What's the worst start you've had?

[Maelstrom]

Wondering what's the worst start you've seen?  I just started my second play through and got a seemingly pretty lousy start.  Full disclosure: my first world was customized to nerf more challenging aspects of the game (passive mobs, no temporal issues) as a primer in learning the necessary survival skills so this is my first "legit" play through.  

So this apparent lousy start - Spawned in a warm climate and there was almost no flint (3 pieces and tons of shale, granite, andesite).  By the time I founded my dirt shack close to sunset on day 2 I had a whopping 25 flint to my name.  Made knives and an axe which was broken chopping brush for sticks (which wasn't plentiful) and chopping a modest tree for 4 or 5 logs (couldn't even chop firewood due to broken axe).  Nothing but low fertility soil for hundreds of blocks radius, almost no food the first day (only found 3 berry bushes with 1 yielding berries to eat); thankfully I harvested a handful of reed roots and cooked them that night when I was starving.  By the time I found medium fertility soil, I had seen a couple of chickens and rabbits, no pigs and no sheep/goats.  Found plenty of flax, rice and other grains, but only two spots of turnips yielding 5 edible tubers.

Want to hear how good I have it by how hard you've had it.

[Ariven]

This might not be quite the answer that you're going for, but I created a 32x32 world, Smallsville, and found my resources a bit slim. Early game is a li'l tough without cattails.

[Kolyenka]

I like starting out in colder biomes, but they can be challenging... my worst start ever deposited me on top of icy mountain surrounded by ravines. By the time I got off the mountain and out of the ravines I was nearly dead from frostbite, had not found a single resource, and was starving. Ended up kicking the bucket inside a nearby trader's caravan, because I never ended up finding anything to eat or start a fire with. It was rough.

[Maelstrom]

4 hours ago, Ariven said:

This might not be quite the answer that you're going for, but I created a 32x32 world, Smallsville, and found my resources a bit slim. Early game is a li'l tough without cattails.

I had a false start on a full sized world where I had enough reeds to craft 1 or 2 baskets for inventory expansion before nightfall.  Quit that world and rerolled a new one.

[Fredrik Blomquist]

Was going to say i never seen lack of flint, but my new 1.15 i only found 2 the first day, which meant some problems, i couldn't make an axe, so i could't get any fire going the first day (bad managing, i could have spent more time getting peat and sticks and i would have been fine, i'm playing collapsing dirt so i had to find ruins to get stone for my first building and spent to much time with that. But once passed first day it worked out, even if it took some problems getting a pot with nearly no trees next to where i settled. Personally i only rarely waste my axe or knife on bushes - usually the bushes gives more than enough sticks anyway unless im using them for something special. I think we all play very differently. I often plant in low fertility soil first round. Might be stupid, but i figure a can always get better soil later and i might as well get something growing right away. I do a walled in garden (guess that is because i started playing when you needed the saw for a fence), and that means i usually start small and enlarge it over time, when i get better soil i use it for the expansion and the grown plants i need to replant. Getting the plantation going usually makes the rabbits appear even if they where not there before.

[Silent Shadow]

I once started in a mountainous forest/jungle with dirt affected by gravity. Constantly sliding off hills, pushing through foliage just for the ground to collapse from under me, all while wolves were chasing me. I think I died 3 times in the first 15 minutes trying to escape it. Can't tell you how many times I ran into wolves and pit traps. I even slid off of a mountain into a pond (losing half my health) only to find 3 wolves lounging around the pond. Eventually I navigated my way out but man that was terrible.

[Maelstrom]

On 7/17/2021 at 4:17 PM, Silent Shadow said:

I once started in a mountainous forest/jungle with dirt affected by gravity. Constantly sliding off hills, pushing through foliage just for the ground to collapse from under me, all while wolves were chasing me. I think I died 3 times in the first 15 minutes trying to escape it. Can't tell you how many times I ran into wolves and pit traps. I even slid off of a mountain into a pond (losing half my health) only to find 3 wolves lounging around the pond. Eventually I navigated my way out but man that was terrible.

Sounds like escaping spawn on 2b2t.  I'll admit that would have been a restart for me (until I get more experience playing the game).

[RobinHood]

My worst start was in a dark, large forrest, surrounded by wolves in the very first minute(s).

End my second worst start, it was with nice hills, nice flatlands, but believe me or believe me not, I found no any flax seed and also no nearly no any seeds in a nice amount!!!!!! I did quit this world after 2 hours.

btw. in ver first in-game month I get mostly a full stack of flax! I find every day some flax here and there ....

Edited July 20, 2021 by RobinHood

[Maelstrom]

Glad I didn't give up on this start.  I serendipitously built my initial highlands home literally on top of a vein of rich hemetite!  Managed to find enough tin to create a bronze pick and anvil (plus a little left over).  Mined over two stacks of iron chunks to smelt before relocating to a more preferable location.

Still interested in hearing the horrors of bad starts (and if/how circumstances changed).

[bearheathen]

Well, I run on Linux, so all kinds of interesting bugs happen. My first game EVER I spawned...over a gaping pit and fell immediately to my death. It got worse from there.

[Maelstrom]

2 hours ago, bearheathen said:

Well, I run on Linux, so all kinds of interesting bugs happen. My first game EVER I spawned...over a gaping pit and fell immediately to my death. It got worse from there.

Sounds like a restart, but at the risk of opening old wounds...  What does worse from there look like?

[Kolyenka]

A new worse start turned great start for me recently--a very, very deep pit. The walls were glacier ice and granite and were almost totally sheer. I had coordinates and map off so idk exactly how many blocks down I was but it was a LOT. Picked my way up the side by just harvesting all the glacier ice I could reach and pillaring up, which took a good long while. Found a ruin with some spelt grain, but no other food or animals. Wandered around until I was nearly dead from starvation (I had learned my lesson about jacking up player hardiness so the cold wasn't affecting me), and ended up finding a really neat underground ruin with a lantern, a bunch of glass, gears, temporal gears, linen sacks, and a TON of those ornate storage vessels. No food though. But I didn't want to just let all that go so I wound up just switching to creative mode and building a tundra cabin with my spoils, and then switched back to survival once I thought I had a fighting chance. I'm still playing it, it's really fun.

[Screwy]

Last time I started a new world, in the moment I was done with character customization, I was instantly killed by a wolf. A whole pack hunted me down every single time on respawn. I gave up after five tries and killed them in creative mode, before I continued.

[Maelstrom]

On 10/18/2021 at 11:34 AM, Screwy said:

Last time I started a new world, in the moment I was done with character customization, I was instantly killed by a wolf. A whole pack hunted me down every single time on respawn. I gave up after five tries and killed them in creative mode, before I continued.

That sucks.  On respawn, did you try to flee the rabid wolf pack?

[Screwy]

For about three seconds each time after the first one, yes. On the first try I was dead before screen could render
That's okay, just a bit of bad luck. Was a survival test world, anyway. Just annoying, because I couldn't test the mods I wanted to check out.

[Windego]

For me there were a couple of rough starts which include some things mentioned above. From minuscule resources to spawning in large deserts with no food or scrubs to get any kind of tools. But my top two worst playthroughs, one of which i quit after dying more than seven times in the first day...

1# This one takes makes as the proverbial cherry on top.
I spawned IN a large hole. It was about roughly 60 or so blocks deep and was connected to some caves. There was water at the very bottom, but you'd have to land perfectly in it to survive the fall I'd thought.. I was wrong. There was a single block of water atop a deep layer of lava. So the lava was masked by the water. Even if you'd have made it down, you would be cooked like some second degree human crock-pot dish. And if by some miracle I managed to descend down via the use of several blocks sticking out from the sides while falling, I would be met by a Bell and a couple of nightmare Drifters to turn me into a human shishkebab. I spawned there at the top, because the first layer was a suspended layer of sand. So once I accidentally jumped as I pressed on the space bar on accident.

2# The base of the cake, this one.
I spawned in a desert area that was connected to more deserts and gravel mountains, and some lakes without cattails. No scrubs, aside the gravel mountains. But there were no berries, no wildlife, numerous hidden holes covered by sand and/or gravel layers that YES, I just /had/ to fall into while collecting flint and sticks.
And as I finally managed to find some kind of dirt field with some berries, it was guarded by a family of 3 wolves and a pup. So I thought.. Nope. Let's try a different one.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Windego

[daretmavi]

1-st game. I spawned in the water, no land visible. I was swimming and found an small island. There were 1 flint and some bushes. I built some shelter and survived the night.

Next morning, satiation almost depleted a was swimming again and found big island, but ... almost no bushes, few flint so I could make some tools. But soon I started to starve and eventually died. I respawned in the water again with half the satiation and till I reached the island again I started to starve again.

Then I decided to read some guides :D
Cattail roots would help me if I knew