Creatures and Wildlife
What the official reveal materials actually establish about creatures in Don’t Starve Elsewhere, including the floating forest creature, the gargoyle statuary in the stone ruins, and the territorial creatures described at high altitude. No creature has been officially named.
On This Page
Creatures and Wildlife collects what has actually been established about the living things in Don't Starve Elsewhere. The honest headline is that Klei Entertainment has published no bestiary and no in-game name for anything that lives here. What exists is the studio's own written description of the world, the announcement trailer, a set of official reveal stills, and the key art. This page sticks to those, and flags everything else as open. Two creature words do come from Klei rather than from this wiki: the studio's own labels for its reveal stills call the large floating forest creature a jellyfish and the winged stone figures gargoyles. Those are the studio's shorthand for the pictures, not published creature names, so they are used here as descriptions rather than as canon.
What the Studio Has Said
The published description of the game promises a world filled with strange creatures and lurking shadows, and sets survivors against monsters and mystery. Two lines go further than atmosphere. The high country is described in terms of territorial creatures that try to bring down the thunder, which is the only place a creature behaviour is described at all. Elsewhere in the same text, the Fog is said to curse everything it touches, which implies creatures altered by it, though none has been shown or named.
Nothing has been published about a bestiary, creature counts, tiers, bosses, taming, breeding, or drops.
Creatures Shown in Official Materials
The table below covers only what is visible in the studio's own reveal materials and key art. Except where noted as the studio's own shorthand, the descriptive labels are this wiki's, not official names.
What Is Shown | Where | What Can Be Said |
|---|---|---|
Floating jellyfish-like creature | Official reveal still, redwood forest | A large creature hanging in the air above the forest floor, with a wide barbed maw ringed by spines and several long trailing limbs. Two survivors are engaging it on foot. Its size relative to the characters makes it the biggest hostile shown so far. |
Small eye creatures | Official reveal still, redwood forest | Several low, single-eyed creatures on the ground around the larger one. Whether they are its spawn, a separate species, or a swarm that appears with it has not been said. |
Gargoyles | Official reveal still, stone ruins | Winged stone figures on plinths around a paved courtyard. One is off its plinth, on the ground beside its empty pedestal, crouched forward with its wings spread toward the two survivors, who are running. Klei's own label for the still describes them as running from the gargoyles. No mechanics have been published, but this is a creature in motion rather than statuary. |
Territorial high-altitude creatures | Studio description | Described only as territorial and associated with thunder. Klei has not named them or tied that line to any specific animal, though the snowy cliff still does show wildlife living at high altitude. |
Clams | Official reveal still, shoreline | Survivors are shown digging clams together on a shore, which makes shellfish a confirmed gatherable rather than a creature encounter. See Survival Basics for the food loop. |
Large horned creatures | Official reveal still, snowy cliff | Two shaggy blue-grey animals on a high snow ledge, standing on four legs, each carrying a heavy ribbed horn that curves back over its body. The nearer one is turned toward the survivor at the cliff edge with its teeth bared. Two pale ovoid objects that read as eggs sit on the snow beside the other, the only sign of nesting anywhere in the reveal materials. |
Small crested bird | Official reveal still, snowy cliff | A small round bird on the same ledge, black and white with a patterned wing, a pale cheek patch and two thin feathers curling up from its head. It is the only animal in the reveal materials that reads as harmless. |
Shell-backed shore creature | Official reveal still, tidal shore | A large crab-like animal on the wet sand, walking on jointed legs under a heavy shell thick with green weed, with two pale eyes set above a fringe of the same weed. Broken planks and the shells of clams lie scattered around it. It is the biggest thing on the beach and nothing indicates whether it is hostile. |
Grey rodents | Official reveal stills, burning forest and cliff base | Small grey animals with large ears and long tails. A pair stands in the open in the burning forest, and a single one appears at the foot of the snowy cliff, which makes them the only creature type to turn up in more than one of the stills. |
Winged creature in the key art | Official key art | A large purple animal with tall pointed ears, wide pale eyes, long fangs and a lolling blue tongue, filling one side of the title art beside two survivors. Its ears, hunched posture and spread wings closely echo the gargoyle in the courtyard still. Klei has not said they are the same creature, and neither has been named. |
The Gargoyles and the Ruins
The gargoyle still is the only look so far at built architecture in the game. Survivors cross a wet flagstone courtyard by torchlight, past an arched doorway and tall gothic windows, while lightning strikes close enough to set a bare tree burning. Carved figures sit on plinths around the courtyard.
One of the figures is no longer on its plinth. It is down on the flagstones beside its empty pedestal, body turned toward the survivors with its wings out, while Wilson runs past holding a lit torch and WX-78 runs ahead of him. Klei's own label for this still has the two of them running from the gargoyles, which is about as close to a statement as anything in the reveal materials gets. What is still open is everything mechanical: whether all of them animate, what wakes them, whether they can be fought, and whether the ones still on their plinths are dormant or simply decoration. The location itself is covered on the Multi-Tiered World page.
The horned pair are worth reading alongside the one behavioural line Klei has published. The studio describes the high country in terms of territorial creatures, and these are the only animals shown living up there. They are on the same ledge the survivors are on, one of them is baring its teeth at arm's length from a survivor, and Klei's own label for the picture says Wilson is being knocked off the cliff rather than falling. Putting those together is tempting, but the studio has not said what knocked him off, so the connection stays an observation rather than a fact.
A Note on Franchise Creatures
The studio's own published description sets the game in a strange and unforgiving new world with all-new biomes, and its wider framing has consistently placed this game apart from earlier entries rather than continuing them. No creature from an earlier Don't Starve release has been confirmed to appear here. Lists of returning monsters circulating ahead of launch are not sourced to the studio, and this wiki does not carry them. If a familiar creature is confirmed later, it will be added with the announcement that confirmed it.
The same standard applies to the survivors themselves, which are tracked separately on the Characters page.
What Has Not Been Confirmed
Treat everything below as open.
The official name of any creature in the game.
How many creature types exist, and how they are distributed across biomes.
Whether the gargoyles are hostile, decorative, or something in between.
What the floating forest creature is called, how it attacks, and what it drops.
Whether the small eye creatures are tied to the larger one or independent.
Boss encounters, and whether the game has them in the traditional sense.
Whether the Fog transforms creatures it touches, and what that looks like.
Taming, farming, hunting, and trapping specifics for any animal.
Day and night creature rosters, and whether they differ.
Whether the winged creature in the key art and the courtyard gargoyles are the same animal.
What wakes a gargoyle, and whether the ones still on their plinths are dormant or scenery.
Whether the eggs on the cliff ledge can be taken, and what the fan-tailed birds do if you try.
Whether the shell-backed shore creature is hostile, and whether it guards the clam beds.
Whether the small animal at the campfire is a pet, a follower, or simply local wildlife.
What knocked Wilson off the cliff, and whether the horned creatures on that ledge are responsible.
Two further animals appear on the rainy plateau, one dark and bird-shaped on the grass and one small and pale beside a survivor at a campfire. Neither is legible enough in the released material to describe, so both are left out until a clearer image exists.
This page will grow as the studio publishes creature details. Until then, anything not listed above should be treated as unconfirmed.