First of all this is a tier list based on "Overall Multiplayer Quality" of the characters and my overall experience playing these characters. Got it? Ok.
Also, fyi, I've played every single character for at least a full year to get a feeling of how they work and what they can do.
Now to explain the tiers!
(S+)
These are characters who are the best of the best, they may or may not have downsides.
Conditions:
-A character is remarkably easy to pick up for what they do.
-Very impactful perks.
-Highly beneficial to the team and/or themselves.
-Overall VERY well rounded in every aspect with little to no benefits.
-Extremely good rewards with little to no risk.
(S)
These are characters who are just, always good, they're never bad choices.
The thing that differentiates them from S+ is that S tier characters are just "Always good with no downsides". They are characters with GOOD team perks with no downside, or they can be characters that boost their team in one way or another. tl;dr impactful characters with no downsides, while S+ are just, Gods.
Conditions:
-No impactful downsides.
-Impactful perks.
-No risk at all for the rewards they provide.
-No weaknesses.
(A+)
A+ characters are those who have a specific niche that they steamroll with, a certain thing they do that no other character can do as well as they can without ridiculous amounts of prep, resources or effort.
Conditions:
-Powerful "niche" roles
-Good perks
-Minimal downsides
(A)
These characters are the perfect representation of "Good.", just good. You can always pick 'em without having to worry about much. Just good.
(B)
These characters are kinda just, replacable, yeah. They're just replacable. Sure, they're good, but if paired up with a character that is a better version of them you'll somewhat feel... Pointless?
Conditions:
-Not enough impactful perks to make them worth taking over other characters.
-Replacable
(C)
Knockoff versions of other characters, yes you may pick them, but there's no purpose to them when they're literally just, worse versions of previous characters.
The thing that differentiates them from B rank characters is that, these are literally just unnecessary when paired up certain other characters. Yes they could make other characters better, but it's redundant. C tier characters could have somewhat of a very SMALL niche, these guys do not.
Conditions:
-No pick worthy perks
(D)
D tier characters are just pointless. No more explanation needed. You never need them for anything, but they aren't a hinderance.
(F)
Characters that directly or indirectly hinder your team's progress.
Now that we have the ranks out of the way, let's talk about the characters!
(Wortox)
Wortox, in my opinion, is the best character in the game and these are the reasons why:
-Requires less food intake than a lot of other characters.
To explain, you do NOT need crockpot foods as Wortox. You can easily plant several flowers in your base and live off of the souls you gain from butterflies. Sanity shouldn't be an issue if you actually kill the nightmares. 1 soul = 18 hunger and -5 sanity.
-Can heal his allies.
Self explanatory, 1 soul = 20 HP. Now this scales with the number of allies near him. Maximum HP that a single soul can heal is 20 and the lowest being 13.
13 is NOT a small amount of HP when you can literally spam it.
-A good boss killer
Wortox is IMO the safest boss killer in the game, especially with fuelweaver. One of his perks is that he gets a free lazy explorer, meaning he can teleport to any spot on the screen for 1 soul, meaning that you do not need to kite bosses, you can just teleport to the exact spot you're standing on to dodge an attack. And he has decent HP sooo, he's pretty good.
-Great explorer/Ruins rusher
His built in lazy explorer is amazing for exploring the world as well as rushing ruins, it's extremely easy not to die on this character.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wormwood - Living logs, and Wormwood's downside of not being able to heal with food.
-Wendy - Sisturn grants Wortox great sanity regen.
-Willow - Bernie can be useful for sanity issues.
(Warly)
I don't think I need to really explain this one all that much. Warly can make very powerful recipes that boost all of his allies when they consume them. From damage reduction to being able to chop faster, he's just an amazing support character.
Yes he does get hungry faster, but he also has more hunger to compensate, and he also can't eat the same dishes over and over again. But see, the only downside with that is fighting, and Warly really doesn't need to fight IMO, depending on the amount of people of course. If you have more people on the server you can easily have Warly just preparing dishes for you.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wormwood - Can make Grim Galette to heal Wormwood.
-Wolfgang - Can boost Wolfgang's damage EVEN MORE.
-Wortox - Due to Wortox not needing to eat crockpot dishes, Warly can eat them.
But yeah, not much else I have to say about Warly.
(Wormwood)
ANother character that I don't have a lot to say about. He keeps his team fed by farming 3 screens of crops before the first winter, has amazing traps that absolutely demolish hound waves, and yeah.
He can spam farm stuff like dragonfruit, pumpkins and potatoes which is really good, as well as some veggies that you'd need for Warly's spices.
His downside is just, not even a downside in multiplayer since you can just have other people doing the fighting while you farm up the food for your team.
His traps do require coordination between everyone, meaning everyone needs to war his armour to avoid dying to the traps.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wortox - Can heal him.
-Warly - Grim galette
-Wicker - Can grow his crops instantly
-Wolfgang - Wormwood can feed him
-WX-78- Can rush ruins for Wormwood to obtain more fridges.
(Wickerbottom)
Does this one even warrant a paragraph? Maybe. Wickerbottom can farm up ridiculous amounts of food for her team, can set up boss killing traps, farm krampus with birds... She is just a very potent character with no downsides.
But I'll go over her books:
-Applied horticulture: Can farm up a lot of berries, grass and twigs for her team. (Veggies if she has Wormwood or farms)
-Birds of the world: By creating a little caged arena far away from her camp she can summon birds inside it and then put them to sleep with Sleepytime stories to repeatedly kill them until she spawns krampus, leading into a krampus sack farm.
-Sleepytime stories: Can be used during the dragonfly fight to keep her from enraging. It puts enemies to sleep.
-The end is night: Pretty much has 1 and only 1 use. Overcharging WX-78.
-On Tentacles: A very, very cool book in my opinion, it has a lot of different uses, the most basic use is setting up for bee queen, surrounding the big beehive in tentacles in order to let the tentacles kill her. You can also have a pseudo hound wave trap with these, but that's a little bit riskier. It's a book that summons 3 tentacles for you.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wolfgang - Can provide a lot of food for him.
-WX-78- Can keep him overcharged.
-Wormwood- Can instantly grow his crops.
-Maxwell- Uses her books for her.
(Wurt)
Oh boy, the little merm lady, what can I say, her survival skills are unmatched, in my opinion the best SOLO survivor in the game, but this is a multiplayer tier list soo. Wurt is a purely late game character, early on she should focus on survival, setting up basic necessities as well as gathering resources for her merm structures, since her perks require chunky amounts of resources that's somewhat tedious to obtain.
She's a character who provides her team with a lot of "damage", and by that I mean boss damage. Her merms can be utilized in many ways that could let you take down enemies:
-Bee Queen setup: Her merms are much more powerful than bunnies and they're also tankier, much faster too.
-Anti hound wave setup: She can make her disguises for her allies so they could all huddle up with her merms for protection.
Her main downside is that her perks are VERY expensive, but that's why you have teammates for, to help you gather those resources.
She also saves a lot of food since she can just eat Durians that Wicker, Worwoom or herself farm up. One durian is 60 hunger, which makes for an AMAZING food source. She can eat only that and leave the rest of the foods to her allies.
This character is a weird S rank and that's mostly because of her design, she revolves heavily around creating a merm army that she can use to DESTROY almost ANY boss in the game(try the merms with ancient guardian), as well as saving up on food by eating only durians.
There's not really any character she particularly works "best" with, she's a solo standing character that indirectly boosts her team's safety AND damage by a mile, but I guess:
-Wickerbottom- Wurt can spam farm tentacle spots for her through Merm king, and Wicker can grow her durians for her.
-Wormwood- Can farm durians for her.
Also she's nice when it comes to collecting tedious resources, such as fish, kelp and tentacle spots.
(Wolfgang)
Does a lot of damage, clears out bosses like they're spiders, LITERALLY nothing else I can mention about Wolfgang.
His entire playstyle is killing things and then using their food drops to kill more things. The reason he is in S rank is that he can destroy bosses for his allies SO FAST that it's unreal, he boosts his team by obtaining amazing loot for them, if he decides to share it ofc.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wickerbottom- Farms up food for him.
-WOrmwood- Farms up food for him.
-WX-78- Farms gears for him(for WX).
-Wigfrid- Can use her helmets and farms up meat for her.
-Maxwell- Farms nightmare fuel for him(For maxwell).
(Wendy)
Oh Wendy, she's just, an amazing support character who boosts her team's damage by 10% for 2 seconds every time Abigail attacks an enemy, or rather, the enemy takes 10% more damage for 2 seconds, but yeah. But "won't abigail die to bosses instantly", you may ask, she won't, because Wendy can make a tons of different elixirs for her, one of them being "Spectral Cure-All" which heals 20HP every second up to 600 HP for Abigail, and that's pretty great especially since Abigail doesn't need to stay alive for that long in a boss fight if you have a bit more people.
Abigail also destroys hound waves, she can take on (around) 15 hounds on her own without any potions.
Abigail is also an EXCELLENT way to farm meat and other resources:
-Abigail + Spectral Cure-All or Revenant Restorative + Distilled Vengeance against groups of pigment (yes, she can kill groups of pigmen now), hounds, bunnymen, merms(a little bit trickier) and even Vargs, she can solo kill 2 Vargs in the night with this setup.
I recommend always having a Revenant Restorative on you, it heals 3 HP (or 2, I am trusting the Wiki, even though I think it's a total of 2 per sec) every second, so it's a nice little boost for when you're fighting spiders or hounds, or even for using after a close battle, it's cheap and nice, you can never have too many of these.
Wendy also doesn't really have any character she does best with, so the only thing I'll say is:
-Wigfrid and Wolfgang- It outweighs Wendy's lower damage due to the fact that they have higher damage.
(Woodie)
Woodie is another simple one, kinda. He's a character with multiple uses that let him cover more ground:
-Goose: Let's him explore the map a lot more efficiently.
-Beaver: Gathers A LOT of wood very quickly.
-Moose: A decent fighter, use Moose when you don't need better gear and don't want to waste durability of items.
Not much I can say about Woodie either, he has a lot of options to what he can do, but in his core he's a very simple character.
Now the reason he's in A+ instead of A is that he's "The Jack of all trades but the king of none" kind of character, but to next level.
Also his beard gives 45 winter insulation which is also nice, but the main that helps him hold his place as an A+ character is his ridiculous versatility in terms of what he can do.
His main downside is his hunger drain after transforming back into Woodie, he loses all of his hunger so watch out for that.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wendy- Farms monster meat for him.
-Webber- Farms monster meat for him.
(Willow)
Oh Willow, everybody's favourite character to blame for random fires they're Wicker started by not knowing how her book works, but yeah, Willow.
Willow is a very basic survival character, she loses and gains 10% sanity from all sources besides direct sanity drains (monster meat, green caps).
The main reason you pick Willow in a group is for Bernie, and is bernie a powerful tool...
Bernie:
-Can farm nightmare fuel INFINITELY, when he kills a nightmare Willow does NOT gain sanity, meaning that as long as you have sewing kits or tape you can go on forever.
-He is great at fighting bosses due to having 2000HP and 50 single target damage. He's especially good during bosses that drain sanity.
-He can be useful with hound waves, AS LONG as your team actually attacks the hounds, remember, Bernie is a DEFENSIVE tool, not an OFFENSIVE one.
Willow's lighter is also a decent tool EARLY GAME for cooking foods for other characters for that extra hunger or sanity.
Some personal tips for Willow:
-Make night lights, they're a great source of sanity and refueling them is INCREDIBLY cheap for Willow, they're also decent light sources and insanity farms for other players.
-KELP FLOWER CROWNS, I cannot stress this enough, they're a great sanity loss tool if you wanna slowly lose sanity to get bernie.
-Eating glommer's goop during fights as healing items is amazing, you gain health and you get Bernie.
Willow doesn't work especially well with anyone, she's a support survivalist who brings damage, protection and solo survival potential to the team.
(Wigfrid)
Same as Wolfgang, not much I can say. She kills things and builds armour for others, that's pretty much it. She's a stat character more than anything else, just that she can also protect her team with helmets. Honestly, there's not much else I can say, all of these A and below characters are fairly simple.
She works well with everyone but especially well with Wurt due to Wurt only eating veggies.
(WX-78)
Oh boy, this one's gotta get people angry, I don't think WX-78 is S tier anymore, he brings nothing to the table, but the reason he's not D tier like Wilson is that WX can explore during winter extremely well, and he can help take bosses down, so that's pretty much it.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wickerbottom- Overcharge.
(Winona)
This character's only purpose is to craft catapults, and that's it.
Catapults can be used to help take down giants that are stationary(Bee Queen, Ancient Fuelweaver, Dragonfly...) though they're fairly expensive so you're best off using Merms IMO.
Yes Merms are also expensive, but they don't require to be refueled with gems every couple of days.
This character is best paired up with:
-Willow- Can make tapes that fully repair Bernie.
(Webber)
This poor character always had a minor dilemma of either being replaced by Wendy or making Wendy more useful, but now it's just, his only purpose is easily farming monster meat, which Wendy/Abigail do a million times better, the only benefit he brings to the table is being able to create spider nests early on, and that's it.
Right now he suffers from the long lost "Woodie Effect" where there's a character that outclasses him by doing the same thing, just that with Webber it's 2 characters:
-Abigail and Wendy- If you have Wendy you don't need Webber, unless you just want a million silk since Wendy can easily go to the desert and farm up hounds like they're nothing. Also late game you can obtain spider nests extremely easily.
-Wormwood- Food is not an issue anymore since Wormwood got released, so monster meat farming isn't that big of a deal when pumpkins give 40 hunger.
Webber is NOT useless, just rather obsolete nowadays.
This character works best with:
-Wendy- Farming spiders.
(Maxwell)
Oh boy, Maxwell is trash. There is no scenario (besides you liking Maxwell more) in which you'd choose Maxwell over Woodie, there's just no scenario.
Maxwell comes with 75HP, and high maintenance puppets (they summon treeguards while Beaver doesn't).
You can argue that he can infinitely farm nightmare fuel, but Bernie does it better.
But yeah, he used to replace Woodie, but now the tides have turned.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wickerbottom- Can use her books due to his sanity regen.
(Wilson)
Wilson is a basic survival character directed towards helping newer players surviving their first winter. He has no beneficial perks for his team besides his beard.
He has no downsides either.
This character is best paired up with:
-Willow- Bernie requires beard hair to be crafted which Wilson can provide.
(Wes)
This character was created to be a hindering challenge for the player, which is cool in DS but not in DST where teamwork plays a great part in survival.
No purpose to play this character other than to be a hindrance to your team's progress.
This character is best paired up with:
-Wormwood- Massive food production.
-Wicker- Massive food production.
And that's it for my tier list! Hope you guys found this interesting! Leave your comments about this so we could discuss differentiating opinions about who is a noob and who is a pro.