Mitch's University Survival Guide

This guide is built to give you enough information to not be miserable during your first year of university.

Prepping for uni

So first off let's be honest you have no fucking clue what you're in for before you go to university. The good news is every fucking body is in the same fucking boat as you so chill the fuck out. The first thing you want to do after you've got your UCAS confirmation is of course make sure everything's gucci with the Student Loans Company and then immediately start looking at accommodation. Student accommodation is generally a seller's market so as soon as the A-Level results come out there's a massive rush for the cheapest rooms. The cheapest rooms sell out ON RESULTS DAY so really after you get the results and confirm you want to start looking at student accommodation. The best rooms are:

• Not the cheapest but relatively close,
• Are normally through a charity or uni-led organisation (such as SULETS, which is the Leicester based non-profit student housing organisation),
• Not through the cancerous mess that is the private estate agents,
• Has a tenancy agreement that doesn't require an arm, the blood of a newborn and a willingness to sell your soul for personal gain. If you don't know what a good tenancy agreement looks like, show it to your parents,
• Comes with a double bed for fucking and sleepovers.

Pretty much everything else is acceptable but get a place relatively quickly. Overall as long as it has enough room for a desk, bed and wardrobe you're pretty much fine. Getting a place that isn't on your university's 'recommended accommodation' list is normally cheapest. The vast majority of houses and flats around your university are let out to university students so ring places up and check them out.

Secondly your parents are probably going to overburden the fuck out of you when you pack your bags. All you need is one instrument (if you play), some kind of PC, maybe a chair, some boxes to put all your shit in, random pieces of shit that every human needs (I'm looking at you, Mr Multitool & Mr Toiletries Bag) and a small wardrobe's worth of clothes. If you plan on drinking (fucking do it you pussy) bring cards and possibly alcohol.

Lastly, seeing as you're probably a middle class prick and have been coddled by your parents for your whole life, learn the essential life skills that haven't been taught to you before heading to university. Learn how to cook by asking your parents how to cook, learn how to do every chore and learn how to regulate your time and emotions. This pays massive dividends later on in your life as essential life skills save you tonnes of time and effort over the course of 3 years and make you look fucking good in comparison to your peers.

Clubbing

The best part of university for yours truly. clubbing is generally the art of getting as close to blackout drunk round an acquaintances abode (or your own) with friends, making a drunken walk to either a pub, a bar or a club and dancing like no-body's watching. There's a couple of rules to clubbing, believe it or not:

1. If you're going to be upset if you lose it, don't bring it clubbing. This means buy yourself a cheap phone and wallet, leave your iPhone at home and don't wear anything that is expensive/has sentimental value to you. People get mugged and shit gets broken/ruined all the fucking time whilst clubbing: even at predrinks, people break glasses and bottles fucking constantly, before they're even hammered.
2. Buy yourself some medium-tier shoes that are a mix of classy, tough and easily cleanable. The most common shoes that people wear on a night out are Brogues in black or brown, with brown being the most common. Why buy dedicated dancing shoes, you may ask? They're going to get dirty as fuck and take a beating every week so you don't want to bring out some shoes that you care about. I personally prefer to wear boots on a night out but your choice.
3. Evening wear is generally classy casual. A nice enough shirt or jumper, jeans or chinos and some classy casual shoes (brogues, monks/double monks, oxfords are acceptable, no trainers and no suede) is generally the go-to. In RNB/Dance etc places you want to go more towards the classy and in Indie/Punk/Rock/Rave you can normally just put on a t-shirt and jeans/chinos. Stick to the fucking dress code because walking home on your own and changing is not fun. 
4. BUY EAR PLUGS. It's loud af in clubs and if you're off clubbing more than once a month you need ear plugs. Multiple of my hardcore raving friends have tinnitus at the tender age of 21 and it's not fun. I've actually got laid from ear plugs (because people start talking about you when they think you can't hear them). 
5. Learn how to dance (or close enough). Google it, buy a book or join a society. 
6. Eat well before heading out. Drinking on an empty stomach is how you end up getting more fucked than Bill Cosby's career after the rape allegations. A lot of my friends down a glass of milk before drinking as it lines the stomach and stops absorption of alcohol (supposedly) allowing you to drink your friends under the table.

Moving in

Moving in day is great, although pretty mad. There's not much to talk about here apart from pack your shit. Talk to, and arrange everything with your landlord before moving in and go find the nearest Tesco and get food (preferably with your parents money). Generally, keep it simple and bring stuff that you'll use a lot and not much else. Minimalism is relatively key and you can always buy other stuff later. I'd also suggest you bring a desk fan and food containers. After you've got your stuff unpacked, go talk to your flatmates, your neighbours and any friends you have in your city/university and organise some kind of social thing to get to know these people as chances are the ones that you actually like are going to become your friends or at least acquaintances for the next 3-4 years.

Food & Diet & Health

There's two things every person should be able to do: fight and cook. When it comes to learning how to cook, the three rules are to keep it simple, experiment and for the love of god use timers. Generally, you want to know how to cook 2-3 impressive dishes and then a good dozen or so 'Tuesday night' kind of dishes. Try to avoid dishes that aren't easily scale-able up and down, that require massive amounts of cooking time and can't be frozen. Generally, you want to make food in medium/large batches. This saves you from eating pasta every fucking night of the week and makes your time invested per meal very low. If you don't like eating full meals out of containers, make the individual parts of each meal and then freeze them. Because of this you want to bring or buy a lot of assorted sized containers. This'll free up your evenings, stop you from eating garbage in the mornings and calling it 'breakfast', and leaves you food to eat after a night out or when you get peckish in the middle of the night.

Guess what motherfucker, no-body can tell you that you need to eat your veggies or tell you off when you eat icecream and cookies for breakfast! Although I'd be a fucking hypocrite to tell you not to do that as I've literally only eaten Ben & Jerry's today, I recommend you don't do it too often. Generally, if you fuck up your diet for over a week everything else is going to start crumbling. Your diet should only consist of things that you actually enjoy eating, otherwise it'll just rot in the fridge (I speak from experience). Your diet should consist of mostly of vegetables and meat, and you should use carbs as a cheap way of filling you up and to put on weight and shouldn't really be eaten otherwise. The only times I eat a large amount of carbs is just before predrinks as it helps keep you sober. Unless you're throwing up, on drugs or dancing a massive amount you're going to put on weight from the alcohol, so generally running a caloric deficit is advised. I'd also suggest only eating when you're genuinely hungry rather than eating by the clock.

I could nag the fuck out of you over health but I'll keep it simple:

• Eat well. Vegetables, fish, garlic and ginger, lots of herbs and spices are your friends;
• Find a sport or hobby that you enjoy in regards to exercise;
• Sleep is your number one priority. It's important as fuck. Remove all interruptions (wear earplugs to bed and get yourself an eye mask). I don't set an alarm in the morning unless it's necessary. Ya;
• Eat garlic and ginger as they'll help you not become sick;
• Men, sleep with at least your lower half naked as your testes need to be cool in order to make testosterone and 90% of your testosterone is produced at night;
• If you're fat and don't want to be, don't bother doing running. Remove most of the carbs from your diet, still eat confectionery if you like confectionery, and swim regularly. Exercise doesn't burn a lot of calories regardless of what people tell you. Because you lose a massive amount of heat to the water, swimming will cause you to burn a lot of calories. Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day and is lean as fuck as he's in the water for 3-5 hours a day.
• If you need any more health advice, read the 4 Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide by Timothy Ferriss or ask me!

Mental Health

I've deliberately put mental health as a separate topic as students, if you didn't know, generally have horrendous mental health. The main contributing factors in mental health, believe it or not, are:

• Achievement of goals
• Levels of discomfort/negative stimulus. A lot of students fall into the 'comfort trap': they have so much time, so much comfort and all their needs are met that they become exceptionally sluggish, bored and depressed. You need to be pushing yourself, discovering new things and hitting your goals otherwise you're going to develop depression/anxiety and probably be packed back off home for failing to get the grades. In short, do stuff that makes you feel alive.
• Levels of sunshine. Humans are meant to be jogging around savannas in western Africa, not sitting in an office in Glasgow. If you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (like me!) try vitamin D tablets. 
• Sleep. If your sleep is getting interrupted you're going to fucking hate life. Wear earplugs to bed and if you have quite a bright room wear an eye mask.
• Diet. 
• Exercise. This is heavily linked to achievement of goals and negative stimulus. 

In effect, do things that you don't like doing but are productive and then go do stuff that you enjoy and your mental health will be pretty good. If stuff starts seriously going wrong, reach out to friends, family and professionals. Mental health issues are by far the most common reasons that students leave university without a degree, so overall keep on top of your shit.

Chores

Do your chores and then reward yourself for doing them. Your priorities should always be taking the bins out, washing the dishes and then doing laundry, in that order. Nobody likes their house smelling like rotting fish. Most people either have a cleaning rota or assign jobs to each flatmate. Most flatmates will put off chores a lot, so in order to avoid a passive-aggressive sticky-note war I suggest you walk up to them and ask them politely to do their chore.

Budgeting

Despite what a lot of people say, budgeting is relatively easy. Spend bare dollar on the things that matter to you and don't spend shit on the things that don't matter. ez pz. Oh, add 10% error to your budget (so if your budget is £100 a week, expect to spend £110) because you'll probably routinely overspend.

Being an Adult

University life is a lot easier when you start acting like an adult. The key to being an adult is to be proactive when you have the time and energy so it doesn't matter if you slack during the times that you're ill or feel like shit. Nip problems in the bud, do some work before the deadlines, talk to your flatmates and solve domestic issues before they become a problem. Overall, when I'm proactive with my uni work I get about 10% higher grades on my coursework. 10% is the difference between grades.

The second one is to listen to your mind and body, work out what's causing you to feel that way and solve it. A lot of the time you'll be having lack of motivation, productivity issues, or sometimes you'll just wake up in the morning and feel like shit. Find out what's causing it and act on that knowledge.

Thirdly I'm going to talk about is taking and understanding negative criticism. Criticising you is literally the best thing somebody can do to you, and everyone loves criticising! Getting negative feedback on work is genuinely the best thing for you as you can learn much more from that than someone telling you that you're God and you shit rainbows on a weekly basis. You should be growing and improving yourself and your situation every day. You're 100% responsible for your life and everything in your life can be changed with relative ease. If you're feeling bad about something, don't wallow on it, go out and sort it out (and if you can't work out how to sort it out, ask for advice/try things).

Generally, problems in your life are compound problems (which is why you haven't sorted them out yet). The best way to solve problems is to work out what those problems rely on or are caused by and to attack those problems rather than attacking the problem directly. For example, let's say you want to pull on a night out because you're lonely. You could go out more often and hit on more girls, but if you're ugly and drunk you're not going to get any. Instead, you should take up new hobbies, expand your social circle, start weightlifting/training, upgrade your wardrobe, eat better and stop getting as hammered at predrinks. Then, you should work on pulling by looking at how others do it, watching videos of pick up artists, etc.. This is the Confucian philosophy of 'action through inaction' or solving problems through personal growth and it's surprisingly effective.

The last thing I'd like to talk about is understanding and regulating your emotions. If you're suddenly angry or having emotional problems, chances are it's the rest of your brain subtly telling you that something's bothering it and you should probably think it out. Personally I was having PTSD-like symptoms when I was doing household chores, getting to university and doing university work. I had to take some time out and think retrospectively about what was causing me to want to break something every time I looked at a dishwasher sponge. I realised that it was because I'd always get shouted at over the dishes and a plethora of other chores by my mum, and so I'd always do the chores whilst I was either angry or annoyed. I always also used to be shouted at by both my teachers and mum over homework and so I'd developed a habit of hating coursework over that too. And again, I'd been pretty much shouted at for the whole of my A-levels by my mother and teachers over my attendance so I fucking hated just turning up. Obviously when I realised all of this shit, I had to systematically deprogram myself from linking those emotions to whatever I was doing. Bad emotions are your body's call to arms.

Education

The holy trinity of getting good grades is:

1. Set hours of work during the day (most people say between 2pm and 5pm I'm gonna do work) and do work during those. That being said, also set time for relaxing/social stuff too.
2. Do work everyday and not cram it into the last week or so (on average you'll get 12% more marks as someone that methodically does their work compared with a crammer) before the deadline
3. Turn up to most lectures.

Bob's your uncle babyyyyyyyy

Dealing with shit

Shit goes wrong in a uni student's life. I got hit by a car, made homeless, mugged, broke my hand (not by getting hit by a car), suffered from so many horrendous illnesses, threw up fucking loads and almost got stabbed a couple of times when I was a uni student. Do not ignore the massive problems that will occur, deal with them first. When shit goes wrong, talk to your parents for advice first, then your professor/support lady at the uni and then ask me. Then get a plan together and deal with it. Notify your university, they'll help out so much it's unreal. The reason people drop out of uni is because they have a problem and they don't talk to anyone about it and it fucks them up.

Setting up for second year

Really, about November/December time you need to start thinking about who you want to live with next year. You need to sign a contract as soon as possible ish. Generally speaking you want more than enough money in a savings account at the end of the year (about 1k+) in order to put down a deposit on a place and pay the first few months rent. Generally speaking it isn't hard to sort out your second year stuff but the earlier you start, the easier it's gonna be. So do it ya bellend

Tips and tricks

• Work out who you want to have in your house in second year early on. Some motherfuckers are just messy, some are unorganised. Avoid them like the plague.
• Enjoy your time, don't sit around bored
• Eat well, sleep well and exercise well.
• Ear plugs are love, ear plugs are life
• Set up group chats on Whatsapp
• Talk to fucking everybody seeing as you'll have a lot of opportunities pop up when you're at uni from just chatting away to people. Whether it's your flatmates, someone that you've ended up sharing an elevator with, your parents, the lady at the checkout, people on a night out etc.. The more people you chat with the more opportunities you'll get just thrown at you, it's great!
• Cook something relatively nice for your flatmates early on in the year and you'll get a bunch of free shit/help from them throughout the year.
• Plan interesting stuff to do weeks ahead
• Get a job whilst at uni, it helps in so many ways!
• Plan internships/other stuff to put on your CV throughout the year and especially during the summer
• Cook early and often, and cook in large batches and freeze that shit
• Be cheeky af with the opposite sex and constantly chat to people 
• If you're suffering mentally or physically before exams, notify your uni/professors and they'll be happy to defer your exams to a later date so you don't get a 2:2 like me lul
• kys

References

• Personal experience, because everyone knows that personal experience is the best academic reference around
• Leaving home survival guide by some random ho, good book on like the basics of being an adult
• 4 Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide by Timothy Ferriss
• Marx's Capital because it's the best book ever
• Bunch of PUA stuff, mostly RSDTyler, good shit if ya ever want to learn how to get laid
• Oh like a 1st year book on contract law that I had lying about
• https://www.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/comments/61sp0r/how_to_survive_on_10_for_a_week/dfh1sld/
• Check out /r/studentfood , /r/mealprepsunday, shit like that. Reddit is great.
• Erm yeah I think that's it

Cheers for reading! I'll be updating this as I think of things I've missed so check it out later! If you want me to make you a cookbook hmuuuuuuuuu

Lifestyle changes to limit depression

I'm writing this because not only do I know many people that are currently suffering from depression but it's also something I have been battling with for a relatively long time and something that I've recently overcome. It was 5 physical and one mental change that forced me through the hell that is recovery and is now stopping me relapsing. The first one was:

Number one: Taking Vitamin D pills

The vast majority of people develop mental problems when they don't have access to ample amounts of sunshine. Humans were built to roam the plains of Africa where there's an abundance of natural light: if you live in the northern hemisphere chances are you live in a world where you receive very little sunlight. It cripples us both physically and mentally. Vitamin D pills help offset any other mental problems (Seasonal Affective Disorder, primarily) that you may have. Even if it only stops 1% of your symptoms it's a lot less to deal with. They cost very little. Going on anti-depressants too might be a good idea for the same reason. 

Number two: Eating well, and eating lots

I had a love-hate relationship with food when I was depressed: I was eating but I really wasn't enjoying it. Like the masochistic prick I am I went from a diet of primarily pizza and ice cream to forcing myself to cook and eat every meal. It adds structure to a day, nourishes and helps with the lack of energy. The best diet I've found for myself is eating 5-8 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, eggs with almost every meal, two of my three meals a day being heavily protein based and fish at least twice a week. I'd advise that you eat such a diet: even if you hate it, chances are you hate everything right now including your current diet so I doubt it can get much worse.

Number three: Forcing exercise

Don't bother trying this one until you've got the other two sorted. Force yourself to do a sport, to run, to lift weights, whatever. It's about as fun as being hit by a car but chances are you feel like that daily anyway so you might as well achieve something whilst you feel like shit. After a bit it'll help regulate your emotions and add structure to your life.

Number four: Sleeping. Literally just sleeping

Sleep is extremely important to mental health. I had a massively fucked up sleeping pattern for about seven years. I then chose instead of fighting it, I'd fall asleep when I was tired and I'd wake up when I was ready. Every other fucker in my life can wait until I wake. After a while my circadian rhythm naturally reset and now I sleep well. I seriously suggest you make sure that you're sleeping in complete darkness and in complete silence with no possible things to wake you up, for as long or as little as you wish. Don't go to bed until you're properly tired and don't set any alarms. Waking up slowly rather than quickly will help immensely too. If you wake up during the night or if you feel sleepy during the day, do whatever your body feels like doing. Obviously some commitments may get in the way of this one; do what you can. You're probably lacking in them anyway seeing as you're depressed as fuck. 

Number five: Slow adoption of good habits, slow breakdown of destructive habits

This one's a little trickier but it's definitely worth it. The way you do it is through consciously linking behaviours together in order to produce the desired outcome, Pavlov's dog style. An obvious example is when I feel hungry, I go find food. If you can link behaviours that you want to do immediately after certain actions you do in your day you can then cause them to effectively become rituals and you won't have to think about them, you'll just do them. I personally did it to establish a morning routine: I used to run around in the morning like a moron doing things in a random order and getting stressed. Now I know exactly what I'm doing for the first hour of waking up, because I established a very short routine (of 3 things) with a reward at the end of it, and then slowly linked behaviours together until I now have a routine (of 9 things) that encompass everything I need to do before I get on with my day. When this happens, it means you can slot good habits into the routine and very soon you'll adopt them. You do exactly the opposite for bad habits; decouple them from the reward (or decouple them from the punishment) and very soon they'll fall out of your routine. My example would be that I hated going to the gym because my friends would push me way too hard and the gym was always crowded. I then stopped going to the gym with those losers and then started going early in the morning so that it was near dead in there, and now I go to the gym rather than sit at home and feel bad about it!

The mental one: Accepting that your brain lies to you

The truth of the matter is that your brain is a massive arsehole. It tells you you're worthless when you're not, it stands in your way by making you feel bad when you should be doing stuff, it lies about literally every external stimulus it processes and then fucks with your emotional state for no reason. The big lie that it tells you is that your abstract thoughts and feelings are much more important than the reality that you live in, which is quite obviously bullshit. Hence, oppose it! Tell it to shut up when it tells you you're worthless, do whatever your goal is for the day even though it's making you feel terrible, ignore it when it tells you you're depressed etc.. In essence, don't let it's stupid and crazy whims change your behaviour. 

A couple of notes

None of this will be easy. These points should be followed for about four weeks. Implementation of these should be in the order that they appear, and will be met with resistance throughout. Push through the resistance, imagine how happy you'll be when you're finally not feeling like a lifeless, grey void. Little steps forward, and don't fret when you get fall back down into the bottomless pit that is your current mental state. Your emotions are a bit like my girlfriend: they can both be beaten into submission. The last note is that just because you don't feel like doing something doesn't mean you can't. Have fun being a masochist!

Mitch's awfully quick guide to getting a SO and keeping him/her.

Let's face it, humans are lonely beings. Whether you're looking for a long-term relationship or something resembling a drunken one-night stand, I've got a guide for you. First, let's go through a checklist of things that really help when it comes to dates (in order of importance):

• Do you carry condoms? Necessary, for obvious reasons. Don't trust the girl, that's how you end up with a deficit of money and a surplus of children. Oh, and possibly herpes. Herpes is the Darwin Award of the sexual world.
• Are you well groomed? Light stubble makes you look unkempt, same with an overgrown hairstyle/beard. Nails should be freshly clipped, pubic hair should be trimmed back, deodorant should be on at all times and you should be wearing some light aftershave. No excuses. If you can't afford proper aftershave get yourself some Old Spice. It's like $8 on Amazon. If you really want to go hard in the paint grab yourself some moisturizer and some witchazel. If you have eczema or acne deal with them to the best of your ability. Face scars are cool, don't worry. 
• Do you have an outfit that you'd be happy to wear to a date? Wear it to the date and wear it out-and-about if you're at a social event. Grooming>Face>Outfit>Body. Nothing else truly matters.
• Do you work out? Obvious really, you don't want to have to take a breather during sex. 
• Do you have a car? Both for sex and to chauffeur yourself and your potential mate around, a car is really damn useful. Preferably not a rustbucket.
• Do you have access to a double bed? Don't worry about this one too much, your friend might have one spare ;)
• Tinder. Don't think too much of it, it's just a silly app. It may or may not get you laid every once in a while. Don't get emotionally invested in it.

Now, let's talk character. The 'personality trait trio' is extremely important. You want to be risk-taking, charismatic and gentlemanly. Risk-taking in order to give you opportunities to capitalize on and to excite whoever you're courting, charismatic in order to intrigue whoever you're courting and gentlemanly in order to set whoever you're courting at ease. Risk-taking and nothing else makes you a fool, charismatic and nothing else makes you a shy guy and gentleness and nothing else makes you a nice guy. Try to at least get two out of three. 

Let's talk about strategy, champ. You want to expose yourself to as many potential mates as possible and show interest to as many potential mates as possible. The first one is really easy; get out more. Bars. Clubs. Friends. Work. Picnics. Family. Cinema. Restaurants. Wherever. The second one takes a little more of a spine. That half-decent waiter/waitress you see? Ask her if she's got a long shift. Ask her when her shift ends, and if she'd like to join you for drinks after. Talk to your damn cashier. If anyone looks like they're having a hard time, ask them if you can help. Hit the library and talk to people. Hold or go to barbecues and speak to everyone. Take risks. Tell the girl that's walking down the road that you think she's gorgeous. Tell the girl working at subway that she has lovely eyes. It doesn't matter if you get rejected. Rejection is the key to success. 

Good luck!

Monetary political lobbying and the reason why it's a horrible thing

Hello.

So what's my gripe with lobbying? When I say lobbying, I mean monetary political lobbying: a company pays a government (or it's officials) to pass or redact a certain law in order to make them (the company)(normally vastly) more profit.

The reason I hate this is for two reasons:

1) It completely undermines the democratic process, as it exchanges votes (a legitimate system (kinda)) with capital (an illegitimate system, in my eyes). I'd much prefer a referendum on a vote than it being sneakily passed by parliamentarians and only because they've been given a lot of money.

2) Political decisions should be made based on philosophical rationality, rather than a corporation's profit motive ('is this going to do more harm than good?' rather than 'can we profit from this?')

I could provide examples at request, but effectively boils down to the fact that the profit motive is not necessarily a moral motive.

Don't Starve: Advanced Tips and Tricks

Hello there, and welcome. This page is primarily for players who have learned how to survive through most things and are looking for a more in-depth analysis of the game.

General Tips & Tricks

These apply to all players and playstyles.

Running around like a madman looking for gold at the start of the game is generally a good idea. Raw materials should be prioritised before actual food in the early game, seeing as you can survive about two days without food.

Buildings/structures can be built but not placed including campfires (which means that you can have a campfire waiting for you and yet you don't need logs/grass to put it down). Perfect if you need more inventory slots.

Wormholes are your friend! Need to escape the Deerclops? Need to get to another biome quickly? Need a panic room and don't know where to put it? No worries!

Koalefant periodically drop manure.

The Koalefant will only spawn if you investigate all suspicious dirt piles.

A couple of Treeguards can kill a lot of enemies without trouble, including hounds and a deerclops, making them useful allies.

Hammering pig heads on a stick is a risk-free way of getting pigskins (and football helmets).

Planting a tree next to your firepit is an easy way of keeping dryer whilst you're doing day-to-day chores.

Don't bring rock lobsters to the over world. Just don't.

If you find any chests in the world or anything that looks suspicious, proceed with caution.

A winter hat, a lot of food and a thermal stone is normally everything you'll need to survive the winter.

Deserts are surprisingly hospitable, between cacti and tumbleweed. Take care when exploring them for the first time, though.

Traps can be used to trap spiders. Free silk! Yay!

Spider warriors are turned into 'worker' spiders if the nest cannot send out a whole war party.

Take care when harvesting beefalo wool. Attacking one accidentally can spell game over very quickly.

Don't Starve Together Tips & Tricks

Some mods don't work properly on DST if you're not the host; namely things like Display Food Values. This is because the food values are hosted on the server and not your version.

Finding it hard to kite? hit ` (left of 1 on QWERTY keyboards) and type ThePlayer:EnableMovementPrediction(false) and see if that helps.

Haunting things can set it on fire. Please don't be that guy that accidentally burns my base down.

Webber can have an extremely high sphere of influence if given a few days to set up. He's great if you need to defend your base, or, you know, want to turn the portal into a deathtrap.

Boss monsters have a lot more health on multiplayer servers.

There are some perks of having a ghost haunt things, they can be found here.

Any others are greatly appreciated, including criticism and error checking.

Tier List

Top Tier: 

Wolfgang

Wickerbottom

Wigfrid

Average, still playable Tier:

Wilson

Webber 

Willow

Wendy

Just never pick Tier:

WX98

Wes

Woodie

Oddball (i.e. playable but have very different playstyles to everyone else) Tier:

Maxwell

Woodie

Webber

University Degrees and Classical economics.

Okay, you asked for it.


Fallacy a) 'university numbers has devalued degrees'

Firstly, university degrees do not go out of fashion, and labour markets do not act in the simple supply/demand diagram bullshit that the modern economists threw out last century.

What do I mean go out of fashion? Firstly a lot of degrees, especially mathematical and scientific, simply can't be 'devalued'; under literally any employability circumstance, these degrees are going to separate the wheat from the chaff. Secondly, the global market for skilled operators is increasing drastically with the BRIC economies rise to power, and has been since the second world war. Britain is one of the biggest exporters of education and professionals in the whole world, and education is literally free money for universities/Britain. Under no economic circumstances can anyone say that Britain should stop accepting overseas students (who make up roughly half of all immigrants, as well. Yes, they do have to pass an English test). Even for niche degrees, there are still expanding markets looking for people with 2:1's or firsts in certain, sometimes highly niche industries. Thirdly, if someone does choose a niche degree or a degree that doesn't have an expanding local market, they can re-train, and in my opinion, retraining is better than having no training at all.

Secondly, degrees are not devalued from university numbers; much more importantly they are 'devalued' because of the market forces that shape the industry that they are in. It's not a surprise that a lot of physicists and potential physicists will end up unemployed for at least some time if NASA and US defense dept. suddenly shut down. As you can see this isn't an education problem, this is a problem with society, that it has an opportunity cost. I understand that if you take a degree in fixing franking machines you might have trouble finding a job, but see paragraph one.

Then, there's the personal economic benefits. People with a degree are half as likely to be unemployed than people without, and in the same light, the vast majority of people in the west rise out of poverty through some education system. People with degrees on average earn about half a million pounds more over their lifetime than their non-degree counterparts, and it's all taxable, firstly from the 10% of gross income that they have to pay for their uni debt and then the higher tax brackets that they will pay through because of their higher earnings.

Fallacy b) 'Universities impose financial burdens upon the nation at large'.

There's multiple layers to this one, but I'll start with taking the fallacy at face value.

Firstly, the 'financial burden upon the nation at large' is not 'at large', it's on the state. As anyone that's studied the modern financial system, they should understand that states, out of everything, are able to carry the largest financial burden possible. Interestingly, by being in debt, states are able to grow their respective economies quicker by borrowing off their own banks (which gives the banks interest, keeping them happy and more stable) and investing the money into economic infrastructure, things like education, UNIVERSITIES, public infrastructure, UNIVERSITIES, things that lead to a long-term strong economic infrastructure, stuff like UNIVERSITIES, which promotes and multiplies long-term growth. Of course, if industries are growing the government has more to tax without having to raise taxes (although it should in some respects), and thus the government is able to 'balance it's books'. This is why almost every government runs a deficit, because it's more 'efficient'.

Secondly, it's barely a 'financial burden'; student debt in 2040 is going to be a loss 0.6% of GDP: This is literally fuck-all, especially in comparison to, I don't know, global warming, the elderly crisis, bankers etc.. Even when we're in a recession such as now, 1% increase in GDP is pretty fucking easy and we've been awkwardly waltzing between a percent up and a percent down for over six years. Either way, this loss of 0.6% is child's play in comparison to the benefits we shall reap, collectively, by being educated to a higher standard than most other countries. Even in a recent article that was linked to me, an independent economist said 'what was lost through non-repayment was "small" when compared with the extra tax revenue from graduate earnings'. Winning.

Lastly, the Student Loan Company/Government reserves the right to not fund universities and students. Thing is, there's so many academics and students that are literally vital to our economic situation. So many UK cities, especially the northern, rely on the business that universities supply. So many businesses approach universities asking to use their academics, and when the academics aren't working with companies or teaching they're advancing their fields with their small armies of Ph.D students. I mean, where would biology be if Watson or Crick were never able to get a spot in Cavendish? Or Feynman wasn't able to get his scholarship? Truth is, intelligence is proportioned normally, in comparison to economic class; sadly, privatised education isn't.

Fallacy c) 'There's an irrational culture of overqualification'

Why is being well qualified a bad thing? 'overqualification', or as everyone else calls it, underemployment, occurs when either industries are shrinking, in which case it isn't just the postgrads that are out of work, or when the labour markets are too rigid, in which case governments need to provide retraining or provide help people to move into other markets, such as the international markets. This 'irrational culture of overqualification' is effectively the same as saying 'god-damnit Mitch, you're just too smart for your own good'. Although I disagree with the former, it seems like after writing this I can't deny the latter. The only time I've ever heard of overqualification being an actual problem uninfluenced by the labour market was of a friends mother who had 3 respected degrees who had become a stay-at-home-mum because no-one could pay her high enough. I'm assuming that people in that situation are well off enough that there's worse situations.

Fallacy d) 'dumbed down education standards of this country'

I'm sorry, but we've been a massive exporter of both professionals and education in the global markets for decades now, unlike the Americans (which have to import theirs, because of their poor education system). If we have 'dumbed down education standards' we should be educating people at a higher level for longer. If we're having teachers that can't teach, we should increase their wages so it becomes a competitive market and thus get some more raw talent in. Either way, this argument doesn't have any weighting.

Fallacy e) 'The education industry has become too large and too expensive to maintain'

The education industry is both efficient and pays dividends in multiple ways, much moreso than quite a few Western countries. Through economies of scale we pay less for our education infrastructure per capita than most other places in the world and we have some of the most prestigious students, academics and universities around. If we are finding that there's leakages in our education system, we shouldn't be changing schools to academies, which become legal companies, of which we need to be reclaiming profits which are being siphoned away from the education system and into the hands of governors through nationalisation or nationalising profits from universities.

Anyone got anything else?

Getting and living with a job; Hard to live with, hard to live without.

So you're entering the world of work, eh? Inadvertently, chances are you'll be working for someone else, doing reception/retail/manual work for pretty much a fuck-all wage. You'll get HMRC unlawfully taking your money through PAYE, which you then have to ring them up to get them to put it back into your account; you'll get your superiors trying to bend you over at any possibility; you'll get them straining you and your rights if they can; they'll lecture on about quotas and backwards policies; they'll fuck up; your hours will probably clash with things that you want to do; you'll fuck up because you're so fucking bored, and the relatively measly paycheck at the end of it won't seem worth it. So what's my best advice?

Go work for yourself. It's a big world out there with lots of things that need to be done. You'll enjoy it more, you'll learn how to live a good life and you won't have to deal with the bureaucracy of a large corporation. Your voice'll get heard, your bank account will get full and you'll work the hours you want.

For the rest of you mugs, this is how you get your foot in the door.

Application for a job

Firstly, get a CV. Get your parents to read over it. Look up on Youtube on how to write it, and modify it EACH TIME you apply for a different job. Not only should it be relevant to the job you're applying for but it should be only relevant (apart from sections like employment history, grades etc).
Don't call your CV 'CV', leave it nameless. Have your name at the top, your contact details and paperclip a small passport-sized photo of you to it. Your CV is about you; your covering letter is about your prospective job. It's a full on letter, so if you don't know how to write a letter, look that shit up. Address it to the 'recruitment officer', say that you're applying for this certain vacancy, you're able to do these hours, you're not a fan of morning shifts, you're really a Nazi that's there to crucify the other employees etc.. Sign it with 'faithfully'. Fold it up with your CV, put it in an envelope, write 'to the recruitment officer' and the company address on the front and either send it via post or hand it in at the reception/counter of the business.

Here's how to not fuck up an interview.

Interviews

First things first, interviewers aren't looking to turn you away. You're both sitting in that room because he/she wants to hire you and you want to be hired. Chances are you're more qualified/useful than they need, so don't think you're wrong if you get rejected etc.. Business and HR is cutthroat, and chances are you won't be hired, or even told you've been rejected. Shit happens. Re-apply. If you can't make your interview, tell them well in advance and sort out another day to do it. Turn up ten minutes before they ask, looking casual/formal (shirt/tie, nice jeans and some semi-classy shoes, a classy bag and a book, paperwork and anything else you'll need in your bag) if it's retail/IT/anything else which probably pays a shit wage, or business/formal (2 piece suit, bag, book) if it's actually a good job. When they ask you to sit down and wait, get your non-fiction/classic literature book out and read. Nothing worse than some shivering arsehole sitting there thinking he's about to get ripped to shreds. When you meet your interviewer, look at his face, say hi, smile and shake his hand. If you are asked any questions that you don't want to answer, say that you would prefer not to answer. Don't be pushed into a corner by your interviewer, they don't want someone that can't handle your average cunt. There's a lot of cunts in business. Ask important questions as well, like HOW MUCH YOU'RE GOING TO BE PAID (so many people just don't ask?), hours, training etc.. After you're both done, say goodbye, thanks for the conversation and shake his hand with a smile. Walk out with your head held high like you've just had great sex.

First day/training

The quicker you sort out the paperwork, the better. Try not to be late to your first day. Meet your superiors, a quick hi will do, get given a job/buddied up to someone/start your training. Then, as soon as you have time to talk to someone who isn't your superior, learn as much as you possibly can from them. The cleaners are great for this because they know exactly what goes on but they're normally entirely out of workplace politics. Learn the business and the people inside it to the best of your ability. Learn who you can piss off, learn who will fuck you hard, learn the arseholes and the genii. Learn the accounts and quotas if you can and learn the company's way of doing things. That way, if someone tries to fuck with you, which will inadvertently happen during your time in company politics, you can either outmaneuver them, call their bluff or force them to back off. It also means if you ever want to move up the ranks, you've already learnt how you can improve the company.

Also, never shit on your inferiors or your equals to gain a superior's favor.

In contrast, feel free to stick up for an inferior/equal if he/she starts to get shat on, seeing as not only will that person like you but everyone on your level and below will realise that you can be trusted and relied on.

You and your job

As a general rule, unless it involves you directly, there's no need to get involved with workplace politics. There's also no need to excel at your job or participate in rat races because you'll disenfranchise your coworkers. As a worker, to have leverage you need to have a network of support if you want to do anything fancy. Any schemes that your superiors have put in place to 'motivate you' are complete bullshit. They're made to turn working in harmony with your coworkers into a rat race, in which the superiors are the real winners. Do the paperwork, know your rights and always read the small print. Learn commercial law, learn customer's rights.


Well, now that that's been said, good fucking luck out there. Most of the things I've said about politics in the workplace you'll already of realised by the time you've had a couple of jobs so learn it now and live a much better life.