This is the first playable character in Don't Starve. He has no downsides, and grows a beard that can either be shaved for sanity and beard hair, or used for powerful insulation in winter.


He has neutral stats, at 150 hunger, 150 health and 200 sanity. He grows a beard, with stage one at Day 5, stage 2 at day 12, and stage 3 at day 17. It's best to let it grow out to it's fullest and keep it for warmth in winter, then shave it in spring. But if you're in summer or late spring, shave it immediately, as it will cause you to overheat faster. The hair from you get from your beard can be made into Meat Effigies, which will respawn you when you die, but reduce your max health by 30 for each one that's active. Besides that, he is the classic, and, in my opinion, best look.

The next person you unlock is Willow. She is immune to fire damage, starts with a lighter, and accidentally lights fires when low on sanity. She's a not a great character. Most of her combat style revolves around lighting her surroundings on fire, and by extension, her enemies. And while this does work great, it's incredibly wasteful. Most loot is burned in the process, and any meat is cooked, preventing it from being dried into jerky. Furthermore, trees burn (can be a good or bad thing), as well as bushes, grass tufts and saplings (never a good thing).
This wasteful but deadly combat style does make her fantastic for adventure mode, where you aren't there to stay, but there's a lot more combat, and in emergencies on winter maps, can light surroundings on fire for warmth.
Her lighter can be useful as a makeshift torch, but it has a terrible light radius and, if you can't afford to build a torch or campfire on the first night, you're better off starting over and trying again. That said, in very early game (first 3 days) it can serve helpful, as night won't stop you from accumulating resources.
Another downside is that, at 60 sanity or below, she will randomly light fires at her feet. I'm sure you can imagine how destructive that can be, and in Reign of Giants, almost all player structures become flammable. This is countered by the fact that standing near fires regenerates sanity, depending on the size of the fire, but you will need to lower your sanity to farm nightmare fuel and beard hair.
In conclusion, she makes a great character for adventure mode, but isn't strictly reccomended otherwise.

He is the next player you get after willow. He is a better fighter with a full belly and is afraid of the dark and monsters. Okay now you may think he is a good person to play but really he's not, well it depends. if you have a world full of food to get then yeah he'll be good. if you have lets say the world you start off in that doesn't really have much of anything then no. he's not really good. You would have to constantly be feeding him rabbits or any other food you would find. He's not a bad person to play but you have to know more of the game first and how to get other food sources before you jump right into this person. You can try him, sure, but play the game a little more on how to make, lets say the crock pot. Wolfgang and the pot go hand in hand. With the crock pot, you can make your food go up a lot faster. All you need is 4 rabbits and then start making meatballs. which makes your sanity go up, health, and food. (note: making your sanity go up is ALWAYS a good thing)
Wolfgang is not such a bad person but for a person just starting the game i would have to ask you to play the game a bit more before you play Wolfgang.

The 4th playable you can unlock is Wendy. She can summon her sister's ghost, abagail, loses sanity 10% slower, and doesn't hit very hard. I don't play as this character, so I can only tell you what I've heard and can observe based on facts. Anyway, she has a special flower in her inventory when you start. This is used in the ritual to summon Abagail. Once the flower opens and floats, which will happen gradually, place it on the ground and use sacrifice a creature. The most practical would be spiders or rabbits. If you decide to go the latter route, please note you can't murder the rabbit from your inventory to summon Abagail. The flower then turns into her twin sister's ghost! Now she's in ghost form, which looks like any other ghost, but with the aforementioned flower on her head. She will attack anything you attack, or anything that attacks you or her. Like other ghosts, she will turn red and damage anything close to her with quick attacks. This works great against groups, mobs that can be stunlocked, or both, but will often lead her to accidentally attack something she didn't mean to, like a pig or beefalo. She will often throw herself into danger due to limited combat AI comparable to spiders, like standing next a giant being a sitting duck, so it's reccomended that you help her in combat against anything that isn't spiders and bees, as she is frail. When working together, you can outdamage most other character. Alone, though, you can't do much combat-wise, as you do 25% less damage. It slows down combat, which actually makes you go insane faster instead of slower with this character as you need to be near monsters longer. With or without Abagail, you need to plan for and be ready for combat, usually getting decent gear before even thinking of attacking any enemies.

WX-78 is a robot who can eat gears to upgrade his stats, takes damage in rain but is charged by lightning, and is doesn't care about stale or spoiled food.
WX-78 starts with very low stats, 100 each, but upgrades them every time he eats gears, maxing out at 300 sanity, 400 health and 200 hunger with 15 gears, making him easily the most powerful character late game. The fact that you needed gears to get there used to make him gimmicky, as you used to only find clockwork monsters near the wooden thing and in the ruins. Now, however, clockwork automatons are much more common in RoG, meaning you can get more powerful more quickly.
WX-78 takes damage in the rain, at a rate of 0.5 health every 3-5 seconds which can be reduced or nullified with waterproof clothes and equipment. However, the sparks that result produce enough light to hold off Charlie (The night monster), albeit at severe sanity and health loss depending on the length of the night.
When struck by lightning, WX-78 will lose 33 sanity, gain full health and enter system overload. During system overload, WX-78 will have buffed movement speed and will give off light, allowing him to work through the night. This effect will last ~1 day.

Wickerbottom starts knowing all Tier one science recipies, and only requires a science machine to unlock Tier Two science recipies, and a prestihatitator to unlock all of the magic recipies. She also publishes her own spellbooks, which have a plethora of effects, but all take a very harsh hit on her sanity.
Speaking of sanity, she can't sleep. Since sleeping is the most practical way to regain sanity, and her main upside, her books, drain her sanity by 33-50 per use, and it's a constant battle to keep sanity high. Furthermore, her penalties for eating stale and spoiled foods are magnified, and in the case of the latter, she loses more sanity. The extra research tier only remains useful for the first week, unless you're playing adventure mode, as her extra research tier makes her one of the best characters for that.

Woodie is the last character you get via level up. He has an incredibly powerful axe named Lucy, and turns into a werebeaver on the full moon, or if he chops too much wood, that being his terrible secret.
Woodie, in my opinion, is a great risk vs. reward character. The risk? If you accidentaly chop too much wood (never do that) or it's a full moon, you turn into the werebeaver. This is a great thing, you are a pickaxe, logsuit, axe, hammer, and tentacle spike all rolled into one, and you chop and mine very, very fast. However, you see how your health, sanity and hunger have been replaced by the log meter? This is your indicator of how long you have left in werebeaver form. It drains slowly over time, and it is drained when you take damage equal to how much damage you would take in a log suit. You can add to the log meter it by eating plant matter. Once you return to being Woodie, you have 50 hunger, health and sanity, and any monsters attacking the werebeaver will be attacking you. This is the risk, as you have to prepare to return your stats to normal. I reccomend, before doing that, taking the oppurtunity to kill beardlings, rabbits that visually change when you have very low sanity, as they drop nightmare fuel and beard hair, making them the most practical way to get nightmare fuel and the only way to get beard hair for meat effigies when you're not playing as Wilson. When you need to restore your stats, there are several ways to do this. First, sleep. This will only restore sanity, but it will restore a lot of it. Jerky is the easiest way to restore yourself on your first full moon, Day 10 and 11, as it restores Hunger, Health, and Sanity and can be obtained by that point. This makes your first 10 days a race against the clock to stockpile Jerky while not neglecting other preperations all other characters would need to make, such as winter clothing or crockpots. Your reward? You return to being Woodie, gather your belongings that are dropped when you entered werebeaver form, as the werebeaver has no inventory, restore your stats, and retrieve the raw materials the werebeaver left behind on his rampage, meaning you're now overflowing with logs, grass, twigs, and other raw materials.

Webber is a young boy that was ingested by a spider, but couldn't be digested, and he eventually took over the body of the spider. He can only be unlocked in the RoG DLC. He starts with Spider Eggs, used to make a spider nest, and monster meat, which he has no penalty for eating, raw or cooked.
He also can befriend spiders, which are always neutral to him, with monster meat, or several spiders at once with regular meat. While spiders might be neutral, not much else is, as anything that normally attacks spiders will attack you. He has 175 hunger, 175 health, and 100 sanity, the lowest sanity out of any character.
He has a unique unlocking process. To unlock him, first you need his skull. This has a low chance to be dropped by spiders. Next, you need to dig up a grave, and place Webber's skull inside. This will cause lightning to strike the grave, and Webber will wake up above ground. He will then jump back into the grave, and several spiders will appear around the grave. Webber is now unlocked. Yaaaay necromancy!

Wigfrid is another RoG (Reign of Giants) exclusive character. She has 120 hunger, 120 sanity, and 200 health. She gains half of her opponents attacking power as health and sanity, does more damage, and can only eat meat, or crockpot recipies made with meat. She starts with 4 meat, and her own special combat equipment, the Battle Helm, and the Battle spear. Once these break, you can craft them, with 2 gold and 2 rocks for the helmet, and 2 gold, 2 twigs and 2 flint for the spear. The battle helm provides protection equal to the football helmet, and the battle spear does 42 damage (52.5 due to Wigfrid's boost in damage). Basically, the Battle helm is worth using late game, the battle spear is not. Now, if you're unfamiliar with how her health and sanity stealing works, here's an example. Let's say you kill a tallbird. Tallbirds deal 50 damage per strike to an unarmored target. So, upon killing it, you will gain 25 health and 25 sanity. Her main downside is that she can only eat meat, which isn't so bad late game, as your main sources of sustainence is honey ham and bacon and eggs at that point, but it's an absolute pain before that. It also limits her methods of restoring sanity, as she refuses to eat Taffy or Pumpkin Cookies.

There are 2 other characters in the world of Don't Starve, however, I can't tell who they are without spoiling the storyline of adventure mode. If you must, however, their wiki links are below. Can't say I didn't warn you!
http://dont-starve-game.wikia.com/wiki/Maxwell_(character)
http://dont-starve-game.wikia.com/wiki/Wes
Be sure to leave your opinions on the characters in the comments below. Thanks, and have fun not starving!