I have been playing Don't Starve and I finally made it to Winter which starts on Day 21 of survival. But then I only survived one single day (I know, it's sad).
It would seem I was definitely not prepared for Winter. If I can ever make it there again, how can I survive? What resources should I stockpile that will help me? What researched items are a must-have? I need to know everything I should have done to prepare for Winter and survive it for the full 15 days that it lasts.
Best Answer
Surviving your first winter can be hard, especially for new players. Veterans can start a game in winter and still manage (in fact, a few level in adventure modes require you to do so). The Winter Guide gives a few good pointers.
Temperature
In addition to the three basic things you need to keep up to stay alive (hunger, health, sanity), and to the task of avoiding getting killed, in winter your temperature becomes an issue. Fire will warm you, but going away from fire too long will lower your body temperature. If it dips below 5, you get cold (visual indicator, edges freezing), if it gets below 0, you start losing health.
An evil sideeffect of this is that should you die and respawn, you'll start freezing pretty much instantly again. Having a heatsource near your respawn point (fire, chest with logs/coal) is recommended.
Insulation
To mitigate losing temperature fast, you can wear protective clothing. Things like a winter hat, rabbit earmuffs, beefalo hat, puffy vest... all slow down the rate you get colder.
Another easy (cheap) way to lower the freezing rate is a heat stone. Warm one near a fire (even holding it and standing near a fire works), you'll get cold slower.
As you figured out, the biggest problem with cold is that it makes it harded to stay away from your camp for a long time. A solution could be to have everything you need close to your camp. Have a lot of berry bushes, crock pots, drying racks, twigs, grass, and trees. Being near to rabbit holes (in combination to a boomerang or traps) can get you food as well.
A trick I often use is that food doesn't spoil until it's removed from it source. Use these ways to store food indefinitely:
Now you have enough reserves to only need a small amount of daily food intake to survive. A few rabbits, one koalefant, a beefalo or two... will do.
One pitfall: when killing innocent creates (birds, rabbits), your naughtiness goes up. Kill enough on a small timescale, and Krampus appears...
Alternative
Another way to deal with winter is to spend (parts of) it in the Caves, where it does not get cold. Surviving in the caves comes with its own problems though, of which sanity is a major one, unless when playing as Maxwell.
Opportunities
Then again, winter is not only about surviving. Once you solved that part, there are a few things you should do in Winter: