Hounds In Summer

[HoneyHam]

Been a long time since I actually settled down to play this game for a respectable amount of time and I just hit summer on day 56 (I think.) Hounds are looming and I have yet to re enter my game because I had to stop playing about when I heard barking. Curious as to see what your guys' strategies are when fighting hound attacks that are too numerous to kite? Also, the possibility of overheating is there as well. I could wear my Eyebrella but then I would be missing out on some juicy damage absorption from my football helmet.

[Yuuko]

Go to the caves during summer.  You can't overheat, and things don't randomly burn down.  It's a great time to check out the ruins.  You get depth worms instead of hounds, but they're a bit easier to deal with as they don't burn / freeze.  You don't get gems from them, but there are other sources of gems underground.

That said - since the hound attack is upon you - it really depends on what you have prepared.  Do you have a ham bat or dark sword yet?  Do you have armor?  I find I can typically kill 1-2 hounds right away with a ham bat, and with armor it isn't too risky to kite and strike as you can.  Also what character are you?  If you're wigfrid or wolfgang you should just tank and fight as the hounds enter, you should be able to keep up decently well.  If you're someone else - prep a tooth trap area in first spring while the grass grows faster.

[Atkvin]

Not sure if you knew, but you can put your thermal stone in the ice box for essentially the reverse effect of bringing a warmed thermal stone in winter. As with its reverse scenario, this has a tepid stage and a longer lasting stage at the cost of more time in the ice box, but should last you out in the summer heat while you deal with the hounds with armor on.

As for strategies for dealing with hounds, the most reliable and safest method I've seen other players utilize, as mentioned by shosuko, is the tooth trap area. Gather hound teeth from hound attacks, Mactusk hounds and hound mounds to make an area a distance away from your base you can run to to easily let the hounds kill themselves on trying to chase you. This is the most favored tactic as teeth traps do not burn in case of a red hound spawning(though that is why you would want the area to be away from your base and in a nice clear so nothing gets set on fire).

You can of course also deal with hounds by just picking them off one by one, though take caution to lure red hounds away from your base and preferably any trees nearby. Alternatively, you could possibly try running the hounds into beefalo herds, pig towns, spider dens and swamps which they will go after and likely lose to after losing aggro on you, though there may be the risk of beefalo or pig houses being set on fire.

[Arash70]

 

here's your answer

always make a trap area nearby

 

[brbrmensch]

there's no number of dogs that is "too big to kite", especially if you host, though, it could be "it takes too long to kite"

log suit give the same damage absorption as football hat, and you can still wear your precious irreplaceable eyebella

as already said, there are another options for overheating and fighting

[Electroely]

13 minutes ago, brbrmensch said:

there's no number of dogs that is "too big to kite", especially if you host, though, it could be "it takes too long to kite"

log suit give the same damage absorption as football hat, and you can still wear your precious irreplaceable eyebella

as already said, there are another options for overheating and fighting

Well, hounds seem to be very random in their behavior, randomly deciding to bark a random number of times after an attack, which gets them easily desynced. They're also much faster than the player and have a pretty long attack range, which makes extremely difficult to successfully kite in groups of over 4. Lets not forget that they also come from different directions.

I wouldn't be too worried about a day 56 hound attack, though. Most hound attacks on days under 100 spawn hounds slowly enough for you to kill 1 by 1, as long as you kill them as soon as you can.

If they start coming too fast for me to kill, I use my base's location to my advantage:
- Pigs in a pig village can distract some hounds while I kill some
- Beefalo will completely destroy hound attacks if you live near them
- In the caves, you get worm attacks instead of hound attacks which are much easier to deal with since Depth Worms are slower than the player and very predictable.
- Tallbirds can also take out a number of hounds, but you need to be careful not to get them mad at you instead of the hounds and in summer and autumn fire hounds could burn their nests.
- Dragonfly's arena with 6 magma pools, 5 of which are on the borders of it and can be safely ran around without getting Dragonfly's attention. These pools also cause anything that touches them to light up on fire, so you can use that to separate (or even kill) normal hounds from fire hounds.

There are probably more base location perks related to hound attacks, but these are the ones I can bring up off the top of my head.

If you don't want to use these, you can set up your own defenses:
- Tooth traps, as mentioned above, are the most used method of hound attack protection (personally I don't like using them for some reason)
- A Meat Bulb can be set up in way which will make it only spawn the eyeplants it would in the borders of it's reach. This can be used to, again, distract some hounds while you kill off others.
- You could build your own "pig village" (a Bunnyman village could work better, but you need to make sure you aren't holding any meat) and keep them out of their houses at night by baiting them with a walled up food item.
- You could drop a load of flammables around an Ice Flingomatic (I use mini signs, which come at the price of 1 per log (1 board makes 4 of them)) and light them up on fire when a hound attack is coming. Hounds will freeze after being hit with 1 snowball. Ice hounds cannot be frozen, which may cause this strategy to be ineffective in cases where more ice hounds come than normal ones in winter or spring.
- Webber can walk around webbed turf without making spiders come after him or being slowed down, which you can use to your advantage by planting a bunch of them (preferably protected by an Ice Flingomatic) and running to them when a hound attack approaches.
 

[Mencken]

Just use whatever is around your base, spiders, beefalo, pigs or tentacles.   I do this routinely and it usually takes about 60 seconds with no damage to myself.

[PillsStealer]

Start making a tooth trap field

They're really useful in later days when going against hounds. Also since you're in summer, beware fire hounds as once they die they set fire to anything near them. Make your tooth trap field close but not too close to your base.

[Donke60]

Hide using a bush hat 

[Ridley]

In most cases you are going to want to use tooth trap fields or beefalo to fend off the late game hound waves. You can also dodge the hounds by being in the caves when they are approaching.