Hound Attacks: Less Frequent, More Dangerous and Interesting

[clickrush]

Hound attacks serve an interesting purpose in DS/T and spice up survival by adding tensions and a bit of randomness. They are one of the first big threats that a player faces and are scary at that.

A veteran player however might find them a bit tedious after some point. They are tuned in a way that they increase in difficulty mainly by adding frequency but also to their variety and pack size. I think the former merely makes them annoying and but the latter makes them more interesting, challenging and even valuable.

One theme that is consistent with hounds is the sometimes so called elemental hounds, having unique perks that increase their power and reward, by dropping blue and red gems respectively.

I think one could expand on this theme to make hound attacks more powerful and rewarding (per attack) while decreasing their frequency.

Each yet unused gem color could represent a different hound type. They would have more powerful perks while granting a chance to drop their respective gem color.

* Purple is the color of magic and insanity. Purple hounds could simply have a stronger insanity aura and similar stats to elmental hounds. When they explode, they deal a bit of AoE damage that drops sanity for a moderate amount.
* Orange is the color of sloth, free mobility and transport. These hounds could possibly teleport away from the player after being hit or even to the player to close the gap. This would make fights more chaotic and challenging.
* Green is the color of cheating, they are used to create something from nothing. These hounds could spawn two additional regular hounds after being killed. This would incentivize players to kill them last.
* Yellow is the color of speed and light. The most powerful gem in DST could make so yellow hounds are charged with lightning, similar to volt goats. When attacked without wearing insulation, the player would be stunned, incentivizing additional preparation for hound waves.

Also the orange, green and yellow hounds would have increased stats, such as +100 health and +20 damage per attack. The very much increased difficulty would warrant a significantly lower hound wave frequency and a well-tuned spawning rate for each of the variants.

[Badarokey]

This is really cool buddy it would give a distinctive feature and great to deal with, tho i would remove "green hounds" .

 

but the "problem" I see is that, after some days, veteran players would have a separated part of the map covered with tooth trap just for hound waves, however, i would be totally aware of, if that "special" hound wave could increase when you were away from base, lets say like 40 tiles distance...then it would give the feeling of threat...

[Skelewar]

I agree with you about hound waves feeling tedious and boring, and I like your ideas for more types of hounds, but I don't think that will solve the problem. Hound waves are still many mobs that overwhelm the player with numbers, leaving tooth trap fields or help from an army of your own as the most viable options. I think that every X number of hound waves, there should be a distinctly different howl signaling a "mega" hound. A single huge hound boss monster. Depending on where you are/what season it is when the hound spawns would effect it's type. Each type would have different special attacks and drops, incentivizing the player to travel to a certain part of the world (namely, not your friendly nearby tooth trap field) in order to try and secure specific drops. Desert would be fire, Lunar islands would be horror, Swamp would be purple... not sure where to place the other gem colors. Regardless, I think changing it from a huge number of monsters where you need to get outside help to one big monster that doesn't try to overwhelm you with numbers (so not a Varg) would be more fun.

[JaxckLl]

Now that it's a setting to disable Hound Waves, I'm never going back to constantly being interrupted and needing to keep fields of Tooth Traps everywhere. However your ideas for new types of hounds are really cool and would make for some interesting fights. Here's an alternative idea to simply making Hound waves harder:

• An upgradable "Hound Capital" that spawns in the Rocky biome. This building would start destroyed and uninhabited, but can be built up using Hounds Teeth, Bone Shards, and Flint (in other words you'll have to kill Hounds from Hound Mounds or Waves first). Once built, the Capital can then be socketed with gems. The socketing is what summons the initial wave of hounds, prompting a different kind of boss fight. When the fight is complete the gems pop out of the Capital with a low chance to break (each colour only gains the chance to break if the player has managed to kill a hound that drops that kind of gem, as a preventer against wasting all of one's gems in a super unlucky run), but since coloured hounds spawn corresponding to the gems inserted in general this should serve as a renewable source of gems and other Hound drops.
• Up to three gems can be socketed with the Capital at level 2 (level 1 being the unbuilt wild spawn), five at level 3. Each gem summons two hounds of its colour and the Capital itself provides two hounds per level (for a total of 10 hounds in the level 2 fight, 16 in the level 3). The Capital sends out a wave when it is socketed, uprooting nearby traps and stunning nearby small critters (bees, moles, butterflies, rabbits, etc). This prevents the fight from being cheesed, requiring instead that the player actually combat the hounds directly. With all of the combinations possible, this would be quite an intense and varied fight.
• The Capital can be hammered to knock it down a level, and no hounds will spawn if no gems are socketed. However any biome that contains a Capital of level 2 or 3 has a chance to regrow Hound Mounds, making Hound Mounds renewable and allowing for the building of fully automatic Hound farms.

This idea upgrades several resources that are currently not renewable or very difficult to renew, such as Green gems or Hound Mounds (rare gems in particular need a new source of renewability, since right now they are locked behind a fairly complicated & difficult boss fight that even the average player finds hard). It adds in new mobs and a new building that make a currently fairly bland biome much more interesting, all by iterating on existing designs. Finally, it makes Hounds, a long-time core mechanic of DST, a feature of more casual or builder-focused games that make use of the "None" option for Hound Waves.

[Well-met]

2 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

I'm never going back to constantly being interrupted and needing to keep fields of Tooth Traps everywhere

have you ever considered your approach to hound attacks is the problematic factor?

[JaxckLl]

4 hours ago, Well-met said:

have you ever considered your approach to hound attacks is the problematic factor?

Have you ever considered that you're rude and that that comment was completely unnecessary? If you've ever played on a long-running Endless server you'd know that Tooth Trap fields are the standard.

[Well-met]

long-running worlds means you have the best gear and tools in the game to cope with hounds

start learning how to fight them the fun way, then maybe you wouldn't find it so boring and annoying

[ArubaroBeefalo]

9 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

Have you ever considered that you're rude and that that comment was completely unnecessary? If you've ever played on a long-running Endless server you'd know that Tooth Trap fields are the standard.

and meatballs are the standart food in those servers but that doesnt mean that there isnt better foods. The game shouldnt be balanced arround players that dont evolve

[Frosty_Mentos]

On 6/17/2021 at 3:29 AM, JaxckLl said:

Have you ever considered that you're rude and that that comment was completely unnecessary? If you've ever played on a long-running Endless server you'd know that Tooth Trap fields are the standard.

Just use caves to hide in like a Chad and not smack talking someone who's pointing out your flaw in dealing with the situation. There's Winona catapults, caves, houndius shootiuses, statue walls... **** tonne of methods to avoid dealing with the hounds.

I know the fact that they're annoying for being too frequent and doing same thing over and over again which I hope Klei changes something about it eventually, but c'mon man.

[HumanoidCreatur]

On 6/16/2021 at 8:46 PM, JaxckLl said:

Now that it's a setting to disable Hound Waves, I'm never going back to constantly being interrupted and needing to keep fields of Tooth Traps everywhere. However your ideas for new types of hounds are really cool and would make for some interesting fights. Here's an alternative idea to simply making Hound waves harder:

• An upgradable "Hound Capital" that spawns in the Rocky biome. This building would start destroyed and uninhabited, but can be built up using Hounds Teeth, Bone Shards, and Flint (in other words you'll have to kill Hounds from Hound Mounds or Waves first). Once built, the Capital can then be socketed with gems. The socketing is what summons the initial wave of hounds, prompting a different kind of boss fight. When the fight is complete the gems pop out of the Capital with a low chance to break (each colour only gains the chance to break if the player has managed to kill a hound that drops that kind of gem, as a preventer against wasting all of one's gems in a super unlucky run), but since coloured hounds spawn corresponding to the gems inserted in general this should serve as a renewable source of gems and other Hound drops.
• Up to three gems can be socketed with the Capital at level 2 (level 1 being the unbuilt wild spawn), five at level 3. Each gem summons two hounds of its colour and the Capital itself provides two hounds per level (for a total of 10 hounds in the level 2 fight, 16 in the level 3). The Capital sends out a wave when it is socketed, uprooting nearby traps and stunning nearby small critters (bees, moles, butterflies, rabbits, etc). This prevents the fight from being cheesed, requiring instead that the player actually combat the hounds directly. With all of the combinations possible, this would be quite an intense and varied fight.
• The Capital can be hammered to knock it down a level, and no hounds will spawn if no gems are socketed. However any biome that contains a Capital of level 2 or 3 has a chance to regrow Hound Mounds, making Hound Mounds renewable and allowing for the building of fully automatic Hound farms.

This idea upgrades several resources that are currently not renewable or very difficult to renew, such as Green gems or Hound Mounds (rare gems in particular need a new source of renewability, since right now they are locked behind a fairly complicated & difficult boss fight that even the average player finds hard). It adds in new mobs and a new building that make a currently fairly bland biome much more interesting, all by iterating on existing designs. Finally, it makes Hounds, a long-time core mechanic of DST, a feature of more casual or builder-focused games that make use of the "None" option for Hound Waves.

Great Idea! but I don't see how that would fix the issue. This building is a good idea if you ask me but it won't make hound waves less tedious. 

[JaxckLl]

The point is to allow players to switch off regular hound waves, instead allowing them to be triggered like boss fights. Allowing Varg & Ewecus spawn rates to be individually adjusted would be another solution, as would a naturally spawning Varg. The Year of the Varg should to my mind cause Vargs to spawn in some biomes when enabled, allowing players to easily spawn in a bunch of hounds without needing to enable waves.

Because if there's one thing all DST players can agree on, it's that hound waves suck.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

Because if there's one thing all DST players can agree on, it's that hound waves suck.

i dont agree with this

[Well-met]

without blue and red hounds, I agree they wouldn't be fun

but we have them