How to deal with mactusk long term without killing them

[Baark0]

I want to enable buzzards in my world, but my current method of containing walruses (5 bunnymen in a closed pen around their camp) is very incompatible with them as the buzzards will fly down and eat the hound corpses, but then get angry at the bunnymen, at which point they will do their fire attacks and break the walls. I can't contain them with just walls either, not because the hounds will attack the walls, but because mactusk will randomly decide to attack them, which will then make the hounds attack the walls.

Manually killing them myself isn't an option either, simply because I don't want to be pestered every winter by an annoying ranged mob and hounds that freeze me and drain my charge.

[Mike23Ua]

Can’t you just place a bunch of toothtrap traps at the MacTusks den and pen them in with a rock wall? Unless I don’t understand the games mechanics, that should work way better then Bunnymen..

Lunar Buzzards will still fly down and eat the MacTusk corpses (I think..?) but at least they won’t get distracted and also fight Bunnymen breaking your walls.

[YouKnowWho142]

5 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Can’t you just place a bunch of toothtrap traps at the MacTusks den and pen them in with a rock wall? Unless I don’t understand the games mechanics, that should work way better then Bunnymen..

Lunar Buzzards will still fly down and eat the MacTusk corpses (I think..?) but at least they won’t get distracted and also fight Bunnymen breaking your walls.

Tooth traps break, it's not a permanent or sustainable solution

[Mike23Ua]

7 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

Tooth traps break, it's not a permanent or sustainable solution

Yes, but couldn’t they just replace them after winter is over and the tusk dens are safe to return to? 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Ridley]

I haven't tried it myself much, but I heard a flare can knock a few buzzards prone. Maybe you could thin out all the buzzards before heading over to the MacTusks?

[Jussatoon]

Just now, Ridley said:

I haven't tried it myself much, but I heard a flare can knock a few buzzards prone. Maybe you could thin out all the buzzards before heading over to the MacTusks?

I thought that was a more obvious route to take. 

[Ridley]

Alternatively, I use Anenemys to kill Volt Goats from off screen. I don't think buzzards eat anything the player didn't bring them to.

[Popian]

16 minutes ago, Ridley said:

I don't think buzzards eat anything the player didn't bring them to.

To add on to this corpses will drop their loot if there are no buzzards in the biome. You can go close enough for the kills without the scavenging, then come back for the loot right away or after the buzzards have despawned.

[mima_]

plant some berry or grass/twig around the camp and let brightshade invest it .. its basically auto farm cus hound will agro it right away

[Baark0]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Yes, but couldn’t they just replace them after winter is over and the tusk dens are safe to return to? 🤷🏻‍♂️

The issue is that this is requires a lot of maintenance which I'm really not interested in doing. I want a solution that keeps the walruses contained or dead without anything nearby to aggro the buzzards into breaking my walls.

4 hours ago, Ridley said:

I haven't tried it myself much, but I heard a flare can knock a few buzzards prone. Maybe you could thin out all the buzzards before heading over to the MacTusks?

This falls under the category of needing active maintenance which I'm frankly too lazy to bother dealing with. I'm so late into this world that if I have to put a modicum amount of effort into doing something then I don't even consider it an option.

4 hours ago, Ridley said:

Alternatively, I use Anenemys to kill Volt Goats from off screen. I don't think buzzards eat anything the player didn't bring them to.

This sounds good (using anenemys to kill walruses) until you remember that mactusk will randomly attack walls for no reason. There's a chance it's something to do with him wanting to eat meat outside of his pen, but I don't have enough info on why he attacks walls for this to be a viable option. Maybe if I put a houndius nearby to draw mactusk's aggro and hopefully the houndius would just ignore the buzzards as long as they don't aggro onto me.

3 hours ago, mima_ said:

plant some berry or grass/twig around the camp and let brightshade invest it .. its basically auto farm cus hound will agro it right away

This option could maybe work? Idk how buzzards interact with brightshades, and assuming they can fight each other then I'd have to remove the walls, which would make it way easier for mactusk to escape at which point he'd be able to kill the brightshades with his range advantage.

Actually, I wonder how good the new coals might be. Assuming they cause fire panic I could easily keep all the coals in the pen heated with several scaled furnaces. It does entirely depend on if they actually panic or if they just sit there and take damage, but this seems like the most promising solution.

[Mike23Ua]

50 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

The issue is that this is requires a lot of maintenance which I'm really not interested in doing. I want a solution that keeps the walruses contained or dead without anything nearby to aggro the buzzards into breaking my walls.

This falls under the category of needing active maintenance which I'm frankly too lazy to bother dealing with. I'm so late into this world that if I have to put a modicum amount of effort into doing something then I don't even consider it an option.

This sounds good (using anenemys to kill walruses) until you remember that mactusk will randomly attack walls for no reason. There's a chance it's something to do with him wanting to eat meat outside of his pen, but I don't have enough info on why he attacks walls for this to be a viable option. Maybe if I put a houndius nearby to draw mactusk's aggro and hopefully the houndius would just ignore the buzzards as long as they don't aggro onto me.

This option could maybe work? Idk how buzzards interact with brightshades, and assuming they can fight each other then I'd have to remove the walls, which would make it way easier for mactusk to escape at which point he'd be able to kill the brightshades with his range advantage.

Actually, I wonder how good the new coals might be. Assuming they cause fire panic I could easily keep all the coals in the pen heated with several scaled furnaces. It does entirely depend on if they actually panic or if they just sit there and take damage, but this seems like the most promising solution.

Out of curiosity how long have you had a world with buzzards active in it? They are soooo cool and the absolute most menacing threat in the game yet. Buzzards will swoop down and mutate any dead carcass capable of being mutated into its lunar variant. I don’t recommend taking a Varg to Brightshades during a Buzzard event, it will be turned into a Possessed Lunar Varg. Your best solution is probably just going to be waiting for the buzzards to go away (watch their shadows and wait for the actual buzzard to drop out the sky to the ground dead) I’m not sure but they should go away when a Lunar Rift closes. Or as others said you can shoot them down with flares if you don’t want to wait for them to die out on their own.

[ToXic Cur3]

 

11 hours ago, Baark0 said:

mactusk will randomly decide to attack them, which will then make the hounds attack the walls

Have you tried tingle nodes against him? I know those are targetable, but maybe he can get stun locked if you make a box with a X running through it or a diagonal line connected 

 

[mima_]

3 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Idk how buzzards interact with brightshades

im pretty sure their fire attack cant harm brightshade but brightshade can harm mutated buzzard.

[Baark0]

6 hours ago, ToXic Cur3 said:

 

Have you tried tingle nodes against him? I know those are targetable, but maybe he can get stun locked if you make a box with a X running through it or a diagonal line connected 

 

I forget the nodes exist since they're such a relatively new item, but those could work assuming there's no weirdness involved with loading them in and mactusk being able to get a shot off before they properly begin stunning him.

[ToXic Cur3]

2 hours ago, Baark0 said:

no weirdness involved with loading them in and mactusk being able to get a shot off before they properly begin stunning him.

I made a mini bio-data farm for wx using the nodes and stone walls stunning the mobs,it works when I load the server or far away/in caves so I'm assuming maybe this could work for mactusk hopefully

if not, mactusk wins again for annoying us 😔

 

 

[Wumpair]

I am not an expeet in how loading works in DST; but can you maybe put an octovigile next to the macktusk camp alo gside the tingle nodes to prevent any loading problems? If the two of them are lladed at once, then it should be stunned as soon as they exit their home, right? 

[Baark0]

3 hours ago, Wumpair said:

I am not an expeet in how loading works in DST; but can you maybe put an octovigile next to the macktusk camp alo gside the tingle nodes to prevent any loading problems? If the two of them are lladed at once, then it should be stunned as soon as they exit their home, right? 

Ocuvigils don't load areas so this wouldn't do anything.

[Juanasdf]

I don't remember if beefalos attack walls during mating season. If they don't: make a wall around the camp and leave a beef inside, eventually they will outnumber the camp. If they do attack, you can try leaving a beefalo parked with a bell when spring starts and the eventual herd shouldn't move too far from it.

If I recall correctly I did it with homeless merms too, since they can regen HP. But you'll need a disguise or actually play wurt if you want the loot.

Edited Wednesday at 04:09 AM by Juanasdf

[Baark0]

1 minute ago, Juanasdf said:

I don't remember if beefalos attack walls during mating season. If they don't: make a wall around the camp and leave a beef inside, eventually they will outnumber the camp. If they do attack, you can try leaving a beefalo parked with a bell when spring starts and the eventual herd shouldn't move too far from it.

If I recall correctly I did it with homeless merms too, since they can regen HP. But you'll need a disguise or actually play wurt

Beefalos will attack walls if they're aggroed on something on the other side of the wall, plus this doesn't solve the buzzard issue, as beefalo will attack them when they go into heat, and buzzards will likely get angry at the beefalo even if they aren't in heat.

[Juanasdf]

20 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

Beefalos will attack walls if they're aggroed on something on the other side of the wall, plus this doesn't solve the buzzard issue, as beefalo will attack them when they go into heat, and buzzards will likely get angry at the beefalo even if they aren't in heat.

Oh I completely skipped over the fact that buzzards were the issue lol... my bad

It's what I get for jumping from thread to thread 

Edited Wednesday at 04:34 AM by Juanasdf

[Popian]

21 hours ago, Baark0 said:

This sounds good (using anenemys to kill walruses) until you remember that mactusk will randomly attack walls for no reason. There's a chance it's something to do with him wanting to eat meat outside of his pen, but I don't have enough info on why he attacks walls for this to be a viable option.

Anenemies take advantage of the fact that MacTusk stands outside of the camp during day time while unloaded, giving the opportunity for passive kills as long as 300 damage is dealt before dusk. Unfortunately days can be short and can require MacTusk to stand over two of them for the kill, which isn't helped by the fact that he can appear from any side of the camp, eating into your Anenemy supply if you want a higher rate of drops. For most worlds setting this up would be a bonus so it's often good enough from being passive alone.

Coals will be more effective than Anenemies and are renewable, but the initial setup will be more costly.

[landromat]

On 6/9/2026 at 5:44 AM, YouKnowWho142 said:

Tooth traps break, it's not a permanent or sustainable solution

Coals then

[BeeClops]

I mean if it's long term enough just surround the igloo with houndiuses

I've personally tried anenemies and ran into the same issues that bother you, which is the wall attacking. You do get loot passively which is nice, but the area needs to be wall free if you don't want to repair it constantly 

I guess a layer of anenemies surrounded by a wall of houndiuses should be fail safe. Tho a touch expensive 

Edited Wednesday at 09:31 AM by BeeClops

[Tigris Nano]

Five. Hundred. Tentacles. For each camp.

[Baark0]

Update: after surrounding all 4 camps with coals and 4 furnaces each, I can report that the walruses are dying, however it's kind of inconsistent. Sometimes the coals will randomly cool off despite being right next to a scaled furnace, which gives mactusk a chance to shoot the walls. The 4th pen I used statues with, and so far there haven't been any containment breaches, so I might just have to replace all my walls with statues, which is going to suck because statues take forever to build walls with. I haven't enabled buzzards yet, but in theory there hopefully wont be any issues, however I could easily see a world where the buzzards get angry at the walruses/hounds before they die, however the coals might be able to panic them and stop them from doing stupid buzzard things.

There's also a lot more items dropping on the ground now which I'm not too fond of. I could put Winbots near the pens with an elastispaced scaled chest to store the blowdarts, gems, rot, tusks, and hound teeth, however the tams are going to be a constant problem that I'll have to clean up or just let accumulate over time. The issue with winbots is that I'd need a lot more space in the pen for the chest and winbot, but then that's probably gonna mean I'd need more coals to fill up the new space, and more furnaces to keep the coals warm (though I might have to do that later part anyways depending on how often the coals cool down or not).

tldr it works but there's a bunch of caveats and it's not as clean as I'd hoping it would be. Definitely an option but its pretty expensive considering you need lots of scaled furnaces to keep the coals warm, plus a lot of glands which can take a while to get (though you can dupe glands by crafting coals and deconstructing them since you get 4 coals per craft).

Klei please give us options to move walrus camps and goose nests I'm begging you, I'm so tired of good base locations being ruined by these unmovable wall attacking enemy spawners.