Question about Hounds

[daldingo]

How do you guys handle hounds? I'm on day 275 and hounds can be pretty ridiculous sometimes. At this point I have about 40 tooth-traps with a few monster meat scattered among them, and the idiots typically just run in and die. However, if I'm ever caught out on an expedition gathering silk or eggs, or whatever, they can overwhelm me fairly easily. If I have meat I can usually drop it and I can either run or start killing them, but still the combat can be pretty frantic when there's 10+ hounds rocketing all over the place. So I guess my question is, how do you handle the hounds later in the game? With the trap method, they're not a problem at all, it's just troublesome to get caught out on a big expedition and get owned in the middle of the night by them (it's happened twice so far, GG meat effigy), and lose a stack of 40 stone as it falls over the edge into the water.

And as a follow up question, what is the best method to raise smallbirds? And do they grow to full size?

[Naipseht]

For Hounds, I recommend carrying a Pan Flute at all times. Also, Fire Darts help.

I assume you know to put Smallbird Eggs near fire at night and away from fire during the day, and other than that, just examine them every now and again. If it says that they're hungry, give them seeds or berries. There really isn't much else to it. There is a piece of code that makes Smallbirds grow up after 10 days, but this is unimplemented. It will most likely be implemented next update.

[rodrigo4sb]

When the hounds come I just drop a stack of monster meat and start to attack (ctrl + space helps sometimes) asap.

And, of course, use a weapon and armor (logsuit and/or pig helm). The Pan Flute is good if they group up.

I'm not sure, but seems that the number of hounds varies according to the place, maybe it's just in my mind.

The smallbirds, oh god, hate them. They only serve to die and disturb you (by feeding and don't let you attack spiders nest)

[Massah]

Run to a pig village or close to bee nests. Hounds attack everything around.

And, one piece of meat will keep all of them distracted. Kill one, another piece of meat falls. All hounds are distracted. Rinse and repeat.

[Solnaga]

As the above posts mention, there's many ways to survive huge hound attacks because they're stupid dogs I'd always carry a stack of monster meat and of course armor to deal with ambushes in the middle of nowhere.

[The Pig Whisperer]

I found the 'one piece of meat' solution stopped working when they started arriving in twos and threes... And at day 156 (ish?) I don't find tooth traps very effective against hounds... They run over them, but the trap trigger maybe 5% of the time? And it takes a few tooth trap hits to take them out. What's odd is, the first time I tried the tooth traps, they pretty much triggered 100% and killed each hound in one hit. Is there something I am missing?

I have been depending on my bees and my pigs and having two firepits burning at all times after dark (which has some other nice side-effects. I'm considering adding a few more...) and all of that together has still left me dead when I made a small mistake.

[Solnaga]

I found the 'one piece of meat' solution stopped working when they started arriving in twos and threes... And at day 156 (ish?) I don't find tooth traps very effective against hounds... They run over them, but the trap trigger maybe 5% of the time? And it takes a few tooth trap hits to take them out. What's odd is, the first time I tried the tooth traps, they pretty much triggered 100% and killed each hound in one hit. Is there something I am missing?

I have been depending on my bees and my pigs and having two firepits burning at all times after dark (which has some other nice side-effects. I'm considering adding a few more...) and all of that together has still left me dead when I made a small mistake.

Ctrl + Click drops a single item of the stack. So you can drop multiple monster meat and keep them occupied for long periods of time.

[daldingo]

I found the 'one piece of meat' solution stopped working when they started arriving in twos and threes... And at day 156 (ish?) I don't find tooth traps very effective against hounds... They run over them, but the trap trigger maybe 5% of the time? And it takes a few tooth trap hits to take them out. What's odd is, the first time I tried the tooth traps, they pretty much triggered 100% and killed each hound in one hit. Is there something I am missing?

I have been depending on my bees and my pigs and having two firepits burning at all times after dark (which has some other nice side-effects. I'm considering adding a few more...) and all of that together has still left me dead when I made a small mistake.

There is a bug with traps right now where they wont trigger if you set them and then log out/reload. Basically, even if they're untriggered, you have to relay them every time you log in, or they wont trigger when mobs run over them.

[speerman84]

I always have a torch or two handy and simply run and find beefalo, pigs, bees, or go through the swamp and let the swamp monsters take 'em out.

[The Pig Whisperer]

Ctrl + Click drops a single item of the stack. So you can drop multiple monster meat and keep them occupied for long periods of time.

Yup. Sometimes this works. Actually, the ctrl+space that someone mentioned sounds like it will make a huge difference, as I might stop accidentally picking up the meats.

There is a bug with traps right now where they wont trigger if you set them and then log out/reload. Basically, even if they're untriggered, you have to relay them every time you log in, or they wont trigger when mobs run over them.

Wow. So, yeah, there is something I was missing! Given the number of the traps I have set up, this is going to take some time, but that sounds like it will make a big (positive) difference in my efforts to survive.

[Marcuzi]

if I'm ever out exploring I pack a miner's hat

did you know that hounds will fall asleep at night if you keep them running for long enough?

as everyone else has said you can just kite them into other animals as well

[Tbet]

Against hounds (with a smallbird):

- I usually drop meat everywhere around my camp. If you spend a day chasing birds with some seeds you can pretty much cover the ground with (eatable) meat. That's the technique I used to protect my smallbrid when I was raising it for 10 days (because you know, you're never too sure!). It survived two hounds attacks doing so, beacause they don't do anything but eat the meat. Does not work if you have pigs or spiders too close....

- Make them fight other animals works but I personnaly favor tallbirds and bees (and pigs as long as they respawn). If you set up as many bee hives as you can and then add a bee trap it's ridiculously effective and you gather a lot of stingers. The meat doesn't get eaten. Doesn't work while protecting a smalbird though. Tallbirds are good fighters and don't eat monster meat neither. I don't know how they react to smallbirds (?!)

- I do not recommand fire darts... at all... in any situation!!! In my opinion it's simply the best way to burn everything to the ground...

- And last but not least.... Run. Running away generally allows you to dodge all their attacks and they always end up dying somewhere... When I played hardcore without crafting any item I mostly ran away. And after a while you just don't know where they are anymore... And that's it. I guess it doesn't work when 5-6 of them pop though.

[The Pig Whisperer]

There is a bug with traps right now where they wont trigger if you set them and then log out/reload. Basically, even if they're untriggered, you have to relay them every time you log in, or they wont trigger when mobs run over them.

Wow. That made a huge difference. Thank you for the information. It will be a pain, given the number of tooth traps I have, but they don't all have to be reset, anyway. As long as I reset enough, I should survive, without too much trouble.