Handling massive dog packs

Game Talk The Bunker
1

So I cleared out a home goods store and I was feeling a bit cocky. I started to make my way slowly into a town towards the north of the store. I killed a few Zs and then I rounded the corner to see this pack of Zombie dogs and rotweilers. I thought I was far enough away, but a few dogs peeled off and came after me. My Trusty Longbow took 'em all down, but they kept coming in 1s and 2s which wasn’t bad, but then 3 came at once and I barely managed to kill them before they reached me. I retreated further away to rethink my plan of attack. Using some caution, I circled around at the edge of my vision (well away from the pack) and saw the rest of the pack in a house. There was a lot of them. So I left to think about a plan of attack.

When I got back to my base, I ended up getting involved in a project and I forgot about the dogs. Basically, I didn’t play the game for a few days and totally forgot about the dogs. After I finished the project, I remembered the town so I went back. At this point, a few in-game days have passed. Probably about 4 or 5 days, thought it could have been longer. I very cautiously approached where the pack was last I saw them and there are at least 15 of the dang things rampaging all through the streets, tearing up cars, houses, etc. I suspected there are more inside the houses and around the vehicles where I can’t see them without getting closer.

So I’m not exactly sure how to take them all out at this point. Past experience shows me if I kill one, several others will come after me. The ones I killed previously were all sort of stragglers to the main pack. If I get too close now, I think the whole pack will come after me. No way I can kill them with my Longbow and katana. It seems pretty obvious I need to lure them into some sort of a trap, but I get the feeling if I miscalculate, I’m gonna be a chew toy.

I have 3 hazy plans:

Plan A: I was thinking of setting up a bunch of spear pit traps or nail board traps to put between myself and the pack, but I’m not sure how many I will need or if they will be effective enough to slow the dogs or kill them. The dogs don’t seem to always take the best path towards me, so I’m not too sure about trying to set up in an alley between houses. An open field would be better, but digging so many pit traps and then luring the dogs to them in is chancy b/c the dogs are faster than me. I’m afraid if I take too long there will be even more dang dogs.

Plan B: Explosives. I have mastered “not dying to pipebombs”, but I was throwing them around corners at Z hordes chasing me across an empty parking lot. These dogs are in between houses, vehicles, and even inside houses. There are a bunch of vehicles I havent plundered yet. I don’t want to throw a pipe bomb in case it destroys all the vehicles in the area, but the dogs seem to be doing that anyway. I have visions of throwing the pipebomb and then either setting everything ablaze or triggering more explosions–or worse, not killing enough of the dogs and get chased down and mauled.

Plan C: FIRE! I’m thinking about just torching a house and letting it go. At worst it burns the entire block down. I can’t get into the other houses at this point with all the damn dogs running around and if this game has taught me anything its that there’s always more loot somewhere else. However… I’m not sure the dogs will be attracted to the fire.

In this particular game, I currently have no vehicles and no guns with ammo.

Thoughts?
Suggestions?

~D

1 Like
2

I’d go with nail board and caltrops in a some narrow area like two walls between the houses. Make a sort of a funnel they cannot avoid to get to you. Then just stand at the end of the line of traps and arrow down every damn thing. Dogs do not have much hit points, so even couple nailboards might be enough to wound them to the point you one-shot any one with your bow.

1 Like
3

Honestly some light armor, particularly on the legs, and a stone spear or melee weapon of choice and you should be fine for just murder butchering all of them. That’s how I tend to end up clearing dog swarms, thunk em in a doorway or somewhere they can’t surround you.

1 Like
4

Ahh, that I didn’t know. That would explain why I was able to arrow them down so fast.

I have some decent armor and chitin boots. I do have some decent melee weapons too: A Katana, Nodochi (sp?) and a HomeWrecka (named Cassandra). I havent bothered with spears this game mainly b/c I can’t figure out why I can’t craft a half pike. I assume i need a recipe book.

Thanks for the tips. I’ll make a bunch of traps and report back with some findings.

~D

5

I always keep several explosives on my character at all times, just for times like these. As well as my trusty lighter.
If I were you, I’d do Plan D, all of the above. Light a house on fire, through grenades at stranglers, and have some nail board traps, caltrops, and/or pots as backup.

6

I really don’t like lighting the houses on fire. Mainly b/c in the back of my mind I plan on stripping everything out of them first. At the very least, I want to make sure I grab all the sheets and long strings as well as any random loot inside the house.

The situation resolved itself though… quite messily.

7

For the curious…

So I made a bunch of nailboard traps and headed back to the town I laid all the traps out in a nice array and then snuck around the house and the dogs were too close to run and they all came boiling out of the house they had been trashing. Unfortunately the traps were to far away, so I grabbed a pipebomb out of my inventory. I activated the pipebomb, threw it, and stepped around the corner.

I managed to get 85% of the dogs and then arrowed the rest down as I retreated towards the traps. The dogs never made it to the traps, so I never got to see how effective the traps might be against them. Oh well, I’m going to move the traps further up the street to see how they might be effective against incoming hordes.