Starvation introduces dog companions, and includes a new skill branch (Dog Taming), dog training, breeding.
Each dog is an individual, with its own stats and skills.
The dog stats are randomly assigned to them when they are first tamed, and cannot be directly manipulated. Some of this stats will vary depending on how well you treat them over time, others cannot be manipulated at all.
The dog skills are acquired through training. The total skill points available for direct training is 30, and you cannot directly train a dog over that overall value.
You'll understand better in a bit why I mentioned "direct manipulation" on the previous points.
The current dog stats are:
- Intelligence (1-20) - directly affects learning capability and slightly affects obedience
- Strength(1-20) - affect damage amount
- Loyalty(1-20) - affects obedience and slightly affects learning.
- Happiness(1-20) - slightly affect obedience and learning
The current dog skills are:
- Attack Dog(0-20) - Affects zombie damage and detection
- Military Dog(0-20) - Affects human damage and detection (friendly targets are not targeted)
- Hunter Dog(0-20) - Affects animal damage and detection
- Breeder Dog(0-20) - Affects breeding effectiveness
The better a dog is at a particular skill, the easier it becomes to detect that specific target.
A well trained dog will detect a target up to 2 times its view range, even if in stealth.
A badly trained dog, will miss even close by targets, and will have a real hard time detecting a stealthed target.
This skills are manageable through training and breeding. While training a dog, the accumulated abilities will never go over 30 (for example you can train a dog with 20 Attack Dog + 10 Breeder, and that's it). Through training alone, you will not be able to have a perfect dog at every skill, so choose carefully where you want to focus.
Through smart breeding you can improve those numbers, by combining parents skills and stats. This means that puppies will always inherit a combined value of its parents skills and stats, making it possible to achieve powerful dogs after a few generations.
Notes about happiness, loyalty and food level:
- You can improve your dog happiness and loyalty by playing with it.
- Your dog loyalty will increase if you can keep it with max FoodLevel. Every Time if feeds and is already at max Food Level it will increase loyalty.
- On the other hand, if you let food level go under 5, loyalty will start decreasing.
- Every Time your dog tries to feed and finds no food or water, its happiness will decrease.
- If your dog food level goes under 7, it will start asking you for food with a special barking sound. So be attentive to its needs
- Your dogs regularly ask you to play, with a special playful bark.
ITEMS:
- A dog staff used to capture dogs. Success chance depends on your Dog Taming skills
- Dog Collars can be used to claim ownership of a dog and to check dog statistics. A owned dog cannot be "owned" by anyone else, and will only recognize command from its owner.
- Throw a dog toy and your dog will go get it for you. Keep your dog happy, and it will perform better
- Dog cookies are your dog food of election. Once tamed, it will refuse eating anything else
- Dog whistles are used to issue orders to your dogs. Use the following keypads:
- # Call dog (do NOT follow)
- # Follow
- # Track&Attack Zombies
- # Track&Attack Humans
- # Track&Attack Animals
- # Stay. Removes ownership, so dogs will stop acknowledging your orders and can be "owned" by someone else. Required if you wanna trade a previously owned dog.
- A human dummy can be used to train your dogs to attack unfriendly humans
- A zombie dummy can be used to train your dogs to attack zombies
- A Pig dummy can be used to train your dogs to attack animals
- A dog trough used to feed your dogs. You can put dog cookies and cans of murky water inside to feed them and your dogs will find it and consume those.
SOME ADVISES (and known issues):
- breed them on a plane surface or you risk losing pups falling through the world
- keep your "breeders" contained and with clear path to food
- if a dog cannot find a path, it can get stuck trying to get to destination. If that happens, capture it and drop it again, or issue an order
- keep your breeders away from your training grounds. It can get confusing having a lot of dogs trying to follow your orders
- Remember that if you issue the stay order, the dogs that acknowledge that order will no longer recognise your orders until you "re-own" them with a collar. That may actually be a good thing if you want to make sure that only a specific dog will acknowledge your orders, but it will open room for stealing. My advise to you would be to leave your breeders on that state, if you can keep them on a secure location.