What is the Scent Hound for?

[OldMtnMan]

I just bought the scent hound for a companion. I don't need it to hunt but I love dogs and enjoy having him with me. He seemed well behaved right from the beginning.

One question. Are there any other times I can give him a treat other than when he finds an animal?

[Dr_ViEr]

I only have the other two dogs, but as far as I know it should be possible after any command it understood.

[OldMtnMan]

You're right. That works.

Thanks.

[jan333jan]

he is broken - wrong writen code

[knott]

One improvement would be that the dog can track wounded animals in viicnity without having to show the first track like in cotw

[abslayer]

Is it me or the Scent Hound is just broken? Cant really figure out what can it can do that I cant do way better and faster...
At level 20 could not track an animal that was 50 meters away from the blood track...

That is how I see dogs also never use them now

[VonStratos]

The scent hound sits down after the blood stops if the animal isn't mortally wounded and isn't going to die. That's by design.

Plus at level 20 their Tracking Focus, Tracking Footprints and Tracking Distance aren't anywhere near max.

I´ll keep levelling it, although my experience so far isn't very good with this dog, maybe I'm biased after having levelled up the awesome german pointer.

Mine is lv46 and still sometimes loses the track if the bleeding stop, and sometimes it loses track even from arrow shots(permanent bleeding), the difference is that he is able to regain the tracking of the arrows. The scent hound has is usefulness but is more a quality of life than a real tracker, it may save you some minutes of tracking, but where it shines for me is when the track is lost in terrain, sometimes the track clues get hidden half glitched below the ground, rocks,etc making almost impossible to see them other than by sheer luck(very rare but happens) the dog can see it anyway and save you in those situations. but for the most part... My scent hound is a mule for extra equipment and weapons

[Jimmy Rustle]

The Scent Hound is definitely the least useful of the dogs, and probably the most difficult to train. If you get a single lung arrow hit on something like a Banteng that runs for miles you will get plenty of XP as the thing runs and drops plenty of blood, but otherwise it accumulates XP only slowly. It doesn't even appear to get the XP for every blood splash, even if it looks like it ran over the track. I just had a Roosevelt Elk which I hit with a single lung recurve arrow, and watched it run and drop in the distance. I counted 7 or 8 large splashes of blood before the animal dropped. I pointed the hound to track the first blood hit and held down the V key a few times to count the XP as it went. The first time it counted 3 blood tracks for XP. I pointed it back to the second track and restarted and it counted another 2 tracks for XP. Another attempt at a later track counted nothing else. Each time it got to where the animal had fallen and struggled to plough through the carcass, but couldn't find it, resulting in the question mark, despite the animal being in the middle of the road. This is fairly common and often comical. Gaining XP with the Pointer is simple fast and guaranteed. I leveled mine to 50 in a month of grinding. The Retriever is also simple, guaranteed and apart from catapulting ducks and space jumps is mostly problem free. The Scent Hound is at the other end of the scale as far as training and usefulness goes.