Dual class modder/Bohemia Interactive employee Dean 'Rocket' Hall has confirmed to Eurogamer that dogs are coming to DayZ. "Oh man that's just GREAT," says a man suspiciously similar to Hudson from Aliens, "I'm out of BEANS and I just got SHOT and a ZOMBIE IS EATING ME and now I gotta watch out for freakin' DOGS. That's just great, man. That's freakin' GREAT."
Hall doesn't mention what the dogs' role will be in the open words massively multiplayer getting-horribly-eaten-and-dying-in-a-ditch simulator, but does confirm that the breed will be "German Shepherd." Packs of wild dogs would be an excellent addition to DayZ, especially if they howl a eerily a bit at night. Hall says that they've been planning to add dogs, but "there's a problem with the implementation and there's been so much more that's been more pressing."
Hounds will arrive in a later patch, but the imminent 1.7.2 patch will give you a way to prepare: bear traps. They "break player and infected legs, kill animals when activated." Ouch. The new feature should be added today according to the mod team's post on the DayZ forums doesn't have a date but will hopefully arrive soon (thanks, Steamtrout). If there are bear traps, will there be bears? Absorb some of the community reaction to the bear trap news and discover why it's been so long coming in our most recent DayZ update update post .
Here are the 1.7.2 patch notes.
Changelog:
* [FIXED] Infected hear perfectly through objects (noise reduced by 50% through an object)
* [FIXED] Animal bodies despawn way too fast (now despawn automatically after 2 minutes)
* [FIXED] Corrupted update data causes people to spawn in debug forest (now will not save corrupted position data)
* [FIXED] States where animal might stop walking around (now should walk around more)
* [FIXED] Animal AI routines consuming large amounts of FPS (now in line with Infected AI routines, reduced FPS usage)
* [NEW] Player Syncing system replaced (increased performance and ammo quantity tracking)
* [FIXED] Error reports are almost invisible (has now been fixed)
* [FIXED] Daylight calculations causing slight FPS issue
* [NEW] Visibility now smoothly alters based on sun, moon, cloud, rain, and fog state
* [NEW] Aubility now dampened in rain and increased by fog
* [FIXED] Object cleanup causing significant (huge) performance issue on servers (reduced by up to 50%, means more players + zombies possible)
* [FIXED] Use of "allMissionObjects" causing performance issue on clients (new engine command "entities" used to improve FPS on clients)
* [FIXED] Too easy to break legs due to infected (reduced probability of leg damage, reduced amount of leg damage)
* [FIXED] Inspection of dead bodies does not work (fix only applies with ArmA2 Beta 94033 and above)
* [NEW] Exponent driven probability introduced into visibility calculation
* [FIXED] Hatchet/Crowbar requires reloading ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/34903 )
* [FIXED] Unlimited Wire fence/Sandbag/Tank Trap Bug ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/34283 )
* [FIXED] Duplication Exploit on object pickup ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/34031 )
* [FIXED] Not full magazines disappear when you reconnect ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/33998 )
* [NEW] Set Bear Traps that break player and infected legs, kills animals, when activated
* [NEW] Authentication process streamlined with new ArmA2 Beta commands (publicVariableServer and publicVariableClient)
* [NEW] Authentication for duplicate IDs supportive of the new beta patch (ArmAX users)
