Companion Dogs: Features Manual

A guide to what your dog does, how to command it and how to look after it.

The breeds (which one to pick, what makes each one special, moodles and traits) are in the other manual: Breeds.

Every quoted text in this manual is how it appears in the game in English. With the game in another language the names change, but the position in the menu is the same.

Installation: start here

The mod needs Project Zomboid 42.19 or newer (Build 42). On an older version it does not load.

To know whether the mod is in your save, look for the paw button on the left-hand bar:

Without that button Companion Dogs is not active in that save and no dog spawns in the world.

Install

1. Subscribe on Steam: Companion Dogs.
2. In the Zomboid menu, open MODS and enable Companion Dogs.
3. Fully close the game (quit to desktop) and open it again.

Without the restart the dog usually shows up with no texture or crumpled, because the game loaded the models before the mod came in.

If the save already exists

You can add the mod to a save in progress. A save that already exists keeps its own list, and Companion Dogs has to go into it:

1. Main menu > LOAD.
2. Click the save to select it.
3. Bottom right: MORE... > Choose Mods....
4. Tick Companion Dogs (and any breed add-ons you use) and confirm.
5. Load the save and check for the paw button before you go looking for a dog.

No building in your world has been rolled yet, so dogs start turning up as you move around, including in places you already explored.

Before taking the mod out of a save, read section 24.

Dedicated server

Two lines in the <servername>.ini file (it lives in Zomboid/Server/):

WorkshopItems=3740052292
Mods=CompanionDogs

They are different lists and both have to exist: WorkshopItems takes the numeric ID of the Workshop item and Mods takes the mod ID. Several entries go separated by a semicolon, with no space.

With the base mod and the published breed add-ons it looks like this:

WorkshopItems=3740052292;3762296152;3770795385;3779327129;3787202559;3808688990
Mods=CompanionDogs;CompanionDogsRottweiler;CompanionDogsDoberman;CompanionDogsLabrador;CompanionDogsPug;CompanionDogsMalinois

• The base mod comes before the add-ons in both lists. A breed add-on loaded before Companion Dogs does not register its breed.
• Fully restart the server after editing the .ini.
• Players download the mod on their own when they join; nobody has to subscribe by hand. They only need the same game version as the server.

Co-op host

Co-op is a server running on your machine, and it does not inherit the mod list from the main menu.

Step 1: enable the mod in your own game. Main menu > MODS > tick Companion Dogs and any breed add-ons you plan to use. Fully close the game and open it again.

Step 2: put the mod in the server settings:

1. Main menu > HOST GAME > Manage settings....
2. Select the settings you are going to use and click Edit Selected Settings.
3. In the list on the left, open SteamWorkshop (that name stays in English in every language). Under Add an installed Workshop item to the list: pick Companion Dogs; if you are not subscribed yet, use Add another Workshop item by ID to the list:, type 3740052292 and press Enter.
4. Still in the list on the left, open Mods and add CompanionDogs the same way.
5. Click SAVE.

Those two lists are the dedicated server's WorkshopItems= and Mods=, only through a screen: the edit ends up in Zomboid\Server\<settings-name>.ini. The same IDs from the table in the previous section apply, and the same order, the base mod before the breed add-ons.

Step 3: start the server with the START button. Whoever joins downloads the mods on their own.

If something goes wrong: an untextured or crumpled dog means step 1 was missed. No paw button and no dogs in the world, for anybody, means step 2 was missed.

1. In 5 minutes: from stray to companion

1. Find a dog. Caramelo strays roam loose around cities and residential neighbourhoods.
2. Have food in your inventory. Any food works, as long as it is not rotten and fills hunger.
3. Right click the dog and pick Give food (befriend).
4. Repeat until it trusts you. A big bag of dog food almost does it in one go; small treats take about four helpings.
5. Give it a name. From then on it follows you on its own.

After that, day to day:

• Feed it and give it water every day. By default neglect takes health down to 10% and stops there; with the sandbox option Illness and neglect can kill on, the dog dies and does not come back.
• Pet it. That keeps loyalty up and also eases your own boredom and sadness.
• Open its window with the paw button, below your hands panel. Everything about the dog is in there.

2. Finding and taming a dog

Where each breed shows up

The mod decides once per building whether that building has a dog, and the decision is saved.

The dog usually spawns on a free tile outside the building: street, yard, empty lot. It only spawns inside when there is no free outdoor tile left.

The sandbox option Animal spawn multiplier scales all of those chances at once. At 0 spawning is off.

Addon breeds come in separate Steam mods, each with its own spawn spots: CD: Rottweiler, CD: Doberman, CD: Labrador, CD: Pug and CD: Belgian Malinois. What each one does is in the breeds manual.

How to tame

Right click the wild dog. The only option that shows up is Give food (befriend).

• All it takes is food. No minimum skill, trait, collar or tool.
• The food can be inside a bag, the mod finds it on its own.
• With more than one kind of food, a submenu opens with the icon and amount of each.
• With no food at all the option is greyed out: You need a food item in your inventory.

How much food it takes

Each helping gives trust equal to the hunger that food would fill. An item that takes away 60 hunger points gives 60 trust. The default is 100 trust to tame (sandbox option Trust needed to tame).

The mod only uses up the bite it needs and gives the rest of the item back to your inventory.

Luck plays no part in it.

While the bar is filling you see: The Caramelo warms up to you... When it fills: The Caramelo is now your companion! and the naming box opens.

Food that is bad for dogs

Bad foods show up in red in the menu, with the warning Bad for dogs. Eating this makes the pet sick.

• By type: candy, sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate, pepper, nuts.
• By name: onion, garlic, leek, chives, shallot, grape, raisin, chocolate, cocoa, coffee, peanut. Grapefruit is allowed.

Giving bad food to a wild dog takes 15 trust away and adds none. On a companion it takes 20 loyalty, raises stress and leaves it intoxicated for 120 in-game minutes.

What happens the moment it becomes yours

• It goes into Follow mode with auto-protect on.
• Hunger, thirst and stress reset to zero.
• Its genetic traits are rolled at that moment and never change again.
• It becomes invincible: zombies, cars, bullets and fire do not kill it. Neglect and an untreated infected wound (see Wound and dressing, in section 7) only kill with the sandbox option Illness and neglect can kill on; by default health stops at 10%.
• It joins the My Companions registry and starts showing up on the map.

Taming another dog does not release the previous one. The new one becomes the active dog and the old one goes passive in Stay mode. See Several dogs at the same time.

Dog limit

The sandbox option Max pets per player ships at 0, which means no limit. If the server sets a cap, reaching it turns the befriend option red and blocks it: Pet limit reached (5). (the number is the configured cap). Releasing or losing a dog frees the slot.

3. Giving orders: the four ways

All four do the same thing, use whichever you prefer.

a) Context menu (right-click the dog)

Everything sits inside a submenu named after the dog:

Guard is not in this menu. The command only exists in the radial menu, on the keybinding and on the button in the Commands tab.

b) Radial menu (hold Q)

The mod hooks into the game's emote menu. Hold Q and a new category shows up, named after your dog's breed and marked with a paw icon. The category only appears with an active dog nearby.

The slices are: Come here, Follow, Stay, Guard, Alert, Quiet, Silent, Attack nearest, Hunt / Stop hunting, Tricks ▸ and Open saddlebags (if it is wearing one).

Picking Tricks opens a third radial level with the four tricks and a Back. A trick you have not unlocked yet shows up with a red icon and the required level in its name, like Distract (Obedience 3).

Some commands also make your character gesture: calling raises a hand, telling it to stay does the stop gesture, ordering an attack points.

c) Keybindings

There are 14 bindable actions and none of them comes with a key set. You set them up on the Settings tab of the dog window.

If you pick a key that is already taken, the mod warns you: F already used by: Stay. With no key set, the button shows Unbound.

d) Buttons in the dog window

The Commands tab has all of it as buttons. The full list is in The dog window.

4. The three modes: Follow, Stay and Guard

The dog is always in one of these three. Sentinel, hunting and auto-protect are settings layered on top of the mode.

Follow

The default. It walks behind you: it starts moving when you are 2 tiles away and breaks into a run past 6 tiles, or as soon as you start running.

• Fights zombies within 5 tiles of you (not of itself) and drops the target at 8.
• Jumps low fences, climbs stairs and changes floors behind you.
• It is the only mode in which it gets into the car with you.
• If you get more than 24 tiles away, it is pulled in behind you, so it does not end up stuck on the other side of a building.

The Following distance slider, on the Commands tab, runs from 2 to 8 tiles, in half steps. The default is 2 and keeps the dog at your heels; more slack keeps it out of your way in the kitchen, the corridor and the doorway, where a big dog gets in the way the most. The choice is per dog, and it is saved with the animal: it survives logging out and back in, the kennel and changing worlds. With a wide gap it starts its run from further away and takes longer to reach the zombie.

"The Caramelo paths along behind you and fights zombies that get close. Its sentinel keeps watch. The default, your companion on the move."

Stay

It stops where it is and does not leave. After about a minute standing still, it lies down.

• It keeps sniffing and warning about zombies.
• It does not chase and does not fight, even with a zombie in its face.
• It stays behind when you get into a car.

"The Caramelo holds its position and won't follow. It still senses and warns about zombies, but it won't chase or fight: it just sits and watches. Good for parking it somewhere safe."

Guard

It records the exact spot where it is standing as its post and defends that post.

• It takes on zombies within 10 tiles of the post, chases, then comes back.
• If it gets in trouble, it falls back behind you.
• For now it only works while you are nearby.

"The Caramelo anchors to this exact spot and defends it, engaging zombies in a wider radius, alerting, then returning to its post after a chase. It backs off behind you if surrounded."

The two recall commands

Use Bring when the dog is stuck behind a fence, trapped inside a building or too far away to walk back. For everyday use, Come here.

5. Sentinel: the dog as an alarm

The dog senses zombies you cannot see yet and warns you.

The sentinel works in all three modes. It does not work during fast forward or while you sleep.

The dog goes from sensed something to alarm when the zombie is 6 tiles away or less, when there are 3 or more zombies, or when there is clear line of sight up to 12 tiles.

The messages float above its head:

• Your Caramelo senses zombies nearby
• Your Caramelo growls, zombies close by!

The Pug (addon) is stuck on Alert: Quiet and Silent show up greyed out on its window and disappear from the radial menu. The sandbox noise option applies to every breed: with it off, no bark draws a zombie at all.

Stress does not make the dog bark. If your dog is pulling zombies in, the source is one of these four: the sentinel on Alert, the Distract trick, the chase during a hunt, or combat.

6. Combat

When it fights on its own

The dog does not go around attacking by itself. It waits for a trigger:

• In Follow, only with auto-protect on, and only if the zombie targets you or the dog, or you are already fighting. The zombie has to be 5 tiles or less from you.
• In Guard, always, within 10 tiles of its post.
• With the Attack nearest command, it searches within 12 tiles and chases for 2 in-game minutes.

It only attacks hostile zombies. Friendly NPCs from other mods (Bandits, A-Life) are spared.

It won't bite through walls

The dog only engages a zombie it can reach on foot. A zombie on the other side of a fence, or inside a closed room, is ignored. If it does try and gets stuck for two and a half seconds with no progress, it drops that target and ignores it for 12 seconds.

How hard it hits

Damage is the product of four things: the breed's natural power, the Combat level, the Strength gene and the sandbox multiplier.

• The Caramelo cannot kill a zombie on its own. It leaves the zombie at 10% health and stops, and no sandbox setting changes that.
• Every other breed can finish the job.
• A Weak dog, one that has gone three days without protein, hits for half damage. It then usually fails to finish and gets stuck on the zombie.

The damage table per breed is in the breed manual.

Every strike has a chance to knock the zombie down, starting at 10% and reaching 50% with Combat maxed out.

Auto-protect

Toggled per dog. When it is on, the dog stands guard while you are defenseless:

• sleeping
• reading
• sitting on the ground
• eating
• fishing

It anchors at your side and takes on whatever comes. If you walk, the anchor follows. When you finish the action, it goes back to following you on its own.

• A dog on a Guard post does not leave it because of this.
• Fighting like this stresses the dog and earns no loyalty.

It comes on when you tame the dog.

Your bullets never hit it

A companion dog does not lose health to a bullet, yours or another player's, in any situation.

• It stays out of auto-aim, so your aim does not stick to it when you raise the gun.
• In single player, at the moment of the shot, the mod takes the dog out of the shot and the bullet goes straight to the zombie behind it.

The dog does not move out of the way for this to happen, and it never turns on you.

In multiplayer, if you shoot from far away, another player's dog may look like it reacts on your screen, but it loses no health.

Wounds, retreat and panic

• Fighting does not cost the dog health right away, it only stresses it. Each bite has a small chance of leaving it bleeding.
• Its health drops from neglect (hunger or thirst above 0.8), from toxic food, from a deer fighting back during a hunt and from the conditions in the Health section. Neglect and an untreated infection only kill with Illness and neglect can kill on in the sandbox; off, the default, health stops at 10%.
• Wound states: Hurt below 30% health, Badly wounded below 10%. A badly wounded dog only follows you, it does not fight.
• It runs behind you when its health drops to 10% or less.
• With high stress it panics: it does not fight, does not keep watch and does not do tricks. It still runs to you when you call it. It only comes out of panic once stress falls well below the threshold.

Kill count

Each dog has its own counter, shown in its window: Kills: 14 zombies, 3 prey.

The zombies it kills also add to your own counter on the character screen.

7. Health and illness

Everything that can make the dog ill and how to care for it. The two tables below are the summary; the detail of each condition follows, one section per subject.

Health at a glance

The fourteen states a dog can be in. The icon is the same one you see in the moodle column, so you can find here whatever showed up on your screen. The detail of each one follows below.

The six medicines

The last column is the chance of finding the medicine on a pet shop shelf, the container where all six show up most, with the sandbox loot options at their defaults. Pharmacies and clinics give about three quarters of that. The other containers are under How often each item shows up, in section 20.

Medicine does not cure on the spot: a dose opens a treatment that runs for hours and only clears the illness at the end. Where to find them and how to give them is under Medicines, at the end of this section. Herbal remedies and poultices, which you make yourself, come right after, under Herbal remedies and poultices.

Healing

The dog heals on its own: a full health bar in about 8 in-game hours. Healing stops past the halfway mark on the hunger bar or the thirst bar.

Wound and dressing

• Each bite the dog lands on a zombie has a 0.4% chance of leaving it with an open wound. Each Combat level takes 0.02 points off that chance: at level 10 it is cut in half, to 0.2%. The chance rises when the dog is already hurt or stressed, and there is never more than one wound every 2 in-game hours.
• The dog limps as it walks, in every breed, and gets a little slower: it walks 10% slower and runs 25% slower. The Bleeding badge shows on its name, in its window and on the moodle, and turns into Injured as soon as the dressing is on. The Health tab of the dog window shows the dog with the hurt part lit up, the body part list and the active conditions, and right-clicking there opens the treat menu; the Health section on the Status tab says the condition, the dressing and what to do. With Animal Care 5 or more both also show healing progress.
• Wounded, it refuses Hunt and Guard until it heals. Follow, Stay and Attack still work.
• If the dog keeps fighting with the wound open, each bite can break its paw, with the same chance as the wound. The message broke a paw! shows up, with the Broken paw badge and moodle, and the dog walks at half pace and no longer runs, in any situation. Healing then takes 3 days, even with a dressing.
• Bleeding and undressed, health falls (90% of the bar per day, a full bar in a bit more than a day) and does not recover until you bandage it. Reaching zero, the dog dies. That holds at any stage: an infected wound with no bandage bleeds and festers at the same time.
• Left undressed, the bleeding stops on its own after 12 hours and the condition changes to Open wound; the wound stays open and can still get infected. A dressing stops the bleeding at once.
• An undressed wound has a 20% chance per in-game hour of getting infected; with a dirty bandage, 5% per hour; with a clean or sterile dressing, zero. An infected wound shows as Infected and blocks health recovery and breeding for as long as it lasts.
• To treat it, use Treat wound on the dog's right-click menu, or right-click the condition in the Health section of its window, with any bandage or ripped sheets in your inventory. The dressing comes out sterile if the bandage is an alcohol one, or if you have disinfectant, alcohol wipes or cotton balls with alcohol in your inventory (they are used up too). First Aid shortens the action. Treating earns loyalty. The bandage stays on the dog and returns to your inventory, dirty, when you use Remove dressing or when the wound closes. The hurt paw shows red cuts while it bleeds and a gauze band once it is dressed, on every breed of the base mod and on the breed add-ons, which also limp on the hurt paw. A dirty bandage also works.
• A clean wound closes in 2 days, 1 with a dressing. A dog at rest (Stay, or passive at home) heals at full pace, a working dog heals at half pace and a dog in combat does not heal. A dog on farm duty heals like a passive one at home. Only a dog stored in the kennel is paused, because it leaves the world.
• In the sandbox, Vet care turns all of this on and off (turning it off mid-way frees the dog at once) and Illness and neglect can kill (default off) decides whether health reaches zero, from illness as well as from hunger and thirst; off, every drain stops at 10%.
• Every illness has its own chance in percent, and zero switches that illness off on its own: Wound chance per bite (percent) (default 0.4), Sprain chance per fence hop (percent) (default 0.5), Worms chance per 6 h with an upset stomach (percent) (default 10), Upset stomach chance (percent) (default 25), Flu chance (percent) (default 15, used both for the daily roll on a starving dog and for each hour beside a sick one), Heartworm chance (percent) (default 1.5), Food allergy chance (percent) (default 5) and Flea and tick chance per bite (percent) (default 0.2).

Infection: fever, critical and death

• The infection gets worse on its own. After 12 hours infected, with or without a bandage, comes the fever: the Fever badge, the dog walks 20% slower and health drains faster (infected, a quarter of the bar per day; with fever, half). The critical state depends only on health: infected and with health below 10%, the dog lies down, does not get up and refuses Follow, Come and Attack. If health reaches zero, it dies. With Illness and neglect can kill off, which is the default, no illness and no amount of hunger or thirst takes health below 10%.
• A bandage does not cure the infection and does not hold the fever back. On its own, the infection passes in 2 days counted from the contagion. The Companion Dogs Antibiotics cut that to 12 hours, and the base game antibiotics clear it just as fast: it is the same molecule, what is missing is the right dose for the dog's weight. That is why the human one has a 25% chance of upsetting the stomach as it is given (a vaccinated dog is safe from that). While the antibiotic works, the fever does not advance. Once the infection is cured, the wound stays open and closes at the normal pace.
• The Companion Dogs Vaccine gives 90 days in which the wound does not get infected, bad food or tainted water do not upset the stomach and the dog does not catch the flu. Moodle Vaccinated.

Sprain

• Each fence jump has a 0.5% chance of the dog spraining a paw (more when the dog is hurt or stressed). It limps and slows down as with the wound (walks -10%, runs -25%), but still fights; it refuses Hunt and Guard.
• It heals with rest only: half a day on Stay or passive, a full day if it keeps following you. In combat the recovery stops. A broken paw is a different case: it does not jump fences and does not fight.

Upset stomach and worms

• Rotten food given by hand always upsets the stomach. Stale food and the game's tainted water (the kind that poisons you) have a 25% chance each, and the water counts both from the bowl and from your hand, with one roll every 12 hours per dog. Fill the bowl with clean water and it passes.
• It lasts 1 to 2 days and the clock only runs while the dog drinks (thirst below half). Meanwhile hunger and thirst drain twice as fast, health does not recover, it does not breed and it refuses Hunt and Guard. Badge Upset stomach.
• A tuft of grass from the game, given through the Treat wound menu, cuts 8 hours off the upset stomach and also shortens the poisoning from bad food.
• Worms are what an upset stomach turns into, not a side effect of it. For every 6 hours the dog spends with an upset stomach there is a 10% chance the worms settle in, so curing it early with grass cuts the evolution off. With worms, hunger drains 40% faster and it never clears on its own: one dose of the Companion Dogs Dewormer Tablet does it. The tablet takes 4 hours to act and then protects for 30 days, in which no new worms take hold even with the stomach still upset. You can give it before the dog has worms, as prevention. While the protection lasts the dog shows the Dewormed moodle with the days left, and the sheet repeats the count.

Flu

• Two ways to catch it: a dog with severe hunger (above 0.8) has a 15% chance per day of falling ill, and a healthy dog one tile from a sick dog has 15% per hour of contact. A vaccinated dog neither catches it nor passes it on.
• It lasts 2 to 4 days and passes on its own. It brings a fever the whole time: the dog drinks 20% more, walks 20% slower, does not recover health, does not breed and refuses Hunt and Guard. Badge and moodle Fever, plus the Flu moodle.
• The Companion Dogs Vaccine given to an already sick dog stops the spreading at once and cures in a day. Antibiotics cut 40% off the flu when the dose ends, veterinary or human. Rest does nothing: the flu clock runs the same whether the dog rests or follows you. Water does help, because the fever makes it thirstier.

Heartworm

• The mosquito only bites outdoors: for every 6 straight hours without a roof the dog rolls 1.5%, and stepping inside resets the count. It is the most serious illness in the mod.
• It lasts 3 to 6 days and clears on its own. Meanwhile it drains a quarter of the health bar per day, brings a fever, drops the walk to 65% and the run to 45%, and the dog refuses to attack, do tricks, hunt and guard. It drops hunt and guard duty the moment it falls ill. Moodle Heartworm.
• The Companion Dogs Heartworm Medicine cuts it to 18 hours. The same dose protects for 30 days and can be given to a healthy dog, which is how it is done in real life.

Allergy, fleas and ticks

• Every dog can have one meat family it cannot handle, drawn once in the dog's life: a 5% chance of being born allergic to chicken, beef, fish or another meat. From then on every meal of that meat brings a flare-up. The sheet says which food it is.
• The flare-up lasts 12 to 24 hours: the dog scratches, gets stressed and moves as if hurt (walks -10%, runs -25%). It passes on its own. The Companion Dogs Allergy Medicine settles it in 6 hours and protects for 2 days. Badge and moodle Allergy.
• Fleas and ticks come from melee: every bite the dog lands has a 0.2% chance of bringing one of the two (more when the dog is hurt or stressed). For 2 days the pest bothers it once an hour, giving stress and a 3% chance of an allergy each time, almost double that for ticks. After that it goes quiet, but it does not leave on its own.
• The Companion Dogs Flea and Tick Medicine clears both in 12 hours and protects for 30 days. Badges and moodles Fleas and Ticks.

Medicines: where to find them and how to give them

• There are six, all with several doses per box: antibiotics give 12 doses, the dewormer 8, the vaccine 6, the allergy medicine 24, the flea and tick medicine 12 and the heartworm medicine 6. Each treatment uses one dose.
• They show up in medicine cabinets, pharmacies, hospitals, store shelves, army storage, pet shops, pet supply crates, home bathrooms, garages and farms. At the vet clinic, the vaccine and the heartworm medicine also turn up in the desk (4.8%) and in each doghouse (2.4%).
• Everything is given through the same Treat wound submenu, or through the Health section of its window: right-click the condition and you see what can be done with what you carry.
• Medicine does not cure on the spot: a dose opens a treatment that runs for hours and only clears the illness at the end. The sheet shows the Treating line meanwhile, and Protected from with the days left when the medicine also prevents.
• The owner's First Aid and Animal Care shorten the treatment by 5% per level combined, and stretch the protection by 2.5% per level. Treating a sick dog earns First Aid experience; a preventive dose on a healthy dog earns nothing.
• An owner sleeping nearby doubles health recovery for a healthy dog. It does nothing for an infected dog.

Herbal remedies and poultices

The herbal remedies come from the Man's Best Friend mod. You make them from the game's crafting menu, on any surface, and give them through the same Treat wound submenu or the Health section of the dog's window. A herbal remedy heals slower and protects for less time than the pharmacy one.

Herbal immunity gives the same protection as the vaccine, for a short time: wounds don't get infected, bad food or dirty water don't upset the stomach and the dog can't catch the flu. It isn't offered for a vaccinated dog, and the sheet shows Herbal immunity with the hours left. The systemic balance speeds up upset stomach, flu, heartworm, allergy, poisoning and infection; worms, fleas and ticks don't pass on their own and don't change.

For wounds and broken paws:

• The effects multiply: splint and comfrey together make a broken paw heal 2.25 times faster while the comfrey lasts. On the sheet, each one shows as Applied while it works.
• Poultice, splint and aloe leaf are used up whole. The three poultices and the splint are the game's own recipes, learned the game's way.
• On a small dog the detox takes more off the poisoning, like the grass does.

Bath and tweezers:

• The bath is the Give a bath option in the same submenu. It needs 1 L of water in a container, clean or not, and a rag, dish towel, bath towel or sponge in your inventory. It uses one dose of the product and 1 L of water; the cloth is not used up. If either is missing, the option is greyed out.
• The tweezers are Pick off fleas and ticks with tweezers. For 8 hours the bugs don't bother the dog: no itching, no stress and no chance of allergy. Then they come back. Only medicine, repellent or a shampoo bath gets rid of them.

What goes into each recipe:

• The fourteen new herbs (aloe vera, licorice root, eyebright, red clover, rose geranium, Oregon grape root, black walnut hull, wormwood, mullein, eucalyptus, astragalus, echinacea, elderberry and turkey tail mushroom) show up in the game's search mode: the woodland and field ones under Medicinal Plants, the elderberry under Berries, the mushroom under Mushrooms, and aloe vera, rose geranium and eucalyptus, which are garden plants, under Wild Plants, in town too. They also turn up on grocery spice shelves, in house and garage pantries, in grocery storage and in farm storage. Marigold, common mallow, chamomile, nettles, dandelions, ginger root, thyme and rose hips are the game's own.
• The shampoo, Aloe Vera Juice, Calendula Tincture and the Tincture Bottle have no recipe: they turn up in pet shops, grocery stores, pharmacies, bathrooms, kitchens, garages, storage and trash bins.
• The Companion Dogs Home Vet Magazine teaches the seventeen recipes and the three poultices. It turns up in pet shops, bookstores, magazine racks, post offices, libraries, the vet clinic and, rarely, in living rooms.
• With the sandbox option Unlock all vet care recipes on, which is the default, every character starts out knowing the herbal recipes, and the magazine only adds the poultices. A recipe you learn stays with the character even if the option is turned off later.
• Remedies made with Man's Best Friend's own recipes work on the dog too.

8. Needs and care

There are four bars, plus loyalty. The mod runs all of them by hand, because a companion dog is invincible and that freezes the game's hunger system.

There is no sleep and no hygiene.

The sandbox option Hunger & thirst rate scales both together. At 0 both freeze. Loyalty keeps falling, so it still needs attention.

Where stress comes from

Stress rises with hunger, thirst, low health, low loyalty and with every blow traded in a fight.

Out of a fight, combat stress fades fast: a full bar empties in about 2 in-game hours. Petting, food and water speed up the drop.

Protein: it is a carnivore

On top of hunger, the mod counts the hours since the last protein. After three in-game days without protein the dog turns Weak, with a moodle of its own on your screen and two penalties:

• Half its bite damage. A dog that killed a zombie in four strikes now needs eight.
• +25% chance of ignoring an order, added on top of the normal Obedience chance. Even an Obedience 10 dog, which never disobeys, goes back to being stubborn while it is Weak.

Counts as protein: meat of any animal, poultry, game, fish and seafood, egg, sausage, bacon and dog food (the dry bag and the opened can). Vegetables, fruit, bread, pasta, dairy, toxic food and rotten food do not count.

The bigger the meal, the more hours without protein it pays back:

The sandbox option Hours without protein runs from 6 to 168 in-game hours, 72 (three days) by default. Changing it rescales the whole table.

Protein counts through all four routes: by hand, from the bowl, from the kennel (a stashed dog) and prey it hunted and ate itself. Hand-feeding counts the whole item, even if the dog only nibbles at it.

The hours only count while the dog is alive in the world. A dog in the kennel, carried in your arms, inside a vehicle, with its owner logged off or posted on farm care builds up nothing while it is there, the same way hunger and thirst do not rise.

Turn it off with the sandbox option Pets need protein. Off, only hunger and thirst matter.

A dog living on vegetables does not die, but it hits for half and does not listen. If you play with a bowl, leave a bag of dog food inside it.

Feeding, giving water and petting

Right click the dog → Feed, Give water or Pet.

• Feeding takes any food that is not rotten and fills hunger; only the toxic food list is off limits. For the hours without protein the type matters. Only the bite it needs is consumed.
• Giving water needs any water container in your inventory (the mod looks inside bags too).
• Petting has a 90 in-game minute cooldown.

The neglect ladder

If you let the dog go:

1. Hunger and thirst go past 0.6. The Hungry / Thirsty moodle shows up on your screen.
2. Loyalty starts falling three times faster.
3. Past the halfway mark, natural healing stops.
4. Past 0.8, health drains in about 8 in-game hours: down to 10% by default, down to zero with Illness and neglect can kill on.
5. Loyalty falls through the floor and the dog turns Disobedient.
6. Stress climbs and it panics: it stops fighting, keeping watch and doing tricks.
7. With the option on, health reaches zero and it dies.

Death is permanent. Your companion Caramelo has died. The saddlebags and everything inside them drop on the ground. If you have another dog, it becomes the active one automatically.

Grief

When a bonded dog dies, your character goes into mourning: the Grieving moodle shows up with the dog's name and sadness jumps all at once. There is no option to turn this off.

The sadness fades on its own until it is gone at the end of the window:

It is ordinary sadness, so everything that cheers your character up still works: reading, eating something good and petting another dog. While the sadness is high, the game's own unhappiness moodle makes every action slower.

9. Loyalty

Loyalty runs from 0 to 100 and measures how much the dog trusts you.

• It drops on its own, about 12 points per day, and three times faster if the dog is hungry or thirsty.
• It only goes up with feeding, giving water (+2) and petting (+2).
• Feeding is the fastest way, but the gain is proportional to how much hunger the portion took away: feeding a starving dog can give back dozens of points at once. If loyalty has dropped, let the dog get hungry before you feed it.
• Eating from the bowl does not raise loyalty.

The disobedience floor

Below a certain point the dog turns Disobedient and refuses to follow, fight and do tricks: The Caramelo no longer trusts you...

That floor goes down as Obedience goes up: it starts at 30 and drops 1.5 per level, never below 10. A dog with Obedience 10 only turns disobedient below 15 loyalty.

When the dog refuses an order

There are four reasons, in this priority order:

10. The bowl: food and water without you

With a bowl the active dog eats and drinks on its own.

Only the active dog feels hunger and thirst. See Multiple dogs at once.

How to use it

1. Get a bowl (crafted or looted, see Mod items).
2. In your inventory, right click → Place feeding dish. That opens a free placement cursor, and the R key rotates the bowl.
3. Right click the bowl → Add food to dish or Add water to dish.

The bowl holds food or water, never both at the same time. To switch, use Empty the bowl.

The model shows what is inside: grey when empty, brown with kibble, blue with water.

What counts as bowl food

Just about any food that kills hunger and is not rotten: meat, canned goods, cooked meals, vegetables, fruit, eggs, dog food, and also grass and hay.

The list of what is bad for dogs is left out, and it shows up in red in the menu.

An unopened can of dog food does not show up in the list. Open the can first.

The bowl holds up to 100 points:

Whatever meat, fish, egg or dog food you pour in stays marked as protein, and when the dog eats that part it counts for the protein clock as if you had fed it by hand. A bowl filled only with vegetables kills its hunger and nothing else.

If the item is bigger than the free space, the bowl fills to the top and hands the rest back to you. On a bowl sitting at 80 points, a bag of dog food takes it to 100 and returns to your inventory worth 40. The message The bowl doesn't have room for all of that. only shows up when the bowl is completely full.

How the dog uses it

• It goes on its own when hunger or thirst reaches 0.5 (adjustable per character with the Eats when hunger/thirst reaches slider, in the Settings tab).
• It looks for a bowl within 16 tiles. Both the mod's bowl and the game's vanilla feeding trough work.
• Each visit clears half the bar. It spends about 3 in-game minutes eating.
• While it is walking to the bowl or eating, it ignores zombies and everything else. Only an order from you interrupts it. A dog panicking from hunger leaves the panic when it eats.

Above its head you see Going to eat, Eating, Going to drink, Drinking.

Eating from the bowl gives no loyalty.

The bowl does not work as a source of drinking water for you, and rain does not fill it. You cannot fill it at a sink or a tap either: the game's own fill option does not work on it. Water only goes in through Add water to dish, with a water container in your inventory.

11. Skills: the dog's five skills

Every dog has five skills, from 0 to 10, and they go up with use.

The Traits (Strength, Aggressiveness, Resistance) are a different thing: rolled when you tame the dog and fixed for good.

The traits, what each one does and the ranges for each breed are in the Breed Manual.

The sandbox option Skill XP multiplier controls how fast all of it goes.

The default for that option in the file is 0.5, half speed, even though the help text says that 1.0 is normal. If the dog seems to learn slowly, raise it to 1.0 or more.

Disobedience

An untrained dog sometimes ignores the order: Caramelo Rex gets distracted and ignores you.

• The chance starts at 30% at Obedience 0 and reaches 0% at Obedience 10.
• A Weak dog adds +25% on top of that.
• Repeating the order right away always works.
• The ignored order still gives Obedience XP.
• It only applies to direct orders: follow, stay, guard, come, attack and tricks. It does not affect feeding, giving water, petting, the saddlebag, Bring, or the behaviour toggles (sentinel, auto-protect, hunting, farm care).

12. Obedience tricks

Four tricks, unlocked by the Obedience level. All of them show up in the menu from the start, the locked ones in red, with the level still missing: Unlocked at Obedience level 3 (currently 1).

Go to a spot (Obedience 1)

Opens a cursor on the ground: green where it works, red where it does not. Left click picks the spot, right click cancels.

• Maximum range of 30 tiles from you, not from the dog.
• It walks over there and holds the spot (it switches to Stay mode on arrival).
• Any new order cancels the trip.

Distract (Obedience 3)

The dog barks loud in a radius of 24 tiles and the horde goes for it. Then it falls back to you.

• The trick barks even with the Noise attracts zombies option off.
• It costs stress.
• Red tag over its head: Luring zombies.
• Cooldown of 10 in-game minutes.

Use it to open a way through.

Sniff out an item (Obedience 5)

Hold an item in your hands and use the trick. The dog memorizes the smell of that item type: Caramelo memorized the scent of Hammer.

From then on, in the background, it sweeps the area around it (12 tiles, reaching 20 with Scent maxed) looking for that item inside cupboards and on the ground. When it finds one:

1. It barks.
2. It goes there and points.
3. The item gets a green highlight out in the world.

Messages: Caramelo smells Hammer nearby. and Caramelo points at Hammer.

The dog keeps one smell only. To cancel, use Stop tracking Hammer (with the name of the item it memorized). Cancelling always works.

With nothing in your hands: Hold the item you want the dog to smell.

Fetch an item while you sleep (Obedience 10)

The dog needs saddlebags.

Hold an item in your hands and arm it: Caramelo will look for Hammer while you sleep. A permanent tag stays over its head: Looking for: Hammer.

• Once per in-game day. It fires right after you wake up, with the dog nearby.
• The chance of success depends on how rare the item is, and it never reaches 100%. The most ordinary item in the game caps at 50% per night (about 2 days of waiting, on average). An uncommon item like an axe sits near 15%, and something rare like a katana lands around 2%.
• If it works: Caramelo brought back Hammer while you slept., the item shows up inside the saddlebags, and a green tag Brought: Hammer.
• If not: Caramelo came back without Hammer. and a red tag Came back empty.

Two blocks when you arm it:

• Item too heavy: Caramelo could not carry Anvil.
• Item that does not exist in the game's loot tables: Caramelo would not know where to look for that.

13. Hunting

Hunt mode comes turned off and you switch it on per dog: radial menu, key, or the button in the Commands tab. Caramelo Rex will hunt nearby game.

What it hunts

Other wild animals it only points at, it does not hunt them.

How it works in practice

At levels 0, 1 and 2 it only points and does not touch the prey. It barks once, trots up close to the animal, stops, strikes the pointing pose and stays there a few minutes pointing. Then it gives up and comes back. Warning: Your dog has found game nearby...

This is how it trains Hunting early on.

At level 3 it starts killing small game.

• If it is hungry, it eats the prey. You get nothing, but the dog is fed, and since it is a whole animal of fresh meat, that clears the protein clock.
• If it is not hungry, it kills and credits you, leaving the skinnable carcass on the ground where the chase ended. It tells you: Your dog brought down game!

At level 6 it starts bringing the kill to you, with the tag Bringing the kill and the message Your dog dragged its kill to you.

With deer the rule is different: it never drags a deer, at any level and in any breed. It wears the deer down to near death and holds the prey waiting for you to land the finishing blow: Your dog wounded a deer, finish it off!, with the tag Holding the prey. If you do not show up within 20 in-game minutes, it finishes the job itself and you still get the credit. If the deer runs, it tracks it: Your dog is tracking the wounded game...

The Labrador delivers the kill from level 3 on, and it keeps at it longer before dropping it on the way. Details in the Breed Manual.

Deer fight back: roughly one charge in four hurts the dog and raises its stress, but it never kills the dog.

Limits

• Game lives in the forest and the countryside, not in town.
• It only works in Follow mode.
• A range of 32 tiles. If it strays too far it gives up, comes back and rests for 20 in-game minutes (tag Hunting: resting).
• It does not hunt during fast forward, while you sleep, inside a vehicle, or in the 5 minutes after an order from you.
• If it is already fighting a zombie, it does not consider hunting. A zombie walking past, on the other hand, does not pull the dog off the hunt. It drops the prey if you get into a fight or if auto-protect kicks in. Any order from you cancels the hunt on the spot.
• Hunting makes it hungry.
• The barking of the chase draws zombies and cannot be turned off.

Foraging bonuses

Both bonuses only show up with the game's Search Mode on.

a) It finds the forage spot (Hunt mode only). When there is no prey around, the dog looks for an animal forage spot, walks over, barks and points the place out: Your dog found something! Turn on Search Mode to see it. Tag: Sniffing for forage.

You are the one who harvests it.

b) It widens your search range (any breed, always). All you need is a dog of yours nearby, loyal and not too hungry or thirsty:

• +6 tiles of range at Hunting 0, reaching +12 tiles at Hunting 10.
• The animal, insect, tracks and carcass categories get much easier to find.

The Golden Retriever adds another 4 tiles on top of that.

14. Caring for livestock

In this mode the dog stays in the pen and looks after the herd on its own.

How to assign it

1. Make a designated animal zone (the base game's pen).
2. Take the dog inside it.
3. Right click → Care for animals here.
4. Confirm. The mod warns you that the dog stops being the active one and will no longer follow you.

Without a pen: Caramelo Rex needs a designated animal pen here to care for livestock.

What it does in there

• Patrols the pen.
• Calms the herd, which is the main part of the job: it holds the stress below the critical point. A stressed animal gives no milk and no wool, miscarries and scatters when a zombie shows up.
• Drives off zombies silently in a radius of 12 tiles.
• Works even with you on the other side of the map.

Warnings: Caramelo Rex senses a zombie near the pen! and Caramelo Rex's herd is getting stressed! Tag over its head: Tending the livestock.

Important rules

• While on duty, hunger, thirst and loyalty decay are frozen.
• It is out of everything else: it does not fight for you, does not hunt, does not keep watch, does not use the bowl.
• An untrained, disloyal or panicking dog stresses the herd instead of calming it.
• Selecting the dog again cancels the mode.

The Border Collie learns Herding twice as fast as the other breeds, but any breed can do the job.

15. Saddlebags: the dog as a pack mule

How to equip them

1. Have the Companion Dogs Saddlebags in your inventory.
2. Right click the dog → Equip saddlebags. Saddlebags strapped on.
3. To open them: Open saddlebags (or the radial slice, or the button on the Commands tab).
4. To take them off: Take off saddlebags. The saddlebags drop on the ground with the cargo inside.

How much it carries

Capacity comes from a fixed base plus the dog's Strength gene. With the default values:

The Husky and the Pug are the two dogs with a breed bonus on the saddlebag: the Husky carries 50% more and the Pug carries 40% less. Two dogs of the same breed can carry different amounts.

The server scales all of this with the sandbox option Saddlebag multiplier; at 0 the saddlebag is just decoration.

What you can put in

Almost anything. The limit is weight, not item count. The exceptions:

• Another saddlebag.
• Equipped items (clothes you are wearing, a weapon in your hands).
• Backpacks and bags. Store the items inside them, not the bag.

If you store an annotated map, the markings are lost: Map markings aren't kept in the saddlebag.

The window

Two lists side by side: Your inventory on the left (click to deposit) and the saddlebags on the right (click to take out). At the bottom: Cargo: 7/12.

Where to get them

Craft: 2x Leather Strips + Needle + Thread (the needle and thread are not consumed). Any sewing needle works (regular, bone, brass or forged) and any thread (regular, aramid or sinew). Tailoring category, requires Tailoring level 1. Gives 15 Tailoring XP.

Loot: pet shops, pet supply crates, camping stores, hunting lockers, survival kits, garage tools and farm crates.

If the dog dies or is released, the saddlebags and all the cargo drop on the ground where it was.

16. Breeding and puppies

There is no "breed" button

Breeding is passive: you set up the conditions and wait.

Every in-game hour, each eligible female with an eligible male nearby has a chance to conceive. The default is 5% per day (sandbox option Breeding chance per day).

The conditions

All of them required, on both dogs:

1. Both are the same species: dog with dog, cat with cat.
2. Both are companions of the same owner.
3. One male and one female, both adults.
4. Neither one has Block breeding turned on.
5. Same floor and 40 tiles or less from each other.
6. Neither one badly hurt or intoxicated.
7. Neither one with hunger or thirst in the red.
8. The female is not pregnant and not in the 7 day rest after a birth.
9. There is a free slot in the dog limit.
10. The area is loaded near you.

The courtship and the pregnancy

The female walks over to the male (Caramelo Rex is heading to the mate) and conceives once she gets close: Caramelo Rex is pregnant.

• Gestation takes 4 in-game days by default.
• The clock runs even with the female far away or with you offline.
• Above her head and in the menu you see Pregnant and, near the end, Due soon, in pink. These two show even with the status texts turned off.

The birth

Caramelo Rex had a litter. After that the mother rests 7 in-game days before she can get pregnant again.

If the server has a dog limit and there is no free slot, the litter is trimmed to fit, and the pregnancy ends all the same. The default is no limit.

What the puppy inherits

• The lineage is the average of the parents. A Caramelo with a German Shepherd gives 50/50. That mixed dog with a pure Shepherd gives 25/75.
• The looks are rolled with the lineage as the weight. A puppy that is 75% Shepherd will probably look like a Shepherd.
• The genes land between the parents, with a variation of plus or minus 6%. Breeding the two strongest dogs you have, and repeating that every generation, raises the bloodline average bit by bit.
• A dog with more than one breed shows as Mixed, and the window shows the breakdown (50% Husky, 50% German Shepherd).
• The pedigree is recorded: generation, name and breed of the father and the mother.

Raising the puppy

• It is born passive (in Stay mode), with 50 loyalty, no skills at all, and visibly smaller.
• It counts toward the dog limit from birth.
• It takes 90 in-game days to become an adult. If the deadline passes while it is unloaded, it turns adult as soon as you come near again.
• Growing up, it keeps its name, bond, genes and skills: Caramelo Rex grew up into an adult.
• The Pause growth toggle freezes the puppy at that size while it is on. Dogs that never grow up? Wish real life had that toggle :D

17. Several dogs at the same time

You can have several dogs, but only one goes out with you at a time: that is the active dog. The others are on standby.

This should change in a future version.

A passive dog is paused:

To switch, right click the dog → Select. The menu of a passive dog only shows what works on it.

The "My Companions" tab: the registry

It lists every dog bonded to you, with avatar, name, breed, sex, skills and the current state:

Three buttons per dog: Bring | Status | Select.

Bring on a nearby dog is a simple teleport. On a dog that is away, it asks for confirmation (Call Caramelo Rex back from afar? Your loud whistle will draw zombies.) and makes the dog reappear with its skills, genes, name and saddlebags.

Each dog has a cooldown of 2 in-game hours. Inside it: Caramelo Rex was called recently, wait a while before calling again.

When a dog goes missing, the mod warns you: Caramelo Rex has gone missing! Open My Companions (paw button) to call it back.

18. The dog window

You can open it four ways: the paw button right below your hands panel, the Status key, the Status option in the context menu, or the button in the My Companions tab.

The window is resizable and remembers where you left it. At the top is the live 3D avatar of the dog, with its name. Inside a car the In vehicle banner shows up.

The "Skills and Status" tab

• Loyalty, with a bar.
• Needs: Hunger, Thirst, Health, Stress.
• Skills: Scent, Combat, Obedience, Hunting, Herding, each with a progress bar and Lv X.
• Traits: Strength, Aggressiveness, Resistance, shown as Low / Average / High.
• Species: Dog or Cat. A cat's young one shows as Kitten.
• Breed: name, age (Adult or Puppy) and (Mixed) when it applies, with the breed description on hover.
• Kills: how many zombies and how much game the dog has killed.

Everything in the tab has an explanation on hover.

The "Commands" tab

• Mode: Follow | Stay | Guard
• Sentinel: Alert | Quiet | Silent
• Auto-protect (on/off)
• Hunting (on/off)
• Following distance: a slider from 2 to 8 tiles, in half steps, with the number beside it
• Care for animals here
• Tricks: four buttons (locked ones are disabled, with the reason on hover)
• Open saddlebags
• Actions: Bring | Rename | Release

Inside a vehicle, everything that needs the dog out in the world is disabled (Not available while driving, your companion is riding with you.) and the actions row becomes Feed | Rename | Give water.

The "My Companions" tab

See Several dogs at the same time.

The "Settings" tab

These options are per player and do not affect anyone else on the server:

• Interface: Status texts: on/off (the floating warnings above the dog's head), Mood image: on/off (the dog moodles) and Pet name: on/off (the name above the dog and the Owner: so-and-so on other people's dogs).
• Sound: master volume, mute, and separate sliders for Barking, Effects and Ambient.
• Auto-feed: the Eats when hunger/thirst reaches slider.
• Keybindings: the 14 actions, with Rebind and Clear.

If the barking bothers you, the Barking slider lowers only that, without turning off any mechanic.

19. What shows up on screen

Dog moodles

Dog moodles sit to the left of the game's normal moodle column. Each breed has its own. Full detail in the breed manual.

The ones any dog can give:

This holds for every breed moodle: on a disloyal, sick, very hungry or very thirsty dog, the moodle switches off until it is cared for again.

Text above the head

The dog stacks several status lines above its head, visible from 14 tiles and only on the same floor. From top to bottom: the sentinel alert, its state (Terrified, Panicking, Badly wounded, Disobedient, Hurt, Nervous), what it is doing (eating, hunting, sniffing, tending the livestock), pregnancy, and the name, always last.

The Status texts: off option (Settings tab) hides everything except the name, and the Pet name: off option (same tab) hides only the name and the Owner: so-and-so. With both off, nothing is drawn. Each one applies only to its own player. The sandbox option Show pet name tags is a world rule and removes the whole tag for everyone.

Another player's dog shows only Owner: so-and-so, the pregnancy and the name.

Map marker

Each bonded dog gets a paw print on the world map and on the minimap.

• The brown paw is the active dog. Grey paws are the passive dogs.
• On the world map the paw comes with the dog's name next to it. On the minimap it doesn't, and it sticks to the edge pointing in the dog's direction when the dog is out of view.
• While the dog is loaded, the marker follows it live. When it unloads, the marker stays at the last seen position.

It helps you find a dog that got left behind, or your own dog after you die. The marker never becomes a saved map symbol.

20. Mod items

The mod adds 45 items: the bowl, the saddlebags, six pharmacy medicines, fifteen herbal remedies, fourteen herbs, two powders, two oils, three ingredients (aloe vera juice, calendula tincture and tincture bottle) and the Home Vet magazine. There is no collar, special treat, toy, doghouse or buildable kennel. The base game's regular dog food is recognized by the mod, but is not one of its items.

The pharmacy medicines are Companion Dogs Antibiotics, Companion Dogs Dewormer Tablet, the Companion Dogs Vaccine, the Companion Dogs Allergy Medicine, the Companion Dogs Flea and Tick Medicine and the Companion Dogs Heartworm Medicine, all weighing 0.1 and holding several doses per box. Where to find them and how to give them is in section 7, under Medicines. The herbal remedies, the herbs and the magazine are in section 7, under Herbal remedies and poultices.

How often each item shows up

Every container you open makes its own rolls, so a house with several cabinets gives you several chances. The numbers below assume the sandbox loot options are at their defaults.

Per medicine, on a pet shop shelf: allergy medicine and flea and tick medicine 17.9%, antibiotics and dewormer 13.6%, heartworm medicine 11.5% and the vaccine 9.3%. The bowl turns up on 36.7% of pet shop shelves and the saddlebags on 17.9%. The shampoo turns up on 13.6% of pet shop shelves and the magazine on 4.7%. One of the ten herbs turns up on 21.4% of grocery spice shelves and on 11.3% of house pantry shelves. The sandbox loot multiplier scales all of it. A container you already opened before installing the mod gets nothing, unless loot respawn is on.

Companion Dogs Bowl

The feeding station. Weight 1.5.

It has two recipes, both made by hand and needing no skill:

• 1 cooking utensil (pot, frying pan, baking tray, kettle, bucket, mug, bottle...), which is destroyed.
• 1 base game pet bowl, destroyed.

It shows up as loot on pet shop shelves, in pet supply crates, the grocery utility section, garden stores, farm and gardening crates, grocery stockrooms and kitchens.

Companion Dogs Saddlebags

See Saddlebags. Weight 1.0, with a good weight reduction inside.

21. Multiplayer

The mod works the same in co-op and on a dedicated server.

Your dog is yours

Ownership is tied to your account, not to the character or to the connection slot.

Other players can see the dog, with its name and Owner: so-and-so above its head.

What other players cannot do:

When you disconnect

With the Stash pets while owner is offline option on (the default):

• Your dogs leave the world, with state and needs frozen.
• When you come back, the dog in Follow reappears at your side; the ones in Stay and Guard and the passive ones reappear where you left them, as soon as the area loads.
• The dog does not come back hungry.

Turned off, the dogs stay in the world, invincible and idle.

For administrators

There is a Companion registry (admin): search by player, Online/Offline status, dog count and a Refresh button. There is also a live server performance tuning panel, described in section 25. Server tuning.

22. Sandbox options

The Companion Dogs page in your world settings. There are 39 options.

In multiplayer the server's setting is the one that counts: from the admin panel the change applies at once, for everyone, and is stored. In single player that screen only opens with the game in debug mode (-debug in the Steam launch options), and there too it applies at once. Without debug, in single player, the way to change them is to start a new world.

Taming and spawning

Combat

Care and bonding

Vet care

Section 7. Health and illness explains each of them with its in-game effect.

Behaviour

Skills and activities

Saddlebag

Puppies

Interface and multiplayer

23. Common problems

The dog showed up with no texture, all mangled. Enable the mod in the Mods list on the main menu and close the game completely before loading the save. It is the most common problem in co-op.

I added the mod and nothing shows up in my save. A mod added later does not get into a world that already exists, and the game does not warn you. On the load-save screen, check that the mod is ticked for that world.

My dog won't obey. Look at the message. If it says doesn't trust you, it is loyalty: feed it, give it water and pet it. If it says gets distracted and ignores you, it is a lack of training: repeat the order, the second one goes through. If it is panic or a wound, take care of that first.

My dog went Weak and it won't go away. It has gone more than three in-game days without protein. Give it a real meal or drop dog food into its bowl: what counts is the quantity. See Protein.

My dog doesn't kill zombies, it only knocks them down. The Caramelo only knocks them down, and no setting changes that. You finish the zombie. The other breeds kill on their own.

The dog barks all the time and brings zombies over. Switch the sentinel to Quiet, which does not bark. If you want no bark at all to pull zombies, turn off the Noise attracts zombies sandbox option; it applies to every breed.

My dog is gone. / The dog gets stuck on the other side of the fence. Both are solved with Bring: open the window on the paw button and go to the My Companions tab. The whistle draws zombies. Details in Several dogs at the same time.

My dog won't get pregnant. Check the list of breeding conditions. Hunger and thirst only get in the way in the red, and loyalty does not count at all. Also check that Block breeding is not turned on. A dog only breeds with a dog and a cat only with a cat.

My puppy won't grow. Check that Pause growth is not turned on for it. Other than that it is just time: the default is 90 in-game days, and the clock runs even with the puppy far away. If the deadline has passed, get close to it: the change happens when the puppy is loaded.

The dog won't get in the car with me. Only a dog on Follow gets in.

I left the dog guarding the base and it did nothing. Guard mode, for now, only works with you nearby. The only mode that works on its own from far away is Care for animals here, and it needs a designated pen.

The dog learns way too slowly. The default of the Skill XP multiplier is 0.5. Raise it to 1.0 or more in a new world.

My dog died. A dead dog does not come back. Hunger, thirst and untreated illness only kill with the sandbox option Illness and neglect can kill on; by default it is off and health stops at 10%. The saddlebags and their cargo stay on the ground where it fell.

My carry capacity changed after installing the mod. Companion Dogs does not touch your maximum carry weight. On a server there is a base game detail: your capacity stays stuck at a low value, ignoring Strength, until the character takes first damage.

24. Removing the mod from a save (READ THIS FIRST)

Removing Companion Dogs from a save that has dogs in it makes animals that are not from the mod disappear: the livestock in your pen, the chickens, whatever is in that part of the map. This is how Project Zomboid stores animals, and the mod cannot defend against it once it has been removed.

Why it happens

The game keeps every living animal of a large map region in a single file. Opening that file without the mod, it finds the dog, does not recognize the type, gives up on the rest of the file and repopulates the region as if you had never been there. Your animals go because they were in the same file as the dog.

Everything stored after the dog in that region is lost, nothing more. That is why the outcome varies from save to save.

Unsubscribing from just the Rottweiler, the Doberman, the Labrador, the Pug (or any other) and playing on with the base mod causes the same problem: the dogs of that breed are still written in the save.

If your animals already vanished

Reinstall the mod right now, before playing on or saving. The animals will most likely come back. Once the game saves over it, the file is lost and there is no backup of it.

How to remove it safely

Step 1: keep every addon enabled. Check that every breed addon you have ever used in that save is ticked in that save's mod list (LOAD > the save > Choose Mods...). A disabled addon already causes the problem described above.

Step 2: get rid of the dogs. Two safe ways:

• Kill them. The corpse is stored in another format, one the game reads even without the mod.
• Carry the dog in your inventory. The game knows to skip that item: only the dog goes, the rest stays.

Releasing a dog or walking it far away does not help: its record stays in the save, and moving it somewhere else only changes which region breaks.

Step 3: save the game. The save is what writes the cleanup down.

Step 4: remove the mod.

Full cleanup (admin / debug mode)

The steps above cover your own dogs, but the mod also spreads strays around the map, and there is no way to find all of them by hand. To clean the whole save at once there is a command:

1. Join as admin (multiplayer) or run the game in debug mode (singleplayer: add -debug to the Steam launch options).
2. Right-click the ground → Companion Dogs (debug) → Tools → Delete ALL dogs (whole save).
3. Wait for the sweep done message and save the game.

The command deletes the loaded dogs right away and then sweeps the rest of the save in the background, without freezing the game. If it refuses and names a breed, enable that addon in the save and repeat: without its definitions, cleaning deletes the animals of the region.

25. Server tuning (admin)

This section is for people running a server with many players and many dogs. The panel is called Server tuning / performance: on top, a live meter of what the mod costs the server; below it, the fields that change that cost. Game rules (damage, hunger, XP, the dog limit) do not live here. They are still sandbox options, in section 22.

The panel is in English whatever language the game is in, because its labels are fixed in the code. The tables below quote each one as it appears on screen.

Opening the panel

Right-click the ground → Companion Dogs (debug) → Tools → Server tuning / performance. In multiplayer you have to be admin; in single player, run the game in debug mode (-debug in the Steam launch options).

What holds for every field

• The value applies right away, for the whole server, and is stored in the save.
• A value outside the range is pulled back into it.
• A green label means the field is set to something other than its default.
• Every change goes to the log with the [CD-TUNE] marker and the name of whoever made it. At boot the server prints the list in effect, with * on anything an admin changed.
• Restore defaults puts everything back, including the measurement and the client authority.

Read the measurement before you touch anything

Click Measurement: off (click to start) and wait up to 20 seconds for the first window. This is the main line:

companionTick: 12.40 ms/s load   0.062 ms/tick   200.0 ticks/s   (4000 ticks in 20s)

ms/s load is the number that matters: how many milliseconds out of every second the mod takes from the server. After a change, that is the number that has to drop. Below it come the loaded dogs, the cost bars per area of the mod (the time is exclusive, so the bars add up, and the longest one is where to look) and the counters: line, with events per second. Two counters say a lot on their own: spawn.qfull above zero is the spawn queue overflowing, and netauth.grant and netauth.revoke both high at the same time is control of the dog bouncing between server and client. If the orange COARSE CLOCK warning shows up, the machine's clock is too coarse for the timings: read the counters and ignore the time figures.

Measuring also costs server time. Turn it off when you are done looking.

Knobs: pass rhythm

Type the number and press Enter, or click outside the field. The mod works in two passes: a heavy one that decides what the dog does, and a cheap one that keeps the dog moving between two heavy passes. Raising the heavy one is the change that relieves the server most, and also the one that delays the dog's reaction most.

Knobs: reach and combat

Before picking a zombie, the dog works out how far it can get on foot. Without that calculation the dog keeps circling a fence after a zombie on the other side.

Knobs: scent

Sniffing for an item sweeps the ground in a ring. It is the only part of the mod whose cost grows with the number of players, not with the number of dogs.

Knobs: stray spawning

Every piece of the map that loads joins a queue to be assessed as a possible stray spot. With players spread out, far more pieces arrive per second, and the queue can overflow.

Knobs: network (multiplayer only)

The Client authority switch is the change with the biggest effect in this section. On (the default), the owner's machine moves the dog and reports its position, and the server checks before relaying it; that is what keeps walking and running smooth. Off, every dog goes back to the server and clients stop sending position, which is the mod's most frequent command on a full server. In return, movement gets choppy for everyone and every dog goes back into the server's pathfinding queue, which is global and shared with the players.

Recipes: the symptom and what to change