dont-starve
Is there ANY way to avoid hounds other than jumping into a wormhole?
I still haven't really gotten past the first 25 days of the game, and hence I haven't built any powerful weapons yet.
So, every time I hear something approaching, I have to start running for a wormhole. And, if I don't find one in time, it's basically game over.
Am I missing something strategy-wise?
Whenever you cut down a tree there is a small chance (larger at night) that a nearby tree will turn into one of these, some call them an "Optimus Pine".
Also, burning trees down will increase the chance of waking it up.
There are several popular strategies to deal with them:
I have only killed one once, and if I recall correctly it dropped logs and pine cones. It didn't drop anything special.
You can find all the informations you need on the wiki.
Basically at the start of the game you're given a treshold of 30 Naughtyness. Every action damaging a "nice" creature subtracts points from this treshold according to the following table:
When you reach 0, one or more Krampii (Krampuses?) will spawn, depending on the days you've survived:
Every 60 seconds spent not doing naughty actions will increase your threshold by one, so this means that if you try to space out your killings in time, you can safely keep hunting for your meat without fearing to meet Krampus. On the table above the "Treshold" column indicates the maximum naughtiness you can have. It has been put in there because it's supposed to go down the more days you play, but there's still an uncertainty on the exact numbers, hence the interval.
Best Answer
What you're missing is your ability to fight back. 25 days into the game you should already have science machine tier tools, which means you should be able to easily fend off relatively weak enemies like hounds with ease, even in large numbers.
For your first few hound attack, you can use:
With these, you can confidently take on the hounds even if your dodging skills are imperfect. Once you get some hound teeth, you can start making traps like tooth traps, which can help deal with later attacks and other enemies.
Other strategies for dealing with hounds include drawing them to other neutral mobs, like beefalos, pigs, and pacified treeguards. When the hound pauses to bark after attacking you, he may switch to any of these targets, which would likely result in the hound quickly being beaten to a pulp. Note that running away is not a very good option, as hounds are faster than a player with no movement aids, like roads or a cane.