You hunt for meat, skins, bones, and knowledge in the Dawn of Man. You might have a steady supply from your domestic animals. However, one bad harvest can starve both animals and the people. That’s why you should always be prepared to hunt wild animals. I’ll break down every aspect of it in this in-depth Dawn of Man hunting guide.
Pro tip: Don’t put any hunting work area. Because hunt work area in the Dawn of Man is useless. Instead, manually sen hunters to big dangerous animals (Memorize portraits to not pick children.) and send automatic hunters to easy prey.
Can hunt in two ways, manual and automatic. Both have pros and cons. In manual hunt, you can select as many hunters you like, group them, and attack a big animal at the same time. It’s the most valid hunting strategy in the early game.
Automatic hunt has no hassle for you, dogs tag along for these hunts, but the prey can escape. Prey can retaliate and kill your hunter as well. But automatic hunt is the best once you have dogs, and bow / composite bow.
Here is how wild animals react in the Dawn of Man:
| Escapes | Attacks Hunters | Attacks Hunters and People That are Close |
| Ibex | Mammoth | Muskox |
| Mouflon | Elasmotherium | Bear |
| Boar | Woolly Rhino | Cave Bear |
| Deer | Ancient Bison | Cave Lion |
| Reindeer | Bison | Cave Hyena |
| Megaloceros | Aurochs | Wolf |
| Wild & Feral Horse | ||
| Wild Donkey |
Animals that fight back when attacked are the best targets to be honest. Because they don’t escape miles away dragging your hunters with them… If your hunters have good weapons and dog sidekicks, animals that are fighting back are easy to kill anyways. Taking few hits is much better than losing the prey entirely, believe me.
Dawn of Man Best Hunting Tools
Hunters can literally hunt with any tool they got in their inventory. It doesn’t matter whether they have ranged or melee weapon. Hunters are ready go as long as they have something to swing.
Though obviously best hunting tools are the ranged ones since it’s highly important to not let the prey get away. Besides you need ranged weapons against aggressive animals to not get hit. Hunters may die in the hunts after all. Even if they do not die during the hunt, wounded hunters have a high chance of getting infected with deadly diseases. So, better equip your hunters with the best ranged weapon available beforehand.
Ranking of best hunting tools:
- Composite bow. (Equal to steel spear in damage but bows have more range.)
- Steel spear.
- Bow.
- Iron and bronze spears.
- Cooper, flint, and bone spears.
Once you get the composite bow, no animal can escape from your hunters. It’s the best weapon in the game as well. So, better mass produce composite bows the moment you unlock the technology for it.
Dawn of Man Hunting With Dogs
Hunting with dogs is an automatic process. Once you select your prey and press hunt, available hunters will go for hunting and the dogs will tag along. That means you can’t use dogs in manual right click hunts. It’s not a huge problem though, especially once you get the bows.
I love dogs because they go melee with aggressive prey while hunters shot arrows. Dogs are basically my tanks against juicy preys such as mammoths, buffalos, bisons, rhinos, and bears.
We’ve discussed hunting with dogs, now let’s discuss hunting for dogs. I mean taming dogs. It’s a delicate process.
Taming a wolf is not a problem as long as it’s all alone by itself. However, taming a wolf belongs to a pack is quit challenging. When you try to tame a pup, the adult wolfs of the pack will attack the tamer. It’s a horrible scenario because one tamer can’t defend himself or herself against multiple wolves.
DAWN OF MAN DOMESTIC ANIMAL GUIDE
What you should do instead is to hunt the bigger wolves of the pack first. Then you can easily tame the little wolves without any interference. This is the only valid strategy. Going for wolf taming without killing alphas first is a death sentence. I lost lots of settlers because of this simple mistake.