JAGO - Animals

A 7 Days to Die mod by AMG5TAG. Version 1.0.1 for game version 3.4; installs on the server and client. Category: Gameplay.

Adopt and train a guard dog that follows, stays or guards your base and fights zombies, plus vulture nests, Bird Flu, dog houses and terrariums that bite back, and zombie animals in blood moon hordes.

Description

The wasteland's wildlife has sat on the sidelines for too long. JAGO - Animals gives you a loyal guard dog to raise and lead, and makes the rest of the animal world something you have to think about: smashing a bird nest might flush out an angry vulture, a dog house might not be empty, and the reptile terrarium in that pet shop could still have a tenant.

Craft a Dog Kennel and a dog moves in. It follows you, holds a spot or guards your base, fights zombies, levels up from its kills and comes back to its kennel a day after it dies. Invest in the K9 Support perk and it carries your loot, sniffs out unopened containers, wears a collar, and at the top rank brings a friend.

Vultures now carry Bird Flu, which you can cure with a cooked remedy, and blood moon hordes can bring zombie dogs, vultures, boars, bears and dire wolves along with the usual crowd.

Features

Guard dogs

• Dog Kennel: crafted from your backpack (40 Wood, 10 Nails, 2 Dog Food, 5 Raw Meat) once you have K9 Support 1. Stand near it and press E, "Call dog", to adopt your dog or bring it home. The last kennel you used is where a new dog moves in after yours dies. Any kennel works for anyone, and you can pick it up again.
• Orders (E on your dog): Follow keeps it with you, Stay holds the spot where you gave the order, and Guard patrols around that spot and fights anything that comes within about 20 m, sending you a chat message with the location when it does. A following dog catches up by itself when it falls more than about 40 m behind, and waits while you are driving fast.
• Whistle key (H by default): every loaded dog of yours drops what it is doing and runs back to you on Follow (needs K9 Support). A dog that is too far away to be loaded can be fetched with "Call dog" at a kennel.
• Fighting: the dog goes after zombies and hostile animals near you or its post, and chases rabbits, chickens and snakes first. It never attacks players or other guard dogs. Zombies fight back, so keep an eye on its health.
• Safe around you: players can't hurt guard dogs, and turrets and motion sensors ignore them. Dogs never despawn.
• Feeding: hold food and press E to heal your dog: Dog Food +125 health, grilled or boiled meat +100, charred meat +75, raw meat +25.
• Levels: dogs level from 1 to 10 by landing killing blows (5 kills per level at level 1, more for each level after). Each level adds +6% bite damage and makes natural healing 10% faster.
• Owner XP: your dog's kills give you part of the normal kill XP, shared with your party like your own kills: 50% at K9 Support 1, 60% at 2, 70% at 3, 80% at 4 and 100% at 5.
• Pack bonus: each other guard dog (anyone's) within 15 m gives a dog +10% max health and bite damage, up to +30%.
• Saddlebag (K9 Support 2): craft a Dog Saddlebag (15 Leather, 10 Cloth, 2 Duct Tape), hold it and press E on your dog. It adds one row of 10 slots that only you can open.
• Fetch: with a saddlebag fitted, your dog runs to up to 8 loot bags within 20 m, nearest first, and empties them into its saddlebag. It tells you when it is done or full.
• Sniff for loot (K9 Support 3): your dog barks and marks up to 12 never-opened loot containers within 30 m on your compass, map and screen for 90 seconds, or until you reach them. 30-second cooldown per dog.
• Collars (K9 Support 4, crafted at a workbench): Spiked (+30% bite damage), Armoured (30% less damage taken) or Bell (the dog growls and warns you when a zombie gets within 10 m of you). Hold one and press E to fit it; the old collar comes back to you.
• Downed, not dead: a fatal hit leaves your dog down for 60 seconds. You or anyone in your party can revive it with a bandage (25% health), first aid bandage (50%) or first aid kit (full health). A downed dog keeps its remaining time through a server restart.
• Death and respawn: if a dog bleeds out, what it was carrying drops in a backpack where it fell. One in-game day later a new dog moves into your last kennel, as long as the kennel still stands and you are online. The new dog starts again at level 1 with no name, saddlebag or collar. You are told if your kennel is destroyed or picked up.
• Coats: every new dog gets a random coat colour (Natural, Black, Chocolate, Ginger, Golden, Cream, Silver or Sable) that it keeps for life.
• Names: use "Rename" in your dog's E menu, or type /dogname Rex in chat (/dogname 2 Rex for your second dog). Up to 24 letters, digits, spaces and - ' . characters.
• Markers: you see your own dogs, and your party's dogs, on the map and compass. When your dog drops out of your loaded area, a "last seen" marker stays where it was.
• Naps and pats: a dog on Stay or Guard lies down after 20 quiet seconds at its post, and while you are offline, and gets up for a fight or an order. Anyone can pat a dog. It does nothing, but it is a good dog.

K9 Support perk (General perks, 5 ranks)

• Rank 1: Dog Kennel recipe and adopting a guard dog (150 health).
• Rank 2: Dog Saddlebag recipe and fitting it.
• Rank 3: dogs have 200 health and can Sniff for loot.
• Rank 4: dogs have 350 health, and the three collar recipes.
• Rank 5: dogs have 500 health, and you can keep a second dog.

A dog's health follows your current rank while you are online.

Wildlife

• Vulture Nests: bird nests are renamed Vultures Nests. Destroying one has a 20% chance that it is occupied: then an 80% chance of a hostile zombie vulture plus a separate 10% chance of two more, and 5 eggs straight to you. Eggs also drop more often from bird nest loot.
• Dog houses hide zombie dogs: breaking a dog house has a 20% chance to release a zombie dog (80% one, plus a separate 10% roll for two). With JAGO - Loot, dog houses break when you empty them, just like bird nests.
• Terrariums hide snakes: reptile terrariums work the same way and release aggressive snakes.
• Bird Flu: each hit from a zombie vulture or radiated vulture has a 15% chance to infect you: -1 to every attribute, 25 max health blocked, and dizzy fits with blurred and wobbling vision every few minutes. It wears off on the same clock as a concussion (about two hours, less with Healing Factor), with the time left shown on the buff.
• Bird Flu Remedy: 3 Mushrooms, 1 Vitamins and 1 Painkillers, cooked in a campfire with a cooking pot (60 s) or at a chemistry station (30 s). It cures Bird Flu and gives 30 minutes of immunity.
• Zombie animals on blood moons: every blood moon horde group can include zombie dogs, zombie vultures and radiated vultures, plus zombie boars from gamestage 60, and zombie bears and dire wolves from gamestage 100. They are mixed in at low weights, so you will see a few animals in the crowd rather than an animal horde.

Settings

• Whistle key: default H. With Gears, each player picks their own key in Esc > Mods > JAGO - Animals from H, J, K, L, G, U, Y, Z, X, V, B, N, M, F5 to F9, Keypad0, Keypad5, Mouse3, Mouse4 or None, and the change applies straight away. Without Gears, set whistle_key in JAGO-Animals.xml (any Unity key name, or None to turn it off).

Everything else uses fixed values.

Compatibility

• Pairs well with JAGO - Loot, which makes dog houses and terrariums searchable and breaks them when emptied. Not required.
• Mods that also add a destroy event to bird nests, dog houses or terrariums will conflict; whichever loads last wins.
• Blood moon animals are added by matching the vanilla horde group names, so horde overhauls that rename those groups won't get them.
• Guard dogs use the wolf model. Mods that change the vanilla wolf entity may also change the dog.
• Bird Flu, Vulture Nest and blood moon text is in English, German and Spanish. Guard dog and K9 Support text is English only for now.

Requirements

• Contains a DLL, so EasyAntiCheat (EAC) must be off.
• Gears is optional; it only adds the in-game whistle key setting.
• Install on the server and on every client. All of them need the same version, as the mod adds its own network messages and the guard dog creature.
• Unzip into your Mods folder and keep the folder name as it is (ZZ-AMG5TAG-JAGO-Animals): the ZZ- prefix sets the load order.
• Works standalone. Each JAGO mod is independent, so you can install just this one.
• Guard dog records are kept in JAGO-Animals-Dogs.txt in the save folder. Deleting it is safe: a loaded dog registers itself with its owner again.
• Removing the mod: saved guard dogs become an unknown creature type in the save. Pick up your saddlebag contents and let your dogs go (or remove them) before uninstalling.

Installation

Step 1: Install JAGO - Animals on the server and on every player's game, all on the same version. In single player, install it on your own game.

Step 2: Download the zip and unzip it into the game's Mods folder, so you end up with Mods/ZZ-AMG5TAG-JAGO-Animals/ModInfo.xml. For the game that is the Mods folder in the install folder (in Steam: right-click 7 Days to Die > Manage > Browse local files; create Mods if it isn't there). For a dedicated server it is the Mods folder next to the server executable.

Step 3: Keep the folder name ZZ-AMG5TAG-JAGO-Animals exactly as it is: the ZZ- prefix sets the load order. Don't put it inside another folder.

Step 4: This mod contains a DLL, so EasyAntiCheat must be off: start the game without EAC (untick EasyAntiCheat in the launcher), and on a dedicated server set EACEnabled to false in serverconfig.xml.

Step 5: Optional: install Gears (Mod Settings Manager) to change the settings in game. Without it the defaults are used.

Step 6: Before removing the mod, empty your dogs' saddlebags and let the dogs go: saved guard dogs become an unknown creature in the save.

Step 7: Start (or restart) the server and the game. To update, delete the old folder and unzip the new version the same way on the server and every player's game at the same time.

Changelog

JAGO - Animals: changelog

=========================

1.0.1 (29 Oct 2026)

• The bird flu remedy, dog saddlebag, kennel and all three dog collars now have their own icons instead of recoloured vanilla ones: the collars use photos of real collars (the armoured one with a shield badge, the bell one with a bell badge), and the remedy, saddlebag and kennel carry a feather or paw badge. Their old colour tints are removed, since the badges now tell them apart. Sources and licences are listed in ICON-CREDITS.txt.

1.0.0 (27 Oct 2026)

• First public release.

Development history

-------------------

Before its public release this mod was developed and run privately, with its own version numbers (the last was 2.5.0). Those notes are kept below for reference; none of those versions were released to the public.

2.5.0 (26 Oct 2026)

• A downed guard dog now stays downed through a server restart or when its area unloads and reloads. It keeps the revive time it had left, instead of simply getting back up with 1 health.
• Sniff for loot is much quicker for the server to work out, with the same results.

2.4.4 (26 Oct 2026)

• Fix: a player below K9 Support 4 could lose a collar by trying to fit it. The rank is now checked before the collar is used up.
• Fix: when a dog stranded in an unloaded area was replaced, anything in its saddlebag was lost. It now drops in a backpack.
• Fix: an extra dog could appear while its owner was offline.
• Fix: a modified client could rename other players' dogs.
• Fix: the dog records file is never overwritten if it failed to load, and dog records loaded while the server was starting up are no longer thrown away.

2.4.3 (18 Oct 2026)

• Fix: a dog coming back after dying ignored your K9 Support rank, so a rank 1 owner could end up with two dogs. New dogs (from the kennel, a respawn or a stray dog of yours turning up) now only arrive while your living dogs are under what your rank allows, and respawns wait until you are online.
• An extra brand-new dog created by the old behaviour is removed. A dog that has a name, levels, a saddlebag or a collar is always kept.

2.4.2 (18 Oct 2026)

• Fix: the whistle's "still recovering" message read as if the dog that had just answered was the dead one. It now makes clear it is your other dog that is recovering.

2.4.1 (17 Oct 2026)

• Dog houses and reptile terrariums can now release a zombie dog or snake wherever they break, not only inside a POI. With JAGO - Loot they break when you empty them, like bird nests, and that break was never counted as being inside a POI, so nothing ever came out.

2.4.0 (17 Oct 2026)

• Your dog's kills now give you XP: 50% of the normal kill XP at K9 Support 1, rising to 100% at rank 5, shared with your party as for your own kills. Nothing while you are offline or dead.

2.3.0 (17 Oct 2026)

• Pack bonus: each other guard dog (anyone's) within 15 m gives a dog +10% max health and bite damage, up to +30%.

2.2.0 (17 Oct 2026)

• Whistle key: press H (changeable) to call all your loaded dogs back to you on Follow. They drop whatever they were doing. Each player can pick their own key in Esc > Mods with Gears, or in JAGO-Animals.xml without it.

2.1.0 (16 Oct 2026)

• Coat colours: every new dog gets a random coat (Natural, Black, Chocolate, Ginger, Golden, Cream, Silver or Sable) and keeps it until it dies.

2.0.0 (16 Oct 2026)

• New: guard dogs. Craft a Dog Kennel, adopt a dog and give it orders: Follow, Stay or Guard. It fights zombies and hostile animals, chases small prey, and comes back to its kennel a day after dying.
• New General perk, K9 Support (5 ranks): kennel and adopting, saddlebag, tougher dogs and Sniff for loot, collars, and a second dog at rank 5.
• Saddlebag: one row of storage on your dog, only you can open it. Fetch sends the dog to empty nearby loot bags into it.
• Sniff for loot marks unopened containers near the dog on your compass and map.
• Dogs level up from kills (1 to 10) for a stronger bite and faster healing. Collars: spiked, armoured and bell.
• Downed instead of dead: a fatal hit leaves the dog down for 60 seconds, and you or a party member can revive it with a bandage, first aid bandage or first aid kit.
• Feed your dog meat or dog food to heal it. Give it a name, pat it, and find it with map and compass markers (with a "last seen" marker when it is out of range).
• Dogs nap at their post when nothing is happening, and while their owner is offline.
• A dog that dies is replaced by a new one: level 1, no name, saddlebag or collar. What it was carrying drops in a backpack where it fell.
• Turrets and motion sensors ignore guard dogs, and players can't hurt them.
• The mod now includes a DLL: EAC must be off, and the server and every client need the same version.