Scout

#Overview

Scout the Beagle is one of the eight ordinary breeds. Tibo recruits it by walking onto a Stray Dog that rolls Beagle (weight 10 of the 80 shared by the ordinary breeds). Another Beagle stray later in the run levels it up instead of joining.

Every 8 seconds Scout sniffs. It points at the nearest unused point of interest within 900 units of itself and drops a small pile of coins at its feet: 3 at level 1, up to 8 at level 5. The coins drop on every sniff, whether or not it found anything. Its aura adds +0.1 luck, which grows to +0.4 at level 5. Training also shortens the sniff interval from 8 s to about 4.1 s.

#How it works

Scout only considers these points of interest: Potato Crates, Spud Shrines, Golden Spud Shrines, Fry Carts, Microwaves, Bot Docks, Spud Whetstones, Tater Slots, Seed Vaults, Tater Magnets, Root Tunnels, Spud Freezers, Frenzy Fryers, Dog Kennels and Stray Dogs. Moldy Shrines, Crop Patches, Beetle Nests, Boss Lairs, Dinner Bells and Tater Lanterns are never chosen. The only "can Tibo use it?" check is for strays: it skips a stray that Tibo could not take, such as one of a breed already at level 5. It still points at a Potato Crate that Tibo cannot afford. The 900-unit limit is the squared distance 81e4 (900²) in the search.^[1]

After a sniff, a short scent trail runs from its nose towards the target. The target also gets priority for the screen-edge POI markers: when the game picks which nearby points of interest get a marker, it counts the one a dog is pointing at as half as far away.^[2]

Each coin is a normal gold pickup worth 1 gold, multiplied by Tibo's gold gain, so Tibo still has to collect it. Coin counts are round(3 × power): 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 at levels 1 to 5. That works out to about 0.4 gold per second at level 1 and 1.9 at level 5 before gold gain.

Measured (build 41 main-B2gf34bA.js, headless tools/play.mjs, seed wiki, standard mode, normal difficulty; Scout added at Tibo's side and trained with the sim's own dog-join and dog-level-up functions; HP refilled every tick; Tibo standing still; level-ups taking the first offer; 150 s; sniffs timed from the game's dogAbility events): the first sniff came 1 s after joining, then one every 8 s at level 1 (18 of 18 gaps) and every 4.15 s at level 5 (35 of 35). 4.15 s is the 4.147 s interval rounded to whole 1/60 s ticks.

#Tips

• Treat Scout as a luck dog that also scouts, not as a gold dog. The Dachshund drops 6 coins every 6 s at level 1, more than twice Scout's 3 coins every 8 s, and adds gold gain on top.
• Scout's luck aura works like Four-Eyed Spud (+0.1 per level) without using a passive slot. At level 5 Scout alone gives a 40% chance of a fourth level-up card, plus bigger chests and rarer items. See Luck.
• Pointing pays off most early in a run, while you still need to find a Fry Cart, Spud Whetstone or Dog Kennel. A Golden Retriever in the same pack pulls Scout's coins to Tibo.

#Ability

Verified (dog ability code in sim-BkfBhQfw.js and run-extras-l2haGSVw.js): Points to the nearest unused crate, shrine (not Moldy Shrines), shop, machine or stray within 900 units of the dog and drops round(3 × power) coins. Only strays are checked for whether Tibo can take them; a crate Tibo cannot afford still counts. power is the training multiplier below; damage is Tibo's damage multiplier.

#Aura

While in Tibo's pack, Scout adds: Luck +0.1 (luck).

#Training levels

Each level multiplies the ability. every multiplies the time between uses (lower is faster), power multiplies its strength and aura scales the aura bonus. The multipliers below are copied from the game data.

Verified: ability power is the product of power multipliers, the interval is ability.every × the product of every multipliers, and the aura is multiplied by 1 + sum of aura values.^[3]

#Obtaining

Stray dogs appear as Stray Dog points of interest; walk onto one to recruit it. Scout's breed weight is 10. See Dogs.

#Names in other languages

Verified: the name the game shows when another language is selected in Settings, from its translation files.^[4] See Languages.

#Data

{
  "id": "beagle",
  "ability": {
    "kind": "sniff",
    "every": 8,
    "gold": 3
  },
  "aura": {
    "luck": 0.1
  },
  "levelUps": [
    {
      "every": 0.8,
      "power": 1.4,
      "aura": 1
    },
    {
      "every": 0.8,
      "power": 1.4,
      "aura": 1
    },
    {
      "every": 0.9,
      "power": 1.2,
      "aura": 0.5
    },
    {
      "every": 0.9,
      "power": 1.2,
      "aura": 0.5
    }
  ],
  "weight": 10,
  "speed": 100,
  "size": 5
}