Revision 1

The Hound is the opening The Valkaru purchase, a Tier 1 melee unit that arrives four to a squad for a flat 250 hexite and no flux at all. The Valkaru are a mercenary group rather than a playable faction, so you never begin a match as them: you contract them partway through a game and fold their units into whichever main faction you are already commanding.

Four bodies at 2 supply each, with 325 health and a point of flat armour apiece, is a lot of material for one hexite only purchase. The Hound has no ability, no ranged attack and no bonus against any armour type. It closes and it bites, and the rest of the roster is built around getting it into contact.

Figures below describe the September 2026 Early Access build carrying the identifier ZS.c36778, and they move with a patch cadence that has been close to weekly since launch. Roughly half the versus roster had a stat touched in the fortnight before that build was captured, so read every number here as dated rather than permanent.

Stat Block

Weapons

Abilities

The entity data lists no activated ability and no passive for the Hound. It is the plainest unit on either mercenary roster, which is the point: everything it costs is spent on bodies rather than on mechanics.

Upgrades

Nothing upgrades the Hound directly. The Valkaru talent line, offered at faction levels 2, 4 and 6 to any commander who has contracted the group, is what changes it, and the first two entries both apply.

Hounds of War is close to a discount on the whole roster. An extra Hound spawns on every mercenary squad purchase, so a commander who takes it at faction level 2 and then buys Valkaru Shock Trooper squads for the rest of the match is accumulating free Hounds alongside them. Relic Plating stacks on top, taking each Hound to 2 flat armour and roughly 406 health.

Conversion Costs

Three factions can act on a unit that already exists instead of building a new one, and each pays out of the same top bar power pool. Infuse is the Grell mechanic, permanently raising a friendly unit's health, damage and regeneration for the rest of its life at a bonus of 45 percent since the balance pass of August 11, 2026. Reanimate is the Legion of Truth version, which speeds the unit up by 30 percent while it lives and stands it back up when it dies. Replicate is the Xol version, which copies an eligible allied unit outright.

The Hound is eligible for all three, and in this build the three prices are identical at 3.125 power each. See Resources and Economy for how the top bar pool fills.

At 3.125 power the Hound is the cheapest conversion on either mercenary roster, and the 45 percent Infuse bonus takes one from 325 health to roughly 471, which is more raw health than a Tier 3 Valkaru Tow Bot carries.

Role

The Hound is a body. Thirteen DPS is poor and a 1.2 range means it has to touch what it kills, but 1,300 combined health across a squad of four, for 8 supply and no flux, is efficient material for holding a position or forcing a defender to commit. Move speed 500 is fast enough to chase, not fast enough to escape.

Its practical use is as the thing the rest of the Valkaru line pulls targets into. The Tow Bot drags enemies toward itself on a 30 second cooldown, and the Valkaru Flame Walker jumps in and stuns on landing, so a Hound squad is rarely expected to close under its own power.

Against anything that outranges it and can walk backwards, the Hound does nothing at all. It cannot hit air, and it carries no armour type bonus, so its damage is the same 17 a swing against every target in the game.

Faction Context

All four buyable Valkaru units come out of the War Vault, and most arrive as a squad for a single price. Within that roster the Hound and the Beast are the two melee units, and the Hound is the one you will actually have several of. The group is described as a war driven society that fights for its own sake, and a purchase that buys four bodies for hexite alone is a fair expression of that.

The Valkaru are also the only mercenary group with two commanders, Mondar and Torq, written as brothers who pass a single hammer between them. See Heroes and Commanders for how commanders are chosen and how they rebuild after dying.

Tier and Armour Interactions

The Hound carries Medium armour with a flat armour value of 1, and the flat value is the more interesting half. Flat armour subtracts damage from every hit with a floor of one damage per attack, so a point of armour barely registers against a heavy weapon and meaningfully blunts a stream of small ones. Relic Plating doubling it to 2 at faction level 4 is a real change against massed light attackers.

The Medium armour type cuts the other way. Since August 11, 2026, when the separate harvester armour type was deleted and folded into Medium, a great many weapons carry a Medium bonus, and all of them apply to the Hound. Units covers the six armour types in the current build.

Counters

Strong Against

Weak To

Balance History

• August 28, 2026: health reduced from 350 to 325 and flat armour increased from 0 to 1. The beast tag was added to the Hound in the same update.

• September 1, 2026: damage reduced from 18 to 17.

Notes

• The roster record for this unit is COMPLETE on every field the source publishes. One value is absent from the entity data and is left blank rather than guessed: the status resist value.

• Mercenary units carry no build time, and that is a property of the game rather than a gap in the record: they are hired rather than constructed, so the entity data publishes a price and a squad size but no production timer.

• The beast tag added on August 28, 2026 is not a damage or defence property. It feeds a Legion of Truth mechanic: Krag'vorn gains a permanent stack of extra damage and health whenever an allied beast dies anywhere on the map, and the same update changed that from one stack per beast to one stack per 75 cost of the beast that died.

• That tag is a live conflict between the two sources. The entity data for this build does not carry a beast tag on the Hound at all, while the dated studio note says it was added. The studio note is the authority on its own subject and is recorded as such here.

• The The Valkaru page still lists the pre August 28 figure of 350 health. The 325 on this page is the current build value.

• Per unit numbers are drawn from a community maintained entity catalogue that the studio links from each of its own faction pages. It is the only place a full stat block is published, so read the figures as careful community documentation of one build rather than as an official specification. Dated balance notes come straight from the studio patch posts and are stated as such.