How to kill the Savage Mutt in Resident Evil 4 remake

Not a good dog

The Resident Evil 4 remake has made some fascinating changes to the original formula: particularly when it comes to the “request” system. In what are essentially sidequests, folks can pick up requests lying around in the form of blue pieces of paper, then complete said request for a reward at The Merchant. Here’s how to start, and finish, the Savage Mutt request.

How to pick up the Savage Mutt request in Chapter 5

The Savage Mutt request can be found near The Merchant at Town Hall just downhill from the church on the way to the village in Chapter 5. You’ll need to trigger this request by picking it up before you can actually get completion credit.

99.9% of the time request bills are in a conspicuous place posted on the wall, so they’ll be hard to miss.

Where to find the Savage Mutt in Chapter 5

Enter the village with Ashley and head back to the Chief’s Manor where you found the wounded dog (exact location here).

Using the in-game map, it’s to the south of the village.

Remember that room upstairs where you encountered Chief Mendez in that prior Chapter 2 cutscene? You’ll want to go into the manor and up into that room: where you can use Ashley to boost yourself and grab a treasure (as well as other goodies).

The Antique Camera can be sold for 10,000 Pesetas.

Once that’s taken care of, go back outside the front door of the manor and look toward the road to the village. See the red eyes?! That’s the Savage Mutt. Follow it into the village to start the encounter.

How to kill the Savage Mutt and get your eight Spinel reward

The main thing you need to do to prep for the Savage Mutt is to have some ammo reserves ready.

Once you reach the center of the village, the mutt will pop out and the fight will start. The Savage Mutt is an early encounter with a buffed-up dog enemy, which has a Plagas tendril to swipe you from far away. While this is technically an elite tussle, the Savage Mutt isn’t all that tough: it just requires a lot of bullets to go down.

Our preferred strategy is to spawn the enemy (at the location in the first screenshot in the gallery above), then get out a rifle and start walking back. Pepper it with some rifle shots and it’ll become staggered, or attempt to dodge. Once you run out of rifle ammo (or if it charges forward), prep your shotgun (if it’s close) or your strongest pistol. Keep hitting it while backing up (you can leave the area and open the door to the manor as well if you’re pressed for space) and attempt to stagger it. You can easily knock it on the ground to trigger an R2 (RT) knife hit too. It’ll go down with little trouble as long as you have at least two guns good to go.

You’ll get an eight Spinel reward (x8) for your troubles, as well as a gem you can loot from the corpse. Congrats! Turn the request in at The Merchant to acquire them.