Finding "Mutt" without the 'Mutt quest" [Solved]

[ositodefelpa]

I wanted my good boy, Mutt, as soon as possible, so when I saw numerous articles saying that you don't need to do the quest, I decided to go straight for him as soon as I got through the tutorial of my latest playthough. I had already picked him up via the long series of quests on my previous playthrough, so I knew where to look.

However, he is not there. Either these articles are incorrect, and you do have to follow the quest, or perhaps there is a certain amount of in game time that must pass before he can be found with the wolves.

Can anyone who has managed to find him without doing the quest shed any light on this?

[ositodefelpa]

After further investigation, I answered this question for myself, so I may as well post the answer here, in case anyone else is interested.

It appears that Mutt does not spawn at his ultimate location until you have done the first part of his quest (which is fairly straightforward).

So you have to complete the quest "Find out what happened to Mutt", then have it progress to "Go and ask the herbwoman about Mutt". You don't have to go see the herbwoman. You can go straight to Mutt's ultimate location and he will have spawned.

After you get Mutt, the quest is marked as complete. This means that you are no longer led through the usual quest chain to get Mutt, although I expect some of the quests are still present, but no longer linked to Mutt. I'm not 100% about that.

[Rookie-31st]

Thank you for sharing

[halfmonkey]

If you find him before completing all the steps for the full quest, the dialogue with the related NPCs reflects this by Henry adding things such as, "Well, I'm glad I already found my dog then."