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Half-Life 2 Hints
General Tips for Using Dog's Ball
1 of 6: If you brought Dog's rollermine ball with you from Black Mesa East, you can start putting it to good use right away.
2 of 6: You can throw the ball with the gravity gun to kill zombies and headcrabs (it can also kill headcrabs on its own by running over them), but its main use is in distracting zombies.
3 of 6: The ball and zombies are totally incapable of hurting each other, but zombies will cluster around the ball and try to "kill" it as long as the ball is on the ground and closer to the zombies than you are.
4 of 6: So let zombies cluster around the ball, then take your time delivering carefully aimed head shots with your guns or with *non-explosive* gravity gun projectiles (see warning below). This is a particularly useful strategy when you're being attacked by fast zombies, since it's otherwise very hard to shoot them all down before any of them can reach you.
5 of 6: WARNING: Keep the ball away from any kind of fire or explosion. If it gets too close to either of those things, it'll blow up. That means you'll have to be careful to keep the ball well out of the way whenever you're throwing or detonating explosive barrels. (It'll also blow up if it's submerged in several feet of water, but this isn't a problem until you reach the second mine shaft in the Ravenholm mines area.)
6 of 6: In many places, it can be convenient to throw the ball ahead of you into the next area you're going to rather than trying to carry it with you while going up ladders and such. (Also, remember how you got it up the ladder in the shaft at the end of Chapter 5.)
