The Paws and Claws DLC adds a cozy Animal Shelter to the Bergson house that looks purely cosmetic at first glance. Spend a few minutes with it and you will notice something important happening before each run. By feeding and caring for visiting animals, you unlock temporary, stackable boosts that apply to your next dungeon attempt. These are not game breakers, but in a roguelite where small edges snowball fast, the right boost at the right moment can carry a shaky run into a confident boss clear.
Where To Find The Animal Shelter And What It Does
After installing the DLC, the Bergson home gains an Animal Shelter space. Cats, dogs, and other critters will start showing up between missions. Interact with them to see their mood and feed them treats. When you leave the house for your next run, the game checks which animals are currently happy and translates their mood into specific buffs. Think of it as pre-run prep that sits alongside crafting upgrades and family progress. The more attention you give the Shelter, the better your starting position becomes.
The Core Loop: Feed, Raise Mood, Cash In During The Run
The loop is straightforward and easy to work into your routine.
Pick up treats. You will accumulate common and rare treats over time. Common treats add a small amount of happiness to an animal. Rare treats add more.
Feed animals between runs. Each animal has a happiness meter represented by hearts. As you feed them, hearts fill up and their mood increases. Higher mood means a stronger version of that animal’s boost.
Start a run to activate the boosts. When you depart the house, any animals that are currently happy grant their bonuses for the entire upcoming run. These bonuses are not permanent and do not carry over automatically into future runs unless you maintain the animals’ happiness.
Expect happiness to decay. After the run, animals lose some hearts. If you want the same power level before your next outing, you will need to feed them again. That upkeep cost is part of the design and keeps the Shelter as a light, satisfying ritual instead of a one-time checkbox.
Mood Tiers And Why They Matter
Animals do not just switch between on and off. Their mood progresses through tiers, each tier increasing the potency of the associated buff. While the exact mood names can vary, it helps to think of them in three steps.
Happy. The baseline tier. Even this small bump can smooth early rooms and lower the risk of taking chip damage.
Excited. A noticeable upgrade. Many players feel it in the first few fights as the team starts leveling or moving just a touch quicker.
Overjoyed. The strongest version of the boost. This is where rare treats shine because they push an animal into the top tier with fewer feedings.
As a rule of thumb, rare treats are best used as tier finishers. If an animal is close to the next stage, a single rare treat can leap it forward and convert into immediate value on your next attempt.
The Types Of Boosts You Can Expect
The Shelter offers a small roster of bonuses tailored to momentum rather than raw damage. You will typically see buffs like increased experience gain and higher movement speed. Together they make your build come online faster and your positioning cleaner.
Experience gain. This accelerates early level-ups, which unlocks or enhances key skills sooner. If you are learning a character or pushing a difficulty spike, that earlier power curve helps a lot.
Movement speed. Easily one of the most underrated stats in Children of Morta. More speed means safer dodges, tighter kites, and fewer bad trades with elites. It also reduces the time you spend repositioning, which adds up across long dungeons.
Other smaller quality-of-life boosts can appear, but XP and movement do the heavy lifting during real runs.
Do Animal Boosts Stack?
Yes. Each animal tracks its own happiness and confers its own buff. If multiple animals are happy, you will get all their boosts during the next dive. There is no set bonus to chase and no limitation that forces you to pick only one. If your pantry is stocked and your goals warrant it, you can head out with several active buffs at once.
Practical Treat Management
You do not need an elaborate spreadsheet for this. A few simple habits go far.
Match your boost to your goal. If you are ramping a new character, prioritize experience gain for early skill unlocks. If you are practicing a projectile-heavy boss, put movement speed first to reduce damage taken while learning patterns.
Use commons to establish a floor. Bring a few animals up to the Happy tier with common treats. This widens your base and gives you several small edges at low cost.
Finish tiers with rares. Save rare treats for moments when an animal is close to the next mood tier. That final push into Overjoyed is where rare treats return the most value.
Time your feeding. Since happiness decays after a run, feed right before attempts that matter. If you are about to do a casual resource sweep, minimize spending and save your best treats for the real push.
How Many Hearts Should You Aim For?
If you are short on treats, getting one priority animal to Excited is a solid plan. The jump from Happy to Excited often crosses the line from “nice” to “noticeable.” When resources are abundant, aim to push your primary pick to Overjoyed, then sprinkle common treats around your second and third choices for incremental gains. Over time you will develop your own rhythm for how much to invest per run based on how confident you feel with that character or biome.
Smart Routines For Different Play Styles
Learning a new character. Feed the XP animal first to accelerate early skill unlocks. Add a bit of movement speed if you are struggling to stay out of danger while figuring out attack cadence.
Boss practice sessions. Speed comes first here. A little extra movement is often the difference between eating a bad projectile or sliding cleanly through a pattern. If you have enough treats, layer XP so your build powers up by mid-run.
Late-night resource runs. Save your rares and drop a couple commons if needed. There is no point burning top-tier happiness on a run where the outcome is not critical.
Fresh attempts after a heartbreak loss. Consider immediately re-feeding your key animals to keep momentum. Nothing is worse than following a near-win with a sluggish opening because you forgot to top up.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
Feeding without intention. If you scatter treats randomly, you will spend more and feel less impact. Tie your boosts to the character you are playing and the content you are approaching.
Burning rare treats too early. Two or three commons might move an animal farther toward the next tier than a single rare when you are still at low hearts. Use rares when you can actually cross a tier threshold.
Expecting permanence. The Shelter is designed for upkeep. Treats will keep flowing, and you will refill hearts many times. Embrace the ritual and you will enjoy a smoother cadence of attempts.
Why The Shelter Fits Children of Morta
Children of Morta mixes family warmth with dungeon intensity, and the Animal Shelter slots into that balance perfectly. You spend a quiet moment caring for creatures, then reap small but meaningful boosts during combat. It does not replace skill or progression. It simply shortens the runway so your build takes off earlier and your mistakes cost a little less. Over a night of runs, that adds up to more clears, more unlocks, and a steadier flow state.
A Simple Play Pattern You Can Steal
Set a goal for your next run, pick one or two animals that match that goal, establish Happy with common treats, then use rare treats to push your priority animal into Overjoyed. Accept the post-run decay as part of the loop. With that rhythm in place, the Paws and Claws DLC becomes a quiet power engine that makes every dive into Mount Morta feel just a bit more generous.
Key takeaway: feed with intention, finish tiers with rares, and stack multiple happy animals when you care about the outcome of the next run. The Shelter rewards small, consistent care with reliable in-run strength, and that is exactly the kind of edge a roguelite loves to multiply.