@Manaiacal Zebra: What I do is zap it with lightning, pause after a few seconds to let any yellow masks get some distance, then put all available villagers onto the totem. It can take as many as three tries to completely dismantle it.

Still, the fact that you had zero progress is odd. Maybe it's your timing?

@Misskathy: The heathens don't try to rebuild the pain totem. They would get zapped by the totem if they tried anyway.

@Manaiacal Zebra: Good luck!
@smjjames: Thank you for the heads up, makes total sense! Glad I didn't wager any money on that bet. LOL!

LDW advised me to switch to slow. Once I did that, I finally started making progress. The Pain Totem is finally down!

I'm glad the advice worked for you, Maniacal

Well with that tribe I still haven't managed to get the pain totem down, but I started a new tribe and it came down easy peasy, so I don't know what the problem is but it's just that tribe. -shrugs-

I have the same problem. Even putting it on slow doesn't help!