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Author Topic: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead  (Read 1770 times)

Stormphoenix

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I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« on: October 03, 2013, 07:15:39 am »

So, one of my miners was found dead on the stairs of my new fort. No migrants yet. A few days later another miner, dead in the dining room. Out of interest I checked with Therapist for any cursed dwarves, all clean. I also rolled back and checked if any of the miners had any nasty disease or something. There's no combat log, no sign of a struggle, no vampires, cursed stuff and plenty of food and drink. Any ideas what might have killed them? They tantrum spiralled anyway so it's pretty academic at this point, but I don't really want it happening again :-)
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Arkenor

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2013, 07:18:07 am »

Miners. That's be "Harder Mining". They mined some coal dust or warpstone dust and it killed them.
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Stormphoenix

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2013, 07:24:02 am »

Does it show up as a wound? They did mine a fair bit of coal, but I assumed if they ended up with black lung it'd show up on there. Does it take a while to kill them? They didn't die in the mine.
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Arkenor

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2013, 07:27:29 am »

They'll often be able to make it back before they die. Is the area they were mining filled with blood or vomit?

Theoretically, if they're in the Mason's guild they become resistant to all this.
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Stormphoenix

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2013, 07:29:15 am »

No blood or anything that I can see. In fact they seem to be in perfect health. Ah well!
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Parhelion

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2013, 08:13:48 am »

None of my miners have ever been symptomatic.

Usually, when I'm mining, I'll get the "You have struck
  • dust!"  I can take a look at who is the area and go, "Yep, he'll be dead in about 60 seconds."


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Etherdrinker

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #6 on: October 03, 2013, 10:09:04 pm »

You should use the "deathcause" command in dfhack... better than CSI!!!

Fairin

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2013, 12:50:21 am »

coal dust is the primary reason i turn off harder mining -.- has killed more dwarves than goblins and orcs combined (but not warlocks... damn .. damn warlocks...)
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Baijiu

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2013, 03:48:06 pm »

Autolabor + harder mining = dwarves dropping like flies

I used to love hitting veins of fuel, but now I'm filled with dread whenever I get the message alerting me. Damn you (addictive) Masterwork!
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Billy Jack

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #9 on: October 04, 2013, 03:59:11 pm »

I turn harder mining off because it never made sense to me that a race that lives on mining and has an iron-cased liver, would be susceptible to "black lung".
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Give a dwarf a fish, you feed him for a season.
Give a dwarf a Fishpond, couple of buckets, build a Fishery, and enable Fishfarming labor; you feed him for a lifetime. (And get someone to clean and prep the fish)

Baijiu

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #10 on: October 04, 2013, 04:01:40 pm »

Well, don't forget these are also the dwarves that can be forever bedridden because of a sock-hit to the head.
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Etherdrinker

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #11 on: October 04, 2013, 04:31:43 pm »

I turn harder mining off because it never made sense to me that a race that lives on mining and has an iron-cased liver, would be susceptible to "black lung".

This so much, also,  they donīt get poisoned by Cinnabar ore that is the "Mercury bearing rock"

>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar<<<

Billy Jack

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #12 on: October 05, 2013, 12:23:57 am »

Nice.  Meph will add that in now.  :D
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Give a dwarf a fish, you feed him for a season.
Give a dwarf a Fishpond, couple of buckets, build a Fishery, and enable Fishfarming labor; you feed him for a lifetime. (And get someone to clean and prep the fish)

Annon

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Re: I can't figure out why my dwarves are dropping dead
« Reply #13 on: October 08, 2013, 02:25:45 pm »

Looking through the RAWs, it looks like 85% of Bituminous coal will produce dust causing black lung.  After that, it looks like there's a 30% chance for the inhaled dust to infect the dwarf.  So overall, it's 25.5% chance per square mined.  If I am reading correctly, Mason's guild dwarves are immune.

If you want to tamp it down some and leave some of the other hard miner stuff in--the mean creature, warpstone, etc, I think you can change those percentages to make it a little less common in inorganic_zwarpstone.txt in the raws.  I think you change the 85 in
Code: [Select]
[ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:COAL_BITUMINOUS:CLUSTER_SMALL:85]or the 30 in
Code: [Select]
[CE_IMPAIR_FUNCTION:SEV:250:PROB:30:RESISTABLE:VASCULAR_ONLY:BP:BY_CATEGORY:LUNG:ALL:START:5000:PEAK:400000:END:400000] both under YESWARP[INORGANIC:COAL_BITUMINOUS_DUST], to change the odds of getting a dwarf infected.  Also, you can change the 250 in the second tag to make the disease itself less severe.
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