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[yaymeh]

Hiho!

At this point, I have encountered quite a few of the "additional creatures". So far, except for the ones that probably (?) belong into the "Domestic Pet" section, I haven't noticed anything that contributes to gameplay - they just seem to make everything messier by adding different names to things that have pretty much the same flavour. So - could someone give me a hint which categories most of the "clutter creatures" are in and in which categories I might be able to find creatures that stand out with semi-unique characteristics?

I'm not sure, but the majority of all those new creatures looks "generated rather than created". Are there scripts around for that / and maybe to check creatures for "uniqueness"? Tried some obscure dark magic on the raws, but I'm having a hard time sorting those out because I don't know what tags I'm looking, what raws I should be looking in and parsing everything takes ages... -.-

edit: HOLY ...regexp! My last attempt at making a small brute force script to unravel / explode the raws into something that can be analyzed more easily is still running and has been for 3 hours. Those raws are way too big for applying blunt force without a clue of their structure T_T

[Meph]

I dont quite understand the question. Toady One added hundreds of birds, and they all have the same function, why shouldnt a mod add more creatures? They are all written by hand, either natural animals, or fantasy creatures from other mods or franchises. They dont harm FPS, and you can remove/add a lot of them with the GUI. You can also add truly procedually generated creatures, up to 1000 per world, which may or may not form civs.

[yaymeh]

Oh, I see. So how different are those all from each others?

My problem is mainly, that I just don't know what I'm dealing with any more when I see creatures pop up in the unit list or being sold by caravans. Don't know which ones have special properties (like many of the new domestic pets... or a few enemies that seemed way stronger / weaker than what I would have guessed) and which ones are basically just the same as a vanilla creature with a slightly bigger X, a slightly smaller Y and in a different colour.

There's just too many questions and the huge amount of different creatures makes it hard to find the answers. Like p.e.:
- Which ones I should try to capture / tame / avoid / ignore / kill / use only ranged weapons for?
- Can any or all of those spiders reproduce (/maybe even lay eggs) and how do they differ from each others?
- "Barghest" sounds stronger than Mastif, but I'll probably not be able to put armor on them. But wait, those Elves also let me order a wide variety of giant animals. Would any of those be an even better choice? As long as they aren't grazers of course... -.-"
... and many more - all of that would be a lot easier to figure out (without looking into the raws every time) if there weren't so many rather similar varieties of creatures.

There might be some real gems in there, but I have no idea what to look for

[Tenderroast]

a good amount of the creatures (at least, of the ones available from the embark screen) come from the mod Deeper Dwarven Domestication. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123155.0

That should answer at least some of your questions.

[yaymeh]

Those are some of the "special" ones that are introduced in the manual, too, yes.

Does this mean there aren't any more of those hidden between all of the wild races?
For all I know the perfect pet for my dwarves could already be sitting in one of my cages or waiting for me to order it from the elves... but I'll never find it, because I'm busy trying to figure out what's the difference between a giant cave spider, a giant wolf spider, a giant drow spider, a giant brown spider, the rest of the giant spiders and if any of those happen to be able to do something special once trained. And stuff like that

[Tenderroast]

personally, for the spiders i like the Forest spiders, and the Drow Spiders. i like to pasture them near cage traps. Wolf spider.... mostly useless. GCS = win, if you can tame it.

[kamikazi1231]

Yea the spiders can sometimes get confusing.  A lot of money to spend to hope they actually make webs.  I think a lot of masterwork is getting rid of the frequently used linear tier system of better vs worse.  In vanilla once you had steel you would completely ignore anything lesser.  In masterwork there are alternatives just as good or slightly better/worse than steel in some aspects, but then a much better weapon or armor in another aspect.  Adds a lot of variety. 

It's a little trickier with the animals.  The manual dedicates some time to each of the unique dwarven pets, they are worth taking along for fast meat production, booze from milk, shearble fur and metal grade scales, extra furiousity in battle, etc.  The rest are very much for flavor and mysterious challenge.  There's so many animals I don't think you'll ever really find a table that you can pause and look up that "random animal type here" beat drake in 1v1 fight 62% of the time.  As Meph suggested before with the new armor types and metal he tried to balance everything with their name.  A legendary blood sword of armok will beat out a rusty iron sword any day.

For creatures I'd also suggest looking at their body size, if that is still visible.  Maybe take note of how fast they move across the map and if they are known for some horrible poison.  All in all I think it's the variaty that makes the game replayable.  I think most of us came here because we were sick of the same old routine, waiting for the only enemy the goblins to show up, get iron, get steel, get candy, avoid tantrums and done.  Now when I play I hardly see the same creature twice and never know what my dwarves are in for.

Is there a certain reason you're worried about this micromanagement?  Are you trying to focus on high value foods from meat or something along those lines?  I'm pretty sure the manual covered ones are the only really special ones to worry about unless you start playing one of the other included races.

[yaymeh]

I'm pretty sure the manual covered ones are the only really special ones to worry about unless you start playing one of the other included races.

Oh... thanks, that's what I really needed to know then

I was mostly having a hard time because I was always looking for more of those between all the wild creatures. Like better variants of the starting domestic ones that have to be captured & domesticated. Keeping 2 of everything that walks into your cage trap around for study is sort of a hassle.

I'm sort of done parsing the raws by now and could clearly see that I can just ignore mostly all of the wild things when it comes to shearing, milking and egglaying. Still not sure about potential leather+meat+combat pets though - guess those go hand in hand? Probably should look out for Great Cow, Cockatrice, giant felines and stuff like that, ignore anything else?

[kamikazi1231]

Those sound like they are promising. Maybe get raptors, bears, and gorillas too for war training animal armies. In fact don't forget the ability to armor certain pets. Anything able to be armored is probably worth a mention.

[kingu]

Oh, I see. So how different are those all from each others?

My problem is mainly, that I just don't know what I'm dealing with any more when I see creatures pop up in the unit list or being sold by caravans. Don't know which ones have special properties (like many of the new domestic pets... or a few enemies that seemed way stronger / weaker than what I would have guessed) and which ones are basically just the same as a vanilla creature with a slightly bigger X, a slightly smaller Y and in a different colour.

There's just too many questions and the huge amount of different creatures makes it hard to find the answers. Like p.e.:
- Which ones I should try to capture / tame / avoid / ignore / kill / use only ranged weapons for?
- Can any or all of those spiders reproduce (/maybe even lay eggs) and how do they differ from each others?
- "Barghest" sounds stronger than Mastif, but I'll probably not be able to put armor on them. But wait, those Elves also let me order a wide variety of giant animals. Would any of those be an even better choice? As long as they aren't grazers of course... -.-"
... and many more - all of that would be a lot easier to figure out (without looking into the raws every time) if there weren't so many rather similar varieties of creatures.

There might be some real gems in there, but I have no idea what to look for

White widows are war-traiable AND reproduce Giiant bladespiders and Giant wollfspiders do neither I believe.

a Yeti will break the arm of your only Hammerdwarf and when the same Hammerdwarf decides to bonk a Spore-man on the head with his hammer it will (might?) kill both of them

Yes, some of these things would have been less FUN to learn the hard way

[mobucks]

I ordered Nightweavers from the elves. They don't reproduce, but they do web. They also have a strange habit of always ripping the heads off of anything they can get their claws on. I'm talking 90% of the time. Awesome.

[blapnk]

White widows also have a slow but powerful poison that causes necrosis. It's labeled as truth spider poison if traders are selling it