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[MaxZero]

Hi all, quick question

A WereWombat came to my fort, killed two dwarves, and bit another 4 (so say the battle logs). I have them sealed off now awaiting an unfortunate cave in incase they transform and kill everyone, but they are all hungry and thirsty. A quick wiki consultation has told me that infected dwarves do not get hungry or thirsty, so is there a chance that they are ok?

Cheers!

[Absentia]

IIRC infected dwarfs DO get hungry and thirsty. They just don't have time to actually die of it before they transform (which resets the counters).

The only way to know whether they're infected is to wait for the next full moon and see if they transform. There's no incubation period or anything like that; if they don't transform they're definitely clean.

[MaxZero]

Great, thanks for the advice. I had half considered letting them out. ^_^


Edit - They all died of dehydration. Is the chance of becoming a werebeast high/low? They were definitely all bitten...

[EvilBob22]

It's a pretty low chance in my experience.  Also, full moons come once a month, so they are pretty fast in real life time -- you probably passed two or three of them before your guys died 

[Col_Jessep]

You can find the transformation dates on the wiki:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Werebeast#Transformation_Dates

They are reliable. If they don't transform by the end of the day they are clean.
One of my miners got attacked, bitten several times, blood everywhere! Even the nerves in one of her leg were damaged and she needed a crutch. But she chopped the beasts head off with her pick, never transformed and had a rich and productive life afterwards.

I wouldn't give up on a bitten dwarf if you can contain him safely for a month. Of course it can become more difficult if you have a couple of dwarfs who have been bitten.

[Broseph Stalin]

In my experience dwarves are ALWAYS infected if they're bitten. There's some confusion because being bitten requires the bite to break the skin. If a dwarf is wearing clothing over the bitten area and the werebeast doesn't have exceptionally sharp teeth it's pretty likely they'll just bruise the skin with the initial bite and do the damage by shaking. Shaking does not count as biting so you can have a dwarf badly mauled by a werebeast without having ever been bitten in a technical sense.

[wuphonsreach]

IIRC infected dwarfs DO get hungry and thirsty. They just don't have time to actually die of it before they transform (which resets the counters).

Yeah, you can leave your infected were-dwarves locked away in a 1x1 chamber and they will *never* starve / dehydrate to death.  They will, however, get very unhappy and naked after a few game-years.

[ancistrus]

Perhaps you need to get the message that toxins(or whatever) have been released into the dwarf's blood?

[Tacomagic]

Alternately, stash everyone in a single room and wait 5 weeks.

If everyone is alive 5 weeks later, then none of them are werecreatures.

If only one or two them are, then those are werecreatures.

Disclaimer: Probably not the best method to use with legendary craftsmen.

[smeeprocket]

I actually had a couple of my guys get infected by a weremoose. But they got killed before taking anyone else out. Luck I suppose. TBH, I would have just let the transformations happen and nature run its course if more got infected. Everyone left over would be much tougher. I wonder if werecreatures attack each other?

[Thisfox]

I had eight were-bitten dwarfs recently. Various injuries from multiple bites to a single through-the-shirt bite. I locked them all in a room, walled it off, and waited.

At the end of the month, none had died of dehydration (all were hungry and thirsty) the dwarf who had the single through-the-shirt bite transformed, as did five of her friends. One of the most heavily injured (and most bitten) didn't transform, he was the first to be killed by the weres. This was unusual: Usually all my dwarfs are infected each from one bite, so the fact that there were some who didn't turn was surprising to me.

When they turned, there was an immediate werebeast-battle where they all killed each other (and the unturned guy with the sword who only had one arm (presumably not his sword arm) killed several before being swamped and killed) and then I had a single definitely were-infected dwarf, slightly injured, in the room, and seven bodies, four of them weres, the rest dwarf. I've still not unwalled it, as that single werebeast is still transforming from dwarf to were, from were to dwarf, on a monthly cycle. He is the winner. He gets to live forever as a were. Lucky him.

I find that at least one bite victim will turn, and infect others. I've never had one die of dehydration or hunger, despite the fact that they have to wait for the month to come around for them to turn. They seem to have at least a 90% chance to turn out to be infected. The weres will then fight, if there's even one who didn't turn, and there will be one successful were who killed all the rest, then if there was anyone else infected, it happens again. If anyone is injured in a werebattle, I wall them all in, as doors don't hold 'em.

Hope this helps.

[wuphonsreach]

Everyone left over would be much tougher. I wonder if werecreatures attack each other?

Were-dwarves transform in order that they were created in the world.  That means that there is the possibility that weredwarf #1 will transform at a different time of day on the full moon vs weredwarf #2.  In which case, the transformed will attack the not-yet-transformed dwarf.

But if they both change at the same time, they won't fight.