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[CatKate]

Hey guys,

I assume the topic has been written about already, but all I find with a search is a host of entries of scales without the zombie part ...

So here it is:
Have some crundle butchered, and since it is a reviving embark (or however it is called) the scales became zombies. My soldiers destroyed the "full body" scale zombie, which got split into several parts. Some of them revived again, and got crushed again, so there are various "mangled" scale parts lying around.

However, the "head scale" survived around 50 pages of combat by now, and all my military is overstressed and exhausted. Additionally, every 20 pages or so the scale thing manages to hit me, and now some of my dwarves are bleeding. I cannot retreat them from combat, because the zombie is still alive. My dwarves ARE hitting it, but the only thing those hits ever accomplish is some bruising.

So what can I do? Wall of the section, say goodbye to all my military? Or hope and pray? Or is there an exploit to solve the situation (since I have the opinion that my dwarves SHOULD win this engagement and therefore a little bit of exploiting would be acceptable, at least for me)?

Thanks for your input!
Cheers,
Cat

[4maskedwolf]

Ah yes, this bug.  I've had similar problems with other zombified body parts as well.  If I'm recalling correctly, there's a bug in the combat code that causes your dwarves to be simply unable to damage it and other things of incredibly small size.  So yes, you're going to have to wall your dwarves in there and let them die, and preferably remember not to butcher things in a reanimation biome next time.  However, I could be remembering incorrectly.

[PatrikLundell]

The problem is that somehow sufficiently small head parts cannot be killed/destroyed (I had a similar problem with ram head wool, while the other wool pieces were killed easily). In my case I could withdraw and then cage trap it, and then release it into an atom smashing device.
I'd consider using DFHack Fastdwarf (if I remember the name correctly) to teleport the militia members into safety after having set up a cage trap or a door (locked) to contain it (in my case the troops were in danger of dying from dehydration, not battle damage).

[Shonai_Dweller]

Don't they retreat when you set military to inactive/disband the squad?

[CatKate]

Hey guys,

thanks for your input!

Well, this is somewhat annoying ...

@Shonai-Dweller:
No they don't. Actually other civilians carrying the other scales of my Crundle-Depopulation-Program towards the garbage chute happily jump into the melee. I don't know, I haven't seen many dwarves that run away from danger, most (if not all!) tend to attack the local wildlife, not retreat. One of my civilians in an earlier fortress killed a cave crocodile with bare hands (or feet, or teeth, or whatever it was), which took quite some time, time the dwarf definitely did not use to run. In this one killed a giant olm, another one got himself killed by combating a giant toad. I am aware that this is some strange behaviour, but haven't given the thing much more thought.

[Ives]

Okay. Build a few cage traps at a chokepoint, close to the undead, but far enough for dwarves to build them uninterrupted. Then create a burrow somewhere far away, go to the alert menu and set CIVs stay in the burrow. Then set the squad to inactive.

The dwarves respect burrow limitations and shouldn't continue fighting. Hopefully the scale will slowly slink after them and get caught, if not, you can keep sending and disbanding the squad to lure it to the traps.

Try to avoid reanimation of monster bits from the monsters that ignore cage traps, as it's a lot more annoying to get rid of them! Also, avoid slashing weapons in combat, because those tend to create more reanimating body bits, including invincible heads. Finally, certain small creatures are similarly invincible, in fact, I had to abandon a fortress once, because the besieging zombie army decided to start a never-ending fight with an undead echidna and murdered my FPS.

Macedwarves are great for undead biomes, they almost never create body parts (other than the completely docile teeth  ) and the bodies they kill cannot reanimate, due to mangling. The "mangled" bodies are also safe to butcher, because the hair and skin they produce are similarly mangled.

Good luck!