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[Warthog32332]

So recently my youngish fortress was subject to what I (In my limited experience consider) a pretty serious siege. The largest one I've ever personally faced anyway, although I realize it's probably not that huge. Regardless it was an invasion force of about 25-35 goblins carrying various implements of pain. I was able to fend them off successfully (after and unfortunate slaughter of all my livestock). And now I'm left to clean up the mess. Which is currently taking a bigger toll on my fortress than the actual siege did. Pre-great cleanup I had maybe 1 or 2 of my 210+ dwarves unhappy. With a good number in the positive range. Most neutral though. Now I have 2 in the bright red, 6 in the dark red, and 30 in the yellow. With that number steadily increasing as I continue to try to clean up.

Now I've set up a massive refuse pile, which was promptly filled with various body parts and corpses, and created a garbage dump right next to it, and assigned everything to dump, everything's unforbidden, I've set orders to allow for gathering of corpses from outside and dumping of corpses, bones, skulls, and other. And despite this and the fact I have 11 Idlers, cleanup is proving painfully slow, and all my dwarves are severely suffering from seeing the corpses strewn about. I think one reason it may be slow is a lot of them are either tackling other necessary jobs for fort function and collecting battlefield trop-ahem-reclaimed items. Some of them are also getting easily horrified by the sight of it all. Is there a way to expedite this process so all my dwarves dont go insane? Or is there any easy way to avoid this fate in the future?

[Hashtails]

Hi fellow!

Clean up a siege suck, dwarves have to go outside and pick their enemy pieces one by one.  Rotting stuff outside dont create miasma but will scare away caravans, and too many items laying will contribute to lag.

With clever use of borrows you can assign only cold hearted dwarves (or ones you dont care about) to do the job.

By defaut itens are forbided but corpses are not. Use this to get rid of the bodies before caring about the items.

In the best case scenario you can build a controlled lava flood in your warhall to melt everything without exposing your dwarves to the horrors of war. Make a drain with grates so you can get the few magmasafe stuff after.

[thorium1]

A few tips as a fellow inexperienced dwarf fortress player:
1. As soon as a siege start unassign all your livestock from their pastures, they will automatically slowly move towards the meeting halls and if your entrance is close they will survive.  If you order them to be moved to another pasture it takes them too long in my experience.
2.Your dwarves might not be able to dump things that are outside. In the o menu there is by default dumping orders from outside are ignored But not corpses in general)
3. Create different stockpiles for different parts. Dwarves really dislike seeing corpses but they have no problems with arms and teeth. Create a stockpile far away for corpses because every time they see the same corpse on a different day they will get negative thoughts and get stressed. You can place the other stockpile with teeth and arms and decapitated heads preferable outside somewhere close to avoid Miasma.

In general have happy dwarves as refuse gatherers only and avoid reclaiming everything until the corpses have been disposed of. (by default the corpses and parts are not forbidden and the gear is to avoid unnecessary stress.)

[Warthog32332]

3. Create different stockpiles for different parts. Dwarves really dislike seeing corpses but they have no problems with arms and teeth. Create a stockpile far away for corpses because every time they see the same corpse on a different day they will get negative thoughts and get stressed. You can place the other stockpile with teeth and arms and decapitated heads preferable outside somewhere close to avoid Miasma.

Does this apply to parts in a garbage dump? And will a wall around stockpile/garbage dump with an open top be effective in blocking the giblets from view?

[PatrikLundell]

Refuse stockpiles and Corpse stockpiles are different things. The Refuse stockpile takes parts and corpses of non sapient creatures (which, curiously, included reanimated former sapients), while the Corpse stockpile takes corpses and parts of sapient creatures. Sapient creatures cause horror in dorfs, with "insignificant" parts having less of an impact than full corpses, and corpses of enemies having less of an impact than corpses of loved ones.
Walls with a door to block view is effective in blocking the view of the corpses to everyone but those hauling them, but there's no getting around the haulers seeing them (as well as those collecting corpses for burial).

I use a Minecart Quantum Stockpile type setting for corpses, where a feeder Corpse stockpile is set to give to a minecart that's set to dump what's put into it into a deep hole, and at the bottom of the hole I have an atom smashing drawbridge. If the hole is deep enough no miasma will reach out of it, and haulers won't see the corpses at the bottom waiting for smashing. A locked door at the bottom of the shaft ensures the dorfs don't haul the corpses back up again...

And yes, cleaning up after a siege is a pain. Removing the corpse hauling job from dorfs that seem to accumulate stress quickly may save them, but some are very sensitive and snap more or less immediately.

[thorium1]

3. Create different stockpiles for different parts. Dwarves really dislike seeing corpses but they have no problems with arms and teeth. Create a stockpile far away for corpses because every time they see the same corpse on a different day they will get negative thoughts and get stressed. You can place the other stockpile with teeth and arms and decapitated heads preferable outside somewhere close to avoid Miasma.

Does this apply to parts in a garbage dump? And will a wall around stockpile/garbage dump with an open top be effective in blocking the giblets from view?

Garbage dump is a zone rather than a stockpile. Everything that is designated to be dumped will be hauled to that zone and dumped there, automatically forbidding the item unless you reclaim it. It can be a 1x1 area and everything designated to be (D)umped will be dropped there, stacking stuff normally unable to stack. (My garbage dump is 1x2 and has about 200 stone stacked there)

You want to haul things to a refuse stockpile for everything that relates to corpses that you want to keep or that do not create negative thoughts, but still outside in case of miasma for body parts. Then there is the corpse stockpile, not to be confused with a refuse - corpses stockpile, which stores all kind of sentient beings their corpses including dwarves. You want to keep these outside and away from areas your dwarves visit. Don't worry about your own dead dwarves, they'll be hauled to a coffin that is designated for burial first if one is available.

Walls will be enough to block vision to the corpse stockpile yes as long as there is no mountain looking down on it.

[PatrikLundell]

Note that dead dorfs are often hauled to the corpse stockpile before being hauled to a free coffin in my fortresses, even though I have free coffins available, so I need to take a bit of care to ensure they're not dumped down the shaft to the corpse compactor (although the door at the bottom allows the body to be recovered unless I've ordered the compactor lever pulled).

[Loci]

Now I've set up a massive refuse pile, which was promptly filled with various body parts and corpses, and created a garbage dump right next to it, and assigned everything to dump, everything's unforbidden, I've set orders to allow for gathering of corpses from outside and dumping of corpses, bones, skulls, and other. And despite this and the fact I have 11 Idlers, cleanup is proving painfully slow, and all my dwarves are severely suffering from seeing the corpses strewn about. I think one reason it may be slow is a lot of them are either tackling other necessary jobs for fort function and collecting battlefield trop-ahem-reclaimed items. Some of them are also getting easily horrified by the sight of it all. Is there a way to expedite this process so all my dwarves dont go insane? Or is there any easy way to avoid this fate in the future?

Using an intermediary stockpile roughly triples the number of "potential corpse exposures". I would recommend flagging the corpses and body parts for dumping directly from the battlefield, either by d-b-d'ing the area or dumping all the enemy corpses and body parts in the stocks screen. That, along with a deep garbage dump, should reduce corpse exposure significantly. You can do even better by dump-flagging items closest to your fort first, then flagging the next closest after the first batch is hauled off, etc., but you'll need to disable any eligible stockpiles to avoid dwarves hauling off corpses without a dump flag set.

A dwarf who "doesn't really care about anything anymore" is ideal for corpse cleanup. It's generally better to let a few such dwarves clean the entire battlefield than to rush things along by exposing more and less-well-adapted dwarves.

1. As soon as a siege start unassign all your livestock from their pastures, they will automatically slowly move towards the meeting halls and if your entrance is close they will survive.

That's a good trick. You can save a little time by using the zones menu to deactivate your pastures instead of unassigning livestock. After the siege is clear, reactivating the pastures will cause your dwarves to drag all the animals back to where they belong.

[Warthog32332]

Now I've set up a massive refuse pile, which was promptly filled with various body parts and corpses, and created a garbage dump right next to it, and assigned everything to dump, everything's unforbidden, I've set orders to allow for gathering of corpses from outside and dumping of corpses, bones, skulls, and other. And despite this and the fact I have 11 Idlers, cleanup is proving painfully slow, and all my dwarves are severely suffering from seeing the corpses strewn about. I think one reason it may be slow is a lot of them are either tackling other necessary jobs for fort function and collecting battlefield trop-ahem-reclaimed items. Some of them are also getting easily horrified by the sight of it all. Is there a way to expedite this process so all my dwarves dont go insane? Or is there any easy way to avoid this fate in the future?

Using an intermediary stockpile roughly triples the number of "potential corpse exposures". I would recommend flagging the corpses and body parts for dumping directly from the battlefield, either by d-b-d'ing the area or dumping all the enemy corpses and body parts in the stocks screen. That, along with a deep garbage dump, should reduce corpse exposure significantly. You can do even better by dump-flagging items closest to your fort first, then flagging the next closest after the first batch is hauled off, etc., but you'll need to disable any eligible stockpiles to avoid dwarves hauling off corpses without a dump flag set.

This would have been great if all the corpses hadn't piled up outside my entrance. I also encountered the problem with dwarves (and enemies for that matter but I frankly couldn't care about them) getting knocked into my moat and drowning, any advice on avoiding this (I lost 2 of my most experienced axe lords to drowning)

[Warthog32332]

I would also like to post an update, the chain of unhappiness and stress has continued although becoming less... Widespread, I mean, It's not growing. But its still not any less of a problem. I have dwarves constantly throwing tantrums and toppling important workshops and such and I've pretty much done all I can to abate it, Its just a matter of time I guess to see what happens.

[PatrikLundell]

To avoid drowning dorfs, it MIGHT work to train swimming (I believe there have been multiple threads in the past on that subject), although I don't know if armor affects the swimming results.

Otherwise, you'd simply avoid fighting anywhere where there's a risk of the morons dodging to their doom.

[anewaname]

Consider rebuilding the main bridge, so it is much wider (to prevent the drownings) and building a second bridge on your surface fort's opposite wall (so you can choose which gates are open).

In the image, the bloody red area was a battlefield, and there is a pair of gates to the southwest and to the southeast of the round tower (all gates are currently raised). With all gates open, wood-haulers could avoid the battlefield if the trees are cut to the east. If I had done 'd' 'b' 'f' on the battlefield and used Stocks menu to unforbid the corpses and body parts, then only corpse-haulers should have reason to visit the battlefield.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sver]

One method that was not mentioned yet (unless I'm overlooking) is to dig a 1x1 channel somewhere in the middle of the corpse field and designate it as a dump, like this:

Code: [Select]

X = dump zone
_ = ground
O = channel

_X_
XOX
_X_
Mark all corpses as [D]ump through the stockpiles menu and watch the cleanup: dwarves will dump bodies into the channel from all available sides, without the need of walking onto the pile itself, which speeds up the process. Once finished, floor over the channel. Then you can collect the loot.
A 1x2 raising drawbridge connected to a lever is a viable alternative/addition to the channel, as long as its placement is the same. Noticeably slower to erect, but this way you get to get rid of "excess items" and don't have a thinly veiled mass grave under your dwarves' walkway.

Also, if you're using the latest version of the game, dwarves with high Discipline skill are the best to do this cleanup, as it mitigates the bad thoughts. If the gobs in question were killed by your military, the killers themselves are the best fit, as they've already seen all these corpses within the last season (which is the period of time it matters). Also, disable all of the other jobs on them to speed up the process - and/or swap the cleanup crew once a season passes, to prevent two stressful seasons in a row for a token dwarf.