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Author Topic: Moving the secrets of life and death.  (Read 2345 times)

George_Chickens

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Moving the secrets of life and death.
« on: August 17, 2020, 04:32:13 am »

Recently, in their exploits, my raiding force came across several necromancer books. Unfortunately, this has decimated my army. Most of my soldiers read the books off duty and are now practically useless. They raise any threat as a hostile intelligent undead every single time it dies.

I don't want to destroy the secrets, because they are much too valuable and !!fun!!. But I also can't leave my fort defenceless. Is there a way to move specifically the secrets of life and death? I want to seal it in a vault.
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Moeteru

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Re: Moving the secrets of life and death.
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2020, 07:00:35 am »

You might be able to do it by forbidding every other book in your library, removing your library zone, creating a new one (with a bookshelf) in your vault, and waiting for one of your dwarves to move the book to the new library.
Alternatively you could just forbid the book. That seems to prevent dwarves from reading them.
Note that it isn't very obvious when a book is forbidden. It doesn't always show the {brackets} around the name. You have to view each book individually to see whether it's forbidden.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Moving the secrets of life and death.
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2020, 07:27:26 am »

You should be able to order the books displayed on a pedestal. Once there they can't be read (until a tantrumer topples it, of course).
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Jundavr

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Re: Moving the secrets of life and death.
« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2020, 01:33:07 am »

You should be able to order the books displayed on a pedestal. Once there they can't be read (until a tantrumer topples it, of course).

That's the most straightforward way to move anything named (artifacts, books, fungiwood shields, etc), but it will leave stuff open to thieves.

Though depending on your goals, that may be a good thing...
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Saiko Kila

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Re: Moving the secrets of life and death.
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2020, 05:33:29 am »

You should be able to order the books displayed on a pedestal. Once there they can't be read (until a tantrumer topples it, of course).

That's the most straightforward way to move anything named (artifacts, books, fungiwood shields, etc), but it will leave stuff open to thieves.

I install such pedestals in a vault (a room), an wall it off. It is always possible to remove the wall if needed. I do it with many expensive items, which increase value of the fortress, but are otherwise not needed, like adamantine warhammers or golden armour. Thieves cannot target items behind walls (kobold thieves also cannot target items on pedestals, but most thieves nowadays aren't kobolds).
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Malroc The Valiant

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Re: Moving the secrets of life and death.
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2020, 01:42:08 pm »

I have question about necro books. Figured I'd add to this thread instead of making a new one, I hope that's cool. I too have recently raided a necro tower. My soldiers brought back a lot of books, and I went through them to see if any had the secrets. In my stocks I noticed that I couldn't find any copies of books, only original "artifact" books. Will necros make copies of books with secrets of life and death or will all books with the secrets be original works? PatrickLundell, you coded that DFhack library viewer thing right? Thanks, you're such a champ. Does that come default or do I have to add it on? If it is default what is the command line? Sorry if I'm not using the jargon right, not good with computers at all.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Moving the secrets of life and death.
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2020, 03:31:01 pm »

I don't think necros produce copies of their books, but in my latest fortress the human caravan brought copies of books with secrets more or less every time, and they were all written by the same necro, so the humans had probably raided his tower and then made copies of the books within. I guess being obsessed with mortality can cause necros to write book after book on the subject...

I'm not sure about what the question really is, but the Librarian script is not part of DFHack, so it has to be fetched separately (the link is in the thread). The script doesn't take any command line parameters, but rather work by taking commands when started (assuming it was saved as "librarian.lua" it would be invoked by "librarian" from the DFHack console).

It's usually better for scripts not to be part of DFHack, as it allows them to be updated when bugs are detected/new functionality is introduced, rather than having to wait for the next DFHack release, which can be many months. Also, it's possible to make scripts support multiple DFHack and DF versions, including old ones, with some clever conditional execution, something you can't do with compiled code (the Librarian doesn't support any versions except the current one, but some other scripts of mine do have some backwards support). Of course, something supplied with DFHack doesn't make much sense to support other versions than the one they're included in.
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Malroc The Valiant

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Re: Moving the secrets of life and death.
« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2020, 04:39:13 pm »

great, I've just been buying every book. I'll have to be more careful. I thought it was a part of DFhack some how. I'll have to get it because keeping track of the books can be a hassle.
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