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[Tayrin]

This isn't a big problem, but I have one uninjured dwarven child who is starving and is persistently hunting vermin, despite there being thousands of meals available, plus he is literally standing in the middle of a stockpile full of prepared meals. None of the other 318 dwarves are starving. If I wait, the child starves to death.

I remember that in an earlier version, a starving dwarf would not stop hunting for vermin until completing the task, regardless of whether food became available in the meantime. I heard this was fixed in 33b, and am guessing the development note "stopped live vermin from being eaten all the time" is what indicates this.

It doesn't bother me that the child happened to become hungry. I am just wondering why he refuses to eat real food when it's available to him.

Does anyone know if the bug of being stuck hunting for vermin was indeed thought to be completely fixed, or am I wrong in thinking this? I have a save if needed.

[ January 13, 2008: Message edited by: Tayrin ]

[Tayrin]

Well, I eventually managed to save the starving dwarf child. I'm not sure how long he had been hungry for; maybe he had been inadvertently trapped somewhere and not freed until he was already starving. By the time I discovered he was starving, he didn't much time left, and apparently not enough time to cancel his vermin hunt and get some real food before he died. But now he's safe.

By locking two doors, unlocking one door and pulling a lever, I managed to force the starving child to attempt to step into a room as it was filling with water, scaring him out of his hunt for vermin. Being both "starving" and "thirsty", he then went to get a drink, despite being more hungry than thirsty. Unfortunately, he starved to death while he was drinking.

So I tried again. I did the same again, but this time I also made sure to forbid all of the 1369 drinks in the fortress (since there was no way to quickly block his access to them), as well as locking the front door so he couldn't go and drink from the brook, and forbidding the indoor well so he couldn't drink from that either.

I expected him to starve to death before he could start eating, but he managed to calmly carry the food back to the dining room, sit down at a table and eat it all. Now I just unforbid all the drinks, and everyone's happy.

But there'll be no dessert for Stukos ābiravuz tonight after that little escapade!

[Balsis]

Wow. I woulda just let the little puke die.

[Tahin]

The thing with vermin being eaten is a completely different issue. Dwarves will randomly eat captured vermin, regardless of how much food is available.

[Tayrin]

Oh, thank you for the information, Tahin. So if I understand you correctly, the bug fix that I quoted was only referring to captured vermin, and is not at all related to starving dwarves? Oops.

It was the first reply in this thread in which I read that from version 33b, dwarves "no longer get stuck hunting for vermin". So I checked the release notes for 33b, and "stopped live vermin from being eaten all the time" was the closest fix I could find to what I was looking for, so I assumed that was the one, but I now see how I could have misinterpreted it.

[briktal]

The current problem still around is what you had, where they attempted to complete the task or starve if they couldn't even though food was available.  I believe the earlier problem is that if they resorted to hunting vermin once, they'd never go back to eating normal food.