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[WTF]

I have a useless bastard with the ambusher skill, axeman skill and a spare axe but he's doing nothing and won't even pick up the axe. I tried to play this a few times but my hunters won't do anything, I can't designate for them to hunt or use the manager. I can learn to play difficult games even without an instruction book but this game is ridiculous. At the moment it looks like hunting a grizzly bear with wrestling IRL would be easier. Atleast it was free.

[MonkeyHead]

You need the wiki.

As a tip, hunters need a crossbow, a quiver and ammo to be properly useful.

[WTF]

It siad there was a bug where they don't assign weapons and you will need to unassign and reassign their jobs but that didn't work. I don't want to worry about making bolts at this stage, I'm trying to keep it simple to start with.

[Merendel]

if you dont make bolts hunters will run out of ammunition very quickly and then will not hunt.   If your sure you have sufficent bolts xbows and quivers all I can sugest is turn on hunting for that dwarf, turn off all other labors and make sure he's not assigned to an active squad or burrow and he'll hunt on his own without any intervention on your part.

As an alternitive you could make him a squad commander and issue a kill order, alot more micro management but as I recall military kills can still be butchered.  cant remember for sure but you may need to tell your dwarves to gather refuse from outside for a hauling job to bring it into your fort however.

[Garath]

make a militia squad, set him with the correct uniform, wait for him to get all the stuff, give kill orders. Do NOT also set him as a hunter in the labors screen. That will make him discard everything he got as militia person and go look for a crossbow, quiver and bolts whenever he's not active in the military. Untill he turns active again and drops all his hunter gear to go and collect his militia issue stuff

If you actually have quivers and bolts and such, any dwarf with the hunting labor enabled will automatically hunt. Otherwise, they won't hunt automatically, but if you want them to 'hunt' without crossbows, you need to have them in the militia and manually tell them to kill stuff

[WTF]

Thanks I'll try again with a military Dwarf rather than a hunter when I work up the enthusiasm. But I still don't see why an axeman won't pick up an axe

[laularukyrumo]

Yeah. "Hunters" will randomly take a "hunt" job where they will go after an animal on the map. But they will not hunt if they don't have crossbow, quiver, and ammo. They won't hunt with other weapons. They act glitchy if you have them in a militia squad with the hunting labor enabled.

Note that you can make crossbow bolts and crossbows out of bone at a craftdwarf's workshop and a bowyer's workshop, and a quiver out of leather at a leatherworks. Leather comes from tanning the skin of butchered animals, which is also how you get stacks of bone.

If you want them to kill animals in melee, first you need to have the weapon created, have a military squad created with them in it, and them set to use the weapon--anything from "Use melee weapon" to setting them to use the particular weapon you created for them. You also need to MAKE SURE they have Wood-cutting, Mining, and Hunting labors all turned off, or else bad things happen. You then have to go into the 's'quads menu, issue a 'k'ill order, then go find an animal and order it to die. Be warned, however... Military dwarves will bum rush animals, who will almost always flee. Unless you have another squad, WITHOUT kill orders, set to m'o've behind them to cut them off and kite them into an area they can't escape from, you likely will never catch them.

You also have to take care with the corpse. You need a butcher's workshop, you need a stockpile set to accept corpses, they need to be VERY close, and the dwarves need to take it there. You might have to unforbid the body, and you will definitely have to go to the 'o'rders menu, 'r'efuse, and tell them to gather refuse from outside. They must haul the corpse to the stockpile, and they must do it in time before it starts rotting. You must then queue up a "butcher dead animal" job, and then pray. I have never successfully butchered a corpse.

[Sutremaine]

I miss 40d's behaviour. You could set hunters to use melee weapons then.

I'd recommend fast military dwarves over individual hunters. Like military dwarves, hunters don't do threat assessment. Unlike military dwarves, hunters can't be made to equip shields and metal armour. Hunters do have the advantage of returning their kills, but if they get interrupted by something they'll drop the corpse and run away like any civilian would.

Dwarves will equip axes in three situations: 1. Being given the Woodcutter labour. 2. Picking out the weapon as part of a military uniform set to 'any melee weapon'. 3. Having a military uniform that includes an axe.

[Brilliand]

I'd recommend fast military dwarves over individual hunters. Like military dwarves, hunters don't do threat assessment. Unlike military dwarves, hunters can't be made to equip shields and metal armour. Hunters do have the advantage of returning their kills, but if they get interrupted by something they'll drop the corpse and run away like any civilian would.

I find that they tend to turn on the thing that interrupted them and kill it.  Civilians with crossbows don't run away - they stand and shoot.

The biggest problem I have with hunters is that they tend to sleep outside, and then get killed in their sleep.  It's generally worth the risk early on, though.

[Sutremaine]

If they do kill the thing that interrupts them, do they retake the Return Kill job?

[Brilliand]

If they do kill the thing that interrupts them, do they retake the Return Kill job?

No.  They could wind up hauling the corpse anyway as a Refuse Hauling job, or somehow pick up another Hunt job before killing the next thing (i.e. if everything gets out of sight briefly), but the job that was interrupted is lost.