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[Kerine]

Hello. This is my first time on these forums so if this is in the wrong place tell me?

So I was playing my first somewhat successful fortress that I had started for the purpose of figuring out HFS since the wiki had told me it was major spoilers. I dug up a bunch of adamantine and found it, then nearly all of my dwarves were killed by either demons or invading goblins. For some reason though the demons ignored to unconscious dwarves that were in comas above ground or off of the top floor of my fortress. I waited two seasons with no migrants, then I gave up.

When I then immediately reclaimed the fortress, all of the demons were still inside the fortress rather than outside. I figured the reason must be that the demons couldn't go outside (they had ignored dwarves trying to grab goblin bodies from my main fortress until they reached the stairs too), so I decided to try to figure out how to collapse the ground around my stairs to allow my new dwarves access to my underground water supply. As soon as I got rid of the floor I had built over the stircase a demon came out and started killing dwarves. Now i'm walled in my fortress with a demon wandering outside.

My questions to you are:

1. If I had waited longer before abandoning would migrants have eventually come?
2. Why didn't the demons go attack other dwarves outside (or even inside but on the first floor of) my fortress?
3. How do I get rid of the demon running around outside and use the outside again without more demons coming out to kill my dwarves?

Thanks in advance for any and all help.
-Kerine

[Dwarf Kitty]

1.  Very likely, especially if a newish fort.  Which two seasons did you wait out?  There's no winter migration wave.  Also, migrants are based on what the dwarf caravan (in autumn) reports back to the home civ.  Sometimes, migrants avoid an obviously dangerous situation, sometimes not.  "Migrants have arrived despite the danger."
 
 
2.  Not entirely sure here.  I do know that attacking needs a line of sight.  Can't attack what you can't see.  The demons at reclaim might be calm and not rampaging until something attracts their attention.
 
 
3.  With your current fort, you might have to wait awhile for more demon fodder migrants.  You might get lucky and get a hunter with a bow and ammo, or a woodcutter with an axe to attack the demon.
 
Also, the caravans are guarded with decent military.  Build a bait trade depot outside.  If you succeed, the caravan guards will take care of the pesky demon.
 
Should you fail, and want to re-reclaim, buy dual-purpose weapons.  Picks, axes, bows, ammo.  Make miners, woodcutters who also are axedwarves, and hunters who are marksdwarves.  Should the demon or his friends still be lurking outside, instantly draft everyone into squads based on their weapon of choice, and attack!

[Kerine]

I waited out the end of autumn and winter. I can't remember if a dwarven caravan came or not, but I think it didn't since the demons would probably have killed it and they (or trolls coming from above ground) destroyed my trade depot. I was also at what the wiki claims is the default population cap of 200 before the demons arrived.

That does make sense for 2. Considering how they had pathed to my fortress in the first place I assumed that they went after every dwarf they could get to.

Considering on the fort before I died a group of migrants took out a fire-breathing fleshy titan with seemingly no injuries, that seems like a good option. I was planning on sending my migrants down to fight demons anyway. I'm off to abandon send a dwarf outside to build a trade depot.

[Broken]

If you really want to recover the site, the best method is making an adventurer and kill all the demons.

[Kerine]

/fails at adventuring. Seriously. I've never even finished two quests on one adventurer and my most recent one is lost in the dwarven capital.

Anyway, I just got a wave of ~20 migrants, but all they could do was wipe out a goblin ambush. Hopefully I get some more soon.

[Dick Givens]

As far as adventuring goes, go find some people who will follow you, take them to x monster while you sneak, then let them run straight forward like heroes while you pelt whatever it is with rocks/knives/cabinets. Loot the fallen (rinse), and go find more idiots to follow you (repeat). Adventuring is 1 part finding things, 1 part tedium, and 2 parts cowardice!

[Noobazzah]

You could just make a specialized demon-killer embark group with the bare minimums to survive until migrants and caravans, with a heavy emphasis on all fighting skills and weapons. Crossbows and pickaxes are a good choice, a squad of 5-7 dwarves with decent skills (remember to put points into dodging etc. they're more important than the weapon skills themselves) should have a good chance od winning against a single demon.

Once the demon is dead, do your best to seal the old fortress off. Build another fortress on the map, a place where you can gather some strenght and swell your numbers and armaments. Then it is time to Attack on Demon!