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[Glumprong]

In my current fortress playthrough, I set a challenge for myself of luring all the demons and trapping them in a chamber, so no more of them would spawn while I completely walled off HFS. I set up my trap based on the information at https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Building_destroyer, but things didn't go as planned (and not in a Fun way, though maybe in a lower-case fun way)

The trap set up: I built a walled vertical tunnel leading up from the adamantine tube, leading into a chamber with only a bridge for an entrance, with a stair leading up to another large chamber with no other entrance. I placed a couple of tables in the upper chamber as bait. I was lucky enough to have two artifact hatches, so I set one atop the stairwell leading into the middle chamber, and another atop the stairwell leading into the upper chamber. The plan was:

• Whichever miner had the misfortune of digging into HFS would be able to flee up the stairs fast enough for me to forbid the locked artifact hatch behind them and save their life.
• Once the miner exited the middle chamber, I would close the bridge, then unforbid both the hatches.
• After demons passed into the middle chamber, I would forbid the bottom hatch until they all pathed into the upper chamber, then forbid the upper hatch to trap them there.
• Lower the bridge, unforbid the bottom hatch, build a stair down to the slade floor, and let my dwarves start hauling hundreds of blocks of rhyolite into the empty underworld to begin the years-long project of their Great Wall.

I assume the demons would path into the upper chamber, and immediately after opening the tube a number of them did, but none of them touched the furniture, and once they were inside they just circled around. I placed some more furniture and a tame badger in the middle chamber and opened the lower hatch, and a few more demons pathed up. They killed the badger, but left the furniture alone. When I opened the upper chamber they eventually all flew up into it and I sealed it off.

A bunch of demons who hadn't joined the initial wave were still aimlessly floating around the underworld, so I figured they weren't close enough to detect the bait. I opened the tube back up and had my dwarves place some more furniture right by the entrance to HFS, and put a regular hatch on top of the entrance itself; some demons started pathing to the fortress while the dwarves were placing the furniture, and again I was able to use the forbidden hatches to let the dwarves escape before letting the demons ascend and trapping them. But again, they ignored the furniture, and the regular hatch once they were above it.

Since furniture didn't seem to be working, I tried leaving another badger by the entrance. This time, no demons came by, even while the dwarves were tying it to the placed rope. Well, alright, I wasn't in any rush, so I decided to leave the project alone for a while and attend to other things in the fortress. I had plenty of time and plenty of badgers, so I figured maybe some demons might eventually drift close enough to be baited, and if that worked then I would have a time-consuming but solid method of emptying the underworld.

So at this point my theory was that building destroyers might not be going for furniture or hatches anymore, but were probably still being baited by pets. However, some demons drifted over to right below the entrance, hung out there for a month or so, and didn't seem to be interested in the badger. So I tried lowering the bridge and unforbidding the path down, and immediately some demons floated up and killed the badger before ascending towards the rest of my fortress.

With a lot of trial and error I was eventually able to trap all the demons, but I never witnessed any furniture destruction, and they didn't show any interest in pets unless they happened to get very close to them. But as soon as there was an open path between them and a dwarf, they would start beelining. So I figure either demons are no longer all tagged [BUILDINGDESTROYER], or the token no longer functions the same way it did when the wiki article was written. Has anyone else noticed this, or observed building destroyers destroy buildings in v50?

[Saiko Kila]

Demons as well as Forgotten Beasts are still [BUILDINGDESTROYER:2], but the tag doesn't work as it used to. They are not attracted to the buildings at all, at least not to the typically used ones like hatches and door. And since doors can be still locked after such critters pass them (unlike when invaders pass them), them even standard-quality doors and hatches are enough to keep the demons at bay. You don't need "hatch from below" trick anymore.

The chained animals still attract them, and if the demons spawned when the path to the animal was open, they will go after it (useful for cave-in traps, I do it routinely for FBs in the caverns, I rebuilt the floors after each use). But if the path is opened later, they generally have to be baited by something else (like wildlife), and only will re-path to your bait animal later, possibly they need to be closer than initially. Flyers still can fly around aimlessly, and other climb (some demons are surprisingly good climbers, then can even seemingly cling to the ceiling), so you need to be careful with trap access.

If they don't go for the live bait, I would suggest moving your dwarves (military) closer, but still in a room or two behind the bait, or they may accidentally go into the baiting room and harm way.