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Author Topic: Looting a fallen comrade  (Read 1694 times)

capnbishop

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Looting a fallen comrade
« on: January 01, 2010, 11:22:27 pm »

I'm new to DF (finally got around to trudging through the tutorials so I can play this great game), so I'm still learning how a lot of this stuff works.  Anyway, something happened that confused/shocked me and I'd like to know exactly what it was.

I got a message saying that one of my hunters was cut down.  I look at the tile where the body was and it listed a few "dwarf chunks".  That was amusing enough, but then all the dwarves from within the fortress drop whatever they're working on and run out to the body.  I wasn't sure what was happening, but it looked like they all went to morn their fallen comrade and carry his body away.  Nope.  They looted everything on him and left the naked carcass to rot in the sun.

What the hell happened?  Does this mean I need to obtain more clothes for my dwarves, otherwise they have to resort to looting or something?
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Phantom

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2010, 11:31:28 pm »

Many have lost forts to that kind of thing...

Except my Human Fort.
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Rotten

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2010, 11:35:10 pm »

Nah, dwarves are just scavengers. They will always do that, as long as they are set to item hauling. If you don't want them to loot (middle of a siege, for instance), d>b>d or k>f forbid the items. Also, they will bury him if you build a coffin (mason's workshop>p, then build>n). Make sure to set it to burial (q over it>b).
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bmaczero

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2010, 11:56:11 pm »

Dwarves are OCD about items, if you have stockpiles for an item that's lying around they will be sure to find it and put it in the right place.

Under the (o)rders -> (f)orbid screen, you can set it to forbid the "loot" by default.  This is very handy because when you start fighting big goblin sieges, you definitely don't want your dwarves running out to loot all the gear while there's still fighting.


I've only been playing this game for about a week and this thread brought up a semi-related question I had - do you have to make clothes for your dwarves at all?  I've got a several-year 200 pop fortress, and I notice that most of my dwarves have "X" tags around all their clothing (which means it's wearing out).  Do they even care, and if I make clothing, will they just pick it up or what>
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Hortun

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2010, 11:59:44 pm »

Also, if you suddenly loose more dwarves than you have available coffins or just don't care to construct any coffins, there's graveyard stockpiles. If you don't want to deal with a pile of rotting dwarf corpses and you don't want to make coffins, then you can make a garbage dump over a magma source or chasm, and then designate the corpses for dumping.

The advantage of graveyard stockpiles as to coffins is that you can recover dwarf bones for crafting, but be sure to place the graveyard stockpile out of site since dwarves get unhappy thoughts from seeing their friends rot in the meeting hall as well as from the miasma. Dumping them destroys the bodies entirely (unless you're dumping them somewhere silly i.e. not in magma), but then you can't make dorf bone bolts.

Also, there is a questions section of the forums for threads like these. :)


And bmaczero: no, your dwarves are fine running around completely naked if you so will it. In fact, they tend to run around in some very strange outfits as it is. In later versions I hear toady intends to make clothing less buggy, but for now it's pretty much comedic unless you're making it for trading.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2010, 12:01:35 am by Hortun »
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bmaczero

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2010, 11:46:15 am »

Well that simplifies things  ;D
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Grendus

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2010, 03:38:21 pm »

Clothing is only important when it's so cold your dwarves will take damage. If your cat has brown wounds over all of it's body, you need to make sure there's enough clothing for your dwarves to stay covered (or check for a goblin ambush, depending on the map).

Otherwise, all it does is give the occasional "Made a satisfying acquisition lately" happy thought. Might be thoughtful of you to make the DM a few extra cloaks, unless you want him running around in 30 goblin made cloaks and a pig tail sock.
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darkflagrance

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2010, 09:50:45 pm »

The advantage of graveyard stockpiles as to coffins is that you can recover dwarf bones for crafting, but be sure to place the graveyard stockpile out of site since dwarves get unhappy thoughts from seeing their friends rot in the meeting hall as well as from the miasma. Dumping them destroys the bodies entirely (unless you're dumping them somewhere silly i.e. not in magma), but then you can't make dorf bone bolts.

Dwarves cannot actually use their bones for crafting; they refuse to use the bones of intelligent creatures that were formerly members of their civ, and instead bury them. Leaving corpses to rot in graveyard stockpiles has no advantage compared to burying (other than saving work), which is to avoid the bad thoughts from the bodies of friends and family rotting.
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Hortun

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2010, 10:03:25 pm »

Dwarves cannot actually use their bones for crafting; they refuse to use the bones of intelligent creatures that were formerly members of their civ, and instead bury them. Leaving corpses to rot in graveyard stockpiles has no advantage compared to burying (other than saving work), which is to avoid the bad thoughts from the bodies of friends and family rotting.

Really? I've misunderstood then! My bad. Would making EAT_SAPIENT_OTHER and EAT_SAPIENT_KILL both acceptable make it so that dwarves can utilize each other's bones?

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bmaczero

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2010, 10:13:24 pm »

Interestingly, my dwarves seem to put invading goblin-napped dwarves in coffins if they are killed.
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pushy

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #10 on: January 03, 2010, 07:33:57 am »

Interestingly, my dwarves seem to put invading goblin-napped dwarves in coffins if they are killed.
That's because at the end of the day they're still dwarves, and are treated as such in death...even though they tried to fucking kill your dwarves.
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lordnincompoop

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #11 on: January 03, 2010, 12:40:06 pm »

Interestingly, my dwarves seem to put invading goblin-napped dwarves in coffins if they are killed.
That's because at the end of the day they're still dwarves, and are treated as such in death...even though they tried to fucking kill your dwarves.
'Tis in the spirit of dwarfdom; beat each other senseless as enemies, then buy each other drinks/toys/socks/coffins as friends.
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wagawaga

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #12 on: January 03, 2010, 04:43:52 pm »

Well, I have about 20 coffins wasted to dwarf merchants. However that means 40 free socks, so that's not actually bad.
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Grendus

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Re: Looting a fallen comrade
« Reply #13 on: January 03, 2010, 06:16:11 pm »

I think the tags you'd have to change would be
   [ETHIC:MAKE_TROPHY_SAME_RACE:APPALLING]
to

   [ETHIC:MAKE_TROPHY_SAME_RACE:ACCEPTABLE]

You would still have to endure the unhappy thoughts from them rotting though.
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