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Author Topic: Crazy Dwarf Merchants  (Read 830 times)

ThrowerOfStones

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Crazy Dwarf Merchants
« on: March 20, 2011, 10:18:28 am »

For reasons unbeknownst to me, the first caravan arrived and then after I traded with them, they said they were leaving, hung around until midwinter, and then went insane. I know this supposedly happens when they can't find a way to leave, but there is a way out, so I'm not sure exactly what happened. I do know instead of going the (admittedly quite restricted) path leading to the edge of the map on the surface they started out going down my central staircase, so perhaps they had some notion of leaving through the caverns - even though I'm pretty sure I don't have any open ways in to them. In any case, they went crazy. One went melancholy, and his camel went stark raving mad.

My question is, what do I do now? Will they starve like normal dwarves? Right now they're both sitting quite content in my food stockpile, not doing anything. Will they just stay there forever? I'm assuming it'll cause a loyalty cascade if I try to kill them, at least with military dwarves, and they aren't really in a good place to kill them by any other means.

I remember the last time something like this happened it was because some undead attacked an elven caravan, and one of the horses fell in a dried up murky pool. He went insane, and the next time an elven caravan arrived, they all instantly went insane, too. I had to kill them all and burrow down into the murky pool to kill the crazy horse to prevent it from happening again.
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Girlinhat

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Re: Crazy Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2011, 10:29:11 am »

WHA?  If you get an insane horse locked away, all others go instantly insane?  THAT'S AMAZING I MUST !!SCIENCE!! THIS!

Also, you may wanna use DFHack.  Place some obsidian atop the insane folk, then dig it out and resume as normal.  Be sure to bury them though, otherwise ghosts.

ThrowerOfStones

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Re: Crazy Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2011, 10:37:55 am »

Yeah, I don't know if that is typical behavior or if it was one-time buggy behavior, but at the time I just wanted some more tamed bears, so to be safe I murdered the lot of them, and the next caravan was normal.
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Girlinhat

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Re: Crazy Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2011, 10:38:31 am »

so to be safe I murdered the lot of them
Well played good sir.

Cotes

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Re: Crazy Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2011, 11:05:08 am »

This happens all the time to me with elven caravans when I deny them access to a trading depot. They'll just stand at the edge of the map until they go insane.

It's quite funny.
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Well if you remove the [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE] tag from dwarves I think they have like 2-4 children each time they give birth. And if you get enough mothers up on the pillars you can probably get a good waterfall going.
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Angry Bob

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Re: Crazy Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2011, 12:34:49 pm »

Before I realized you could order your military to slaughter them, I would just let them into the depot and lock the door until one of the pack animals went insane. Do this a few times, and then engrave the area around your depot with images of elves murdering camels or vice versa or whatever.

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FUN FOR THE FUN GOD