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[SpiralDimentia]

I have a question about pits. I've never used one, but the thought of tossing a goblin down 5 zlevels, and assuming he's able to survive, having to navigate an intense, trap-filled maze to escape seemed rather appealing. What I intend to do is carve out a room, leave a 1 tile wide space around the rim and just dig straight down, and then at the bottom carving out the maze.

My question is, what all can be thrown into pits? Animals [why is this even possible? Why would a dwarf need to throw an animal into a hole anyways?], Prisoners... and that's all I can think of. What about bones? It'd be neat to have the goblins fall and land on a huge pile of bones.

[AdeleneDawner]

You can designate the same zone as a garbage dump and dump some bones in before you dump in the goblin. Dwarves *love* throwing garbage in pits.

Also, pitting animals was, before pastures, a good way to put animals in enclosed areas without chaining them.

[SpiralDimentia]

Will that work since it would be open space? I mean would they still honor the dump zone or would they run into the maze and throw it on the ground?

[AdeleneDawner]

If the zone is at the top of the hole, that's where they'll stand to dump things.

In fact, if the zone is next to the top of the hole, they'll still dump refuse in the hole, from the top. (This is something to watch out for when setting quantum ore stockpiles near volcanoes!) Dwarves really love throwing 'garbage' in pits. Don't know if they'd pit an animal or goblin properly in that case, though.

[SpiralDimentia]

So how would I set it up? I imagine the shaft would probably be 5x5 with the center 3v3 being the hole down, like

OOOOO
OXXXO
OXXXO
OXXXO
OOOOO

No ramps on the sides, seeing as how it would be a multi-zlevel plummet of death.. so would I have to make the 'pit' the center 3x3, or would it have to be the whole 5x5?

[AdeleneDawner]

You'd need the zone to cover at least one floor tile and at least one empty-space tile to be sure that dumping the goblin in would work. Having the zone cover the whole 5x5 would work fine; so would having it cover just one of the four sides (the zone would be 5x2 in that case), or just the floor space nearest the stairs/door/whatever and the empty space nearest that.

[SpiralDimentia]

So they wouldn't like, dump the prisoner/elf volunteer on the floor tile that isn't a huge hole, and then walk away like everything was okay?

[AdeleneDawner]

Correct.

Assuming you're doing 'pit/pond' and not 'pasture'.

Edit: The normal issues with dwarves getting scared of hostiles as soon as they let them out of the cage to try to lead them somewhere still apply, though. Build the cage at the edge of the pit to minimize this issue.

[SpiralDimentia]

Hmm.. I suppose that's doable. Then I could have a platform in the middle of the 3x3 area.. a sacrifical altar of sorts.

[Fredd]

The 3x3 is truly dwarfy, but this works,
   

Code: [Select]

fffffff
Wdf WWW
fffffff      Top

Code: [Select]

WWWWWWW
WuWLabyrinth
WWWWWWW      Bottom
f= floor, W= wall, u=upstair, d=downstair, the blank spot on top level is start of the channel, L is landing spot.
 Dig access stairway, using up/down stairways in between the two levels. Channel straight down, remove bottom ramp. Dig out the maze, when finished, wall off the landing spot from the access at the bottom

[AdeleneDawner]

Also, if you're going to use this on more than one goblin at a time, put a floor hatch over the hole. (Yes, this means that you can't do a 3x3 hole.) Otherwise, when dwarf 1 drops goblin 1, dwarf 2 will see goblin 1 in the hole, and even if dwarf 2 isn't freaking out about goblin 2 who he's hauling, he *will* freak out about goblin 1 (who's down in the hole, and can't get to him, but he doesn't know that - he just knows that he sees a goblin) and release goblin 2 (who isn't yet in the pit) to run away from goblin 1. With hatches, dwarf 2 won't see goblin 1 until goblin 2 is safely chucked.

[SpiralDimentia]

The 3x3 is truly dwarfy, but this works,
   

Code: [Select]

fffffff
Wdf WWW
fffffff      Top

Code: [Select]

WWWWWWW
WuWLabyrinth
WWWWWWW      Bottom
f= floor, W= wall, u=upstair, d=downstair, the blank spot on top level is start of the channel, L is landing spot.
 Dig access stairway, using up/down stairways in between the two levels. Channel straight down, remove bottom ramp. Dig out the maze, when finished, wall off the landing spot from the access at the bottom

Confused. Why the walls in the middle of that?

[pushy]

My question is, what all can be thrown into pits? Animals [why is this even possible? Why would a dwarf need to throw an animal into a hole anyways?]

Throw a lion or tiger in the pit after the prisoner goblin to fight to the death?
In my opinion it's generally more useful with pond designations than pit designations - you let the water rise up to 7/7 and get a dwarf to drop a fish or whatever in there and because he's not coming into contact with the water he won't freak out and cancel the job before it's completed and if the fish/animal needs to be in water to survive then there's less risk of it air-drowning Handy for filling a moat with things like crocodiles.

[franti]

I actually just built my first pit trap. 4 z-levels and 5 bronze spears per square. It causes significant injury but so far none have been killed. I should've made it 10 z-levels and more spears. The bridge is also too small: the goblins can dodge the fall easily, somehow.