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[Antalia]

My most beloved fortress to date, Nutscaves, is 17 years old. It's in badlands with a river (not a brook) flowing through it, and an aquifer. The aquifer has no fish at all in it that I can find, and (bizarrely?) neither do the lakes in the three caverns.

We have no murky pools, no ocean, no above-ground lakes, and we get no rain. So, if you follow, the river is the only source of raw fish. The water in the river is fresh. (I know this because I get "water[10]" in a bucket if I force someone to collect water from it very directly.) I've caught shad, brook lampreys, salmon, and steelhead trout from it, and I often see little groups of steelhead trout and salmon swimming around in it. I've never seen any mussels or caught any.

We've made a couple dozen artifacts, and only once has someone requested a shell. It just had to be one of my favorite dwarves--my favorite Legendary potter . We could not find a shell for her.

At the start of that mood, I sent a bunch of dwarves to fish my river hard, hoping to come up with a mussel to process. (We never fished at all before that, other than sending one dwarf around to each watery area once, to test where we can get fish if we suddenly want them for some reason.) My potter already died of insanity about a year ago, but the search continues. I've been keeping my eye on the fishers, and they've not found a mussel yet. (We have also, by the way, never seen a snail man  )

According to the data file, I can see that mussels can be in any kind of River. Is that the same as "Mussels will eventually show up in every River"? I know I can cheat and add shells to dogs. But I was just wondering, is there a way to tell that my river definitely won't ever have mussels before I cheat? (I don't mind cheating on its own, but for some reason, adding shells to dogs seriously offends me.)

[eataTREE]

Just because an animal lives in a particular biome/environment doesn't necessarily mean that you will find that animal there. If there are no mussels in this particular river, there never will be.

My baroness has a love of turtle shell. Pity we totally fished up every turtle on the map years ago. As in real life, if you exterminate a population, it doesn't come back by itself.

[Sphalerite]

Yeah, according to the raws Mussels are supposed to occur in any river with 100% reliability in large numbers.  Yet they don't.  Cave fish and cave lobsters also don't seem to ever show up in the current version.  If you've never caught mussels despite years of fishing, you probably never will - creatures don't suddenly turn up in the local population if they weren't there to begin with.

[Antalia]

Ok. It's sad news, but I suppose I expected it. Thanks.

If I were to start over in 31.25 in a region that has something with shells, like turtles, will the shelled creature population eventually die out on its own as the fort gets old? (Do vermin reproduce on their own?) Or will I be safe to go fish one turtle (or oyster) as the rare need for a shell arises, for the decades to come? We can assume I won't let a shell-lover get in charge.

I'm already paranoid about fishing in limited water sources, because I've also exterminated turtles to my great woe before. I'm just not totally clear about how the extinction works from the information on the wiki.

[Edit: just spelling]

[Sphalerite]

Local vermin populations do not recover after being fished - the local biome starts with a fixed population that never recovers once destroyed.  I don't know if they'll die of old age if you don't fish them, however.  Either way, I don't think you can guarantee a reliable sully of shells without modding.

My preferred solution is to mod the material raws for hooves to make them count as shells.  It's not quite as cheaty as giving shells to dogs.

[Saiko Kila]

Ok. It's sad news, but I suppose I expected it. Thanks.

If I were to start over in 31.25 in a region that has something with shells, like turtles, will the shelled creature population eventually die out on its own as the fort gets old? (Do vermin reproduce on their own?) Or will I be safe to go fish one turtle (or oyster) as the rare need for a shell arises, for the decades to come? We can assume I won't let a shell-lover get in charge.

I'm already paranoid about fishing in limited water sources, because I've also exterminated turtles to my great woe before. I'm just not totally clear about how the extinction works from the information on the wiki.

[Edit: just spelling]

I think you will be good for decades. I actually fished all turtles from ponds and all mussels from river (in 31.25) in like five years, but I thought they would recover. They didn't. But I fished really many of them, first for fun, then for shells. I had one child who really wanted a shell for its home project, my fisherdwarf caught five turtles and that were the last turtles in existence on the map. Not counting flashing vermin, but they cannot be caught anyway. But I would suggest trapping - maybe you will have trappable turtles? I had only toads. Anyway, if you fish only for artifacts or mandates, they should last decades.

[Friendstrange]

For shells, its best to buy turtles and mussles from merchants if you want something reliable. It also gives you a reason to trade with merchants other than to get rid of goblin crap.

[AutomataKittay]

For shells, its best to buy turtles and mussles from merchants if you want something reliable. It also gives you a reason to trade with merchants other than to get rid of goblin crap.

But you can't get shell off those in 2010! (at least I've never gotten shell off them ) It works in 40d, though.

[celem]

Correct.  Mussles and turtles bought from merchants have already been prepared.  This is the harvesting step so you wont get shell.  Nowadays shell moods are thankfully more rare, back when they popped up a lot more often I used to flag hooves as a shell material.  Still takes a bit of thought to acquire but not impossible if you aint in the right embark.

[Lord Inquisitor]

Where is the limit for these to be found? Raws we can access or hard code we cant.

My dwarfs have pulled a lot of mussel and turle up in past few year, how would I know if near the limit.

[celem]

Population limits are given for most stuff in the raws.  You can probably find turtle in creature_small__riverlake.txt or something similar. 

These raws define how the game puts the creature together from tissues and how it behaves once created. 
Thanks to toadies awesome tag system we have massive control over this side of things.  The hard-coded behaviour is what these tags do. 

The upside is that while creating new things is tricky you can mix and match anything hes created into any creature in any possible combination (there are a few basic requirements for creatures to be biologicaly and structurally viable).  So if you decide dogs now have shells, 8 legs, claws, fangs and dragonbreath then you can make that happen.  Someone probably has.

[MiniMacker]

You should be glad. Mussels are the ONLY thing I find in my stream. Not one type of fish or anything.

[Lord Inquisitor]

creature_reptiles.txt for turtles and creature_small_ocean.txt for mussels.

Both are at 250:500.
Probably sticking 0 on both would help more.

Would we need a regen?

[celem]

Yeah im pretty sure that takes a regen