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[drivec]

it would be nice if there was a way to reveal to dwarfs that this dwarf is a vampire.

i dont like locking away a dwarf away from the others just because i know its a vampire i want the others to know its a vampire.

is there anyway to currently do this?

[jp.mech]

It feels buggy in the sense that vampires require quite a bit of micromanaging or metagaming to deal with the situation and there are not many game mechanics to deal with them properly after finding them. Yes you can accuse them of the crime, but they simply go back into the population after their jail term or 'execution' and nobody else seems to care. Do dwarves even get happy/sad thoughts related to the jailing/release of someone who's killed their friend? There's no way to get rid of them that doesn't involve a pit or magma.
It would be more interesting if they were more discrete. Rather than always losing a dwarf, what if there was some other way that a vampire's presence was notable? Victims fainting in the middle of work due to low blood levels and sent to the hospital to rest for example.

What was the mechanic that aroused suspicion in all of the previous cities that the vampire lived in and is it present in fortress mode? Has anyone experienced a case where vampires left the fort voluntarily, given that they spent jail time and you didn't lock them up in their personal walled off burrow room with no doors?

[Nathair]

I think the addition of vampires has made DF less fun.
<...>
Am I alone here?

Not at all. Twilight Dorfs; a total departure from the milieu. A huge waste of priceless coding time and effort.

YMMV of course.

[gildarumarth]

I think the addition of vampires has made DF less fun.
<...>
Am I alone here?

Not at all. Twilight Dorfs; a total departure from the milieu. A huge waste of priceless coding time and effort.

YMMV of course.

It's not that they make DF less fun, but it just feels like a step away from 'Dwarf Fortress' towards 'Bunch of Random Fantasy Creatures Fortress'.

[Blah]

---snip---

Well, it's fine to dislike a new feature. OTOH that new feature is pretty easily disabled, so the minority of people who dislike it have already been taken care of, at least insofar as that they can turn it off.

Maybe a more productive use of the thread than simply voicing a complaint/dislike would be to discuss how the feature could be improved?

I think it's time for some burrow improvements so that we can properly segregate the Very Important Dwarves from the plebes and vampires.

The ability to restrict the same dwarf to multiple burrows would do it. That would allow the player to have a few VIDs living in their high-security quarters while sharing the other fortress facilities with the rest of the dwarves who cannot enter the VID quarters.

Alternatively, some way to actually prevent the vampire from killing VIDs. Guard animals that can spot and interrupt the vampire if he's trying to suck blood within a few tiles of the animal? An interrupted vampire would not kill his victim but perhaps just weaken it somewhat. That guard animals would only be able to guard a small space would make it difficult to secure every single bedroom while giving you some way to protect your legendary armorer/axedwarf/etc.

Also, the Hammerer should properly dispose of vampires guilty of murder by murdering them in turn.

[Istas]

I think vampires are an awesome addition to the game.

I also think they're incredibly annoying to deal with, given that they seem to keep going after my highest-skilled dwarves, or the sheriff... In my latest fortress the first sheriff I appointed was drained of blood in the communal bedding area before I even had a chance to give them their own appointed offices and such.

It's a great feature but it also needs a less frustrating way to deal with them in the game than the tedious and somewhat meta-gaming ways available now, -or- an option to turn them off until then. 

A vampire hunter profession, or perhaps training war dogs to be able to sniff out and kill vampires, would be a much-appreciated in-game way of dealing with these things.

I've tried editing world_gen.txt and changing every instance of VAMPIRE_NUMBER to 0, but I'm -still- getting dwarves drained of blood.


Repeat: unless there was something else added to the game that stealthily drains dwarves of blood in communal sleeping areas, editing world_gen.txt to not have any starting vampires does not stop vampires from happening.

[Lord Dullard]

I think it's time for some burrow improvements so that we can properly segregate the Very Important Dwarves from the plebes and vampires.

The ability to restrict the same dwarf to multiple burrows would do it. That would allow the player to have a few VIDs living in their high-security quarters while sharing the other fortress facilities with the rest of the dwarves who cannot enter the VID quarters.

Alternatively, some way to actually prevent the vampire from killing VIDs. Guard animals that can spot and interrupt the vampire if he's trying to suck blood within a few tiles of the animal? An interrupted vampire would not kill his victim but perhaps just weaken it somewhat. That guard animals would only be able to guard a small space would make it difficult to secure every single bedroom while giving you some way to protect your legendary armorer/axedwarf/etc.

Also, the Hammerer should properly dispose of vampires guilty of murder by murdering them in turn.

That all seems pretty reasonable, especially the animals.

For that matter, at least according to a lot of typical fantasy lore, animals are supposed to freak out because of vampires even *without* seeing them do anything overtly hostile. It would make sense to add a (small) chance of this occasionally happening, too.

I think the addition of vampires has made DF less fun.
<...>
Am I alone here?

Not at all. Twilight Dorfs; a total departure from the milieu. A huge waste of priceless coding time and effort.

YMMV of course.

It's not that they make DF less fun, but it just feels like a step away from 'Dwarf Fortress' towards 'Bunch of Random Fantasy Creatures Fortress'.

Erm. In a world that already has goblins, elves, demons...?

[Aspgren]

I like vampires. but I have to admit it seems ridiculous when you look at legends and see that they've killed thousands.

To put it in perspective. In one world there was a lizard demon. He was a very ferocious foe who took control of a goblin civilization and was at war with everyone. Constantly taming creatures of the underground, constantly attacking civs, constantly being besieged ... he held fast and utterly destroyed many a dwarves, humans and elves. He took out most of the sieges single-handedly scoring over 200 named kills and about 2000 unnamed ones through perpetual combat.

A random vampire easily scored 2000 unnamed and named kills in the same timeframe. Simply by bouncing from settlement to settlement and eating. I think he ate between 50-200 dwarves per settlement (didn't count them) before anyone accused him of murder and he ran away.

That's just ridiculous. You know? ... ah well I like them in fortress mode. What's a dungeon without a resident?

[Flying Dice]

I like vampires. but I have to admit it seems ridiculous when you look at legends and see that they've killed thousands.

Not really. Boost the attributes of any creature and give it immortality, and it will continue to get the same rate of kills, but will continue to do so until it is killed in combat.

[floundericiousWA]

You know, this thread is a very interesting read, despite the bit of meta.

I just got my first random flashing medical icon with no apparent injury warning.  It happened right after I had a dwarf child go insane after a mood so I didn't see it happen.

The victim, however, was a nondescript dwarven child.  That child is now pale and "SUFFERED MAJOR BLOOD LOSS" but is still hanging on by a thread walking around.  It is very interesting to me to see how to manage this.  I'm also noticing that I'm having a devil of a time with dwarf children running loose in the countryside and getting snatched.  My "basics of survival" took a disastrous turn with the loss of my only two skilled miners/masons early in the fort's history...I find that these issues introduce a serious challenge that's sorely missing from my fat, happy, civ-leading v31.25 uber fort which has rings of walls, a huge supply of water, food, drink, and game animals, and defenses that kill goblins by the dozens.

[Nathair]

Erm. In a world that already has goblins, elves, demons...?

Yes. Vampires represent a major departure from goblins etc. as external threats, the kind of things that might cause a dwarf to want to build a fortress over. The meta-gaming and "corruption" (entire fortresses full of food-free and drink-free super dwarves) caused by Twinkledwarfs is a bit different.

To the point though, with a simple switch in the normal world gen or init file to turn the silly things off everyone would be happy!

(Well, everyone except me 'cause I still hate to think of what excellent dwarfy stuff could be implemented with the time spent Twilighting the fortress. But I'd be happier.)

[gildarumarth]

I think the addition of vampires has made DF less fun.
<...>
Am I alone here?

Not at all. Twilight Dorfs; a total departure from the milieu. A huge waste of priceless coding time and effort.

YMMV of course.

It's not that they make DF less fun, but it just feels like a step away from 'Dwarf Fortress' towards 'Bunch of Random Fantasy Creatures Fortress'.

Erm. In a world that already has goblins, elves, demons...?

All of which are not a part of your fortress. Again, it's only my opinion but a vampire dwarf sounds a bit silly.

[miauw62]

Set vampires to 0 in worldgen parameters.

Problem solved.

Still one problem. Some do not know how to fiddle with the other parameters. Like mineral scarsity.

If you don't know how to scroll down the main menu to advanced worldgen, read the line for the 'edit parameters' hotkey, and scroll down the list of parameters until you see 'vampire' and hit enter twice (or look up how to do so on the wiki), that's really your own fault, isn't it?

That doesnt change the other parameters, such as civs, max sites etc.

[Aspgren]

I like vampires. but I have to admit it seems ridiculous when you look at legends and see that they've killed thousands.

Not really. Boost the attributes of any creature and give it immortality, and it will continue to get the same rate of kills, but will continue to do so until it is killed in combat.

Aye. but the thing is that other creatures lead armies or go fearsome rampages. They stand tall holding slain enemies in each of their hands shouting COME AT ME BRO ... while the vampires hides, sneaks and assassinates. If you confront a vampire he will run away; if you confront a hydra he will destroy you. It feels silly because the vampire has to put a lot of thought and effort into each and every one of his kills; and the number of mysterious deaths that occur before the townspeople get suspicious of him is through the roof so that's also silly.  but that's just my opinion.

note: i haven't confronted a vampire in adventure mode. i refered to when they run away in legends

[Shinotsa]

I like the addition, but there should be some kind of check during feeding to see if the dwarf is strong enough, fast enough, or aware enough to stop the feeding attempt. I find it kind of strange that my legendary axedwarf, that could at this point probably snap a bronze colossus's neck, can't push a child off of them.

I do support the addition of burrow features though. Perhaps an "Exclusion burrow" that you designate to allow people into it much like a normal burrow, but that also prevents anyone else from entering. Maybe this could be done by making assigned rooms "private" and having them only allow the assigned dwarf and his friends/family. Granted I'm guessing once the economy's back in and criminals start stealing things a "tresspassing" crime will come about and make vampires harder to get. Perhaps the fortress guard will actually patrol the halls and listen for screaming victims.

All in all they're a little unpolished right now, but I think that they have great potential. They're neat though, and only a hassle if you want them to be. I do have to ask, what's all this with mucking about in text files? There's an advanced worldgen parameters screen integrated in the game with the vampire option included...