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[SAFry]

Hey all, I'm new to DF, started playing a month ago after storming off from Skyrim swearing never to play 'kids games' again!

So I think I've done OK learning the ropes over the last month, recently updated to 0.34.07 and started a new 1050 year old large region with the default custom perimeters. Found a nice tropical region with palm trees, a river and a volcano! Also there was a tower in the area, so I figured that will be nice, maybe I'll get Gandalf  show up and be my friend, wrong!

Turns out I have a steady stream of undead running around! Still as I've got magma forges and some pretty good ore I figure it will be a fun game. Anyho, this necromancer shows up and zaps a dead alligator which then runs around biting the arms and legs off a few dwarfs. The bits of dwarfs then come back to life and start chasing my dudes around!

I put plenty of cage traps about and finally manage to kill or capture all the undead bits and pieces. I think the main culprit was an undead kestrel but I finally get him too and stuff calms down. Next I have the problem of disposing of the caged bits of undead including a lama head and a dog skin, eww. Luckily I managed to make a nice pitting area on a ledge in the volcano and dropped all the bits I could down it. They boil away for a couple of months upsetting my dudes but finally died.

Only problem is the Dwarf remains in cages I can't pit, maybe because they were former citizens, I think one might have been a caravan guard, I also have a dwarf necromancer in a cage it wont let me pit. I can move their cages around but I can't pit them, I can pit the captured human necros but not the dwarf one.

So is that a bug? What's up? How do I get rid of the dwarf zombie bits? I was reading the wiki today at work and I learnt how to dump stuff so I guess I could dump the cages in the magma but I haven't tried that yet. Also if you are dealing with necros I'd recommend maybe putting your refuse pile away somewhere as I keep getting necromancers creep up on it and start reanimating skeletons and corpses in it.

Any advice would be appreciated, currently designing a magma shower chamber for incinerating my zombie zoo. Got plenty of magma safe stuff but I want to be able to flush it with water or something so I can reuse it.

[Sheb]

I don't think it's a bug. Just put the cage in a room, link them to a lever, then flood the room with magma and open the cage.

[SAFry]

Oh good point, I didn't think about opening the traps after the magma flooding. Thanks!

[ddonohu2]

My current embark features regular undead hordes so I'll tell you what I can. Firstly, I'm surprised that the zombie bits you threw into the volcano died at all. I tried pitting zombie corpses in some lava and I ended up with flaming corpses running around a basement until I built some traps for them to run over. You may want to consider repeating spike, weapon trap or military execution style solutions in order to avoid never dying flame zombies.

  The other problem is that burning up members of your civilization deprives you of remains to bury. I've had problems with engraving slabs for necromancers and dwarf zombies. I haven't done any science but my suspicion is that properly memorializing undead monsters drawn from your civilization isn't fully implemented yet (although, in your case they're your dwarfs so this probably doesn't apply, just be careful about dwarf zombies who wander onto your map).

  As has been mentioned, for members or your civilization you need to actually build the cages and link them to a lever which you pull. It's a pain but it's the only thing that's worked for me so far. Be careful using this method when killing multiple necromancers since the ones who die first become raw materials for the rest.

I think that a water washing system for your magma shower will be entirely redundant (unless I'm completely misunderstanding something). Magma is the best way to clean any surface. It is for this reason that my execution chamber can be flooded with magma, erasing all the nasty gore that my dwarfs would otherwise happily track all over.

[SAFry]

Cheers for that ddonohu2. On the subject of remains I'm pretty sure at least one of them also has a grave that says something like 'contains part of so-and-so' as it's just his reanimated hand in the cage. The others I might not be so lucky.

Good point about them reanimating each other, I'll have to take that into consideration.

I got really lucky with this volcano, the surface of the magma is below the level of the rest of the peak, thus I was able to carve out ledges over the magma. So when I dropped things in; they couldn't get out, except that bloody kestrel, doh! They still did take months to finally dissolve unless they just sunk out of sight down to hell?

What I meant about cleaning out the magma chamber, and I may be showing my newb, is that I thought the magma wouldn't evaporate or go cold? I wanted to be able to empty the chamber again so I thought if I pour water on it then it hardens to obsidian that I can mine out and start again? Or should I just drain it off into a hole?

[Sheb]

It really depend of what speed you want. Magma will drain from a hole, but it'll take more time than water, that's all.

[ddonohu2]

As long as the dwarfs in question are yours you shouldn't have any problems laying any ghosts to rest, just thought a warning was in order for necromancers and foreign zombies. just remember to kill necromancers first, or clean up before you release them and only release them in small numbers or one at a time.

  Magma does evaporate so just drain the chamber and the 1 deep magma remaining will eventually go away. Alternatively, use a bridge which forms the floor above a drainage ditch (in a pinch a large enough room will do). You can then dump any magma or flaming debris instantly. This is what I do when I build an execution chamber. It allows me to clean out bits and fluids with magma and then dump the magma and have my dwarfs go straight back to work.

  I'm not sure whether the zombies you dumped died from magma or from wandering onto the SMR, or if they did just wander off into the magma sea. As long as they're not your problem anymore than you should be fine.

  If they did wander off, it wasn't to hell...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

unless they just sunk out of sight down to hell?

Believe me hell is a whole other matter to the magma sea. You'd know if there were a way in or, more importantly, out.

[SAFry]

*nods sagely*

OK, guess I'd better suck it and see, guess I could just release them one at a time and get my dudes to fight them arena style. Work on my magma skills later.

Thanks again for your replies! 

[thegoatgod_pan]

I'd also like to point out the real danger here isn't the zombies but the size large 1050 year old world.  Unless you are using somesort of single-core super computer I would suggest your next world be smaller and/or younger. Otherwise f.p.s. death looms large (zombies and fires probably not helping either)

[SAFry]

ha, it is going a bit slow thegoatgod! Funny the CPU monitor says it's only at 40%, seems like when it slows down a lot saving then continuing again helps. Well I was looking at upgrading the CPU soon anyway, was going to go for the highest GHz quad core I could afford over more cores anyway. Still, maybe I'll try something smaller next time though.

[zazq]

I've always found my solution to zombies in atom smashers, not magma.  You can dump a occupied cage into your smasher and be done with it, no pitting required.  And it doesn't leave behind animatable bits either.  Magma is nice and all, but flaming zombies are just bad news. 

[Loud Whispers]

I've always found my solution to zombies in atom smashers, not magma.  You can dump a occupied cage into your smasher and be done with it, no pitting required.  And it doesn't leave behind animatable bits either.  Magma is nice and all, but flaming zombies are just bad news.

It also leads to FPS death

[SAFry]

Turns out you can dump the cages with the zombie parts in the magma but I only tried wooden cages. One annoying zombie snake scale sat in the magma for like a year scaring my dudes before it finally went possibly after I dropped some other stuff on it. So from now on I'm going to make an arena of some sort to use my military to take on the parts in a controlled environment.

Also, magma crabs! nooooooooo!

I might have to start again with a smaller world, getting serious lag and only year 5