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[Saiko Kila]

Some background - a few months ago a dwarven caravan came, together with a liaison, followed by a band of zombies (almost 200) and some goblins. I was too busy to fight or manage them, so I just allowed the caravan to enter, made sure the remaining merchants and bodyguards had no apparent chance to survive (which was wrong, because merchants survived somehow and were running in circles around my walls, only their  5 bodyguards died) and closed the gates. Unfortunately two of outside merchants had their horses killed, so merchants inside refused to trade. I allowed them out (five wagons of goods, welp) with the remaining bodyguards. The mechants fled, but all 5 still alive bodyguards died in the end, fighting very bravely. All goblins also died to zombies. Together with the bodyguards they killed all the zombies except one, which was killed by my military, because it was too afraid to enter my cage traps. During all that mess I captured almost 30 zombies. I ordered all zombie corpses to be thrown into  smashing chamber, but cannot smash them right away because I need to sort out useful stuff first, and it will take a few months. Now, there are two problems I don't know how to solve:

1. With dead zombies. I built coffins for the bodyguards, and my dwarves moved them there. However, I also built some coffins for future needs, but they all had "Dwarf corpse" assigned to them. The zombies in question are called "Dwarf corpse". I tried removing and rebuilding the coffins, but they always end up reserved for the zombies. How to make it stop? I cannot built hundreds or coffins for some stupid dwarven zombies, I'm not a disaster relief agency. Why are they treated as my citizens or friends? Thankfully there is no "burial job",  so no cancel spam, but this still makes my cemetery useless. If I select to disallow burying citizens, the zombies aren't assigned to the coffins, but what are they good for then?

2. With alive zombies. Caged zombies cannot be pitted, nor can be assigned to another cage, which means I have to build a cage for every one of them, then link it to a lever and release if I want to train my military. Linking ten cages takes like one month, then killing the zombies is done in five minutes. Absurdity. Again, it seems they count as my civ or friends. Is this really intended or just an annoying bug?

[Loud Whispers]

They are indeed a part of your civ. Also the stocks screen makes the linking job take around 5 minutes ^_^
Just forbid everything non-dwarf

[Hyndis]

Easy way? Wooden cage traps. With the caverns you have unlimited wood.

Just chuck the zombie filled cages into magma or an atom smasher. Don't even open the cage, just toss the whole cage, zombie and all.

[Saiko Kila]

They are indeed a part of your civ. Also the stocks screen makes the linking job take around 5 minutes ^_^
Just forbid everything non-dwarf

Nice civ I have. Traitors. Good thing that liaison got offended by my dwarves somehow and left unhappy. Maybe my civ won't be bothering me too much now, undead or not.

What I meant was that linking in-game takes much time, because mechanics have other tasks too. Also they can link only one cage a time to the lever. I don't want many levers near my prison, doesn't look neat, and I just need to Note every lever. The process of designating the link isn't that time consuming, though I prefer to do it with cheapest mechanisms, carefully, and probably not in the most optimal way.

Easy way? Wooden cage traps. With the caverns you have unlimited wood.

Just chuck the zombie filled cages into magma or an atom smasher. Don't even open the cage, just toss the whole cage, zombie and all.

I may be forced to do just that. I have massive "forests" dug, but they take ages to grow, and I use tons of wood for steel, soap and ballistas. Yet the zombie handling is too annoying. Another way I'm considering is just killing them in place with military. But this is still a bit too dangerous to my grunts, and I need them for other tasks, inside my fortress.

[Hyndis]

If you keep zombies in one piece they're not so bad. Its when you've chopped down a zombie from a single zombie into 5 zombies that each keep reanimating when things get a little crazy.

If you're going to try to chop them to pieces, you need to stick with it. Keep chopping them into smaller and smaller pieces so they won't be able to get up again.

[Bilanthri]

The way I see the dwarven corpse in coffin issue is that dwarves respect their own. Some foul necromancer has been torturing the souls of innocent dwarves and the least your fort could do is give them a little peace.

At the same time, it really is a hassle to bury all those unnamed corpses.

As far as cages and levers go, why bothering to note them? Allow mechanic on a dozen dwarves, build your cages and a lever for each one, link them, pull them, then deconstruct. No mess of levers or wasted mechanisms, and it won't take too long if you just let every Tom, Dick, and Urist build levers and cages.

[GavJ]

I dunno, I think that problems like this are fair punishment for using super lamely overpowered cage traps that can be made out of balsa wood and hold 15 zombie whales and a dragon with 0% chance of failure...

If you used something at least a tiny little bit fairer like weapon traps or dodgeits, this wouldn't have arisen as a problem.

[Saiko Kila]

The way I see the dwarven corpse in coffin issue is that dwarves respect their own. Some foul necromancer has been torturing the souls of innocent dwarves and the least your fort could do is give them a little peace.

At the same time, it really is a hassle to bury all those unnamed corpses.

I ordered my masons to carve couple of hundreds of slabs. Then I will engrave them. Maybe this will suffice to let me use coffins again.

As far as cages and levers go, why bothering to note them? Allow mechanic on a dozen dwarves, build your cages and a lever for each one, link them, pull them, then deconstruct. No mess of levers or wasted mechanisms, and it won't take too long if you just let every Tom, Dick, and Urist build levers and cages.

I note them because I have many levers for different purposes, and there is no room for so many levers near the caging are.

I dunno, I think that problems like this are fair punishment for using super lamely overpowered cage traps that can be made out of balsa wood and hold 15 zombie whales and a dragon with 0% chance of failure...

Gross exaggeration…

If you used something at least a tiny little bit fairer like weapon traps or dodgeits, this wouldn't have arisen as a problem.

What? Zombies wouldn't block my coffins? This is the real problem here. And zombies are needed for rookie training. My seasoned soldiers eat zombies for breakfast.

If you keep zombies in one piece they're not so bad. Its when you've chopped down a zombie from a single zombie into 5 zombies that each keep reanimating when things get a little crazy.

If you're going to try to chop them to pieces, you need to stick with it. Keep chopping them into smaller and smaller pieces so they won't be able to get up again.

In that case 150+ zombies were killed by a bunch of soldiers and goblins, so they are not hard to kill indeed. Fortunately they were not reanimating. I hope that goblin or human zombies will start appearing. Maybe I will be able to pit them then, to make some bones. I cannot pit dwarves - and it would be great to kill dwarf zombies with dwarf bone bolts.

[Funk]

if there not reanimating then just cuting them to pieces works.
when thay keep reanimating you need to of realy killed them so thay can come back(not that the ai stops trying to!)

burning is a good way to kill them.

[crekit]

On the other hand... This allows you to build the BIGGEST CATACOMB OF ALL TIME MEGAPROJECT.
Then you can let a necromancer in.

[SAFry]

I experimented with dumping wooden cages into magma but a word of caution, I did get one (non-dwarf) zombie part pitted into the magma that lasted in the magma for over a year scaring away all my workers from the pit which was annoying. I finally got rid of it by dumping something else on top I think, either that or he got eaten by magma crabs and I finally managed to use the dump again!

Another reason not to keep a zombie zoo is the caged zombies show up on your s, k, l, list even though they are in a cage which can be misleading.

[Nibble]

For dead zombies, you can designate them for dumping and then deconstruct the coffins. To avoid this problem in the future, designate them for dumping before building new coffins.

Unnamed zombies will not return to haunt you if you dump them.

[Hyndis]

An atom smasher linked to an automatic repeater gets around things not melting in magma. Even if it survives the fall into the pit and reanimates, it will still be atom smashed.

I do prefer digging just a very deep pit down to the magma ocean. Depending on how deep the map is, the garbage chute could be 80 Z levels deep. Just dig two shafts next to each other. One is the garbage chute, the other is the access stairway. Channel out the shaft one level at a time, and then at the bottom link the two together. Then dig out the last portion of the garbage chute and wall it off, forever separating the two shafts.

If you're tossing garbage 80 Z levels down into magma, at that point it doesn't matter if it survives the fall and reanimates.

[Saiko Kila]

My slab memorialising project was a failure - these dwarf zombies cannot be memorialised on slabs. Only the named ones can, as well as kobolds and goblins. Unnamed zombies cannot. Necropolis seems the way to go.

As for zombies surviving magma dip I've read about that possibility. Wouldn't be much problem in my magma disposal chamber, because I always have a bridge smasher below it (to decrease level of magma for maintenance, or to destroy semi-molten items) surrounded by grates (to prevent dwarves from getting smashed accidentally). However, I could just use the above ground smasher for destroying them. I'll do that if I don't find a way to chop them to pieces to obtain bones.

For dead zombies, you can designate them for dumping and then deconstruct the coffins. To avoid this problem in the future, designate them for dumping before building new coffins.

Unnamed zombies will not return to haunt you if you dump them.

After reconstructing coffins the zombies are assigned again, despite them being dumped. Maybe if I destroy the bodies that will stop? I must destroy all bodies before I'm sure it works.

I do prefer digging just a very deep pit down to the magma ocean. Depending on how deep the map is, the garbage chute could be 80 Z levels deep. Just dig two shafts next to each other. One is the garbage chute, the other is the access stairway. Channel out the shaft one level at a time, and then at the bottom link the two together. Then dig out the last portion of the garbage chute and wall it off, forever separating the two shafts.

If you're tossing garbage 80 Z levels down into magma, at that point it doesn't matter if it survives the fall and reanimates.

I have a magma pool 20 levels below surface, it then goes all the way down to magma sea, but I wanted to make a water manifold for shooting fire imps. I worry the zombies could scare the prey off

[ddonohu2]

Weapon traps full of iron menacing spikes seem to work extremely well. I have a single row across the entrance to stop animals wandering in and a fifty eight zombie siege just wiped itself out trying to cross them. No jamming, just dead zombies.