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[KroganElite]

Just got a melancholy dwarf because I couldn't get a shell. There are no turtles, oysters,mussels, snails, oysters, or ANYTHING that has shells on my map. To top it off, none of the merchants brought any animals with shells either. It's year 3 now...should I just accept losing dwarfs to something I can't even control. I usually get over L2P issues, but this is a wtf-can-i-do-rng issue. Am I missing something here? or is this just more !FUN!

/rant

[Slythe]

Ever since the latest release, I've never seen or heard of a mood requiring a shell anymore.  I thought Toady might've removed that requirement altogether.  I guess not.  You have no surface water whatsoever to fish from?  Also, caravans only bring processed seafood with the shells already removed, so that's not an option.

[KroganElite]

There's a river, but I haven't seen any fish since the first year of so. You can get shells from traders...in my old fortress I bought turtles(in cages), killed them, and got shells.

[o_O[WTFace]]

The sort of fish you catch are vermin fish that dont show up normally.  Set up a fishing zone and assign a fisher to try it out.  If there is nothing to catch you are probly out of luck though, shells are the rarest of treasures.   

[Lich180]

Iirc, shells are only a possible material for moods if your embark has shelled critters on it / you have produced shells before at some point. Doesn't mean you won't have an unlucky demand for shells you can't get, but it sure does help with the issue.

[Quietust]

Iirc, shells are only a possible material for moods if your embark has shelled critters on it / you have produced shells before at some point.

Wrong - that's how it works for glass and for favorite metals. Shells are only demanded by dwarves who have a preference for them, but they'll demand them even if there aren't any on your map.

[Uggh]

You can mod your raws to make other items acceptable as shells in artefact creation, e.g. chitin which is useless otherwise. It's very easy, although I don't have the details at hand. But you can easily find a thread somewhere around here.

[KroganElite]

Well i've gone past the point of caring now...all the shell lovers can die if they want. I'd rather they all die than mod in shells for cats or some crap like that.

[GreatWyrmGold]

There are some premade creatures which you can just add in, like cave crabs and such, which are common domestics which you can butcher or sometimes shear for shell.

[Larix]

Hmm, i've only ever seen demands for shells when it was selected as the base material for a mood - i.e. it would've made the dwarf a master bonecarver. Perhaps training our drunks in other skills would allow them to take a different profession for their mood and dodge the fatal shell requirement entirely?

Although i take shells and related moods as a pure matter of luck (or lack thereof) - if there's something shell-providing on the map, i'll make sure to keep the material on hand for moods, but if there ain't any, any moody shell-lovers get a bunch of wardogs to keep them company in their workshop, and once they finish their mood, they get a nice coffin.

[zzedar]

I've been having a similar problem. I'm debating whether to open up the caverns (currently sealed off with two bridges in an airlock setup) to see if I can catch some cave lobsters.

[hanni79]

I were able to solve my shell problems with (Giant) Armadillos.
To my surprise, they actually give shells, too and were sold to me by my friendly neighbourhood Hippies.

[zzedar]

I were able to solve my shell problems with (Giant) Armadillos.
To my surprise, they actually give shells, too and were sold to me by my friendly neighbourhood Hippies.

The best thing about armadillos is that they breed, so you can keep some ready in case of need.

[lwCoyote]

In my current vanilla game, I'm heavily relying on fishing for my forts food needs (now that Im up to 170 dwarves its.. not working very well, even with 10 fisherdwarves)... at one point I had a stockpile dedicated to just shells, and it was overflowing, and I was able to ship out tons of high quality shell crafts thanks to a legendary bonecrafter.

So.. fishing is win for  shells <3

[zzedar]

Don't fish run out eventually? I thought they didn't restock, that was a bug. Or do you just have to be careful not to overfish?