Only kind a masterwork question: I googled what these raws things are so I'm taking a gander through thep et raws to figure out what are the best pets to take on embark. Which section determines how many babies a non egg laying pet has and how quickly they'll grow up? I'm looking for the ideal animal to butcher. Iirc vanilla behavior is that for egg laying animals you can only fertilize one egg per female at a time, meaning egg layers take a while to reproduce (also, beared kavernkeets are really good pets, they give both wool once per year and a mildly decent clutch size. Frill lizards are next, giving a very consistant clutch size of exactly 2 every time, and also hunt vermin. take these instead of cats. Horned caveturtles give the largest clutchs, ranging from 1 to 5 eggs. I tend to take along a male of every egg laying species, 5 female horned cave turtles, 3 female beared kavernkeets, and 4 female frill lizards, locking one female each in a room with a nest box to and forbidding the door to prevent my dwarves from getting their eggs, so that they hatch. Frill lizards and cave turtles take longer then bearded kavernkeets to grow, which is why I take fewer. Also, the wool isn't that important. Also of note is the dew beetles. The females lay a small clutch, the males have a honey extract that can be brewed into honeydew and they also reproduce quickly meaning they can help with alcohol supply quite easily if you bring a couple of em. Basically it comes down to a choice of more food or more booze, that is, kavernkeets(since you wont be slaughtering em for extract like you will be for stag beetles) wool +additional eggs or mead. Either are valid choices. The reason I know how long the egg layers will take to grow up is that I have personal experience with em. Frill lizards and cave turtles take 2-3 years, and kavernkeets and dew beetles only a year, year and a half max. So yeah, what tag controls litter size and speed of growth, that is, how can I determine from looking at the raws what pet is the fastest growth for slaughter.another important question is How can I determine how much meat it gives on slaughter, so that I can determine the pet that will give the best results(Obviously it's just the pet with the highest ratio of growth time to meat given.)
Tl;dr: See bolded parts of text. Take a few bearded kavernkeets or dew beetles on embark instead of chickens/turkeys/whatever. Horned Caveturtles are the best for an egg based economy, and frill lizards are a great replacement for cats, due to no risk of catsplosion and they also lay eggs.
Also repeating this question again: What's the prayer labor called. I can't find it in the skills to pump up on the embark screen. I know its just renamed strand extraction but I can't find that either.
Edit: I also found out from looking at the raws that sacrificing dwarves on the second tier will only give you a steel hammer. Sacrificing on the third tier gives you blood_metal hammer, which is really meh. Sacrificing blood on the second tier will give you a chance for a blood-metal hammer, and also a bunch of blood metal crafts which are worth something. Third tier sacrificing will give you a battle axe though, which is nice. You can also turn bones and totems into drinks at the second altar, and oddly enough ash into hellwood. Will have to look at the raw for hellwood to figure out what it's good for. Third tier, sacrificing weapons just turns it into another weapon of the same material. armor turns it into a different type of armor of the same material. The weapons is kinda worthless but the armor is actually decent, as you could easily get something that protects better. Actually, the weapon sacrifice could be used to turn the shitty hammer from sacrificing blood into some sort of slashing weapon. Even if its foreign, it would still be a big step up from the hammer.
