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[Julien Brightside]

So, I decided to do it a bit difficult, whereas I embarked on the most cold and forgotten glacier known to dwarfkind.
Considering the weather was rather unforgiving I dug deep, and soon I managed to find the shiny blue stuff.

But I dug too deep and unleashed an army of nasty things. I did however manage to cork the stairways with some floortiles.

In conclusion I now got 100+ demons roaming the deep caverns, harassing the local wildlife and treating the lava and water as their local spa.

Any suggestions on what to do next?

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

cave-in. Magma with water. Repeat

[Namfuak]

Capture a giant cave spider, tame it, and set up a trap hall filled with cage traps with the GCS one z-level up so it can shoot webs at them and trap them.  Or keep it untamed and set up the webs beforehand.

[Julien Brightside]

Hmm, the current giant cave spider might have left the map.

Also, not sure if I can access the lava anymore as the circus clowns are kinda having their fun on those levels.



I am contemplating a long hallway with three ballista at the end, with chained animals in certain cracks at said hallway. That way, the clowns get distracted by the animals while the ballista arrows shoot.

[Sutremaine]

Use lever-linked retracting spikes interspersed with doors. The demons will occupy themselves with the doors, getting spiked the whole time.

Layered defenses are best, as different demons have different quirks. Off the top of my head:

Layer 1: Marksdwarves, positioned well away from the demon's run. They'll take care of the ones that explode into fire or are made of snow, salt, grime, etc. Demons with ranged attacks will require marksdwarves with decent defensive skills, and deadly dust may have a range that matches or exceeds that of the marksdwarves. Mostly, fire is the problem, as it can melt mechanisms and other building items.
Layer 2: More marksdwarves. These will focus purely on anything that gets past Layer 1, instead of wasting bolts on disabled enemies while allowing fresh ones to slip through.
Layer 3: Stabbity death, plus doors. Works best on organics, which can be taken out by marksdwarves but are often quite resilient.

By this time, anything made of flesh or fragile materials should be dead. That leaves the trickier materials like stone or metal. Inorganic demons that need to land an attack to use their special attacks can be safely(?!) taken on in melee by dwarves with sufficient offensive and defensive skills, and good equipment and good stats. Vapours and dust are, as always, bad news. Nuke them from orbit. Luckily, you shouldn't have many (if any) of these to deal with, so you don't need kill chambers that could deal with everything crawling out of the depths.

What do you have crawling about down there?

[itg]

You've got a glacier? Unless you have a lot of fire demons, you could probably pull off a freezing trap. Not that that's the easiest thing to do, but you might well be the first person to defeat the HFS with one. Basically you'd want to copy the dwarven checkerboard design, but build it at the surface and forget the magma. The only potential problem is that flaming demons might prevent the water from freezing, but you might be able to pick them off with marksdwarves. Luring the demons into the trap might be tough, too, but that's an issue for any trap-based solution.

[DWC]

I haven't dealt with this problem in a while, but a long hallway with a ceiling above it rigged to a lever (I don't think they will destroy supports or trigger pressure plates) would be my plan of action and as mentioned plenty of back-up plans and layers of defense.

I'd also conscript every disposable dwarf in the fortress, arm them with a crossbow and shield and whatever else you can provide them and stick them behind fortifications in 'tower defense' style maze full of upright spike traps. It's a do-or-die situation and what your lye makers and garbagedwarves lack in skill they make up for in volume of fire.

Maybe the collapsing ceiling last, save it for the tougher ones that don't go down from marksdwarf fire or

[Tirion]

As far as I know, collapsing ceiling is an insta-kill for anything under it. And can be dome with just rock you mine.

[Centigrade]

There is nothing that says you have to do anything.

From what I have read of your post, you have the demons contained outside of your fortress. You are under no obligation to defeat them now or ever. If you do decide to defeat them, then you can do so later rather than now. I would personally set up an area just inside your containment perimeter, a simple 1×3 corridor with a door at the far end, and beyond that perhaps a 3×5 area with a support at the far end being the only thing holding up a couple layers of ceiling. Build up a military fielding adamantine or steel axes and silver war hammers, send them into your 1×3 fighting corridor and let the demons in to fight them. Perhaps your 10 or 20 dwarfs will kill all the demons if you trained them up well enough; if not, then they will die and their gear will be dropped in the 1×3 corridor, the demons will break the door behind them, rush into your 3×5 collapsing room, destroy the support and be crushed. Just to be extra safe, on the far size of the collapsing room trap, have an upward floor hatch or something else that building destroyers can't break, to seal off any who happen to get through the collapse. Even if your military squads die, their gear will be sealed away, safe from the cave in and ready to be recovered later. If there are still demons living at the end of this, then do it all again: make another battle corridor, another cave in trap, another wave of military dwarfs, and repeat until you finally overcome the initial wave of demons that spawned upon breaching Hell. Once you have taken care of them, the stragglers that spawn on the edge of the map shouldn't be too much of a concern.

[Julien Brightside]

WEll, I am not obligated to defeat the demons, but I am playing dwarf fortress, and let's face it, it is the combination of Murphys law, alcohol and beards that make these dwarves fun to watch.

Also, here is the list of demons, more or less.


Going to take your advice and spend my time building up my army. Might as well make a business around selling souvenirs to the dwarf caravans that come by, perhaps earning enough to buy a load of weapons.



A couple of questions:

Are spear traps effective against demons?
Can mine carts be weaponized?

[ragnarok97071]

In response to the minecarts:

this is Dwarf Fortress.

EVERYTHING can be weaponized.

EVERY. THING.

[Sutremaine]

Those aren't too bad, assuming 'more or less' doesn't mean 'except for the flying steel duster'. They're all made of either flesh or weak material, though the poisonous gas is quite nasty and stops short any plans of melee combat. Fireballs have a range of 15 (though they travel further once loosed, as bolts do), so any marksdwarves you use will either have to be very near the edge of their range or regularly doused in water to put out any fire*.

I recommend a long spiky corridor with doors in it. The snow and steam demons will die quite quickly, and the rest of them will be held up by the doors long enough to get stabbed repeatedly.

*Armour doesn't protect certain parts, ever, and any exposed parts with fat as one of their layers are distressingly flammable. There are different ways to mod around this, but by default dwarves will be set afire quite quickly even if covered entirely in metal armour.

[Julien Brightside]

Can demons wander off map?
Could have sworn I had more of these.

And, it appears they managed to kill a cave dragon. I didn't even know those existed.

[DWC]

The underworld is it's own biome and has 'wildlife' as such which will appear off screen. If anything, more will show up the longer you wait.

[Mr S]

I'm pretty interested in this one eyed hedgehog made of cream.  PTW.