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[Iban]

I'm playing on an evil biome and the butchery is almost unusable.

If you don't know, any corpse or mangled bit on the map in an evil area can be turned into an undead. After an animal gets slaughtered, the skin and hair can be returned as an undead creature that then attacks the dwarves.

The problem is, they take on far too many characteristics from their butchered animal. Water Buffalo Skin and Hair is right now killing all of the dogs I have stationed by the kitchen. Even though it's literally just slivers of skin, they take many of their host's attributes and can then go on to overwhelm three different dogs.


Is there any way around this? I'd report it to the bug tracker but it doesn't seem to want to let me register an account.

[Iban]

Wow, and then my dwarves auto-butchered the dead dogs and now their skin is coming back, too. Fuck this shit.

[sandi Mexicola]

lol!  try putting a tanner right there and have a dwarf with only tanning available job

[Deepblade]

That's not really a fix for the problem that zombified parts are too strong. But, this is the exact reason dwarves  mostly eat mushrooms. If you want a meat or leather fix in an evil biome caravans are your best choice.
Also, be wary of dwarven burials. You can't bury ANYONE in a coffin, because zombies aren't locked inside them. building a trash compactor or incinerator is a must for an evil embark.

EDIT: You may also want to turn auto-butcher off from workshop orders o>shift+W. You can then be prepared for a butchering spree by placing guards around then telling the butcher shop to repeat butcher.

[Iban]

You can't bury ANYONE in a coffin, because zombies aren't locked inside them.

Wow, that's good to know. I'm glad my miner fell into the volcano instead of just dropping dead, then. A legendary zombie dwarf with a pickaxe running around mining children's brains would be the end of me.

[Loud Whispers]

Cage traps in every butcher's workshops.

[krenshala]

Also, be wary of dwarven burials. You can't bury ANYONE in a coffin, because zombies aren't locked inside them. building a trash compactor or incinerator is a must for an evil embark.

I discovered this just today when my previous fort was overrun by stuff animated out of my refuse pile (damn stealthy necromancers!).  Just before I ordered the last half dozen or so dwarves to abandon I noticed that the three dwarves that had been buried prior to this necromancer showing up were dancing around their coffins.

So, in my new fort (also built about 4 region tiles from a tower) I immediately built a curtain wall to keep the zombies (and necros) out, only to have a damn black bear get in and kill my one of my woodcutters and a farmer (leaving me with 12 dwarves).  Next migrant wave has a Ranger with a crossbow, but she and the bear dance around in the keep and never see each other so she didn't attack it at all.

OT: anyone happen to know if a named black bear will return to the map after it wanders off?

[matskuman5]

Water Buffalo Skin and Hair is right now killing all of the dogs I have stationed by the kitchen. Even though it's literally just slivers of skin, they take many of their host's attributes and can then go on to overwhelm three different dogs.

I think that undead skin or hair aren't just tiny bits of it.
It's that part of the whole body, so it's an entire buffalo made of hair or skin.

OT: anyone happen to know if a named black bear will return to the map after it wanders off?

It stays gone. If you find new black bears, they are completely different ones.

[Sutremaine]

Arm your butchers and tanners with crossbows and metal bolts, and keep hammerdwarves nearby.

Arming civilians with crossbows in biomes with undead can be a little risky. Undead are slow enough to outrun, but civilians with crossbows will insist on firing on undead even as the corpse closes in. However, things you're trying to butcher will reanimate right on top of your dwarves anyway, so engagement range isn't a concern.

Maybe you could give the butchers and tanners hammers instead, though I don't know if they'd attack enough to make the hammers useful.

[SRD]

If I butcher anything, I usually keep an eye on it until the process is fully completed.

1. Butcher the animal.
2. Dump the zombifiable parts on a hatch
3. Open/Close the hatch, dumping the parts down 3z levels into a river which is a constantly recycling aquifer which flows outside and off the map.

OR

3. The tougher parts (FB skins etc) I store in a separate pit which can be triggered to be unleashed on the goblins.

[laularukyrumo]

In an evil biome, I habitually surround every single butchery, tannery, AND farmer's workshop completely with one row of cage traps. Cage traps work on zombie bits, as long as the critter wasn't trapavoid in life. IE, kobolds and FBs.

I also put the entire meat industry in one room, with an atom smasher in a pit (just in case), and another atom-smasher situated in between the row of doors and cage traps, and the final defense bridge-wall linked to about ten levers.

PS: The Spinning job at farmer's workshop will turn zombifiable hair into non-zombifiable thread that can be used in hospitals for suturing, but not for cloth.

[paldin]

It should be noted that even a very large, muscular hair ball is still missing the entirety of its self. Therefore even a dabbling striker can punch the limbs off of its non-existent body. Just have a military dwarf standing nearby and wait for the decapitation to end the undead hair's reign of terror.

I almost abandoned what looks like will be a very fun location because I butchered my starting water buffalo to make food for the first immigrant wave (plump helmets haven't come to full production yet) and one of the hairs came back to life and scared everyone off. Then I decided that this is what !fun! is all about and drafted all my dwarfs to fight it. I resigned myself to hoping that the third (first non-coded wave) would show up with enough population to offset the losses. Moments after I unpaused, the fun was already over.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The water buffalo bull hair misses the MCH! (my mechanic's custom profession name)
The MCH counterstrikes!
The MCH punches The water buffalo bull hair in the left rear leg with her left hand and the severed part sails off in an arc!
The MCH punches The water buffalo bull hair in the lower body with her left hand and the severed part sails off in an arc!
The MCH punches The water buffalo bull hair in the left front leg with her left hand and the severed part sails off in an arc!
The MCH punches The water buffalo bull hair in the right front leg with her left hand and the severed part sails off in an arc!
The water buffalo bull hair misses the MCH!
The MCH counterstrikes!
The MCH punches The water buffalo bull hair in the head with her left hand and the severed part sails off in an arc!

That's the entire combat report. Right there.

[wierd]

Just wait for the adorable kitties making dead thrips and the like.

Things like the infamous flying lungfish.

Undead fliers on an auto_undead embark are no fun at all. *all* the parts can fly.

[laularukyrumo]

Lungfish, thankfully, are vermin (which is why they fly in the first place).

I did not know, however, that undead chunks of FLYing creatures could FLY themselves. That is frightening indeed.

[wierd]

Flying zombie goose skins.

Or, if you are insane enough to try taming them...

Flying giant kea skins.