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[smjjames]

I know and have read the stuff regarding undead and that the necromancers can even raise stuff like skin (undead cloakers anybody?) and hair, however, any tips regarding this stuff before I embark?

I'm also embarking on a non-volcano tile and will be performing my first magma piston.

[Laserhead]

Necro's wont raise processed things like leather, but they can raise almost any kind of body part. You might want to use an indoor refuse pile, with a magma chute for getting rid of body parts before they rot.
You might want to favor blunt types of attacks, like hammers and such, as opposed to axes or serrated disks. If you chop off a zombie's arms and legs and a necro raises it again, now there are 5 zombies.
If you haven't fought zombies, one other thing to note is that your melee guys will get a bad thought about being attacked by the dead, even if they easily defeated the zombie. You might want to give them a mist generator or something. Crossbows avoid this.
Speaking of crossbows, capturing a necromancer in a cage allows you to have a resurrecting live archery practice target, which is good for training. You might consider meeting the first necro attack with a wall of cage traps for this purpose.
Speaking of walls of cage traps, undead seiges are big. If you think "ha I've got 20 cage traps, they'll never get in", you're going to be in trouble.

[Sirbug]

Make sure you seal off corpses from the rest of your fortress, so necromancer won't be able to raise even more of an army.

Try to arrange sniper post in attempt to shoot the bastard down.

[Urist McRas]

Never let any bodies lay around. And never fight in a place where necromancer can see the deceased. Hint: ambushing necromancer is invisible.

[smjjames]

Could be a problem when caravans get ambushed if ya know what I mean.

What about embark prep?

[itg]

Nothing too special for embark prep. Theoretically, necromancers can attack at any time, but if they attack too early, the only thing you can really do is wall yourself in, anyway.

Another tip: use metal bolts. For whatever reason, metal bolts kill typical zombies in one hit, but bone and wood bolts take about 5 hits to kill.

[smjjames]

And at least I can smelt the single bolts left over.

[smjjames]

Additional necromancer question, would a stream be more of an asset or liability against necromancer sieges?

I know from adventuring experience that undead can swim just fine even if they spam *flounders around in the water*, but I guess it depends on how you use the stream?

[Garath]

well, they can't drown either, I guess sometimes it can be used to push them into a drain to collect them or something. Otherwise it's not going to add a lot

[kiwiphoenix]

For the love of Armok, make a sealed pit and Dump all non-economic corpses and body parts.
Even if a necromancer does find your corpse pile, they'll all be stuck in a hole, and you can put them down at your leisure and get a few legendary marksman out of the deal.
(I take no responsibility for incidents involving flying undead building destroyers)

But, yeah, you do not want long-forgotten goblin skeletons getting up and mauling people to death while your back is turned. And the necromancers will find any discarded chunk that you miss.
Consider dumping from the Stocks screen?

[Garath]

a slightly twisty corridor with a cage trap is your friend to the refuse pile. It will catch any necromancers heading for the reanimation pit

[ancistrus]

Build an archer tower. Even a 1 z level high platform without fortifications will work, since necromancers and zombies have no ranged attacks. If a siege comes, a few marksdwarves with copper bolts will do just fine.
The necromancers, unlike most things in the game, can actually think and will try to stay away from your marksdwarves. However, if you can kill zombies faster than the necromancers can reanimate them, which is not difficult at all, you will be ok. Once a certain percentage of their horde lies dead, the necromancer will flee the map.
Or, consider building more archer towers.

[ShadowHammer]

Keep in mind, even if your in range of a tower, other enemies will still attack you. Even more so if the undead maul the traders. You can't make your defenses solely for the undead, 'cause then the trap avoiding mega beasts that can fling poison at your marksdwarves who aren't hiding behind fortifications because you didn't think you needed them will slaughter you. Then, when you kill it, a necromancer will raise it from the dead.

I speak from personal experience.

[PainRack]

Additional necromancer question, would a stream be more of an asset or liability against necromancer sieges?

I know from adventuring experience that undead can swim just fine even if they spam *flounders around in the water*, but I guess it depends on how you use the stream?

There are..... reasons why you don't want a stream, although it DOES help.

I embarked on a river with two towers in range. Here's what happened.

1. Bolts sent undead corpses dodging into the river.
2. They stayed there forever, creating a scenario where they caused work stoppages and my fort to be permanently under siege.

Zeds can climb out from a river/pond channel, but don't make the mistake I did by assuming that they would do so. Also, they seem to prefer bridges to path through, so, a bridge can be a deathtrap for them when covered with marksdwarves, but see above.

Don't assume that rivers= impassable though. They can and will pass through it if there's no other way in.

Also, the dwarf corpses that they reanimate WILL litter up your graveyard if you set it to burial citizens. I sorta enjoyed that, gave me a thematic reason to embark against the undead afterall. I have no idea what that will do for your FPS though.

Siege= FPS killer.


Also, Undead vs Goblin can be very fun to watch. Refer above bridge for scenario. The goblins dodged into the river and didn't reanimate. Don't ask me why.

Necromancers create campfires in siege.


A more aggressive attack against necromancers is impossible without walls channeling them. Their ability to dodge your patrols is superior to your ability to sense them. They WILL leave the map eventually..... its just that you might never know when they do or if another ambush just emerges along. I had the scenario once where my fort was under ambush from the enemy for two years, before it became a goblin siege and well, above scenario happened.


Simply put, if you play turtle, your refuse pile is safe from necromancers and the turtling design works against both sieges and goblins. Just.... be careful about caravan access as a necromancer once animated a hand while inside my trading lanes.

Melee dwarves= no. I love melee fighting. But against the undead, its impossible. Here's a fun fact. After a hand/skeleton has been mauled enough, they have missing parts. If your dwarf hit them in said missing part, its a miss and does no damage. But said hand, despite not having any fingers and etc, despite massing so little that your combined dwarven army can't hit it 6 times in a role, can do enough damage to fracture your dwarven plate coated fighter into submission and then death.

So, an ideal defence design is to have an island with moats, a bridge where your marksdwarves can hit them. A simple channeling should work and if you do the standard two tile wide moat, you should be able to be safe from dwarves dodging in(no need for water in this case).

What I did was to create a skybridge, allowing my dwarves to fire upon incoming intruders at will.........

Kinda worked until that dastardly elite goblin crossbow lord came knocking........

[Urist McVoyager]

Build a drawbridge over the dumping pile, raise it before dumping, drop it after. No body parts, nothing to raise.