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[Giver99]

Hi i have a Fortress that Has 155 Dwarfs and one vampire and i was Woundering if you have a Reliable way for me to weed him out

[wierd]

Time consuming, but garanteed method:

Assign each dwarf a unique room, and lock them in. If the get thirsty, hungry, or sleepy let them out.

A vampire will obey a burrow restriction, EXCEPT to go nom nom on another dwarf. Just burrow them into a test chamber, lock and forbid the door, then wait.

Less garanteed, but faster method:

A vampire will never have a spouse present at the embark. Married couples are exempt from suspicion, if the spouses are both present. Vampires will sometimes claim to be married, but their spouse is fictitious, so they will never accompany them.

Vampires tend to bounce around governments and settlements like pinballs. As such, any dwarf with more than 5 entries for "former member of" in their preferences page are suspect. Any dwarf with absurdly high social skills (use therapist to spot quickly) is also immediately suspect.


More exotic proceedural sort method: (if you don't mind some nomnomnom happening)

Divide the fortress population in half, and segregate them such that they cannot mingle.
Wait for noming to happen.
Free the innocent half.
Divide the suspect half in half again.
Wait for nomming.
Rinse, repeat.

Statistically, you should locate the vampire within 7 deaths.

(Eg, start with approx 200 dwarves.
First death clears 100 of those.
Second death clears 50 more.
Third death clears 25 more.
Fourth death clears 12 more
Fifth death clears 6 more
Sixth death clears 3 more
At this point there are only 3 dwarves. One of which will be the victim.
Lock them in a room together. The survivor is the vampire.)

[Urist McRas]

Time and labor consuming, but reliable method. Just check their thoughts. If a dwarf has any thoughts about food, drink or sleep then he is not vampire. If a dwarf has no such thoughts then he is vampire or he just immigrated.

Easy, fast, but cheaty method. There is an option to highlight vampires in dwarf therapist.

[Steelconfused]

I am still a noob, but...

I have learned to spot Vampires pretty fast in Dwarf Therapist. Without using the special option.

Either the vampire has several social skills pretty high. Or he has way more work experience than any other dwarf. Or both.

Once you have a suspect, check the name from Therapist in the game. If you do not find the name in the game, you can be sure it really is a vampire. Some consider this to be cheaty. So you need to go the other way, look up the name list in the game and check for a name which does not appear in Therapist.

Or you could just look through your bedrooms. You might spot a vampire in the middle of the act. (I once saw a vamp draining a peasant. The vamp got drafted, sent to a corner for getting walled in. He obidiently went as assigned, waited a few tics, got bored, and returned to draining the peasant. Then went back to the assigned spot. Is it normal that I watched all this with kind of a horrible fascination?)

One more bit of advice: There may be more than one.

[Kaos]

easy and quick method: throw all your dwarves inside a cistern full of water, the ones that don't drown are the vampires!

oh!... you meant without killing 99% of your fort? sorry about that!

[Giver99]

thanks guys im going to start testing tonight

[Falconbridge]

zombies!!!   lock your suspicious dwarves with a zombie. zombies will eat normal dwarves but ignore vampire.
only way to be sure is to check the whole fortress.

[Sutremaine]

If you allow dwarves to claim their own beds instead of assigning them or sleeping in a dorm, any dwarf who's been in the fortress for more than a season and doesn't have a bedroom claimed is quite likely a vampire. I forget whether it's green or yellow you should be looking for when you go to assign a bedroom manually, but you're looking for the odd one(s) out.

You can tear out all the existing beds and rebuild them in the dining room, designating them as bedrooms but not assigning them to any dwarves. Crowding the beds together makes it more likely that the next attack will be witnessed, and choosing the dining room as your new bedroom complex means you get to mooch off the existing furniture to boost the value of the bedrooms-in-name-only.

[WaffleEggnog]

The way I always found them is when you go into the info on the Dwarf, if the dark blue bit has like 7 instances of "Former member of", then it might be the vamp.

Another way is to check their kills. If they have a ridiculous amount of kills (including some dwarves) that didn't happen in your fort, then this also raises them as a suspect.

Finally, very high social stats are very common in vamps, so your mayor or any other noble might be the vamp.

If they have any thoughts about food or drink, then that eliminates them from being a vamp.

Once you've found someone like this, lock them in a room via burrow, lock the door, and if they get hungry/thirsty/tired, let them out and keep looking for suspects. Remember to keep track of checked Dwarves, or you'll check the same one twice.

Hope this helps!

[xcorps]

Best method...

Set number of curses to zero in awg.

[Kumis]

I had a vamp, I found him after I think three attacks.

After, methinks the second, attack I had a witness, and the witness accused... The Militia Captain who was on duty at the time! I found that rather suspicious.

Turns out in the end that the 'witness' was the vamp. No food or drink thoughts, long list of divs, not particularly good at any skill in particular, though, which I found a bit weird.

I put him on duty down in the caverns whilst I prepared the death pit for execution, but even on duty he went back up the stairs and found some poor sod to nom on, whilst 2 entire squads just watched. Does anyone have a nice quick method of building a death pit without sending your miners to their demise?

[wierd]

vampires are atom-smashable.

If you want to pulverize him into pink paste, just tell him to stand still while you deploy his surprise.