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[LMeire]

Any way to have warlocks force-target Prisoners first? That could be a good medium ground, having them drain some prisoners would prevent them from targeting your warlocks and ghouls.

It's been a while since I've had a warlock-vampire, but I assume they still obey burrows when it comes to murdering. Basically just segregate your fort with ghouls and warlocks in one section, vampires and prisoners in another. One time I kept a vampire/ethereal-summoner "locked" in an open courtyard for years until a titan showed up and ripped off his arms.

[Arcvasti]

Is that Slade Boulder spell that all warlocks supposedly start with not an attack spell or something?

It doesn't exist right now. It may get readded later.

[Jiamil]

The slade boulder and slowing down work fine for me. Warlocks are equipped with Wraithblades and Warlock Staffs, I guess the spells are bound to the items!?

[Meph]

Is that Slade Boulder spell that all warlocks supposedly start with not an attack spell or something?

It doesn't exist right now. It may get readded later.

It should still be there, if you equip a Wraithblade/Mage Staff. Each one adds either slade attack or slow spell. (mostly for wildlife, slade attack shoots down birds, slow spell makes animals easier to catch)

[Arcvasti]

Is that Slade Boulder spell that all warlocks supposedly start with not an attack spell or something?

It doesn't exist right now. It may get readded later.

It should still be there, if you equip a Wraithblade/Mage Staff. Each one adds either slade attack or slow spell. (mostly for wildlife, slade attack shoots down birds, slow spell makes animals easier to catch)

Oh, OK. I wasn't sure if that had been fixed yet or not. Because I remember there being some sort of bug with the itemsyndrome not working for the staffs and wraithblades.

[Meph]

Yes, but itemsyndrome works now. It needs to be loaded when you load the map, which is no done with the onload.init. So all is good.

[windalu]

I'm not sure about the warlock weapon spells... my Overlord - wraithblade in one hand and magestaff in the other hand - was chasing a bird that got inside my tower and never used any spell. All he did was poke the bird in the head with his staff after the elite ghoul squad whipped it down 

also I just noticed - skeletons no longer have exp penalties on their labour skills (except warlock specific skills, those still have -101%). Bloodsteel skeletons have the old -99% on skeleton labours except bonecarving described below.

and the last thing that is a little weird - all units (including skeletons) have -101% on bonecarving. While it is not anything terrible, it could be a slight nuisance having to inscribe the bonecarver when he loses levels because he was bonecarving too much 

[Arcvasti]

I'm not sure about the warlock weapon spells... my Overlord - wraithblade in one hand and magestaff in the other hand - was chasing a bird that got inside my tower and never used any spell. All he did was poke the bird in the head with his staff after the elite ghoul squad whipped it down 

Overlords can't learn normal spells in my experience. It might extend to weapon spells as well.

[cerevox]

Ok, so I just ran two forts, both quite interesting and I wanted to share because they showed some oddities with the warlocks.

First fort, I embark with 4 warlocks/3 skellies. A day in and green goop starts falling out of the sky. Nauseating Slime. It doesn't have any effect on my warlocks or skellies so I ignore it. After a short time though, my refuse pile starts filling up with wildlife. Turns out the nauseating slime is so nauseating that living things puke so much they suffocate, within a day or two of entering the map. The map was split between two biomes so only part of it was getting slimed, but with critters tracking it everywhere, the whole map quickly turned green.

I had 0 combat units on this map. No traps at all. Each year I was raking in over 100 kills. This goop would kill anything on the ground on contact, it would swat birds out of the sky, nothing was safe, except my undead minions. I had 3 kobold thief groups that I noticed and one elven ambush attack. I only noticed them when their corpses flowed into my corpse stockpiles for butchering. The slime was killing them before any of my units could even encounter them.

It was warlock fortress on super easy mode. The only losses I suffered where from a few harpies that flew in during a break in the goop rain, and a siege where a few members managed to reach my skellies before suffocating. Corpses were effectively infinite, my industrial choke-point was on how fast my skellies could butcher them and churn out hourglasses. I had 30 skellies running non-stop just trying to process all these corpses. 10k meat within 3 years for 0 effort.

Notice the odd bit in there? Skellies butchering. Why not ghouls? Because apparently ghouls can suffocate, they died just like all living things that entered the map. Restless Walker zombies out of the graveyard too. Ghouls I can kind of understand needing to breathe, they even have a thing about their breath reeking of carrion in their description IIRC, but zombies? I ended up ditching the fort because it was too easy. So if you want to play warlocks on easy mode, just find a zone with lethal weather.

Second fort was standard. I just want to mention it because of the zombies again. I actually created a zombie loyalty cascade. Turns out, if you create a skeleton, for a few seconds its considered alive and zombies will attack it. They got a few blows in on the first skellie i built and proceeded to slaughter each other in a loyalty cascade between opposes life units. Zombies are kind of pathetic in combat, die to pretty much anything(during the cascade several zombies managed to wound each other and then bleed to death, zombies bleeding to death), and kill my prisoners. The only real bonus is that when they die, you can butcher them for a lot more than it cost to attract them.

I love the warlocks, they are incredibly fun to play as. But the zombies summoned from the graveyard are more like farmable undead cows than actual combat anything. Their only real strength is their absurd speed.

[Jiamil]

Overlords can't learn normal spells in my experience. It might extend to weapon spells as well.

Overlords can't learn magic? The one most powerfull entity that should reign the fortress can't use magic? That is not only sad, that is something worth to be fixed as soon as possible if it's true 

[Meph]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I will make sure to change the relevant bits (zombies for example) when I do the update. But humans come first atm.

[cerevox]

Of course, but this also means we have time to collect all the needed things for warlocks so we can nail them down good and tight when they get their turn.

For whenever warlocks do get a looking at, I have two more, somewhat related items that might need looking at.

On prisoners and overlord raiding, as far as I can tell, the only way to generate prisoners is by raids, immigrants, or embarking with them. This means that, if you happen to lose all prisoners before getting any intel off them, you can't actually go on any raids. You can set the kill/steal/kidnap options but you can't select any destination. This means you can effectively lock yourself out of any raiding options, unless there are ways to get prisoners that I haven't found yet that don't require you to already have prisoners.

The other issue is directly related. Your fortress ends up crawling with undead everything. Which all hunt down living things and kill them on sight. At the same time, I am supposed to have a stash of living prisoners in my fort. What I normally end up doing is shoving any that I can keep alive into a sealed room with a dirt floor so it grows random plants and a skellie to harvest. He normally collects enough to run a feed reaction and keep them alive. This is all just buying time until I can fill my fort with dozens of weapon traps full of basic wooden serrated spikes. The idea is that the traps kill the random uncontrolled undead and then I butcher them really quick before they get back up, which keeps them out of the inside of my fort, but it is a real pain to manage. The other option is to not raise uncontrolled undead or don't embark on evil biomes, but that kind of limits the warlock's power.

So i guess prisoners in general need a looking at, whenever warlocks are getting worked on.

[Meph]

1. Not true. Raiding the countryside needs no info.
2. Keep your prisoners locked away from the undead. Pastures with doors help.

[aldehyt]

There is no reason to pasture prisoners, when they eat all meat, counted in hundreds

[Meph]

There is no reason to pasture prisoners, when they eat all meat, counted in hundreds

Pasture them on the prison, feed all of them with a single reaction?