Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Melting Sky]

You can just directly assign the dragon from the cage to the chain. I highly recommend chaining him in there. The training will stick so long as the trainer is skilled and has access to the dragon. Without access, the dragon will slowly revert back to it's wild state and it will become quite dangerous.

If I remember correctly you just need to use the q command on the chain and it will give you the option to assign any caged creature to it.

Also keep in mind the dragon will not shoot fire through a fortification he is not standing directly next to. Dragons are the same as low level rangers in this regard. Also they won't necessarily reposition themselves in order to fire at approaching enemies.

[MrsStick]

If he's chained, he won't try to burn my guys, will he? Just want to be sure before chaining him and then deciding to move him. I am rather paranoid about getting him in place.

EDIT:

Ziril Oltarkovest Kadol Osram, Stray Dragon, is now trained (but still in his cage - I thought that wasn't even possible but apparently it is). I think I will war train him before sticking him in his pill box (since it is still being built...). Score! Surprisingly, my civ still doesn't even have "general familiarity" about dragons. Maybe someday.

My floor plan for this pillbox is:

BBBBB
W##WB
#   C#B
WD#WB
__BBB

B = bridge
C = chain
W = wall
# = fortification

I've built an up/down staircase (x2 levels) so I can put the roof on, and will dismantle it as soon as it's built. This whole thing is tucked in the corner of my moat, as far from both my pasture area and my entrance as possible.

And, of course, the siege comes before I'm done building. Oh well - the mountainhomes were almost done loading their wagons, so they're cutting them down. PLUS it means I have more training aides...

[Bumber]

EDIT: Some materials are dragon-safe. Adamantine cannot be melted by anything in the game short of the magical powers of smelters. Steel and many types of stone are resistant enough to withstand dragonfire. Obsidian in particular makes a good choice.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Dragonfire

So obsidian isn't safe after all? Looks to me like any non-metal is vulnerable to the initial attack (for vulnerable buildings; e.g., lowered drawbridges.)

[WillowLuman]

In short, make a metal bridge if you can.

Also, bear in mind that anyone with a shield will be pretty much invulnerable to dragonfire. No matter what their shield is made of.

[Melting Sky]

Nope, if he is chained he will not target your dwarves even if he goes feral on you. He will however not hold back from blasting enemies even if your dwarves are in the same area so make sure that you keep your dwarves out of the picture when he is roasting incoming goblins. 

Edit: I am OCD and amend EVERYTHING I post. Looking over your design it looks pretty functional to me. Keep the pill box on the same level as the enemies you plan to fry and put a pit around the outside edges of it to keep low level archers from walking up to the edge and shooting in on the dragon. You could probably replace all the walls with fortifications assuming you aren't using them to block the dragon's line of fire or sight on purpose. You might have to extend the bridge lengths slightly to cover the corner fortifications if you did that.

[Saram-61-97-kon]

I think nether-cap is the only really dragon-proofed material, due to its fixed temperature.

[WillowLuman]

Dragonfire cheats somewhat in the physics department, as of the current game. Nether-cap will catch and burn due to the things dragonfire does, which are better explained on the wiki.

[Melting Sky]

Dragonfire cheats somewhat in the physics department, as of the current game. Nether-cap will catch and burn due to the things dragonfire does, which are better explained on the wiki.

Yeah, this thread has actually been quite educational. Despite owning and using a dragon in my current fort I didn't know that metal had a weird immunity to the fire. I assumed since dragon fire is in theory hot enough to melt any material in the game it would do so, particularly after watch it vaporize my magma safe stone bridges. Thanks for the heads up on metal's magical dragon fire immunity. I had given up on blast shutters but now they are feasible.

[MrsStick]

The purpose for the walls in the corners is two-fold:

1. You can't build a (floor) roof on top of fortifications unless you have a wall to start from (I've tried everything, the space over a fortification shows up as open space as of last night at least).

2. It would be hard to keep him from seeing things through the corner fortifications and, thus, frying whomever is walking by.

Good call on the pit - I'll incorporate that although I'll need it to be one square away from the bridges so the bridge doesn't go over it.

Anybody know offhand if he'll target friendly civs? So if he's open and the elves walk by, or the humans, or mountainhomes (without any siegers near to target, I mean)...I mean, I usually use the traders to help with sieges, but I'll have to be more careful to keep them indoors while his bridges are open and such. I like the idea of a back door, but I just don't like having siegers able to go to two different directions. Maybe I'll finish making my escape hatch 1-wide trap labyrinth...no beserk traders wanted now.

[fortydayweekend]

Anybody know offhand if he'll target friendly civs? So if he's open and the elves walk by, or the humans, or mountainhomes (without any siegers near to target, I mean)...I mean, I usually use the traders to help with sieges, but I'll have to be more careful to keep them indoors while his bridges are open and such. I like the idea of a back door, but I just don't like having siegers able to go to two different directions. Maybe I'll finish making my escape hatch 1-wide trap labyrinth...no beserk traders wanted now.

Assuming he reverts back to wild pretty quickly, he'll target traders and dwarves.

Someone mentioned it above but it's worth repeating, don't let elite archers of any race get within range - they'll kill your dragon very quickly. I had a similar setup with a fireball-throwing FB; he utterly destroyed zombie sieges and melee goblins, but a goblin crossbowman killed him with 2 shots.

[Melting Sky]

Anybody know offhand if he'll target friendly civs? So if he's open and the elves walk by, or the humans, or mountainhomes (without any siegers near to target, I mean)...I mean, I usually use the traders to help with sieges, but I'll have to be more careful to keep them indoors while his bridges are open and such. I like the idea of a back door, but I just don't like having siegers able to go to two different directions. Maybe I'll finish making my escape hatch 1-wide trap labyrinth...no beserk traders wanted now.

I'm actually not sure how the dragon will respond to other entities, particularly if it reverts to its wild state while still chained. Off the chain and wild, it will attack everyone and everything. Still on the chain but wild, I don't think it will attack your allies but I could be wrong. Your allies may very well try to attack it if they can path to it. I had a war jabberer I captured and had chained up and the human guards rushed into its pen and hacked it to death. You might want to raise the bridges to block the view into and out of the dragon's den while the merchants are in your fortress.

[Dirst]

Dragonfire cheats somewhat in the physics department, as of the current game. Nether-cap will catch and burn due to the things dragonfire does, which are better explained on the wiki.

My impression is that Dragonfire is its own thing because it needs to work whether the player has temperature turned on or off.

[WillowLuman]

Chaining does not make wild animals passive, only training can do that. A chained wild animal still has all it's behavior, it just can't move more than 1 space from the chain.

[Loci]

1. You can't build a (floor) roof on top of fortifications unless you have a wall to start from (I've tried everything, the space over a fortification shows up as open space as of last night at least).

There are two different ways to build a fortification. If you construct them, they do not include a roof. If you construct walls, then carve them into fortifications, floors will remain on the level above.

Chaining does not make wild animals passive, only training can do that. A chained wild animal still has all it's behavior, it just can't move more than 1 space from the chain.

Nope. At least in version 0.34, creatures on a restraint will not directly attack members of your fortress. They will still attack visitors (traders, liaisons, etc.), and creatures with a special attack (deadly dust, dragonfire, etc.) may still injure your dwarves indirectly.

[Melting Sky]

Just a heads up! I had my dragon chained up. Due to its trainer not being able to readily reach it, the dragon's training lapsed and it went wild again. I decided to remedy this by opening up it's little pill box to let her trainer back in. I didn't see exactly what happened but the dragon freed itself from the chain and commenced going into a murderous rampage.

I don't know how it got free of the chain since it was made of metal and chained prisoners are docile but I thought it would be worth mentioning here since you are basically using the same exact set up that I am. The dragon either snapped or melted its chain so I highly recommend you keep the dragon trained even while chained up.

Edit: I puzzled it out. I still had standing orders to train the dragon so once they could finally reach her again they tried to put her back into a cage to be re-trained. She broke free during the transfer attempt. The lesson I learned here is that it is very important to keep up with the training of a chained beast.