Print

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

[em1LL]

Hi all!

I just caught a live cave spider (not the giant one) and I want to create silk farm. If I build room surrounded by walls in biome where I found him and release him here, will he stay in this room forever? Will he throw webs in this room and how my dwarves can access it? Could I use door or will cave spider just walk thought it?

Thanks in advance.

[MonkeyHead]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Silk_farming

There are plenty of ways of managing this. you just need to allow a GCS to think it can path to a target for webbing, but be able to isolate it to allow for safe collection.

[em1LL]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Silk_farming

There are plenty of ways of managing this. you just need to allow a GCS to think it can path to a target for webbing, but be able to isolate it to allow for safe collection.

I caught the vermin cave spider, not the giant one.

[pisskop]

You're not going to.  Put it up for adoption or in a cage.

[MonkeyHead]

Cave spiders in cages will not spin webs. A silk farm requires an area in which the vermin can run wild. Since cave spiders do not reproduce like creatures, any such farm will need to be in a biome that generates cave spiders. You can also dig out a room in an upper level (near your loom) and attach a lever to a cage full of tame spiders, and release the spiders. They will begin filling the area with webs without your dwarves and pets having to deal with bites.

[em1LL]

You're not going to.  Put it up for adoption or in a cage.

Could you rephrase, please? Do you mean that I need to tame the cave spider to tame it by some dwarf later?

[em1LL]

Cave spiders in cages will not spin webs. A silk farm requires an area in which the vermin can run wild

Or what else? Will they just disappear?

Since cave spiders do not reproduce like creatures, any such farm will need to be in a biome that generates cave spiders.

Ok, will they live here forever or just always reproduce? Will this reproducing lasts forever?

You can also dig out a room in an upper level (near your loom) and attach a lever to a cage full of tame spiders, and release the spiders. They will begin filling the area with webs without your dwarves and pets having to deal with bites.

And they will die then, am I right?

[MonkeyHead]

Cave spiders in cages will not spin webs. A silk farm requires an area in which the vermin can run wild

Or what else? Will they just disappear?

Since cave spiders do not reproduce like creatures, any such farm will need to be in a biome that generates cave spiders.

Ok, will they live here forever or just always reproduce? Will this reproducing lasts forever?

You can also dig out a room in an upper level (near your loom) and attach a lever to a cage full of tame spiders, and release the spiders. They will begin filling the area with webs without your dwarves and pets having to deal with bites.

And they will die then, am I right?

1) If the biome does not support them, then yes, that will happen.

2) If nothing hunts down all the vermin in the area, they will always be there, in fairly small numbers, but slowly replenished over time. If you have cats/kestrels, keep them away if you want webs.

3) Yes, unless you make said farm in a biome that supports them, when they will be ok for a while, and reproduce vermin style to maintain numbers.

All in all, its a lot of hassle to do for a product with not great value that you can obtain in large quantities by trading, or even replace with a higher value or easier to obtain product in the form of FB or GCS web.

[em1LL]

So the best way to get webs from cave spiders is just wall-off biome where they are reproducing from cats and let dwarves to collect webs when they are ready, am I right?

[MonkeyHead]

Yeah, that is the best balance between amount of material and time/effort spent on securing supply.

[Loyal]

This thread is making me wish we still had underground rivers/chasms.