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[blue emu]

Just finished digging a twenty-level-deep dodge-em trap. One of my Legendary Miners left the pit via the passage, the other one left by climbing the twenty-level-tall natural-stone wall of the pit.

To be a bit more precise, he climbed up nineteen of the twenty levels, then fell to an explosive death.

How would I best stop this sort of Dwarven silliness? Should I smooth each level as I dig it, to make it unclimbable?

[Astrid]

At least the lowest one, that would be a start yes.
Unless you enjoy that to continue, then leave it as it is.

[blue emu]

I realize of course that our Dwarves can't make an omelet without breaking legs... but exploding into gobbets and leaving your spleen hanging from the top of the door seems a bit excessive, even for our drunken bearded maniacs.

[RocheLimit]

I had that problem too until I started digging a staircase in the middle of the planned area before digging the pit.  The staircase is easily removed after the pit is dug and gives the dwarfs easy ways out of the pit while digging.

So long as dwarfs have a normal path out to do things like eat or drink, they won't resort to climbing.

[blue emu]

The plan I was going to test for my next dodge-em trap was to just dig out twenty rooms, one above the other, and then pile-drive the whole thing by dropping a properly-sized constructed floor all the way through it from the surface to the basement level. That also lets me smooth all the walls first.

So long as dwarfs have a normal path out to do things like eat or drink, they won't resort to climbing.

Not in this case. I pre-dug all the exit corridors before sinking the pit... and his buddy left via the corridor at the same time as the lunatic climbed up the wall.

[Sanctume]

So spiderdwarf ran out of sticky webs on the 20th wall

[Max™]

Yeah, was gonna say, dorfs will usually take a normal route, but climbing options mean the ai will do weird stuff at times, to the point that you can find off-duty military clambering around on the outside of your fortifications as you wonder how the heck they got there in the first place.

I don't think climbing skill really matters as much when you're already on a wall though, must have gotten tired at the top and blacked out or something?

I've scaled well over 20 z up the side of a cliff before remembering I forgot to put any points in climbing. I don't do that anymore since I've started doing parkour everywhere, but those points are mostly for the actual grabbing a wall while falling check, and climbing speed itself.

[blue emu]

I don't think climbing skill really matters as much when you're already on a wall though, must have gotten tired at the top and blacked out or something?

I suspect that he fell because constructed STONE BLOCK walls (as opposed to natural stone walls or constructed rough stone walls) are very slippery. He successfully climbed from the bottom of the pit up to ground level, but slipped and fell trying to negotiate the one-level constructed STONE BLOCK wall that encircled the pit at ground level.

[Max™]

I've scaled lots of stone block walls, they're harder to catch hold of when falling, but just climbing by itself is another matter. On the other hand you simply don't get the option to grab hold of a smoothed natural wall.

Maybe the block wall slowed them down more, enough so that they go worn out and fell?

Part of why I assume this to be the case is because they should have caught one of the levels below if they were rough stone, but didn't, which you would expect if they were zonked out.

Just built a wall from blocks, climbing it as I went, then grabbed a quick run down/up and jumping  back and forth from it to the walls of a keep and back.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Loci]

So long as dwarfs have a normal path out to do things like eat or drink, they won't resort to climbing.

Not in this case. I pre-dug all the exit corridors before sinking the pit... and his buddy left via the corridor at the same time as the lunatic climbed up the wall.

There's your problem. Dwarves that path into another dwarf will choose an alternate route, even if that route takes them significantly longer or requires them to scale treacherous cliffs. Make your exits two or three tiles wide to avoid this "feature".

[Di]

Wait! Does that means multilevel corridors finally have some use? Like 1-wide 3-tall corridor instead of 3-wide. And 2x2 tunnels should be a dwarven highway now.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

PTW.

[Pirate Santa]

I don't think climbing skill really matters as much when you're already on a wall though, must have gotten tired at the top and blacked out or something?

I suspect that he fell because constructed STONE BLOCK walls (as opposed to natural stone walls or constructed rough stone walls) are very slippery. He successfully climbed from the bottom of the pit up to ground level, but slipped and fell trying to negotiate the one-level constructed STONE BLOCK wall that encircled the pit at ground level.

This sounds great as an intended feature of the design.
Any creature that somehow survives the first fall climbs almost to the top before falling a second time.
To make it guaranteed use smoothed natural stone instead of blocks.

[blue emu]

In my newest fort, I am trying out the "pile-driver" method of digging out a dodge-em trap. I have excavated twenty 12x9-tile rooms, positioned one above the other. Now I'm smoothing all the walls. I have already constructed a "hanging ceiling" up above the excavation, ready to be released by lever-pull to smash down through the twenty levels and clear our all the ceilings and floors. I'll post the results later.