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[Hiarhu]

Finally got the isolated tower built on the surface for my about to die of old age citizens being turned into vampires to live in. Moved in the first residents, a pair of 90+ humans and then I remembered I already had another vampire. A goblin citizen used long ago for an experiment and locked in a cage, put on display and forgotten.

I moved her to the tower and had her released. She had spent the last ten years in that cage and was very happy to be free. She made herself some new clothes from the stock in the tower and quickly cheered up even more after spending time in the tavern level chatting telling stories with the humans. Everything was going great until I decided to help the festivities by naming the goblin and a human as tavern keepers to access the booze stockpile set aside for future vampire dwarves.

See I forgot that the goblin was an alcoholic who loved to start brawls when drunk. I forgot that the entire experiment had been to see if getting such a goblin drunk and depriving them of someone to punch and a statue to topple would get them cursed, obviously it does. Filled with joy at how wonderful everything was going for her now she hauled off and nailed my useful human (the other is a monster hunter) right in the head, snapped his neck like a twig. Now he can't use his arms or legs and he can't breathe. Only he can't die. The goblin got so drunk she fell down next to him flopping like a fish also unable to breathe but in her case it'll wear off.

So now not only is one of the humans an immortal vegetable, my alcoholic vampire goblin is locked in a sealed tower without anyone left who can serve her a drink.

Hiarhu 1, Joyous celebration of eternal new life 0

[MCreeper]

Discovered that, in 34.11, magma can generate inside adaantine vein. One full tile of it, specifically. The hell?

[TD1]

Yes. It was the Hell.

[Eric Blank]

Maybe that tile was generated as part of the magma sea, but the adamantine vein + the bedrock conspired to enclose that one last tile of "open space" on all sides.

[Randos]

You have to be kidding me...

I have this awesome, minimal, nearly perfect fortress which I started last week. I lost it to a Titan and then reclaimed it and learned A LOT about how reclaiming a fortress isn't so easy. BUT. I DID IT! YEAH! I cleaned the place up perfectly after a lot of work and went back to expansion. "I will not quit mode enabled"

Then. Back to my usual plight. I suck at handling sieges. But I'm studying and working at setting up the biggest military I've ever had, and they are all well trained and ready for action. I'm bored... where are those damn goblins? "Bring it on mode enabled".

Finally they come. And I win! But they nearly wipe out my military. Close dodge! phew!

Now I search around and post on this forum and set up the best archery towers ever, with perfect burrow orders, cleaned up the mess, my dorfs are getting over their depressions, all cleaned up again... I'm READY. "bring it on mode reactivated!"

DOPE! It's not goblins that come, but a friggin' Forgotten Beast from below. He has some type of "web shit" that basically kills anything that goes near it?!?! "WTF mode enabled!!!". My military is gone again! 40 troops decimated. 100+ dorfs cut down to 80- dorfs.

NOTE TO SELF: Shut that damn gate to the caves and keep it shut!!!

HOWEVER. I am still alive. The damn web slinging "Slug" did eventually bleed to death after significant damage!!!

By the way. How the hell does "web" kill?

[Hiarhu]

How the hell does "web" kill?

It doesn't. It renders the victim immobile and unable to prevent the beast from biting their heads off. As you have learned engaging such a creature with melee dwarves is near suicidal no matter how good they are. Next time you get one, and you will, you can engage with archery dwarves farther away than the webs can shoot, or drop a cave in on them, You could also try and airlock them in a chamber with raising bridges, retracting spikes on a lever inside if you want to kill and if you don't you can farm the silk or use it to web cage traps to capture other Forgotten Beasts.

If all else fails, build a tunnel connecting the caverns to the surface with bridge controlled access. Let your visitors sort themselves out.

[Randos]

Next time you get one, and you will, you can engage with archery dwarves farther away than the webs can shoot, or drop a cave in on them, You could also try and airlock them in a chamber with raising bridges, retracting spikes on a lever inside if you want to kill and if you don't you can farm the silk or use it to web cage traps to capture other Forgotten Beasts.

If all else fails, build a tunnel connecting the caverns to the surface with bridge controlled access. Let your visitors sort themselves out.

That's for the info! That's very useful. I do regret sending in the weapon dwarfs now. They didn't stand a chance. But still, it seems to me that the web just killed them. I watch the whole thing. The beast was still a distance from them and never touched them, but once the web hit them they were dead.

1 - How do you "drop a cave in on them"? I mean, I know how to channel out some area too fall, but that takes time and the thing is moving. Am I missing something?

2 - The retracting bridge technique would also take time to setup. And again, the beast is always moving. Furthermore, you can never perfectly time the moment they pull the lever to raise the bridges. So how does that work?

I love the idea of tunneling to the top so "guests" can deal with them. I could gate off the stairs to the outside until some guests come to visit, then open the gate and let them go down to the dungeon for "fun" 

I wonder if a Titan would fight a Forgotten Beast if such a tunnel were made?

[Hiarhu]

1 - How do you "drop a cave in on them"? I mean, I know how to channel out some area too fall, but that takes time and the thing is moving. Am I missing something?

2 - The retracting bridge technique would also take time to setup. And again, the beast is always moving. Furthermore, you can never perfectly time the moment they pull the lever to raise the bridges. So how does that work?

Yes dealing FBs in any safe way that exposes your dwarves to minimal risk will usually require some planning and set up, but if done right it's usually reusable or quick to build replacements once you get the hang of it.

Bait is the key. Animals will work but I find furniture to be more efficient. You need to lure the beast into a chamber built for whatever you have in mind. I usually use an L shaped tunnel with doors inside. FBs are building destroyers to they're attracted to doors to destroy them, which takes them a moment. So they go past the bridge into the tunnel to smash the doors and you raise the bridge while they're doing so. Once they're contained you can do whatever you want with them.

If you want to use spikes you can just leave them in the hallway but remember that where you use a door for bait you can't have a spike so they can just stand on that spot and not get hit by the repeating spikes. Or you can move them into another room once they're contained out of the cavern and have this room set up to deal with them however you prefer. This would be the best way to use a cave in against them, for example if they have toxic blood you don't want your dwarves exposed too from using the spikes.

I wonder if a Titan would fight a Forgotten Beast if such a tunnel were made?

Absolutely, those kinds of beasts are all really the same thing just named depending on where they live and none of them get along with anything else.

[Kagus]

Also, weaponized cave-ins are generally constructed where a chunk of rock is channeled out while being supported by one or more supports. Supports can be hooked up to levers and other mechanism triggers in order to make them collapse on demand. Once the final support had been collapsed, the chunk of rock will crumble and smash like a standard cave-in.

It's definitely advanced stuff, as you need to set things up in such a way that you'll be sure the rock will fall once that support goes, and also making sure that the accordion effect doesn't cause unwanted problems in the form of punching open new entrances for underground beasties or just falling on top of some dwarven industry a few levels down.

But if you can get it to work, there are few things quite as destructive as a cave-in.


Generally not necessary for most FBs though, but there is the occasional invincible one.

[Purdurabo]

I just had a 10 year old cyclops child invade, panic at first sight of my military and run away straight into a cage trap.

[lazygun]

My fort is suffering a sheepsplosion after I let the breeding population increase to around 40. I wanted wool for clothes, but now my dwarfs are still spinning when the seasons roll around and it's time to start shearing again. Further, my cloth stockpiles are now full of bins of sheep wool cloth. I ordered a cull of about half the adults. Now the butchers shop is stinking out the kitchens: all my dwarfs on only food hauling and refuse hauling are still not enough to cope.

Also, the fort had a puppy who apparently loved to jump onto the (inaccessible) top of the curtain wall and then fall 3 z-levels to the ground on the other side. Or something. I never saw it happen, just the "combat" reports when she hit the ground. She grew up and still carried on this habit until she smashed her paw to pulp. So I put her out of her misery. 

[LadySerpentine]

There's something strange afoot in Canyonburials right now. I just checked the bottom of my unit list for the first time since unretiring, and there's a "dwarven" peasant with an unusual name.

Spoiler: "Ecamo Emeraldslide the Spotted Barricade of Lancers" (click to show/hide)

Quite a long name, in fact. Suspiciously long, considering his lack of combat skills.

Spoiler: "Ecamo isn't very good at fighting" (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: "Or at anything else" (click to show/hide)

In fact, he's suspiciously bad at things - he's 71 and worse at social skills than the three peasants who grew up in the fort, and they're 5, 7, and 14. Still, though, that could just be chance. And as one of my engravers demonstrated when a potash maker went insane, even poor combatants can be pretty deadly in the right circumstances - maybe he just got lucky? I'd expect that to raise his wrestling skill or something, since strangulation seems to be the fastest way for an unskilled dwarf to kill something, barring the strength required for reliably making body parts collapse into lumps of gore with a single punch, but still.

Spoiler: "Let's check his kills." (click to show/hide)

...oooookay then. Either he's the luckiest dwarf alive, or there's something strange going on here. Thirty-seven kills? Fourteen goblins is respectable enough, but twenty-three of them trolls? I'm pretty sure that I've seen steel-clad legendary combatants with shorter kill lists than this. And they were all in the same place, too.

It was at this point that I realized Ecamo is not a normal Dwarven name. A quick trip to the Wiki later, and I find that it's Elven - as is the rest of his name. That... Throws my previous theory of a vampire for something of a loop. Especially because not one of those kills is a dwarf or elf, and he doesn't seem to be hiding like they usually do. Seeking further clues, it's back to the description.

Spoiler: "Hang on a minute..." (click to show/hide)

So, yeah. It looks like I may have an incredibly badass - all the more so for having presumably used wooden weapons and armor if he is one - Elven agent in my fort (possibly here to try and investigate the rather suspicious death of every caravan they send?); I'm not sure how to get into Legends mode to try to confirm this without retiring briefly, and I don't actually know what retiring again might do here.

[spazyak]

Arent fake identities a thing? Maybe he's a liar.

[LadySerpentine]

Indeed they are, but I don't think you can fake additions to a kill list - and why would he pick an Elven name?

[Schmaven]

Indeed they are, but I don't think you can fake additions to a kill list - and why would he pick an Elven name?

That is fairly unbelievable to have such low combat skills and yet 37 kills.  Maybe they were just in a siege somewhere and got touched by those goblins and trolls before the marksdwarves killed them.  Is it enough to just be involved with the fight to get a kill?  Or do you need to execute the killing blow? 



In my fort, a were-elephant arrived, fought with all the undead hyenas and snakes on the surface until changing back to a human, then ran off the map in fear.  I did lose a couple dwarves to zombies though since it's now my rule that the surface is immediately sealed off, no matter who is up there, whenever were-creatures arrive.  Ever since that were-mammoth I confused for a were-moth wrecked one of my last forts...