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[EuphoriaToRegret]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had a fort get sieged by a tower in year 2 last night. It died. The fort, not the siege. The undead path to the fort now when there's an opening, yes. And they can climb walls, although as far as I saw they will not path to the fortress if the only access into the fort requires climbing walls. If a flying animal or something on the other side of the wall gets their attention they will scale walls to chase after it.

Undead seem kinda impossible to beat in dwarf vs zombie combat right now. For example, tower sieges can come with necromancers to re-raise the dead, and the zombies they bring with them typically have weapons and shields. Zombies can even have archers. And all zombies, either tower zombies or evil biome zombies, are capable of sprinting, making for insanely fast chasing down of prey. I don't think they can get tired from sprinting, meaning they will chase anyone and anything that can get tired or overexerted and catch them eventually. And due to the strength of the dead, armor is almost useless against anything dwarf size or larger because one hit can have enough force to pulp a dwarf instantly.

Best current anti-undead options seem to be clever traps or flooding the world with cleansing magma and fire.

Even better is the fact that, since they're undead, they don't get stunned, they don't bleed, they can easily dodge, and they can attack just as fast as you.
What even made zombies so difficult in the newer versions? Was it the change to combat where it was no longer based on  character speed but now the speed of different attacks?

[Spehss _]

Even better is the fact that, since they're undead, they don't get stunned, they don't bleed, they can easily dodge, and they can attack just as fast as you.
What even made zombies so difficult in the newer versions? Was it the change to combat where it was no longer based on  character speed but now the speed of different attacks?

I'd say it was the addition of pulping in 0.40. Undead's super strength lets them pulp body parts easily, and even if it's not a lethal pulping (head or upper or lower body) it seems a pulping attack can cause enough pain to knock out a target, and being unconscious around undead typically equals death.

[ZzarkLinux]

December 27th patch notes (pending release):
: Strength buff nerf
: zombie tactics nerf, will charge instead of armlock & suplexing dwarves
: severing any HAS_GRASP part on a headless zombie will destroy it
: Toady reproduced one of the "unkillable zombie" bugs

Somebody build a tavern to celebrate !

A zombie nerf has arrived. The animated critters no longer block, dodge, parry, wrestle or sprint, and they do charging attacks whenever possible. Zombies no longer receive positive defense adjustments for body part types, and they don't seek or prevent combat opportunities. Their strength bonus has been reduced. Severing all non-smashed heads on a zombie kills it (smashing already worked), and severing or smashing any working grasp on a headless zombie kills it. Zombies can still be reanimated if they have a working grasp. So it's a bit confusing there with the overall grasp situation on headless zombies (it's better to target their arms than their bodies if you can't smash them entirely), and they still have some undue benefits they share with wild animals (you should be able to strike or stop many unarmed attacks with weapons), but it is much better than it was. I still sometimes get those invincible unsmashable zombie heads. I'll try to figure that out.

In an arena test, my competent sword+shield human was able to defeat ten zombies at once, receiving only minor injuries. It took some judicious selections, and some dodging to other squares, but it isn't hard if you stay away from multiple opponents. I also set six sword humans against twenty zombies, and they won without any losing anybody. On the other hand, I set ten unarmed unskilled humans against ten zombies, and the zombies won without losses. That sounds about right to me -- the zombies have many advantages in unarmed combat. So you'll have to keep your squishy civilians safe. Incidentally, one unarmed unskilled elephant person was able to kill ten human zombies without any trouble, since they have smashing power. Then an elephant person zombie was able to kill the elephant person...

[Robsoie]

That's great !
Finally the undead can become a serious threat like they were in the past versions without being overpowered silly.

It will make the "too easy to clean the *spoiler* with your army of undead" stuff in adventurer mode a bad thing of the past too

[HawaiianJon]

As far as I can tell, I am able to survive about 2 seasons with Mace Dwarves (more pulping damage, more gory messes.) yet if ONE thing dies or gets slaughtered, then it turns into a death spiral.
You butcher those 2 starting animals? Their Hair and Skin can kill you.
You killed generally anything in the caverns? Its coming for you.
You abandoned the fort without butchering the 2 starting animals? Muscled Corpses of BIG and NORMALLY STRONG animals are coming from your own base.

You need to use the Dwarven Cleansing Liquid... but even then...

Can you make it that long?

[VerdantSF]

As far as I can tell, I am able to survive about 2 seasons with Mace Dwarves (more pulping damage, more gory messes.) yet if ONE thing dies or gets slaughtered, then it turns into a death spiral.

Are maces better than warhammers for pulping, or are the weapons still basically equivalent?

[PatrikLundell]

Cages still trap most everything. Butchering animals in a reanimating biome requires militia dorfs on standby to deal with reanimated hides and hair, but those are not that much of a threat to a competent militia unless they are HEAD ones, in which case they're unkillable, or possibly just almost unkillable (requiring a very rare exact hit, which a full squad of weapon masters cannot be expected to deliver before they all die from exhaustion/dehydration/hunger or damage from the reanimated skin).

Suffering death inside the fortress is very dangerous (the tavern with it's drinking to death is likely to become a source of excitement...).

The sprinting was really scary, since that was FAST. I've got mixed feelings about it disappearing.

Stuff in the caverns can be eliminated using cage traps and/or atom smashers (a bit tedious to rebuild them when they deconstruct trying to smash reanimated blind cave ogres and the like, though), but it is still possible to clean an infested cavern out. The messy part is the campers that refuse to path into your fortress.

There isn't much margin for errors in a reanimating biome, however, but there shouldn't be. If you don't want that level of danger you should avoid those embarks (and leave them for people who like to juggle with running chain saws).

[ZzarkLinux]

For butchering, I would build 1-tile closet/door and dump the skin/hair in there until you can get spinner and tanner going. Worked pretty well for me. Getting an embark going, well that's a different story. Make a backup save before unpausing your embark.

As far as I can tell, I am able to survive about 2 seasons with Mace Dwarves (more pulping damage, more gory messes.) yet if ONE thing dies or gets slaughtered, then it turns into a death spiral.

Are maces better than warhammers for pulping, or are the weapons still basically equivalent?

Aren't you the guy who diagnosed MicroDwarf syndrome? Congrats man !!!
But I can't answer your question, I don't know :-( You may be more qualified to answer it than most.

[PatrikLundell]

Set up butcher in the middle and tanner and farmer's workshop to each side of it (in the same room or in separate rooms). Surround everything with cage traps, as that will cage quite a few of the reanimated bits before they can cause too much damage, and also can catch dodging civilians to save them from the undead parts. Dig a shaft with an atom smasher at the bottom just a few tiles from the butcher trap ring for the stuff you want to get rid of (including hair and skin early on, if you don't want to risk processing them).
When I did get animated HEAD skin or hair I used DFHack's exterminate him/her command to work around the unkillability bug. One rather annoying thing is that you have to dismantle the workshops far too frequently because of killed renimated hair/skin parts getting stuck in the buildings (and some of those can reanimate).
Also use doors so you can keep the reanimated stuff locked up in an emergency.

[ZzarkLinux]

When I did get animated HEAD skin or hair I used DFHack's exterminate him/her command to work around the unkillability bug..

I used Linux so I couldn't get DFHack for the unkillable nose hairs. But I did manage to avoid using cage traps. Not easy, but possible.

Patrik, what is your initial build for death biomes?

[PatrikLundell]

I don't have a huge track record of reanimating biome embarks. The referred method was used on an embark supplied by vjek to Pseudo which I piggybacked on. I don't remember exactly, but 5 picks were included, no wood except the wagon, no animals except the draft ones, and I think there were normal amounts of booze, food, etc. Oh, the surface was lethal when the blood rain happened, due to the extreme heat. Some migrant waves made it in, but all caravans were lost. If nothing else got them caged animals perished and reanimated outside their cages in the trade depot...

The previous one was an evil reanimating glacier with a non animating ocean biome in the corner, in which my first attempt was slaughtered by a yeti before the miners got the pick in the ground due to despairing evil rain. From then on I save scummed my following attempts as I didn't think I could handle more than one set of reanimating dorfs and their animals.
I believe I used a "normal" setup with two picks, two axes, dogs, cats, peafowl, and turkeys (3 of each gender to handle non breeders), but skipping the grazing sheep. The items brought otherwise didn't really matter, since the only thing I managed to get indoors before I tossed up a wall was a single piece of wood. It was a race to dig though the ice to set up a butchery for the draft animals as well as a well before hunger and thirst got to them (it's really frustrating to fail to get them to put the last hand on the butchery because they're hunting vermin, so they starve to death). The animals and water bought enough time to get make a raid on a cavern to get some crops for planting. Piercing the aquifer required usage of the open air freeze method. This embark was the first one I encountered the unkillable head stuff bug in. I had reanimated ram head hair, and it didn't seem to fight back, but my civilians and militia fought it until they passed out and started to starve and get dehydrated. Forum help allowed me to build a cage and use a civilian alert burrow and restation orders to withdraw, and the hair was eventually caught in a cage (and finally atom smashed). The key there was that it didn't fight back, so the militia could actually withdraw.

[ZzarkLinux]

Cool. Your embark load was a little different than mine. I used 3 picks instead of 5, and two seasons of food booze, and I had like 60+ blocks and wood each. That's because I wanted full map aquifer, so stone was crucial. I would embark and try to wall in the wagon and roof it (surface bunker benefits e.g.it is very hard to go up-in-Z-levels in Zombieland). If the giant kea pathed directly to center of map within 15 days, then I had to savescum.

Another Toady quote today:

I also fixed a bug that was causing reanimated undead to end up on two sides of conflicts (which caused further issues).

Does this end the "Dwaf husk punches the other Dwarf husk" bug? I will always remember the trio of legendary wrestler husks on the surface of RabbitHut. I feel they were always watching me over their shoulders... creeped me out.

[PatrikLundell]

I normally embark with full aquifers (in non evil embarks) on perfectly flat embarks, and I tend to bring 12+ stones (for mechanisms and drawbridges). Usually I've got at least a few trees, but if I don't, I try to bring some of that as well. I try to get clay, as that works well to plug aquifer walls with (as well as to cover my recessed courtyard). I don't think you need to bring more building material than about 40 pieces of plugging material (10 stones split into blocks, for instance), as I think you hit stone after at most 3 levels of aquifer, and that stone ought to be sufficient to plug the remaining levels if split into blocks.
I toss out the plump helmets are replace them with brewable garden vegetables in order to get seeds for potental "surface" farming. I don't farm dimple cups or quarry bushes, so their seeds go, and I try to top up the others to 9 or 10. Also, I toss out all the wood and pig tail stuff, and add 8 cave spider silk threads and 8 wool threads plus 5 leather bags instead. Since my worlds are mineral poor I often lose embark points by having to use a steel anvil and/or bronze axes and picks. I try to bring some plaster and a few junk metal bars (for mood handling).

I wouldn't bring blocks, but rather stone and split the those into blocks myself.
I don't think you should have to save scum because of early keas. The strategy ought to be to dig fast and bring as much as possible inside (everything can probably be hauled within 15 days anyway), possibly building a bunker meanwhile (before the miners have dug out an area there isn't anywhere to haul stuff anyway). As soon as the undead are spotted I'd turtle with whatever I've managed to bring in, and return to the surface when they've left, working in small bursts.

[greycat]

Also, I toss out all the wood and pig tail stuff, and add 8 cave spider silk threads and 8 wool threads plus 5 leather bags instead.

If you don't consider it an exploit, you can embark with bags of sand (1 point each), and dump the sand out.  (Or actually make some glass thing, but that requires fuel and so on.)

[PatrikLundell]

Also, I toss out all the wood and pig tail stuff, and add 8 cave spider silk threads and 8 wool threads plus 5 leather bags instead.

If you don't consider it an exploit, you can embark with bags of sand (1 point each), and dump the sand out.  (Or actually make some glass thing, but that requires fuel and so on.)

Yes, but I do consider it a bit of an exploit (I use other exploits, though, so I'm not consistent). The bags are likely to eventually be used for glass making when I set up a magma glass furnace, provided I've got sand on the embark. I could also leave one seed each of dimple cups and quarry bushes with the same intent. I also make sure to bring all four kinds of booze by reducing the amount of other types and replacing that with the added one(s), because I want to provide the maximum booze variety possible.