Print

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

[rachiebird]

Today I turned on DF. Less than a minute in, I get a notification that my leatherworker has been found in a tree, dead of starvation. Since I'm very sentimental, and also a savescummer, I restart the game. I know nothing about this dwarf, but I'm determined to save him. After looking stuff up online, it seems people have had some success with constructed stairs. Unfortunately, this guy is on death's door, and no matter what, he always kicks the bucket before anybody can make it over there.

I do some more googling. DFhack has a command to instantly heal units. I do that, and the guy is no longer starving/dehydrated. Yay! Someone builds stairs underneath him, but he still won't climb down. Maybe he needs a matching set of down stairs? No good. I can order them to be built, but anybody who takes the job will just grab the material and then stand around doing nothing.

More googling. DFhack lets you teleport units. I teleport him to the ground. I rejoice. He walks over to the new stairs and climbs the tree again.

Okay. I order the stairs deconstructed. Some idler comes over and dismantles them so slowly I'd swear the game was paused. For good measure, I restrict the area around the tree. I restrict the area in the tree. I teleport him. He uh, walks through the restricted section and continues to pursue his tree-dwelling dreams.

And that's where I am now. I would like advice on how to remove him, preferably without harming him, or the tree.

Misc Details:
- When I first located him, his job displayed as "hunting vermin". Since being healed, it's been "no job".
- It's unlikely he was trying to run away from something. There aren't any hostile units in the area. The closest thing to hostile units this area has ever had is a herd of badgers that shows up once a year and is always quickly dealt with. The most recent combat report is from two seasons ago when a human caravan guard killed a kingsnake. He dislikes bats, but I haven't seen any bats either.
- I do have ladders and fruit gathering areas, but this tree is not part of any of them.

[Panando]

And that's where I am now. I would like advice on how to remove him, preferably without harming him, or the tree.

Well that's your problem. You need to shake off these non-dwarvenly thoughts of not harming trees and cut the tree down ASAP!

[PatrikLundell]

Can you please tell me how you teleport a creature to a different z level? I haven't been able to teleport anything that isn't still selected, which means only sideways (in your case, it would mean beside the tree to drop down on the ground)?

I've had stupid visitors who decided that pathing down into a murky pool was the right thing to do to get into the fortress (including a case of "Meeting" for a petition). I dug a tile beside the pool and dug a stair for good measure and teleported the visitor(s) to that tile, but the bugger climbed up and went back to the bottom of the murky pool. I did, however, manage to get the morons to path into the fortress by teleporting them (in many steps) a fair bit into one of my fortress entrances, and from there they actually managed to path into the fortress. You might be able to do the same.

Another alternative is to set up a burrow covering the whole embark but the tree (in particular excluding the level where the bugger camps) and assign your dorf to it and then teleport the dorf to the ground.
 That ought to forbid the bugger from climbing back up (but burrow violations aren' exactly unusual). You might also combine this with waiting until the bugger gets hungry/thirsty, so there's a reason to path to a food/drink stockpile instead of back up the tree.
I

[rachiebird]

Regarding teleportation, you'll want to go to the dfhack console and use these commands


teleport -showunitid
    shows the id number of the unit under your cursor (the unit you want to teleport)
teleport -showpos
    shows the position coordinate number underneath your cursor (where you want the unit to go)
teleport -unit *** -x *** -y *** -z ***
    actually teleports the unit, fill in the blanks with the numbers you got earlier

With any luck, your visitor will be appreciative, instead of pathing back into the pool.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks!
Any luck with getting the bird watcher down? A more permanent solution is to build walls around the base of the tree to make it impossible to climb (provided, of course, the bugger doesn't start scaling the walls... If so, try raised drawbridges, as I don't think they can be climbed [but I haven't heard any definitive claim in either direction]).

[Dunamisdeos]

Build a complex series of pressure plates and raising drawbridges that dump a 10x10 cube volume of water on top of the tree anytime someone tries to climb it. Think like a water tower, but with a trapdoor over the tree.

[rachiebird]

Thanks!
Any luck with getting the bird watcher down? A more permanent solution is to build walls around the base of the tree to make it impossible to climb (provided, of course, the bugger doesn't start scaling the walls... If so, try raised drawbridges, as I don't think they can be climbed [but I haven't heard any definitive claim in either direction]).

HA. Bird watcher! I have a duck stuck in a different tree, maybe six trees away, so that's actually really funny. Maybe I'll try teleporting it down too, to see if it's also an obsessive tree-climber.

Anyways, I just booted df up, and decided to try teleporting him clear on the other side of the map from the tree, since that seemed to work for you. Plopped him down in his bedroom, instead of down and over a few tiles from the tree. He actually went right to the larder and got himself a drink.

I also noticed that the only labor he had enabled was leatherworking, which is something our fortress has never used. So I made him an engraver, and he went off to do that after putting his goblet away.

I feel like I should continue to keep an eye on him though, so I've named him "incredibly stupid dwarf", and will continue to check in on him periodically.

[greycat]

Staircases work very well, but the staircase must be adjacent to a branch (not a leaf) of the tree, so the dwarf can walk on the branch, then on the staircase, then down.  You can also build floors from the staircase to a branch, if need be.

Deconstructing takes much longer than constructing.  I know it's nonsensical.  It's just always been that way.

If you want to keep these trees around, I would strongly advise that you build permanent staircases up to each level of the tree, so dwarves can climb out of the trees.  Otherwise, chop 'em.

[Loci]

I teleport him to the ground. I rejoice. He walks over to the new stairs and climbs the tree again.

When they have no jobs to do, dwarves like to return to their "previous idle" locations--which, for this dwarf, was up in that tree--before selecting an "idle job". If you teleport the errant dwarf into a locked room you should be able to "force set" his "previous idle" location to that room. That may keep him from climbing back up the tree. Also make sure you have one or more accessible meeting areas in your fort; some odd tree-climbing behavior results from dwarves being unable to path to a meeting area.