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[muldrake]

Are there ways of making it useful to kill elves?  I know it's fun to kill elves just for the hell of it, but how do you make it productive?

They're such weaklings that they never retaliate no matter what you do, but other than just murdering their merchants and stealing everything in their caravan, how can you make it useful to kill them?

[Fleeting Frames]

If you're in reanimating region, you can reanimate the elves.

Then, you can kill them again, let them rot to bones, and use bones for crafting.

Otherwise, you can let them keep getting killed and reanimating, until you get unkillable hair/legendary soldiers/tantrum spiral.

That said, unarmed unarmored merchants or wildlife that don't hit back aren't exactly dangerous, yes. You could beat on them with training weapons or two shields for skillups.

They're bit more dangerous if going to war with you, capable of bringing giant animal ambush teams (even a giant war elephant can be invisible, which is probably how they kill the dragons in worldgen) but unlike goblins and humans this will not give you any metal to melt.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Are you sure?
I don't think elf bones can be used to craft, zombie or not.
Unless those strange moods, but again, didn't see any recently.

[Fleeting Frames]

Sentient bones cannot be used to craft.

Undead aren't sentient.

That said, haven't tested myself yet, just going by what PatrickLundall has reported in other threads.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Hmm, strange, if it is a thing I should have seen it.
Maybe I should play with more zombies to test it.

[steel jackal]

armok prefers elves in magma.
or magma in elves.
yes... force feed the elves magma until their guts bust open and they melt from the inside...

[Lozzymandias]

Sentient bones cannot be used to craft.

Undead aren't sentient.

That said, haven't tested myself yet, just going by what PatrickLundall has reported in other threads.

If a creature is sentient, then its body parts, whether they have been undeaded and redeaded or just deaded once, will be treated as sentient. That means they can't be butchered for bones.
However, if the creature has been sufficiently dismembered (Its a bit of a mess just how dismembered) then the resulting members will rot to bones, not needing to be butchered first. Once rotted, these are totemable, that is, can be carved for necklaces and bolts and the like.
Reanimation is handy because you have to chop a corpse into little pieces before it stops reanimating. Therefore the bits will be small enough to rot to bones and not just a partial skeleton.

A much more effective way of producting totemable parts is a 50 z drop onto a hard unyielding surface. Sell the resulting elf bone necklaces to an elf caravan!

[Infinityforce]

I don't like killing elves. Doesn't seem particularly rewarding, dwarfy or challenging.
Why would anyone kill elves when there are perfectly horrible/vicious goblins around?
I much prefer killing those evil baby-snatching gobbos and those troublesome kobolds. That's my idea of !FUN!
But I digress.
By far my favourite way to dispose of nasties is to create a deathtrap laden arena/labyrinth and/or have my dwarves use it for target practice.
Second is as (live) bait. Quite a useful option to have.

[PatrikLundell]

There are two factors involved in the acquisition of bone for crafting, first butchering to release the bones, and then having the bones available for crafting.

Some creatures are not butcherable, and some of these are sapient, while others are not. Unbutcherable creatures can be made to yield bone through "natural" butchering, such as traps that cut pieces of them off (in particular arms and legs), or a splatterer. Complete bodies will not yield bones when they've rotted (which is why the dorfs carry skeletons to the butcher from the caverns: to butcher the skeletons to free the bones).

Now, free bones are available for crafting only if the creature it came from is deemed not to be sapient. Somehow the fact that the creature it came from was undead overrides the fact that they were sapient before that. So elven bones can be used only if they come from a reanimated elf. I haven't fully verified that killing a sapient, reanimating it, and then rekilling it will result in a body of a non sapient, but I believe that's the case.

0.42.X changed the stockpile usages of the corpse stockpile and the refuse stockpile. Before that all dwarves, citizens, invaders, and undead alike, were sent to the corpse stockpile, while everything else, sapient or not, was sent to the refuse stockpile (some pieces into the refuse/corpse sub stockpile, which many confuse with the top level corpse one), and all free bones except dwarven ones (undead or not) were available for crafting.
From 0.42.X onward, the corpse stockpile take all body parts of all sapient creatures, while the refuse stockpile takes everything else. This means the refuse stockpile will no longer take anything that freak dwarves or merchants out. The refuse stockpile now take parts of reanimated former sapients without problem. All free bones in the refuse stockpile are available for crafting.

[Evans]

Sentient bones cannot be used to craft.

Undead aren't sentient.

That said, haven't tested myself yet, just going by what PatrickLundall has reported in other threads.

If a creature is sentient, then its body parts, whether they have been undeaded and redeaded or just deaded once, will be treated as sentient. That means they can't be butchered for bones.
However, if the creature has been sufficiently dismembered (Its a bit of a mess just how dismembered) then the resulting members will rot to bones, not needing to be butchered first. Once rotted, these are totemable, that is, can be carved for necklaces and bolts and the like.
Reanimation is handy because you have to chop a corpse into little pieces before it stops reanimating. Therefore the bits will be small enough to rot to bones and not just a partial skeleton.

A much more effective way of producting totemable parts is a 50 z drop onto a hard unyielding surface. Sell the resulting elf bone necklaces to an elf caravan!

No - reanimated creature is no longer sentient.
Your Happy Hippy Elf, supposedly sentient being, becomes upon reanimation a *Happy hippy Elf Corpse* which is a different, non sentient creature.
Bones from that creature will not be *elf bones* but *elf corpse bones* and as such can be used for crafting.
I have most of my beds in my fort made from succubus corpse bones, after a siege from the tower.

[Lozzymandias]

Now, free bones are available for crafting only if the creature it came from is deemed not to be sapient.

Are you sure patrik? I process (with an axe) goblin prisoners all the time, without reanimation. Their bones get turned into bolts as readily as any others.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

snip

Let's do some !!SCIENCE!!

[King Kitteh]

Wasn't being unable to butcher sapient skeletons a glitch that was occurring for a few versions a while back? I think it's fixed now.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Wasn't being unable to butcher sapient skeletons a glitch that was occurring for a few versions a while back? I think it's fixed now.

Nope, you can not butcher troglodytes anyway, unless you are playing mod.

[King Kitteh]

Wasn't being unable to butcher sapient skeletons a glitch that was occurring for a few versions a while back? I think it's fixed now.

Nope, you can not butcher troglodytes anyway, unless you are playing mod.

Sorry if this was what you meant but, does that also affect butchering skeletons? I was under the impression that you could "disassemble" a Sapient if it had rotted to only a skeleton. Can't do that?