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[snow dwarf]

After horribly every dwarf in a succession fort die in an evil biome I decided to compile a list of tips and questions regarding evil biomes.

Tips:
Smash Corpses and refuse that you don't need.
Make a military from blunt weapons, don't bother making any other weapon type.
Creatures in caverns will also be undead.

Question:
Can bodies in coffins reanimate?

[Ulfarr]

There are some (5 years) old posts that do say that burried corpses can reanimate, but I'm not sure if it's still valid.

Also the "use blunt weapons" part is now somewhat debateable. On one hand, edge weapons will create more body parts that can be reanimated, on the other they will be a lot smaller/weaker than their full bodies and thus easier to kill even by civilians/untrained dwarfs, in some cases.  One of the major issues with the undead, was that dwarves couldn't  hit very small body parts (reanimated hair, fingers etc) but that has been fixed recently.

[Leonidas]

I've been running a reanimating fort for a few weeks now under 44.05, so I can clarify a few points.

1. Corpses and body parts will reanimate unless they're mangled or mutilated. I had problems getting bodies into coffins, but that was probably from a bug unrelated to the reanimation.

2. I've been using maces on the undead, and they seem to mangle just fine. Once the undead go down, they don't come up again, at least with maces.

3. Butchering is tricky. Hair, wool, and skin will reanimate and disrupt your workers. They aren't dangerous, though. I've never seen one injure a dwarf. But, they can cause a morale hit if your butchering area is in sight of many dwarves. Once a battle starts, all dwarves in sight will join it and gain a "vengeful" hit to stress. So butchering works just fine, as long as you don't mind a few interruptions and keep it out of sight.

4. Undead have plenty of useable parts on them, so don't forget to butcher them. You could even think of caging undead grazers as a superior alternative to pasturing live ones.

5. On my map, the surface-level wildlife spawns as undead while the cavern wildlife spawns normally. But creatures in the caverns fight and generate corpses, which reanimate. After a few years I had hundreds of undead in my caverns, who swarmed and killed anything that appeared, including FBs. And so the horde grew. Opening a cavern at ground level is not to be done lightly. While the surface undead only attack on sight, the cavern undead all sensed the path to my fortress and took it immediately. An undead horde in a sealed cavern probably drains your FPS a little, but an undead horde in an open cavern will drive your FPS down to single digits.

6. Reanimation takes a random amount of time, so don't assume that the dead will just hop up and fight when you want them to. I had to wait nearly a month for a cyclops to reanimate and walk into my cage trap.

7. Armor works great against the undead, because they mostly just scratch and bite. I put all my dwarves, except a few miners, into squads with full armor.

8. Caravans are vulnerable to surface undead, because guards armed with bows or spears are useless. I tried letting the caravans walk over the surface, but it failed too many times, and I ended up building a caravan tunnel.

9. Undead make awesome training dummies for marksdwarves. But then, marksdwarves are useless against undead.

10. Undead are all on the same team, and I believe that they're hostile to HFS. And the dead are immune to syndromes. I'm planning a huge battle of HFS vs Army of the Dead. Stay tuned.

[PatrikLundell]

When it comes to undead in the caverns, I managed to eliminate a few hundred of those buggers with a combination of atom smashers set to trigger on critters smaller than bridge destruction size and cage traps (the latter for reanimated large thingies, such as blind cave ogres and rutherers). As long as you can close up the entrance to rebuild the smashers you should be able to mostly clear a cavern in 5 years or so (I had a few campers that refused to path into the fortress). That was in 0.40.24, though, so a few things have changed.

[FantasticDorf]

Its worth mentioning that you can train wrestlers and the like out of butchers, and miner squads by adding armor ontop of them or making them replace their clothes outright, with this you could assign some militia captains in one man inactive squads, and the skills learnt through training will transfer over into inactive duty.

Metal chainmail and leather armor should be enough generally on a strong butcher (good for hauling corpses anyway) who can promptly punch skins etc back into being undead.

[nuget102]

Build a enclosed structure on the surface asap.

Evil biomes don't always reanimate

Weather can be nasty, like rain that causes localized necrosis. But it gets everywhere so you end up with a zombie of melted flesh.

[Sanctume]

Axe > war hammer vs husk/thrall that gain skills and feel no pain.

[PatrikLundell]

Evil biomes seem to fail to reanimate most of the time, so you need luck, hacking, or searching to get it, usually. My current (non reanimating) embark had a rather interesting evil rain: it causes tuberculosis, or as close to it as DF can manage, i.e. a permanent syndrome of coughing blood. While usually not fatal (two babies and a kid), it causes the whole map to be covered in blood over time (a tribute to Armok...).

[rhavviepoodle]

I once had a fort with no syndrome weather, but it rained bile that produced blisters on dwarf. On their eyes, too. So after a point, the majority of my dwarves we're blind.

[snow dwarf]

Axe > war hammer vs husk/thrall that gain skills and feel no pain.

Why axe not maces? I personally find maces the best for undead because they make sure that don't come back

[FantasticDorf]

Axe > war hammer vs husk/thrall that gain skills and feel no pain.

Why axe not maces? I personally find maces the best for undead because they make sure that don't come back

Because you'll cut them into reanimating little bits that are unintelligent and generally less threatening than a more powerful and able husk head on.

[Sutremaine]

When it comes to husks, I'm guessing that they don't care about the damage that maces do?

...If you chop a husk's arm off, does the arm retain its husk status when animated?

[Leonidas]

In my current 44.05 game, I'm not seeing anything called a thrall, husk, or zombie. Just corpses. I guess that husks and thralls only come from evil weather. So the weapons choice would depend on which type of evil biome you've landed in.

[Kametec_Housen]

Husks/thralls can only be created by husking/thralling cloud. Husks and thralls are the same, the only difference is name.

Also, I usually mix weapons in squad, so that chopping and mangling can happen in the same time.