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[Saiko Kila]

I've experienced a missing body problem. It was during a goblin siege, but probably not related to it.

People in the meeting hall started freaking out over a dead monster slayer, but only a couple of them, despite the room being crowdy (over 60 people, plus dozens of animals evacuated from pastures). It turned out a monster slayer died suddenly. However, he was still listed as missing, despite death supposedly being seen by some people. I used dfhack to determine the cause of death - it was by a vampiress. I know about her from Dwarf Therapist, but not in-game, so I let her hang around. Plus she's a great crossbowman and mason. Before this kill I had 65 monster slayers, and 55 normal citizens, so loss of a monster slayer is not significant, he left some nice named weapon... and I was in process of furnishing rooms for the slayers and the vampire, so they can be useful in protecting my actual population.

But the death caused some problems. First: how the vampire could have killed the guy without anyone noticing, despite them standing next to the victim? Could it be fog from mist generator concealing everyone, or the vampire is just so skilled? Second: why they know he is dead, stand over him, be freaked and create bad memories, but still not see his body, and remove missing status? With "missing" status, there's no way to memorialise him (he's not on the list), and no one's burying the body.

I have created an archive save for experimenting, and ordered dumping the dead guy into the atom smasher, and smashed him. The first person to carry the body was freaking out, but then gave birth on the way (a nice experience for the baby, too), so another had to continue. He was also horrified, but dumped the body. The dead was still missing! So the guy is horrified because he saw the dead body of the deceased (as it clearly stated in thoughts), and the deceased is still missing and no one knows what happened to him. A bug or feature? (As expected, smashing the body didn't help in anything)

I reverted to original save, and installed a coffin for the deceased, then marked it as his grave. Nothing was happening for a few weeks, except some people present in the meeting hall being horrified from time to time. Finally someone has noticed him drained of blood, and then buried in the coffin, traumatizing onlookers. Then his murder showed up in justice system, I accused some goblin (who died in the meantime on surface killed by an aspiring monster slayer) and let it go.

I know sometimes noticing a body seems to be laggin, but never experienced such a disrepancy between an obvious death and noticing it. Additionally, they can still be horrified by body of the missing person, and not reveal it, which is just stupid. May it be caused by unusual method of dying, mist, low IQ, any rational cause, or is it a bug?

[Grand Sage]

What version of DF are you playing? In the most recent release (0.44.10), The thoughts for finding a dead body and seeing someone die, and long term memory was added, so I assume there may be some unusual behaviour there, intended or not.

I initially thought that his status as monster slayer was the cause of the "missing" problem, but seeing as you actually send dwarves to carry his body to a dump site, it most clearly is a bug. Please check the DF bugtracker for similar bugs, and, in absents of any, report it there.

[Saiko Kila]

It's current version, i.e. 0.44.10.

I've found something on mantis:

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=7439
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=7278

So this isn't new. It was present since about v.0.40. This here is marked as resolved.  However, by description it looks to me there were two problems: first that some critters in caverns were listed as missing, second that dwarves clearly seeing the body (and being horrified) do not update the missing status. I'm not convinced the second problem was resolved, or if it did not return.

[PatrikLundell]

I've had a partial opposite issue, i.e. when a report shows up that somebody has died, the body is already gone as it's been hauled to the corpse stockpile or is being hauled there. Still, it's a case of them clearly seeing the body and reacting to it, but failing to report it in a timely manner. In my case it probably happened in 0.44.05 the latest time, but it's been present for a long time.

The issue with vampires draining citizens of blood within full view of others, including stationed militia, has been reported on the forum quite a long time ago (0.40.X?), although I haven't checked the bug tracker to see if it's been reported there.

[redivider]

The new version stress "rebalance" is more buggy and messy than previous (44.09). Dwarves are impossible to bring down to low stress levels (you can make their dream come true, give them the best meals, bedrooms etc etc doesnt work) once they get stressed. If they are in the military they will soon stop caring about their friends dying (doesnt care about seeing a dwarf die) but they will be horrified and get PTSD from seeing a random crundle die. The tactic from the past where you wanted to get the "doesnt care about anything anymore" trait doesnt really work anymore as that seems random now (I like it this way actually). So sometimes they get ptsd sometimes not, but it seems that it is creature specific and checks whether they knew each other (was friends/family etc). Microing corpse haulers is a thing now. The problem is even if you get your "hardened" military to haul corpses, they still get ptsd from it, there seems to be no way to harden them anymore (speaking from my exp from a sinister reanimating embark a few years in). Also there is no "immediate" happines so once someone gets horrified they keep remembering and even if they craft an artifact or masterwork theyre not even happy for a week or a day, so theres no short term happines anymore, just short and long term stress, which sucks and is not realistic. Dwarves should be able to kinda "forget" about problems when they drink for instance, thats my 2p (look at this for instance https://puu.sh/Ah8V4/2d91eb6fa3.png ).

Essentially what happens now is there is no more "1 drop over the top" tantrum spirals where shit hits the fan and its all over; now it happens slower,  1 dwarf gets too stressed, goes melancholic or whatever terminal thing, dies, this tips someone else (or more) and this repeats and eventually most of your fort is dead (considering no migrants). Although it seems that dwarves that crafted artifacts still cant go terminal like in previous versions so theres that. TBH to this day I dont see what the whole stress change actually "changed" from the previous happiness system, or how it is better or whatever in any way shape or form. Think of this what you will.

[§k]

I think missing people can be memorised. That's how we memorise miners falling into magma.

[Saiko Kila]

Yes, missing people can be memorised. The problem to me was however not a possibility of rasing a ghost to hunt my people, but rather their inaction when it comes to removing the corpse. And the corpse was creating bad memories for more and more folks, which is a serious problem (really, it's completely unrealistic now). I have him memorised, but only after the body was discovered, they moved it to the coffin. With further such cases I simply order it do be dumped into atom smasher as quick as possible (and the owner of the corpse remains missing).

As for a vampire killing a guy in the crowd without anyone noticing, this happened again. Although the victim was just another monster slayer, I fear that a proper dwarf may be next. I created rooms for monster slayers, and a room for vampire amongst them. My hope is she will sometimes visit the room to watch furniture (made from her favourite materials), and drain one of the neighbours. But it seems this won't be so simple. Is there any easy way to make a tavern for visitors only? If not, I will create a burrow for every dwarf except the vampire, and exclude the tavern from it. She's my best mason and my best crossbowman, I don't want to isolate her.

[PatrikLundell]

There is no way to create a visitor's only tavern. You can use burrows to keep your dorfs mostly out of one, but then you can't serve booze to mine visitite, nor clean up the mess caused by visitors fighting among themselves (or harvest any visitite resulting from it).
Setting up a tavern for citizens only and a tavern for all far away is completely counter productive, as it results in your dorfs spending a lot of time trekking to the remote tavern, for reasons I haven't been able to understand (most of your dorfs' tavern time will be spent in their own tavern, but there was constant traffic to and from the remote one).

[Saiko Kila]

Maybe they were performing, or seeking to talk with more humane friends. Anyway, I want to just minimise risk, and time spent in the wrong tavern. I routinely tweak burrows for some purposes, so tweaking it to get some items is not that problematic.

Still, I'm not sure it will work, because I don't know how vampire selects its victims. I suppose it is someone falling asleep (on the floor of the tavern/hall in my case). But since it clearly doesn't have to be an isolated sleeper, it makes any setup problematic.

UPDATE: Oh, and my next vampire victim is not in the list of engraver to memorialise. That's another monster slayer. So no all missing can be memorialised. Strange, but I remember issue like that from previous versions.