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Author Topic: Where have all the dragons gone?  (Read 847 times)

Mort Stroodle

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Where have all the dragons gone?
« on: August 25, 2018, 11:09:11 pm »

I've finally gotten around to playing adventure mode, and all of the random chatter between hill dwarves and townies has made me suddenly remember that something has been missing from my fortresses for a bizarrely long time. Despite all of the companions and random drunks imploring my adventurer to slay roc's, dragons, and hill Titans, in the nine months I've been playing this game, I have encountered two surface megabeasts in fortress mode, period. That was two dragons in the same fortress, back around 40.05. Since then, I have not had one surface megabeasts attack any of my forts. I've had countless forgotten beasts come up from the depths, sure, but when you know that every beast of any significance is going to arrive in the caverns it's really quite easy to install some drawbridges to wall any dangerous ones off indefinitely. Variety is the spice of life, and for all of their procedural generation the forgotten beasts have started to become rather dull to deal with. I've never encountered a roc, a bronze Colossus, a titan, or a hydra, leaving the surface of my forts worryingly benign.

So, what I want to know is whether or not other people have encountered a lack of megabeasts on the surface in the last couple of updates. Is it possible that some kind of bug is preventing them from attacking our forts? Have surface mega beasts always been less common than forgotten beasts? Or has everyone else been getting a decent number of surface megabeasts? Is it possible that there's something I'm doing at worldgen that causes fewer surface megabeasts to survive? I tend to go for medium-short history length (125-250 years) and meduim-high beast frequency. Also, does breaching the caverns early encourage forgotten beasts to spawn instead of surface megabeasts?
« Last Edit: August 25, 2018, 11:11:14 pm by Mort Stroodle »
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Where have all the dragons gone?
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2018, 11:15:58 pm »

How many dragons actually exist in your world?
Check that they're not all long dead before going looking for them.
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Where have all the dragons gone?
« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2018, 04:32:23 am »

A previous 43.05 fort of mine got 27 forgotten beasts in 39 years in small world, but only 1 dragon and 1 hydra. Then again, it did have more fbs than megabeasts in the worldgen, and iirc most of that time was spent below 80 pop - semimegabeasts were more common, but still only a handful (if you're imaging a hand full of minotaur, imagine them as miniatures or chibis).

Don't know if FBs have link like that. They have wealth trigger, though.

Adequate Swimmer

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Re: Where have all the dragons gone?
« Reply #3 on: August 26, 2018, 05:12:55 am »

Dragons tend to be spread out and few in number. The real worldgen winners are cyclopses and rocs, plus the occasional minotaur.
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Mort Stroodle

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Re: Where have all the dragons gone?
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2018, 03:09:51 pm »

Yeah taking a glace and Legends Viewer is telling me that dragons and titans are drastically outnumbered by forgotten beasts. The problem isn't that they're being killed off, there are simply not many there to begin with. That being said, legends viewer doesn't seem to have an easy way to filter for the other megabeasts. I have no idea how many rocs, hydras, and bronze colossi are knocking about, but judging by their complete disinterest in my fortresses I have to imagine they're also incredibly rare. I guess I'll just have to hunt for megabeasts myself in adventure mode if I want to meet any.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Where have all the dragons gone?
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2018, 04:19:05 pm »

Yeah taking a glace and Legends Viewer is telling me that dragons and titans are drastically outnumbered by forgotten beasts. The problem isn't that they're being killed off, there are simply not many there to begin with. That being said, legends viewer doesn't seem to have an easy way to filter for the other megabeasts. I have no idea how many rocs, hydras, and bronze colossi are knocking about, but judging by their complete disinterest in my fortresses I have to imagine they're also incredibly rare. I guess I'll just have to hunt for megabeasts myself in adventure mode if I want to meet any.
Legends Viewer historical figures list has a filter for race, doesn't it?
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Adequate Swimmer

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Re: Where have all the dragons gone?
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2018, 06:26:01 pm »

Yeah taking a glace and Legends Viewer is telling me that dragons and titans are drastically outnumbered by forgotten beasts. The problem isn't that they're being killed off, there are simply not many there to begin with. That being said, legends viewer doesn't seem to have an easy way to filter for the other megabeasts. I have no idea how many rocs, hydras, and bronze colossi are knocking about, but judging by their complete disinterest in my fortresses I have to imagine they're also incredibly rare. I guess I'll just have to hunt for megabeasts myself in adventure mode if I want to meet any.

Attacks in general are less frequent in this build, and often underwhelming once they do happen.
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