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[anewaname]

The axedwarf bites the werellama. The axedwarf spits out werellama wool.

[mross]

Won't work once digging invaders are implemented.

Complaining about an unfinished sandbox game.

Not a valid excuse.

[Bumber]

You necro'ed for that? And the mermaid thread to call the game boring?

[Salmeuk]

he must have run out of new things to post about, and has begun to recycle old topics. Luckily DF development is so slow his three year old complaints are somewhat relevant, so I feel comfortable posting in this thread that werebeasts are the best part of the early game and if you cannot handle a surprise attack once or twice a year, you are either weak-hearted or you do not understand how to build walls or bridges.

I mean, forreal, what ELSE is there to fight, during those first few years of growth?

[HMD Majesty]

I mean, forreal, what ELSE is there to fight, during those first few years of growth?

Under Our preferred Settings?  Titans.

Default Settings?  We've heard sometimes undead Invasions.

Although, We've never really had much Trouble with Werebeasts.  They're fairly easy to avoid if you consider Ducks expendable.

[BigUglyWorm]

Bud, DF's code is available as plain text.  You can build mods in Notepad.  If you don't like how werebeasts work, you can just...change them.

But also, I feel like the nature of DF is such that both opinions can coexist: werebeasts are horribly unfair and broken, and if you can't figure out how to work around them, you deserve all the frustration you get.

[Maloy]

The only reason I didn't suffer horribly on my first few forts like this is because I started on a 5 year old world

I never realized it would cut me out of a lot of potential encounters, but it also gave me an incredibly safe place to build and experiment

Nowadays I think that's the real way to start for new players!
No necros, intelligent undead, werebeast plagues, goblins are small in number and isolated to small areas of territory

[PlumpHelmetMan]

So am I the only one who hasn't had that much experience with werebeasts? Almost wish I did TBH...would make my forts a lot more interesting.

[Maloy]

So am I the only one who hasn't had that much experience with werebeasts? Almost wish I did TBH...would make my forts a lot more interesting.

custom generate a world with a high number of werebeast curses and generate a late world history and you should be good!

[brewer bob]

So am I the only one who hasn't had that much experience with werebeasts? Almost wish I did TBH...would make my forts a lot more interesting.

You're not alone. I don't know why, but I've never had problems dealing with them nor have had a widespread wereinfection. I dunno, maybe my playstyle is too careful or I pay too much attention to combat logs?

The only close calls I've had were visitors unexpectedly turning into werebeasts. If I hadn't been reading announcements I could've easily missed the transformations.

(Personally, I'd prefer werebeasts being visitors transforming and not the typical werebeast attack with the announcement once spotted. The latter seems a bit too gamey to me.)

[Salmeuk]

Although, We've never really had much Trouble with Werebeasts.  They're fairly easy to avoid if you consider Ducks expendable.

you have incurred the wrath of an entire fortress of duck worshippers

I agree with the small text above. Werecreatures should also remain a creature for longer, somehow, as they often return to human form almost as soon as they have struck.

it can make for a good story to play dumb about the infections until the next full moon. . . a sort of survival challenge.

[HMD Majesty]

Although, We've never really had much Trouble with Werebeasts.  They're fairly easy to avoid if you consider Ducks expendable.

you have incurred the wrath of an entire fortress of duck worshippers

I agree with the small text above. Werecreatures should also remain a creature for longer, somehow, as they often return to human form almost as soon as they have struck.

it can make for a good story to play dumb about the infections until the next full moon. . . a sort of survival challenge.

It mightn't be a bad Idea to put it as a world gen Option, so that Players such as Ourself who rarely have Visitors can still have Werecreature Attacks.

[muldrake]

LOL.  It just got worse.  You don't get a warning if somebody is visiting, just a note.  So a visitor walked right up and then changed into a were-giraffe.  No "Now you know why you fear the night" just a bunch of dead dwarves.

My favorite was right when the dwarven caravan arrived and started unloading, while most of my fort was carrying items to the Depot, a visitor showed up through the trade depot and transformed into a wereelephant, essentially wiping out even the tough caravan guards as well as the fort itself.  About the only good thing about a wereelephant is the odds are good there will be no wounded victims because they will be a thin red mist.

Other than the nightmare embark things where you're immediately blasted with a thralling crowd, the only quicker end (from we are fine to we are all dead in seconds) I've had was when I killed a starting pack horse to butcher it in what I thought was a fairly harmless biome but in fact had a few reanimating squares including where I killed it.  With my starting workshops all being in the same room as the dormitory, first the zombie horse killed the butcher and nearly immediately everyone else too.

The problem with big weres is while they're devastating if you can keep them somewhat in control, they can cause an immense amount of damage when you can't or you fail to play close attention to the calendar.  I think the most useful weres for military use are the mundane mid-sized predators like tigers and bears and wolves.  They're tough enough to wreak some havoc on invaders, but not to wreck an entire room full of workshops in a couple hundred frames.

[Mungrul]

It eventually broke, because you can't really contain a werecurse, but I did have a successfully quarantined werebeast at the bottom of a fortress' trapped entryway / 10z level pit. When invaders came, even the trap-avoid ones would, if the time of month was right, dodge off the bridge into the pit, where even if they survived the fall, they'd be torn apart.

I seem to remember the werebeast eventually and somewhat improbably jumping out of the pit and murdering everyone, but details are hazy; it was years ago now.

[muldrake]

It eventually broke, because you can't really contain a werecurse, but I did have a successfully quarantined werebeast at the bottom of a fortress' trapped entryway / 10z level pit. When invaders came, even the trap-avoid ones would, if the time of month was right, dodge off the bridge into the pit, where even if they survived the fall, they'd be torn apart.

I seem to remember the werebeast eventually and somewhat improbably jumping out of the pit and murdering everyone, but details are hazy; it was years ago now.

Werecritters acquire all the swim/climb/etc. traits of the critter in question.  If it really did jump what was it?  A werethrips could possibly jump but I haven't looked at the raws or anything.  Also a squad of weres can be very useful if you have intense attention to the calendar.  They seem to retain their killing abilities when they transform but if you mess up you then have a team of Legendaries in were form.

If you can have a separate mini-fort/burrows/barracks for a squad of weres that does not directly connect to the rest of the fort but only opens to the outside, it makes for a nice siege-breaking force that can be used once a month.

Important note:  do not give these guys the great armor or clothes if their transformation destroys it.

(The fort I am at escaped werecreatures entirely because it is about as isolated as Easter Island in an evil reanimating ocean biome where although my biome is dwarf paradise everything around it is evil but nothing can reach us here except the occasional undead albatross.)