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[Naryar]

I'm starting to embark more regularly on evil biomes now, as opposed to a novelty embark in previous versions. I was a serious Untamed Wilds dude before that, although I got disappointed with it with all the new giant creatures that don't seem dangerous or really useful. And all the new animal men. A giant thrips ? Yay.

Has any science been done on evil biomes ? What's the difference between Sinister, Haunted and Terrifying ? Is it the same as Calm, Wilderness and Untamed Wilds ?

It seems so far that Sinister is more like an evil flavored biome. It certainly seems less dangerous than Haunted. Do reanimating biomes happen on all three ?

What about evil clouds ? I've embarked on Sinister and Haunted on this version and never saw an evil cloud, ever, though I haven't embarked on evil biomes this much so it may just be RNG at work. Mostly I've had reanimating biomes and evil rain.

Any experience from players that embark a lot on evil ?

[Bumber]

It indicates the savagery level. You'll get undead giant thrips in Terrifying, I think.

Reanimation and clouds are based on RNG, yes.

[delphonso]

I think there's a fifty-fifty shot on evil biomes causing undead to rise. I would appreciate some science on how that works with maps on multiple tiles.

[anewaname]

Take a look at this alignment-verse-savageness chart on the wiki.

And the regional interaction types.

[PatrikLundell]

In 0.44.12 (and earlier) all the evilness stuff was specified at the Region level, and all the tiles of a region had the same Evilness level (but not value: the tiles varied within the range). Interactions were associated with Regions, and Regions had a "dead percentage" variable that determined how much of the vegetation would be dead.

In 0.47.X the restriction of evilness being tied to the Region can be overridden by sources of spreading evil, allowing non evil Regions to have evil tiles (it was possible to hack this earlier). I also suspect that evil death sphere influence results in the Region's "dead percentage" to be set to 100 as there's a lot of those values now, and I believe non evil tiles of the Region not affected by the value.
Similarly, I suspect interactions are only applied to evil tiles now.
An open question (as far as I know) is what happens when multiple spheres influence the same region, as I believe it used to be that you didn't get more than one interaction in a Region (a single interaction can still have multiple effects).

It can also be noted that I'm not aware of the identification of any data structure that's tied to the spread of evil, allowing it to expand and contract, but the info presumably is located somewhere.

[Naryar]

It indicates the savagery level. You'll get undead giant thrips in Terrifying, I think.

Reanimation and clouds are based on RNG, yes.

It is sad but not unexpected. So evil is applied the same way for all types of savagery, good to know. Thanks.

Take a look at this alignment-verse-savageness chart on the wiki.

And the regional interaction types.

I'm aware of the wiki, yeah. But it doesn't say a lot.

In 0.44.12 (and earlier) all the evilness stuff was specified at the Region level, and all the tiles of a region had the same Evilness level (but not value: the tiles varied within the range). Interactions were associated with Regions, and Regions had a "dead percentage" variable that determined how much of the vegetation would be dead.

In 0.47.X the restriction of evilness being tied to the Region can be overridden by sources of spreading evil, allowing non evil Regions to have evil tiles (it was possible to hack this earlier). I also suspect that evil death sphere influence results in the Region's "dead percentage" to be set to 100 as there's a lot of those values now, and I believe non evil tiles of the Region not affected by the value.
Similarly, I suspect interactions are only applied to evil tiles now.
An open question (as far as I know) is what happens when multiple spheres influence the same region, as I believe it used to be that you didn't get more than one interaction in a Region (a single interaction can still have multiple effects).

It can also be noted that I'm not aware of the identification of any data structure that's tied to the spread of evil, allowing it to expand and contract, but the info presumably is located somewhere.

Yeah, necro towers spread evil, and bogeymen are apparently (?) restricted to evil regions with the spheres of darkness and nightmares now. Though, I wonder how do you know what sphere influences what evil region.

Reminds to be seen how it works. I wonder if science has been done on the topic.

[Taras]

What spheres induce evil plants spawning? May it be chaos sphere or deformity sphere? I need region with eyegrass and wormgrass, with sliver bard for dyery and with glumprong for weapons. Will evil creatures (ogres, blizzard men) spawning in all evil regions or only with regions with special spheres?

[PatrikLundell]

What spheres induce evil plants spawning? May it be chaos sphere or deformity sphere? I need region with eyegrass and wormgrass, with sliver bard for dyery and with glumprong for weapons. Will evil creatures (ogres, blizzard men) spawning in all evil regions or only with regions with special spheres?

If you're looking for these things, the safest gamble would be to embark in regions that are evil originally, not tiles turned evil by influence. I would expect that part not to have changed, and if that is the case creatures and plants tied to evil are randomly made available in suitable biomes (the plants have no biome restrictions [apart from support of plant life], only evil, while ogres require plains and blizzard men glaciers). Note that there is only a chance to get the permitted creatures/plants: RNGs decide if they appear, although the regions can be hacked to add them. With animals you also have to get lucky to get the one or two (in savage embarks) groups entering the map being of a desired species, or something "useless".

I don't know if evil spreading sphere sites result in the addition of plants/creatures: I would guess not, but haven't investigated it.

[Naryar]

What spheres induce evil plants spawning? May it be chaos sphere or deformity sphere? I need region with eyegrass and wormgrass, with sliver bard for dyery and with glumprong for weapons. Will evil creatures (ogres, blizzard men) spawning in all evil regions or only with regions with special spheres?

I've just embarked in a Sinister region and there's definitely glumprong trees and a bunch of sliver barbs, but no staring eyeball or wormy tendril. (or any other signs of evil so far !). So I think evil plants have potential to spawn in all evil regions, depending on RNG, but that MIGHT have been changed.

Blizzard men spawn in evil glaciers, ogres spawn in evil plain-type biomes (shrublands, grasslands, savannas) and harpies spawn in all evil plain-types and wetland-types.

[Naryar]

Okay, so news on that sinister biome.

I thought it had only rain blood - and then undead ravens went to trouble me roughly after 3/4rds of a year. It's weird because all the plants are living, so it should not be reanimating ? Maybe they come from a nearby reanimating biome ? There may be haunted biomes in the same tile I embarked in.

[PatrikLundell]

Okay, so news on that sinister biome.

I thought it had only rain blood - and then undead ravens went to trouble me roughly after 3/4rds of a year. It's weird because all the plants are living, so it should not be reanimating ? Maybe they come from a nearby reanimating biome ? There may be haunted biomes in the same tile I embarked in.

No. Dead Percentage is separate from Reanimation: you can have one without the other. The vanilla way to check for reanimation is to slaughter an animal and wait to see if the skin or hair reanimates.
When it comes to flying critters, though, they usually belong to the air biome, which is the biome of the world tile to the NW of the world tile the embark is in (this is the cause of undead fliers showing up in embarks with no evil bits). It's presumed to be a bug, using 0 as the default value rather than 4 for the air tiles (which is an easy mistake to make when you've got at least 3 different systems for referencing neighboring tiles).

[Hyndis]

Evil biomes are heavily procedurally generated. An embark might have just regular rain and snow as weather. It might rain harmless elf blood. It might rain brown sludge that causes dwarves to be mildly dizzy with no long term effects. It might rain slime that instantly causes everything to dissolve. Totally random.

Evil biomes may or may not have undead. Some evil regions are swarming with infinite undead, where new ones appear the moment the prior ones are dispatched. This makes small embarks on these biomes exceptionally difficult. The undead are relentless. They never sleep, never run away, and there's always another one. You will be under constant attack from day 1 of your embark. Other times, evil biomes have regular living creatures and no undead walking on to the embark from the edge of the map. You might get harpies instead of red pandas, but harpies at least die and stay dead.

Some evil biomes can have spontaneously regenerating undead, where non-mangled corpses will spontaneously get back up. You may have to kill the same cave crocodile 15 times before it finally stays down for good.

Sometimes you get clouds. Clouds are not raining elf blood or green sludge. Clouds are different. Clouds can be harmless, or they can be instantly lethal, or they can turn living creatures into husks opposed to all life, and the dust in the cloud spreads and infects everything.

And to add to this, evil biomes can have different effects at different z-levels! You might get a safe biome at ground level where the undead do not reanimate. But go up just 1 z level and now everything is reanimating and there are husks all over the place.

---

All of these variables are independent from each other. There are so many factors that embarking on an evil biome is often luck.

Note that evil clouds can take a while to show up. Evil clouds might appear only 2-5 times a year, so you might think everything is okay at first, then in autumn a cloud rolls on over your trade depot.

The above findings are based on my personal experience from having played DF for more hours than I'd care to admit, going even back to the 2nd version before spontaneously reanimating undead were even a thing.

Funny thing is, I think I'm the person who suggested spontaneously reanimating undead in the first place. I think Toady One read my suggestion thread and actually did it.

On some embarks I regret my suggestion! Undead ogres who will just not stay dead are no joke!