Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Schmaven]

While reclaiming a fort that had fallen to hostile creatures, the brave group of 7 were ambushed immediately on day 1 by some surface beasts.  The game paused, and zoomed to the location as normal.  A short while later, there was another ambush announcement.  But this one zoomed to 22 z-levels underground that has never been explored.  And I don't mean just with this reclaiming force - the original fort never got the chance to dig deeper than even 10 z-levels before falling. 

I assume it happened in the cavern levels.  But as they have never been revealed, I thought no wildlife would even spawn in them yet.  Either I'm mistaken about the revealing of caverns being tied to growth of the cavern population, or maybe that only applies to a fresh, pre-reclaim-scatter embark.  Or maybe someone can confirm that I just imagine having read that somewhere and cavern critters wander down there from day 1 no matter if we see them or not.

Either way, having it zoom underground to an ambush in the void makes me wonder who ambushed who down there. 

[PatrikLundell]

When you reclaim there are often a lot of "hostile" critters that trigger ambush announcements (a bugs). If I recall correctly, they're marked as hostile, but does not act as hostile (but I think they'll still scare civilians).

I believe activities happen in caverns regardless of whether you've breached them or not, which could lead to caverns filled with undead in a reanimating biome if you wait 10 year or so before you breach them, but I'm not sure if FBs show up before caverns are revealed. I generally breach and reseal the caverns within the first two years (the latter with a heavy aquifer or other things delaying vertical exploration), so I don't have much experience with leaving caverns undiscovered for extended lengths of time.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Another person who plays "Dodge the Caverns" while diving for that sweet red liquid?

[PatrikLundell]

Not exactly. I want to map the caverns in general to deal with them later, with a magma production facility as an earlier goal than that.

[Schmaven]

My last fort had an undead cavern population explosion problem, so I was trying to test if not revealing them would pause their population growth.  In reanimating biomes, caverns have proved to be a bit too formiddable for my military to tame.  But that could be just because I left them for decades to swell to thousands of undead crundles before attacking.

The surface ambushes were all definitely from hostile undead, but having non-hostiles trigger that message definitely opens up more possibilities for what might be transpiring in the caverns to have generated that message.  I still find it especially unusual how the announcement was only triggered once in the yet to be discovered caverns, while there were many ambush announcements on the surface. 

I'll try and keep the reclaim alive for some time and see if there are more undiscovered cavern ambushes.

[PatrikLundell]

I've cleared out (most) of an undead filled cavern using atom smashing bridges and cage traps (for critters too large to be smashed) in the past (with some critters, including an undead FB, refusing to move until engaged by my militia). Repeating menacing spikes ought to be useful as well, but that generates mess to clear up as well as miasma.

[Moeteru]

The correct solution is magma. I'm pretty sure only organic corpses are eligible to be raised as zombies, so it should be pretty effective.

[anewaname]

When you reclaim a civ-generated site, you only get the "ambush" announcement for the creature that destroyed the fort during world gen. Possibly, when a fort falls during gameplay, all of the existing cavern creatures qre tagged and stored as ambushers, and due to these tags they never revert to the status that would allow them to wander off the map.

Creatures definately wander the caverns and fight each other, even if you have not breached them. No idea about FBs.

[Jundavr]

I'm not sure if FBs show up before revealing the caverns, but I remember this happened in a 3 year or so fort: almost immediately after revealing the caverns, and before I could build enough on it to seal it off, a FB showed up in the middle of the map from an area that I hadn't revealed, not from the edge. It still showed the box announcement, and I was surprised that they could just show up like this.
Not sure if it was already wandering there or immediately spawned after the caverns were breached, but that fort soon met its demise since it was a webspinner.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, when you embark on a site that has a cave, without ever actually exposing the caverns, FBs can show up. I was making an aboveground fort and training a militia to explore the cave depths, and got distracted and ended up making a library fort due to all the scholars who decided to visit. When I least expected, a blob of mud FB with dead spittle showed up from the cave. Maybe the requirement is that it must reach your fort from the cave edges?

[Schmaven]

Maybe the requirement is that it must reach your fort from the cave edges?

In the last version I saw countless FBs and they only spawned at map edges for that fort.  It could have changed with this recent release but I haven't revealed the caverns yet to see them.  Maybe it could have to do with cave layout too - like if a section has no map edges maybe?

[PatrikLundell]

You can DETECT FB's when they leave the hidden areas of caverns, at which time you get an announcement, but they still come from the edge originally. The situation is similar to that of weres, which enter at the edge, but won't be announced until it's detected. In the ware case it's when a unit sees the were, while in the FB case it's the less sophisticated case of entering the revealed area.