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[Meng Lolorked]

Is it me or werebeasts became much more of a problem in the new version? Earlier I've never had a situation when werebeast arrives in my tavern as a human and transforms later, attacking and infecting everybody inside. Now it's the most common reason of my fortress downfall. In my latest fortress I decided to build tavern outside, to easily isonlate werebeast outbreak if needed. At first the plan worked - I locked poor patrons inside when werebufallo transformed, and sent military to station outside, in case doors were broken. Half of guest were massacred inside, but only one mechanic was injured (I've isolated him in quarantine and sure enough, he was infected). But then something else happened - surviving poets and dancers started attacking each other and members of my fort. Resulting loyalty cascade costed the fortress third of it's population and I barely saved it. Usually I build beautiful cementerys with quiet corridors and rooms for each coffin. Now recently excavated mines had to be hastily filled with shoddy caskets and coffins.

But in time the fortress healed (it seems changes to stress system made the dwarves more resillient). After a few years we became a mountainhome - and at that moment another werebeast (wereass this time) appeared. History sort of repeated itself. This time there were a lot of injured poets, dancers and other patrons. They filled up the hospital, but before I isolated them, a loyalty cascade started (just as the queen was arriving). It was more of a loyalty trickle than cascade - now and then an elven poet or goblin dancer would attack somebody. After few weeks of picking them off I decided to perform a nuclear option - all non-dwarves were to be exterminated by military. Boy, that was a !fun! error. The slaughter caused the loyalty trickle to turn into a cascade, and at some point even different military squads fought each other. Then, as if we didn't have enough problems, almost all hospital patients transformed into wereasses and began to rampage. At this point somebody switched a lever and fort was purged with magma (I might have ordered it, he he).
So in my next fortress I might skip building a tavern altogether, as it no longer attracts mercenaries (another bug in new version?), only useless monster hunters and almost useless artists.

Anyone else has that problem? Or am I just very unlucky? It seems to me in previous versions werebeasts arrived in transformed form only and could be handled well outside the fort. Any ideas how to mitigate it?

[PatrikLundell]

It is a big problem and, in my opinion, the greatest threat to fortresses, especially when you've also got visiting necros...

The disappearance of mercs is thought to be caused by the introduction of merc companies which are assumed to have soaked up almost all mercs. I disagree with the opinion that performers (and scholars) are useless, as I prefer to have actual citizens in my squads and as craftsmen rather than mercs, even it it takes two years longer. However, if you get lots of migrants you can fill your squads with those. The thing recruited visitors bring to the fortress is racial diversity, though, which doesn't happen with migrants.

[DwarfStar]

It seems like the AI is missing the concept of, “OK well maybe this guy was my friend or a member of my civ, but he was clearly a murderer/werebeast so it’s understandable that he was attacked.” Perhaps all friend and civ relationships should be severed when a citizen transforms?

A more complicated model would allow for “knowledge” of the fact that a person is a werebeast, maybe if there are witnesses to the transformation. But then a person who didn’t know who the transformed citizen “was” would not be mad at his attacker based on his relationships either.

[PatrikLundell]

Elements are there, but they seem to be bugged. Once turned weres are (or should be) enemies to everyone (except other weres of either the same were species or even more specific, bearers of exactly the same curse strain: I'm not sure which). However, once weres turn back everyone "forget" it's a were and relations are returned to what they were before. If someone is striking at a were that turns back while the strike is under way observers react to a strike that hits their friend, not the were it was aimed at.

[Meng Lolorked]

Thanks for answers, guys. I see there is no simple remedy for these issues. For a moment I thought I could create a tavern for visitors only, but there is no such option. So the safest way for now is not to have a tavern at all, which kinda sucks.

[Starver]

Elements are there, but they seem to be bugged. Once turned weres are (or should be) enemies to everyone (except other weres of either the same were species or even more specific, bearers of exactly the same curse strain: I'm not sure which). However, once weres turn back everyone "forget" it's a were and relations are returned to what they were before. If someone is striking at a were that turns back while the strike is under way observers react to a strike that hits their friend, not the were it was aimed at.

Given typical were-'lore' then it would probably make sense for the rampaging beast that mutilates some livestock regularly to not be known as the quiet village shoemaker who doesn't seem to like socialising at the time of the full moon. So long as it isn't obvious (a transformation is actually witnessed, someone notices that the beast happens to be wearing a particularly recognisable bracelet, or just some basic deductive/inductive reasoning), at which point Reputation And Rumour kicks in with - and, yes, with risks of loyalty cascades between those who know/don't know or (between those actually/practically knowing) have different reactions to which side the 'flip' puts their continuing alliances.

But that's for Toady to resolve the fine detail of. Spooky-knowledge-at-a-distance might make the situation at least consistently too broken. The more it gets 'realistic', the trickier it might actually be to handle as overseer, although if you could safely retain subcommunities so that the tavern revelations did not immediately cause potential feuds throughout the fortress. I've been luck enough not to have too much of this sort of thing (somehow - not sure which parts of my playing style might be mitigating this, I've just not had much lycanthropy/whatever, but I doubt my counter-vampire measures are playing any part, they should even make it worse).


But I also don't rush to create a tavern (because I've got so many other things I prefer to set up, and I'm still fairly worried about over-drinking issues from the early days) so maybe it just doesn't happen quite as much in standard Dining Rooms(?!?)...

[DwarfStar]

Thanks for answers, guys. I see there is no simple remedy for these issues. For a moment I thought I could create a tavern for visitors only, but there is no such option. So the safest way for now is not to have a tavern at all, which kinda sucks.

Actually I have a concrete suggestion for you: don't put your tavern outside. I think the basic problem is that you are failing to offer protection to your visitors. I establish a tavern inside, once I have a basic functioning military, and werebeasts are a challenge but not impossible to handle.

You might be having really bad luck with your world gen, if you have random visitors transforming frequently, since I've never seen that myself. There are two primary sources I've seen for werebeasts:

* Either there is a werebeast attack on the surface, which is announced like a titan arriving
* Or a tantruming citizen topples a statue in a temple, which is also announced

Are you sure your werebeast problem didn't start with one of those, and then any unexpected transformations that happened after that were due to infections that happened within your fort?

Once you see one of these, if your entrance defenses are set up well, you can get your military in front of any non-military dwarves, or visitors. With any luck, you can take out the creature without getting bitten. Look over all combat logs carefully for any bites. If anyone does get bitten, kill them via some extrajudicial method, such as flooding your hospital with water. Or arrange a cave-in over their bed if they're injured and you didn't make prior arrangements like that. Hopefully an "accident" like that would have less loyalty consequences than more direct methods.

In one game, I had trouble with visitors transforming unexpectedly, and it turned out to be that in the mod I was playing, some of the sorcerers could give their enemies the werebeast curse with an interaction (at least, I think that's only possible in a mod, not 100% sure). So I had to take extra precautions with any visitors that encountered such enemies because they arrived during a siege and survived, carefully checking their combat logs and isolating them if necessary.

[PatrikLundell]

Visitors that are weres is definitely a thing. I've had a case where I had both a were and a necro, and when the were turned the necro did as well, the corpse from the previous siege that just happened to be visible through the door to the corpse stockpile as yet another corpse was brought in...

A problem with the current weres is that they act as if they're not aware of being weres, and not figuring it out when they flee naked from whatever mess they've created either. I'm (sort of) fine with weres showing up at your tavern to deliberately perform an attack, as well as those who know they're cursed and try to lock themselves in in order not to cause trouble (plus those who like the slaughter but are stealthy about it, which I guess is the regular kind of were attacks.

[Bumber]

For a moment I thought I could create a tavern for visitors only, but there is no such option.

I've heard only visitors will visit a tavern that's had its zone disabled. Haven't tried it myself.

[Salmeuk]

I tend to avoid building taverns in the first years of my fortresses, and avoid the worst of this issue. I also suspect my preferred worldgen parameters (or some other hidden factors) are preventing me from experiencing this 'were creature transforming in tavern" business, as I have yet to experience this Thing-like horror.

If you can, cage trapping and killing the creature in isolation seems to avoid other visitors realizing the 'horror' of what you've done. No loyalty cascade if there are no witnesses. This is assuming, of course, the cascade derives from loyalty outside familial and local governments. If the were-beast-peasant is somehow related to one of your own dwarves this might cause issue?

Does anyone know what motivates werebeasts to travel, and if they are only motivated to approach your fortress under certain conditions? Perhaps what we are seeing is werebeasts who MEANT to arrive a day earlier in full were form, but because they bought a year-old calendar off craigslist they scuffed it and had to pretend to be visitors. A month passes, and whoop-de-doo there's suddenly an angry mammoth-man rampaging inside your tavern!

[Meng Lolorked]

New idea: I will build a tavern with barracks inside. The military should take care of any werebeast as soon as it transforms, and I hope killing it while its transformed will not cause loyalty cascade. Unfortunately there is still a chance it will transform somewhere outside the tavern, e. g. on its way to a temple. Will test it soon and report back.

[Urist Odursegam]

If you make a burrow covering the whole fortress minus the tavern, your dwarves will leave. If all the potential werebeasts are still inside, lock the doors, and start building memorial slabs. Sucks to be anyone who doesn't get out in time I guess. The ones that get out will tend to go to the hospital, so you might have to isolate those as well. Dwarven werebeasts can be recruited to a new squad and sent to a safe place.

And after some trial and error I finally dealt with the remaining isolated weregiraffes in my Stridefuldyes by carving fortifications in the walls of the temple where the last remaining beast was locked, and stationing my marksdwarves outside. This didn't seem to cause a loyalty cascade, as opposed to sending them to kill the beasts earlier. The temple was in an isolated part of the fortress, so I don't think there were witnesses, but I think just walking with the intent to kill the weregiraffe poet past his friends was enough to trigger a fight. Maybe the dorfs sing a jaunty tune about who they're going to kill and that vexed the others? Also - they didn't manage to kill the beast, but the unfortunate poet didn't recover from the wounds he took and didn't make it till the next transformation.

From my general reading I gather this method might also cause a cascade if an arrow is fired at the werebeast, but the victim transforms before the arrow reaches its target. While the risk of that isn't very large, you can always tell your dwarves to stand down before the transformation.

I tried stationing the militia around the werebeast, but the creature always managed to bite a few bystanders before being slain, so the cycle continued.