Print

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

[dikbutdagrate]

I was surprised to learn recently that moon snails are not [FISH_ITEM]s, and that they leave behind remains, despite being oceanic vermin creatures. Was considering doing a timed any% moon snail macabre artifact challenge.

So in an unmodded game, no DFhack, no vanilla raw mods, how do you catch a moon snail, exactly?

It's likely much easier if you can use a frog man in adventure mode, to dive down and look for one, but I'm curious if theres a way to do it in fort mode.

edit: I've done a fire snake artifact challenge previously, and from the looks of things, moon snails appear to be infinitely more difficult. Bottom of the ocean soil level difficult.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Hmm…

Wiki says they’re temperate oceanic vermin and can’t be caught in animal traps.

Looks like your only option is to embark on a temperate ocean and start fishing.

[dikbutdagrate]

You can't catch them through fishing. You can only catch [FISHITEM] vermin through vermin.
Moon Snails are oceanic non fish_item vermin, and they spawn on the ocean's soil, so like, under 5-13 z layers of water.

Heh, practically all of the vermin have no_trap, it seems like. This just means you have to assign a dwarf a labor from the vermin catcher's shop, or kennel in 47.05, to catch a live vermin. Hence the trouble. Seeing as how these things spawn at the bottom of the ocean. 

[dikbutdagrate]

It all sort of depends on the conditions for which these things actually spawn. Since, perhaps fortunately, they spawn in temperate oceans, we might be able to get an ocean that freezes in winter, and use that to our advantage. Channel out a column through the ice, and build walls. However, it's unclear whether they actually require ocean soils in particular to spawn on, or if they don't care, as long as its underwater soil in an ocean biome.

It may well be the later, in which case this will be quite easy to set up. But in the case of the former, we have a lot to consider for doing this as quickly as possible, as this has interesting implications for our construction of the vertical chamber. The last frozen tiles can't be mined, instead, they must be allowed to thaw. Then the dwarves are going to need to either use buckets or a pump screw to drain most of the water out of the tiles, leaving just enough for the moon snails to spawn, and for the dwarves to be able to root around for the vermin. And of course, being careful not to allow the water to evaporate, or have grass start to grown on it.

I've never caught a moon snail, so we'll have to see what happens.

Of course, we might be able to request pet moon snails from human merchant guilds. That might be way faster, but getting that to work is a whole lot of RNG.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Have you considered draining the ocean?  Perhaps using a portable drain?

[Blue_Dwarf]

"Let's drain the ocean using buckets, so we can catch some moon snails."

- Dwarfs

[dikbutdagrate]

I was thinking for a moment, that if we could deploy in a hot enough ocean biome, we could just evaporate all of the water on the first couple of frames. As long the biome is just cool enough for liquid water to continue to pool in from the sides of the map, the moon snails could still spawn.

Lol, the problem here though, is that this "ocean" wouldn't be considered temperate, unfortunately.

[eerr]

Big sea creatures can be trapped, I used that to breed a pair of sea serpents ages ago. (patched out)

I recommend cast obsidian and a completely idle dwarf to pull the lever.
I don't think it's feasible without magma.
if you mess up, you can pull crazy shenanigans dropping obsidian repeatedly into hollow areas to make the area flat again.
but that repair if you miss or mess up takes careful planning and attention to detail though.
I don't know if the snail will still path to obsidian.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Moon Snails aren’t big sea creatures.  They’re vermin.

[Salmeuk]

I was thinking for a moment, that if we could deploy in a hot enough ocean biome, we could just evaporate all of the water on the first couple of frames. As long the biome is just cool enough for liquid water to continue to pool in from the sides of the map, the moon snails could still spawn.

Lol, the problem here though, is that this "ocean" wouldn't be considered temperate, unfortunately.

this thread is the most interesting thing i've read on these forums in a while ...

two thoughts:

are vermin affected by temperature? as in, would the snails melt?

wouldn't this require modding? since the temperature needed to insta-evaporate an ocean is either impossible to reach or something I've never heard of... and that same temperature would surely fry your dwarves... you would  need to increase dwarven temperature resistance

However, it's unclear whether they actually require ocean soils in particular to spawn on, or if they don't care, as long as its underwater soil in an ocean biome.

would the requisite ocean would need to be a 'deep ocean', in order to produce a top layer of ooze or clay?


it might be worth testing these ideas with DFhack, but this would also ruin some of the fun.

Was considering doing a timed any% moon snail macabre artifact challenge.

there are many paths to stardom and infamy...

[anewaname]

I know you're attempting to catch moon-snails, not fish, but this may be relevant....
- Fisher-dwarfs can only catch fish when the body of ocean/river/cavern water is still connected to the edge of the map. Does this apply to other ocean vermin?
- Fisher-dwarfs can still catch fish when you dig a trench away from the ocean. This indicates only connected water is necessary, not an "ocean floor" tile. Does this apply to other ocean vermin?

And, can trappers catch vermin if the trapper is on the beach adjacent to the water (as is done with pond turtles)?

[FantasticDorf]

I just assumed that like other creatures without being trappable like pixies, they just don't. A tricky answer could be you just rely on coastal humans bringing you a snail in a cage in tribute or trade, or mod in that they drop their shell when they die whole, and let the cats at them.

They'll fit inside a aquarium once you actually have one in a animal trap or cage for holding, along with any other live fish you've got.

Big sea creatures can be trapped, I used that to breed a pair of sea serpents ages ago. (patched out)n.

I remember that one, it remained a inspiration when i tried my hand at breeding modded to be tame eels (just for faster setup) by making a seaworld like set of holding pens, with the intention to keep them on suspended underwater platforms. Unfortunately the pressure pulling them off the restraints as well as finding a way to air-drown them without also killing the mating pair ruined the project.

I might try it again. If i can just isolate water around the pillars (levered floodgates or doors) before dumping water out it should be fine.

  - Though i don't know if obsidianization will even work, ice freezing doesn't retain vermin i don't think in any capacity from oceans (or the unfrozen sea would be littered with fish remain corpses) and the mechanic is more or less the same in its implementation.