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[Kaelis Asur]

So far ive been able to find answers to all my questions and problems with the help of wiki and some forum searching, and my second fortress is prospering. However, heres a little conundrum i cant solve: my dwarves (and animals, as well) keep visiting a certain outdoor spot from time to time, particularly military dwarves and children. The spot gets a few such visits each season, despite nothing worth of attention being there - ive checked for zones, stockpiles, workshops, and everything else that would require a dwarf to get somewhere, nothing. Dwarves who perform these visits are idle; they have no job listed in their general info screen, as if they were sightseeing during their free time. Setting the immediate area as restricted traffic zone doesnt help, they do pick different paths taking changed traffic cost into account, but still insist on seeing that particular patch. Only ordering dwarves to stay indoors works, but i need them to access other outdoor areas, not to mention cave adaptation. This obviously poses a big problem due to ambushes. Any ideas?

[Omega2]

Quick question: is it the same spot your settlers first appeared? I sometimes get dwarves visiting the former wagon's location for some reason.

[Deon]

Do you have a meeting zone inside? Make one in some big room and you should have your problem solved.
If you have none they usually pick the starting position as a meeting zone by default.

[Kaelis Asur]

@ Omega2: Nope, its not where the wagon used to be, at least not exactly - its in the vicinity, but then again, my whole fortress is in vicinity.

@ Deon: I have several meeting zones designated, both inside and outside.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

What happens when you wall the area off? Try walling off an area slightly larger than they hang out in, squared off, and you don't need to bother with a roof. If they can't pathfind to the spot, maybe they'll stop going there.

[Deon]

No! Just no.
This will lead to huge lag due to broken pathfinding.
The same thing as when you breach the HFS and then wall it off.
The framerate may drop from 50 to 5-10.

[galmud]

I think pets who lost their owners return to the spot they were killed but I dont know about dwarves

I would treat it as a holy place where some dwarves pray to the gods or something. Build a shrine wall it off and connect a tunnel so they cant reach it from outdoors

[Deon]

A place of a holy wagon .

[Corak]

Just a thought but perhaps its a bug due to having multiple meeting zones? I know multiple trading posts, for example, screws things up.

[Kaelis Asur]

Since ive had a walled-off meeting area not too far away, i took LeoLeonardoIII's advice and extended my walls to encompass the 'holy spot'. No joy, it seems that my dwarves decided to move their holy spot a few squares away in response to my heretical actions. That, or its another spot that i didnt know about.

[Deon]

So you have a meeting area inside and they still wander outside to hang out there? Then it's a bug with AI.
I had a situation once where my small squad instead of patrolling 2 close spots made its way via all the map via a huge U-shaped patrol route. The weirdest thing is that after I deactivated those dwarves they continued patrolling until I gave them orders and even after that they continued to "patrol" the map while being idle.

[Brian]

I don't have a save to back it up, or any specific recollection, but I am sure that I can say that I've seen this.  It wasn't a big issue for me.  All I remember is they were "taking a break", and that's a little fuzzy even...

It made it annoying when sieges came tho, because it was far from safety.

[Kaelis Asur]

Ive managed to get a recording of a recruit visiting the spot: http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-658-holyspotofvisiting

[pancho]

Same thing happening here.  I thought it was no big deal until a kid got snatched and his mother threw herself down a well.  My legendary clothier mother....

Now I have a Champion sharpening his spear as his sits on the mystery spot.

[Barag]

This has happened to me in just about every fortress I'v started. Like 1-3 dwarves usually pick a spot a screen or so over from the starting area and visit it every so often. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes alone. I always assumed it was just something that they did.