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[Martin]

2nd Hematite, 211, Early Summer

Morul most of the last year setting up the next chain of skills. Hunting and animal training took some time to setup, but at this pace, each will take about 8 years to complete. Could be worse, I suppose. Ran into a severe barrel shortage with all the additional meat from the last butchery pass. 1100 meat now on hand - none of it imported. Working on shifting that out and Morul became a legendary miller in the process. Might need to start on the extracting skills soon - they too may take quite a while.

10th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn

Waiting for some critters to show up to hunt, Morul became a legendary bowyer. Anyone need 600 bone crossbows? Anyone?

26th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn

Turned out a few more meals to clear out some barrels and Morul is now a legendary cook. Off to brew some booze. These dwarves sure do drink a lot. Hunting progress is going surprisingly well. Morul is already a skilled ambusher, with the butcher shop bunkers still being built. Another year before they are all hooked up properly. No wildlife at the moment, which is troubling. The place is a mess, though. Wolves, horses, groundhogs, mountain goats, hoary marmots, and rhesus macaques all cruise through and there are heads and legs *everywhere*. With no long hauls to dump off a kill, he just mows through the place.

The fortress was extended to give safe access to the top part of the chasm. There are both cave spiders and fire snakes there. Traps, meat, and a few workshops will go in. Hopefully trapping, milking, and animal dissection can get a move on. Will need a shitton of barrels, though, which I don't yet have. Cut down another 500 trees this year, but another 1500 are needed just for skilling. Can't really afford too many for barrels. Maybe Morul should start on soap making. There's a good 50 barrels of tallow to recycle...

18th Moonstone, 202, Early Winter - Miner
19th Limestone, 206, Early Autumn - Woodcutter
27th Granite, 207, Early Spring - Appraiser
9th Sandstone, 207, Mid-Autumn - Bone Carver
11th Granite, 208, Early Spring - Furnace Operator
27th Opal, 208, Mid Winter - Engraver
5th Granite, 209, Early Spring - Carpenter
24th Timber, 209, Late Autumn - Mason
13th Opal, 209, Mid-Winter - Weaver
14th Obsidian, 209, Late Winter - Dyer
12th Granite, 210, Early Spring - Clothier
2nd Hematite, 211, Early Summer - Miller
10th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn - Bowyer
26th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn - Cook

[Jim Groovester]

I fear you may run out of animals before he becomes a legendary ambusher, but your quest is a righteous one and I wish you luck.

If I may, I offer a suggestion regarding your potential hunting and animal training problem. Use cage traps on wild animals, but don't train them. Let them run loose in contained areas so that they breed and produce wild offspring. Then release a bunch of them at a time to train hunting, and then let them breed back again.

Provided you haven't run out of wildlife yet.

And I don't think you have to worry about Morul suddenly becoming an elite weapon user if he's training weapons through hunting. I think he will only be locked out of the civilian professions if you ever activate him while he's Great in at least one weapon.

[Martin]

I fear you may run out of animals before he becomes a legendary ambusher, but your quest is a righteous one and I wish you luck.

If I may, I offer a suggestion regarding your potential hunting and animal training problem. Use cage traps on wild animals, but don't train them. Let them run loose in contained areas so that they breed and produce wild offspring. Then release a bunch of them at a time to train hunting, and then let them breed back again.

Provided you haven't run out of wildlife yet.

And I don't think you have to worry about Morul suddenly becoming an elite weapon user if he's training weapons through hunting. I think he will only be locked out of the civilian professions if you ever activate him while he's Great in at least one weapon.

I thought untamed animals generally didn't breed? I know that some do like cave crocs and giant cave swallows, but I don't recall wild surface animals ever reproducing.

His weapon skills are coming up very slowly. Only marksdwarf comes up when hunting, but he routinely gets attacked by horses when hunting them and that seems to trigger a proper defense with the axe which does skill. It's way to slow to be a problem so far.

[Jim Groovester]

In my current fort I had a muskox give birth to wild muskoxen calves. In a previous fort, some mountain goats escaped their cage (because a fire snake burnt it up) and made some kids. So surface animals definitely can breed.

Wildlife eventually runs out, so it is definitely something to consider given what you're trying to do.

ADDENDUM: You could make it an arena event. Arena releases twenty horses, see how long it takes for Morul to hunt and butcher all of them.

[Flashzom]

I thought untamed animals generally didn't breed? I know that some do like cave crocs and giant cave swallows, but I don't recall wild surface animals ever reproducing.

Tell that to the hippos of my last fortress.
Urist McArchitect cancels Construct Building: Mauled to death by marauding hippos. Again.
Honestly, that fortress had hippos that would give birth to three or four more calfs every season. It became a serious problem for my FPS. Hipposplosion.

[zchris13]

I thought untamed animals generally didn't breed? I know that some do like cave crocs and giant cave swallows, but I don't recall wild surface animals ever reproducing.

Tell that to the hippos of my last fortress.
Urist McArchitect cancels Construct Building: Mauled to death by marauding hippos. Again.
Honestly, that fortress had hippos that would give birth to three or four more calfs every season. It became a serious problem for my FPS. Hipposplosion.

My dwarves just all simultaneously crapped themselves.

[Martin]

20th Felsite, 212, Late Spring

Busy setting up a host of other things, but Morul is now a legendary brewer. Steady progress. Decided to end the active hunting out of fear that the population would be overhunted and have built out about 40 cage traps at strategic locations to catch wildlife and set up a breeding program. The masons have been busy transforming the top level of the fortress into a breeding/hunting arena. So far only horses have been captured (the cages were very fortunately placed) but hopefully we'll get some of the other wildlife in time. Morul has also started trapping/milking/animal dissecting. Very slow going, but steady progress. 40 traps have been deployed twice and resulted in about 30 purring maggots. Milking is going pretty well. We're going to have to import a huge amount of meat for this process - each cage takes about 10 meat on average, so each deployment requires 400 meat on hand. Not sure we can produce that much with the few animals we have on hand.

Made some progress on a half dozen other skills just as part of normal fortress operations, but it's going to be at least another year or two before another skill comes in. Trapping/milking/cheese making should all show up around the same time and then I think Morul will turn to fishing/fish cleaning/fish dissection while continuing on with animal dissection.

18th Moonstone, 202, Early Winter - Miner
19th Limestone, 206, Early Autumn - Woodcutter
27th Granite, 207, Early Spring - Appraiser
9th Sandstone, 207, Mid-Autumn - Bone Carver
11th Granite, 208, Early Spring - Furnace Operator
27th Opal, 208, Mid Winter - Engraver
5th Granite, 209, Early Spring - Carpenter
24th Timber, 209, Late Autumn - Mason
13th Opal, 209, Mid-Winter - Weaver
14th Obsidian, 209, Late Winter - Dyer
12th Granite, 210, Early Spring - Clothier
2nd Hematite, 211, Early Summer - Miller
10th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn - Bowyer
26th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn - Cook
20th Felsite, 212, Late Spring - Brewer

[zchris13]

What color is he?

[Phazer]

Mix gray,yellow,purple,blue,dark grey,white and brown and you get it.

more serious answer: i think hes blue because he has many craftdwarf thingys

[Martin]

He's a miner.

After hitting legendary miner he got a fey mood, went to a masons workshop and doubled down on miner experience - bastard. I unselect skills as soon as he hits legendary, so that will always be his highest skill until he goes military.

Trapping is driving me crazy. The game pauses every time something is caught and every time the bait is stolen. Morul is a Master Trapper now, so not much longer for him, and we have 80 maggots to milk, so they'll carry through to legendary milker, but the two dissecting skills will still require trapping another 1000 or so vermin. That's a LOT of pausing.

We deploy between 40 and 80 traps at a time (depends on how much meat we have, but fishing will provide a steady stream of fish, thankfully) but it's really dragging things out.

[Jim Groovester]

You don't need to set the animal traps. You can have a bunch of animal trappers catch vermin live by using the 'catch live animal' command from the kennels. It might save you a heap of time on animal dissection if you have teams of trappers catching vermin instead of using baited animal traps, and it will avoid all that annoying pausing.

[Time Kitten]

Not to mention wasting entire stacks of meat.

[Martin]

I'll try that but in my experience they tend to catch unusable vermin. Things like roaches can't be extracted - only cave spiders or fire snakes.

And I don't think you can catch moghoppers without setting a trap at all. The only way to get fish dissecting.

[Update]

Aha! I misunderstood how to catch moghoppers. That will be much easier!

[Martin]

12th Limestone, 214, Early Autumn

The fortress is now swimming in dwarven cheese as Morul finally became both a legendary milker, but also a legendary cheese maker, each a rather rare achievement among dwarves.

13th Timber, 214, Late Autumn

Enough quarry bushes sprouted this year for Morul to reach legendary thresher. Been working on that since the beginning.

13th Obsidian, 214, Late Winter

Nobody wants to discuss how much meat was committed to the cause, but Morul became a legendary trapper today. Onward!

23rd Felsite, 215, Late Spring

The mayor was complaining about how many metal bars had piled up, so 600 buckets later and Morul is a legendary blacksmith. And we still have too many metal bars lying around...

In the meantime, the fortress is starting to take shape. The masons have put down around 5000 stone blocks and about 2/3 of the fortress no longer looks like an irregular pit. Lots more to do yet.

18th Moonstone, 202, Early Winter - Miner
19th Limestone, 206, Early Autumn - Woodcutter
27th Granite, 207, Early Spring - Appraiser
9th Sandstone, 207, Mid-Autumn - Bone Carver
11th Granite, 208, Early Spring - Furnace Operator
27th Opal, 208, Mid Winter - Engraver
5th Granite, 209, Early Spring - Carpenter
24th Timber, 209, Late Autumn - Mason
13th Opal, 209, Mid-Winter - Weaver
14th Obsidian, 209, Late Winter - Dyer
12th Granite, 210, Early Spring - Clothier
2nd Hematite, 211, Early Summer - Miller
10th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn - Bowyer
26th Sandstone, 211, Mid-Autumn - Cook
20th Felsite, 212, Late Spring - Brewer
12th Limestone, 214, Early Autumn - Milker
12th Limestone, 214, Early Autumn - Cheese Maker
13th Timber, 214, Late Autumn - Thresher
13th Obsidian, 214, Late Winter - Trapper
23rd Felsite, 215, Late Spring - Metalsmith

[Walliard]

Wow. Just... wow.