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[Slogo]

On my fort recently I had a fire imp spawn right inside my craftdwarf's shop while she was in it! I get how the spawning works so I'm fine with that. What surprised me is what happened next...

-When I got to the Imp (job cancellation message alerted me) there was smoke all over the workshop. The imp had a yellow wound and the craft dwarf was unharmed. I stationed some military in the shop but they were far away. All of the military was protecting some outdoor work.

-Suddenly a fire flashed over the entire workshop the faded. I assume this was a fireball or something, since nothing was combustible in the shop (other than the dwarf) nothing really 'caught' on fire and continued to burn.

-The craftdwarf then proceeded to wrestle the imp and kill it. A fully unarmed, unarmored craftdwarf with 0 wrestling skill as a civilian beat an imp. That was pretty impressive to me.

So anyways I'm curious about two things...

1. Why did the dwarf fight back instead of running? I'm glad she did but it certainly puzzled me.
2. Why didn't she catch on fire? She was most certainly standing in a tile that had "fire" (using k) on it. Not to mention the smoke didn't seem to affect her at all either.

Also temp. is on so that's not why.

[kalida99]

1: Some dwarves when cornered will fight back

2: sometimes it's just the luck of the draw that keeps a dwarf from catchin fire

[nil]

Yeah apart from the fireballs imps are pretty weak--they're half the size of dwarves.

[Slogo]

Well I actually savescummed this fortress at the beginning as I tried to do something stupid* + lost a few dwarves right off the bat. How did I lose the dwarves? A fireball from a much further range than 1 tile annihilated a dwarf on two separate occasions within the first season.

*The stupid thing I did was try to make a cool looking entrance that passed over the magma vent to get into the fort proper.

[kalida99]

yea, alot of people make little mistakes like that, sometimes they're more severe but a mistake no the less.
I had a legendary marksdwarf kill by a fire imp beacuse it hit him with fire and set all his clothes ablaze...
(and the little bugger keeps setting fire to the map preventing me from looting the orc corpses)

[Slogo]

Fortunately neither of my magma pipes are exposed enough to do that on my map.

It's actually pretty interesting. One pipe only barely reaches the surface at all. The top z-level of it is the bottom-most ground level of my mountain side. It's almost entirely within the mountain though and there's just 3-4 tiles that are open to the pipe. It's more like a cave than an open pipe.

The other pipe has the 'pipe' part extend up the entire mountain but only has lava near the lower levels (a few z-levels above my other pipe). The empty pipe part makes a neat 'hole' and eventually more of a cresent shape to part of the mountain as it goes higher up.

[Albedo]

On my fort recently I had a fire imp spawn right inside my craftdwarf's shop while she was in it! I get how the spawning works so I'm fine with that...

Eh, not so much, actually, no.

Only vermin "spawn" - by appearing suddenly somewhere within their biome, as if teleporting in.  Imps are not vermin (in the technical sense, at least), they are creatures.

Creatures don't "spawn" - they are on the map and move.This one had to have moved from the magma up into your fortress and then to where you spotted it.

Many players build walls or floors over magma asap to avoid this.  Some will even detour nearby water and make an obsidian cap.  Others take a more pro-active approach, and use a bait animal w/ nearby military to just take them out here and now.

(Note - read the wiki on fire imps before butchering - just take my word and do it.     )

[betamax]

Many players build walls or floors over magma asap to avoid this.  Some will even detour nearby water and make an obsidian cap.  Others take a more pro-active approach, and use a bait animal w/ nearby military to just take them out here and now.

And I do none of these. Imps and magmamen will only come out of the pipe if there are dwarfs near the exposed pipe outlet, provoking them. If your dwarves never go near it, the creatures should never go out, so there isn't really a problem unless your magma pipe is in front of your fort entrance (which would be pretty cool).

[Slogo]

On my fort recently I had a fire imp spawn right inside my craftdwarf's shop while she was in it! I get how the spawning works so I'm fine with that...

Eh, not so much, actually, no.

Only vermin "spawn" - by appearing suddenly somewhere within their biome, as if teleporting in.  Imps are not vermin (in the technical sense, at least), they are creatures.

Creatures don't "spawn" - they are on the map and move.This one had to have moved from the magma up into your fortress and then to where you spotted it.

Many players build walls or floors over magma asap to avoid this.  Some will even detour nearby water and make an obsidian cap.  Others take a more pro-active approach, and use a bait animal w/ nearby military to just take them out here and now.

(Note - read the wiki on fire imps before butchering - just take my word and do it.     )

The corpse rotted anyways as a good 70% of my fortress population is busy hauling stuff inside. The access ramp I talked about previously hit 3 veins of ore and I wanted to bring in some extra wood (I spent a ton on windmills) too as I'm going to keep all the dwarves out of the unprotected areas once this work is done.

As for how the imp got where he is... One vent is walled off completely so that's a no go. The other vent would require the imp to either float up 30 z-levels, climb down a mountain, and enter through my main entrance (which is busy with all the hauling).

That or push himself through some vertical bars, hop out of the lava through the workshop over it, travel through the workshop area, down 4 flights of the central staircase going past a busy zoo with tied up animals AND my main dining hall AND all the people hauling the ore/wood up the same stairs then then into the one (out of 16 on the floor) workshop through the staircase on the storage level to the craftdwarf.

So I'm not really sure how in the world he could have managed all that without someone spotting him before hand and without getting distracted by the zoo (I have tied up animals as well as caged animals in the zoo).

[Slogo]

I just had this happen *again* (well a dog took out the imp this time). The imp actually was spotted below the craft dwarf's workshop and this is with 90+ Dwarves running around the fort.

[smjjames]

Do you have another route from the magma pipe? I've never heard of fire imps doing this kind of thing, just appearing out of nowhere.

[Slogo]

I think I may have figured it out. I have this on the lowest level of my storage

Code: [Select]

=====
=X=X=
=====
=<=X=
=====
And below that (# is wall, ~ is magma)

Code: [Select]

##
~###
~~##
~~~#
~~~#
I'm not sure which square is causing the problem but this has to be it.

EDIT: Redid magma level had a mistake in visible tiles
 

[forsaken1111]

Put some hatches over those stairs and see if that helps.

Or grow a pair and do it the way a true dwarf would... pump out the entire magma pipe and kill the crap out of the imps.

[AlienChickenPie]

Make your dogs magma-proof and drop them into the pipe.

[forsaken1111]

Make your dogs magma-proof and drop them into the pipe.

Also give them flight, swimming, and lasers on their foreheads and make them called 'magma sharks'.

Also... building destroyer tag.