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[pytor]

After reaching summer of the second year with the first fortress I manage to actually get going properly, I finally get an immigration wave. However, the place on the map where the migrants appear is directly next to a giant cave spider. They pretty much die immediately they step onto the map, and I can see no way to actively guide the migrant dwarves away from the spider, so I am powerless to stop them as one by one they run straight into its webs and are killed.

As this is going on, all of my original dwarves' orders have changed to 'store item in bin' (wtf) and they all charge out of the fortress and run to the edge of the map where the migrants are appearing, headlong into the webs and eventually also being killed by the spider. I was too busy watching the carnage where the migrants were appearing to realise they were doing this until it was too late, and by the time I turned off the hauling labors for everyone to try and stop them, I only had one solitary dwarf left alive.

Here is the final result:



Admittedly this was pretty funny to watch, but at the same time it was kind of a kick in the nuts to lose my first proper fortress like this as I had no idea how to stop it.

Some questions, then;

1. Is there a way to tell ahead of time where migrants will appear, so as to plan in advance for something like this? If I'd known it was going to happen I could've at least scraped together a military and attempted to kill the spider.

2. Why did all of the dwarves who were already in the fortress suddenly decide that it was very important that they collected some miscellaneous item adjacent to the giant spider? Did the migrants uncover something extremely valuable or something like that?

[goatunit]

I don't think you can tell where migrants will come from, but I might be wrong. As for the other guys running out there, either they wanted to bury the dead or they have skills enabled that require tools they don't have. If, for example, one of the migrants was a miner and had a pick, and all seven of your dwarves have the mining skill turned on but no picks, they would've gone running after that pick.

I'm sure, though, that there are loads of other reasons this might happen that I'm missing.

[Malicus]

When a dwarf dies, the other dwarves who are not otherwise busy and have the appropriate hauling labor enabled rush after the now ownerless objects.  Jokes have been made about dwarves competing for that last pig tail sock.  If you can find where they died in time, and it's a particularly dangerous place, you may want to <d,b,f> and extend a box (like other designations) over the dead dwarves and their possessions so as to forbid them.

[Syff]

I strongly recommend going to the standing orders (o) menu, the Forbid submenu (F), forbidding your dead (c), your death items (i), and everything else in there while you're at it.  Easier to reclaim stuff later than try and forbid it as it falls.

Related story:  Almost a year ago, my brother and I introduced our father to Dwarf Fortress.  His first embark landed him on top of an exposed chasm, and he starts getting harassed by the various chasm critters.  This continues for a little while until he got the message "An ambush!  Drive them out!" and a Giant Cave Spider was exposed, as it proceeded to slaughter his dwarves.

[DeathOfRats]

I strongly recommend going to the standing orders (o) menu, the Forbid submenu (F), forbidding your dead (c), your death items (i), and everything else in there while you're at it.  Easier to reclaim stuff later than try and forbid it as it falls.

This. Very much this. Particularly in areas with dangerous critters (chasms, terrifying biomes, etc.), you want to be able to control when the little blighters make a run for the stuff dead people dropped, and the orders menu is awesome for that. On more peaceful areas, it *can* be fine to leave them unforbidden, but that risks your dorfs running into that siege once you've killed a single goblin.

[zwei]

You could have drafted your immigrants to army as they arrive to try to give them fighting chance, 10 or so of them could kill spider.

I do that anyway because I use that as quick method of 'marking' newcomers (you can put them to same squad and let them wrestle a bit to get some stats before you get around to assigning them proper jobs).

---

Hey, you have nice small challenge over there; just hold fortress with one survivor till immigration wave comes again! Then build military and revenge!

[Derakon]

Migrants should always appear on an edge of the map that has a valid path to your fortress. Same goes for traders. So to a limited extent, you can control where they appear by limiting the access to your fortress. You can't build walls near the edge of the map, but you can channel, and there are sometimes trees at the edge that act as walls. You may also be able to build drawbridges (which, when raised, act as walls). Combine all this and you should be able to make a fortress that has only one valid access route, which you control.

Mind you, this is pretty cheesy.

[Sphalerite]

I have to disagree.  Migrants always appear at a random spot on the border of the map, regardless of if they can path to your fortress from that spot.  I've been using channels and raised bridges to limit access routes to my fortress for a while.  It works for caravans, which will only span in a spot that can path to your trade depot, but immigrants and diplomats will spawn in any random spot that is clear on the map edge.  I've many times had to temporarily open side paths to let immigrants in.

[Vester]

Spoiler: Death (click to show/hide)

That's the largest assortment of Dwarven corpses I've seen in a while.

[SquirrelWizard]

I just love how they're smiling too.

[Chromie]

Migrants always appear at a random spot on the border of the map, regardless of if they can path to your fortress from that spot

They ARE stopped if spawning on whatevertile would kill them. So you can build a wall the min distance close to your map edge, and then pump in water or magma, and make those tiles permanently inacessable to visitors.

To close off the edges, you can use magma-safe bridges

Code: [Select]

~~~~~||XXX||~~~~~
~WALL||XXX||WALL~
~A+++++++++++++W~
~L+++++++++++++A~
~L+++++++++++++L~
~WALLWALLWALWALL~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Where the XXX is your accessible entrance, and the +++ is your fort and the || are built to raise <- thataway and -> thataway, raised once, and then the operating lever is deconstructed. They act just the same as regular walls, and go to the edge.

[Sphalerite]

True.  Immigrants, animals, ambushes, diplomats, and whatever will only spawn on a tile that is clear of magma, trees, bridges, chasms, or other non-pathable contents.  So if you completely wall off the entire map border other than one spot, immigrants will always spawn in that spot.  So will ambushes and wild animals, which can make things entertaining.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

you need to use raised bridges because they are some of the only things you can build right on the edge. this way you don't need any liquids in use.

[Psychoceramics]

do migrants ignore traffic areas? I've never tried or read anything about it

[Sphalerite]

Traffic areas don't make map tiles non-pathable, so I doubt they'd affect where immigrants appear.  It would be really nice if you could control where immigrants and diplomats appeared by designating a spot on the map edge high-traffic, but I'd be really surprised if the current version worked that way.