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[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Didn't he just say that he likes them being randomly very mega to not very mega?  How're you agreeing with him when you just disagreed with everything he said?

[Greiger]

I'm fine with forgotten beasts sometimes being easily killed.  Is that creature made of salt going to be a horrible unkillable machine of death? Or is the salt fine granules and going to fall apart at the slightest touch?  Only one way to find out.  I even don't really mind the 'unkillable' ones that are made of something like solid bronze like a colossus.  Ones like that make you fear the underground and set up horrible death traps.

The ones that really drive me batty are the ones made of something like steam.  They should at least be able to hurt your residents.  I mean, a creature made of steam can't be hurt, and can't hurt anything.  They only kill by cancelling jobs and preventing folks from getting food or water and such, which is dumb.  Sensibly the Dwarves should be able to realize that the thing can't possibly hurt anyone and go on with their business ignoring it.  For that matter the beast itself should realize that it can't hurt anything, and ignore solid folks as well.  But all that would probably be way too hard to code.

Probably just requiring a gaseus random gen creature to have a solid weak point someplace in it's body would fix most of the problem with gas (and I assume liquid) FBs.  Adding something like an ethereal attack that damages in some non-conventional way would fix the ability to do harm problem. 

I would think something that just checks to determine if a generated creature is primarily made of something unharmable, and forces those two features would be a quick and dirty way to do it until something better comes around.

[Paul]

Even some of the new underground creatures (non-random ones) have problems, it's just a general bug that needs to be fixed with some creatures.

A group of underground creatures completely stopped my fort due to slowly working their way into my fort and causing job cancelations left and right. My military beat and beat and beat on them without killing them. I had to mod the game to make them die.

The good news is it's a bug, not a feature, and it will be fixed. The bad news is there are currently quite a few bugs, so it will take time. This happens every big version, though - so it shouldn't come as a surprise.

[bmaczero]

If you'd even been kicked by a horse, you wouldn't question their ability to one-hit unarmored dwarves (for more reasons then one, heh heh).

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I got kicked by a horse once when I was a kid.  Mind this one was full grown.  He only sort of side swiped my thigh though so it didn't do any real damage.  Scared the crap out of me though.  Figuratively speaking of course.

[Black]

Why are you digging into the cavern in your first year?

[Ghavrel]

Why are you digging into the cavern in your first year?

Well, in my case, it's because I'm in the middle of an arctic tundra with only food supplies and a few picks thanks to a Blizzard Man, so I have some ramshackle farms occupying a secured part of the caverns while my miners dig out a large space to be terraformed via a large pool of water.

One of my funner fortresses, to be sure.

[smjjames]

Why are you digging into the cavern in your first year?

I'm doing it because I have next to no experience setting up an irrigation stuff for farms right away and so, I want to get farming set up ASAP. That and the 'can't have underground farms on dry soil' bug and I like exploring the caverns.

[HatfieldCW]

Are forgotten beasts really megabeasts?  I thought they were just novelty critters from ancient times.  Maybe they're fuzzy and harmless, maybe they're covered with poisonous spines, maybe they're just a weird anomalous floating pinata with snowflake breath.  I like the idea that breaching a feature isn't a guaranteed "boss battle" and the world contains critters that aren't purpose-built to provide an appropriate challenge to dwarf fortresses.  The world and it simulation should be prior to the gameplay in this case, and I am always thrilled when shit goes totally wrong due to factors that were out of my hands.  Build a nice fort with a strong anti-goblin military and a steady supply of food and jewel-encrusted mugs?  Have this nice flying maggot with poison breath and a body made of salt.  Sorry, bro.  You lose.

[Blargityblarg]

Someone needs to mod in Fun as a potential Forgotten Beast material.

On second thought, maybe not.

[G-Flex]

The problem is that the game simply doesn't have a proper way to represent a being that's made out of non-solid material yet (this includes powders, which presumably includes snow, salt, and ash).

After all, you'd think those should be easy to break apart, but then you have to ask: What's holding them together in the first place? If I cut clear through a beast made out of water/steam/fire/salt/dust/ash with a giant axe, does that mean that he falls apart, or do the forces that kept him together a second ago continue to do so?

It's a complicated situation, and DF just doesn't have a viable solution yet. This is why fire men are such wimps at the moment.

[Moleculor]

I think the issue is more that... well... if it's a forgotten beast, that implies that it's lived a long time, yes?

A being made of ash that dies in a single kick from a baby horse? Uh... How, exactly, did that ash monster live a long time? A damn STIFF BREEZE might actually kill it.

It's the line between what is, and is not consistent with the universe we're being provided. Magma burns things, water drowns things, dwarves live hundreds of years, metals are better for weapons than rock or wood, etc. All this stuff makes sense. We even have highly detailed bone and tissue simulations for every creature in existence.

A beast that's millennia old or whatever, dying in two kicks from a horse's baby? It's highly unlikely it lived as long as is implied.

[Shadowgandor]

A beast that's millennia old or whatever, dying in two kicks from a horse's baby? It's highly unlikely it lived as long as is implied.

Perhaps the Forgotten Beast was a legendairy liar?

[Duuvian]

They'll probably become much more interesting once Toady adds the magic arc. Remember he has this all planned out. He was nice enough to make a steam monster vulnerable because he hasn't programmed in ways to hurt steam yet. In a year or two all of this will make sense and we will continue to heap praise upon Toady for his brilliance in being uniquely farsighted.

[Spong]

I for one don't have a problem with some forgotten beasts being totally feeble - it would certainly explain why some of them were forgotten in the first place - totally unmemorable.