Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[iEpinephrine]

If you don't mind rigging up the pressure plates to upright spear/spikes a couple tiles away, they work particularly well for what you want.  They do heaps of damage but don't ever jam, but there is the chance they won't hit their target + you'll need to find an efficient way to reset them...

[Nameless Archon]

Wooden practice weapons get stuck the least, because they inflict kills very rarely.  That may not seem useful but they do bust up enemies and exhaust them, and you can use them on a catwalk to force many enemies to dodge away from the trap and into a hole.

If you don't mind rigging up the pressure plates to upright spear/spikes a couple tiles away, they work particularly well for what you want.  They do heaps of damage but don't ever jam, but there is the chance they won't hit their target + you'll need to find an efficient way to reset them...

A couple of things to point out:

1) Invaders can get better at weapon/shield/dodge/armor skills every time a weapon trap fails to kill them. Using wooden spears (which often can't penetrate clothing) can eventually make your lucky invaders into Legendary ArmorUser/Dodge/ShieldUser/WeaponSkill Invaders, which isn't as good for your fort as you might like, so if you plan to use the "wooden spears make them dodge into a pit" plan, make SURE that the fall will kill or fatally injure the dodging party, and guarantee that they can't leave the area except via the pit, otherwise you're just training them to be more effective dwarf killers!

2) Rather than using a pressure plate for a resetting spike trap, just link them to a lever, and put the lever in your meeting hall. There will (almost) always be some idle dwarves nearby, and you can put the lever on repeat-pull to make sure the spikes keep going off over and over. This is the same basic premise for a danger room, but it works with lethal traps to correct invader counts as well. Note that this relies on your ability to keep the enemy in the area - see the "goblin grinder" section of the wiki on how to rig up a confinement area that you can fill with spike traps.

3) In my experience, if the goal is to keep your weapon traps from being stuck, don't overload them. If you use one or two discs/spears instead of 10(!) per trap, the invader is more likely to take a fatal injury (like an amputation or mortal stabbing), stagger a step or two and then bleed out. Then just space out the traps and you're in business.

4) If immediate lethality with minimum reset is the goal, use upright spikes with a lever and 10 steel menacing spikes per trap, bordered by a multilevel Z-level drop if they dodge off the narrow catwalk. Upright spikes (with no lever or plate) should also be placed at the bottom of the drop bordering the walkable area. Foes have a choice: Get impaled up top, or dodge off, fall in a hole, and get impaled at the bottom...

5) Make sure that an enemy who survives the drop is forced to re-enter the area at the beginning, and thence to walk through all of your traps AGAIN. This produces an effect where a goblin keeps fighting the same traps over and over until he gets an unlucky roll, and gets a skewer as a lovely parting gift.

6) Recognize that some foes aren't as vulnerable to amputation or impalement, and consider how you will deal with those.

[iEpinephrine]

Haha, trying not to get too defensive at the perfectly reasonable elaboration on my suggestion, but I like things to be automated, I never have idle dwarves for pulling levers either, just a huge military...

*Checks wiki about falling onto spikes causing more damage*

Hey, cool!  I read something a while ago that said falling onto spikes made no effect, has that changed, or is it just because the initial tests were done with only 1 z-level drops? 

I'm going to put spike pits everywhere from now on!!!

[Nameless Archon]

Haha, trying not to get too defensive at the perfectly reasonable elaboration on my suggestion, but I like things to be automated, I never have idle dwarves for pulling levers either, just a huge military...

Plates have a reset delay.

Pressure plates send an 'open' command the instant something steps on them, and a 'close' command 100 ticks after something steps off of them.

Levers do not have a reset delay. They recycle as fast as the lever can be pulled.

If you have nobles*, you have dwarves to pull levers, and you might as well get some use out of them before they meet their fates...

*: Okay, not ALL nobles, but quite a few of them won't do any real work, so pulling levers is about as much as you're ever going to get out of them.

[FleshForge]

1) Invaders can get better at weapon/shield/dodge/armor skills every time a weapon trap fails to kill them. Using wooden spears (which often can't penetrate clothing) can eventually make your lucky invaders into Legendary ArmorUser/Dodge/ShieldUser/WeaponSkill Invaders, which isn't as good for your fort as you might like, so if you plan to use the "wooden spears make them dodge into a pit" plan, make SURE that the fall will kill or fatally injure the dodging party, and guarantee that they can't leave the area except via the pit, otherwise you're just training them to be more effective dwarf killers!

After killing thousands of enemies this way, I can tell you this isn't a big concern - they are exhausted, have many broken limbs, and are pretty much as dangerous as a doorknob after making their way through 15 or 20 weapon traps loaded with wooden training spears.  If they have the "tireless" tag then they aren't exhausted, but they'll still be getting the broken limbs thing - only the truly invulnerable AND tireless enemies can get through this type of trap line without having their danger level reduced substantially (and of course trapavoid critters).

[zilpin]

In an unmodded game, my first few layers of traps are all filled with 10 bludgeon weapons each (mauls are great, but I use anything left by siegers).  They've never jammed on be yet, in 31.16

Then serrated steel disks, once the steel industry is up.
Then spikes in weapon traps, 10 each, to give a high chance that anybody who made it that far gets lots of wounds to bleed out.

Last line, cage traps.


But usually I mod the traps a little.
I mod every trap component to be placed like an upright spike, so that I can link levers to giant axe blades.
I also mod in a giant hammer bludgeon trap component.

[rephikul]

I also mod in a giant hammer bludgeon trap component.

Haha i got this one too, i named mine "Crushing Pillar" tho. Somehow they end up heavier then the stone they came from

[NecroRebel]

In an unmodded game, my first few layers of traps are all filled with 10 bludgeon weapons each (mauls are great, but I use anything left by siegers).  They've never jammed on be yet, in 31.16

I've got a line of 3 traps filled only with 5 (various quality) silver warhammers at my front entrance. After several sieges and probably a dozen enemies killed by them, I've seen one of them get jammed once. This makes some sense, as IIRC traps get jammed when they get stuck in an enemy, and blunt weapons don't usually get stuckins for obvious reasons.

Just felt I should mention that all-blunt weapon traps can get jammed, it's just unlikely 

[WrathNail]

Try this: Suspend a 1-tile wide row of weapon traps over a pit. I still recommend steel disks, but even training weapons will do here. Enemies walk over the traps and dodge into the pit.

Now you have options:
 
a) Make the pit escapable, so they can climb out on the start end and walk over the traps over and over until they die.

b) Make the pit deeper to increase fall damage. Otherwise the same as a), but quicker. Use upright spikes at the bottom for even better results.

c) Put water in the pit and drown 'em.

d for Dwarf) You guessed it... Magma pit.

[forumist]

About trap weapons:

And I see an Elk bird sleeping not far from the trap.

I found those spears near dead reptilepeople. Is it possible that the spears are covered by some sleeping poison ?

[Quietust]

About trap weapons:

And I see an Elk bird sleeping not far from the trap.

I found those spears near dead reptilepeople. Is it possible that the spears are covered by some sleeping poison ?

Weapons dropped from underground animal people are typically coated with poison, most commonly cave spider venom (which causes stunning) or giant cave spider venom (which causes paralysis), or possibly even helmet snake venom (for NASTY effects).

[Chocolatemilkgod]

Can you coat weapons in poison? And how do you know if they're poisened, is it in their description?

[candylord]

You can't, cavern civs can
although, in theory, if you used an axe, for example, to kill an FB with poisonous blood, and it spattered everywhere, including onto your axe blade, it might count as "poisoned" and be the most fearsome weapon any dwarf has wielded and rack up a kill list of over 9000...
That or it could horribly kill the first dwarf to pick it up without gloves
*shrug* either way, it means !!SCIENCE!!

[zilpin]

*shrug* either way, it means !!FUN!!

Fixed that for you.

[candylord]

actually I was referring to the !!SCIENCE!! in trying to make sure the only people to wield it also wear gloves and such
but yes, much !!FUN!! is to be had as well