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[Acperience]

After reading up on the forums and wiki i believe I understand what a danger room is and how you go about building one but I'm not sure I know how to put it into practice. And I have a LOT of questions.


So a danger room is a room filled with upright spear traps, that are in the activated position, so basically a big spikey floor to put your recruits in harms way?

Is the trap put directly on the ground, or does it require you to channel a tile to act as pit?

Is the goal to get your dwarfs to step on the trap, poking them? or to get them to dodge out of the way? or both?

Does the trap have to be activated when a dwarf stands on it or will it work as long as the trap is in the activated mode and a dwarf walks over it? I see mention of using repeater mechanisms so does that mean the traps have to be constantly activating/deactivating? or permanently in activated mode (saving mechanisms)

Should the entire floor be filled with traps or should you leave safe tiles and arrange the traps and safe tiles in a checkerboard pattern?
A checkerboard pattern would allow the dwarves to technically avoid all the traps though, so should you make the traps unavoidable to walk into?
On the other hand, would the dwarves have enough self-preservation to walk around the traps or will they walk onto the trap tiles?

To get your squad to use the danger room, do you station them inside the room or can you set the room as a barracks and have them train there?

How many wooden practice spears is a good number to avoid killing/crippling inexperienced dwarves?

Base quality wooden spears and base quality mechanisms would be best for the traps correct? But if the trap only needs to be in the activated mode, no mechanisms are necessary?

[Clover Magic]

For my danger room, I built a 5x5 room and used a dwarf with absolutely no talent in carpentry make 24 wooden training spears.  Then I placed an armor stand in the middle and put the upright spear traps on every tile of floor in the room so that the only safe point in the room to stand is literally on the armor stand.  Designate it as barracks, link all the traps up to the same lever, order it pulled on repeat.  Then I just assigned a squad to train in it and their skills would skyrocket during their individual combat drills.  You can also activate them and make the room a burrow and tell them to defend it.

Basically, you want no-quality wooden training spears, with only one per trap, cause then they won't hurt any dwarf, even if they don't have armor, so safe tiles are unnecessary.  (Cats are another story, keep the door locked).  The idea is that as they stand on this tile, every time the spikes come out of the ground due to the lever being pulled, they gain skills in whatever stops it - armor if their armor deflects it, weapon if they block it with their weapon, shield for shield, and dodging if they jump out of the way.  You have to have the lever going, or else the trap doesn't do anything.  So you do need all the mechanisms.  The quality doesn't affect how much damage it does, I believe, only the spear.  So pick a dwarf with no carpentry talents to make your spears.

[AngleWyrm]

I make mine with three spears per trap -- 24 training spears. That way if the thing attacks three times, they're getting more experience per unit of time.

I make a 5x5 room with a weapon rack in the middle, and 'q'uerry the weapon rack to create a 3x3 room surrounding the rack. Then place eight traps around the rack, with three training spears each, then create a lever outside the room, then link each of the eight traps to the lever. Set lever to repeat, and dwarves take turns pulling it. This danger room requires 25 mechanisms, 24 wooden training spears, and a weapon rack.

Also, locking the door doesn't prevent pets. They just squeeze in when someone enters/leaves. It might be worth trying to build the danger room a ways away from the main traffic areas to prevent unnecessary curiosity. But if they're gonna go hang out with a military dwarf, they're gonna get creamed. I built mine right next to the main entry hall, and all my cats died. Might even be a good idea to start ordering cats from the caravan, just in case, to prevent a miasma explosion if you run out of cats.

Also, females in the military is a bad idea with danger rooms, unless you're trying to cut down on the number of babies.

[NewSheoth]

A danger room is often built in form of upright wooden training spears of base quality, one in each 'spike trap', connected to a lever/pressure plate. The pressure plate thing is the best, since you can put it in your main hall where dwarves are constantly walking about and have them trigger it (allow citizens to trigger the plate; I believe you can disallow it too, but I haven't tried disallowing it after allowing yet). Don't make it too big, or you will spend way too much time linking the spears up to the plate - you still have to wait for one to be done to order another. It should be just a room, no tricks except for the spears built into the floor. When it's complete, lead the squad in (don't forget the armour) and turn the plate on/set the lever to pulling repeatedly(haven't tried this one yet). Watch out for female dorfs - if they're carrying babies, better put off the training 'till later, since the baby will get skewered.
I've heard people use the barracks method - make it a barracks and send them to train there. But I think stationing them can also work.
If the spears will always be up, no-one's going to get poked by them. So making it work is necessary.

There are, of course, variations, like with the number of spears etc.

[Acperience]

Replies were very helpful thank you

ColverMagic I incorperated some of what you said into the wiki, I hope you don't mind.

This part cleared everything up for me

The idea is that as they stand on this tile, every time the spikes come out of the ground due to the lever being pulled, they gain skills in whatever stops it - armor if their armor deflects it, weapon if they block it with their weapon, shield for shield, and dodging if they jump out of the way.  You have to have the lever going, or else the trap doesn't do anything.  So you do need all the mechanisms.  The quality doesn't affect how much damage it does, I believe, only the spear.  So pick a dwarf with no carpentry talents to make your spears.

I'm going to try to incorporate the repeater mechanism into my mist generator.
Does anyone know if the tile of water i use for mist generation will stay on one tile long enough to trigger the pressure plate? I'm going to try it by trial and error anyways.

[Cyroth]

I've heard people use the barracks method - make it a barracks and send them to train there. But I think stationing them can also work.
If the spears will always be up, no-one's going to get poked by them. So making it work is necessary.

If you assign the danger room as barracks you will have the advantage that your dwarfs will have individual combat drill and sparring sessions while training with the danger rooms traps, and that all at the same time. (Way more experiance gained in the same amount of time)

[NewSheoth]

True that.

[Clover Magic]

Yeah, making it a barracks makes all that time spent "Watching Archery Demonstration" worthwhile. XD

Another thing to remember: If your dwarf gets high in one skill first, they tend to use that skill to block the spears, making everything else level up at a piddling pace.  This is especially true of shields.  Let them get to legendary shield user, them mark every shield you have for dumping.  A hauler dwarf will come along and strip them of their shield, and then they will be forced to use their weapon, leveling up their weapon the fastest.  Then when they get legendary in their weapon, take that away too to get them up to legendary dodgers and fighters.  I did this and had triple and quadruple legendary military in maybe two or three seasons with only one spear traps.  It works!

[HungryHobo]

Another little trick.
I didn't like that they had a safe spot in the room.

So I built a danger room like this:

###
#B#
#D#
#T#
#T#
#T#
#T#
#D#

B=bed
D=door
T=spear trap.
I set the door to the bed internal, make the bed a barracks and lock it.

That way there's no safe spot so they stay over the spikes.

Oddly while an easy way to train I consider this fair, the price is paid in the blood of infants and I can so imagine some sort of dojo with warriors training while spikes shoot out of the walls at them which they have to dodge or block.

[candylord]

Another little trick.
I didn't like that they had a safe spot in the room.

So I built a danger room like this:

###
#B#
#D#
#T#
#T#
#T#
#T#
#D#

B=bed
D=door
T=spear trap.
I set the door to the bed internal, make the bed a barracks and lock it.

That way there's no safe spot so they stay over the spikes.

Oddly while an easy way to train I consider this fair, the price is paid in the blood of infants and I can so imagine some sort of dojo with warriors training while spikes shoot out of the walls at them which they have to dodge or block.

I've been doing something extremely similar to this for a while
one thing is though you should also have the door between the bed and the rest of the room forbidden as well as internal

[NewSheoth]

He did say he locks it, which means forbids it.

[candylord]

ah, my bad I didn't read the lock bit
>.<

[Shoku]

I use a 2x2 room with 10 spears in a trap. I don't care to increase the efficiency by forcing them onto spikes more often because this form of training is ridiculously fast anyway. If you give them robes or dresses their entire body is covered in clothing and thus shouldn't get touched by wooden spears.
Note: Once they are accomplished (10th level) in a skill they tend to gain skill pretty fast through regular training and start growing the other skills quickly as well. Not danger room fast but by that point they're decent defenders anyway.

The pressure plate thing hasn't been answered yet so here's this: a tile of water sitting on a plate set to trip on high water triggers the plate instantly. The plate sends it's of signal after 100 ticks of not meeting it's condition. If your mist generator just shuffled the water tile in a square through four generators it would hit the plate too often and it would never send an off signal. I think six pumps will take long enough to trigger the plate both ways but I haven't tried.

I'm not sure if spikes have an internal delay to how fast they can trigger but if not you could make them go faster by having several plates/levers linked to them.

[eue]

I'm glad I just found this thread. My danger room was almost ready, but I didn't care about the spear quality. Since they were made by my legendary carpenter they were quite deadly. It will take a while to replace them all now...

For the "pull the lever" part, I just built a simple fluid logic repeater. This way the dwarfs can spend the time they'd spend pulling levers doing better things like say... drinking and partying, perhaps.

[Larry421]

In my 100% military challenge fort I'm using a 5x5 room with 10 spears per trap. It's super exploity!
I've got a few different uniforms set up so that they level armour user, then weapon skill, then shield user.
Though doing it in the other direction by dumping their shields looks like a lot less work.
To keep cats out I've got little entrance hallway with multiple pet-impassable doors.