Print

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

[Graebeard]

So, I decided that I needed a zoo with as many novel and interesting creatures as possible.  Obviously, that required me to capture a wealth of underground creatures, since there are so many wonderful and interesting things running around down there.

The setup I went with was to wall off all but one entrance to a specific cavern and then litter the only path to my fort with tons of cage traps.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In addition to lots of pedestrian creatures I ended up getting a few interesting baddies; few trolls, blind cave ogres, one minotaur, giant toad, giant earthworm, cave crocodile, GCS, and helmet snake.

It seems I've run the tap dry in the second and third caverns.  The first one still has stuff coming in and out since I was never able to wall up the entrances and I've just closed off that entrance to my fort.  It used to be that new creatures would spawn as soon as I'd captured all the old ones.  Now, I'm not getting anything to spawn at all.  I'd really like to keep harvesting these suckers.  I really want a breeding pair of GCS and helmet snakes.

Does anyone know whether I can jumpstart the spawning again?  Also, does anyone use similar/better setups for catching everything that comes in through the caverns?

[Syrup Roast]

Wouldn't spitters be able to get at your GCS?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Are those fortifications blocking your GCS from the hallway? Creatures will only use their natural ranged attacks if they can path to their target.

[Graebeard]

Wouldn't spitters be able to get at your GCS?

I set up a raising bridge in case of spitters.  I'm hoping I can cage them before they hit the GCS too bad.  Not sure if it'll work.

Are those fortifications blocking your GCS from the hallway? Creatures will only use their natural ranged attacks if they can path to their target.

Dang, forgot about that.  Will a door blocking them still allow pathfinding?  What about a restraint?

[Nidokoenig]

Since they're building destroyers, they'll path through any door, but since they're only level 1 building destroyers, they won't actually be able to get past a stone one. This exact trick is used for the GCS silk harvesting trick in the GCS wiki entry.

[Hyndis]

If you have any artifact furniture build the artifact furniture before the main doors leading from the caverns.

Building destroyers will try to destroy them but cannot destroy them because it is an artifact, and so they will just keep on attacking the furniture without cause any damage, forever.

Its a great FB trap. It will lure them all to the artifact furniture and hold them in place while they uselessly rage at it.

[Syrup Roast]

If you have any artifact furniture build the artifact furniture before the main doors leading from the caverns.

Building destroyers will try to destroy them but cannot destroy them because it is an artifact, and so they will just keep on attacking the furniture without cause any damage, forever.

Its a great FB trap. It will lure them all to the artifact furniture and hold them in place while they uselessly rage at it.

I thought building destroyers would eventually deconstruct it? (ie, the artifact itself is intact)

[CaptainArchmage]

Creatures will path through doors, unless maybe they're forbidden, and so you can make an extension to your trap corridor. If you haven't already, you can put the GCS in a 1x1 pasture zone where you want it.

[thegoatgod_pan]

My experience with gcs says they will shoot even if the door keeping them out is forbidden.  How do you keep your dwarves from getting caged though?  It seems like to get to  the gcs'd cages theyd have only one way--through the gcs cages.

[thijser]

Having plenty of useless haulers? I mean like 50 of them you can release them from their cages afterwards.

[Nidokoenig]

I was gonna say a separate staircase near the front of the traps with a lockable hatch cover, since BD's can't destroy things above them, or a path that you can flood with water and, in emergencies, pump magma into to seal it. Or you could be a little cheeky and add [WEBIMMUNE] to the dwarf raws.

[Graebeard]

So, I ended up using a modified version of the GCS silk farm on the wiki.  I set it up so that the spider would shoot at a bait goblin, webbing the cage traps behind it.  There are two paths to the fort from the spawn area.  The one on the left is an access tunnel that is always walled off except when it's time to grab a cage and reload a trap.  The other is open most of the time to lure in FBs, but dwarfs are blocked by locked doors to keep them from wandering in and getting caged/killed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unlike the silk farm on the wiki, I made the fortifications only 1 tile wide since I'm only webbing traps in a straight line.  I also added a door at the south (rear) that you can unlock to let the spider out if you need to move her to safety or to another webbing setup.

It's working pretty well so far.  I've caged all six FBs that have wandered in.  I had a bit of trouble luring the last one in, but eventually coaxed it into a trap by dropping bait (goblins) in from above.  I occasionally cage a dwarf or two, but sometimes caging and extraction go smoothly.

On a side note, all six of my FBs have spawned from the same spot.  It's also the only spot where the ground level of the cavern is not walled off.  Even though regular critters can (well, they used to before they stopped spawning) spawn on top of walls blocking the cave entrance to enter at a higher level, it seems that FB's either must spawn at ground level openings or prefer to do so if they can.

Also, I still haven't managed to coax any cave critters to spawn (other than the occasional gremlin) since depleting the caverns one by one.  Does anyone know if I can get this going again? I'm not sure if caverns keep track of a wildlife population like above-ground creatures do, since it seems odd that you exhaust each cavern independently, one at a time.

[Reelyanoob]

Wouldn't spitters be able to get at your GCS?

I set up a raising bridge in case of spitters.  I'm hoping I can cage them before they hit the GCS too bad.  Not sure if it'll work.

Are those fortifications blocking your GCS from the hallway? Creatures will only use their natural ranged attacks if they can path to their target.

Dang, forgot about that.  Will a door blocking them still allow pathfinding?  What about a restraint?

I used the combo HPH : Hatch-Pressure Plate-Hatch, the one and only time i had a GCS, it worked great.

I had a back-door for recaging the GCS, mine was a wild one.

I definitely think the caverns are limited supply and track the populations. Possibly elves could bring more animals, but modding would be required, and I'm not sure that what elves will bring can be changed without a regen.

How about a world when goblins ride GCS mounts?

EDIT: No way to restock cavern critter I know of, the only trick that comes to mind is to replace the raw entry of some useless critter that elves or invaders bring with a copy of the GCS raws, call them a "Giant Forest Spider" or something.

[JmzLost]

Replacing Raws Requires Regen

Modifying an existing creature into something entirely different might work, but the amount you would need to change is ridiculous.

I've heard a number of people say the caverns have a max population of 600 creatures per cavern (not counting vermin).  I haven't heard anything about being able to restart creature spawning after they've all been killed/captured. 

I like your cave-critter-capture system, I'll have to try something similar when I'm done with my 135 z-level Dodge This! trap.

JMZ

[Reelyanoob]

Replacing Raws Requires Regen

What I suggested specifically does not require a regen.

Modifying an existing creature into something entirely different might work, but the amount you would need to change is ridiculous.

You just replace the entire entry with another existing species (full replace). I deleted the contents of "Dwarf" and replaced with "Donkey". on reloading the game I had a civ of donkeys. There's no "might work" here, it just works. You only leave the top tag [CREATURE:DWARF] alone because this is how the game know which race is which.

This works as you are replacing with existing debugged code, not trying to mod the race as such. Just click, drag, copy, paste, and you're done, the only actual edit is giving the copied species a new name (descriptive only, the title of the race is the same as far as raws go)

No regen required, but you "lose" the race that get's pasted over. Any pets of the old race automatically become the "new" race.

e.g if I have a bunch of dogs in-game, replace the contents of the DOG raws in the save with the contents of the GCS raws, I get my pet dogs replaced by something that looks like a GCS, acts like a GCS, and everything in-game tells you it's a GCS, only it cannot breed with a normal GCS, hence my suggestion to make them "Giant Forest Spiders" instead.