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[Pan]

 Are there any people who has managed to take out the initial wave of demons? Any awesome defense schemes against them utilized? Heroic last stands? Share your experiences here with unleashing hell!

(Frankly, haven't heard of the defense schemes too much. People brag about their goblin shredding defenses, but seldom do I hear of defenses that systematically kill demons.)

[Lectorog]

If you want to kill them, make a long hallway full of spike traps. Likely thousands of steels spikes. That, or train an expert military and hope for the best.

I haven't taken any out yet. I usually open the HFS as an honorable end to a fortress.

[Jacob/Lee]

Hell is quite hard to fight off with a military, I had 20 or 30 dwarves clad in full steel, all of them had pretty good training and yet will still had a lot of casualties compared to fighting anything else. I suggest lots and lots of well-trained soldiers.

[Rallan]

It has been done, but its insanely difficult and takes a lot of preparation since demons can swim through water and magma, don't trigger traps, can destroy buildings, and quite a lot of them can fly. You'll want to set up a humungous killing zone that utilises the few things that can kill demons:
- cave-ins
- obsidian casting
- upright spike traps (they're remotely triggered, so it doesn't matter that demons are trap-immune)
- siege engines
- a metric assload of highly trained military dwarves with high-quality steel or adamantine gear.
- lots and lots of trained war animals (they won't do much good, but they'll serve as meatshields for your military dwarves)

[zair]

sigh, i remember hearing the ongoing story about a veteran player who as a challenge, got a fortress going well, sealed it off and peirced the HFS. he had the goal to never open up his fort again and to wage war against the HFS, and he was winning. slowly he would clear out and area of demons withh his beastly and large military (that was admittedly syndrom ridden to hell, but in full candy armor) and walling off the parts as he cleared them. i think he was pretty far through hell doing this, but i lost his thread...

[NecroRebel]

I've done it myself. I had a hallways, 3x90 tiles I believe it was, with every tile filled with upright spike traps, each with 10 steel spikes of various qualities from superior-quality and up. I also had 20 soldiers, all in masterwork steel armor and with masterwork adamantine battle axes. I opened the pit, let my miner get past the spikes, then started triggering them on repeat. As the clowns went through, they'd get spiked, usually 40 times (4 shots of 10 spikes each). One spiking would kill all the soft inorganic beasts, such as steam, snow, and fire beasts. Four would kill almost anything, and the four or five that got through to my soldiers had red wounds on every body part and thus were easy prey. The only actual problem I had were fire beasts; while they'd die instantly to the first set of spikes, they'd explode into a burst of flames that would melt the trap that killed them and sometimes the ones around it, so it became increasingly likely for a creature to get through as the swarm went on.

Eventually, the tide passed, I built a staircase down to the floor of the depths, mined all of the adamantine, got bored, and abandoned the fort. Really, done the way I did it, dealing with the clowns isn't all that impressive; it's like dealing with goblins with a long field of weapon traps. I suspect that the reason why people don't tend to brag about clearing hell much is because they die, because they do it a cheaty way, or because it takes so long due to the mass building destroyer lag that it doesn't feel epic like some sieges can.

Also, since demons are immune to most of the dwarfiest ways of killing things, there's no real impressive methods. Magma traps are awesome, as are drowning traps, as are obsidianifiers and degrinchinators, as are collapser traps. Ice traps are impractical against clowns due to some of their natural heat and the rest of them being so far beneath the surface, it's tricky to catch them in a collapse trap safely, and setting up obsidianifier traps is difficult in the best of cases and demon attacks are hardly ideal circumstances.

[Quietust]

Another way to deal with them is to build an artifact floodgate / statue / grate / hatch cover to lure the demons out (they're building destroyers, but artifacts are indestructible) and then station marksdwarves behind fortifications and/or fire ballista bolts from siege engines (catapults never seem to actually hit them).

[Supernerd]

Might I recommend rigging a pressure plate in a very high traffic zone that will activate several hundred spike traps every time any dwarf steps on it?

[MonkeyHead]

For me it is the FPS hit of a fuckton of demons that makes me avoid hell. Zigzag firing channels for marksdwarves and ballista coupled with lots of war animals and spike repeaters meant my melee troops were only used to mop up badly broken demons that made it through my own version of hell in one's and two's - these were mainly the ones made of things other than steam, ash, fire and water, which as usual were taken out by kittens and suchlike. The whole process took about a week at less than 1 fps.

[Kon]

Built a fortress such that you can defend against flying creatures. Be able to close off the fort entrances using drawbridges. Have crossbow dwarves patrol the entire wall perimeter of the fort along one-tile wide corridors with fortifications on both sides and a roof overhead. Have stairs leading up directly to the corridor from below without exposing the dwarves to the outside. Have many animals within the walls of the fortress to attract the demons. When ready, have a dwarf miner go on a suicide mission by digging outside of the fort until he breaches the gateway to hell.

[eataTREE]

I haven't deliberately breached HFS in about a year. The last breach destroyed my fortress: my defenses consisted of moats (one water, one lava) which the demons swam through, and walls which they flew over. At this point the military was bugged to hell and so my soldiers tried fighting the demons unarmed, which worked out about as well as you might expect.

The worst part is that, as the fortress fell to demonic assault, I didn't think to order them to lower the drawbridges and raise the gates. So all the adamantite armor and goodies within were forever sealed off from adventurer mode.

[Gyvon]

The worst part is that, as the fortress fell to demonic assault, I didn't think to order them to lower the drawbridges and raise the gates. So all the adamantite armor and goodies within were forever sealed off from adventurer mode.

Reclaim and ding into the area with the lever.

[eataTREE]

The worst part is that, as the fortress fell to demonic assault, I didn't think to order them to lower the drawbridges and raise the gates. So all the adamantite armor and goodies within were forever sealed off from adventurer mode.

Reclaim and ding into the area with the lever.

I think I may have actually done that, although I had to send an adventurer or two to the site to clean up the remaining demonic invasion first. Then a bunch of new game versions came out and I deleted the world...