I'm somewhat new to Dwarf Fortress - I've only been playing a week. I've got a battle-related question, Dwarf Fortress mode. Please forgive the length of the post. I recently read Boatmurdered, it might have something to do with it.
The way it began was relatively simple. I started a new fortress- Snaketown - my third on the world, and I think my sixth total. I meant Snaketown to be a challenge - no trees, no plants. Frozen glacier in evil territory. And it was tough.
I figured the first thing I needed to do was dig down as fast as I could, find a nice, decent-sized cavern and put up walls around a little portion. I needed a place to farm, and I needed a place to chop down trees (or mushrooms, really) for wood. After I got a nice little hole dug out up top for my people to shelter in, I dug downwards and found a cavern around z-level -30. Walling this off, I harvested every mushroom in sight, and felt pretty good. Now I could make beds.
I noticed a small band of reptilemen over a level or so down in the caverns, and intentionally avoided them. No sense starting a fight when I didn't have an army. But after the wall was built, I dug even deeper, aiming for magma (my first time). I later found it and started a magma forge... Though my obsidian floodgates came loose for some reason and set me to panicking. I didn't want any enemies in my fortress (demons or whatever spawns in lava, I think I read somewhere that something does - fire imps?).
It was about this time, that I was panicking about the magma going everywhere, that a forgotten beast showed up. Horrible timing. Adith, I think the name was - a giant three-eyed pelican, if I remember right. Adith roared into the caverns and mercilessly began killing and devouring the reptilemen. I let it gladly - two birds with one stone. I could weaken Adith and kill off the reptilemen all at once, I figured. I used the time I had to finish off sealing my place from magma.
About a season later, when I finally had everything under control, I went back and looked at the forgotten beast using the "U" key - and there it was, right at the edge of my vision. It was underwater, and had murdered all of the poor, helpless reptilemen... except one. This lone survivor, a reptile spearwoman, was missing her left leg (or right, one or the other). I checked the reports and was astonished to see a full 88 pages of combat. The reptile woman would stab the beast and roll out of the way when it tried to grab her, only to stab it again the next time it charged. I could only shake my head. This creature had earned my respect at that point. I continued to keep tabs on the battle every now and then.
Two seasons later, the battle was still going. They were on the edge of my vision, but every once in a while old Adith would stumble back towards the shore with the spearwoman (now a spearmaster) following it behind, stabbing and dodging. I looked at Adith in surprise, wondering first, how the reptilewoman was still alive, and second, how wounded was the beast?
The epic underwater war aside (which lasted over a year - surely something worthy of being sung in the halls of my dwarves for years and years to come), this is what intrigues me. Looking at Adith, the beast had an enormous list of - not wounds - scars. The beast had about one page of red-letter text, the wounds and everything, and I could scroll down for twenty seconds at top speed before I got to the end of the scars. I'm guessing it must've had... 30 pages? If I make a (very) rough estimate of 20 scars per page, there were ~600 scars on the thing. Which means it was healing during combat.
My question is this: are enemies supposed to heal while in combat? I didn't know it was possible, but obviously they can, or else Adith would've been dead long before the reptile woman became a spearmaster, and Adith wouldn't have any scars (playing adventure mode tells me that this is what happens when they heal). Also, has anything like this happened to anyone else, or is it unique?
I use no mods (that I know of) and have not edited the raws in any way. I will admit to using the Lazy Newb pack, though (I am a newb, give me a break), with sound sense and dwarf therapist. I don't think that would have affected anything, though.
tl;dr version: A reptile spearwoman fought a forgotten beast underwater for over a year, and both healed during combat. Are enemies supposed to heal while you fight them, and are battles supposed to last this long?
I have the save if anyone wants to see it, though you won't get it in the middle of the fight, so it's kind of useless.
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Topic: Forgotten Beast Battle (Read 6490 times)