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[exolyx]

Well, I'm relatively new with minor knowledge of the game. I recently discovered in my (kinda crappy without much time into it yet) fortress that there's a corner of the map where Rhinos and Elephants come in and leave relatively quickly (for a short moment, usually) but should I be more worried that they could possibly come for my dwarves' blood? Also, what would be a good way to prepare for these if they decide to head for my fortress?

[NecroRebel]

As they're not predators, rhinos and elephants usually won't seek out your dwarves. The days where elephants were the scourge of the Mountainhomes are long past and they're no longer aggressive. If you're worried, having a line of weapon or cage traps at your entrances will usually stop any wild animal incursions, since wild animals are completely unarmored and are thus very vulnerable to even cheap-material weapons. It's very, very rare that a whole herd comes at once, so usually your dwarves will have time to clean or rearm any traps between incursions.

[Mushroo]

I recommend equipping one or more Hunters. Elephants provide an insane amount of meat! Elephant meat lavish meals are a wonderfully profitable trade good.

Anyways it is good you're starting to think about the safety and security of your fort. There are a lot of good strategies and suggestions throughout these forums and the Wiki.

[exolyx]

Ah, thanks for the advice. I already have a large amount of traps jammed into my fortressentrance, so that seems fine. I also have a hunter who (even though turning off hunting while he was resting, in fear of elephants) he ran anyway and shot at them, almost killing one before he ran out of ammo. so I turned hunting for him back on.

[daggaz]

I recommend reading the History of Boatmurdered.  Woven throughout its torn and bloody pages, are many a parable on how NOT to protect yourself from the "harmless" elephant. 

[The Wanderer of Planes]

Elephants and Rhinos aren't much of a threat.
The real thing you should watch out for are hippos
and especially hippo skeletons. They bask in the rivers
resting all day but will come and brutalize your dwarves
to death (mutilate) if they spot a single dwarf on sight.

Also, they like the sewers. Don't build sewers
in a hippo friendly environment.

Skeletal hippos will appear only in haunted, or terrifying
(maybe not in sinister) biomes... so you should be okay.

Then again, the wiki is full of fun information :
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/40d:Hippo

[Kogut]

ekhm "This article is about an older version of DF."

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Hippo

[The Wanderer of Planes]

Yes I wanted him to be able to read the "D for dwarf" section
about their murderous habits but they have taken that away.
Sadly it doesn't speak of skeletal hippos.

Thats why...

[Garath]

hippos and elephants are a bit less murderous since 40d

[Grumbledwarfskin]

My impression is that they used to have the same aggressive tag as honey badgers have, so you'd get "The elephant has become enraged!" back in 40d (assuming that battle log message existed in 40d), followed by massive carnage.

From what I hear, they can be modded back into the killing machines they once were by copying the tag that makes honey badgers aggressive and adding it to elephants and hippos, for the full Boatmurdered experience.

Though I'm not sure how likely it is that you'll also get an artifact toy boat with an image of a dwarf being struck down by an elephant on it, as they did at Boatmurdered.

[Blue_Dwarf]

It's still possible to have dwarves killed by them, if they get too close to the herd.

Another thing to avoid is to send untrained military in those areas, they can get carried away a bit (in body bags).

[Garath]

you'd still get plenty of carvings of dorfs being murdered