How do you deal with rats?

[Talesin]

Since its been a year since last time, i decided to start over and see what new stuff has been added.
First thing i noticed was the rats who kept running to my food and seeds as fast as speedy gonsalez.

So how do you get rid of them?

I tried:
1. hunting, but you apparently can't actually hunt them despite being able to set them as an animal to hunt.
2. Rat traps, only seem to work if its infront of the door the rats enters, doesn't stop rats who allready gotten in.
3. Cat, does nothing. He literally sleeps next to the rat whos eating the food next to him.

So how are you supposed to get rid of them???

[Finjachan]

- you can hunt them but they hide quiet freqently so you need a high hunting skill (they don't loose the hunting task if they hide. so it will be there again if they reappear)
- cats will hunt them if they are hungry or their instict bar is very low
- i would suggest placing rat traps in the room where your food is to catch them if they move around (they will most likely not leave the room again so a trap right infront of the door wouldn't catch them. alternative you can place rat traps in the paths where they would go from spawning (harvest job (yes also peat)) to your storage rooms (easiest if you enclose your fields)

[dissent]

Layout is key to using Rat Traps effectively. The goal is to keep all your food in one place, make that place accessible only via a long single-tile passage, and then to line the passage with Traps. Have a look at this setup:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989981934/screenshot/2103803480204153795/

The building in the centre houses my cold room at the bottom and the gathering room (with all the cooking stations) directly above it. There is only one entrance to the gathering room. I built an extra wall section to hem in that entrance and lined it with Traps. There is no way that Rats can get to my cold room without going along that deadly passage.

The problem with putting Traps in front of doors is that a Trap only stops one Rat at a time. If you're harvesting crops, two Rats can spawn from each tile. So a harvest of 30 tiles can spawn a dozen or more Rats. One Trap either side of a door will only stop two of those Rats, the rest can walk over the full Trap without being harmed. The Trap will only be reset when a worker removes the dead Rat for butchering. So in addition to having my 'corridor of death' setup, I also set all Traps to a default priority of 8 so that workers clear them asap.

In terms of enclosing your crop fields, this is the sort of setup I use:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989981934/screenshot/2103803480204192017/

The crop fields are completely walled in and the only way out is along that Z-shaped corridor that is again lined with Traps. Note the Butcher Block placed close to the Traps for rapid clearing of corpses.

[Philtre]

I don't go as crazy as dissent. Put a trap immediately inside and outside each door that a rat will need to go through to get to your food (except where you want a doormat), then put a couple inside the pantry/granary itself, near the food stowage containers. Make sure at least one person has hunting at a high priority so they will clear the traps, and make sure you have a corpse stockpile to take the dead rats to, otherwise they will only clear the traps when they're ready to butcher the corpses. Once you start making farms, enclose them with fences and put traps around the gates.

[Rane]

I tend to place a ton of traps, outside doorways and a few in the vicinity of the fields. I also set them to Prio 10, so they get cleaned and reset quickly. My philosophy is, 'if the rat can see the brick of my buildings, he's probably in a trap.' I never bother to manually hunt them. The cats.... occasionally get them, if they're in the pantry. Cats, to me, are about the occasional rabbit delivery, moreso than rat catching. Traps don't seem to slow down the walking speed of Folk going thru that tile, so there's no real drawback, to me, to just placing them anywhere I don't want a rat getting in.

[TechRabbit]

I have about 5 traps INSIDE the food stores and 1 or 2 at the door.

[Talesin]

I placed traps infront of all the doors and that seems to have solved the issue.

[old.school]

I'm new so my house isn't as big/elaborate yet. I have 4 entrances into the house: front, back, left and right. I put a trap at each door at first but if they come in waves that doesnt stop the next one. So at each door i put a trap on the outside and another on the inside. In the main corridor inside the house i also put 2 traps. I have a building for my poopholes and each hole is its own room with a door. I noticed that rats were hiding in those rooms too so i put a trap outside of each poop room door. I just started up a pigpen and i have 5 of them an a chicken. I'm starting to see rats go in there too so i'm putting a trap in the doorways there as well. First chance i got i bought a cat but it doesnt always hunt rats near the house when i want it to.

Another idea i was thinking of was to store some food well away from the house as bait sort of and see if the rats will go to that pile of food.

[dissent]

I'm not concerned about where Rats hide as they do no damage to non-food hiding places like poop-holes or Clothing Baskets. My only concern is if they get into my food storage facilities - Meat Rack, Serving Basket, Grain Pallet, Pantry Shelves, Serving Table. Ordinarily I have two food locations in my settlement: the cold room situated just off the gathering room, and then the Thresher room which adjoins my barn. That contains my Grain Pallets, which I use to feed my pigs. Having their seed stocks in the adjoining room is efficient. However, it means I have to Trap two different areas. For my next settlement, I will go with something like this:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989981934/screenshot/2103803480209129675/

The room on the left is the gathering room, to the right is the Thresher room and below is the cold room. That clusters all my food in one place. It may seem excessive to cluster 11 Traps in that area. But consider the following:

1) Those 11 Traps are the *only* Traps needed in the entire settlement. I don't even need to Trap my crop fields because Rats don't eat crops lying on the ground, they only target them when they have been put in storage.

2) None of the Traps is more than ten tiles away from the Butcher Block. So clearing the Traps is a fast and easy operation.

3) The butchered Rat Meat is right next to a cooking station so it can be cooked immediately. If I prefer to store it, the cold room is only a few tiles away.

4) All the Traps are behind a door. It drives me crazy when I put down Traps outside, only to have Foxes or Wolves wander past during the night and scoff the Rats. I don't go to the effort of Trapping as an act of charity to feed the local wildlife. I want my pound of flesh from the Traps. Or, in the case of Rats, my two pounds of flesh (2 Meat). The door stops Foxes from pilfering the corpses.

The inefficiency involved is that I must now carry seeds from my Thresher room to the barn to fill the Grain Trough. That will take longer than my standard arrangement of having the Thresher and Grain Pallet right next to the barn. However, that must be weighed against this system's efficiency in clearing the Traps and processing/storing the Meat. If I had to do an analysis between the two systems in terms of man-hours spent feeding my pigs and ensuring a Rat-free settlement, my sense is that this system would win handsomely.

[Finjachan]

the negative side of rats in a room (not food storage) is that they cause disturbed sleep

[Steelwolf]

Normally my cats are good enough. Also free food. Been using my hounds to keep my livestock safe and getting more food myself. Funny thing is I get more food from my hounds than I get from my livestock haha

[Zat]

Rats in the open like to run on paths. Build a bit longer path outwards from your home to farm, then around and between the fields. Leave a buffer zone between your home and the fields so they will use the path to move. Install traps on every path square in these incoming roads and you'll rarely see one make it to the kitchen door. Trap in the daylight as you harvest, at the rat source - the fields.

Foxes and Wolves are high priority hunting targets, I have no qualms against pulling my hunters out of bed for some easy porch-shootin'. But I think if a horde of rats are waiting in the grass until dark to move, and getting trapped at night, it's because I didn't get them on the paths between plots after harvest.

[Daniel]

If you have problem with rats inside your house and not able to hunt them before they go hiding under something, try to put rat traps around the desk, table, ect, they are hiding under,

after, just need to change the location of the item and when a people come to take the chair, desk, ect, the rats they are under are revealed, and if they try to run they are caugh in a trap or if one of your avatar are enough fast to hunt him...

[Saint Graz]

So something i use if the rats keep coming from the same area(farm, bogpit) then place traps along the road from there towards your food areas as the rats will run down the road and hit the traps before they get to the traps to your food area .

Also you will need alot if you have big farms/clear alotta grass/bogs at the sametime as i've seen 5-7 rats run at one time and they can overrun a few traps just at the door easily

[dissent]

I want the Rats in my food area because, well, they are food themselves. So I subscribe to the doctrine that you should keep your clanfolk friends close but your rat enemies closer. I finally finished the blueprint design I posted earlier. This is how it looks in a real world application:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989981934/screenshot/2183743646076138215/

I've been cutting grass like crazy and nothing has come even close to over-running my defenses. Every morning at Sunrise, a worker heads to the Butcher Block and clears up about six Rats from the line of Traps. They get hauled to the cold room in seconds.

There are eleven Traps protecting my grain storage and nine Traps protecting my cold room. These are the only Traps in the settlement, no other area is trapped. I don't want to trap them where they spawn because then it's a long walk to cart the Rat to the Butcher Block. It's also outside so Foxes and Wolves eat the Rat carcasses at night. Luring them into the Corridor of Death, which is inside so they can't be eaten by wildlife, is my preferred approach.

The mistake I made with this design was not giving enough open tiles around the Butcher Block. It's fine for Rats but for Sheep or Deer, there aren't enough tiles to catch the Meat, Pluck and Hides. So some resources get shunted into the grain room while butchering. What I'd do for the next design is make the area around the Butcher Block bigger with more open tiles, and then also move it to the right so that it's above the midpoint of the corridor. That way it's even closer to the Traps, especially the ones near the door which are the most frequently used. It means making a walled alcove above the corridor but that's fine. If the Rats scurry into that alcove, there's no food there and they still have nowhere to go. Whether they go left or right, they're walking straight into a Trap.

I'm also liking the gathering room design in this set-up. The bed in the top right corner is for travellers. I arranged the room so that the last three tasks that the traveller does - drinking, bathing, flute - are all next to the bed, with each task taking the traveller one tile closer to the bed. That way, when they finish the Flute, they can just fall over into the bed. It shaves off a lot of task time which means more Private Room sleep time which results in more Rent and Rep.

[Sarge_85]

Originally posted by dissent:

I want the Rats in my food area because, well, they are food themselves. So I subscribe to the doctrine that you should keep your clanfolk friends close but your rat enemies closer. I finally finished the blueprint design I posted earlier. This is how it looks in a real world application:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989981934/screenshot/2183743646076138215/

I've been cutting grass like crazy and nothing has come even close to over-running my defenses. Every morning at Sunrise, a worker heads to the Butcher Block and clears up about six Rats from the line of Traps. They get hauled to the cold room in seconds.

There are eleven Traps protecting my grain storage and nine Traps protecting my cold room. These are the only Traps in the settlement, no other area is trapped. I don't want to trap them where they spawn because then it's a long walk to cart the Rat to the Butcher Block. It's also outside so Foxes and Wolves eat the Rat carcasses at night. Luring them into the Corridor of Death, which is inside so they can't be eaten by wildlife, is my preferred approach.

The mistake I made with this design was not giving enough open tiles around the Butcher Block. It's fine for Rats but for Sheep or Deer, there aren't enough tiles to catch the Meat, Pluck and Hides. So some resources get shunted into the grain room while butchering. What I'd do for the next design is make the area around the Butcher Block bigger with more open tiles, and then also move it to the right so that it's above the midpoint of the corridor. That way it's even closer to the Traps, especially the ones near the door which are the most frequently used. It means making a walled alcove above the corridor but that's fine. If the Rats scurry into that alcove, there's no food there and they still have nowhere to go. Whether they go left or right, they're walking straight into a Trap.

I'm also liking the gathering room design in this set-up. The bed in the top right corner is for travellers. I arranged the room so that the last three tasks that the traveller does - drinking, bathing, flute - are all next to the bed, with each task taking the traveller one tile closer to the bed. That way, when they finish the Flute, they can just fall over into the bed. It shaves off a lot of task time which means more Private Room sleep time which results in more Rent and Rep.

dude seriously, your ideas astound me. youre like some kinda clanfolk playing genius lol