Enchanted pool and Kraken

[Zephyr]

So, after stumbling upon a colony of dwarves which caused me problems while digging for iron, discovered their hold had a broken throne which acted like the real thing once claimed, which is cool, and an enchanted pool, something I didn't see before playing the alpha.

I put two workshops right next to it, and was happily making enchanted gear for my minions as it's a good temporary upgrade while waiting to find iron, and built an eye nearby, just in case(as it's 4 levels under my main floor, and I'm paranoid about underground critters being a pain due to a previous encounter with rats who invisibly dug through my walls).

Cue a few minutes forwards, and suddenly I receive an instant message telling me my two gob artificiers died. I immediately rushed to the location of the pool, only to discover SOMEHOW a Kraken had decided to emerge from it. I thankfully had 4 friendly vampires who lived in my basement and who I could recruit to deal with the thing, but it raises some questions.

First of all, shouldn't I have gotten an immediate warning as soon as the kraken, who is very aggressive by nature, appeared? I had the eye for that exact purpose, you know...

Second, is that damn thing going to come back over and over, or is he dead for good once killed? Because the perspective of having to regularly curb stomp the drat thing and have contingency plans for it is annoying, but at least it's better if I know how what to expect.

I would also like to know exactly what makes it spawn. Is it related to making enchanted objects in certain numbers, or does every single enchanted pool have a kraken in it?

Because if I see an enchanted pool again, I'm going to have to treat it with extreme caution in the future if it's guaranteed kraken spawn.

[Doomvora]

I'm not sure what causes it to respawn but I've had it respawn 3 times in one session while I was making enchanted gear, so it may just respawn on a timer.

Kraken's afaik can only spawn in enchanted pools.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by Doomvora:

Kraken's afaik can only spawn in enchanted pools.

Unfortunately that's only partially true. Kraken can still spawn in any deep water pool, I found one on ground level and another on z-1 yesterday. The true part is that kraken can respawn in enchanted pools. My solution to the kraken issue was to build walls around most of the enchanted pool, only leaving gaps for enchanted workbenches and cauldrons.

I still get kraken spawn... but they paddle around in the pool harmlessly until an archer walks in.

[Zephyr]

If I had to hazard a guess, it's that it must be dependant of making gear. This is the kind of design I've seen before, a system to "punish" you from using a source of power. It's less arbitrary than just a timer, but still annoying. Assuming my speculation is correct, it's either the amount of gear made raising a chance for it to respawn, or it's dependant of the gear's "value".

This is still very annoying it's not gone for good... There is no real way to deal with that kind of nonsense. Even if I put one minion on guard at bow range to snipe it when it comes back, minions need to sleep, so it's not a sure fire thing. That Kraken is going to regularly swallow entire crafters, and there is nothing I can do about it except replace and reequip them all the drat time.

[di eshor ribly]

Nah, nothing tied directly to making gear, it's just a 0.2% chance for a kraken to spawn in enchanted pools on any given turn.

[Zephyr]

Is that chance by enchanted pool tile, or for the pool as a whole? Because if it's by tile, it multiplies the chances of spawn considerably.

[di eshor ribly]

I'm pretty sure it's for the pool as a whole, but it may be per tile. I pulled the 0.2% from another thread where someone was looking at the code. I've only ever seen one kraken in a pool at a time* though.

*One Keeper you can play has a special Z level with multiple kraken on it. That's a special exception I'm only mentioning in the interest of honesty.

[Mofaka]

Kraken and enchanted pool in my game is broken. It died and respawned instantly like 50 times until my super army was eventually killed. I'm not exaggerating the number of times it respawned instantly. I thought i wasn't even killing it, until i gave up command and saw the giagantic list of corpses.

[Zephyr]

"Lerease the Klaken! And the Klaken! And the Klaken! And the Klaken! And..."

Joke aside, it's certainly not normal and a bug. You shouldn't have 50 krakens on top of each other, or queuing to respawn immediately.