How did you deal with the underworld mobs?

[EisenZahnWolf]

Started in a small mountain cause medium was too large in my opinion and I was also hoping to get some more frames out of it.
Finally found one, had 45 dwarves, 90% with better militia weaponry but almost none had rings or armor.
There was a slimecave there and my god, everyone just straight up died down there. Having no option to stop dwarves from trying to rescue their fallen kin it was game over.
Tech tree was almost completed was just missing the last one, had a bunch of gold but rehiring was useless since they went to their doom in an instant.
Should some normal slimes and 2-3 slime kings really hit that hard on normal?
Probably gonna try another run tomorrow but putting down the difficulty by 1. Normal waves were no problem with enough traps and rarely resulted in downed dwarves.

After this defeat I'm pretty certain we need some kind of combat overhaul.
Sword+Shield --> Tanky Defender type dealing less damage than current sword users, moves slower when near enemies due to raised shield but has damage negotiation depending on the quality and material used for the shield.
Spear --> Longer range, can stay behind shield users to poke the enemies.
Archers/Axe Throwers --> Ranged unit, no additional info needed I guess.

[Dan]

This sounds weird. What kind of weapon did you use? My dwarfs one-shots slimes,undead and rats but I did of course give them all a basic militia "education" by picking every talent from rugged mindset down to beast of burden. If you pick those for all your dwarfs along with spelunker scout they will all have ~30% extra movement speed so they can run from danger. The only time my dwarfs seem to be in trouble is if they drop down into a swarm where they are overwhelmed. When this happens I send all my dwarfs down there to kill them by right-clicking the nearest lair.

[Surumon]

I had to micro every fight. I had them equipped with the best adamantine gear I could craft. I even gave them signet rings instead of armor rings since I could double them up for an easy 30%+ move speed bonus that helped me micro the ones near death out of the fight better. Plus I needed to have every fight be at least 10 Dwarves hitting the enemies all at the same time. Otherwise they'd all go down.

That being said, I eventually just stopped fighting them and ignored them. It wasn't worth the hassle. It's rather easy to just build around them. I used a miner or two equipped with the max level lanterns to avoid the monster lairs.

[EisenZahnWolf]

Cant remember the exact weapons tbh. Since I was selling them every now and then on the overworld and didn't specify the metal they should be using I assume those were pretty decent. I don't have issues with normal nest but that fiery underworld area was brutal.
If its still that hard on lower difficulty I will build around and block of any entry points.