Fire breathing lava Octopus

[M.A.X.]

How do I beat a fire breathing lava octopus. It is currently incinerating everything that moves in the caves beneath my fort. Will a door stop this 300 year old death machine, do I need a balista and a draw bridge or are my 200 Dwarfs about to be cremated?

[jeetrix]

you can either wait till some flying giant spider-bat-thing comes to eat it , or you can lure it with a chained dog inside a masterfully crafted upright-spear-traproom and lever it to a swift end. sending in dwarfs is not advisable; could be fun tho

[Erei]

Fire breathing can be blocked by a shield. Even a wooden one. However, the burning stuff around the dwarf, not so much. If you fight it in a stone corridor it's probably OK.
You can also use bridges to trap it, or even smash it. You can also ignore it, but it's likely to break doors. Bridges and wall can't be broken (but some creature are so big you can "drop" a bridge on their face).

Depending on the material, magma can also work against it. If it stay often at one place, dropping a section of the mountain on its head will work to.

[Vettig Annikske]

Make a death hall, line it with traps. Carve fortifications for your marksdwarfs to shoot from while charging in with the militia, make sure they are shield users. My commander once blocked a dragon's fire with his shield and cloved its head asunder.
The fortress did succumb though because I had wooden pallisades and an undead army came charging straight after, as if they were waiting for it..

You could also cage it with a cage trap. But I don't find that particulary fun

[Erei]

The beast will breath through fortification incinerating marskdwarves.

[Bralbaard]

Originally posted by Vettig Annikske:

Make a death hall, line it with traps. Carve fortifications for your marksdwarfs to shoot from while charging in with the militia, make sure they are shield users. My commander once blocked a dragon's fire with his shield and cloved its head asunder.
The fortress did succumb though because I had wooden pallisades and an undead army came charging straight after, as if they were waiting for it..

You could also cage it with a cage trap. But I don't find that particulary fun

Quite a few things in that post are really bad advice. Cage traps don't work against forgotten beasts, unless it is a webbed cage trap, but that means you first have to trap something worse than that firebreathing octopus.

[jeetrix]

i know theyre supposed to be buildingdestroyers but in the steam version forgotten beasts dont seem to break doors

[Erei]

Originally posted by jeetrix:

i know theyre supposed to be buildingdestroyers but in the steam version forgotten beasts dont seem to break doors

I noticed that to. I didn't want to push my luck and promptly sealed the creature (I always used doors to "slow" them down). So I was not sure. But it seems so.

In any case, if you have an artifact door, they can't break that.

[M.A.X.]

Originally posted by Erei:

Originally posted by jeetrix:

i know theyre supposed to be buildingdestroyers but in the steam version forgotten beasts dont seem to break doors

I noticed that to. I didn't want to push my luck and promptly sealed the creature (I always used doors to "slow" them down). So I was not sure. But it seems so.

In any case, if you have an artifact door, they can't break that.

Avoiding the fight seems to be the best option then as it sets the mushroom cave floor on fire in a huge radius and the thick smoke is a death sentence for my hammer dwarfs.

Do forgotten beasts fight each other? had a different one spawn 5 minutes later

[Erei]

Yes they sure fight each others :)

[M.A.X.]

Wait, what happens when I flood the caves by dumping/piping in water? Will he turn into obsidian?

[jeetrix]

hahaha err... sounds like an elaborate plan, who knows

[Erei]

Originally posted by M.A.X.:

Wait, what happens when I flood the caves by dumping/piping in water? Will he turn into obsidian?

Magma + water make obsidian. Or should. But on steam I had some water on floor, and magma came but no obsidian was made. So maybe you need some mimimum depth ?

BTW, anything which is in a tile that either become obsidian or ice is killed.

[GrimdarkOG]

Just leave it down there. Dig around it. I have a reigning champion in my cavern, he's killed 6 other forgotten beasts. Wall it up and forget about it

[Empath demon]

I had a forgotten beast made of fire, but it jumped into water and didn't die. I'm not sure material properties are entirely respected when bodies are made from them, so I would guess water won't turn it to obsidian/kill it. But it might, and it should, so you could test it. This is called !!SCIENCE!!, the !! being the symbol for an item on fire

[Grimbot]

That's a bad one. Unless I was feeling crazy cocky and well-prepared, I'd probably just seal yourself off until it leaves or something else kills it. If it wanders into a convenient location, you can also walk it up and later connect it to some bridges and surface tunnels to use it as a weapon.