Undead can attack when enemies are off?

[Ironbuket]

Im on my second fort. The first was ruined by an undead attack in my first year. My second I built in a calm place away from everything on purpose. I got attacked by undead again. I have an army with steel but the undead just stomp my forces with little effort. I have a manual save before they arrived, but running it forward they arrive everytime so doesnt seem random. I tried reloading and turning enemies to off in difficulty, but this doesnt stop their arrival. Is there any way to avoid or cheat kill the the undead somehow?

[Shiranai]

Build walls around your fort entrance and then lock the door. They'll roam outside and kill what they see, but won't get inside.
Also make a burrow to prevent your dwarf going outside when they arrive.

[Ironbuket]

@Shiranai Thanks, but I want to know if there is a way to deal with the situation I have now as the alternative is I have to start again. I was planing to build a tower this season and am half way through building one of those cheat farm plots where light comes through stone floors. The floor was only about a third built. I can use a burrow and just hide, but I dont want to deal with undead attacks at all. At least not until much later in this game.

[Tikigod]

Originally posted by Ironbuket:

Im on my second fort. The first was ruined by an undead attack in my first year. My second I built in a calm place away from everything on purpose. I got attacked by undead again. I have an army with steel but the undead just stomp my forces with little effort. I have a manual save before they arrived, but running it forward they arrive everytime so doesnt seem random. I tried reloading and turning enemies to off in difficulty, but this doesnt stop their arrival. Is there any way to avoid or cheat kill the the undead somehow?

Yeah, unlike games like Rimworld that randomly roll events to decide what happens and can be cheesed with loading saves, I believe most if not all things like this in Dwarf Fortress are actual entity movement behaviour around the world, so if a raiding party is already en route and heading to your fort.... a raiding party is heading to your fort

[Tikigod]

Originally posted by Ironbuket:

@Shiranai Thanks, but I want to know if there is a way to deal with the situation I have now as the alternative is I have to start again. I was planing to build a tower this season and am half way through building one of those cheat farm plots where light comes through stone floors. The floor was only about a third built. I can use a burrow and just hide, but I dont want to deal with undead attacks at all. At least not until much later in this game.

It's just one of those things you eventually need to learn to embrace and just savour the "Fun" with Dwarf Fortress.

Sometimes things like this happen completely out of the blue and can completely bring a fort to ruin, approaching Dwarf Fortress with the mindset of "I am going to play one fort for a very long time and I don't want to have to face certain challenges until I feel I am ready" is just asking to have a un-enjoyable time with the game as no matter how hard you try, some things can and will just happen unexpectedly that you can't deal with and your fortress is over.


Like I had a fortress recently get brought to ruin on the first year when the very first trading caravan had a guard charge at some potentially hostile creatures that had been leaving my fort alone and aggravated them.

Caravan Guard promptly got killed, and the now very pissed off critters killed the rest of the caravan and my own dwarfs.


Collecting a long list of short lived fortresses that had big dreams behind them dashed by random circumstance is very much what playing Dwarf Fortress is about.

[Duuvian]

I had this problem too, but I think I've overcome it. The first thing I tried was a one tile wide channel near the map edges but not so far out that it is in the no building area. This way you can put cage traps in gaps. However, one wide channels can be jumped over by undead (or they climbed a tree overhanging the channel; I've since cleared nearby trees out). After recovering with migrants from a sole surviving dwarf (a child who wasn't found by the undead before the last one was caught in a cage trap) I widened the channel to a two wide channel and built a wall along the inside with wooden blocks, and now the undead funnel correctly into my cage traps.

I also put all the adult dwarves into 4 different squads, each set to train for three different months in monthly schedules.

If you have a 3 wide entrance in the channel for wagons, you can extend a line of cage traps parallel and then turn the cage trap line right or left from it's path while keeping it three wide. That way it's rare for the cage traps not to capture a large number of invaders, though you will want to make it 5 or more cage traps deep above the bend in the cage trap line, and a few deep along the sides. At least a few bait animals beyond the cage traps in a pasture will help steer the invaders in that direction.

What generally happens is that when an undead siege arrives a few necros find the cage traps first (same with goblin thieves when goblins attack) and the rest go straight through the cage traps after shambling that way and seeing my animal pasture. I set the dwarf squads to station inside the fort away from the entrance to assemble, then assign them to defend a burrow at the entrance of the fort. Once the uncaged undead start chasing my animals around the dwarves start to chase after the undead, and I issue station orders to make sure it's not only a handful at a time.

As my dwarves became well practiced in combat skills they took fewer and fewer wounds. I've even reduced 3 of the 4 squads to leather armor and clothing with a buckler and weapon for better hauling speed, but they seem to be skilled enough to offset that by now.

I've been saving the undead for the lone survivor dwarf to beat up for combat skills once they finally become an adult, should be one more year if the maturation age is 18. I'm trying to decide if I should have them train unarmed skills first or if I should start with hammer so they can use an artifact "long" crossbow more effectively in melee, though it is made of lightweight wood and not as effective as a metal crossbow for that.

I'm planning on making the lone survivor the baron at some point so I've been rejecting the nobility offer, even though it costs the import requests (no leather for my unless I slaughter some tame emu) and larger capacity of the wagons.

EDIT: Population cap of 50, and I set the first population triggers for attacks to 75 IIRC. I still receive undead attacks, and also goblins so I might have missed one or be at war or something with a goblin civilization or something.

[Ironbuket]

@Tikigod Wish it was eventually. Im still grasping some of the concepts of the game. 2 for 2 enjoyment ruined by undead armies. Have now read about world creation settings which can help with this and DFhack used to have a kill command I believe. At this point Im up for using any kind of cheat (if one exists) just to make this go away. If not Ill just try hiding for a few years, which seems lame.

[Duuvian]

I lost the fort to undead the first time and reclaimed it, then had a near wipeout with one child survivor. The riskiest part of the undead attacks are the first few years; I really recommend removing ramps on hills at at least one layer and digging a channel to funnel them into traps early on. I had a flat area next to a lake, so I removed all the ramps leading to the mountain terrain on the first layer, leaving only the unremovable ramps on the map edge, which are outside of the channel I dug in the flat area. Cage traps are really cheesy; it's a one shot for almost all enemies and you can release them with a lever at your will. Dumping all their weapons through stocks menu is something I'd advise first; you can also drag a dump designation over a built cage and the dwarves will take all their equipment, but leaving the armor is better for training purposes; I haven't figured out how to view and dump specific equipment worn or held by creatures inside of a cage like was possible in pre-steam DF for selective dumpingof only the cage occupant's weapons.

Once your dwarves have been training 3 seasons a year for a few years the nameless normal undead are pushovers for them as long as the dwarves have iron armor and weapons (silver for blunt weapons is preferable due to heavier weight) or high skills.

I also caught a lot of necromancers, at least one of which raises undead lieutenants that are friendly to me. If they are hostile to goblins that's a gain for me even if they just wander aimlessly where they were raised as it appeared... however if they are friendly/neutral to other invaders I suppose it's not that useful.

I also had an elf corpse's head land in the branches of a tree and it was turned into a normal undead head by a necromancer and scared my civilian dwarves away from that area. I don't remember what happened to it; it must have fallen out of the tree somehow and been killed since I noticed it right before I shut the game down and forgot about it by the next time I loaded the fort.

I've managed to tame emus and coatls; the emu breed rapidly and the coatls are quite brave and charge the undead and die. They've made a far more effective animal first line than the elephants I brought on embarking, as the first year's elephant calves haven't matured yet and the war elephant adults long ago died to undead. Coatls don't have that problem and charge the undead even without war training for some reason, while the emu flee all over the place and distract the undead.

[Guided]

there are good places on the map as well as evil.
also the closer you are to an undead biome the more likely you will get undead.

I like serene or calm biomes, these tend to be really peaceful even if you have enemies turned on.

[Duuvian]

I'm also getting FB and semi-megabeast attacks so I probably goofed the attack settings. semi-megabeats are in the main entrance hall near the depot in built cages and the FB don't have a path into the fort from the caverns and leave as I sealed the stairs I dug to find the caverns and dug the actual stairs into a rock column for when I'm ready for cavern defense. I have a well going down to cavern water next to my hospital, but since there is no ground path even a pterasaur (flying) FB got bored and quickly left. I'd have to put bars or a grate (whichever allows the well's bucket through, I forget which) to prevent flying cavern creatures from emerging inside the hospital area once I make a ground path to the caverns.

[Ironbuket]

@Duuvian Not sure if these are the basic undeads you mentioned or not, but 4 are Unbelievably strong, basically unbreakable and 1 is Unbreakable and mighty. Plus the Necro. All are named. If I throw my whole army at them, I can kill 1 or 2 at best. My melee dorfs are Proficient and Skilled in mostly Steel with some iron. Most appear to get instant killed when they engage.

@Guilded My embark wasnt in range to any settlements at all (neither friendly or hostile) and calm. I just want to learn the game before cranking up the difficulty :\

[Duuvian]

Those sound like undead lieutenants; on my initial loss I had one of those show up and wipe the starting 7 and first migrant wave and force a reclaim. It was well skilled in combat sills and killed everyone by itself. I had set the options so 1 monster showed up in the first attack and it brought a lieutenant, so I turned that off for the first trigger, 0 is the default. The normal undeads don't have any skills I've seen. They can obtain names from killing something; a few killed coatls lately and were named for that.

I turn the culling option on for non-historic figures in worldgen; perhaps that's why my basic undead invaders have no skills? I haven't tried it without the culling option yet. I think this world is 300 years worldgen; I had an earlier fort with 1000 years with culling and a 600+ year old undead elf lieutenant wiped out a fort in that one before I made a new world with a shorter worldgen period.

I set culling to on in the hopes it made worldgen and saving/loading a bit faster, but if it makes the undead weaker I might change that next time. I don't have any evidence to support this guess though so it's likely incorrect.

The default popcaps are a lot lower than what I have mine set to (my excuse is I have a low population cap and stop receiving migrants once at 50 dwarves including children so I have around 34 adult dwarves at this time). It hovers around 50 as I haven't set a burrow to encourage babies and the dwarves scatter everywhere instead of hanging out together; migrants don't show up the first season after there is room in the popcap, it takes another season or two usually before it goes from 49 to 50. I always hope for a talented dwarf but end up with a fisherdwarf or herbalist or some such even if no babies are born in the interim to block the migration again. I lost a few dwarves in the hospital and then confusingly to what I assume is old age as they died when the year rolled over and on one occasion two in one year rollover.

Check your popcaps and see if your population is high enough to trigger monsters; that would bring undead lieutenants in sieges.

[Guided]

sounds like you had a necromancer visit you :/

In world gen, advanced settings

there are some options,
allow divination
allow demonic experiments
allow necromancer lieutenants
allow necromancer ghouls
allow necromancer summons

possible you can limit if not prevent necromancers this way. but not in a world already created

I'm not even sure how they are really triggered.

their apart of the law.
they come into being on year 1.
or can be made via praying to a god to gain the secrets of life and death
or, a dwarf can be made into a necromancer by reading a book of life (I think)

after that. they decide what they do and where they go.
if you look in legends you can get an idea of things like,:

where they live currently
the areas they have travelled
their family, enemies etc

it can give you an idea of any grudges they may have?

as far as I know, they don't have to attack your fortress,
they can choose to move in with you :/

possible your fortress was just 'in their way'
or maybe someone came to visit, and they didn't like them.
could be your civilisation upset them,
or they just want to take over the world

only way you can find out that I know of:

is to retire your fortress and look in legends
(there are ways to do this, where you save to a different time line, but I've never done it, and cant tell you the problems you might have doing this)

or, you could have your dwarfs make carvings or statues with the name of the necromancer.
they will carve any knowledge they know of.
but that knowledge could be, they arrived at your fort :/

[Helios]

Originally posted by Ironbuket:

Im on my second fort. The first was ruined by an undead attack in my first year. My second I built in a calm place away from everything on purpose. I got attacked by undead again. I have an army with steel but the undead just stomp my forces with little effort. I have a manual save before they arrived, but running it forward they arrive everytime so doesnt seem random. I tried reloading and turning enemies to off in difficulty, but this doesnt stop their arrival. Is there any way to avoid or cheat kill the the undead somehow?

build traps with blunt weapons inside.

[Guided]

I tend to make small worlds that only have a 2-5 year history.

seems you get less crazy this way.
but that doesn't mean you wont get crazy.

I had one REALLY dark world.
3 fortresses later and a look in legends and I just deleted it.
some of the stories are... just wow.

right now I have a very peaceful world,
the goblins don't bother me
the haunted areas are small and far away
with the only necromancer living on an island :D

its a very lucky roll

there are some world settings on the wiki that can help you get a good roll
you can play the same map,
but with different history from another world if you want.
this is because a world uses different seeds

for example:
you have history seed
creature seed
and seed, I think that's what the map looks like

its a complex game :D

best way to learn, is to just keep trying out different things.
strongly suggest talking a look at the wiki for a world you'd like to play