Dwarf is stealing from me, how do I stop them?

[Lycan]

I recently caught a dwarf hauling legendary items to the edge of the map, the items vanish and the dwarf returns to work. What do I do?? I can't just order guards to chop them to death can I?

[GankHammer]

Put dwarf in a new mil squad
Order dwarf to go stand in path of a drawbridge that is up
Drop the drawbridge
Make sausage...

[pezenwever]

Killing, hammering or enprisoning your dwarf wont stop the instigator. If you realy want to mess with the justice system, you will have to do interrogations and find the visitor instigator.

[Lycan]

Originally posted by pezenwever:

Killing, hammering or enprisoning your dwarf wont stop the instigator. If you realy want to mess with the justice system, you will have to do interrogations and find the visitor instigator.

Wait so someone is forcing the dwarf to do it? Hmmm... I've never tried out the justice system yet honestly, wasn't aware such things could happen.

[Lycan]

Originally posted by GankHammer:

Put dwarf in a new mil squad
Order dwarf to go stand in path of a drawbridge that is up
Drop the drawbridge
Make sausage...

That!-... that could work.. But what about the legendary item they are holding?

[opformaster]

I recently had a similar issue. If you have a justice system in place, the thief is spotted or you get an alert for a missing item you can investigate any suspects and convict based on interviews and or confessions. In my fort a citizen was seen stealing an artifact from a display. I caught the alert as soon as it happened, investigated the primary suspect who confessed and implicated the boss who had convinced them to commit the crime. Oddly after convicting the thief they didnt get any punishment compared to dwarves who disobeyed production orders and got beaten or months in the dungeon.

short answer is to try and catch them before they get off the map.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Lycan:

I recently caught a dwarf hauling legendary items to the edge of the map, the items vanish and the dwarf returns to work. What do I do?? I can't just order guards to chop them to death can I?

You need to make sure you have a Sheriff or Captain of the Guard assigned. Then, go to the "Justice" Tab and see if there is a "Crime" reported for the Theft of that Artifact. If so, you should "Interrogate" that Dwarf.

See here: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Justice

Theft schemes/plots can be quite complex. It's likely a Visitor convinced your Dwarf to steal an Artifact that was on display or that someone talked about a bit too much. Then, your Dwarf met the conspirator, or another, at the edge of the map and handed them the stolen item. (There can be multiple conspirators on the map at the same time and there could even be an organization or leader on the campaign map that is plotting to steal your artifacts.)

[pezenwever]

I had the entire organisation and it's kingpin uncovered in my previous fort. There was nothing to be done. No mission to go capture or kill him. The system is unfinished.

[Lycan]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Lycan:

I recently caught a dwarf hauling legendary items to the edge of the map, the items vanish and the dwarf returns to work. What do I do?? I can't just order guards to chop them to death can I?

You need to make sure you have a Sheriff or Captain of the Guard assigned. Then, go to the "Justice" Tab and see if there is a "Crime" reported for the Theft of that Artifact. If so, you should "Interrogate" that Dwarf.

See here: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Justice

Theft schemes/plots can be quite complex. It's likely a Visitor convinced your Dwarf to steal an Artifact that was on display or that someone talked about a bit too much. Then, your Dwarf met the conspirator, or another, at the edge of the map and handed them the stolen item. (There can be multiple conspirators on the map at the same time and there could even be an organization or leader on the campaign map that is plotting to steal your artifacts.)

Wait for real? Holy crap.. I might roll back my save further then and lock all my artefacts in a sealed room..

[Doctor Zalgo]

Originally posted by Lycan:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

You need to make sure you have a Sheriff or Captain of the Guard assigned. Then, go to the "Justice" Tab and see if there is a "Crime" reported for the Theft of that Artifact. If so, you should "Interrogate" that Dwarf.

See here: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Justice

Theft schemes/plots can be quite complex. It's likely a Visitor convinced your Dwarf to steal an Artifact that was on display or that someone talked about a bit too much. Then, your Dwarf met the conspirator, or another, at the edge of the map and handed them the stolen item. (There can be multiple conspirators on the map at the same time and there could even be an organization or leader on the campaign map that is plotting to steal your artifacts.)

Wait for real? Holy crap.. I might roll back my save further then and lock all my artefacts in a sealed room..

You can put them in a room behind bars and that still counts as them being in a sealed room. Also, be careful if/how they're being used.

By way of example, I got an alert that a guy in my tavern was handing off my precious artefact mug to a random visitor. So I had my guards gank the visitor to recover the mug and the dwarf got time in jail.

Then later on, he did the same thing again with a different visitor with the same outcome.

After the third time, I investigated what was happening a bit more closely. It turns out that he was the tavern keeper and I'd instructed my tavern to have 50 mugs in storage but only produced about 30 or so, so he'd tried to fill the gap with the artefact mug (which wasn't on display, just in a storage stockpile somewhere).

So he would periodically fill with the artefact mug with beer and hand it over to a random visitor, triggering the 'someone noticed an artefact handover' alarm and the immediate murder of said visitor for theft.

Obviously this doesn't apply if your artefact is a flood gate, but it does highlight how different systems can work together in ways that you might not anticipate.

[Helios]

Originally posted by Lycan:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

You need to make sure you have a Sheriff or Captain of the Guard assigned. Then, go to the "Justice" Tab and see if there is a "Crime" reported for the Theft of that Artifact. If so, you should "Interrogate" that Dwarf.

See here: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Justice

Theft schemes/plots can be quite complex. It's likely a Visitor convinced your Dwarf to steal an Artifact that was on display or that someone talked about a bit too much. Then, your Dwarf met the conspirator, or another, at the edge of the map and handed them the stolen item. (There can be multiple conspirators on the map at the same time and there could even be an organization or leader on the campaign map that is plotting to steal your artifacts.)

Wait for real? Holy crap.. I might roll back my save further then and lock all my artefacts in a sealed room..

what you can investigate if you find guilty visitors what groups they are from that way you know the next time somone visits you can check his groups the ones who wanted to steal my artifacts were called the group of toasts that later turned out to be a human city 6 days travel to the north i never had contact with.

[TreesAreTough]

I think you can look up your artifacts in legends mode and then send dwarfs on missions to that place to collect

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Lycan:

Wait for real? Holy crap.. I might roll back my save further then and lock all my artefacts in a sealed room..

The thing about artifacts is that if you want to get the full value out of them, which means giving Dwarfs happy thoughts when they see them, they have to allow a dwarf to stand or move through the same tile that they're on. And, that means... you can't fully protect them against thieves.

They can still contribute to room value if they're sealed away, but that's really a waste unless you really need that extra oomph in a room. (Though, you can achieve those happy thoughts in other ways, like a waterfall, etc.)

Rumors will spread about all your artifacts you have on display and, AFAIK, even the ones that can't be reached in the same tile. (Unsure, but I think they can be revealed to outsiders as well.) The "Intrigue" system isn't fully finished, but you can end up uncovering a whole crime syndicate including criminal gangs and "Villains." (Note: If you uncover a plot for a "coup" that isn't currently functional in the game. The only thing functional are plots to steal your stuffs. :))

I think artifact thieves are a bit cranked up in frequency right now, though... Most of my artifacts are still in bins as I just don't have time, literally do not have the time, to put in enough protections and interrogate and expel or murder all the thieves. If I didn't do that, I would spend every single play session dealing with thieves. I could, of course, just refuse all visitors and shut the doors, but that's not very fun. :) IMO, it needs serious retuning, like cranked down to a single-digit percentage chance of what that chance is, now.

PS: Keep dogs either in zones or on chains nearby, post Guards around your artifacts, make sure there are plenty of people observing them, keep them a fair distance from your entrance so you have time to react and shut the doors when a theft is reported, get your Captain of the Guard's office fairly close to where they're likely to be stolen (for quick Interrogations) and post Guard patrols that have a chance of nabbing a thief. (They won't necessarily do it on their own, but thieves react to guard patrols, it seems, and will try to move away from them. If you can spot the thief by checking their inventory, you can choose them for interrogation and if that doesn't force them to drop the item, exile them and then... murderize away... It's the only way I deal with it, now. Keep an eye out for "hand-offs" as thieves will conspire together and transfer the item from one to another.)

[Portnord]

One thing that worked for me a couple times was finding the creature taking the artifact delivery outside the fort, sometimes around the edge of the map. Most seem to belong to outcast organizations with no civilization. You can order military to attack that character without declaring a war which seems to also make them hostile to the thief. The thief drops the artifact and runs for safety like any other interrupted civilian job. The instigator has so far been too busy dealing with the fighting to pick up the dropped item and flee. Of course, this assumes the instigator is within your power to fight.

[Diarmuhnd]

Put your legendary artifacts behind bars , thats worked for me so far.