How to handle werebeasts?

[Karma]

Is there a proper, Dwarfy solution to handling werebeasts in the Steam version? The first notification I ever got that one was nearby was once they'd walked into my fort, past all the traps, and started eating people in the main hall. I tried reading through the thousands of lines of resulting combat reports to see who got bit and isolate them, but I must have missed one as the next full moon, another two werebeasts repeated the fun. Once more, some leaked through, and now almost my entire fort is in the hospital, probably infected.

I genuinely never had this problem in the original DF version; you'd get notices when a werebeast entered the map while transformed. Is there some solution to this problem, other than just disabling werebeasts in the game setup?

[Soul4hdwn]

well if entire fort is infected, that "could" be a good thing if its all single werebeast type =o
otherwise, they are building destroyers 1 type so can place bait.
to get around trap immune, cave ins can stun (or kill), and stunned creatures lose immunity to traps.

[McFuzz]

It's had this issue in the original, it just feels more common now because visitors can be secret werebeasts.

1) Send all visitors home from all locations (or kill them, you do you)
2) Quaratine all wounded, preferably in the hospital; if all wounded dwarves are shut in there, forbid the door; losing the people in the hospital is better than losing the whole fort.
3) Wait for a turn. Have multiple military teams spread out in high population places.
4) Either kill the beasts in the hospital, or wait for them to turn back then banish them all

I controlled a 200 pop fort this way after losing 61 lol. But that's it, that's all you can really do without getting draconic lol.

[Empath demon]

Setting lookouts is important, but if it doesn't transform until it's inside your base that's just how it goes. Every room in my hospital has doors and space for a wall in case of quarantine (werecreatures are door breakers). Lost so many good dwarfs to those filthy beasts!

[Diarmuhnd]

I get nervous whenever I let my dwarfs mingle with visitors. Especially during a full moon.

I wonder if building double gates and lots of traps around the taverns and bedroom wings would be worth the effort. It would allow us to quickly lock down multiple parts of the fortress with a few quick lever pulls and hopefully catch any escaped monsters.

[Hazuki-chan]

To be honest, the best way seems to be... build up your army with heavy armor as early as possible, permanently post them on a single entrance to your fortress and hope it helps.

And/or hope you never get a single werebeast just randomly wandering over to scratch one of your fruit pickers. Because if they do, your whole fort is dead. 20, 40, 60 people, it doesn't matter. One scratch, one more monstrous frigging werebeast determined to murder everything around it. Lizard, hamster, whatever type is exactly the same. Fort full of blood and bones and body parts.

It would be nice if there was something you could do, besides... either exile (i.e. murder fifteen other forts by sending the beasts on to them, real cool of you) or straight-up murdering all your own people because they got the wereplague (I get attached to my legendary stone carves, sue me).

Eh, whatever.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Hazuki-chan:

To be honest, the best way seems to be... build up your army with heavy armor as early as possible, permanently post them on a single entrance to your fortress and hope it helps.

Yes, you are supposed to have heavily defended entrances. Like, what if it's not a werebeast, but a dragon instead? Does it just go in and eat everyone?

That is canon in LotR, but you should play better.

Don't gather plants around full moon, if you are worried about werebeasts. Also, plant gatherers should be some of the most expendable dwarves.

[svlla]

good advice itt.. also I turn down their chance on worldgen

[Hazuki-chan]

Originally posted by AlP:

Originally posted by Hazuki-chan:

To be honest, the best way seems to be... build up your army with heavy armor as early as possible, permanently post them on a single entrance to your fortress and hope it helps.

Yes, you are supposed to have heavily defended entrances. Like, what if it's not a werebeast, but a dragon instead? Does it just go in and eat everyone?

That is canon in LotR, but you should play better.

Don't gather plants around full moon, if you are worried about werebeasts. Also, plant gatherers should be some of the most expendable dwarves.

Makes sense. Problem was, I had all of 16 dwarves in the fortress for the longest time, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for military training. Plenty of food, beds, a tavern with rooms, a temple. 16, "no migrants this season", over and over. Best I can think, some kind of glitch or a quirk of the world population flow mechanics. Who knows.

I save, exit, and the next time I load the game I get migrations that double our population, then more on top of that. So I start training troops. But now the game's going "Ooooh, that's a good sized population you've got there, bet you'd like some nasty events to challenge you at this point", and normally it would be right. However, due to the lengthy stagnation, coupled with sudden population growth, we were not in a position to defend properly.

These things happen, I suppose. Can always turn the buggers off. Or obsessively prepare, and then just never have a werebeast show up for that fort - have some other rotten thing wriggle through the million or so holes in your defence that underground caverns inevitably bring. I especially "enjoy" the ones that shoot webs and can thus turn all of your legendary fighters into meat piñatas.

So you prepare for that too, and it ends up not happening either. And so on and so forth. But that's the gameplay, really... either you figure out how to do well, or some disaster will end your run. All dust in the wind, sooner or later.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Hazuki-chan:

Originally posted by AlP:

Yes, you are supposed to have heavily defended entrances. Like, what if it's not a werebeast, but a dragon instead? Does it just go in and eat everyone?

That is canon in LotR, but you should play better.

Don't gather plants around full moon, if you are worried about werebeasts. Also, plant gatherers should be some of the most expendable dwarves.

Makes sense. Problem was, I had all of 16 dwarves in the fortress for the longest time, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for military training. Plenty of food, beds, a tavern with rooms, a temple. 16, "no migrants this season", over and over. Best I can think, some kind of glitch or a quirk of the world population flow mechanics. Who knows.

I save, exit, and the next time I load the game I get migrations that double our population, then more on top of that. So I start training troops. But now the game's going "Ooooh, that's a good sized population you've got there, bet you'd like some nasty events to challenge you at this point", and normally it would be right. However, due to the lengthy stagnation, coupled with sudden population growth, we were not in a position to defend properly.

These things happen, I suppose. Can always turn the buggers off. Or obsessively prepare, and then just never have a werebeast show up for that fort - have some other rotten thing wriggle through the million or so holes in your defence that underground caverns inevitably bring. I especially "enjoy" the ones that shoot webs and can thus turn all of your legendary fighters into meat piñatas.

So you prepare for that too, and it ends up not happening either. And so on and so forth. But that's the gameplay, really... either you figure out how to do well, or some disaster will end your run. All dust in the wind, sooner or later.

Did you export enough wealth? Migrants come when you export a lot, but at the same time you must still have a lot when the dwarf merchants leave the map. So if you traded away all your valuables, the caravan reported that your fort is very poor. So no migrants wanted to come, after the two hardcoded first waves. After your next caravan, you probably produced enough wealth to attract migrants.

For early defense, I have a dwarf training from day 1, he becomes the militia commander. Everyone else does all the work.

You also don't need to fight every monster head on. Traps can deal with a threat your dwarves shouldn't approach, or you can simply lock them up, collapse a ceiling on them or drown them in magma. This is not an exploit, the game gives you tools to use with your ingenuity to beat the challenges.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Karma:

Is there a proper, Dwarfy solution to handling werebeasts in the Steam version? The first notification I ever got that one was nearby was once they'd walked into my fort, past all the traps, and started eating people in the main hall. ..

They were in werebeast form and hostile when they entered? That's basically a generic attack that you handle like the rest of them.

The insidious ones are the Visitors/et that come, but turn with the full moon and start attacking everyone. (I had a seemingly friendly werebeast Visitor, once, too. Just stood there, listening to poetry all day. :))

Setting up hospital space that can be easily isolated/walled-off is a good method to prevent newly created werebeasties from spreading it even more. The best ones I have seen just have small cubicles that can be walled off individually. It can help contain it.

IMO, werebeast frequency should be tuned down a bit in worldgen. The same with vamps. (There's a known effect there with older worlds that illustrates the issue)


I generally have one entrance open for visitors that can be sealed by, hopefully, artifact quality doors. (Another is then opened that leads to a trap maze) Guards are posted there with staked dogs and a squad patrols the main corridor and tavern. (Rather, that's what I try for in that design that accepts Visitors)

[malthenielsen]

Like you I'm also struggling to make sure I've read the battle logs for bites. None of the anti-werebeasts measure work if you don't know who got bitten or not. I adopted the measure of just killing everybody that had been near the werebeast to make sure, but it didn't seem sustainable.

I "fixed" it by picking a younger world, as it takes time for people to get cursed and infect others and so on. So there's few to no werebeasts and vampires around. You have way more megabeasts on the other hand.

I've go a 100 year old world and haven't seen a werebeast in 28 years of game years.

[AlP]

Originally posted by malthenielsen:

I adopted the measure of just killing everybody that had been near the werebeast to make sure, but it didn't seem sustainable.

Calm down, Satan! Just lock them in a room with food for a month, Jesus!

[RoM]

oh werebeasts. chipped naughty bastards. they ruined 7 embarks in line.

the cure:
* close the gate
* marksdwarf on the wall
* pray. no, PRAY

[Trollemancer]

If werebeast comes to your fortress, try to:
1. Seal the fortress. Werebeast will turn normal soon and flee in disgrace
2. isolate civilians, handle the beast with best fighters - fast and clean
3. Go thorugh the combat logs. If someone gets "werebeast poison runs through something something", put him to a special squad and send it somewhere, like lava or another settlement