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Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: TheFlame52 on December 03, 2022, 01:11:55 pm

Title: The hungry deads [SPOILERS]
Post by: TheFlame52 on December 03, 2022, 01:11:55 pm
Before the update on the 6th, I wanted to share my project.

(https://i.imgur.com/GRb46vE.png)

It's the 10th of Sandstone, the day before the full moon.

(https://i.imgur.com/GFgbjTI.png)

Bembul, you brave bastard. You charged that weremoose even though the military was already surrounding it. You could have run, and no one would have been hurt. But you decided to charge in anyway, and that weremoose ripped you up.

(https://i.imgur.com/xQRWqO8.png)

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Fight bravely, Bembul.

(https://i.imgur.com/hAcSacs.png)

Gostrim Brushgrowth, captain of the Invisible Channels, may be giving his life tomorrow too. Those cages? Well, Gostrim isn't my only necromancer. you see...

(https://i.imgur.com/qfHDPHa.png)

Captain Ingiz has been hard at work. You see, there's one creature I hate above all others. I hate them so much, in fact, that I'm going to inflict those creatures on hell.

Spoiler: the hungry deads (click to show/hide)

In those cages are over 200 hungry head corpses, or hungry deads as I like to call them. As well as 200 more other zombies, mostly giant birds. All together, over 150,000 urists of ravenous dead.

Gostrim is just there to give them a little more longevity.

(https://i.imgur.com/Yfvx3v2.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/HH5TH0a.png)

Demons shriek and writhe in the deep! Quickly, Bembul, change your form!

(https://i.imgur.com/lHU7Ine.png)

Not an instant later, she does! The weremoose is a terrifying creature, armed with hooves and horns, fully half the size of a demon. Sadly, I fear that may not be enough. She is quickly overwhelmed.

(https://i.imgur.com/frCO0nf.png)

Quickly dwarves! Pull the lever! Release the hungry deads! Bembul keeps the demons distracted!

(https://i.imgur.com/kNReFlo.png)

Webs spray and flames burn! The beasts are free! Let the slaughter begin!

...

(https://i.imgur.com/VxXLun1.png)

Well uh, that didn't go as planned.
Title: Re: The hungry deads [SPOILERS]
Post by: TheFlame52 on December 05, 2022, 08:31:53 pm
Two years have passed. Gostrim's flaming corpse was extinguished (by designating the pit she was thrown into as a pond), retrieved by a fearless doomed ghoul, resurrected as a doomed ghoul herself, recaptured, and thrown back into her chamber.

Round 2.

(https://i.imgur.com/2d8Ev9W.png)

Here, a curious demon inspects the area as the last cages are linked up. This time, hopefully I can lure the demons into the diagonal pillars. It's my theory that this will block most of the fire and webbing, giving my zombies the advantage.

Several more of my animal training programs have reached completion. The leftover animals were zombified. This time we have considerably more lethal corpses than before. Giant moose. Giant kestrel. Jabberer. Rutherer. A few miscellaneous zombies. But we also have 38 of the most deadly creature in the world. The dreaded ZOMBIE ECHIDNA. Unkillable by dwarf or demon. All together we have over 500000U of zombies.

(https://i.imgur.com/3FjPf25.png)

Come ON kill each other already. The demons are all hanging out at the top of the hollow spire, about 15z up. I should have pierced up there. Too late now, though.

(https://i.imgur.com/0PRHmtQ.png)

This is more like it! I threw down a plump helmet man from one of the hatches above, and it got things started. Two tanager fiends have shown up. Giant beakless birds. Their gas does nothing to a zombie.

(https://i.imgur.com/5F3NS1h.png)

They go down, but demons take a lot of killing. Even the ones without weapons.

I have 8 kinds of demons. Demons of snow, monsters of embers, steam spirits, gray spirits, and shade ghosts are all pretty harmless. Made of ash and snow, no poisons or weapons. Flame spirits are blobs of fire which can breathe fire and also shoot some kind of superheated poison globs. These killed Gostrim in the initial skirmish. Tanager demons are described above. There are only two left. Then there are the serpent demons. Skinless winged serpents that spit webs. Immensely lethal. There are 18 of them left. One was somehow killed in the first skirmish, possibly by one of the doomed ghouls mixed in with the normal zombies.

Alright then you lazy demons, we can do this the hard way.

(https://i.imgur.com/sRoe5bc.png)

I have more disposable dwarves. This time I'll sacrifice my doomed ghoul woodcutter. He has no friends, no family, and no skill outside of woodcutting 1. He can carve his way into the zombie-infested area without provoking the zombies.

(https://i.imgur.com/VdGpAPb.png)

Ohoho, they're moving! Apparently I didn't save a screenshot of that. Coming from the lower spire breach too, actually. That might be bad. Flying pathfinding, amirite? I'd show more shots of the action, but it's all miasma, fire, smoke, webs, and dust. Demons are dying with the zombies, though, so it's not as one-sided as before. The game is crawling, and there's nothing I can do to affect the outcome, so I'm just going to walk away and see what happens.

(https://i.imgur.com/vU1M15L.png)

Some time later, the demons and zombies appear to have stopped fighting? A few of the echidna corpses are still being beaten, but no other conflicts are occurring. Demons and zombies are simply sitting right next to each other. Have I created an abomination? There are still too many serpent demons left for me to consider sending in the military. Another bait plump helmet man was swiftly eviscerated. I will attempt to create another corpse bomb. More updates later.
Title: Re: The hungry deads [SPOILERS]
Post by: Doren I on December 05, 2022, 10:06:10 pm
Fiendish teenagers!

This reminds me of the ravens are murder concept.  What is it about hungry heads that make them so annoying?
Title: Re: The hungry deads [SPOILERS]
Post by: TheFlame52 on December 07, 2022, 03:41:27 pm
Quote from: Doren I on December 05, 2022, 10:06:10 pm
Fiendish teenagers!

This reminds me of the ravens are murder concept.  What is it about hungry heads that make them so annoying?

Loud Whispers is a legend and an inspiration.

Hungry heads are always flying around in my caverns, assaulting my dwarves. The dwarves fight back. They punch the hungry head in the teeth. Boom, 30 new hauling jobs. I hate them so much. I literally drove them to extinction in the local area with this project, and good riddance.
Title: Re: The hungry deads [SPOILERS]
Post by: AllomancerJak on December 09, 2022, 01:58:36 pm
This is beautiful! Any plans to eliminate the rest of them?
Title: Re: The hungry deads [SPOILERS]
Post by: TheFlame52 on December 09, 2022, 02:58:50 pm
Going back to this fort after the Steam release is refreshing on the eyes, haha. It's hard to read a tileset. I'm used to the simple ASCII.

Quote from: AllomancerJak on December 09, 2022, 01:58:36 pm
This is beautiful! Any plans to eliminate the rest of them?
I started with about a hundred demons, now I'm down to about 50. I've thrown over 1000 corpses at these things. That might be a slight exaggeration but not a huge one. I'm currently preparing another ~50 corpse bomb, and there are still ~50 more corpses in the hell breach. It's gonna take a lot more than that to kill the rest of the demons. Unfortunately I only have one giant cave spider. Web immune corpses would be worth 10 times their number of normal corpses.

Conclusion: Zombies suck in 0.47.

EDIT: Most of the time, inorganic demons and mindless undead don't pick fights with each other. That's why the demons and corpses seemed to be living in harmony. It's only the serpent demons I have to worry about. Those are the skinless winged snakes with webs. Without them, I can send in the soldiers and they'll mop up everything. I honestly think that if the serpent demons had both male and female castes (and were therefore capable of breeding) that this challenge would be impossible. I also think this challenge would have been a lot easier if I had giant echidnas. The normal sized ones make nasty enough zombies as it is, imagine if they were giant.

I had 10 serpent demons when I made this post originally. I made two more corpse dumps of about 80 zombies total. Now there's only 7.

Raiding all the necromancer towers has paid off. I managed to capture another necromancer who decided the fort was safe to sneak into.
Title: Re: The hungry deads [SPOILERS]
Post by: TheFlame52 on December 29, 2022, 05:31:57 pm
I haven't been idle. Three years have passed since the HFS was opened. FPS continues to drop and is now sitting at a solid 2. Another batch of processed wildlife was dumped in, with absolutely no effect. My strategy needs adjusting.

With the extinction of surface wildlife looming, I've decided to process my prisoners. 40 humans have been processed into doomed ghouls. 80 goblins have been processed into raised corpses, due to my necromancer being stubborn about resurrecting them. I have also captured 16 other doomed ghouls sent to destroy my fortress by the necromancer towers. These ones still have their weapons as well as considerable skill using them.

At some point the remaining echidnas managed to overwhelm one of the serpent demons. Now there are 6.

Having finally captured the last giant eagle, region-pops reports that I have exterminated all life on the surface. The captured giant eagles, giant kestrels, and giant moose are processed, but they will be saved for the big rush.

I also processed the sentient wildlife that I've been saving up for a while.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I will drop the wild animal corpses here:

(https://i.imgur.com/fikAmll.png)

The prisoner corpses are also visible on this screen. The doomed ghoul cages will be opened with staggered timing in order to avoid conflict between different groups.

This will be the final push. This is victory or defeat.

(https://i.imgur.com/7pG1SET.png)

By Armok... it's beautiful. The zombies are fighting the inorganic demons and absolutely destroying them. Time will tell what happens to the flame demons, but I have high hopes for the assault.

(https://i.imgur.com/QRZCUHt.png)

There are only 5 serpent demons now. Aside from that, it didn't go so well. I did manage to shut the middle gate, trapping a bunch of weak, inorganic demons in the first vestibule. The military can easily take care of those.

(https://i.imgur.com/ol8pMns.png)

Clothing is a lethal weapon.

(https://i.imgur.com/UIJOa72.png)

That could have gone better. Due to poor timing, two demons escaped and killed a metalsmith before they could be put down. His body is to mangled to resurrect, so he will be given a permanent burial. That dwarf corpse you can see was a zombie, not one of mine.

Some time later, all the zombies are dead, but there are only 4 serpent demons. Those serpent demons are all stacked on one tile, distracted by echidna corpses. Frankly, I could send in the military right now if those echidna corpses weren't the most dangerous thing on my map.