Bay 12 Games Forum

I went back to vanilla DF after getting my fill of orcs on Dig Deeper, least for now.  The map I picked is a mix of evil and normal savage biomes, mountain and badlands.  Was watching my dwarves run around inside their encampment, several minutes after the caravans left, when suddenly most of them headed outside.  I followed and they were after camel bones and skulls, four camels worth.  This puzzled me, as I have all refuse gathering on, and have storage space for corpses by my butcher shop - and the dwarves were not all busy.  Corpses have been hauled in before and butchered, so I expect they should have brought the corpses inside, long before they rotted down to bones.  And I really would have liked the hides.

When I checked the units list, the only dead camels were four zombie ones.  There were five smatterings of blood by the bones.

It's possible that the caravan killed those zombie camels since I didn't watch the caravan leave (and there's no friendly deaths on my unit list), but why didn't my guys go after the corpses before they rotted if so?  Would those zombies have rotted to bones that fast?  On other maps my dwarves have brought back rotting zombie corpses to decay in my refuse pits.  This map has had several 'odd animal deaths' even long before my caravan came, my dwarves running out to get corpses for butchering and when I check the units list and the area the corpses are at I don't see anything to explain what killed those animals, and my dwarves are not being attacked on the way there or back.

No dwarves are set to soldier or hunt, and these corpses are all fairly near the map edges and fairly far from my dwarves' encampment. My civ screen only shows dwarves and there have been no messages about ambushes, so I don't think other races or hidden creatures are killing the beasts and wandering off/hiding again either.

Any ideas?

I've no idea where the color of the light wounds is set, but it's easy enough to mod a change to the whole (or part) of the color scheme used.  So you can set 'light gray' to look like any other better contrasting color, or change all colors if wished - note this change will apply to every light gray color in the game.  There's a wiki page about it, including some people's designed color sets.  I like the 'Natural' set myself.

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Color_schemes

Thanks all!  I didn't take any special precautions to try and fence Mom away from the flies, but that baby slowly improved to fine, despite showing the same negative thoughts and no positive ones.  Still a baby though, will see if it manages to grow up - unless of course the suicidal baby Moonlightbird wrote of had a Mom that was unconscious or something, unable to tend to it?  If that's the case, my wee grouch is prolly fine

My current fort has a newborn who is quick to anger, often discouraged, and uncomfortable with change.  Additionally, he detests flies, and of course my fortress swarms with them.

Noticed him during a scan of moods - what, I've got an unhappy dwarf?  Well, indeed I do.  His only thoughts are accosted by terrible vermin and annoyed by flies, two events that are likely to reoccur often and he's only been alive a few days.

Is it possible for him to tantrum as he is, or the moment he grows to a child?  I find myself wishing I could designate some toys for him, draft and arm him with a rattle or something.

Gobs in my civ, (one of them is a diplomat -- truly odd).

Poor gobby, this doesn't surprise me at all.  I can see him now, spent his whole life begging and pleading for food, water, not to be beaten or killed...  Diplomacy from desperation up!

I enjoy watching my dwarves catch vermin, so I don't tolerate cats very well.  I've watched far to many migrants' cats stop following their masters much and mostly just endlessly hunt, so I made a short dead end corridor with a door where it joins my living area, and placed a spike trap right inside the door.  Then I draft the cat owner and station him inside the corridor, and usually their other pets follow first and I have to wait for the cat to notice.

This wait is useful - once I see the cat heading towards the room I pause and move the owner out.  The other pets notice first, and follow out, and I usually use the one step advance while paused to be ready to make the door forbidden and not pet passable (both are necessary because I had an owner let the cat out before).  The cat tries to leave the room and stops by the door, right on the spikes, and easy to kill without risk to others.

Anyone know if personality traits affect how the justice dwarves handle their jobs?

I enjoy watching my dwarves catch and later eat various vermin.  I'd been quite disappointed to think that I might not be able to suppliment their diets that way. ;p