Bay 12 Games Forum

Five questions, all relating to training war animals:

I have a war grizzly bear and a war giant eagle.  I want the giant eagle, not the dog, for my axedwarf.  Is there a way to set which one of the war beasts he receives, or is it just random?

If I want to train just a grizzly bear, and not a cuddly dragon, is there a way to choose which animal to train at the kennels?  The only thing I can think of is caging up all of the animals that are [TRAINABLE] except for the grizzly bear.

If I have a war Giant Lion on a recruit, and decide I want someone else to grab the Lion, is there a way to reassign the Lion?  Or is an unfortunate accident the only way?

Say I have a 999 year Dragon in my fort that I've caught.  If I keep it around for another few years, is it possible to grow into its adult form and become fully grown?

Lastly, do owners get comforting thoughts from their war animals, as they would if they were a normal pet?  Or are the war animals too battle hardened to be kitten-like anymore?

I accidentally stole from a Dwarven caravan in my new fort.  I was so guilt ridden that I had to abandon.  Basically I was trying to hastily build up walls, so when the first caravan came around I threw down a Depot.  After trading, I broke the Depot down, but...  when they traders left, they left behind all their items.  Didn't feel right to go from my near-dead, completely starving and tense dwarves to well armored, well fed ones...  Bah.  I have a conscious and I play Dwarf Fortress, I've obviously not played enough.

Except now your fortress is worth more, and some noble may take it to make themself very happy.  Just take care that it isn't stolen.

As a note, most people will draft their dwarves (the ones who you will be using in unmoodable ways, like farming and mining) into the Weaponsmithing line of work.  Once they become novice weaponsmithers, just send them back on their normal line of duties.  If they hit a mood later on in life, they'll use a Blacksmith's Forge, resulting in a shiny artifact weapon.

Caravans don't seem to mind much, mind you.  As long as you don't unforbid their items, or seize while trading, or hurt one of the traders, they kinda just wave their hand to it.

Danger rooms are what most people use, and that is the answer to your question.  If you're not using one, your dwarves aren't learning.  Make sure they were actually training though.  It's easy to forget to assign things to make them do so, or leave labors on so they attempt to do work (which is an odd case).  By slow learners, he may be pointing out that some dwarves have intrinsic abilties (things that make them unique) that make them good at some things and bad at others, no matter how much they try to learn.  You might just have a potential mismatch.

It's popular now it sucks?

It's popular now it broke more like.  I can't go finishing a post withou- INTERNAL ERROR 500

This may not be mention worthy, but it might save a lot of grief in newer players.  While building many houses, and subsequentially making dwarves get locked inside these houses because they build things from the wrong side, I found something.

XXO
X=X
XXX

X is a wall that you'll build, O is a wall that you'll build after all the other's are done.
If you build everything without filling in a single corner, you'll never run into the "dwarves building from the wrong side" issue again.  The thing is, Dwarves have to be either directly up, down, left or right of the thing they're building.  So they can easily build everything here.  After they've made the other bits of the wall, when you tell them to build that last corner they'll have to be outside it, they can't wall themselves in.  Alternatively if you want them to finish from the inside, you can do this:

XXX
X=OX
XXX



I know at least one other person hasn't found this out yet, so it's gotta be helpful to some degree.  Cheers!

Valuable scientific knowledge I appreciate and will utilize later.

On one hand, it's horribly inefficient to shoot very far, and you're still screwing over any of your dwarves that are remotely close to the magma.  On the other hand, you're making a cannon that fires liquid death.  Totally worth it.