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[windalu]

Sometimes it takes awhile before they transition from the blue "Shambling skeleton" to a white name on your person list.

In the inscriptor, i think there is an reaction(the first) exactly for that reason?

That's what the manual says, but the first reaction on the list (while requiring no reagents) doesn't appear to do anything. I checked the raws and can't determine what it's supposed to do either. My assumption (may not be correct) was that it had been removed and the manual hasn't been updated yet.

ahh, now I see. I misunderstood the manual and I though that "the first reaction" refers to the first reaction-inscription for any particular skeleton. Thanks! I hope it works

[Guthbug]

Heh. If you look, there's like one "free" reaction that shows up on the list. Doesn't cost you any cut gems or souls or anything.

But in the list of possible reactions is this cutiepie:

   [REACTION:WARLOCK_INSCRIPTOR_HELP6]
[NAME:*Free Masterwork Item Skeleton Reaction*]
   [BUILDING:INSCRIPTOR:CUSTOM_NONE]
   [PRODUCT:100:1:WEAPONRACK:NONE:INORGANIC:SKELETON_JOIN]
[SKILL:DISCIPLINE]

I think this is the one the manual refers to, but it's not listed as a permitted reaction in the entity file so it must have been removed by the creator at some point. Since skeletons do eventually seem to become part of your civ, there's some other methodology by which it is happening now. Usually they've got to hang around awhile, so I'm betting it's some looping script or something in the background.

Skeletons I spawn using the dfhack tool (spawnunit WARLOCK_CIV 1-4) don't ever seem to join the civ. They do labor and everything else but I've never been able to get them to actually become a squad leader. As an experiment, I spawned 75 dreadnoughts once to see what would happen. Nothing really exciting happened, but they all rushed the spare pants pile like fat kids chasing the ice cream truck.

Right now I have a fort running where I spawned 10 vampire necromancers and let them kill all the regular necromancers and ghouls. The fort hasn't collapsed (though it has no functional nobles) and it's been over a year now with no deaths. Is an all-vampire fort feasible? I don't know yet. They don't seem to be killing each other, so that's progress!

[windalu]

Just now I let the problematic squad run the first 2 free "reactions" (those that are there just as a description/information about the Inscriptor building) on repeat cycle. Maybe it is just a lucky coincidence, but for the first time ever I can see all 10 of them in the Therapist. Although... only 1 of them is listed in the military-squad members screen

[cerevox]

From how I understand it, shambling skeletons when first constructed are not historical figures. They need to create a masterwork or kill a named thing or lots of nameless things or do something else noteworthy to become historical. Once they are historical they can do everything, but until then they are just shambling skeletons, not real people skeletons.

Directly spawning in units is likely to be so buggy its useless. Creating skeletons "legit" is already buggy as it is.

Also, I am not sure upgrading skeletons is worth it. If you look at them in therapist, it seems that they lose pretty much all their ability to learn skills including combat skills. Other than the increase in armor, it seems to be a pure downgrade in all other respects.

[Flare]

I tend to have a few specialized skeletons I upgrade. Things like weapon and armor smithing I like to have someone who can make some masterwork stuff. I also like to have a skeleton who has legendary smelting skills, and given some souls to speed up the metal reclamation process.

As for making them historical figures, there is a secret option in one of the workshops that spawns a split second masterpiece as the product .

[cerevox]

Are you sure that reaction still happens? according the post 3 or so upwards, it has been removed?

Also, giving skeletons skills is incredibly cheap. Green glass gems work IIRC and with free souls from graveyards it is fairly easy to skill up a skeleton the 5 required reaction to make him legendary in any skill desired on demand. Or you can actually do it the standard way and just have a skellie forge 4 million copper spears. As far as I can tell, base skeletons can level up their skills as usual for pretty much everything, since they don't sleep or eat it is pretty easy to set up a lava forge and a pair of lava smelters to re-melt everything he makes and just spam a forge-melt cycle, if for some reason you can't find a handful of gems and souls.

The manual appears to be wrong on many skeleton details, it's better to test it yourself.

[palu]

The spawn-unit script should have been updated to fix that, I'll check.

EDIT: Looks like it's supposed to do that, at least.

[Guthbug]

From how I understand it, shambling skeletons when first constructed are not historical figures. They need to create a masterwork or kill a named thing or lots of nameless things or do something else noteworthy to become historical. Once they are historical they can do everything, but until then they are just shambling skeletons, not real people skeletons.

Directly spawning in units is likely to be so buggy its useless. Creating skeletons "legit" is already buggy as it is.

Also, I am not sure upgrading skeletons is worth it. If you look at them in therapist, it seems that they lose pretty much all their ability to learn skills including combat skills. Other than the increase in armor, it seems to be a pure downgrade in all other respects.

I don't usually bother to upgrade mine. I put them all in a militia with a uniform designated for picks and they can so-so defend themselves. In each invasion I'm going to lose 10 of them or so anyway and it doesn't seem to matter whether they were upgraded or not. Their combat skills suck so badly that even if they were clad in adamantium and holding legendary shields they'd still get killed. I watched a pair of dreads who I assigned to permanent guard duty at the front door take on a kobold thief. One of them lost a leg and the other was struck down when the large silver dagger severed his spine. Their job in any of my forts is to go collect the corpses and haul stuff from one stockpile to the other ... and hope they don't get lost on the way when they walk around a corner, can't see a necromancer or a pylon, and decide to drop everything and wander off moaning.

Before this mod, I never pitied the bad guys in any of the fantasy novels I'd read. The undead lich king always seemed like such an uber-menace, but now I know his secret pain of having morons for minions, a vampire doctor just waiting for him to go to sleep, and a constant feeling of anger and depression because he's one armor stand short in his bedroom suite.

[Guthbug]

Oh, as an amusing aside ... I had about a dozen zombie walkers roaming the map outside in a tropical broadleaf forest. First, chimpanzees showed up and threw poo at them. Then, the zombies cornered an elephant and took him down about about 20 real  minutes of biting on him and "bruising the fat".

Then one of my skeletons decided to carry the elephant corpse past the black monolith I had sitting by the door. Now there's a named zombie elephant roaming the map.

[cerevox]

I treat black monoliths like nuclear weapons and keep mine sealed at the bottom of my fort on the magma level in a closed and trapped room, and only bring it out in desperate situations. It will guarantee I win any fight it is involved in, but at the cost of zillions of undead and harm to my FPS. Using the "raise all dead on the map" spell from the necro alter is even worse. It obliterates any invader, but my FPS plummets.

I typically upgrade a few skeletons who have critical skills like weapon/armor smithing, mechanics, that sort of thing, but my skeleton militia squad typically ends up full and everyone gets a curious ritual knife and full leather everything.

Also, on entombing warlocks and skeletons, the idea is you shove them in a coffin before they rot. If they haven't fallen apart you can just get them back up, warlocks are cheap to raise, skeletons are literally 3 for a soul to rez. I just build a layer of coffins around my alter and ignore skeleton losses. After the fight I just chuck em all in coffins and get a warlock to spam "raise skellie". It starts to feel like a revolving door for my skellies they get in and out of their coffins so frequently...

[Guthbug]

Yes, I call the black monolith the "lag-inator!"

I'll try that with the coffins. I have been doing the exact opposite, which is to just build a big corpse stockpile right there and keep the warlock corpses out of their boxes. But then I can never seem to raise any of them. Thanks for the advice!

As for raising dead, it seems that I end up with one or two actual corpses and about a billion severed hands, feet, toes, etc. I can't imagine that it's very menacing to a dwarf axelord to be confronted by the dread necromancer's raised arm bone of a lemur.

Same thing with the raise dead spell. I will never, ever teach that to another warlock. Dude just walked around the dungeon raising anything he saw.

[mcolombe]

One thing which is very annoying, is that i build necromancer alters and they keep on suddenly dissembling randomly for no good reason, it  is very off putting. Something that really spoils necromancer fortress. you try to build a skeleton and poof your alter falls into it's component pieces. it is such an annoying bug.It would be awesome if this bug was fixed in a update. oh well. (ps, my apologies i have no idea how to do a bug report). 

[Guthbug]

Ah! I think I know what is happening with that one ...

Pay close attention when you build it as to what components you use for the soul portion. If there are un-processed souls, it will let you use them in that, but then when they decay the building collapses. Make absolutely sure that you use a proper phylactery.

At least when I started making sure of what components I used, it stopped deconstructing on me after a period of time.

I don't have any idea, however, why it isn't still standing after a fortress reclaim.

[cerevox]

If you use a soul, and not an hourglass then the building will disintegrate when the soul decays. It is the same as if you are building with ice to make structures. They all melt when summer comes around and any building will disintegrate when the ice melts.

Its typically best just to convert every soul to an hourglass asap, hourglasses are cheap and a skellie can churn them out by the hundreds.

IIRC the manual even points this out specifically and warns against using unprocessed souls to create buildings.


As for AxeLord vs stray body bits, no one body bit won't do much, but dozens of body bits over and over and over will eventually win. With a black monolith present, the axelord has to win infinite times, the raised arm bone of a lemur only has to win once.

[Guthbug]

Have you played much with the overlord's throne?

I can build one and run reactions in it. I've even tortured prisoners to get the intel and ran raids on churches and caravans. I've tried killing, kidnapping, and plundering ... but only ever get announcements. I can't seem to get it to drop anything in the way of loot.

It occurs to me that I may not be using an actual overlord to run the reaction though. Is that the problem?