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Author Topic: Dead critters in the caverns?  (Read 1883 times)

Witty

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Dead critters in the caverns?
« on: January 03, 2015, 08:40:36 pm »

In a recent fort, the first layer I breached was covered in dead cave swallows, a gorlak corpse and the skeleton of a giant bat. The condition of the corpses seems to suggest that they died before I ever breached the caverns.

Is this some new behavior? To me it seems like a bug, but I wondering if anyone else had similar experiences or some insight/speculation.
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duckman

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2015, 09:07:22 pm »

Most animals only live about 20-30 years, they probably all died of old age while you were digging around up above. I embarked on a cavern with giant rats back n 34.11 and those things keel over every 3 years.
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Pirate Santa

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2015, 09:21:37 pm »

Did they die violently? Creatures in the caverns kill each other all the time.
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bluephoenix

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2015, 10:21:49 pm »

Did they die violently? Creatures in the caverns kill each other all the time.
This, just because you haven't breached the caverns yet doesn't mean they don't exist.
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Niddhoger

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2015, 01:00:25 pm »

In a recent fort, the first layer I breached was covered in dead cave swallows, a gorlak corpse and the skeleton of a giant bat. The condition of the corpses seems to suggest that they died before I ever breached the caverns.

Is this some new behavior? To me it seems like a bug, but I wondering if anyone else had similar experiences or some insight/speculation.

The caverns are active the entire time you have embarked.  There used to be a bug that caused cavern-related messages to pop up before you breached them.  I'd get all sort of "naked mole dog gave birth!" messages until I could breach the cavern and unleash my axelords to shut all those critters up permanently. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that spiders are always at work.  Spiders count as cats, so they hunt down vermin and shoot webs at them.  This is why the cavern is littered with webbing from the start... look closely and there should always be vermin remains near the webbing (or at least a corpse of something larger a GCS killed).
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vjmdhzgr

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #5 on: January 04, 2015, 01:10:05 pm »

Another thing to keep in mind is that spiders are always at work.  Spiders count as cats, so they hunt down vermin and shoot webs at them.  This is why the cavern is littered with webbing from the start... look closely and there should always be vermin remains near the webbing (or at least a corpse of something larger a GCS killed).
I checked the raws and cave spiders have neither [VERMINHUNTER] or [HUNTS_VERMIN] so that's not how that happens. How it does happen I really don't know, my guess would be that if there's a webbing creature living in an area then you find webs there whether or not it had any reason to shoot them.
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The Bard

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #6 on: January 04, 2015, 08:09:45 pm »

If a vermin moves onto a web, it dies on contact.
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Broseph Stalin

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2015, 08:15:15 pm »

Webs kill vermin and cavern creatures kill each other.

Niddhoger

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Re: Dead critters in the caverns?
« Reply #8 on: January 04, 2015, 09:11:24 pm »

Another thing to keep in mind is that spiders are always at work.  Spiders count as cats, so they hunt down vermin and shoot webs at them.  This is why the cavern is littered with webbing from the start... look closely and there should always be vermin remains near the webbing (or at least a corpse of something larger a GCS killed).
I checked the raws and cave spiders have neither [VERMINHUNTER] or [HUNTS_VERMIN] so that's not how that happens. How it does happen I really don't know, my guess would be that if there's a webbing creature living in an area then you find webs there whether or not it had any reason to shoot them.

What I ment is that spiders kill vermin in the caverns.  Everytime I see web I see vermin remains.  So they might not have the exact same code, but they function like a wild version of cats. 
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