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Author Topic: Flesh balls  (Read 1715 times)

Libash_Thunderhead

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Flesh balls
« on: October 22, 2016, 07:58:06 am »

Well, I wonder if you guys have noticed, once those things appear on your map, no more other creatures spawn in cavern level 3.

Maybe that is because they don't move and thus won't leave map on their own. Further more, can they spawn in water(but they don't swim), so normally you don't have a way to kill them.
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2016, 08:09:31 am »

If they're in water, can't you typically order marksdwarves to shoot them? Otherwise, can also cave in on top of them, though this is might be bit dangerous to do on map edge.

Lozzymandias

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2016, 08:25:47 am »

You get 4 batches of wildlife I think, one a cavern and 1 on the surface. Once the flesh balls are installed they, and don't move, you won't get more wildlife. Solution: kill them. Drain thelake would be one way, or opening the cavern from above and firing on them. Alternatively train a giant toad or cave crocodile and drop it from above on them.
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Libash_Thunderhead

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #3 on: October 22, 2016, 08:44:04 am »

Ha, I don't know if marks can shoot underwater targets.
But training toads and crocodiles sounds interesting.
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Lozzymandias

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #4 on: October 22, 2016, 09:31:00 am »

Can comfirm marks dwarfs do shoot underwater. Probably simpler to just drop a few war dogs in. War dogs are pretty expendable
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #5 on: October 22, 2016, 11:04:43 am »

The various sphere creatures are indeed a pain in that they frequently enter the map under water and then proceeds to camp. The only solutions are to kill them and to capture them. You can kill them by obsidianizing the tiles they occupy (or the one above to create a cave-in, unless it attaches to the shore). It's also possible to fire ballistae under water by firing through fortifications than drain the water rushing in downwards to either a map edge drain or a portable drain.
I generally secure all caverns by building walls along the edges (using obsidianization to handle the water edges), and drain the lakes. Often I end up with portions of the lakes outside of my obsidianizations, though, and then I build airlocks with cage traps up to the lake wall, dig through the wall, and thus flush the campers out into the cage traps. The drawbridges are then used to close the water flow (until the next set of campers come along.

Lozzymandias is almost correct regarding creature groups: There is one group each for the surface and for each of the caverns, unless the biome is savage, in which case two groups can be present simultaneously on each/any of the levels.

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wierd

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #6 on: October 22, 2016, 12:11:25 pm »

fleshballs make excellent dinner.

Drain the water source they are lurking in and then take them out-- butcher them, and have fleshball surprise.
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Atarlost

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #7 on: October 30, 2016, 07:55:54 pm »

Why would you want to get rid of them?  They keep the cavern layer with the most interesting tree types safe to work in. 
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Libash_Thunderhead

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #8 on: October 31, 2016, 12:24:01 am »

Well, I tried but marksdwarf couldn't attack them.
I think I'll ignore them for a while and focus on other tasks.  :P
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2016, 04:37:43 am »

I have the same problem with crundles, given that they are numerous (very numerous) and there are game bugs related (a lot like goblin commanders getting stuck affecting the squad) to them getting isolated and just stopping when 1 of them gets caught.

Catch 1 offshoot crundle = The entire blob of crundles just freezes climbing up on the walls, stuck there and never moves, meaning i have to risk a miner and a squad to destroy a crundle blob, which is more deadly to militia (especially dodging off the now exposed sheer vertical distance of the walls) than you expect (the worst is cavern water areas, since crundles also get stuck on mushrooms, fighting climbing crundles over mushroom tree caps also rears the same bugs of getting stuck in trees when they swap positions)
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #10 on: October 31, 2016, 07:42:15 am »

Capture campers are indeed a pain (ever had a flock of albatrosses stuck 12 levels above the ground?).
My usual means are ballista bolts and cave-ins (the latter is too much work for the albatrosses, though, but the former works fine, even though it's still a lot of work). Waiting for an FB to get close enough to them can also work (caverns mostly, of course).
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Libash_Thunderhead

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Re: Flesh balls
« Reply #11 on: November 05, 2016, 07:25:18 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Draining the lake.
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