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Author Topic: Question about item scatter and abandonment  (Read 1919 times)

George_Chickens

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Question about item scatter and abandonment
« on: October 07, 2018, 11:24:53 am »

I'd like to abandon a fort, but I can't remember an effective way to prevent my key items from scattering, so that an adventurer can retrieve them. How should I go about this? Should I place my items on pedestals and weapon traps/upright weapons to prevent it?
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Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2018, 04:50:45 pm »

If you're willing to cheat, there's the lair command in DFHack. Otherwise, I'm not sure if there's a surefire way to prevent scattering. Chests are deconstructed on reclaiming, so other buildings might as well, but perhaps that's part of reclaiming and not abandoning.
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Blue_Dwarf

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2018, 10:37:50 pm »

Does a vault room with a lever work?
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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2018, 10:55:05 pm »

Does a vault room with a lever work?
Scattering ignores connectivity IIRC.
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metime00

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #4 on: October 09, 2018, 01:18:26 am »

The best non cheating way is to forge heavy metal bins. Lead, gold, and silver work well, then make a stockpile and constrict the kinds of items and materials of bins to include your special ones. Object scatter is controlled by how heavy the item is, and containers count as one item for the purposes of scattering.
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《monty》

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #5 on: October 09, 2018, 05:27:45 pm »

I wonder, if you put everything into a 1x1 garbage dump does that limit the scatter to that immediate area?
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Staalo

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2018, 01:46:45 am »

How about just retiring the fort? Then everything would stay in their places and you can still just walk in and loot anything you like.
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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #7 on: October 10, 2018, 01:53:00 pm »

Retiring still has things dumped out, rooms unassigned and the like. Pets stay alive and most dwarves stay present, though.

Staalo

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #8 on: October 10, 2018, 02:19:44 pm »

Odd. When I've visited in my retired forts as an adventurer, all items and stockpiles have been where I left them, nothing scattered. Creatures have been all wonky, though; animals all over the place, autonomous wagons climbing stairs etc.
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #9 on: October 10, 2018, 08:26:41 pm »

I always used the [lair] command myself.

Scattering definitely does not take locked or shut doors into account, you can seal up your fort completely and there will still be stuff scattered about on the surface with the fort still as sealed up as when you left it.
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mikekchar

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #10 on: October 11, 2018, 08:51:24 am »

The scattering only happens on unretire.  I used to retire and unretire a lot.  There is a bunch of stuff that you need to do (rebuilding some furniture, reassigning *all* bedrooms even if you think you don't have to, setting up manager commands, etc, etc).  It used to take me about 3 in game months to finish everything each time I retired.  It's not really so bad, though...  just a bunch of busy work.
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snow dwarf

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2018, 09:42:46 am »

What about pedestals? Would that stop items from scattering?
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2018, 01:11:36 pm »

IIRC pedestal items do not scatter.
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andrei901

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Re: Question about item scatter and abandonment
« Reply #13 on: October 17, 2018, 11:01:54 pm »

Does a vault room with a lever work?

I know for a fact that this worked in previous versions, but I have not tried such a vault room recently.

IIRC pedestal items do not scatter.

They prevent item scatter on retire/unretire, and they prevent item scatter when retired/visited by adventurer. Abandonment I think would be different, because don't all buildings get deconstructed?
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