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[nocpur]

Not much of an update, but I do like to update whenever something fun happens. I did mention this can happen, but it's actually a pretty rare occurrence and only has happened to maybe about 3-4 of my beasts in this fort. They recover after a while and it's been a long time since I've seen one, so I haven't had a chance to get one in a gif. But: I have yet another 'wallowing in misery' forgotten beast.



Poor Nubpo. A sad little frog.

Not much else to report. 221 captured now. I'm getting quite the streak of web-shooters, I've had like 3-4 in a row now. (And I'm losing quite a lot of dwarves to old age. New generations aren't coming in fast enough. I know last time I posted a screenshot here I had 96 citizens, old age has left me with 83 at the moment.)

-----

As an aside, here's another interesting member of the Casotoxa collection.



A cyclops, gone berserk. He's chained, but usually, when a cyclops or any humanoid (semi)megabeast gets chained and inevitably goes insane (keep them in a cage to prevent that), they'll starve or die of dehydration, despite not needing to eat normally. Why hasn't he died? Well:




Weredeer don't eat.

All werebeasts in my world have gone extinct, most killed at my fortress. He's the last remaining werebeast in existence. Kinda wish I could have turned him into a weremammoth (had those) or a weregila monster (had those), but I didn't do this intentionally, he showed up at the same time a weredeer did. I typically kill semi-megabeasts and trap everything else because I could care less about those, they're way too common and they just don't have the appeal of a dusty beast, but he's the only outlier. Welcome home.


----

Edit: Wow, I know I said it was rare, but two in one day!



Smespu the Soaked (in his own tears).

Edit again: 3?? Today is a miserable day to be captured.

[nocpur]

I feel like I'm updating this so often, I was really going to wait til I had my second hall filled, but I do think this is important to share.

Anyways, I've discovered I was mistaken about something. This whole time I've been under the impression that "noxious secretion" beasts have no effect on anything while they are chained or cage. This is mostly true - for all the beasts I've captured, I've never had any issues with it, and have never been too careful as a result. Just now, though, I had a unique combination of events...

This is Zimun,



and this is Furgig.



Furgig apparently has a syndrome that causes unconsciousness and causes you to vomit blood. Randomly, my dwarves that were transporting his cage collapsed unconscious. And because Zimun was captured in the same area as Furgig...


This is Zimun's ichor vomit (the white spatters on the floor).

You can imagine that Zimun vomiting his deadly blood while being transported through the fortress is not a great combo, and you'd be correct. Zimun's blood contains a necrosis effect, so I had a hospital full of dwarves, vomiting blood from Furgig's syndrome, and some of my animals rotting away from Zimun's syndrome.

I have now learned to be careful with noxious secretions.

(I took a look through the raws to see why this beast in particular could actually cause an effect. I actually don't know why this caused issues and not another one that I have, Bothon. Bothon is a gas producer just like Furgig, but Bothon actually has a necrosis/pain effect that I never experienced. Another has a mild pain/bruising effect, but I probably wouldn't have noticed that even if it did appear. Interestingly enough, the others that I have don't seem to have any syndromes at all. They just spew gas and nothing else.

Bothon's syndrome code:

Code: [Select]

[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:POISON:CREATURE_EXTRACT_TEMPLATE]
[MELTING_POINT:9800]
[BOILING_POINT:9900]
[ENTERS_BLOOD]
[SYNDROME]
[SYN_NAME:beast sickness]
[SYN_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
[SYN_IMMUNE_CREATURE:FORGOTTEN_BEAST_476:ALL]
[SYN_INJECTED]
[SYN_CONTACT]
[SYN_INHALED]
[SYN_INGESTED]
[CE_NECROSIS:SEV:100:PROB:100:START:774:PEAK:1467:END:4062:LOCALIZED:VASCULAR_ONLY:SIZE_DILUTES]
[CE_PAIN:SEV:100:PROB:100:START:72:PEAK:781:END:2581:SIZE_DILUTES]
[SECRETION:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:POISON:GAS:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:SKIN]
[ATTACK:BITE:BODYPART:BY_CATEGORY:MOUTH]
[ATTACK_SKILL:BITE]
[ATTACK_VERB:bite:bites]
[ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:2:2]
[ATTACK_PRIORITY:MAIN]
[ATTACK_FLAG_CANLATCH]
Furgig's syndrome code:

Code: [Select]

[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:POISON:CREATURE_EXTRACT_TEMPLATE]
[MELTING_POINT:9800]
[BOILING_POINT:9900]
[ENTERS_BLOOD]
[SYNDROME]
[SYN_NAME:beast sickness]
[SYN_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
[SYN_IMMUNE_CREATURE:FORGOTTEN_BEAST_706:ALL]
[SYN_INJECTED]
[SYN_CONTACT]
[SYN_INHALED]
[SYN_INGESTED]
[CE_VOMIT_BLOOD:SEV:100:PROB:100:START:770:PEAK:1865:END:5329:RESISTABLE]
[CE_UNCONSCIOUSNESS:SEV:100:PROB:100:START:805:PEAK:1081:END:3140:RESISTABLE]
[SECRETION:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:POISON:GAS:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:SCALE]
Perhaps the "size dilutes" also protects from severe effects (although I find that unlikely), rather than "resistable". Who knows. I'll have to do some testing if I get more, since I only have 5 of these guys anyways. Interesting that after all this time I've played it this way, this is the first time I've ever had any kind of adverse effect.)

-----

Anyways, not much else. Crisis resolved, lesson learned. At 238 now. Finally caught the lobster I've been wanting to catch.

[nocpur]

On Casotoxa's 83rd year, our second hall has finally been filled.


Little bit of a crusty gif.

Anyways, these are 268 beasts. 269-272 popped up immediately after I put the last one in place, so it's time for another expansion.



New hall ready to go. It looks so nice mostly because of DFHack's tiletypes, thank you tiletypes, except for the fact that there was some jankery with the far right side's walls. Sigh. Gotta fix that. I really like microcline, if you can't tell.

Also, if you're wondering about web-shooters, I believe I've killed somewhere around 45. So the actual 845 total is more like 800... minus even more of the web shooters that I have yet to discover. I can't get the exact amount right now, but I do put their bodies on display, if I am able.

You can see how there is a notable slowdown in the number of beasts that show up, especially over time. Year 65, I finally broke 200. Nearly 20 years later... just about 60 more. So, things do really slow down. I haven't actually ever had a fort running for this long before, but thankfully FPS is doing just fine.

Still undergoing a bit of a population crisis. I think my civ is dying, so I've stopped getting migrants. Sooo... I had a bit of a detour with setting up a lot of dwarves with each other, lol. Children everywhere.

[King Zultan]

I forgot what made you decide to kill the web shooters instead of capturing them?

[delphonso]

Since they're using cage traps under webs, web shooters will avoid it and can't be captured. I think you can capture them using cave-ins, but that's too much of a hassle and also is likely not to work with flying beasts anyway.

[nocpur]

I forgot what made you decide to kill the web shooters instead of capturing them?

Since they're using cage traps under webs, web shooters will avoid it and can't be captured. I think you can capture them using cave-ins, but that's too much of a hassle and also is likely not to work with flying beasts anyway.

I have tested cave-in methods for capturing web-shooters - I don't think it's possible due to the [NOSTUN] tag that FB's have, but it's been a while since I last tried. Like you said, though, it wouldn't work on flying beasts and from my tests, likely wouldn't work on inorganic ones, either. I once even tried modding in a creature that had an extremely powerful unconsciousness syndrome that it would apply to the beasts, but interestingly, they would only ever get "very tired" when standing over a cage trap, and when they were standing off of it they would have a frame or two of actually collapsing. I'm not even sure if they truly fell asleep. It was strange.

All in all it's just easier to kill the web shooters, for now. This reminds me that I should experiment with cave-ins a little more for web-shooters (I once even saw a thread about one showing up caged in an elven caravan???) but for now they will just have to die, unfortunately. I wish I could keep them around.

Edit: Decided to test it out. Still thinking it's probably not possible for [NOSTUN] creatures. Triggered a cave-in both above and below a beast and despite getting thrown around in the cave-in and passing over several traps, it was never caged.

[nocpur]

Back in with another update. Casotoxa has turned 100! My longest fort ever and still going pretty strong. FPS is slowing but it's always been like that, I don't think I'm in danger of FPS death anytime soon. I started getting migrants again so population isn't a problem anymore, and things are just moving along.

Current progress:

I'm getting something I'd like to call "curse of the yellow/brown forgotten beasts, because holy shit, they just keep coming. My hall is looking pretty un-colorful right now. I think gray/white/yellow are the most common colors, so there may come a point where I don't get the nice blue/green/reds anymore.


-----


Anyways. Not much new. I just had something really strange happen actually - on each cavern level, I only have maybe 1-2 groups of animals show up at a time. A little pack of rutherers, a jabberer here and there. My cavern wildlife is dying out, which is fine by me. I have rocs and giant orcas to eat.

Well, randomly...

All of these are on my second cavern layer. Wtf. They all showed up at once, right at the same time. No clue what happened. The only thing I did was open up my second cavern layer after a while of having it sealed, so I guess maybe some pathing fuckery happened. Really, really strange. I've never seen anything like it before.



Edit: So many of them came in injured or rotting. ??

I have a web-shooter that I'm letting roam down there in hopes that it gets itself killed, so it's got plenty of bait to play with now, I guess.

[nocpur]

A quick update, because I finally had the chance to sit down and look through the raws, and I'm recalculating my final tally a bit more. This is a bit of stream of consciousness because as I was doing this I realized I had fucked something up.

First, I've determined that there's 105 web-shooters in my world. I have killed 54 of those so far, and kept one. There are 50 left, not counting whether or not they may have died somewhere else in the world. So I'll need to lower the end goal from 863 (the number of beasts that were alive at the start of my fortress - my world had 867 generated at the start) to 762, because that is the maximum amount of beasts that I can actually capture. This number may still not be reached because of ones that have died elsewhere, but for now, it's my best estimate.

For some reason I've had 845 as the maximum this whole time. I don't remember why I made 845 my max goal. Maybe I subtracted from the current number of web shooters I had at the time, I don't know. Whatever it is, it's fixed now. Legends says there are 808 forgotten beasts still alive. I count 51 of their bodies in my main hall right now, I likely lost some along the way. I'll get an accurate count later.

I dug through legends again and counted the beasts that died before the year my fort started.
Web-shooters that died: 1
Non-web shooters that died: 3

So the final tally is readjusted to 758.

-----

Re: my colors, here's what I've found -

Color 0:0:1 - Gray
   104

Color 1:0:0/1 - Dark Blue
   48

Color 2:0:0/1 - Green
   76

Color 3:0:0/1 - Light Blue
   46

Color 4:0:0/1 - Red
   91

Color 5:0:0/1 - Pink/Purple
   121

Color 6:0:0/1 - Yellow/Brown
   179

Color 7:0:0/1 - White
   202

So in order of frequency: white, yellow/brown, gray, pink/purple, red green, dark blue, light blue.

Explains why I'm getting so many yellow/white/gray beasts now. I haven't actually counted the ones that I currently have because I would have to do that manually, but maybe I will eventually. I dunno. I'm honestly not sure if I care enough to do it, lol. I'll just deal with them as they come.

I am aware that there is a difference between some of the colors, like how there technically is a difference between a light gray beast and a white one, but I typically sort them by whatever is the lightest color they flash to (it's technically possible to tell the difference between a light gray and white, or a pink/purple, or a yellow/brown, etc in-game, but it's such a pain to determine, so I don't pay attention to it), so for my own purposes they're all grouped together.

-----

Not much else right now. Here's the current hall.

[King Zultan]

When you think about it this place seems like a prison from some legend or a fantasy story.

[nocpur]

When you think about it this place seems like a prison from some legend or a fantasy story.

In a previous fort of mine, someone took inspiration from it and used it in their D&D campaign as a dungeon, which I thought was so rad. Walking down the halls of an abandoned fortress, only to trigger one wrong lever and unleash the prisoners stored within...

I definitely see this place as a big prison or vault. I'm keeping at least two of every megabeast as well. In the far, far future, someone uncovering old Casotoxa is gonna have a really bad time.

[nocpur]

Alright, third hall filled. About to leave for a few days so I don't have time to make a gif of it, but maybe later. Time to expand and make a fourth hall, and we'll keep going. Over halfway!


Family picture.

Lots of web-shooters lately. I've been mostly leaving them to fight among themselves or to get killed by local wildlife. A couple of my captured beasts were even able to finish off a webshooter, whenever they do that they get a new name to their title, so it's cool. I'm also starting to downsize my fortress's population from 100 to about 50 to preserve FPS, so my military's going to be mostly disbanded by that time. I haven't been sieged in like 50 years, so really not much use for them nowadays. Casotoxa's quiet little retiree years, at the ripe old age of 123.

Subtract two from this total (latest forgotten beast is a web shooter, and we always subtract one for Ngonos).




Edit: Whoops. Guess who got distracted and forgot to seal off Kutsmob from the main fortress while he was digging out his fourth hall. He was a web-shooting alligator, and is now known as Kutsmob Athkutsmob Zospuumu...




This guy...

50 is coming faster than anticipated. Always check your levers...

[Salmeuk]

That cyclops who turns into a weredeer, who is endlessly beserk when concious. amazing story fodder.

I want to see THAT animorphs cover

This is a really great project and good luck capturing the remaining beasts.

[nocpur]

Alright, my final tally decreased again, because I'm stupid. I forgot to count spiders in with webshooters. So the final tally decreased by 10, because I have 10 spider forgotten beasts in the world. 115 web shooters. Not a big deal but this should be the last time I have to make a change until the end.

For a huge arachnophobe IRL, I'm surprised I could forget about the existence of spiders.

Anyways, 435. Some empty gaps because I'm still working on moving some in.



And if you'll notice...



There's some spatters of blood here. Why? Well, we have this guy to blame:


Dethe's noxious secretions are the type that constantly produce a gas cloud around it, which can be contracted while even inside a cage. And this guy's syndrome causes you to cough blood... forever. So about 5 of my dwarves came into contact with the gas, inhaled it, and now cough blood constantly. They're otherwise healthy, they just leave blood spatter everywhere. And I mean everywhere.









I have "clean" jobs going constantly.

So, in the future, if you see random red spatters in my screenshots, thank Dethe for that.




Another neat thing. I've captured a commander... who is actually a cyclops.





I don't know why all my cyclops get something interesting. I definitely prefer minotaurs. But either way, Shezpa might be a new permanent member of the Casotoxa collection. Normally I kill semi-megabeasts, but I'll keep her around. She can get a room next to the weredeer cyclops that I have, I might need to turn her into a werebeast to keep her alive.

Interestingly, she's listed as a "caged prisoner" rather than a "caged guest".








And I took a peek in legends mode to see which civ she belonged to and all that. She's the commander of a nomadic group of goblins as well as a member of a religious group of dwarves, although she really didn't do a whole lot else throughout history. Her life goal is quite funny. Sorry for locking you up for eternity, Shezpa. This is just Casotoxa's contribution to world peace.

[nocpur]

I always just barely miss the milestones. Oops.


Anyways, 502.

Having a lot of (Q)uadrupeds lately. Casotoxa has also officially turned 150 years old. Not much else to share.

Check out this guy, though. What a metal name.



I've actually been getting a good number of crashes lately, let's hope the trend doesn't continue. It's frustrating seeing a beast only to crash a while later and lose it. Doing troubleshooting anyways. Population is down to 51.

[nocpur]

Alright, another hall complete.


535. We're getting real close.

But... an issue.

Once a forgotten beast or any megabeast enters your map, it is there forever, until it dies.

However.

Because ol' Casotoxa is on its 160th year, and has about 700 or so units on the map at all times, I'm working like crazy to prevent anything from causing FPS death. This means I'm killing almost all my pets, I'm downsizing my population, I'm dumping bins upon bins of shit into lava, and DFHack's tools are keeping me propped up comfortably. FPS is not really an issue yet, thankfully.

Unfortunately, this means I have to play with temperature off. My FPS slows to a crawl with it on. In previous days I would keep it on, but I haven't turned it back on in a while. This has been fine, but this leads to a really unique glitch that I've never encountered before. It's only happened twice, and I'm stupid, so I didn't take pictures, so next time it happens (although I hope not) I'll be sure to document it.

What happens is when a forgotten beast made of flame OR a fire-breathing forgotten beast causes fire to appear (or at least causes the game to think that there's supposed to be something super high temp there), it prevents creatures from pathing over it. No actual temperature updates or fire spread happens when temperature is off, but the pathing issues persist. I'll occasionally have a spot of moss that is seemingly impassable even though there is no fire or warm stone there, because a beast breathed fire on it sometime in the past.

This means that if I have a forgotten beast made of flame spawn at one edge of the map, if another forgotten beast eventually spawns in that same location... it just won't.

I still get the big announcement with the red text, but it's not on the map. It's not dead, and it's just not even there at all. I tried using DFHack's retrieve-units command, and it did bring a beast back! Except... it clones the beast. So what happens is I have two forgotten beasts, which are the same exact forgotten beast, and they follow the same exact path, always standing on top of each other. They never separate, they always flash back and forth between each other. In the units list, they actually show up as two completely separate entities, both by name AND the time they arrived - I had one new beast that claimed it appeared around the same time as Ngonos, which was early into Casotoxa's life. I can't separate them but honestly I haven't really tried because I don't want these. I don't want to kill just one and leave the other because then my counts would be inaccurate. So, unfortunately, both times this has happened I have had to hard exit the game. Both times resulted in a LOT of lost progress but I think I was just unlucky. Boohoo me, I need to save more often.

Anyways. I don't save scum often, so if you see any kind of irregularity moving forward, that could be it. I'll let you know if it happens again and actually document it better. I've been able to fix it by briefly turning temp on and letting it and some DFHack commands sort it out (stable-temp helps) but I probably will forget to do it every now and then. I actually think I'm due for a fix soon since I had a flame beast show up recently. I might keep it for now so I can document the glitch.


No other news. New hall digging out now.

You know, you remember Kutsmob from last time? The web-shooting alligator that showed up as soon as I finished digging out my 4th hall and killed like 7 of my dwarves? Well, perfect timing, because this was the very next beast that popped up after I put the last forgotten beast in place to complete the 4th hall. Maybe this time I can show off that I've learned to close my bridges around webby alligators.