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Author Topic: My Dwarves and Pets are Rotting Away  (Read 809 times)

Charredbridge

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My Dwarves and Pets are Rotting Away
« on: October 23, 2010, 10:27:36 pm »

Almost all my pets and some of my dwarves are starting to have issues with rot.  It starts in their feet, and then spread up through their body.  I have a few theories about why it might be happen, and I was wondering if you could provide feedback or help me with this serious plague.

First of all I recently broke into HFS and killed all the demons that spawned below the admantine pipe.  I had my dwarves clean up the corpses and carry them up into the above ground cast obsidian tower that my dwarves are living in.  So one theory that I have is that perhaps the demon's goo has some sort of rotting effect, since I started noticing this happening soon after the HFS.  However, if that was the case wouldn't the rot also be on the dwarve's arms and hands?

My other theory is that perhaps the dwarves are rotting just from walking around in some much blood and filth.  One stairway in my above ground tower is covered in blood, as if twenty or thirty stacked smears and smudges of demon goo, forgotten beast ichor, goblin, troll, hydra, giant, and dwarf blood.  Since this staircase is above ground the dwarves refuse to clean it.  I am thinking that perhaps just walking through the nasty cocktail of blood is causing the rot to start.

So my question is whether either of these theories seem more likely to you, and more importantly how can I clean up the blood above ground?  Is there some option that I have missed which prevents the dwarves from using the cleaning skill to clean up blood above ground, even if it is inside my tower?  Or is that a feature that will have to wait for a future version?  Because if so then DF is broken for me because I like to build above ground mega constructions, and blood accumulates in them over time and seems to make my dwarves catch rotting infections.
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Sphalerite

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Re: My Dwarves and Pets are Rotting Away
« Reply #1 on: October 23, 2010, 10:31:46 pm »

Forgotten beasts can have blood that causes various horrible things to happen to dwarves and pets that come in contact with it.  This doesn't happen from the blood of normal creatures, just from certain forgotten beasts, titans, and HFS.  Aboveground tiles will never be cleaned by your dwarves.  You can manually clean the tiles by building floors over the blood and/or deconstructing floors with blood on them, or flooding the area with magma.
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Clover Magic

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Re: My Dwarves and Pets are Rotting Away
« Reply #2 on: October 23, 2010, 10:32:20 pm »

If you're really desperate, download dfhack and use the clean utility.  It will erase all pools of bodily fluids from your map and stop the spread.
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Randy Gnoman

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Re: My Dwarves and Pets are Rotting Away
« Reply #3 on: October 23, 2010, 10:39:17 pm »

Probably the HFS.  Dwarves don't care much about sanitation.  Case and point:  my above-ground well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Pools and pools of blood.  Human, elven, elephant... whatever.  Some vomit, too.  No ill effects.  The dwarves really don't care at all.

EDIT:  Although... the demon goo on that stairway might be your problem, so finding a way to clean that might solve it.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2010, 10:42:28 pm by Randy Gnoman »
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Charredbridge

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Re: My Dwarves and Pets are Rotting Away
« Reply #4 on: October 23, 2010, 10:40:29 pm »

@Sphalerite:

Hmm, thanks for your help.  I will build floors over the blood that is on a floor.  But some is also on a up/down staircase.  Does the same deconstruction trick work for staircases?  Also I really don't want to deconstruct my cast staircases.  I guess worst case scenario I will have to build a magma cleansing system, which shouldn't be too hard since I already have a magma pump stack going up through the center of the obsidian tower.

I wish it was possible to make them clean inside spaces that are aboveground.

@Clover Magic:

Sadly I haven't yet found a version of dfhack which works on my Mac.  Thanks for the suggestion though.  I guess I could take the save file to a Windows installation and then use dfhack.  I'll try the non-hack ways suggested by Sphalerite first, though.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2010, 10:47:17 pm by Charredbridge »
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Charredbridge

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Re: My Dwarves and Pets are Rotting Away
« Reply #5 on: October 23, 2010, 10:46:04 pm »

@Randy Gnoman:

You definitely have more blood than I do.  The blood I have is very concentrated, and as you can see from the following screenshot  it definitely has demon goo in it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You are right, it is probably the HFS causing it.  For now my hospital is able to keep up with the rot, but my surgeons are definitely busy working away. None of the dwarves have lost a limb yet, though almost all of the pets are dying.  :(
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