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Author Topic: Surviving The Rot  (Read 52511 times)

absynthe7

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Surviving The Rot
« on: November 17, 2010, 01:56:05 pm »

So - I just survived an outbreak of Kitten Rot with only one dwarven casualty. It's been one full season since my last outbreak, so I'm pretty certain I'm in the clear. Anyway, I wanted to share my observations of and techniques for dealing with FB syndrome outbreaks, in the hope that it could help someone else.

NOTES:
1.) The smaller a creature is, the easier it is to infect. Your cats and dogs will be doomed, as well as most larger livestock like donkeys or cows. Large creatures like bears and elephants might be safe - or, more accurately, they won't start getting sick until your dwarves are already dying en masse, so you'll have bigger fish to fry by then.
2.) This may be common sense, but multiple contacts with contaminants increase the likelihood of infection. Dwarves with many infected pets are more likely to get sick than those with only one, dwarves hanging out in miasma-filled areas are more likely to get infected than those in areas with only occasional clouds, etc.
3.) Syndromes vary wildly from Beast to Beast. Your mileage can (and will) vary quite a bit.

HOW IT SPREADS (known):
1.) Fighting the FB - venom/poison can infect the injured, secretions can infect any who touch them, breath and dust can infect anyone nearby.
2.) FB Extract/Blood - Walking through FB extract or blood can infect dwarves or animals. While this is known to be worst for FB's with dust attacks (since they leave extract everywhere), please note that outbreaks can (and will) occur from other attack types as well.

HOW IT COULD SPREAD (theorized, from most likely to least likely):
1.) FB Miasma - My fort was doing just fine (except for the one injured dwarf who was bitten) until the corpse of a venomous FB began rotting right in the middle of all my workshops. Soon after, several animals caught The Rot.
2.) Miasma from the infected - Those spending a lot of time near the infected are most at risk, although this could be based on simple proximity rather than the miasma itself.
3.) Blood from the infected - Possible but unknown. Areas with blood from the infected often have miasma, so this could just be a repeat of the above.
4.) Invisible dustings of contaminants - Some have theorized that amounts of extract or blood smaller than a dusting or spattering could be tracked invisibly by DF, and still be enough to infect. My situation provided no evidence of this, but different syndromes are different.

PRE-EMPTIVE MEASURES:
1.) Create ponds with ramps in meeting areas and/or high-traffic hallways, filling them to a depth of 2-4 before un-designating them. Dwarves and animals will walk through them, washing off contaminants. The water will get pretty vile, so make sure this is not designated as a water source. Once they start to get full of contaminants, loo(k)ing at the water may cause a crash.
2.) Have multiple Butcher Shops at the ready.
3.) Have many built, empty coffins prepared for burial (include pets) at all times.
4.) Have a well-stocked hospital with many beds and accessible soap/water.
5.) Prepare a pet disposal area - a single-tile hallway that ends with a lever, a non-pet-passable door, and a spike trap connected to said lever can help eliminate non-butcherable infected pets.

FIGHTING THE ROT:
1.) Get rid of the Forgotten Beast corpse and all parts to prevent as many miasma infections as possible.
2.) Set all tiles with Forgotten Beast blood and extract as Restricted-Traffic designations, so dwarves will path around them. Consider building walls around it to prevent animals from walking through, or wait for idle dwarves to clean them.
3.) Have idle dwarves available for cleaning and burial. These are low-priority actions, so you may need to disable labors for some dwarves.
4.) Keep an eye on the Health screen within Z-Status. Any animals requiring Diagnosis are infected, and any dwarves likely are as well. Note that the Diagnosis requirement will not pop up when infected, but when they start showing symptoms, so many animals are likely already doomed even if they do not show a need for health care. Check constantly to be sure.
5.) Immediately butcher or otherwise eliminate all infected animals ASAP. Do the same with all dogs and cats. Either butcher or closely monitor all larger creatures, particularly cows, donkeys, camels, jaguars, and other mid-size animals. If an infected animal is in an unneeded room alone, lock the doors and wait it out. Its worth noting that my only surviving animal is a single war bear - all cows, bulls, and donkeys were infected.
6.) Save and load constantly. A normally-minor glitch prevents badly infected creatures from dying until the fortress is loaded anew, and dead infectees are much less dangerous than live, wandering ones who spread miasma throughout the fortress. You may see instances where you load your fort to see a dozen animals die within minutes and get immediately stuffed into miasma-preventing tombs. This is also notable because dead animals somehow produce less miasma than infected ones.
7.) Disable all non-medical labors on at least a couple of dwarves, to ensure that infected dwarves are treated ASAP.

I hope this helps. I would encourage you to be careful, as different syndromes are different, so your experience will likely be very different than my own. That said, I was able to survive with only one casualty (not including the 30 animals), so hopefully this advice will help you out as well.
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Bordellimies

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2010, 02:05:43 pm »

This seems useful.

Do very largely populated forts need different actions? I mean, if the place is flooded with war dogs or dwarves, infections can stay quite long?
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absynthe7

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2010, 02:27:16 pm »

It'd be tougher to manage with higher-population forts, though not impossible. Getting preemptive measures in place ahead of time becomes a lot more important.

The main issue with a larger fort is the number of animals, as they get infected very quickly and spread it to everything else. In a fort with 50+ war dogs you might need to assign them to a military dwarf and lock them in their own little leper colony section of the fort, disallowing contact with all others.
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Zhulik

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2010, 02:45:21 pm »

Contributing anecdotal evidence for the benefit of mandwarfkind!

Invisible contaminants from breath attacks are not counterable I don't think. I at least had no success with trying to wash them away or using dfcleanmap. I had zero success treating the rot in hospitals as well. Since rotting feet are in most cases insufficient to render a dwarf unconscious, the patient stands up and walks away as soon as he's placed on the table for surgery. I tried sedating said patients through judicious use of unfortunate nonfatal accidents, but none of the subjects survived in the end.

It may have been just this one particular kind of syndrome however.

edit: the deadly rotplague was spreading exclusively through tracking of said invisible contaminants all over the goddamn map. The fb breathed randomly several times without hitting anyone as my marksdorfs were using it for target practice through ceiling holes. I then dropped a portion of the ceiling on it, as it was composed of amber and refused to die to bolts.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2010, 02:48:51 pm by Zhulik »
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absynthe7

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2010, 02:55:19 pm »

So I guess we can confirm that invisible contaminants are left behind by breath weapons, at the very least. I believe the one I dealt with was venom, which I hear is one of the tamer ones. From .16 on, contaminants are not supposed to track, so it'd be problematic if the invisible ones are still being spread around the fort (unless you were using an earlier version?).

As far as surgery goes, I'd highly recommend not putting tables in your hospital - it gives them the opportunity to decide against treatment when being placed on it, and without them dwarves will still perform surgery right on the bed.
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Zhulik

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2010, 03:07:07 pm »

So I guess we can confirm that invisible contaminants are left behind by breath weapons, at the very least. I believe the one I dealt with was venom, which I hear is one of the tamer ones. From .16 on, contaminants are not supposed to track, so it'd be problematic if the invisible ones are still being spread around the fort (unless you were using an earlier version?).

As far as surgery goes, I'd highly recommend not putting tables in your hospital - it gives them the opportunity to decide against treatment when being placed on it, and without them dwarves will still perform surgery right on the bed.

You know what, it did happen in either 12 or 14, so disregard everything I said then. Silly me.
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absynthe7

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2010, 03:21:19 pm »

That still confirms that invisible contaminants exist - even if they're no longer being tracked all over the fortress.
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Uzu Bash

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2010, 04:19:28 pm »

Contaminants aren't invisible, it's just that some effects continue after contact with the extract. Some continue terminally, some will recede, some stop immediately after skin contact is removed, but by the nature of the effect, i.e. unconsciousness, the victim will die because they won't seek treatment or become clean.

Even after a map clean, there's extract on clothing, weapons and armor that many years later will turn into pool that infects anyone who walks across it. The soonest afflicted will be the barefoot ones, pets and infants. In a long-term fort, most dwarves lose their shoes and even when they claim new ones, never put on anything. I've even seen an immigrant drop his shoes and socks as soon as he arrived on the map. So everyone becomes completely vulnerable.
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Aspgren

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #8 on: November 17, 2010, 05:09:03 pm »

One idea for larger forts is to build many "cells."

 With this I mean, basically, scatter wells and unused farm plots and a few food stockpiles here and there. Make lots of doors dividing the cells.. and once the rot is detected you can lock the doors and quarantine the dwarves.

 The quarantined dwarves will have to fend for themselves. Depending on where they were at the time you noticed the infection, they might have access to water, food, beds, a unused 2x2 farm plot and some seeds ... it's all up to armok.

 I'd advice against sending a doctor to a nearby cell and let him in unless micromanaged to perfection.. in a big fort you can't risk any important dwarves' life because of one individual. It's a good idea to keep multiple meeting areas too, or no meeting areas at all .. that keeps the dwarves scattered. Don't want an infected kitten to rub against the legs of 20 dwarves at once.

 .. another idea is about animal husbandry. You can't do much about the pets but you can construct stables where you breed animals. Chain them up!! The calves will stay close to their parents and the parents can't go anywhere. This should be enough to keep them contained in a lockable room... making breeding, milking and disease control more manageable.
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Uzu Bash

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #9 on: November 17, 2010, 08:49:38 pm »

Infected individuals don't spread it, infected water sources do; wherever dwarves and animals get clean, they leave all their contaminants behind. So keep those away from main traffic, so whenever you detect symptoms you can narrow down where it came from while keeping the spread to a minimum. The pool on the floor is what you should isolate.

Only livestock and other tame, unadopted animals can be chained or caged. Pets can't.
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(name here)

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #10 on: November 17, 2010, 08:55:31 pm »

It might be a good idea to create a "quarantine" burrow down in the cavern with a fully-stocked hospital and food for use fighting forgotten beasts. Lock squads inside after a battle and wait a while.
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Heliman

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #11 on: November 17, 2010, 09:07:54 pm »

HEY! I just found that Military dwarves was able to go toe-to-toe with a Deadly Blood FB because he had a water covering and was in 3/7 something water, he had no ichor on him after the fight!
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Uzu Bash

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #12 on: November 17, 2010, 09:19:04 pm »

Yup, standing in water will protect from contaminants. Another reason it's difficult to detect where an extract spill came from is that whoever had it on their clothes/equipment won't be affected themselves, they'll be covered in water. Everyone who comes after will be. It's still possible to be infected if coming into contact at the same time as entering the water, but if the effect isn't by nature terminal then it'll fade. Examples, one extract causes victims to bleed to death, and they did so even if the extract washed away. Another causes nausea and gradually increased bruising in the contact area, but fades as soon as the extract is washed off (though the vomit-trails linger...)

And if you're going so far as to build a quarantine barracks, start with a decontamination chamber. Mist from a waterfall, which can be artificially constructed, will wash away contaminants very quickly while leaving everyone inside with water coverings.
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TurkeyXIII

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #13 on: November 17, 2010, 10:06:32 pm »

But the mist will splash the contaminants all over the decontamination chamber.  So either have dfcleanmap handy, or construct it such that no dwarves can be in or near the chamber without being covered in water.
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Heliman

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Re: Surviving The Rot
« Reply #14 on: November 17, 2010, 10:47:15 pm »

perhaps you would be better off building a Mist generator instead of a waterfall, enough water in it's systems can fill a whole room with mist, making it virtually sterile.
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