40d Talk:Eerie glowing pit

This article contains massive spoilers. If you do not wish to have your game experience spoiled, do not scroll down!

The Demons

How powerful ARE the demons now? I gather that a pit chamber will release piles of them, but how many and how nasty are they all? Wonder if adamantine is really worth it... though if you've planned it out, I suppose it might be. Wonder how many demons a legendary dwarf warrior wielding masterwork adamantine weapons and armor could take out by himself!

They're as nasty as they used to be. -- Zaratustra 11:38, 20 November 2007 (EST)

I had repulsed the initial wave of 1 Daemon and 7 Spirits of Fire by 5 marksdwarves and 4 axedwarves. 2 marksdwarves and 2 axedwarves were Elite in full steel chain/plate, others - on their way to it. Lost all axedwarves and 1 marksdwarf in the process. A few seasons later I thought that there weren't much more daemons and breached the pits in a new spot. By that time I had 3 Champion marksdwarves in Fortress Guard (not controllable at all :( ), ~20 wardogs, 4 other marksdwarves, 2 of which - Elite and 4 axedwarves/hammerdwarves at about 'competent' each. All the civilians (90 of them) were drafted into military with some extra weapons and no armor including ~10 miners from Legendary to novice with picks. The aftermath in the units screen is 16 dead Spirits of Fire including 7 from the initial attack, 10 live and happy Spirits of Fire with very long names, probably some more Spirits of Fire in ambush/invisible to me state and 5 recruits resting and dehydratated in remote corners of my bedroom area. There were immence lags when my stockpiles cathed fire and it were heavily lagging when I got there in adventure mode. --Another 15:05, 20 November 2007 (EST)

I just recently breached a pit, only to result in my entire fortress virtually being annihilated, 109 military dwarves were killed, including a Hammerlord with a legendary adamantine hammer, a mortally wounded Legendary Captain of the Guard, and the daemons lost only 50 total. --Naze 23:19, 12 December 2007

I cleansed a demon pit that included exactly 30 fire spirits and a demon. I built a corridor to the chamber, filled it with spikes and chained them to a lever, with the pull lever/R action. It worked quite well despite the fact that my spikes were melt by the demons as they approached. They eventually had to go through a corridor where marksdwarves were stationned. They killed 5 marksdwarves, and some managed to enter my fortress undetected. I was VERY lucky because the fortress guard was useful! If you disable TEMPERATURE, they will be destroyed with no sweat. Bartavelle 09:01, 11 January 2008 (EST)

If you re-site your barracks to just outside the pits, then your fortress guard will find themselves joining the front line... YayTheDwarves 09:58, 11 January 2008 (EST)

from Lumpen on SomethingAwful: "Last night I cracked into the glowing pits and massacred the demons by filtering them through a massive maze of twisting fortifications through which my legendary siege operators unleashed a hail of over a hundred ballista arrows cranked out by 6 ballistae." So, that could work. --Jellyfishgreen 12:19, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

I broke into the pitlast night, and beforeI could close it up, frog demons were across my cut of adamantine viens. I sent very little, but very strong people down there, as I only had about 39 dwarves :D. They killed them no sweat. They had abit trouble with a demon. There was only about 10 of the that came from the pit. I was quick to seal up where the whole where the demons came out of, yet my fortress still being able to get in.

Breached pits for the first time on accident. 50 dwarves crumbled in 3 minutes. Reclaimed with 70. All dead. 1 spirit of fire is still alive, 29 dead. Do not underestimate the pits. --173.73.166.152 05:06, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Magma mini-pipes/vents?

Are the magma bits considered unconnected, and thus will cool to obsidian, or are they in effect pipes/vents and will refill via the new code? --Nunix 23:29, 26 February 2008 (EST)

there is no such thing as disconnected magma solidifying. that was added for some reason by someone to the wiki a long time ago but is incorrect. magma that is not connected anything will stay magma forever. the only way to turn it into obsidian is by adding water -Chariot 05:15, 27 February 2008 (EST)

Although, to be fair, depth 1 magma will cool to, um... air or something. At any rate, if you let it get to depth 1 it evaporates, much like water. Except more frustrating, because it's very slow to begin with.--Doctorlucky 03:36, 20 March 2008 (EDT)

Twas cooling in 2D. And what about refilling?--Dorten 02:20, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

What? Magma didn't ever cool in 2D, except for the special event that sometimes occurred on breaching the magma river.

ah, the magma river. The name brings back such memories...

--Savok 11:10, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

Rewalling/Flooring

If you floor over the glowing pit rather as opposed to rewalling do the demons still spawn? Yvain 18:18, 19 March 2008 (EDT)

No, reflooring still can release demons. Tested the hard way. Yvain 23:31, 19 March 2008 (EDT)

Additionally, building walls over every glowing pit tile still releases demons. Yvain 00:18, 20 March 2008 (EDT)

First encounter

A creature I am developing, called the solen, was tested today using these. That is, demons. And the interesting thing is, fourteen have slaughtered--so far--about...

20 tentacle demons, 5 daemons.

Shall I upload pics of the room, its contents, and the glowing pit itself? Also I think this should be moved to Eerie Glowing Pit, as that's what it really is. ~ Midna 17:21, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

I like the move idea. --Savok 11:10, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

Captives

what happens if you free the captives in a glowing pit after surviving the demon onslaught? --0todd0 02:08, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

dunno, think they just go around babbling or somesuch :\ --Frostedfire 04:32, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

They are all insane, mostly melancholy. If you unhook them, they just act like melancholy dwarves and wander around or throw themselves in the pit. Poor guys :( --Dadamh 13:28, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

Unchained humanoids?

The article talks about caged/chained humanoids.

Well, I have so far breached two pits. One had a floor of caged humanoids. That was the most recent one, which I breached carefully (and with cheating).

The first one, I breached with stairs (which was dumb, because they couldn't be stopped at that point by rewalling). Inside the chamber there were at least 40 unchained melancholy/crazy humanoids. They immediately started trying to flee, along with the demons. The initial wave of "refugees" lagged my fortress to the pits and back. They were free to begin with.

has this happened to anyone else? Logical2u 11:35, 16 June 2008 (EDT)

Well, I breached my first pit ever last night. Thing was 4 stories, connected by stairs all the way to the lowest Z-Axis level. 3 floors FULL of Elves and Humans caged/chained. My Fortress pretty much lagged up into infinity at that point. It's gotten a little better, but it's still pretty bad. I appreciate the asthetic value, but good lord I hope Toady changes some of this in the future. Either let SOME of the Humans and Elves vamoose back to wherever they initially came from (I bet it's a funny story how they ended up in a glowing pit being tortured by unimaginable horrors from the deep....), or make a good point out of them trying to get a 10/10 on their headfirst dive into magma. Archaeologist 00:53, 28 September 2008 (EDT)

They've been driven to insanity and care about nothing anymore. --GreyMaria 01:28, 28 September 2008 (EDT)

So how do we get rid of the little lag monsters? Wait, nevermind, the sudden wave of tentacle monsters killing EVERYTHING seems to have been more than adequate. Archaeologist 02:43, 28 September 2008 (EDT)

Well, my tentacle demons killed nothing (apart some marksdwarves), and I still got 104 (not kidding, there's more than 5 pages of them in the "u" menu) elves, dwarves and humans babbling around. How am I supposed to kill them all ? Most of them are still in the chamber, and because of the adamantine veins I can't force myself to flood it with magma, create a cave in or something like that. It will be fairly complicated to kill them with the dwarven atom smasher too... Do you have any ideas ? Timst 15:18, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Ballistae --LegacyCWAL 15:34, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Time. Leave it a season and they'll all starve or die of thirst. Aosher 09:11, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, they can do that ? Even if it's, err, NPC ? The merchants never die of thirst or starve, for instance. Anyway, it's "great". :) Timst 09:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

They can do that! Don't know about diplomats etc, but the chained humanoids - i.e. anything labelled "From the Deep" in the u menu - can definitely starve, as of 40d. Aosher 19:31, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed. Refugees are physically unharmed but all insane and wearing nothing but filth, blood, and stains. My refugees all died about two months later, all on the same week, except the caged ones. Evidently insanity means forgetting to drink when you're thirsty. The tortured dwarves were laid to rest with proper dwarf coffins by my citizens. The elves...were added to the bonepile. --Jellyfishgreen 20:25, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I did a few tests and it seems that only tentacle demon pits contain prisoners on every level (along with the depraved engravings and filth, slime, and unknown substances) - frog demon and SoF pits only contain prisoners on the lowest level. --Quietust 15:06, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Water?

Anybody know if pumping the glowing pit full of water will affect the demons? I've started a fortress to try it out, but it's slow going(I'm really more of a modder as DF goes).

• Demon leaders, frog demons, and tentacle demons can all swim, and spirits of fire are so hot that they'll boil the water from several tiles away, so flooding the pit is all but useless (aside from possibly drowning the chained prisoners). --Quietust 13:22, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Which would reduce the lag from them, so it's not entirely useless. --Aescula 20:17, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Spheres

A bit of research has revealed that the actual contents of each level of the glowing pit are determined by the [SPHERE] tags on the Demon entity (bottom level only) and on the Tentacle Demon/Frog Demon/Spirit of Fire entities (all other levels):

• [SPHERE:FIRE] - ashes + charcoal, pools of magma
• [SPHERE:WATER] - pools of water
• [SPHERE:MUCK] - muddy floors, vermin
• [SPHERE:DEPRAVITY] - engravings of depraved acts, general filth
• [SPHERE:THRALLDOM] - unchained prisoners
• [SPHERE:TORTURE] - caged and chained prisoners, corpses + body parts + chunks + meat + skins on pikes/in cages/on floor, pools of blood
• [SPHERE:DEATH] - engravings of death and suffering, bones, bone meal, skulls on pikes

It's very much possible to combine these spheres in other ways for interesting results - for example, giving a demon both FIRE and WATER spheres will give their pit levels pools of both water and magma. --Quietust 20:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Demon Count

In my first fortress to uncover HFS, I got 1 red demon and 20 spirits of fire, while in my current fortress I got 1 red demon and 30 spirits of fire. Trying to figure out exactly what determined the demon count, I took a closer look at the two and discovered that while my current fortress had 3 floors worth of charcoal and ashes above the "torture pit", my last fortress had only 2 such floors - thus, it would appear that each "minion" floor contains ten minion-type demons (or simply causes 10 to be spawned within the entire region the instant the chamber is breached). --Quietust 17:52, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Further tests (using Dwarf Companion to remove them all from ambush mode) shows that each level does indeed contain exactly 10 demons, and the bottom floor contains only the red Demon. --Quietust 14:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Spawning?

Do glowing pits spawn demons? or do they just contain them?--Drunken dwarf 23:32, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Open one and find out =) --Squirrelloid 00:00, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

In other words, no, they do not spawn demons. All of the fun is there the instant you open it, and once they're all dead, you're perfectly safe. Back in the 2D version, it may have been different. --Quietust 00:48, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Please clarify (article is mistaken, there can easily be more than one pit per region)

Ok, if by region you mean the area occupied by the "region" display in the embark screen, this is definately false. I have confirmed it with the site finder. I think probably the word "region" in this article must be refering to something else. Could the author please clarify?--Jpwrunyan 14:39, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Spoiler

Why is this considered a massive spoiler for this game..? – unsigned comment by 97.89.42.171

Perhaps thinking about that question a bit more would help you find an answer? ~ Midna 11:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Nope. I've thought it through, and it seems like another feature to me, albeit a very dangerous one (this is why I asked)

It's intended (by the author) to be a surprise for new players, so let's leave it at that. --Quietust 18:31, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Pre-killed Demon?

Hey yall... I'm relatively new to DF, and I just breached my first Pit. Aside from lagging me to a deeper hell than the Demon's home, when I checked my unit list, I noticed this entry:
"Rash Gedorilir, Demon ----- Deceased"
I don't recall killing him (considering I ordered all my nearby dwarves to run to a safe point and they're still doing that as I write this, I would recall it) and there are no visible lesser demons. From the look of things, I have a SoF pit, charcoal and ash. There are the prisoners, but where are the guards and why is this all glitchy?
Possible answer: I've reclaimed this fortress many times (I'm new, give me a break) and that's caused some other weird glitches (like a couple hundred enemies in my underground river)... any ideas? --Waladil 19:01, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

If the upper levels were filled with charcoal and ashes, you indeed have spirits of fire, which would explain why the Demon is already dead - being ridiculously hot (enough to melt Steel and even Bauxite), they have a tendency to set the Demon on fire and kill it before it ever reveals itself to you. --Quietust 19:08, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I also found out why the lesser demons had never revealed themselves; I had never found one. I let a dwarf go down there to clean up (the prisoners, I guess) and he stumbled onto one. The rest are probably there and hiding. At least I'm well-enough sealed off that I'll lose 2 dwarves, tops (the cleaner and the guy who finished the wall holding them back). Still lagged out, though. I've made about 2 "days" in this past hour, probably less. --Waladil 19:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Scratch the lag, too. I think there might be a glitch in the code for concealment; I was having less lag when the demons were busy slaughtering my cleaner than when they were just lurking. --Waladil 20:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

About the Pit

1. Can the glowing pit be used as a chasm for dumping objects?
2. Can you know if your map contains an EGP without excavating the entire map if you did not have the ini set to reveal such things to you?

--Iban 04:28, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Try using reveal.exe then just using ctrl-shift-esc to bring up DF and forcibly crash it so it doesn't save the revealed fortress. Alternately you can just back up your save beforehand.98.244.20.155 17:22, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Visual Fortress (Utilities page) has a feature for revealing hidden tiles. The glowing pits are pretty obvious, they have large veins coming out and if you look from underneath the map you will see black (the actual pits themselves).

Number of Creatures in HFS

I just encountered my first HFS chamber, and there are *95* humans, elves, and dwarves in there, variously among cages and wandering about. Is this amount of creatures normal? -- DwarfAI

If your pit is inhabited by tentacle demons, I'd say that's perfectly normal. --Quietust 13:38, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

High pit

I just (semi-accidentally) breached a pit, and there was an anomaly that seems to rate mention. As the article mentions, there can be "some" levels of just chasm, no adamant or anything. This one had six. The top level (the one I breached) was nine levels above the bottom of the map. I got off really lucky, because it's a SoF pit and I managed to pull both my legendary miners and some random haulers out and seal the area, losing only one dwarf and one cat. No casualties on their side yet though. --Waladil 17:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The Pit's Greatest Horror

I recently just stumbled into the eerily glowing pit, and as is to be expected my dwarves started dying, but soon after opening up the depths something else died as well - my FPS. Suddenly the is updating at a mere frame every 10 seconds and it becomes incredibly tedious to do anything. My game runs fine at every other time, it may slow down when I have a massive amount of dwarves and animals around but it has never been THIS bad.

Well, I abandoned the fort, hoping to come back as an adventurer mode to loot what was left. But there is a problem - the moment I enter the site again the same happens, I press a button to move and I don't do it until at least half a minute later. All the fighting between the demons and merchants (who happened to be on site when I opened the pit) is over, so I'm thinking the slow down is due to all the depressed elves, humans, and dwarves trying to kill themselves near the fort.

My question is simple...can I ever make the site "normal" again? 71.23.170.109 21:01, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Not without revealing and killing all of the demons inside, as well as any prisoners. Out of curiosity, what kind of demons were they? --Quietust 00:14, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

They are tentacle demons, is there some sort of odd game-slowing property those have that others don't? 98.206.10.80 00:02, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes - when you get tentacle demons, you also end up with upwards of one hundred unrestrained insane humans, dwarves, and elves running out of the pit and into your fortress. Spirits of fire cause their own sort of lag from the immense amount of heat they give off, and frog demons don't really do much at all. --Quietust 00:08, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, according to Quietust's post regarding the spheres, deleting the demons' [SPHERE:THRALLDOM] and [SPHERE:TORTURE] tags should prevent the little lag monsters from spawning, though perhaps also ruin the atmosphere somewhat. (71.23's fort is pretty much cooked, though.) Is this worth mentioning in the article? --Mr Frog 21:15, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd think any feature with the potential to make the game unplayable in its current form should be noted in the relevant article. I just popped open my pit for the first time and I think 1 frame per 10 seconds is right about what I'm experiencing. --24.58.8.116 13:42, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I left my 10-second frame dungeon running to see if a few hours of processing would let it sift through it. Turns out the big demon in the pit's already dead somehow... No idea how that happened. But as soon as the lesser demons (SoF's) un-stealthed, it sped back up to my normal 28ish FPS. --24.59.131.132 04:41, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Bug, or intentional? - 10+ surface-to-0-z-level eerie pits

I just embarked in an area, and upon starting, I got a message "Horrifying screams echo from below!", followed by about half an hour of caves collapsing (and at least 2 lakes emptying into a pit, along with 5+ pools of lava). I looked around, and there were at least 10 different eerie glowing pits going from the surface down to 0 Z level. I'm guessing this is a bug, has anyone else encountered this? 96.48.63.143 12:14, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

How did you get the message "Horrifying screams echo from below!" in 40d? The only message you're supposed to get when demons show up is "Horrors! Demons in the deep!" --Quietust 01:53, 21 January 2012 (UTC)