v0.34:Werebeast

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v50.14 · v0.47 · v0.34.11 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23 This article is about an older version of DF. More Info · V

Werebeasts are a variant of night creature that are procedurally created during worldgen. Deities may curse sentient creatures (including any animal man) to transform into an animal form on the night of a full moon. Creatures bitten by werebeasts are cursed to become werebeasts themselves.

Werebeasts may take the form of mammals or reptiles.

The behaviour of vanilla werebeasts in worldgen (i.e. fleeing town upon being cursed and conducting raids from their new lair) appears to be caused by the cursed individual's beast form having the [NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER] tag; removal of this tag from a generated werebeast extracted from a world.dat file and jimmied into the standard raws caused those cursed to behave no differently from any other unnaturally-immortal individual.

Even if the werebeast is dispatched while in animal form, werebeast kills are listed as being of the original race.

All werebeasts are described as having glowing eyes of some random color, and are "crazed for blood and flesh" meaning they attack everything that is not its own race, including undead.

Werebeasts in Fortresses

In some regions, the full moon will herald the attack of werebeasts upon your fortress (triggering a message similar to the one that is shown when a Megabeast attacks), or instead the unwilling transformation of your own citizens into their bestial forms. The cursed will attack anyone they can find for the duration of the full moon, spreading their affliction even further. Werebeasts of the same species will cooperate with each other and not normally fight, but those of different species will treat each other no differently than enemies.

Werebeasts Abroad

In adventurer mode, werebeasts are usually found living in small lairs on the edges of civilization. Young adventurers will often be called upon to slay them, with instructions along the line of 'he assumes a bestial form' along with a description of what type of metal they are vulnerable to. However, as long as they are not visited on the night of their transformation, they are just common peasants, and can be dispatched easily. It would behoove these individuals to hide themselves among townsfolk, but what can ya do?

The transformation to a Werebeast seems to only affect physical attributes, mental attributes are not changed though the descriptions will be relative to the Wereform's average. A Werebeast never gets hungry, thirsty or drowsy, and will not drown when in Wereform. When transforming to Wereform and back, all health regenerates, including missing limbs. All carried items will be dropped as soon as the beast enters a fight, making only the natural abilities of the creature available for combat. These abilities differ from creature to creature (Claws/Hooves/venomous Bite etc.) Your wereadventurer still can pick up his weapon and shield back, but, seeing as werebeasts seem to have minimum body size of about 80000, armor will become too small for you to fit in. Hauled items will also be dropped on Fast Travel, potentially lost forever if traveling from a location that doesn't save.

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Sometimes a werebeast arrives in humanoid form, the game predictably announces the arrival of a normal, intelligent creature like it was some terrible beast, and the naked, confused creature runs away, probably scared away by your dwarves' laughter.

Werebeasts also tend to change back into humanoid form at the worst moment, like when they are charging a group of axedwarves.

Sometimes a werebeast's humanoid form is more dangerous than the werebeast form, most obviously for snake man werewolves.