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40d:Carp
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- "I think I made fish too hardcore" --Toady One
These little monsters are challenging elephants for the post of King of Beasts, not only because they can drag a fully grown dwarf into the water and nibble him to death, but also because they can stare at your fisherdwarf and send them staggering back into a cliff. To make things worse, hunters will unload their whole quivers on them, oblivious to nearby animals walking on land. Carp will however die after the first winter if you are lucky enough to have a map which freezes. Alternatively, try draining all the rivers and lakes to air-drown the fish (but be wary not to water-drown your dwarves in the process).
Explanation
The carp's status as a cold-blooded dwarf killer is no doubt due to the fact that Toady One simply used a default bite attack for the carp (as with most of the new beings in v0.27.169.33a). The carp, half the size of a dwarf, has a bite attack which inflicts 1-6 damage points. Compared to the strength of a dwarven punch (1-2 damage points), it is easy to see that it is simply an oversight and will be fixed some time in the future.
The carp's propensity to attack creatures outside of its element and its ability to scare away dwarves it could never really reach is better classifiable as a bug. The same could be said about the hunters ability to target and attack them.
Carp also used to gain attributes from skill increases. Previously, innate swimmers gained attributes as they gained swim skill. This has been changed, and innate swimmers no longer gain swimming skill (or stat increases).
Additionally, dwarves who get attacked by carp tend to end up in the river, either from being pulled in, "dodging" into it, or trying to bull-rush the carp.
Advice
If you are new to DF, then there is only one thing to do if you come across a river full of carp and you don't want your dwarves to die... Run. Run and never look back. But that's not very dwarvenly, and while others may understand, they'll still mock you. The game can be merciless, some dwarves will die; part of the fun is trying to stop it, if not always succeeding perfectly.
You can construct a well for drinking and tended wounded - that will solve one small part of the problem. Dwarves like running water rather than still water, so try not to make it dead end, but connect it through and back to a river or brook.
You can channel out a canal and put protective grates over it, for both fishing and drinking, and designate your fishing/drinking zones there - that will help also. (Channel just the end area, and dig a tunnel to that desired area, and then channeling out the last tile next to the water source to flood it - that will prevent creating a long carp-friendly access river to that area. Same advice re well, above - try to avoid dead end if a drinking source.)
If you have some carp-free water sources, you can use designations (d) then set traffic areas (o) to simply discourage your Dwarves from using the dangerous waters. (Note that if carp are sighted in one part of a long stream or brook, they are everywhere in it.)
A further alternative would be to position your Marksdwarves nearby for some shooting practice. This, combined with the Traffic area solution, works exceedingly well in keeping your dwarves safe and controlling the problem, if not wiping out the Carp population altogether for the long-term safety of a Carp-infested map.
Another option is to modify the raw files. Carp are in Dwarf Fortress\raw\objects\creature_large_riverlake. In here you can find their damage and attacks and modify them, so that they become weak or benign creatures, or if you feel like a cruel god, just delete them from existence altogether. Some players consider this to be cheating, because even though killer carp were never really intended to exist as they do, the game is still playable and they can lead to lots of fun. Don't complain about "realism" - it's a dwarven fortress, fer Armok's sake!
Danger
Just in case you don't believe us, here is a little hint:
