Gremlin

2023-01-19T11:20:03Z

HappyPills: add premium sprite to Creaturelookup for Gremlin

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'''Gremlins''' are intelligent [[cavern]] [[creature]]s who are invisible until spotted, and cause various kinds of [[fun]] in your fortress by stepping on [[pressure plate]]s, pulling [[lever]]s, opening [[cage]]s, picking locks and opening forbidden [[door]]s - it is recommended to not have gremlins and easily-accessible [[Stupid dwarf trick#Self-destruct lever|self destruct lever]]s in the same fortress. One way of exploiting their lever-pulling behaviour is to have a lever that triggers a trap to kill the user when pulled, and leaving it in an area likely to see gremlins visiting. All gremlins are born with Competent [[skill]] in [[ambusher]].

When a gremlin is discovered, the game pauses and centers on it, with the message: "{{DFtext|A gremlin! Drive it away!|4:1}}".

Despite being intelligent creatures, gremlins possess the {{token|PET_EXOTIC}} token and can in fact be [[Animal trainer|trained]] by your [[dwarves]], provided you can bypass their [[trapavoid|natural immunity]] to most [[trap]]s. They don't possess a pet value, which theoretically makes them worthless for keeping around your fort, but if you do manage to capture and train a gremlin, it could actually become your [[mayor]]. In fact, this is quite likely because the gremlin is not able to work, so it will spend all its time in your meeting hall making friends. After a certain period of time a trained adult gremlin will turn into a gremlin hunter and will then hunt alongside your [[hunter]]s. This is because gremlins have natural skill in ambushing, which is associated with the hunting labour.

Note that a trained gremlin will not pull levers mischievously anymore. As explained by [[main:Toady One|Toady One]], the reason they are tamable is roughly that they are supposed to be only pretending to listen to your dwarves so they can mess with your levers and then run away, though trained gremlins currently do not perform this function at all and simply act as regular (albeit buggy) pets.<sup>[https://youtu.be/nAB93hOcsPI?t=4300 Source]</sup>

In the current version, a stray gremlin will claim a [[bed]] in the [[Tavern|inn]] and become a long-term resident, eventually petitioning for citizenship. This can be mortally annoying, because they will then perform labors and ignore requests to be trained, resulting in trainers dying of starvation and thirst if you aren't careful. A solution to this is to make them exclusively soldiers, or assign them to a small burrow with a workshop exclusive to them, and make the area a training ground, which you can also order them to station in. Being trained isn't a job for the gremlin and it just has to be there; the trainer will eventually finish the job if the gremlin is in the same area. This no longer occurs with their tame offspring. This method can also work for other trained intelligent creatures if you've modded them to be pets.

Gremlins will not eat normally due to having the {{token|BONECARN}} tag, and their minuscule size makes them terrible at handling alcohol. They are also notably long-lived, with some living up to 1000 years.

Some dwarves [[Preferences|like]] gremlins for their ''mischief''.

[[File:gremlin_preview.jpg|thumb|230px|center|Acts as bad as he looks.]]

== Trivia ==
Gremlins can talk, and be recruited in [[adventurer mode]], which is useful if one is trapped in a cave and cannot find [[animal people]]. Also, because they both inhabit the first cavern layer and are trainable, the dwarven [[Trading|caravan]] will offer their bodily fluids for sale, including gremlin [[blood]], sweat and tears.
{{D for Dwarf}}

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zWSrT2TfBc Don't expose them to bright light. Don't feed them after midnight. Don't get them wet.]

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Gremlin