40d:Stupid dwarf trick

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This article or section has been rated D for Dwarf. It may include witty humour, not-so-witty humour, bad humour, in-jokes, pop culture references, and references to the Bay12 forums. Don't believe everything you read, and if you miss some of the references, don't worry. It was inevitable.

A stupid dwarf trick is any project that requires a large amount of time and effort - often for little or no practical benefit. They exist only as a challenge for experienced players.

Adventure Mode Fortress

Build a fortress specifically for exploring in adventure mode. You can either make a nasty monster-filled challenge, or a smörgåsbord of masterpiece steel weapons and armor. Possibly both. A chasm, underground river, or hidden fun stuff can ensure the fortress is occupied.

Difficulty: The sky's the limit.

Usefulness: Not applicable.

Alarm Clock

Are your soldiers all sound asleep while blood soaks the walls? No need to deconstruct their beds one by one, if you bought the Dwarf Wakey 3000! Simply a solitary floor tile balanced on a support, one or more can be toppled with the pull of a lever to produce an earth-shaking racket that'll have them leaping for their axes!

Difficulty: Low.

Usefulness: Low.

Alphabet Cages

Use captured monsters in cages to spell messages.

Difficulty: Medium. Vowels are hard to come by.

Usefulness: Absolutely none whatsoever. (Easy reminders in case you're too lazy to use notes?)

Aqueduct Power

If your river's a long way away from your fortress, building a trans-map axle may be less efficient than building an aqueduct and pump stack driven by waterwheels in the river. The pump stack raises it to the height of your fort, where it flows through the long, long aqueduct and drives waterwheels on the other end. Getting the water pressure just right so it powers your waterwheel without flooding the fort can be Fun. Diagonal channels make good pressure reducers.

Difficulty: High. Lots of stone, lots of engineering, lots of dangerous outdoor work, lots of trial-and-error for the receiving waterwheels.

Usefulness: High. As much water and power as you want, wherever you want, whenever you want.

Watervator

By creating a vertical "Hydraulic Elevation and Lowering Platform" chamber (A H.E.L.P. Chamber, so named for the cries of the passenger dwarf) with lever controlled water levels, you can move a dwarf up several z-levels without any stairs. All it takes is the dwarf's ability to swim up to the surface of the water to breathe. BONUS: Fill it with tame carp, see IT'S A CRAP below.

Difficulty: Medium. Moderate possibility of Fun by way of flooding your fortress. Any dwarves that can't swim will instead experience Fun when using the Watervator. The actual construction time and resource usage is very low. Using the Watervator often leads to unhappy thoughts about drowning

Usefulness: Low to Medium. The Watervator requires manual micromanaging, while stairs do not. On the other hand, it can be used to create a pathway that most Dwarves enemies will simply be unable to use. Those that can would still be doing so at great risk of drowning or falling to their death

Aquifer Power

Aquifers can be a resource of immense power. If you have two levels of aquifer, you can generate a continuous flow by draining one level of aquifer into another and plant waterwheels above it. One stream can power a lot of wheels.

Difficulty: High. Anything to do with draining aquifers is very Fun.

Usefulness: High. The lowly windmill pales in utility compared to a waterwheel.

Artificial Waterfall

To keep the waterfall going, you need a pump stack, preferably powered by a windmill or water wheel.

Difficulty: Moderate.

Usefulness: Dwarves love waterfalls. Putting a waterfall in your meeting hall will give your dwarves good thoughts, although it can significantly lower framerate.

Ballista Battery

Overlap a few ballistas to completely cover a narrow corridor. There is an unavoidable risk of your operators wandering into the line of fire.

Difficulty: Low. If you insist on highly trained operators with high-quality ballistas, it gets harder.

Usefulness: A complicated and dangerous way to defend a single corridor. Ultimately extremely effective. Sometimes.

Bridge-a-pult

A bridge that opens outwards, to fling enemies away. Ideally, they land in a very nasty place.

Difficulty: The hard part is the nasty place they get flung to.

Usefulness: There are a far more effective ways to defend a fortress, but few are as entertaining.

Dam

Build a wall across a riverbed to stop the flow of water. Floodgates optional.

Bonus: excavate a reservoir and a lower river valley
Bonus: build a control center to control the water flow
Bonus: draw your entire energy from a power station within

Difficulty: On a map that freezes in the winter, this is easy. Otherwise, very difficult. (See dam, or Moses effect, below. But with the bonuses it gets a bit harder.

Usefulness: Depends on how many bonuses you fulfill. The Power station is obvious, and with the control room you could build up a nice defense system.

Day Care

A room where you put all your dwarf children so they cannot be kidnapped by snatchers. Make a suicide booth setup that drops the child into a room with beds and tables and stuff. Remember to include a food chute to quantum stockpile a huge amount of food and alcohol on a 1x1 stockpile (so it doesn't rot) in the room. High quality food, furniture, and socializing should keep them happy. Note that the children will no longer be able to perform certain useful tasks like crop harvesting and deconstruction, and will not level up their skill in various professions like an otherwise kidnappable child, but this is a small trade-off if they usually get kidnapped before maturing anyway.

Difficulty: Low but annoying. You may have to micromanage to get every child into the room, and it'll be a hassle to get the grown ones out without releasing all of them.

Usefulness: Low. Protecting the children may be more trouble than it's worth

Doberman Bomb

Whenever a dog or cat gives birth, stuff all the kittens and puppies in one cage in your entryway. Link this cage to a pressure plate beside it. Should your last lines of defense be breached, goblins will step on it and in the next instant be torn apart by dozens of goblin-seeking hostiles and distracted by dozens of surplus targets. The trap actually going off will probably be very bad for your framerate. Bonus: Train all dogs inside as war dogs when they mature. Super bonus: Make it a Bear Trap. MEGADWARF bonus: Combine with a drowning chamber and carp trap.

Difficulty: Low.

Usefulness: Medium, potentially fortress-saving

Drowning Chamber

A room which you can fill with water (e.g. from a river or aquifer) and subsequently drain (using screw pumps or floor grates).

Difficulty: Moderate.

Usefulness: You can kill prisoners, useless peasants, irate nobles, hammerers, untrainable animals, or anything else.

Dwarfputer Complex

A big mess of fluid and/or machine logic full of hatches, floodgates, gears, pumps, etc. and powered by waterwheels, windmills, or useless idle dwarves. Hook it up to doors, bridges, and traps.

Difficulty: Medium to high, depending on what you want to build. You'll want to build for very high water flow if you have more than a few fluid gates.

Usefulness: Your mechanics and architects will level up very fast. Manual pumps give something for your haulers to do and makes them stronger. Try and make a clock to trigger different mechanisms in different seasons. See if enemies actually blunder into your intricate traps. Watch all hell break loose as water freezes.

Dwarven Apartment Complex

Essentially, one of the many possible mega constructions dedicated to providing dwarves with rooms so high above the ground they get vertigo. Every floor must have plenty of rooms of at least 2x3 squares, with walls and a door surrounding this. Oh, and it has to go up as many Z-levels as possible. For extra credit, decide on what the top story will be (i.e. as many levels up as you deem possible, minus one so you can build a roof) and turn this into a Royal bedroom for a noble, complete with gem windows, artifact/masterwork components, and untold numbers of armour stands and weapon racks. And then build some shorter but wider apartment buildings nearby to turn your fortress into essentially a giant fist with extended middle finger. Extra points for adding extra useless things for luxury, such as a magma-based heating system, fireplaces in rooms, and a lock-down lever in case of goblin attack. (or a self-destruct lever connected to the main supports, in case your dwarfish tenants are unsatisfied with your 5-star service.

Difficulty: Low, although the walls around the rooms can be a bit fiddly due to the impossibility of building walls on constructed floors (yes, an extra credit challenge is to do this without using Remove Construction).

Usefulness: Limited, because you could just dig the things underground and save yourself the hassle. However it is much harder to flood a tower than a cave, in case you're prone to fun by water.

Execution Tower

Just a tall tower to chuck your captives to their deaths.

Difficulty: Easy.

Usefulness: Lets you dispose of prisoners, and claim expensive silk, meltable iron, and (eventually) useful bones. Also highly amusing.

Flood the World

Difficulty: High danger. Will kill your frame rate.

Usefulness: Will prevent any sieges, at least. Or anything else, save for the occasional invasion of sociopathic Carp.

Gladiator Arena

Station some soldiers at the bottom of a shallow pit and dump your captives in. You can also use dangerous animals instead of soldiers. For extra points, put the prisoners in cages connected to ramps underneath the arena floor. One lever will open both the cage and a hatch above the ramp.

Difficulty: Moderate, but time consuming. Some danger depending on the relative skill of your soldiers and the danger of the captive.

Usefulness: The most difficult way to dispose of prisoners. It does give your soldiers a little bit of experience.

Glass Ceiling

Sick of having your dwarves vomit all the time when they go out to retrieve loot or lumber? Despair no more! Build an almost-infinitely tall tower, and then put a glass floor on the highest level, spanning the entire map. For extra kicks, make a mechanism that will crash the entire thing upon the heads of the one goblin horde that manages to get through all your other deathtraps.

Difficulty: Medium. Very grueling.

Usefulness: Low, but potentially fortress-saving. (see above)

Greenhouse

A greenhouse is just a farm with the ceiling channeled out from above. This lets you grow outdoor plants without venturing above ground. For maximum style, build the greenhouse above ground and cover it with a glass roof to keep your farmers safe.

Difficulty: Low.

Usefulness: Surface plants can be grown at any time of the year, and some are more useful than those available underground - for example, sun berries can be brewed into valuable Sunshine, and whip vines can be milled into superior quality flour. Having greater food and booze diversity can also keep your dwarves happier.

Hammer of Armok

A gigantic hammer made out of pure steel and/or valuables looming over your fortress entrance ready to smite those foolish enough to lay a siege on you. Also, gives you a psychological advantage over the traders who unload their goods under it. Attach to a lever-linked support for quicksmiting, or any other single-tile collapse mechanism. BONUS: Cover it with blood.

Difficulty: Low. Depends on size, materials and magma's existence, though. Make it a gold hammer menacing with adamantine spikes, if you're going for high quality.

Usefulness: Low-medium. 10x10 size is minimum for practical effectiveness. 30x30 hammer extending handles length from your entrance actually works against sieges.

Ice tower

Building a huge tower is easy. To make things more fun, make one out of some exotic material, like glass, ice, gold, or soap.

Difficulty: Low. You need to be on a freezing map to pull off an ice tower.

Usefulness: None, though the material is easy to get.

"I dinna say we wurren't crazy!"

Build a huge room with nothing in it except rock pillars, then dig channels on the levels above and below it until you have a ridiculously huge room ten Z-levels in height. Inspired by Irregular Webcomic.

Difficulty: Mainly in putting up with the incessant channeling, and avoiding dropping large chunks of ceiling onto the floor from five levels up.

Usefulness: Negative, due to the insane amounts of space it takes up, and rooms don't benefit from open z-levels above them.

It's A TRAP!

It seems that traps are buildable outside. This provides for numerous opportunities. The first that comes to mind is to trap the entire outside world of your embarkation point. This will make your sieges very amusing, as a hundred high-level goblins rush onto the field and are immediately shredded into ribbons by invisible traps before even seeing one dwarf.

Difficulty: High. Depending on the size of your embarkation point, this may involve placing thousands of traps. Depending on the type of trap, that may involve making tens of thousands of trap components.

Usefulness: High. Sieges will be instantaneous, and if you use cage traps, your arena will never want for combatants, including all those pesky wild animals you no longer need to hunt for.

It's A CRAP!

CRAP: Carp trap...wait, why are you laughing? Anyway, here's what you do.

Capture some carp in terrarium cage trap. If you don't die instantly, tame them. Then dump them in your moat and breed them. All the little goblins (or Orcs) coming toward you in a massive siege must be directed into your moat. When they fall in, they become (goblin chunk). Laugh maniacally.

BONUS: Edit the raws to make carps eat their kills. BONUS: Edit the raws to make carps native to lava.

Difficulty: Like going within two tiles of a carp infested river and surviving. Usefulness: Questionable

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Construct a sturdy vessel hanging over the top of a magma pipe or volcano, outfitted with everything your intrepid crew might need for their journey of exploration - food, booze, sleeping quarters and a bridge a must, but depending on the amount of effort it can include other items such as a recreation deck, water reservoir and trade depot for dealing with the natives. When all is ready, lock the explorers inside and send them on their way. Bonus points if you can detach it from inside so you can use it in Adventure mode later.

Difficulty: Moderate to High, depending on the size of the ship. For bonus points, carve the entire thing out of existing rock overhanging a magma pipe and engrave it with messages. The main problem is getting the whole crew inside at the same time - separate sleeping quarters help here.

Usefulness: Negative. For some reason, no explorers have returned. Of course, if you select only the Best and Brightest for the ship's crew...

Labyrinth

A maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Traps and dangerous animals are essential. You can have a retracting bridge drop invaders in, or just have a labyrinth as a back door.

Difficulty: It's a lot of mining. Having a bridge drop invaders inside is more difficult, but more useful.

Usefulness: It makes a nice element of fortress defense, and you can dump your prisoners inside it. Also makes a great place to explore in adventure mode.

• BONUS: Generate a world with large mountain caves. Instead of using the labyrinth as your backdoor, use it as your fortress.

Magma Chamber

A room which you can fill with magma and subsequently drain.

Difficulty: Dangerous as any magma project.

Usefulness: It's like a drowning chamber, but any non-iron items carried by the victim will be destroyed. Depending on your style of play, this may be a good thing.

Magma Cannon

It can be done! It uses a row of pumps to pressurize the magma in a chamber with only one exit. When the floodgate opens, the magma flies out a short distance.

Difficulty: Very high. You need metal (or glass) screw pumps to make it work, magma-safe floodgates and mechanisms, plus a big above-ground construction.

Usefulness: Marginal. But very cool.

Magma Mausoleum

This trick involves dripping water on to the middle of a magma pool until you have a column of obsidian, then channeling down into the obsidian more than one Z level, and putting a burial receptacle there. This probably won't work in magma tubes or Volcanoes since the created obsidian would fall into the bottomless pit. The trick is getting the water to fall onto the magma in a controlled manner. Bonus points for each additional level down you manage to place the coffin.

Difficulty: High. Requires certain resources from the start, plus lots of setup. And your dwarves tend to erupt into dwarf steam occasionally.

Usefulness: None, since an obsidian lined room with exactly the same furniture somewhere else will please your nobles just as much.

Magma Pumping

It's a lot like pumping water, only more dangerous, and requires the pumps to use magma-proof pipes and screws in their construction.

Difficulty: The difficult part is making all those iron or steel pumps and bauxite floodgates. Very high risk.

Usefulness: Magma is fun, but also Fun.

Mega/Water Drowning Trap-Thing

This is basically a channel above some pressurized water with a short tunnel leading to a door. The door needs to be connected to a lever somewhere in a safe part of the fortress. Position the door facing the main stairs into your fortress (for multiple stairs use multiple traps). When enemies come down the stairs, pull the lever and make them drown. (It helps to seal off the rooms).

Difficulty: Medium. Needs flowing water under pressure and levers.

Usefulness: Medium. Depends on the size of your fortress/defences/amount of attackers. Works well with fire demons to create a sauna.

Monumental Statue

Difficulty: Depends on how big you want the statue to be. If you are feeling really masochistic, cast it out of obsidian using magma and water.

Usefulness: None.

• BONUS:Make the statue hollow and have dwarves live inside it.
• MEGADWARFBONUS:Make the hollow statue for the dwarves to live in out of obsidian.

Moses Effect

With enough pumps, you can pull water out of a square faster than it flows in. This can create a reverse waterfall, or a dry spot in the middle of a flowing river. The effect is like Moses parting the Red Sea.

Difficulty: Surprisingly easy.

Usefulness: You can use this trick to create a waterfall or drowning chamber. It is also important if you want to pass through an Aquifer, although that is far more difficult.

Nuclear Fallout Bunker

Build a mini fortress with everything your dwarves could need deep underground. Stock it with enough food, drinks, and materials to last your small band of survivors for years or alternatively make it self-sufficient with its own food production. Lastly add a bridge that allows you to seal off the bunker from the rest of the world.

Difficulty: Easy-Medium depending on the relative luxury of the bunker and how many dwarves you intend to shelter form the apocalypse.

Usefulness: High. If your fort is threatened by some particularly nasty disaster (be it tantrum spiral or Bronze Colossus) simply rush your best and brightest dwarves down to the Nuclear Fallout Bunker and raise the bridge, sealing it off from the rest of the world.

Obsidian factory

You need one reservoir of water, and one of magma. Mix, cool, mine, and repeat as necessary.

Difficulty: Medium.

Usefulness: Obsidian is 50% more valuable than flux and 3 times as valuable as ordinary stone, making it ideal for your masons and stone crafters. Done properly, it can also serve as a magma chamber, a drowning chamber, and a swimming pool.

Pit o' Doom

Combine with an Execution Tower for maximum z-level executions! Spike traps are a must.

Difficulty: Low. You want it nice and deep though.

Usefulness: Dispose of prisoners, execute nobles, gruesome fatal injuries, laugh maniacally.

Pressure Washer

A huge tower with floodgates at the bottom on one side. When opened, the pressurized water fires out and pushes anything in the way of the flow away. Depending on size, can be surprisingly powerful. You can see an example tower here

Difficulty: Medium, construction technique takes some consideration.

Usefulness: Medium-High. Tested with 50 recruits standing in front of it when the floodgates opened, killed 46 of them, including ones not pushed into the pit.

BONUS: Fill it with Magma instead (though Magma doesn't pressurize).

Rehabilitation Centre

Had any problems with dwarves charging brainlessly towards the enemy, getting slaughtered, and then starting a tantrum spiral that will destroy your fortress? Turn your prison into a luxurious room full of things that make dwarves happy. Add artifact furniture, beds, a booze stockpile, chains made of gold (or anything valuable,) a waterfall, creatures in cages, etc. Hopefully they will return to society as a happy, more productive dwarf.

Difficulty: Low-Medium. Acquiring valuable items and setting up the waterfall can be annoying sometimes. Also you need guards to actually put them in jail. And it can be a real pain when those ungrateful sobs destroy the nice furniture you give them.

Usefulness: High. A tantrum spiral can quickly turn a productive fort of 200+ dwarves into a rioting fortress inhabited by a bunch of insane, miserable dwarves who spend their time punching people and breaking furniture. Don't let it happen to you.

Road of the Damned

Create a giant channel filled with spike traps, 10 tiles wide and going all the way from your fort to the map edge. Pave it over with crystal glass so traders can get that foreboding feeling that'll make them seal the deal without bargaining too hard!

Difficulty: None, just looks nice.

Usefulness:Low. The same as a normal road.

BONUS: Spike a goblin on every trap!

Self Destruct Lever

A mechanism that, for example, could flood your fort with magma, or release a trapped megabeast. For bonus points, build the whole fort on a single support.

Difficulty: Very high. Extremely dangerous.

Usefulness: None, by definition, but highly amusing.

Swimming pool

It's a reservoir that fills to 4/7 exactly. Station soldiers inside, lock them in, and fill. This way they gain swimming skill.

Difficulty: Low. It's just a pair of reservoirs.

Usefulness: The swimming skill is only slightly useful. This is most useful if the entrance to your fort has narrow walkways/moats surrounded by water, and you station your soldiers there. It does help gain attributes though.

Tower-cap Farm

You absolutely need to break into an underground river or lake. Make some muddy floors over a big area and wait.

Difficulty: Moderate. More information on it can be found here

Usefulness: Depends on size - bigger is better.

Town Destroyer

Start your fortress in an area with an existing settlement. Create a channel all the way around it, then dig out everything on the Z-level below and watch it obliterate itself (and probably your framerate).

Difficulty: Low to medium. It's not hard, just very time-consuming.

Usefulness: Very low.

Underground Perpetual Motion Power Plant

Combine with a use for the power and you either have an awesome setup, or a ticking time bomb.

Difficulty: High. Maintaining the correct water level is annoying difficult at times.

Usefulness: Depends on size of plant and what it's connected to. Also useful as a puzzle for adventurers.

Underwater Statue room

A simple room filled with statues that just also happens to be flooded. Simply dig a room near to a water soure smooth and engrave the walls and floors than fill with statues. Dig a tunnel to the water source and a separate escape route. seal both off with floodgates pull the levers in the right order and bam underwater statue room. For added effect make the meeting room a room directly above with a glass floor.

Difficulty:Low.

Usefulness: Absolutely positively none.

U.R.I.S.T. Artificial Intelligence

Basically, a dwarf in a bunker that controls your fortress. Being that there are no supercomputers in DF at the moment, we'll have to use the closest substitute, a dwarf. Seal your dwarf in a room full of levers that activate various floodgates, bridges, doors, hatch covers, traps, etc. Make sure this room has no exits or entrances, but it needs a luxurious bedroom and dining area, and you must include a chute for dropping in food biomass and alcohol coolant fluid. Alternatively, you can set up farms in the bunker for a self-sustaining, infinite source of food and booze, although you may want to seal multiple dwarves in the bunker to ensure that there is always a dwarf ready to pull a lever. Profile the levers so that they can only be used by the A.I. dwarf(s).

It would be a good idea to make the system into two rooms. The food/drink/bed room and the lever room. Should you need to add more levers, you can lock the A.I. dwarf outside the lever room and have your mechanics set up more levers without interacting with or releasing the A.I.

You can make the lodging room suited for the particular dwarf by adding furniture made from their favorite materials, and smoothing and engraving everything. Use quantum stockpiling to give them 10+ years of food and drink. Make sure the A.I. is unable to communicate with other dwarves. His/her mood must not be affected by the deaths of the walking meat-bags who tried to befriended him/her.

You must also make a snazzy/lame acronym name for your AI, here are some examples:

• U.R.I.S.T. - Underground Reasonably Intelligent Settlement Technologist
• N.O.B.L.E. - Narcissistic Obnoxious Boastful Laughable Excrement
• M.A.G.M.A. - Massively Alcoholic Gear-Machine Assembly
• A.R.M.O.K. - All-Reaching Master Of Killing
• A.S.S. - Almost-autonomous Systems Selector
• D.I.E.D. - Dedicated Irrigation and Everything else Device

Difficulty: Medium. Setting up all the levers and lodgings can be a micromanagement hassle. Further research is required as to how well the A.I. will fit into a dwarven economy.

Usefulness: High. Having a dwarf dedicated to pulling levers will ensure that they are pulled on time. Additionally, you will have a constantly-ecstatic dwarf who is virtually invulnerable to all threats. Should your fortress be slaughtered by invaders or drowned by flooding or tantrum spiraled, your fortress will be preserved until more migrants arrive, or the AI runs out of food.

Vomitorium

Prevents cave adaption. It's like the greenhouse, only instead of a farm, it's a meeting hall or barracks. Since you can't build tables or beds outside, build the room and channel down to it, or build a bridge or two over the top.

Difficulty: Low.

Usefulness: Low. Make sure to wall the pit in, or it will become very fun once goblin archers become involved.

Destroy the world

Make a huge pump that can destroy the entire world save for a bit of hostiles-free land to be happy with forever. Have the all-important stop-the-pump-it's-enough-now device be timer that stops the flood once McDoomed ceases to go thru a certain pressure plate regularly while hauling rocks back and forth.

Bonus: use magma instead of water, and release hell while your utopia under a sealed glass dome is safe and entertained by the demons outside. Claim it's all in the interest of destroying the one ring (before someone finds it) by bringing the volcano to it! Laugh maniacally until they realize you had the one ring safely in your pocket since embark!!

Extra bonus if done to finish off a cat explosion problem. This is the reason I've done it.

Difficulty: High due to micromanagement - such as walling the world.

Usefulness: What do you mean it's not awesome??? Oh, right, you can no longer really LOSE so you're bored? I guess you're volunteering for the pressure plate work, McDoomed...

Split fortresses

Make 2 or more independent fortresses.

Bonus points for a great wall of china type thing to keep invaders from sieging both at the same time.

Difficulty: Medium once you have a timer open the doors on alternate years to one fortress or the other. You can have drop-chutes to give stuff to the other fortress if need be, it helps with fey moods.

Usefulness: Whatever FUN happens, you have a backup. Except when the dragon decided to go thru my inter-fortress chute to reach in the closed-this-year fortress and burned everything, but you should usually get +250 years of FUN out of it before it's all over from synchronized disasters, very major disasters, or something like a catsplosion in a very far corner of the map killing framerates.

Break the Dam

Dam a river (or brook) using something nonpermanent (floodgates, drawbridges) and build your fortress entrance in the now dry river bed, make sure you can seal it off nicely (floodgates anyone?) then wait till the first Goblin siege, let them get to your entrance floodgates, seal them, open the dam and laugh manically

Difficulty: Low

Usefulness: Instantaneous death to all sieges!!