40d Talk:Cage

Live Fish in a Wooden Cage

Okay, I was trading with the elves, and I got a caged Longnose Gar... Which is a fish... But it wasn't in an aquarium. Not even a terrarium. Just a wooden cage. It was still alive. So, I traded for it, and constructed it's cage. There it is. A living longnose gar, happily laying on the floor of it's wooden cage, unconcerned of it's lack of water. I figured it would just take a while for it to die. (I've noticed that vermin fish, when captured, take a few months to die) It's been almost a year, and he's still happily alive in his cage. I'm afraid to try and move him out of it, though. I'm pretty sure he'd die if I changed anything at all. Think I should make an aquarium for him, and attempt throwing it in a proper environment? --Kydo 07:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Could you designate a river/brook or any other such water feature as a pit and then have it chucked in?--81.105.210.98 13:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Assigning animals / building cages

How do you put more than one animal in a cage? Runspotrun 11:41, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Once you hit (A)ssign, you should have a list of all tame animals in your fort. From here you can toggle whether or not a given animal is assigned to that cage by hitting Enter. You can do this for a number of creatures at once. Creatures already assigned to a cage or chain will have [A] out to the right of their listing. IIRC, there is a limit on the number of critters in a cage, but it's pretty high. One nice benefit is that if you put a male and female of the same species in a cage together, they can still breed.--RedKing 12:25, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Um...

(A)ssign? Uh, I don't see that. (a) is announcements, and (A) does nothing. I can see a list of animals with both (u) and (z)->Animals, but they only let me assign to owners, slaughter, etc. Do I need a specific noble? Runspotrun 12:41, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Ah, hold on. I appear to have only caught untamable creatures (yay... I guess). Does (A)ssign only work if I have caged, tame creatures? Runspotrun 12:45, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Cage options menu, I think q or t. --Savok 12:48, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Wow, I'm being really awkward here. Sorry. q and t both give me options about the animal stockpile the cages are sitting on, or the ground below that. Runspotrun 12:55, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Ahh, now I see the problem. You have to build the cage first, which moves it from the stockpile to whatever location you specify, then you can assign animals to it. Animal stockpiles just serve as collection points for your trappers to dump off their catch, or for new animals bought from caravans.--RedKing 13:19, 9 November 2007 (EST)

AHA! I see it now. Thanks for your help! Runspotrun 13:37, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Possible addition

Maybe worth adding to the article : How do you empty cages of bones and seeds? What's the best way to get rid an untameable creature in a cage? Runspotrun 21:15, 13 November 2007 (EST) Answer to both questions is lava. Rkyeun 17:21, 23 December 2007 (EST)

Alternatively, if you're just trying to get them out, melting the cage will work as well. (assuming metal of course)

bones and seeds in a cage can be dumped, the cage will remain where it is. Lava and melting will destroy the cage too, so thats not exactly helpful.--Koltom 13:59, 2 March 2008 (EST)

You can build the cage and use d-b-d over the builded cage to dump all items in it. This includes the items of the caged creature but not the creature itself. --TCPR 15:55, 1 November 2008 (EDT)

Captured thieves

So, if you manage to catch a thief or a snatcher in a cage trap after he has already managed to steal something/one, is there any way to get it off him, without releasing and killing him in process?--Dorten 23:35, 13 January 2008 (EST)

There might conceivably be some way to make him go melancholy, at which point he might ditch all his items. I wouldn't know how to induce it, though.--Maximus 04:43, 14 January 2008 (EST)

Found this at forum: You can find the items, carried by caged goblins/kobolds/whatever in the stocks menu and designate them for dumping, then dwarves will strip the prisoner. Cant check now. Anyone, confirm?--Dorten 07:06, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Yep, this works. Got a human macelord in cage, found (*steel morningstar*) at stock menu, zoomed to it - it pointed on macelord's cage so, it's his morningstar, dumped it, and voila: a dwarf comes to cage and gets morningstar out. The only thing unclear - how do you free a child from a bag?--Dorten 02:39, 16 January 2008 (EST)

Magma works well I hear. Jikor

Alright, so this works with dumping. If I designate an item to be melted, will the furnace operator come take it off the captured goblin? How about if I have a standing order to improve clothing? Will my clothier come and take the (narrow cave spider silk trousers) and sew his cloth image on them? Or is actual dumping the only way? --Zombiejustice 09:12, 16 June 2008 (EDT)

Dissapearing metal cages

I keep trying to make metal cages for a prison, but each time it gets completed the smith stands around a while and then it just dissapears. He doesn't even put it on a stockpile. Can anyone tell me what's happening? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patarak (talk•contribs)

Have you tried tracking the cage in the stocks menu? Are you sure it disappeared? VengefulDonut 20:44, 25 January 2008 (EST)

check with t if the cage is still in the workshop - also, u need an animal stockpile (not a furniture one)--Koltom 22:42, 7 March 2008 (EST)

Stopping certain dwarves from un/caging

All right, I know how to qasign animals to a cage. But even with animal hauling turned off, my dwarves still love putting furries into cages - how do I make it so that only my animal carers and animal trainers do this job? My miner drags herself from one end of the mine to the other to do this job!GarrieIrons 05:44, 13 February 2008 (EST)

Did you try with both hauling and care off? --Edward 08:17, 13 February 2008 (EST)

All of my trades-dwarves (carpenters, miners, woodcutters etc) have only the following enabled: their trade, Health Care ('cause I don't want anyone to die for no real reason), Burial ('cause if they do die I wanna get rid of the evidence), and Cleaning (cause from what I hear, dwarves clean less than I do even with that one turned on). So yeah, I've got both Animal Hauling AND Animal Care turned off AFAIK.GarrieIrons 03:25, 14 February 2008 (EST)

yep, seems anyone will cage/uncage. no way to stop it. --Koltom 22:43, 7 March 2008 (EST)

From the 40d version of this page: "Moving untamable and/or untamed occupants utilizes the Animal Training labor, which allows you to assign stronger, more capable dwarves to the task, which (may) reduce the chance of escape. It is unconfirmed whether this is the case with untamed, tamable creatures." I tested this in DF2010, and moving any creature has no particular labor: anyone who is available will do it (I tested tamed, untamed tamable, and hostile creatures, results were the same in all three cases). Same goes for pitting them. I'll update the DF2010 page with a line about it.--24.29.243.151 21:52, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Confirming having children in cages

I noticed that the page says it's unsure whether or not animals can bear children when while in cages. To my experience they do, I recently had some donkey foals born when everything but my wardogs were caged up. They were also standing around right next to the cages. Anyone care to confirm this so we can add it to the page? --Eurytus 3:14, 28 March 2008 (EST)

It says 'It is unsure if animals in a cage will mate, but animals can bear children when caged.' You just approved second part. What are you going to change?--Dorten 05:01, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

I get what you're saying, I think. I'll spade it a little more to see if the couple continues to bear children even though they're both in the cage at all time before I consider changing anything.--Eurytus 5:34, 28 March 2008 (EST)

I'm still on it too. I'm waiting for the last offspring to be adults to make sure this isn't blocking new ones, plus 3 years to be sure, but it looks like the donkeys and groundhogs have really stopped breeding and the rest too. The requirements for getting pregnant seem to be rather low; having a free male and female somewhere on the map for a short time seems to be enough. --Koltom 22:58, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

I've confirmed that caged animals do not, in fact, mate. I did a controlled study with animals in cages, specifically with dogs. I brought along two dogs on a new fortress. As soon as they had puppies, I slaughtered the parents and caged the puppies. As immigrants came along, all newborn puppies were immediately caged, and I paid specific attention to which animals were giving birth. Over a 5 year period, 12 puppies matured into dogs (2 are still puppies), none of which gave birth. The only source of puppies were the pets. --JeebusSez 22:10, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

animals reproduce asexually anyway, for some reason - i had a walled up puppy that grew up and had a puppy of its own, as well as a single (tame) mountain goat in my fortress, which had two sets of kids - i butchered the first lot so no, they didnt impregnate their mother... Twiggie 16:45, 12 July 2008 (EDT)

Every fortress I've ever played contradicts what is reported here. I've never seen a tame animal in a cage *not* breed. I've been caging and breeding tame animals (captured and imported) since 2D. I suppose I'll have to do some more testing. Not so sure why the user was able to produce these results. I'm also confused as to why they would slaughter the parents and what sort of effect that is supposed to have on the data. It could be that this somehow prevents the puppies from ever learning how to breed, or some other strange effect. See the picture at discussion for the meat industry.Schm0 16:57, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I store all my puppies in cages aside from a chained male/female/female. Never have had a matured dog in a cage give birth. Isn't this something that has been tested/confirmed before? The standard advice on the forums is to cage cats to prevent breeding, and it seems to solve the problems. Slaughtering the parents wouldn't cause some strange effect as children don't learn anything from parents currently. How did you do your testing? If they were matured when you stuck them in the cage then chances are they were already pregnant thanks to the spores effect. --Elvang 17:45, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Cages and Fluids

Do creatures need to breath in a cage? If you have an unconstructed/constructed cage underwater does the inhabitant drown? If you have a unconstructed/constructed magma-proof cage under magma does the inhabitant burn up? Yvain 08:29, 6 April 2008 (EDT)

Here is the experiment I conducted:

• built a large deep empty pool
• put a goblin cage and a cage stockpile at the bottom of it
• waiting for a dwarf to put some goblin cages in the stockpile
• turned on the pumps to flood the room
• had a dwarf throw (pit/pond) another goblin into the pool
• waiting until the thrown (pit/ponded) goblin drowned and then emptied the pool

Results: Neither the goblins in the constructed cage or the goblins in the unconstructed cage in the stockpile died. So in conclusion it appears that caged creatures do not need air. Yvain 23:25, 9 April 2008 (EDT)

Does this also hold for fish? VengefulDonut 02:11, 10 April 2008 (EDT)

Knowing the questionable physics of DF, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that both land animals and fish in the same cage need neither air nor water, simultaneously. A kind of quantum stasis or cryogenics. --DDouble 18:16, 31 July 2008 (EDT)

I actually did it! I managed to trap carp in wooden cages in a drainable chamber! I then added the [PET] tag to their raw file, and I actually was able to tame them! --Arkenstone 12:57 17 August 2009 (EST)

They can never be truly tame... Shardok 20:11, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

My experience in just chucking a few goblin cages into a garbage pit full of water resulted in the goblins being alive and well, just caged in 7/7 water. This has gone on for seasons now so I'm guessing they don't need to breathe, and the only real indication I'm going on is that they haven't chucked miasma into the rest of the fort as a dead creature would've. --24.162.138.162 05:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen the same thing. I ended up constructing the cages and linking them to a lever before flooding, then pulling the lever after they're submerged (since I wasn't familiar with pits/ponds at that point and didn't want to risk taking a goblin out of its cage). You can confirm they're still alive by checking the units screen. They do just fine until their first gulps of horrible, suffocating freedom. --HebaruSan 14:40, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Building materials

It appears that it takes four bars of metal to make a cage. How many logs of wood? How many bags of sand? These are things it would be nice to have in the article. --zombiejustice 00:51, 03 June 2008 (CDT)

Trading caged animals

Okay, so I just tried ordering my caged Fire Imp (wooden cage, go figure ^_^) to the trade depot so that the humans could take it away. A dwarf instead opened the cage and let the thing go, and the now empty cage was taken to the depot. Fortunately the humans smote it before it could set anything alight, but it would've been nice to sell the thing to them, so they could've smitten it on their own time. Does this always happen with caged wild animals? --Raumkraut 14:28, 12 July 2008 (EDT)

Like anything else being taken to the trade depot - order the container (in this case the cage) to be taken to the depot not the contents. You ordered just the contents, so they took just the contents out of the container.GarrieIrons 00:18, 13 July 2008 (EDT)

Not so. I've just tried with a "dog cage (Acacia)". The relevant cage shows up under both "pets" and "cages" sections of the "bring to depot" list. Neither of these options caused the dog to be released from the cage. And if I'd selected the fire imp rather than the cage, then why would the (then empty) cage be taken to the depot? --Raumkraut 13:18, 13 July 2008 (EDT)

To answer my own question, this is known bug #000041 (means it's been around a while, I guess!). As mentioned in this forum thread. --Raumkraut 13:34, 13 July 2008 (EDT)

On the other hand, if you don't feel like spending time setting up mechanisms and pulling levers, and you happen to be trading, this is a decent way to free up cage traps while letting your military practice. Station your military by the cage traps, mark them for trade, and watch the sparks fly. The civilians always run away right quick while the military fills the trapped goblins/animals with bloody holes. -Fuzzy 15:33, 19 September 2008 (EDT)

Training Vermin in Cages

How can you train them? I want some rats, dragonflies, and some lizards as pets.--Seaneat 03:12, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

You train animals in a kennel (b->k), by a Dwarf with the Animal Trainer skill activated. Depending on the animal, you either use the command to train a small animal or a large animal. I'm not sure right now of the condition of the cage or trap in which the animal is stored but I am sure it has to be stockpiled, at least. --FJH 18:56, 24 February 2009 (EST)

Cage Trading Caveats-Elves

I'm not sure it's directly relevant to pretty much anything, but I found the section about elves trading wounded animals to be very interesting. Has anyone here read "Lords and Ladies", from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series? In it, elves are described as being particularly cruel, and are said to be good at keeping creatures alive- sometimes for months(with the suggestion being that they torture them very slowly to death).

Could DF elves perhaps be similar? Apparently Discworld elves are based off pre-Tolkien British and European folklore, but I don't know enough about that to be able to draw a reasonable conclusion. Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there. Perhaps it's not actually a bug? ;) --Gnavin

Animal Stockpile doesn't move caged animals

I built a cage and assigned creatures to it. I assumed they would take that cage to the animal stockpile. It makes sense. So far all they've taken there is my empty cage. I'm guessing that I'm doing it wrong, that building cages is not the way to move them (maybe once they're built, they're forever immobile until you unbuild them?). But how do you capture animals in a cage without building the cage?

You have some of it right, but you're confusing about 3 different actions, all of which are explained on their own wiki pages.

You build a cage if you want to un/assign creatures to that cage (or designate it as a jail - but chains are deemed better) - the cage then becomes a structure, the same as a door or bridge, until deconstructed. Once deconstructed, it then again becomes a portable item, with any and all creatures still inside.*

(* FYI - a cage with many animals is HEAVY. A dwarf could take a long time to move something like that. Still might be faster than the alternatives, but be aware.)

You can designate an animal stockpile and cages and/or animals in cages will be moved there for storage - but you can't interact much with them at that point, until the cage is built somewhere. There is an option (u, iirc?) that allows you to toggle whether empty cages are allowed. forbiding all animals but allowing empty cages gets you a stockpile full of... empty cages.

To capture a large creature, you must use a mechanism and construct a cage Trap (c, T, c). To capture vermin, you must query a kennel or butcher's shop and have a trapper try to catch them.--Albedo 03:40, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks so much. I'm dumb. It makes sense. I didn't realize that you could deconstruct a cage and keep the creatures inside, I should've tried that or just read the article more carefully. Many thanks.

Cages and Unwanted Dwarven Inhabitants

I think that it would be useful to have a section on removing unwanted inhabitants. Not only for wiki-readers, but also for me. :) I have searched high and low, but I cannot find any workable answers for my dilemma. Problem: Unconscious dwarves trigger cage traps, which lead to them being irretrievable. Thanks in advance! Apparently it's a fairly common problem, so I think it would be good to have.

I also had this problem. I fixed it by setting the cage to be melted (k->m) and then adding the task to the forge (q->o). The dwarf in the cage was released and the cage was melted...although you can probably un-toggle melting the cage just after the dwarf is released... --Wizjany 21:10, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

To remove dwarves from a cage, you can simply by going to the build cage (b-j) then press x, then find "dwarf cage" and place it, u the dwarves will make that cage a building and u can release him from that cage like you would anything else.– unsigned comment by Sindain

Dungeon master handles gobos

For fun I ordered 2 (armed) goblins in cages to be transferred to another cage - the inital result was as expected - havoc and lots of interrupt messages. But then my dungeon master came along and swiftly took both of them to the new cage - awesome! --Confused 20:18, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

What version is this? I'm currently re-caging five armed goblins into a single cage without any problems, at all. Which is nice, considering I don't even have a military, and it allows re-use of cage traps. One was built and the others weren't, if that makes a difference. I'm playing the latest version: 28.181.40d Talonj256 20:51, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Assigning pets

While the game won't allow you to assign somebody's pet to a cage, I've noticed that if you assign a cat to a cage and it adopts while being caged, it will still be placed in the cage (where it will then be unable to contribute to a catsplosion). --Quietust 18:21, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I believe this gives a small unhappy thought to whoever the cat adopted. --Bombcar 04:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

releasing creatures

For unknown reason(s), releasing a creature from a built cage (the only kind 
you can intentionally release them from) requires an accessible empty, unbuilt cage...

Um... no. I just did it. Several different ways, several different games. Zero unbuilt cages, many animals released, no problem. I merely hid this edit ftm, but I think this is both a confused and premature edit. Altho' minor overall, it is fairly radical in that it claims to be a dealbreaker - something this radical needs discussion (and independent confirmation!) before slapping it up.--Albedo 01:32, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The behavior is weird. Here are my guesses:

1. Large, tame creatures can be released without an extra cage.
2. (Small) and (large non-tame) creatures cannot really be released at all by unassigning them.
3. So, unassigning does not mean "release the creature", it means "remove the creature from THIS cage." If the creature is tame, dwarves will release it and let it walk around. But if the creature is not something they want to let loose in the fortress, they will interpret this as a transfer, not a release attempt, and will refuse to do it if they have no cage to transfer them into.

At least that's my experience so far. I simply could not figure out how to release captured goblins or tame vermin using just the cage interface. Am I missing something? Maybe the article needs to be clear that 'unassigning' != 'releasing' Cheepicus 18:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

From my own experience, the only time a cage is required is when unassigning a wild animal or a hostile creature (i.e. goblin); unassigning a tame creature always just releases it, allowing it to roam freely. Also, unassigning a vermin requires an animal trap, not a cage. --Quietust 20:07, 14 October 2009 (UTC)