v0.31 Talk:Forgotten beast

I've found all the forgotten beasts I've found so far have been pretty easy to take down. Heavily armoured dwarfs helps a lot here - with how overpowered armour is currently, the forgotten beasts cheerfully mince my civilians but die to raw recruits. Which is amusing. My two least experienced soldiers are the ones with forgotten beast kills. ADVICE: Use edged weapons. Against unarmoured targets these are lethal.--Nimblewright 19:24, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

When I looked at the materials section of the ammunition screen, there were 171 different types of forgotten beast bones listed. Is this number constant across all worlds? Does everyone have the same 171 beasts? BoilingSpecter 00:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The number of Forgotten beasts is a world-gen parameter, if you wanted you could make a world with no forgotten beasts or hundreds of them, And they are randomly generated so it's pretty unlikely anyone will have the same beast. But man these things are WEIRD I saw a humanoid green haired panther that SECRETED FROZEN POISON, And it was in charge of a goblin civ, there was also A MONSTER MADE OF STEAM IT'S WAS AWESOME. 24.255.86.193

Thanks for adding the info to the main article. I had to fight a few demons made of steam (Boiling Specters). My dwarves couldn't kill them, and they couldn't hurt my dwarves, so they attacked each other until my dwarves died of thirst. BoilingSpecter 04:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

That certainly lowers the awesome, should I add that to the known bugs and issues page? 24.255.86.193

Encountered my first forgotten beast today. Wandered near the stairs that went through a cavern. Soon afterward, I sealed that staircase so it couldn't get close. I'm somewhat afraid of getting near it. It appears to be nothing but a shell rolling around in the water. --Kuroneko 13:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC) Update: Oh shi-- Apparently it's a !!Forgotten Beast!!. It took a swim through the cavern and turned the entire water supply to steam in a few minutes --Kuroneko 17:00, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

You did well, I heard of this guy who had a four legged vomit monster, and his dwarfs cut of it's legs, but it managed to BUMP them to death, along with a caravan. 24.255.86.193 Fire eh? don't wrestle it. 24.255.86.193

I've also found indestructible forgotten beasts, guessing it's a bug. I had one where every single part of its body was considered both broken and smashed open, but it kept hitting back for probably 20 minutes before I finally forcequit the game. It had a single 'body' section instead of the traditional upper and lower halves, and it lacked arms/legs/heads to disable its attacks so that might have resulted in it being effectively impossible to cause true damage to.97.90.193.201 10:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Just had one of those today, it was made of salt apparently. Also had two tails, which my Axe Lords chopped off quickly. However, they spent about 10 mins hacking at it to no effect. The 'body' section was red, but it kept bumping my dwarves to death. Lost about half my force before I gave up. Decided to seal the cavern to prevent it from destroying the rest of my fortress.--67.163.255.238 22:17, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Had one of those indestructible titans today as well. Just a shell and a body, made out of mud, evidently. On the upside, it kept my goblin seigers occupied for 3 months (until they got bored and left), more than enough time to build a collapsible pit trap and drop it in a hole. Now, if I can get my dwarfs to stop freaking out within 20 tiles of it, I can hopefully seal it up and call it a day. --98.185.244.59 23:09, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Just had an Indestructible forgotten beast myself. This one was made of mud... Mud with wings. It excreted a paralysing vapour. I had 2 legendary swordsdwarves and 2 legendary axedwarves hacking it for some time. It only had one body piece besides the wings. It just wouldnt die. Glob quit are me. A previous fortress found a mauve crab that breathed fire. Gotta love the random gen.

I ran into a similar one; it was just a blob of snow with a pair of wings. I think it got bored or something, because after awhile it disappeared from the units list. Can Forgotten Beasts wander off the edge of the map and disappear like any other creature? --JonTheRed 16:39, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

More likely it just wandered to undiscovered part of caverns. Don't worry, when you'll show some activity at that cavern, it'll come back, hehe... Web collectors are perfect for that. =) Peregarrett 06:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I've got two beast wandering at the caverns. First one was made of vomit, and first thing it did when appeared - ran to the bunch of batmen - 5 blowgunners and an elite wrestler. It was funny to watch them. Batmen (i think it was wrestler's work) injured all beast's body parts to red condition, all limbs were broke open. But somehow the beast killed all of them. Now it wanders at the darkness, all broken and unhappy. That's good that cavern is isolated from our domain
Second one passed cage traps and destroyed hatch hover that was closing the passage down to the caverns. I hardly had time to build a floor above the stairs closely to the fortress itself. Pheeewww... --Peregarrett 14:17, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I had a beast in my caverns. I tried to attack it with several full armored soldiers, it minced them apart. I reloaded, sealed the cave and it got killed by a miserable snakeman naked and armed with a wooden spear and a blowgun... --79.3.172.1 09:30, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Few days ago I generated a world, started up adventure mode and chose forgotten beast as race.. The game immediately crashed and I restarted it and decided to play DF instead (with the genned world), chose Play Now, and now for some reason all my units are forgotten beasts xD The screen is being spammed with "Urist McForgottenBeast, peasant cancels Pickup equipment: Too injured" probably because they don't have any arms.. Hilarious but can't do anything with them xD I haven't reported it to bugtracker though.. --84.245.25.61 20:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

ONE Forgotten Beast may showup when you reclaim a fortress? ONE? I had at least half a dozen show up on one large reclaim I had. The 1st showed up instantly, I had 4 on the map before the 1st migrant wave came. I just gave up when 7 or 8 arrived. Well, some were Titans, but same thing.

If FBs are immune to traps, do they trigger pressure plates? Or maybe destroy them? Since at the current version(.35) archers are bugged, I'm thinking of replacing them with balistas with pressure plates. Will they work? Trepach 17:32, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• They don't trigger pressure plates, so that is unfortunately not a suitable way to deal with them. How were you going to use a pressure plate and balista? One can't "trigger" the other... -- Kalon 22:38, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Magma/Drowning Immune

Beware, I got one today that was immune to both magma and drowning. Or rather, drowning in magma. Oddly enough, the beast was 'composed of snow.' Weird. Garanis 05:16, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

There are some circumstances making creatures quite immune.

A blizzard man for example will be hurt by magma, fire and dragonfire, (skin and fat will be destroyed) but will not die. I think it has something to do with its temperature. --Kami 14:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I had one made of snow - dispatched it quite easily with 'training swords'. Snow is weak to severs, apparently.--Zombiejustice 14:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Worldgen parameter

The article says that there's a worldgen parameter that changes the number of forgotten beasts. Is this one of the cave-related options? Changing "Titan number" and "Number of Demon Types" to zero didn't get rid of Forgotten Beasts; is this a bug? -- 141.154.159.229 16:34, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I guess it's the number of mountain caves for outdoor titans and megabeasts. Read the "exported" regionXX-world_sites_and_pops.txt. --TomiTapio 20:59, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Common properties

It's possible to extract the raws for all of the forgotten beasts, titans, and demons out of the "world" file for the region. I've written a short PHP script which seems to work reasonably well on uncompressed regions with no active saves - see my user page. --Quietust 21:24, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Based on a sample size of 75 forgotten beasts (extracted from a single world), forgotten beasts appear to all have the following properties:

[GENERATED]
[FEATURE_BEAST]
[ATTACK_TRIGGER:0:0:50000]
[NAME:forgotten beast:forgotten beasts:forgotten beast]
[CASTE_NAME:forgotten beast:forgotten beasts:forgotten beast]
[NO_GENDER]
[CARNIVORE]
[NATURAL]
[AMPHIBIOUS]
Either [BIOME:SUBTERRANEAN_CHASM] or [BIOME:SUBTERRANEAN_WATER]
[PETVALUE:2000]
[GRASSTRAMPLE:20]
[BUILDINGDESTROYER:2]
[ALL_ACTIVE]
[SWIMS_INNATE]
[SWIM_SPEED:2500]
[TRAPAVOID]
[NOPAIN]
[NOSTUN]
[NONAUSEA]
[NOFEAR]
[NOEXERT]
[NO_DIZZINESS]
[NO_FEVERS]
[LARGE_PREDATOR]
[BODY_SIZE:0:0:10000000]

Given these properties, it would appear to be utterly impossible to capture one in a cage (as was possible in 40d with frog demons and tentacle demons by using cave-in dust to knock them unconscious). --Quietust 19:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

If that are the raws of forgotten beasts, there is a [GENERATED] tag. Does that mean.... I can make a species with that tag? Niggy grins evil EDIT: Nope does not work :/ the [GENERATED] tag doesn't do anything. --Niggy 18:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

It's just silly that vanilla megabeasts can be cagetrapped. --TomiTapio 20:59, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I had one stand on a cage trap in order to destroy the workshop right next to the cage trap. The trap was never triggered. I took it out with marksdwarves. (I had heard a rumor that cage traps would capture them, but I had also heard that they don't trigger traps. Had to see for myself.) -Greycat 23:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I was just looking in my world.dat, wondering if anybody else had noticed the commonalities. Other things I notice is that all combat skills are at level 6, and that all syndromes have SEV:100 and PROB:100. Secretions, dust, etc seem to fall into liquid, gas, or solid categories; gaseous secretions melt at 9800 and boil at 9900; solid secretions melt at 10200 and boil at 10400. Not sure about liquid. This is just from noodling around within the .dat of one world. However, I see that some of my FBs lack BUILDINGDESTROYER, which is probably a recent development. Any counterexamples to the commonalities I see?98.203.173.56 04:19, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Modding

Is it possible to either mod or edit the properties of Forgotten Beasts (eg, adding new types or new qualities) in the raws, or is it hard-coded into the game? --121.44.11.37 06:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no. But it would be awesome to give forgotten beasts genders and making them able to cage and tameable. God, now I want to make a giant snail with huge wings that fizzles that spits poison farm. --Niggy 20:15, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Fire beast in water

I think a similar beast is already brought up on this page, but I got a fire beast to appear in my underground lake. It came from off of the explored part of the lake, and immediately began converting it to steam. I'd love to know if it was destroying water off-screen (but I sadly did not know to check for changing water levels.) It would be interesting to see if DF treats off-screen stuff like this differently. I left my beast for a while and when I came back I found him stuck in a dry section, with trees blocking the water from getting in, and the beast from getting out. My theory is that he swam over one of the trees, and then got rid of the water on the trees, trapping himself between them. Can creatures swim over trees that grow under water-filled squares?

EDIT: Just looked at my beast, and it turns out he has wings. Also, I forgot to do this:--Peglegpenguin 21:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No longer enraged

I just got the message "Thefin Tomoicmi, Forgotten Beast is no longer enraged."

I confess I hadn't released that it previously was enraged: it spawned a couple of years ago in the cavern I'd stumbled upon and then closed up, and it has been stomping around there ever since. I just assumed stomping was its thing.

So what does it mean? Has Thefin been trying desperately to find a way to my dwarves all this time, and now has calmed down enough that it will no longer bother? Do all FBs start off enraged, and then calm down later? Hv 12:37, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

'Enraged' means that the forgotten beast was probably fighting something and went into a berserk fury. Most (all?) animals including goblins will do that, with the exception of dwarves who go into martial trances. Theoretically, enraged enemies hit harder while the fury lasts, while martial trances increase combat prowess by an absurd amount. Don't try to make friends with the FB.JohnnyMadhouse 13:47, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I heard that martial trance just allows to ignore a number of slowing and weakening effects while it lasts. Like Pain, Winded, Exerted, maybe Stunned. Normally each non-positive status effect (for combat calculations only Enraged is positive) cumulatively slows the creature down.--Another 14:19, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Check your corpses listing in your z-stocks screen. You might find new dead members of an underground civ off your known map of the caverns. I've noticed, in my current fortress, every time I'm getting that message, there's a new dead antman or antwoman. I know where they lived, now anyways.--Fancy Admiral 18:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Grime and Filth beasts

The article gives an impression that forgotten beasts made of grime and filth might be hard to kill. The thing is, one of my dwarves (Adequate in almost all military skills) single-handedly defeated such FB BY THROWING IT AGAINST A WALL. Maybe crashing into an obstacle is their only weakness?

Deadly Webs

As far as I know, all the FBs with "deadly webs" don't produce webs at all. I was hoping they would produce webs.....Forgotten Beast Silk sounds cool. Is this another bug? --Stinhad Limarezum 03:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's a bug - specifically, it's a syntax error in their generated raws ("[WEBBER]" instead of "[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SILK:SILK_TEMPLATE] [WEBBER:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SILK]"). --Quietust 12:46, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Building Destroyers

It says that all of FB's appear to be building destroyers. Mine was not. I had a forbidden door separeting it from the rest of my fortress, and it just stood behind it for a few months. Then I just decided to confront it. Would a door hold it for so long if it was a building destroyer ? --Pirate 01:58, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

By any chance was the door an artifact? --Quietust 00:42, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Odd... I ran into one that either couldn't or didn't feel like attacking any of my buildings... I offered it doors, supports, bridges... none of them artifacts. It seems to enjoy tearing up my dwarfs and bait animals just fine though

All my FBs would first run and destroy the door I baited my cage traps with. Was your door open? Any object on the door preventing it from closing? I read on the exploits page that if you have something on your door (stones, monarch butterflies, anything) that keeps it open, building destroyers will wait for it to close before proceeding to smash it to bits, so if you have a forbidden stone on it, a FB would be permanently prevented from entering.--Stinhad Limarezum 03:41, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Stockpiling of FB parts

After my FB was butchered, its hair and chitin was put in my outdoor "useless refuse" stockpile (where hair/wool and fresh raw hides were forbidden). I had other stockpiles for raw hides and hair/wool. Another strange thing is that the hair could be spun into thread, but the chitin could not be tanned. --Stinhad Limarezum 04:03, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

That's a combination of multiple known bugs - 2762 and 1160. --Quietust 12:49, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Flaming Forgotten Beasts

Just had a humanoid FB made of flame appear on the edge of my map and crash the game for the second time. It even appears to be the same guy.He shows up, sets the undercavern on fire and just sits there. My military dwarves cannot be set to atack him, says there's not a valid target. But when I station them nearby and they see him they'll head over and attack, then the game crashes. Anyone else have this problem? Is this a known bug? Thanks regardless, --Unseenmage 18:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)