v0.34:Animal trainer

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

Skill: Animal Trainer

Association
Profession	Ranger
Job Title	Animal Trainer
Labor	Animal training
Tasks
Train war animal Train hunting animal Tame large animal Tame small animal
Workshop
Kennel
Attributes
Agility Toughness Endurance Intuition Patience Empathy

v50.14 · v0.47 · v0.34.11 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23 This article is about an older version of DF. More Info · V

Animal trainer is the skill associated with the animal training labor. An animal trainer works with animals, either taming wild ones, or training certain species for war or hunting.

An animal training zone is required for all training activities.

Domesticating wild animals

An animal trainer is needed in order to domesticate wild animals. To do so you will need an animal captured in a cage trap, an animal training zone, and some plants or meat depending on whether the animal is carnivorous or herbivorous. To have your animal trainer begin taming a wild animal, use z to open the status screen and select the animal menu. Scroll through the list until your captured wild animal is selected and use t to set a trainer to tame it.

A wild animal can be trained from a cage or on the loose. The trainer will bring food to the cage. Once the animal is no longer wild, it may be released from the cage (e.g. assigned to a pasture or restraint), and further training will take place wherever the animal is. Trained animals become immune to traps. However, if the animal reverts to the wild state it will retain its trap immunity, making it quite difficult to recapture. ^Bug:6002

Adult trained animals will slowly revert to their wild origins over time and must have a trainer permanently assigned to them to ensure they remain friendly. Trained animals have a quality associated to their training whose full effects are not yet fully known, but seems to include the time before they revert to a wild state. The last state before an animal becomes fully wild is 'semi-wild' which prompts a game announcement. Here are the known training quality levels:

Designation	Description
Semi-wild	Semi-wild
Trained	Trained
-Trained-	Well-trained
+Trained+	Skillfully trained
*Trained*	Expertly trained
≡Trained≡	Exceptionally trained
☼Trained☼	Masterfully trained
Domesticated	Tame

Animals who are trained while young may become fully domesticated and will remain forever tame. In addition, animals who are born from a trained animal will inherit the mother's trained status, including the training quality. It appears that this added training quality, with the addition of training reinforcement by assigning a trainer, allows for the progression to domestication.

Animals born from partially tamed parents will not revert to a wild state while they are still a child. For example, if a wild female wolf is captured and trained up to the +T+ level, and gives birth, the pups may forget any training they're put under as pups, but will never go lower than Semi-Wild while they're still pups. They can, and will, revert to a wild state when they become adult wolves, though going back to a fully wild state will still take some time after they've reached adulthood.

Finally, when training animals that your civilization has never domesticated before, successful training will result in some knowledge being transferred to your civilization every time the dwarven caravan returns to the mountainhomes. The effects of these are unknown but may result in easier or faster training by animal trainers in future fortresses established by that civilization.

Announcement	Training level in z screen
The dwarves of (civ) now know a few facts about (animal) training.	A few facts
The dwarves of (civ) have attained a general familiarity with (animal) training methods.	General familiarity
The dwarves of (civ) are now quite knowledgeable (animal) trainers.	Knowledgeable
The dwarves of (civ) are now expert (animal) trainers.	Expert
?	Domesticated

Bonding

As animal trainers work with an animal, they may become bonded to it ("formed a bond with an animal training partner"), and this relationship is visible in the dwarf's relationships screen. This happens even if the dwarf is not specifically assigned to the animal and regardless of training quality. The death of a bonded animal results in a bad thought for the trainer ("has lost an animal training partner to tragedy"), whose exact severity is unknown but fairly significant. It is unknown whether working with a bonded animal gives a happy thought similar to the one gained from talking to a friend.

Training Tasks

To train an animal for Hunting or war, you need a training zone (i, t) and a dwarf with the animal training labor enabled. Then you can go to your animal status screen (z, Enter) and find there a trainable animal. Trainable animals are those where you see you can press either w for war training or h for hunting training. If you wish you can also select a particular trainer t to perform this task.

Train a Hunting Animal

Requires: An uncaged tame animal with [TRAINABLE] or [TRAINABLE_HUNTING], an 'animal training' activity zone, and an animal trainer. Note that an animal that is in a pasture can only be trained if the zone is also in the same pasture.

Hunting animals can be assigned (v-select dwarf-p-e) to follow a hunter and assist in the hunting process. They are faster and more agile than a regular tamed animal, but not as strong as a war animal and cannot be unassigned.

Train a War Animal

Requires: An uncaged tame animal with [TRAINABLE] (or [TRAINABLE_WAR], although no such animals exist), an 'animal training' activity zone, and an animal trainer. Pastured animals can only be trained if the zone is located within their pasture.

A war animal is stronger than its untrained counterpart. War dogs make excellent companions when starting a fortress, when you can't spare many dwarves for fighting.

Like hunting animals, they can also be assigned to individual dwarves; combined with their strength, this makes them effective expendable bodyguards for any dwarf likely to see danger or who you feel is valuable enough to be worth protecting. Even if they fail to defeat an attacker, they can often buy their charge time to escape or for additional reinforcements to arrive.

Notes

Animal tab (z - Enter) has a list of all animals that are tame (and belong to your civilization) or are caged and can be tamed. Each animal on the list can be assigned a trainer, who will then tame (if needed) the animal, increase its tameness (if not born from tamed animals) or train it for war or hunting (if selected for hunting or training). Not all animals can be trained for war or hunting. Taming or increasing tameness requires an 'Animal Training' activity zone and food (edible plant for herbivores, meat for carnivores), which the trainer will bring to the animals. If a caged animal is fed a plant, seeds will stay in the cage. This has no effect on training, but if you later release the animal, you will need to dump the seeds from the cage before it can be reused.

Certain animals are trivial to tame (domestic animals are well known by dwarven civilizations), some are rather easy to tame (animals from Caverns aren't alien to dwarves). Other creatures will require more attention, at least until your fortress manages to get familiar with them. Which animals are known and how well can be checked in the second sub-tab in "Animals" tab. Badly trained animals can revert to a wild state, resulting in dragons rampaging through the fortress.

Only wild animals can be trained while in a cage. This means that if you want your animal trainer to provide additional lessons, you must release the trained animal. Alternatively, with a difficult to train animal or a poor trainer, you may want to leave the animal in it's cage. The Animal will eventually revert back to it's wild state, at which point your trainer will train it again, safely giving your trainer experience and also more knowledge about the animal if it's exotic. (this probably won't work with grazing animals, as they'd starve to death in the cage)

Sadly, nobles cannot be trained, no matter how desperately they need it.

Trainable war/hunting animals

The following creatures can be trained into war animals or hunting animals: If you trade for one of these animals, and they are already tame then they will remain tame when they become yours.

Animal	Size	Notes
Dog	30,000	† ♪
Mandrill	20,000	☼ †
Gorilla	150,000	☼ †
Grizzly bear	200,000	☼
Polar bear	400,000	☼
Gigantic panda	1,160,900	‼
Elephant	5,000,000	‼
Rhinoceros	3,000,000	‼
Giraffe	1,000,000	‼
Giant bat	200,000	♪ Hunting only
Giant cave swallow	200,000	♪ Hunting only
Jabberer	4,500,000	☼
Cheetah	50,000	♪
Leopard	50,000	♪
Jaguar	75,000	♪
Lion	200,000	† ♪
Tiger	225,000	† ♪
Bobcat	8,000	Too small
Ocelot	25,000	?
Lynx	25,000	?
Giant cheetah	560,000	♪
Giant leopard	560,000	♪
Giant jaguar	750,000	♪
Giant lion	1,700,000	♪
Giant tiger	1,900,000	☼ ♪
Cave dragon	15,000,000	☼
Roc	20,000,000	☼ ♪ Megabeast
Dragon	25,000,000	☼ Megabeast

☼ - These animals are a good choice for your army.
† - These animals are good choices for protecting important civilians, attacking dangerous creatures so the dwarf can escape.
♪ - These animals are good companions for hunters and marksdwarves.
‼ - These animals are a poor choice for training due to their voracious appetites for grass.

Remember to keep a breeding pair out of harm's way around if you want more of a particular animal, in case the ones in service somehow die.

Tame water creatures

It is reportedly possible to capture and tame water creatures if special care is used. But it's unknown how to butcher them. [1]

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