v0.31 Talk:Kennel

I have been having trouble taming creatures, but other than that it seems like kennels haven't particularly changed.

2010 Best animals for military?

So now we have War Elephants, War Grizzly Bears, Giant War Eagles and even War Dragons. How about we collectively decide which is the best (strongest, most accessible, easiest to breed, etc.). I really like Elephants as they are way strong and Giant Eagles because they can fly. Grizzly bears are really accessible from elves and they can be the front lines against goblins to make way for your dwarves. Haven't really tested much, but from what I have observed, Elephants are the strongest due to their size, but the others seem to do quite well against goblins, too. Now which ones are massed up easily, are tanks, are fast, are strong, are dispensable (I always feel bad when my hard-worked Elephants die, as I always attach to them, same goes for Eagles... until they start breeding properly). What do you think? --Speed112 3:54 AM, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Dogs, probably. Available everywhere, breed fast, grow fast, half-decent stats. My (very limited) experience with War Giant Eagles suggests that they aren't as good as their wild cousins... their stats are better (thanks to training), but while they CAN fly, they DON'T fly, choosing to follow their trainer/master around on the ground. So the Giant Eagle's biggest advantage (hit-and-run from the sky) is lost... and they don't have the stats to match goblins one-on-one. --DeMatt 01:32, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

2010 War Dogs

Is it just me, or are war dogs barely worth the investment? Mine do virtually no damage to anything and just get themselves killed (I've just had one killed by a troglodyte, of all things).--Nimblewright 12:29, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

• Individually they don't do a lot of damage, but it's pretty easy to get a swarm of them - and a war dog swarm is a force to be reckoned with.
  • forget dogs -- Elephants breed just as fast and if you know the trick you can get them more easily (on a jungle biome)
    • Elephants may breed just as fast, but it takes ten years for them to become trainable. --Quietust 14:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
      • Small numbers of war dogs are only useful to stop enemies for a while until the military arrives. Currently, I create a squad with one legendary dwarf and 55 war dogs. That should be quite effective. --Blur 11:02, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

2010 [TRAINABLE] animals

Since apparently Elephants are now trainable, someone needs to compile a list of animals that can be trained into war animals and added to this page for easy listing 68.161.167.37 13:35, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Here you go, this is everything with the tags in the raws. Note there are none with [TRAINABLE_WAR] --StrongAxe 13:48, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

• [TRAINABLE]
  • [CREATURE:DOG]
  • [CREATURE:BIRD_EAGLE_GIANT]
  • [CREATURE:BEAR_GRIZZLY]
  • [CREATURE:ELEPHANT]
  • [CREATURE:LION]
  • [CREATURE:LEOPARD]
  • [CREATURE:JAGUAR]
  • [CREATURE:TIGER]
  • [CREATURE:CHEETAH]
  • [CREATURE:MANDRILL]
  • [CREATURE:GORILLA]
  • [CREATURE:BEAR_POLAR]
  • [CREATURE:LION_GIANT]
  • [CREATURE:LEOPARD_GIANT]
  • [CREATURE:JAGUAR_GIANT]
  • [CREATURE:TIGER_GIANT]
  • [CREATURE:CHEETAH_GIANT]
  • [CREATURE:DRAGON]
• [TRAINABLE_HUNTING]
  • [CREATURE:BAT_GIANT]
  • [CREATURE:BIRD_SWALLOW_CAVE_GIANT]

Does anyone know the difference between [TRAINABLE] and [TRAINABLE_WAR]? If there's no difference can we assume Toady has an idea he has yet to implement... Numeral 17:58, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Given that [TRAINABLE_HUNTING] only allows the creature to be trained for hunting and not for war, it's rather likely that [TRAINABLE_WAR] only allows the creature to be trained for war and not for hunting. --Quietust 18:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

My bad, I was under the assumption that [TRAINABLE] was only for war animals and that to have an animal be hunter trainable and war trainable it needed both [TRAINABLE] and [TRAINABLE_HUNTING] Numeral 18:11, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Animals appear to have to be uncaged prior to being trained; a lack of uncaged trainable animals throws up a 'no trainable creatures available' error. Fortunately, dwarves still recognized caged wild animals if ordered to tame them.

Kennel as Workshop

Should it be noted that the kennel isn't built from the workshop menu, but is actually directly under the build menu 98.117.151.147 03:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Additional Detail?

Perhaps it should be added in the article that the creature to be trained has to be roaming the fortress freely and may not be assigned to a cage or restraint? --Doub 14:23, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I concur. It's not entirely obvious, but to train an animal, said animal has to be able to freely walk to the Kennels. If all trainable animals are restrained, the trainer will cancel the job; however if there if the animal is not restrained but is unable to walk to the Kennel (due to non-Pet-Passable doors), the animal trainer will not cancel the job and the job will never complete.

Contradictory information

The section on taming large animals say you need a caged wild animal, then later says the animal should not be caged at all:

"Requires: A caged wild animal and an animal trainer.

The animal trainer uses it to tame wild animals not already domesticated, such as those caught in cage traps. The creature to be trained has to be roaming the fortress freely and may not be assigned to a cage or restraint..."

I read that as "the creature must be caged, but can't be in a cage." Am I missing something, or is this information completely contradictory? --71.186.242.142 23:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Taming (i.e. turning a wild animal into a tame animal) requires the animal to be caged. Training (i.e. turning a tame animal into a hunting animal or a war animal) requires the animal to be uncaged and able to walk to the kennel. You are correct, though, that the text in the article was contradictory - it's been fixed now. --Quietust 02:44, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Built or loose cage, or does it matter? Uzu Bash 21:36, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I've never actually tried taming animals in a built cage - it's probably worth trying out. --Quietust 00:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Taming creatures in built cages works just fine. --Quietust 02:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Tame megabeasts who've killed dwarves

Does anyone know if offscreen dwarf killings (those found in the legends) prevent megabeasts from being truly tame, like it does when a normal creature kills a dwarf of your fortress? --Peglegpenguin 03:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

If that made it an enemy of your civilization, same as an onscreen killing. Uzu Bash 19:42, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Workaround the for the no Dungeon Master bug?

I've edited the raws for the giant eagle from [PET_EXOTIC] to just [PET], but the caged eagle I have still isn't tameable - any idea why this is? I edited the raws -after- it was captured, if that makes any difference? 90.198.6.67

Mmmm... did you edit the raw files in the specific save folder, or the main DF folder? --DeMatt 20:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I had a similar problem a while ago, i had 6 dogs in a pen/pasture and my miner/trainer wouldn't train them for war, it turns out that they cannot be marked for the pasture for them to be trained, same thing probably goes for cages.

The problem is, really, that the dogs must be able to make their way to the kennel. The dwarf doing the training doesn't fetch them. Instead, he waits for the dog to arrive. If your kennel is inside the pasture in which the dogs are kept, it works just fine. The dogs will be allowed to make their way to the kennel. --Jwest23 17:59, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Ediable

Can you eat creatures you've tamed... if so, how? As it seems I can't select butcher on tame/untame rodents of any size...? --Djsmiley2k 16:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

You can butcher and eat most animals you tame. You just can't butcher tame vermin. I think dwarves can randomly grab and eat vermin you have, but I don't know if they ever grab tamed ones. You can butcher animals by looking in their unit menu (press v), hovering over them, and pressing p for their slaughter page. Press s to toggle their slaughter order. You can also press z, and then enter on "Animals." That gives you a list of all your tame animals, making it easy to mass-butcher kittens animals. As for slaughtering and eating normal untame animals... well, the game is silly there. You cannot just stab a sword through the bars of the cage into a captured animal and call it a day. You have to set it up so the animal gets killed after being set free from the cage. Build the cage, connect it to a lever, and build something around it to kill it. Maybe traps, or some soldiers looking forward to combat practice. Then pull the lever, and wait. Just be careful when letting your soldiers deal with wild animals. Alternatively, you can wait until caged wild animals die of old age, then butchers will just automatically butcher their corpses. Takes up the cage for a while though.--Peglegpenguin 22:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Training

My caretaker isn't training a pet dog (it's even HIS pet). I've trained two other dogs without problem, but with this one, it just keeps coming up with the "no creature" error. The two other dogs weren't pets, so I'm wondering if it's some sort of unique bug, or am I just looking something over. 70.132.3.212 00:51, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

• Training an animal requires the animal to be able to reach the kennel, if it's been assigned to a cage, pasture, or chain then you'll keep getting the message until it's unassigned.

• I'm getting the same error, over and over, in 31.25, even when the pet dog is already in the kennel. Locked in via pet-impassable door, or pastured in an overlapping area, doesn't matter. It might make a difference that the dog came as a pet with a wave of immigrants, but shouldn't.