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.

The Animal status 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). Which animals are known and how well can be checked in the second sub-tab in "Animals" tab.

An animal training zone is required for all training activities.

Domesticating wild animals

Capture

In order to domesticate an animal you must first have an animal to domesticate, so before you can do any training you must capture some wild animals. Which animals appear at your fortress (and thus which animals you can attempt to tame, besides the subterranean creatures that are randomly present) is dependent upon your surroundings, which is in turn dependent upon the local biome, or biomes if your fortress overlaps multiple regions.

Wild creatures can only be captured by cage traps; as above-ground traffic is, as a rule, unrestricted, and as creatures can enter and exit the map from any direction, the only reliable way to force wildlife into your cages is to build a lot of them. The same is true of the caverns, although since they are usually not nearly so expansive capturing passing creatures is a little easier; on the other hand you have to be much more worried about exposing your dwarves to the various subterranean nasties. Note that animal traps are not used in this role, but are instead used by trappers to capture live vermin, and thus surprisingly enough trappers are not involved in the trapping of actual creatures.

Just because you have a creature stowed away in your cages stockpile does not mean that it can be trained, as only creatures with the [PET] or [PET_EXOTIC] creature token can be trained. Additionally, [TRAPAVOID] creatures ignore cage traps entirely. Captured war mounts and any other named enemies of your civilization can also be trained, but they will, regardless of training level, remain hostile to your civilization and will, if released from bondage, attack your units without mercy; even worse these creatures may cause a loyalty cascade if you order your military to deal with the situation.^Bug:6051 To make use of captured creatures that you cannot or do not want to tame, see live training and mass pitting.

Taming

Designation	Description
Wild	Not tamed
Semi-wild	Semi-wild
Trained	Trained
-Trained-	Well-trained
+Trained+	Skillfully trained
*Trained*	Expertly trained
≡Trained≡	Exceptionally trained
☼Trained☼	Masterfully trained
Domesticated	Tame

Once you have a captured, trainable creature trapped in a cage, you can start trying to domesticate it. You will need cage trap, an animal training zone, and some plants or meat depending on whether the animal is herbivorous or carnivorous. 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. Note that 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.

The trainer will bring food to the cage and perform the initial training, setting the animal to one of the trained levels (see table at right). A fully wild animal must be trained from its cage, but once an animal has been initially trained and it is no longer wild, it may be safely released from its cage (and preferably assigned to an enclosed pasture or restraint, to keep it hemmed in case problems arise later). Be warned: trained animals immediately become trapavoid, and will stay so if they ever go wild again, making recapture impossible.^Bug:6002

A notable exception from "training levels" are animals which are a member of a species your civilization already has domesticated. Only few of them can occur in the wild to be captured - e.g. water buffalo and turkey. Such creatures become fully tame when tamed by a trainer.

Only wild animals can be trained in a cage. If you want your animal trainer to provide further training 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 its cage. A caged animal will eventually revert to its wild state, at which point your trainer will perform the initial training again, safely giving your trainer experience and your civilization more knowledge about the animal. Note that [GRAZER] animals need a pasture to survive, and will die if left to linger in a cage for too long.

The overall difficulty and time required to tame an animal is roughly proportional to its pet value. As a general guideline, animals with pet value less than a hundred are easy to train, those with values in the hundreds take some effort and a few years to train well, and creatures with pet values in the thousands such as dragons are very slow to train and almost impossible to completely domesticate.

Adult trained animals will slowly revert to their wild origins over time and must be permanently scheduled for training (through the animal status menu) to ensure they remain friendly through regular re-training. Trained animals have a quality associated to their training that affects how long they will retain composure before reverting to the wild, but which may have other effects as well. The last state an animal reaches before it becomes fully wild is semi-wild, which prompts an announcement.

Dwarves will instinctively know when their animal training partners need retraining, and will prioritize doing so, but will obviously not be able to if they are injured, experiencing a strange mood, or are otherwise unable to reach their trainees. If you assign a single dwarf to an animal (Any available trainer is also an option) only that dwarf will ever attempt to train or retrain the creature, so care must be taken to keep your trainers healthy and available.

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. This has no effect on gameplay within your fortress, but is conjectured to reduce training barriers for future fortresses established by your civilization. Although a number of farm animals are domesticated by your civilization from the beginning of the game, your fortress cannot individually "civilization-level" domesticate a species.¹

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

Taming children

Only animals with the [CHILD] tag can breed and have children, but any animal children that they have offer a significant perk: the possibility of producing a fully domesticated population. Note that animals cannot get pregnant in cages (in fact, this is one of the few times they can't), so you'll have to move past the initial training stage to have them.

Animals born from a partially tamed mother will not revert to a wild state while they are still children: for example, if a wild female wolf is captured and trained up to the +T+ level, and gives birth, the pups may forget this "inherited" training, 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. Interestingly, the training level of the father does not count for anything when it comes to the child, but perhaps this is unsurprising given that in Dwarf Fortress animals can breed from across the entire map, without ever even seeing each other.

Animal children always become fully tame upon receiving training once. This not only allows making children of partially-tame mothers fully tame, it also allows instant taming of caught animal children or of children born in captivity to fully wild mothers. Only children can be domesticated, and once the young animal grows up the opportunity for domestication will no longer be available.¹

Animals in Dwarf Fortress give birth in one of two ways, either with live births or by laying and incubating eggs. Child-rearing animals that give birth to their young is easy: as long as there is at least one male of that species somewhere on the map, children may be conceived, inheriting their mother's pasture status in the process. Egg-layers are more complicated; there must be an open constructed nest box for the female to occupy and lay a clutch of eggs in, and they and the mother must remain undisturbed during the process as the mother must incubate her eggs; even training is inadmissible. Thus the eggs must be forbidden and the mother should have her trainer de-assigned during the duration of her stay; they also will not inherit their mother's pasture status.¹ The resultant children will have the taming status of their mother when they were laid, not hatched.

Training tame animals

Tame animals can be trained for hunting or for war, for which 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 your 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

This 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 intrinsically faster and more agile than a regular tamed animal, and can sneak alongside their partner, but are 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, as currently all war-trainable animals can be trained for hunting as well and are under the inclusive [TRAINABLE] tag), an animal training activity zone, and an animal trainer. Pastured animals can only be trained if the zone is located within their pasture. War animals are assigned the same way as hunting animals (v-select dwarf-p-e).

War animals are significantly stronger than their untrained counterparts; 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.

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 appears to disregard 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.

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 bobcat	256,320	♪
Giant ocelot	377,750	♪
Giant lynx	377,750	♪
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

With a great deal of effort and some clever engineering, it is possible to capture, tame, and butcher water creatures.² Water creatures can survive indefinitely in cages, but will drown at water levels below 4/7 while dwarves will cancel tasks at water levels at or above 4/7, making training extremely tricky. This basic problem can be solved with one of more interesting bugs in the game: ghost trainers.³ It is currently unknown what bug causes this, but some animal trainers that are killed and never buried or memorialized will continue to perform their job from the grave. This removes the fundamental problem of water depth incompatibility and makes the task much easier. An easier solution, however, would be vampire animal trainers: they are unbreathing and will path through such water normally, so long as there is no flow. Taming water creatures in vanilla is fairly useless, however, as without modding they never have children, nor can they receive war (or hunting, however that would work) training.

Taming hostile creatures

Taming hostile creatures like enemy mounts does not cancel their hostility. While the job is completed and the animal trainer gains experience, the tamed creature remains hostile to your civilization and will attack your dwarves.

However, it does seem that the offspring of tamed hostile creatures belong to your civilization, because tamed mounts amusingly disturbingly attack and subsequently kill these offspring at birth. If you are careful and ingenious enough, you can separate the parents and children at birth.

Note that hostile egg-layers, such as cave crocodiles, might not use nest boxes and therefore generate no offspring.

Handling dangerous creatures

Only dwarves with the animal trainer labor active will move non-tame (wild or hostile) captive creatures to a chain or to another cage. This restriction only applies to non-tame creatures and only to the "chain large creature" and "cage large creature" jobs. Throwing such a creature into a pit or pond can be done by anybody, and the chaining and caging of tame creatures is similarly unrestricted.

Bugs

• Trained animals immediately become trapavoid, and will stay so if they ever go wild again, making recapture difficult.^Bug:6002

• Capturing and training war mounts may cause a loyalty cascade if your military has to put them down.^Bug:6051

• Trained fliers may swap positions with dwarves, leaving the dwarves stranded in an inaccessible area.^Bug:3371

• Taming herbivores leaves seeds in cages, which must be manually removed.^Bug:201

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