40d:Cage

A cage is a holding device. Cages cannot be made of stone, but can be made of wood, metal and glass (terrarium). Cages can hold an unlimited number of animals and captured vermin at once. Placing animals in a cage can reduce lag and traffic in your hallways. Both empty and occupied cages can - and will - be stored only in an animal stockpile. A cage takes 1 wood log if made by a carpenter at a carpenter's workshop, 3 bars to build and uses the metalsmith profession if made of metal by a metalsmith at a forge, or 1 sand bag (or rough rock crystal) if made of glass.

The cage can be used in a few ways:

• A cage trap needs a cage as one of its components.
• As animal restraining device, where you simply plant it and allocate any animals (except pets) you want in it. Females that are caged will not get pregnant, but animals can bear children when caged.

This is also how you go about making a makeshift zoo for trapped animals.

A glass cage (Terrarium) can be designated an aquarium for holding captured fish. (see captured live fish)

• If the cage is made of metal, as a jail, where you designate its location to be used for justice, and a sheriff will detain any unruly dwarves.

If you buy your first animals via the traders, you may be unsure how to extract them. To remove an animal from a cage, it first needs to be placed via the Build menu (b-j). Once it's placed, use q to examine it, a to assign, and then use Enter to toggle the animal(s) currently inside. A dwarf will come along and let the animal out of the cage, after which it can be butchered, moved, et cetera. If all you want to do is tie it up, you can assign the creature using the restraint's menu.

If you already have a cage placed somewhere, a faster way to release bought animals is to examine this cage and assign the animals to it. A dwarf will fetch the animals from the stockpile after which you can release them by again examining the cage.

You can find a list of imaginative ideas to do with captured creatures here.

How to disarm hostiles in cages

You can find the items carried by caged goblins, kobolds, etc. in the stocks menu and designate them for dumping. While it is easy to identify goblin/kobold clothes because they will always be described as "narrow"/"small", it is harder to make sure you have found the right weapons; you can verify that you are targeting the right items by using the zoom function; it should point you to the cage. Mark the items for dumping, and dwarves will come to the cage and take them.

In the current version of the game, you can make this process quicker and easier via the mass designation tool. Use d-b-d to designate an area from which all items will be taken and dumped. Afterwards, hit k, go over each cage and press d for each of them. The end result will be that prisoners will be stripped naked but the cages themselves (and the creatures within) will remain in place, ready to be used for whatever purpose.

Stockpile

Cages are under the "Animal stockpile". To create a stockpile for empty cages, disable all the animals but permit empty cages u.

Arena

If you link a lever to a (built) cage with trapped hostiles, you can release them by pulling the lever and let animals or your soldiers have fun with them. Make sure you have disarmed them first. The design of this "arena" is really up to you but a somewhat contained area or room is advisable. This is also a creative way to get rid of unwanted pets, if you can manage to trap them in the arena. Make sure your dwarves won't tantrum from unhappy thoughts! Dwarves attempting to move certain creatures between cages(goblin champion, colossus, skeletons, etc) will merely result in freeing the creature.

One method is to have a room above a ramp (so the down-ramp is in the room). Build your occupied cages all about the room, station your soldiers near the ramp, and mark the ramp as a pit; then start chucking goblins into the pit. They get briefly stunned by the fall, so there's little risk so long as you don't try to pit too many at once (and be careful with the axelords, too). In the rare event that one of your peons cancels the pit-animal task, probably because they saw one of the recently-pitted goblins, there's plenty of soldiers at the ready to clean up the mess. http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=19613.msg204684#msg204684 Idea adapted from a post by Derakon on the Bay 12 Forums

Moving and Releasing Caged Creatures

To Release an animal from a cage, simply select a built cage with q, use the assign command a, select the animal (animals assigned to the cage will have a green + next to them), and press Enter. 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. The empty cage is not directly used, but seems to be tied up/unavailable for a short period of time during the process. Failing to provide an empty cage will result in nothing but constant job-cancellation spam until you provide an empty cage, re-assign the animal to the cage it currently occupies, or use the o menu to deactivate "Dwarves announce some job cancellations". When releasing multiple animals you may still receive spam if a dwarf attempts to release an animal while another is "using" the empty cage to release theirs. Moving untamable and/or untamed occupants utilizes the Small Animal Dissection 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.

It is very important to note that you must only assign one new untamed occupant to a cage at a time, mainly when transferring untamable creatures from one cage to another. If two or more creatures from other cages are assigned to a cage, all will be marked for release simultaneously (they are no longer assigned to the cage they were in) and then marked to be placed in their new cage one by one. This seems to follow the list of creatures in order, so that the first creature assigned to your new cage will be transferred directly, while the others will be released, at which point your dwarves will still attempt to cage them. Tame creatures will cooperate; untamed will not, resulting in a spam of job cancellations, and possibly worse things: The released animals will behave normally, for example a goblin Macelord will begin killing dwarves, a Cave Swallowman will flee helplessly and interrupt your dwarves' work, and a knuckle worm will begin wandering aimlessly again. Tamable creatures lost in this way will still appear on your Animals screen and all relevant menus, and any creatures lost in this way will still be capable of being assigned to a cage, but until you recapture them the task cannot be completed. One report of a Dungeon Master being unafraid to recage a pair of free goblins indicates that there may be more exceptions to the behavior of once-caged creatures, and tasks related to them.

Remember that some creatures are too powerful for your dwarves to safely lead around by the nose (megabeasts), and some others such as invaders may also escape while being transferred.

Cage Trading Caveats

• known bug 41 has reared its ugly head in that a cage marked for trading will almost always release the caged creature when it is picked up to be brought back to the depot. It is therefore, virtually impossible to trade caged animals as of this time. ^{v0.28.181.40d} There is, however, one exception - if you have managed to acquire animals through, for example, an elven trading animal being knocked unconscious on a cage trap by invaders while carrying caged animals for trading, these will be put into a different cage when released and can be sold to merchants at will.
• Elves are known to be trading crippled animals. In some games, the animals that the elves bring will always have a number of red injuries, including limbs, internal organs, and nerve damage. It has been speculated that this may happen due to environmental damage for creatures outside of their habitat, but it has been spotted in the forums in native species as well. ^{v0.28.181.40d}

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Military FAQ
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Recruiting, equipping, and managing your military
How do I train my dwarves' martial skills?
How to train civilians into super-soldiers
How do I keep armor from slowing my soldiers down?
How do I train and deploy animals when needed?
Help! My civilians keep running into combat!
How do I remove weapons from caged prisoners?
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