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v0.34:Werebeast
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Werebeasts are a variant of night creature that are procedurally created during worldgen. Deities may curse sentient creatures to transform into an animal form on the night of a full moon. Creatures bitten by werebeasts are cursed to become werebeasts themselves.
The behaviour of vanilla werebeasts in worldgen (i.e. fleeing town upon being cursed and conducting raids from their new lair) appears to be caused by the cursed individual's beast form having the [NIGHT_CREATURE_HUNTER] tag; removal of this tag from a generated werebeast extracted from a world.dat file and jimmied into the standard raws caused those cursed to behave no differently from any other unnaturally-immortal individual.
Werebeasts in Fortresses
In some regions, the full moon will herald the attack of werebeasts upon your fortress, or instead the unwilling transformation of your own citizens into their bestial forms. The cursed will attack anyone they can find for the duration of the full moon, spreading their affliction even further. Werebeasts of the same species will cooperate with each other and not normally fight, but those of different species will treat each other no differently than enemies.
Werebeasts Abroad
In adventurer mode, werebeasts are usually found living in small lairs on the edges of civilization. Young adventurers will often be called upon to slay them, with instructions along the line of 'he assumes a bestial form' along with a description of what type of metal they are vulnerable to. However, as long as they are not visited on the night of their transformation, they are just common peasants, and can be dispatched easily. It would behoove these individuals to hide themselves among townsfolk, but what can ya do?
The transformation to a Werebeast seems to only affect physical attributes, mental attributes are not changed. After transforming, the Werebeast has regrown all missing limbs and healed every injury, but all carried items will be dropped as soon as the beast enters a fight, making only the natural abilities of the creature available for combat. These abilities differ from creature to creature (Claws/Hooves/venomous Bite etc.)