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DF2014:Titan

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xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼
v50.14 · v0.47.05 · v0.34 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23
This article is about an older version of DF.
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The Mountain Titan Ozosm has come! A great humanoid composed of native platinum. It has wings and it has a regal bearing. Beware its webs! (post)

Titans are large, monstrous, procedurally generated megabeasts that lurk in the surface world, pathing through to your fort and seeding destruction amongst your dwarves. They are the above-ground equivalent of forgotten beasts.

Titans are attracted by wealth and population size. Additionally, one may randomly appear when you reclaim a fortress. When a titan becomes visible onscreen, the game automatically pauses and displays a message.

Generation

Titans are procedurally randomized - being of any form, and made of any sort of material. Multiple titans may come to attack your fortress, each coming at different times. Most take the form of an animal, some not found in vanilla Dwarf Fortress, with extra features (e.g. extra eyes, feathers) or removed body parts (e.g. skinless cobras) and unusual colours. However, a titan can also take more generic forms, such as shelled blobs, quadrupeds, and humanoid golems. Materials range from flesh and blood, to flimsy things like ash and steam, to truly scary monsters of pure rock, gem, or metal. They may get a special attack, ranging from things such as venomous stings, poisoned blood, or explosive dust clouds, to flame breath.

If a titan has a venomous attack of some sort, it is randomly generated, as are the resulting symptoms, including, where applicable, the titan's breath attack. Venom attacks come in a variety of forms, from boiling ichor to trailing dust, and the effects can range from mild pain to complete and instantaneous necrosis or paralysis. Some forms of venom can spread from spatters and contact with your dwarves, eventually 'infecting' your entire fort - decontaminating your soldiers in shallow running water is one way to deal with this problem. Some titans breathe fire or shoot webs in lieu of any syndrome-bearing attacks. Web-shooters are immune to the effects of webs they, or any other creature, create and will shoot web even at targets they lack a proper path to. Titans based on spiders may be capable of shooting webs in addition to any other special abilities.

Unlike forgotten beasts, the number of titans in a world can be controlled if it is created through the advanced world generation screen. All are building destroyers, and are almost entirely immune to traps (they are [TRAPAVOID] and [NOSTUN] but non-webspinners will trigger a trap that has been webbed). They are also immune to pain, nausea and fear, and feel no exertion. Bridges are also less useful, as they cannot be raised or lowered as long as the beast is standing on (or under) them, preventing the traditional magma pit / dwarven atom smasher designs from working. Unlike forgotten beasts, titans possess unique titles depending on the biome they inhabit - titans living in marshes will be known as marsh titans, titans living in savannas may be known as savanna titans, etc.

The description of some titans are also affected by the alignment of the biome from which they come from, possibly most notable with the recorded examples of titans from good-aligned biomes having descriptions ending with "It emanates an aura of giving and kindness".

Death and application

Unless the player has completely walled themselves out of the surface world, it is not possible to avoid confrontation with a titan when one spawns. Titans are not intelligent creatures and those made of "fleshy" materials can be butchered; due to their massive size, they will leave you with hundreds of meat and bone units and dozens of prepared organs. Titan shells may prove valuable during a strange mood, particularly on a map without other sources of shells. Unfortunately, all titans have a value multiplier of 1.

Some titans whose bodies are made of liquid, gas, fire, or powder will die or lose limbs on the first hit. Others are extremely difficult to kill due to being made of very hard materials or having an amorphous shape. When confronted with such near-invulnerable creatures the only option is usually to use your brain and try to lock it away somehow. Walls and raised draw bridges stop them. Since they are building destroyers, you can use installed furniture to lure them to a particular location. If you can put it in a pit, a clever trapmaker can feed it invaders. If a near-indestructible beast isn't in a position to threaten your dwarves, it can be used to train marksdwarves.

Due to arriving from the surface, cave-in traps may not be as efficient against a titan as they are against forgotten beasts unless the player deliberately allows them to enter the fortress. They'll be killed by dropping either natural or constructed walls or floors on them. It is also possible to capture some titans in cage traps by using giant cave spider webs (or similar). Titans possess a pet value of 2000, but they cannot be tamed due to lacking the necessary tokens.

You can prevent titans from appearing by editing d_init.txt to change [INVADERS:YES] to [INVADERS:NO], though that will also prevent ambushes and sieges, or through setting the number of titans generated to 0 in advanced world generation

Titan Threat Analysis

If you do not want your fun spoiled, do not look below!

Estimated size comparison between a titan and a dwarf.

Titans pose different levels of threat to your fortress, based on their composition, body shape, movements or special attacks. This list also works with forgotten beasts and demons.

Of course, general threat must be appraised after all categories. A giant blob made of smoke with webs is still pretty harmless and very fragile, despite it having webs, and a no-frills humanoid made of steel with no special attack will cause dangerously large amounts of fun, being essentially a far more resilient bronze colossus.

Material Composition

  • Water, Grime, Filth, Salt, Steam, Smoke, Snow: Liquids, gases, and powders are incredibly fragile, most of which usually don't do any damage - mostly dying to kittens playfully scratching them, or babies punching them. Unless paired with a dangerous attack method, these should not be a threat at all.
  • Fire: While very fragile, fire is incredibly !!fun!!. This type of titan will usually stay at the edge of the map and may burn large parts of the grasslands when it first enters. Engagement should be avoided if it does not path to your fortress (and into a trap) as it could cause casualties with fire spread, contact, and fireballs (passive ability). Dropping an unarmed goblin or two (or a ceiling) on top of it should kill it as it will die as easily as any other gas beast. Upon death, titans made of fire tend to explode in a large fireball which will kill all units within range, so keep your melee fighters away!
  • Flesh: Most titans are fleshy. It's about the standard level of threat for a titan. Invertebrates are generally more fragile than vertebrates due to lack of bones, so it's easier to damage the brain or mangle their body parts.
  • Rock or Mineral: Quite difficult, but not unbeatable. Can be damaged with metallic weapons. Beasts may be made of native copper or silver ore; see below for those.
  • Glass or Gem: They are generally pretty tough, though not quite as much as being made of diamond might imply. If you have poorly equipped dwarves, military action is not advised.
  • Non-weapon grade metal: Similar to rock titans. Most weapons-grade metal can damage it but many decorative metals, like gold, are also quite dense.
  • Copper/Silver: If you've got a good military and weapons as good as bronze, it should at least be beatable. Don't expect an easy fight by any means, however.
  • Bronze: If you have encountered a bronze colossus before, this beast should be comparable in how dangerous it is. Whether it is more or less dangerous will depend on various features such as natural weapons, body type, whether it can fly, material emissions and whatever syndromes it may possess.
  • Iron: Are you having fun yet? Do not send anything against it that has less than steel weapons; it will be pointless. Magma also does nothing against these.
  • Steel: While exceedingly rare, these are fortress-ending threats on the level of HFS, beatable only with cave-in traps, falling traps, obsidian/ice traps or adamantine weapons. Be sure to post how your fortress ended horribly the epic story of your struggle with it on the Bay12 forums!

Body Shape

  • Blob: Depends on material - fleshy blobs having only a single body part, which all attacks will target, causing it to accumulate damage rapidly until it explodes into 'gore'.[Verify] Has only a blunt push attack, which at a titan's size is deadly. However, inorganic blobs are a whole other story, and metal blobs are a sign that the game hates your guts.
  • Quadruped, Humanoid: About the average for a titan. Try and use cutting weapons or spears to cripple them.
  • Insect, Spider: Obnoxious because of the large number of redundant limbs. The large majority of spiders (not "tarantulas", apparently) will be guaranteed to have a webbing attack and should thus be treated with extreme care.

Movement

  • Walking: Normal movement. All titans are also amphibious.
  • Flying: More dangerous than walking, for obvious mobility reasons. Be sure you only have one entry for your fortress.

Special attack

  • None: Consider yourself lucky—most forgotten beasts have some kind of syndrome-based effect. However, certain kinds of beasts have inherent abilities, like fireballs for a beast composed of fire, or webs for a spider-based beast.
  • Noxious Secretions: Every single part of the creature's body is covered in extract. If it's in liquid or solid form, and any of your dwarves touch this extract, they will receive the syndrome effects. Usually not a threat; since dwarves are often well clothed, your military even more so. If the secretions are in gas form, treat the titan as if it has a toxic breath attack. Note that, unlike other attacks, gaseous noxious secretions are effective even if the beast is caged.
  • Hunger for warm blood: When the creature stabs the opponent, some blood will be drawn. Additionally, its ability to detect any creature with blood will let it "see" dwarves through walls and other solid objects.
  • Poisonous bite or sting: Not dangerous by titan standards.
  • Spitting glob: Generally not dangerous, unless you forgot shields and shield use on your military for some reason.
  • Fire breath: By itself not threatening if you have shields and decent shield skill. However, fun is always where fire is — a burst of flame is quite likely to start a wildfire. Alternatively, the fire can also take the form of fireballs.
  • Toxic blood, vapor, or gas: Threat depends on the syndrome's effects - can be harmless or kill your entire military. You may want to sacrifice something to see what the titan extract does.
  • Webs: Webs are incredibly deadly in melee, but do not help much in range. It will slaughter your whole melee squad with incredible ease, but not your ranged squad as long as the ranged squad is out of reach. Engage it with marksdwarves or kill it with a cunning trap.
  • Deadly dust: Possibly the most fun attack a titan can come with. Deadly dust acts like cave-in dust with syndromes. Dust coming from all directions (as opposed to a breath attack) is even more fun. If the material of the titan is weak (like flesh), or if it has articulations or organs to be damaged, it will harm itself with its own deadly dust. However if it is made of stronger material, it will be immune to this effect. Deadly dust is generally a very effective defense against melee and marksdwarves, but is a liability if the titan is fleshy and not a blob.

Applications

Titans can be put to various uses if correctly managed. See here for more information.

Adventure Mode

Titans can be encountered in adventure mode and are considered "beasts" for the purposes of asking about troubles. They are common targets for quests and reside in shrines.

Titans are relatively easy to defeat in adventure mode, at least as far as they won't be made of too hard material or possess devastating special attack. Though they are gigantic, they have two major weaknesses: they are unintelligent, and so cannot train skill in combat; and they live in shrines, surrounded by pillars, which make excellent cover for a stealthed adventurer. It is therefore quite possible to sneak up behind a titan and slay it, without it ever noticing that you're there as long as you attack hard enough. Do note that all titans possess legendary skill in observer.

This strategy should not be attempted on titans which are naturally without eyes, or which possess a hunger for warm blood, as these have omnidirectional [EXTRAVISION].

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