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v0.34:Weather
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Weather refers to any type of weather effect in DF. It includes snow, rain, and special features in evil surroundings. Normal rain cleans any tile it lands on, removing blood, vomit and other bodily fluids on contact. Any dwarf caught outside when it rains will receive a minor unhappy thought.
When rain hits a tile labeled as a murky pool, it will begin to fill it up with 1/7 water, and if that does not evaporate the water will grow deeper, until the pool is full. Murky pools do not overflow from rain, but this extra water can be drained off and stored or used. (See the Well Guide.) While not much, it can really help maps without 'unlimited' water supplies such as rivers and brooks.
Freezing will also refill murky pools which are found in some biomes (mainly temperate) - after the murky pool unfreezes, it will be full again. This happens in biomes of moderate temperature as well as cold biomes.
Weather can be disabled by changing [WEATHER:YES] to [WEATHER:NO] in the init file. Disabling weather is a quick and largely harmless fix to improve framerate on older machines if required.
Evil weather
Certain evil surroundings feature freakish weather, such as fogs, clouds, and rains. They may afflict those caught in them with various kinds of syndromes or curses, such as poisonings or transformation into zombies.
Types of evil weather
Two kinds of evil weather exist - evil rain and evil clouds. The type of weather effect and their associated syndromes (if any) are different and randomly chosen for every evil biome in a generated world. Usually there will be only one weather effect for a given evil biome, often in conjunction with the effect of corpse animation.
Evil rain can be made of either the blood of a civilized race (dwarves, goblins, etc.) or a randomly generated inorganic substance. Blood rain typically causes no syndromes, only giving whomever caught in it an unhappy thought. Generated substances are more dangerous, causing minor symptoms such as vomiting, blisters and fevers, as well as inspiring the aforementioned unhappy thought.
Evil clouds are made of a generated inorganic gas or dust. They start in one tile and spread out in a similar manner to miasma vapor; when the game announces the cloud's presence, it will zoom into this tile. Evil clouds cause more serious syndromes than evil rains, similar to those of forgotten beasts, titans and demons. Certain evil clouds transform living beings caught in them into dangerous zombie-like thralls, turning them against all life while significantly increasing their strength and toughness attributes.
Name for evil weather is randomly generated, typically something along the lines of "abominable mist", "unholy gloom" (clouds) or "creeping murk", "horrid goo" (rain).
Evil weather forms on the edge of the map and moves about the screen. It does not necessarily respect walls, and may enter a fortress to affect your dwarves.
Dangers of evil weather
Beware of both kinds of evil weather effects. Though evil rains (excluding rains of blood) usually cause the "milder" types of syndromes, these may still cause death as a secondary result of that syndrome: e.g. suffocation from blisters, dehydration from chronic nausea. Evil clouds inflict worse syndromes than evil rains; thralling clouds are especially dangerous in the extreme, as the zombies produced are much stronger than those produced via ambient effects.
Some evil weather effects condense on creatures, making their effects semi-permanent - symptoms won't go away until the source is washed. Those effects also can spread like a disease. In most cases, it will just infect dwarves that carry contaminated bodies to caskets. Thralling dust clouds, however, can quickly lead to an unstoppable zombie apocalypse if the dust is not completely washed off somehow.
Thralling clouds are also dangerous in adventure mode. Undead status means hostility from civilized beings, reduced speed and no regeneration. However, other undead will ignore you.