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v0.34:Pet
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Pets are creatures that have been adopted by your dwarves. All creatures that can be tamed can be made into pets; that is, all creatures that are both non-sapient and non-evil. Pets will follow their owners around, providing a companionship happiness bonus (based on the creature's pet value), being fed by their owners if they are grazers[Verify], and, in many cases, protecting them from harm, either by actively attacking enemies or by acting as meat shields that allow their charges to scramble away to safety.
Adopting
Pets cannot be assigned; rather, dwarves will adopt them on an ad hoc basis. Dwarves that are idling near a wandering stray animal may chose to make them their pet, giving them a name, causing the animal to follow them around, and giving the owner a happy "got a pet" thought. The chances of this event happening are strongly influenced by your dwarves' personal preferences; while they will rarely go out of their way to adopt animals for themselves, every dwarf has a preference for a certain creature, and will go out of their way to get them as pets, often resulting in the fortress engraver being followed around by a family of cavies.
You can control what animals are up for adoption through the animal status screen, the first tab on the z menu. There you can toggle available/unavailable on each tame individual, freeing them up for adoption. Animals will never be adopted out of a cage, and must be let out to roam for adoption to take place. Stray animals tend to accumulate at meeting areas, a good thing for foodless herbivores and carnivores, but a bad thing for grazers, causing them to starve to death in your dining room if you are not careful to assign them to a pasture. This, and the fact that owners will not specifically feed their pets[Verify], makes adoption of grazing animals significantly more difficult. Cats are notable for being an exception to the rule; they will assign themselves to dwarves, and cannot be made available or unavailable. Vermin pets will perch on their masters' shoulders, protecting them from those darned cats.
Utility
Pets will provide a happiness bonus to their owner for the duration of their or their owner's lives. If the dwarf dies, the animal becomes a stray, and is available for adoption again. If the pet dies from anything besides old age, the owner will get a negative thought, made worse if the pet isn't given a proper burial. As long as a creature is somebody's pet, they cannot be butchered; this can lead to a catsplosion when there are several crazy old cat ladies in your fortress and you don't immediately butcher all the kittens.
Good pets
The value of a pet is based upon the species' internal pet value, a number in turn based on a number of factors: body size, exotic-ness, and intelligence being among them. It also helps if the animals in question aren't useful for anything else, although assigning pets to pastures to keep them in place works fine, allowing such thing as pet alligator egg farms. The best pets of all are cave dragons and dragons, if the world is old enough and/or you are lucky enough to cage some.