40d:Animal trap

A special trap used to catch live land animals or fish from the river. Creating an animal trap requires the trapping skill and not carpentry or metalcrafting despite the fact that they are constructed at a carpenter's workshop or a metalsmith's forge. It is recommended that you build separate workshops or forges to construct animal traps, for if you do not have an unoccupied dwarf with the trapping skill active work will grind to a halt as your carpenters and smiths wait for the construct animal trap job to be finished before they can get to their tasks.

Animal traps are stored by default in animal stockpiles when empty or containing an animal. They can be used for trapping animals in two ways - either by defining a Capture Live Land Animal task at the Kennels (which usually results in Vermin being captured) or by building them as an Animal Trap.

When used via the kennels, a dwarf with the Trapping labour enabled will pick up an animal trap and find the nearest vermin. The dwarf will bundle the animal into the trap and drop it, and it will then be retrieved by a dwarf with Animal Hauling enabled and dropped in an animal stockpile.

When used via the build menu, the traps are constructed by a dwarf with the trapping labour enabled, using either a wooden or metal trap created previously from a Carpenter's shop or Forge. Once constructed, examining it with q will allow you to set the bait to be added to the trap. Set traps can be baited with nothing (z, presumably the inactive state), meat, fish or a large gem (presumably for more intelligent creatures). Once placed and baited, you simply have to wait for an animal to walk in and trigger the trap. Traps are not guarenteed to successfully capture an animal, and it seems safe to assume that the quality of a constructed trap has some influence on the capture chance. The bait will be stolen if the trap fails to go off, but the trap remains set and simply needs rebaiting.

Once an animal is caught in a built and baited trap, the game will pause, zooming to the trap, and you will receive an announcement telling you what you caught. The trap will automatically be slated for removal, and one of your dwarves will deconstruct it and move the trap containing the animal back to the animal stockpile.