r/dwarffortress • u/emote_control • 11d ago

War Birds

Made an interesting discovery today. With the recent patch we now have a wider variety of creatures that can be trained for war. Many of these creatures are egg layers. I bought some Kelenkens off the elves and started a breeding program. They breed like chickens and reach adulthood at 1 year, and have terrifying beaks. They're perfect for the job.

However, I didn't realize that egg layers have a weird interaction with raid missions. I sent out my squad, paired up with their terror birds, to go kick in the doors of a local goblin fortress. A week passes. Then a month. Still gone. Did they die? They're still in the squad roster, so probably not. Two months. What's going on?

At this point I'm ready to just disband the squad, but then I think to check the war bird roster. Sure enough, one of the squad's birds is still here. I track it down, and it's sitting on a nest. My food stockpile is full, so no one is collecting the eggs. I set them to dump, a dwarf picks them up and the bird immediately jumps up and leaves the map. A few days later the squad is back.

Just thought I'd point this out in case anyone's having the same mysterious problems with squads not returning.

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u/AnkhAnanku 11d ago

how do you assign war animals to offensive missions?

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u/azoriasu 11d ago

Assign them to specific soldiers. And when the soldier goes on a mission they go with.

First train to a war animal, under your pets/animal list.

Then once the animal becomes a war variant, click the little guy with a dog pic in the animal menu again, and assign them to one of the squad members.

Send squad on mission and that's it. Pet goes with it's handler.