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[Warlord255]

A quick question to pick Toady's brain.

The upcoming list has a large mention of poisons, but one thing is bugging me. Do you have any plans to allow poisons to be attached to non-creature objects, such as trees or types of stone?

Stone poisons could bring about effects like lead/mercury poisoning (contact/ingested-by-transference?) or coal dust (inhaled). Poisoned wood might be more nebulous, but could yield interesting results.

A yes/no/maybe would be immensely appreciated. Keep enjoying your break for now, Toady!

[Sowelu]

I'm no Toady but--

Well, my understanding is that poisons can be injected, inhaled, or touched.  I'm pretty sure that an ordinary object can't be 'poisoned', but it can contain a poison extract, or it can be coated with a layer of poison.

To me, the hard part is taking a rock or tree and getting a poison out of it, and into a situation where someone can be poisoned by it.  You don't normally coat a weapon with rock, you don't eat rock, and rocks don't turn into dust so they can't be inhaled (except for mine collapses, which may or may not actually count as an inhalable gas).  Dwarves don't eat or drink out of utensils so there's no reason for a poisonous stone or wood mug or bowl to do anything right now.  As for picking up a rock or a log...well, unless there's a system for giving that rock a coating of whatever poison it's supposed to have, you might be out of luck.

So I think that right now, poisons will still be critter based.  You can stab someone and get coated with contact-poison blood, or injected with poison (as happens now), possibly stab someone with a sword that accidentally has a coating of a poison (like poison blood), you could inhale poison-gas-breath, you can eat meat that spawns poisoned...and that's about it.

At least, that's my guesses for now!

[Footkerchief]

Whoa, I don't know if you saw it or what but I just posted a Suggestions thread about this earlier today, discussing how dwarves should get "spattered" with a greater variety of things, including contact poisons, in the next version.  If you look at recent dev logs, Toady is upgrading this "spatter" system so that creatures, items and terrain can be spattered with any material rather than a few hardcoded material types.

Rock dust isn't just for cave-ins -- mining and stoneworking should generate substantial amounts of it.  Woodworking should also generate lots of semi-airborne sawdust, so there's the route of administration for poisonous wood.

[corvvs]

That's administering poisonous wood by accident - what about extracts from Hemlock-ish trees? Does Silver Barb make a drink currently, or just black dye? (I've never run into it in my games) If it's only a dye, perhaps it's because the "drink" it would make is poisonous, and so might bring a meaning to the "process plants (to barrel)" command for which I've never found a use.

[Footkerchief]

Yeah, sliver barb makes "gutter cruor."  I don't think you can extract poison from plants in the current version, but the next version, with its more flexible material system, should allow it.

[LumenPlacidum]

except for mine collapses, which may or may not actually count as an inhalable gas

That is one of the greatest ideas ever.  TO THE FLYING MACHI- er... the suggestion boards!

[Zai]

Rock dust wouldn't necessarily affect dwarves though, considering they are dwarves and all. One of the few times you'd see it in vanilla DF is when you're being attacked or sieged by humans or other non-dorfy creatures. Which would, admittedly, be pretty nice to have your attackers be wounded/slowed down by excessive amounts of dust. That would add a new layer of defense strategy.

You could get a dust moat.

...Which doesn't even make sense, but whatever. <.<

[LumenPlacidum]

Rock dust wouldn't necessarily affect dwarves though, considering they are dwarves and all. One of the few times you'd see it in vanilla DF is when you're being attacked or sieged by humans or other non-dorfy creatures. Which would, admittedly, be pretty nice to have your attackers be wounded/slowed down by excessive amounts of dust. That would add a new layer of defense strategy.

You could get a dust moat.

...Which doesn't even make sense, but whatever. <.<

I wouldn't expect them to be poisoned by ALL kinds of rock dust.  Just because they must be acclimated to a life of mining and living underground.  However, there's no reason to suppose that there's no kind of rock dust that would harm them.  No living thing is completely immune to everything in its environment.  Hell, RAIN kills organisms all the time.  So, I still think it's an awesome thing.

[Zai]

Yeah. I wasn't saying it was a bad idea, just saying that having rock dust in general would not necessarily mean problems all the time for dwarves. It could be (cinnabar, I'm looking at you (wut)), just not always. It would add more complexity to the game. A lot. In many different ways. Such as the example in my previous post, having to change the location of your new dining room because you struck poisonous rock where it was to be located, and others.

So, indeed. It would be awesome. Pretty much any (and all that I've seen planned) expansion to the game would be awesome.

[penguinofhonor]

dust moat.

Is that a pun on "dust mote"?

[Granite26]

Dwarf Beard = Air Filter.

(True fact... what do you think nose hairs are for?)

[Zai]

dust moat.

Is that a pun on "dust mote"?

Maaaaaaaaaybe.

[Rakis]

Cinnabar is mercury.  I could imagine there being some poison related to that.  Also, lead barrels storing food or drink could be hazardous over time.

[G-Flex]

The thing about working with cinnabar, especially mining it, is that you INHALE mercury.
Inhaling mercury is a hell of a lot worse than ingesting it. By far.

Personally, I think that if mining created dust, and if regular-style dust gave more health and unhappiness issues to non-dwarves than dwarves, than it would provide even more reason/incentive for dwarves to stick underground and other races to stick above-ground; currently, there's no particular reason (or at least not as much) for humans to not live underground, for instance. Dwarves should still get a bit of an unhappy thought, like they do now, but no severe problems unless they're working with toxic materials, and even then, that should be less dangerous than it is to, say, humans/elves.

The problem is how to handle the unhappy thoughts. Obviously a dwarf randomly getting splatted in the face with chalk dust isn't going to like it, but a guy who's been mining the stuff all day won't care. It's like in real life; a miner isn't going to care much if he gets dirty, but a BYSTANDER who gets dirty will get annoyed.

Ideally, the game would lower the magnitude (to the point of nonexistence if applicable) of a negative thought based on whether or not the creature is used to something, and maybe even whether or not it has to do with its current job. For instance, say tanning releases bad smells; someone who's never encountered it will probably vomit, someone who's just starting to work with it or isn't working with it but has encountered it before will probably dislike it but not as strongly, and someone who's been doing it for the past few seasons won't care much anymore. This could probably be simplified to just an "is the creature used to this?" exposure check, which might decrease over time, such that even if you're a miner for a solid year, waiting ten years to mine again might make you unused to it.

[Mel_Vixen]

[...] currently, there's no particular reason (or at least not as much) for humans to not live underground, for instance.

Well in the real life (i know we talk aout df here  ) there are some Problems. For example  is sunlight needed, in the human organism, for the Production of certain vitamins (D iirc). We all get too problems with closed and small rooms after an while Underground, not to mention that the Temperature (around 2-8°C in an Cave/Mine) is also not very healthy.


Alergics come into my mind by the way. I know people which, for example, are alergic to nickel.

This stuff, maybe not exactly like that, can work under contact poisons (f.e. realgar, oripment, and sulfur) which toady mentioned.

Mild poisoning shouldt indirectly cause unhappyness.

"Urist Mcurist feels ill."

edit: Language (i must have been drunken)