I'm a newbish player, and right after starting a new embark I found that there was already a "resident" in my area. I tried to give my neighbour a wide berth, but he recently elected to perch, unmoving, on a cliff far above my plant collection area. Now I have a series of dwarves trying to pick up the same White Yam Plant[2] who, arriving within sight range of the bird, get terrified and apparently just stand there. One of them is dying of thirst. How do I get them to come back to my fortress? I can't fight a Roc.
Best Answer
There are several things you can try, the first one is to designate a burrows and restrict civilians to it. This is a great way of preventing them from being outside and in a certain region. You can, in fact, set an order for dwarves to be inside only using o-->i. However, their fear for self-preservation will usually override this by scaring them in the wrong direction.