Dwarf Fortress you sick temptress, you!

I've been playing the new version a bit. Its full of bugs but it does introduce some fixes that people have been dying for. For instance you can now designate activity orders like digging over multiple Z levels. If you want a stairway to hell all you need to do is designate one tile of stairs and hold the level change button for a couple minutes. VAST improvement over designating stairs one level at a time. The vampires are extremely irritating. Its gotten to the point that I have given up on private rooms for dwarves entirely and have everyone sleep in the same room. I can see it being an interesting mechanic but only if it was rare on the level of megabeasts.

Anyhow I've been slowly learning the newer mechanics like the military and hospital. Like clockwork all my fortresses end when the first human merchants show up. Inevitably the goblins will spring an ambush at the exact same time and then everyone dies. The solution I'm going to try next is to just give every single person in the fort a crossbow and zerg rush the goblins.

One thing I really despise about the new squad system is that when you select people to put into a squad position, it doesn't remove them from the list. So when you go to select people for the next squad you can easily mess up and recruit someone already filling a position. In which case it yanks them out of that one and puts them in the new squad, creating a gap you have to go back and fix. I've taken to just giving dwarfs nicknames like MACE1 in an effort to keep them organized. On the bright side sparring actually works now and doesn't involve filling a room with orphan limbs and teeth.

Another thing I still need to master is steel production. Its pretty straightforward, but if you want to go industrial you need magma power. Most magma I find is better than 100 levels underground, way too far for hauling efficiency. That means building a pump stack. Should be interesting.

One of the new world gen options is mineral abundancy. If you turn it up all the way minerals are EVERYWHERE. Its almost impossible to dig ten tiles without running into an ore or gem or new type of stone. I rather like this because you don't need to spend as much time prospecting and micromanaging miners to make sure only the legendary one is mining ore and such.

As someone who is a general fan of roguelikes, esoteric interfaces and minecraft, I just want to dip my toe into this thing and mess around for a bit. Does anyone recommend any particular tileset over the default and any particular getting started tutorials?

Also, did anyone know that someone is publishing a Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress through O'Reilly? Insane.

Actually I did know that. The author was over at Quarter to Three pimping it in their thread. From the sound of it he plans of including a copy of the game so that you can follow along and play in the same world.

Norfair wrote:

Actually I did know that. The author was over at Quarter to Three pimping it in their thread. From the sound of it he plans of including a copy of the game so that you can follow along and play in the same world.

Yeah, the series of blog posts he made that seemed to have spawned the book are like that: http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/...

Mixolyde wrote:

As someone who is a general fan of roguelikes, esoteric interfaces and minecraft, I just want to dip my toe into this thing and mess around for a bit. Does anyone recommend any particular tileset over the default and any particular getting started tutorials?

I'd suggest going with the Lazy Newb Pack. It's a single download of the game, three of what I consider to be the better tilesets, Dwarf Therapist (an indispensible tool for managing your dwarves), some other utilities and an easy to use front-end GUI to manage it all. The thread to get it is here http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0, but you'll probably need to wait a couple days for it to catch up to the current version while the tools included with it are updated (unless you feel like doing the manual updates yourself).

As far as getting started, the DF Wiki is a good place to get info: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page
Quick Start Guide: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Quickstart_guide
Fairly comprehensive tutorial video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn1iW1QN7_s
Let's play series by the same person: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQXnVy6Nd_c

Any book is going to be outdated in a week.

Not if you stick with the version that comes with the book.

Anyone messed around with the new hauling features? I haven't noticed much difference but my game is young. I usually dig a shaft into the ground and surround it with a stone palisade. But this has been greatly slowed down because stone boulders have significant weight now and dwarves are very slow when carrying them. I still haven't figured out wheelbarrows either.

From what the patch notes imply you can get more than one "unit" of resources from a single tile of rock now. Which makes up for how hard it is to move them around I guess.

To use wheelbarrows, assign 1-3 of them to the stockpile that you want the wheelbarrows to be use to haul to. Your dwarves will then use the wheelbarrows to do all the hauling to that stockpile.

This is what Threetoe said in the patch notes:

Carving rock blocks makes more than enough building material, so I was able to construct a good sized temple outside the entrance in just the first year. Mining ore gives you more material too

Not entirely sure what he means by this. But its pretty evident that my usual plan of making a palisade out of boulders isn't going to work.

Tamren wrote:

This is what Threetoe said in the patch notes:

Carving rock blocks makes more than enough building material, so I was able to construct a good sized temple outside the entrance in just the first year. Mining ore gives you more material too

Not entirely sure what he means by this. But its pretty evident that my usual plan of making a palisade out of boulders isn't going to work.

Making rock blocks at a mason's now gives you 4 blocks per stone where previously you only got one. They're lighter and stackable in bins so should be easier to move around and deal with.

SWEEETNESS! This will make megaprojects a lot easier. I wonder if that works with glass and wood. Will have to test it out. A new version just dropped so I need to make a new world and fort.

Does anyone know how the new ore mining works? From the sound of it materials are no longer 1-1 ore-bar.

Picking an embark site is hard!

Not sure if anyone has posted this DF Map before (it's a long thread to skim), but this is what happens when you "win" DF:

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-7268-flare...

IMAGE(http://i36.tinypic.com/34rd1c5.jpg)

It... it belongs in a museum.

This is dwarf fortress not minecraft

That's an actual Dwarf Fortress map, probably just imported into Minecraft (possibly using this) to get a 3D view.

That's not Minecraft at all. Somebody created a stand-alone app that reads your DF data and generates a 3D model of it. I've used it before, but unfortunately I've never had any interest in building anything spectacular visually. I'm somewhere between mechanical junkie and extreme survivalist.

If anyone's interested, I have a story thread that's... well, pretty much abandoned, I just haven't admitted it yet and keep telling myself I'll get back to it eventually. It all started with a passing challenge where someone suggested killing off the barons so you can accumulate consorts, and keep doing that until it's impossible to keep up with their demands - so, that's what I tried to do! Hope you enjoy.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index...

Yes, map 3D renderers have been around for a long time. That wasn't imported into Minecraft; you can tell from the trees and the pixels and having seen a few Minecrafts in my time.

For example, this is a render I did 4 years ago of my Isengard fortress:
IMAGE(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2382/2263353557_1f7ec415af_z.jpg?zz=1)

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Yes, map 3D renderers have been around for a long time. That wasn't imported into Minecraft; you can tell from the trees and the pixels and having seen a few Minecrafts in my time.

For example, this is a render I did 4 years ago of my Isengard fortress:
IMAGE(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2382/2263353557_1f7ec415af_z.jpg?zz=1)

Hmm, that makes me realize that there are no Ents in DF, unless he's added them in recently when I wasn't looking. That seems like a pretty shocking gap.

These renders... oh my god. Dwarf Fortress really is something. I just don't have the words.

So can anyone tell me why my Dwarfs don't want to fish, and I can't designate fishing zones anywhere around the murky ponds that have been generated on the surface near me?

Carp kills.

boogle wrote:

Carp kills.

Heh, no. These are just ponds, no carp in them. But I think they should be fishable with vermin fish. I get no messages saying that there are no fishing zones, but the fisherdwarves never go out to do any fishing. I have a fishery, which is set to auto clean fish, too. I thought it might have something to do with the ramps down into the water from the edge, but even after I removed them, I couldn't fish into the water.

Mixolyde wrote:

So can anyone tell me why my Dwarfs don't want to fish, and I can't designate fishing zones anywhere around the murky ponds that have been generated on the surface near me?

I vaguely remember running into the same problem. There is a bug where fish stocks are no longer replenished in some circumstances. But I forget the details.

Are you sure its not just because you embarked to a swamp?

I'm not sure you can fish just anywhere (if my memory serves me correctly, which it may not). It may have to be something fed by an aquifer, and if not, then there may not be any fish in them thar pools.

The first thing I would check is make sure your orders aren't preventing dwarves from going outside. 90% of the time, it's usually something that silly.

Dwarfs are definitely going outside for trees and berries. The ponds are not being fed by any flowing water or aquifiers, but I didn't think that mattered. I am at a super high elevation, like 130+. I thought dwarfs liked mountains, and that's where fortresses belong. But the pools are in a regular forest biome tile. Do I have to declare them as water sources and then fishing zones?

Fishing zones only restrict where you want them to fish. They should be fishing regardless. If there simply isn't anything available to catch it should tell you.

Tamren wrote:

Fishing zones only restrict where you want them to fish. They should be fishing regardless. If there simply isn't anything available to catch it should tell you.

That's what I thought, but I get no message, do I have to turn fishing on in some other menu than just the labor? Is there an item they need? Or maybe they just don't like murky pond water. Should I be able to see vermin fish in the water?