Dwarf Fortress you sick temptress, you!

Duttybrew wrote:

I just recently restarted (things got a little hairy on the last one after a second wave of immigrants. Death is harsh in this game!) This is my fort just as I am entering my first winter:

I think this should be enough for the winter and no immigrants so far. We'll see.

That's an impressive fort, Dutty.
I chose to Abandon my first fortress just before winter set in. Without functioning farms and a lack of food reserves, they made a collective decision to break for the Mountainhome before starvation set in.
I'm looking forward to starting my second attempt tonight. The first was good fun, but that learning curve held me back, I think. I can do much better than the hodge-podge of mistakes that it ended up being.
So, stubby fingers crossed. =)

If you have food in stores that arent showing up, its probably a case of having stuff to cook meals. You can be sure by going to the Z page and select Kitchen and press enter. It will break down what the food you have is. Your dwarves won't eat raw flour, or raw fish, or syrup, but if you set up a kitchen, they can use these things to create some meals, which can really stretch your food stores. (or it seems to, its hard to measure).

To answer my own question from earlier, I've found a decent way to deal with intruders, especially small ones like ant men. Press V and go to every nearby dwarf, you'll have an Activate option. Use it and they'll engage anyone in the immediate vicinity (some may go off for equipment but usually not if they're real close to a badguy)
If you don't activate them, they'll run unless they're trapped, so this is the only way to be sure your dwarves gang up on the intruder, and not leave their friends to die.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

I'm very curious, what's everybody's fort look like. I'm afraid I don't plan ahead enough. There's lots of weird traffic issues cropping up now.

Define "traffic issues" please.

At of the start of my 4th year (I think), I'm up to 101 dwarves thanks to the recent arrival of 20 or so immigrants including a bunch of freeload... er, nobles. Anyone know what a ferite or a berite is?

Anyway, here's the map (1570x1632, 288.5 KB) with a couple labels on it. My dining hall and main hallway are completely detailed and engraved as is the noble section (though I'm about to have to start a new one for the new arrivals).

For those who mentioned something about not enough barrels, I again recommending the starting strat that I linked a couple pages back. If you buy 1 of each type of 2-point food, they each come in/with their own barrel.

I'm specifically avoiding digging east for the time being lest I "dig too deep". Given that "Nobrakust" translates to "Two Tomb" I'm already paranoid as it is.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Farming, hunting, and fishing all seem like poor producers! Butchering horses and merchants kept me from starving though.

Those poor, poor merchants.

Grumpicus wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Farming, hunting, and fishing all seem like poor producers! Butchering horses and merchants kept me from starving though.

Those poor, poor merchants.

That is exactly what I thought

From what I have observed, it seems like the further east you dig, the more likely you are to have an ambush. I got sucked into Total Pro Golf this weekend (Bill Harris has made some damn fine recommendations lately) and haven't been able to work any further on my fortress. I am hoping to post another shot when I enter my second winter.

Dear lord, Grumpy, how are you feeding over a 100 dwarves with only 300 food? That would put me into a panic attack. I didn't see a smelter or forge -- how are you keeping the Bookkeeper happy without the ability to mint coins? Do your dwarves ever use that enormous dining hall to its capacity?

Your fortress is much more organized than mine, but you've left yourself no room for fortifications or hallway expansion. I did the same thing with my initial rooms near the entrance to the fortress where there wasn't much stone left behind to later widen hallways that became choke points.

Are your jail cages wooden? Will wooden cages hold dwarves? (I've yet to see someone "arrested") What are you selling to traders? Why is the river all hollowed out? What do you do with a Loom/Cloth room or an Archery room?

I notice your doubly-detailed walls don't have faces in them. Is that what "toggle engravings" is all about?

Has anyone noticed if trees grow back faster if you neglect to gather plants in an area?

Duttybrew wrote:

I got sucked into Total Pro Golf this weekend (Bill Harris has made some damn fine recommendations lately) and haven't been able to work any further on my fortress.

Tell your neglected dwarves that they are welcome to stay at my fortress in the meantime. The work is long and hard but the pay is good. Inappropriate touching is kept to a minimum.

Wow Grump, that fortress would make any dwarf proud... but where's your military? At some point, jealous neighbors must show up to see if they can take what you've built. Im picturing a bloody battle in that great hall of yours. What a show that would be. You might try converting that furniture storage right by the entrance to a barracks and training area, you can dig fortifications into the front of the mountain that allow your dwarves to fire on incoming enemies too.

Danjo: He's dug around the river to allow its overflowing to seed the mud. Trees and shrubs grow with stuff you can't start with, and stuff merchants don't often bring. Mostly its good booze making material.

I just ruined my fortress with a farm. I was having trouble building a bridge across the river (after a rampaging farmer destroyed it (while he was on it) and drowned) so I dug out some of the rock. I wasnt paying attention and dug a hole in my farm. I didnt notice until the following spring when I flipped the switch. Turns out dwarves can't breathe underwater very long. It flooded the whole map.

Wow, Grump, that's hella organized!

Grumpicus wrote:

Define "traffic issues" please.

Well, what I've seen is that it slows dwarves down to have to pass each other in the hall. Dwarves will move sideways to avoid stepping on the same tile as another creature, even though they can do it. I've tried to open all my halls to at least a width of 2 to help them get around.

Is moving 1 space sideways and then going forward again slower than trying to push through the same tile? I do not know.

Grumpicus wrote:

I'm specifically avoiding digging east for the time being lest I "dig too deep". Given that "Nobrakust" translates to "Two Tomb" I'm already paranoid as it is. ;)

Well, if you keep going deep east, you'll hit magma. Aside from the very rare Fireman ambush, I haven't had any trouble with it. However, you haven't even reached the chasm yet! With the chasm, you might see the occasional troll (from under your bridges). I've had much more trouble with frogmen and lizardmen though. This recent game, lizardmen attacked me in my first year and seriously injured a miner, my only farmer, and a peasant. It's a year later and the peasant and miner are still falling unconscious every 30 seconds. The farmer is still bed-ridden.

I searched the forums on tips for first aid. The impression I got was: leave some unowned beds (non-barracks) in a nice room. These will apparently be designated as "hospital beds". Keep a water supply (well) and food nearby. I've got my guys setting a hospital right now. If it doesn't help, well, I guess I'll just have to put em out of their misery.

Grumpicus wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Farming, hunting, and fishing all seem like poor producers! Butchering horses and merchants kept me from starving though.

Those poor, poor merchants.

Hahaha. Aw, it's okay to eat Elves, right? Buncha pompous vegan jerks!

I felt so bad yesterday. A child in my mines was injured by some creature and was falling unconscious constantly. He was in a bed being fed and cared for for a long long time. He never improved. Finally I just locked the door and waited for him to die. Its a shame you can't do some kind of mercy killing.

There was another sad tale earlier today. A magma man abushed one of my miners who was carrying his baby with him (thats hardcore child care). Both burned to death. His spouse threw a fit and my sheriff arrested her and jailed her for 25 days. Harsh.

polypusher wrote:

There was another sad tale earlier today. A magma man abushed one of my miners who was carrying his baby with him (thats hardcore child care). Both burned to death. His spouse threw a fit and my sheriff arrested her and jailed her for 25 days. Harsh.

The dwarven eyes of justice are blind.

So was my miner. Poor guy lost both his eyes.

I just managed to flood my fortress... hell, the entire world. The doors to my farm weren't closed when I opened the floodgates. It's kind of excessive that this floods the entire fortress (including both sides of the river and the entire outdoors too), dontcha think?

Various people wrote:

Horrible things.

Christ. This sounds like the most gruesome game in the world.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Dear lord, Grumpy, how are you feeding over a 100 dwarves with only 300 food?

As I said, we just came out of winter. The stocks will be up before the next one for sure. I buy out every caravan that comes to visit.

I didn't see a smelter or forge -- how are you keeping the Bookkeeper happy without the ability to mint coins?

They're both there in that workshops section inside the main mining warehouse up north. That being said, no bookkeeper yet...

Do your dwarves ever use that enormous dining hall to its capacity?

Not that I've noticed.

Your fortress is much more organized than mine, but you've left yourself no room for fortifications or hallway expansion. I did the same thing with my initial rooms near the entrance to the fortress where there wasn't much stone left behind to later widen hallways that became choke points.

Yeah, I haven't had need to get into the whole fortifications thing (though I do have cage traps at every entrance) yet but my hallway is already 5-wide.

Are your jail cages wooden? Will wooden cages hold dwarves?

From what I read on the wiki, they need to be metal. Mine are copper.

What are you selling to traders? Why is the river all hollowed out?

These go together. Mostly I'm selling trinkets. By themselves, they're not worth much but I have a legendary craftsdwarf that cranks them out faster than an assembly line. As for why the river is hallowed out, my craftsdwarf likes to work in limestone instead of crappy rock. All the hollow spaces along the river are me chasing veins of ore and light/dark stone. I leave 99% of any rock behind to support the ceiling. As an aside, although I have the one created farm room so I can get started as soon as spring starts, I also do a good bit of my farming on the riverbanks after the annual flood.

What do you do with a Loom/Cloth room or an Archery room?

Collect webs to turn into silk to make clothes, ropes, and crafts from. Archery is where your recruits can train their crossbow. 3 of my 5 marksdwarves started off as recruits. I think hunters/trappers may train occassionally as well.

I notice your doubly-detailed walls don't have faces in them. Is that what "toggle engravings" is all about?

Yes. I quickly turned that off. I already have enough faces to look at.

Has anyone noticed if trees grow back faster if you neglect to gather plants in an area?

I haven't noticed.

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polypusher wrote:

Wow Grump, that fortress would make any dwarf proud... but where's your military? At some point, jealous neighbors must show up to see if they can take what you've built. Im picturing a bloody battle in that great hall of yours. What a show that would be. You might try converting that furniture storage right by the entrance to a barracks and training area, you can dig fortifications into the front of the mountain that allow your dwarves to fire on incoming enemies too.

Yeah, as I said, I've only really had to deal with a couple wild animals and the occassional frogman/lizardman/kobold. If you look at the log, though, you'll see that the sheriff just created the fortress guard for me when the mayor showed up so I suspect the ranks are about to swell.

Danjo: He's dug around the river to allow its overflowing to seed the mud. Trees and shrubs grow with stuff you can't start with, and stuff merchants don't often bring. Mostly its good booze making material.

Yeah, that too.

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I suspect I'll need to find magma soon but I'm getting by ok with charcoal. Still, as I alluded, I haven't had to deal with too many enemies and the longer I can keep it that way, the better.

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I flooded the whole map in one of my earliest games while trying to get a handle on the gates. That sure feels like a bug to me.

Oh yeah, you asked what the Berite and Ferite are. They are the Mining and Farming guilds respectively. They petition the mayor with jobs which become demands for you to complete... but I have no idea what these jobs are. My guess is that each related task (like plant seed) fulfills one of the needs. Since thats what you do anyways, I cant really see the point... If its redundant and pointless (heehee), it has to be beuracracy! (sp)

I'm also liking this game. It has so many facets, and it is quite fun to have your dwarves doing all kind of thing. Only I'm not really good at the whole farming yet. I had a nice fortress going on, my dwarves were topping out on 49, I had a child dwarf running around. But then winter came, and my farms didn't give food for some reason. (I did assign crops and such, but they just kept ignoring the whole thing, only a few tiles were being worked). I had a lot of dwarven dying that winter, some even killed other dwarves. The child dwarf had seen the death of her father in a tragic accident (I suspect murder) and tantrums were thrown around constantly. Because of the anger, no-one was willen to butcher all the dogs, so it got worse as time went on. 1 dwarf even got stark raving mad. I was left with 25 dwarves after the winter, and none of them felt like working. So it was kind of a lost cause.

Now I just need to get that farming together in my next fortress.

The only thing I do dislike about the game is the amount of assigning you have to do. As far as I know you can't set the farms to repeat, and that bothers me, because you have to set it for every season for every farm. That's alot of boring work.

As far as I know you can't set the farms to repeat, and that bothers me, because you have to set it for every season for every farm. That's alot of boring work.

You do have to set them every year... which is no surprise since you have to recreate them every year... but you can set all 3 seasons at once. When you're in the crop assignment screen, hit A, B, or C to assign crops for Spring, Summer, and Autumn, respectively. Nothing grows in the winter.

Remember farms don't give food during the winter. They only work during the other three seasons, and you have to build them new every spring, and issue planting orders for the year for each.

IMAGE(http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/899/siege1td1.th.jpg)

Goblins attack a month before my Tunnel of Magma project reaches fruition. My overly complicated front hall flooding setup turns out to be practically worthless since it appears goblins treat locked doors like impenetrable walls. Three were lost that day.

Grumpicus wrote:
As far as I know you can't set the farms to repeat, and that bothers me, because you have to set it for every season for every farm. That's alot of boring work.

You do have to set them every year... which is no surprise since you have to recreate them every year... but you can set all 3 seasons at once. When you're in the crop assignment screen, hit A, B, or C to assign crops for Spring, Summer, and Autumn, respectively. Nothing grows in the winter.

Ahhh, I didn't realize you can set all 3 seasons at the beginning of the year. I've just been going back into the crop selection screen at the change of each season (it automatically selects the current season).

That's a hell of a fortress, Danjo.

One thing I'd like to be implemented is the ability to pulverize loose rock. I like a neat and tidy fortress and it's so hard to set aside areas for loose stone to be stockpiled. If you dig an area, you're only getting around 1 square of storage for every 2 blocks you clear (since the other square gets the stone from the blocks you just dig). If you stockpile it outside, it's simply too far to travel as you dig past the chasm. Masons turning stone into blocks helps, but not enough: it's just too slow.

Alternatively, you should be able to dump rock into the river, chasm, and magma.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Ahhh, I didn't realize you can set all 3 seasons at the beginning of the year. I've just been going back into the crop selection screen at the change of each season (it automatically selects the current season).

I didn't either. That's good to know.

I only got my farm plots up and running in early summer, so I am currently planting cave wheat and plump helmets (which must be mushrooms).

I'd like to be able to build walls, to correct mining too far or creating new rooms out of old space, but at the same time, I think that that must be part of what makes dwarven construction so beautiful and lasting, is that serious thought and foresight go into designing their cities. So maybe when I'm able to design my city without a single mis-mined block, I'll have reached some kind of Dwarven Zen.

Anyway, having started anew, here's the fort as of the mid-summer in the first year. Still mastering the curve, I think.

IMAGE(http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/8058/midsummer1styeareh6.th.png)

The wiki suggests that you can toss stuff into the river and chasm. I have seen a 'chasm' option appear once you have the Bookkeeper but I have never tried it. The wiki suggests that dumping stuff tends to stir up 'things' Its worth a shot just to find out what these 'things' are. Maybe they're not so bad and would give your soldiers something good to practice on.

I was looking through the list of nobles in the wiki and noticed a set of nobles who arrive after you craft some very high quality weapons, and they in turn attract very skilled warriors like Axe Lords. I think I just found a new goal.

I was bogging down in the middle game most of the time. My fortress seems to degenerate into a wreck of inefficiency no matter how far ahead I plan, but a few things like Axe Lords and Dungeon Master to look forward to will help.

By the way Danjo, what the heck are the long verticle shafts at the south side of your fortress for? Searching for minerals?

Those vertical shafts were initially me looking for various ore veins to make iron and steel. After that I made a vertical shaft every third block to hunt for precious, precious gems.

Axe Lord sounds like a good goal, hearty and wise.

Has anyone noticed the FT: 0 in the farming screen? Is there a certain number of times I can plant in one area before it needs to be fertilized/fallowed?

Do I need to be making clothes?

I've chasmed refuse but never stone, I'm not sure it is an option. And I don't think you need a bookkeeper to chasm normal refuse.

I tried playing the adventure mode this afternoon. Seemed pretty cool. After killing an assortment of cougars, wolves, and bears I tried the wrestling game. I wrestled a cougar for the better part of 10 minutes and I never seemed to get an option to break a limb or gouge eyes or anything.

I really had a tough time figuring out what the heck I was supposed to do. I got a quest from a mayor in town to go kill a minotaur that was "half a day to the west". Well I started marching west and I went a REALLY long ways with no Minotaur to show for it. Is there some secret scale that tells you how far half a day is?

Anyways, I chanced upon something that resembled a wall from one of your castle pictures so I went in to take a look. The walls were all "polished jet" or something to that effect so I get the impression this castle is all black.... and bad. A "Beak Dog" attacks me but I bash it in the head a couple times and it dies. Then I see a little red "g" approaching behind me. An inspection says it's a "goblin hammerman". I figure everything else has fallen before my mighty bronze hammer so this goblin shouldn't be too bad. The goblin whacks me once and sends me flying against a wall... thus ending the life of Rincil Larcyhum - Hammerman.

I tried the Fortress campaign but I literally can't get off the very first screen. I need to read the guides a little better I guess. I can't even figure out how to make all these little smiling Dwaves do anything. At least I know how to pause it

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Has anyone noticed the FT: 0 in the farming screen? Is there a certain number of times I can plant in one area before it needs to be fertilized/fallowed?

I read about this today either on the wiki or on Dubious Quality. It shows how many times you've fertilized that plot, I'm guessing per season.

To start this game you need:

1. This guide
2. and a person you can ask all of the questions that feel dumb. My brother was my answer-man. Anyone who's played for a week can tell you how to assign dwarves jobs and advise you to build a Trade Depot when you get a chance, because the game wont tell you until the caravan arrives and moves all the way to your front door.

Click on my name and I can answer basic questions through IM

polypusher wrote:

advise you to build a Trade Depot when you get a chance, because the game wont tell you until the caravan arrives and moves all the way to your front door.

Ha! My first time I managed to get a trade depot built to welcome the caravan after getting the Announcement AND build a craft workshop to pump out enough enough turtle shell baubles to take all their food.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Do I need to be making clothes?

I've chasmed refuse but never stone, I'm not sure it is an option. And I don't think you need a bookkeeper to chasm normal refuse.

Yes, after a few years, your dwarves will become unhappy that their clothes are in tatters.

I don't believe there's an option to chasm stone, and you might be right about needing a noble to make chasming refuse available, but I think all you need is a Manager.

Here's my question:

I've been building a road to far eastern part of the map. It's mostly done but a portion of it is blinking and I don't think it's complete. Can't seem to get anyone to work on it either. Advice?

Neat game and a fun time wasting at work.

Trashie wrote:

Here's my question:

I've been building a road to far eastern part of the map. It's mostly done but a portion of it is blinking and I don't think it's complete. Can't seem to get anyone to work on it either. Advice?

Neat game and a fun time wasting at work.

They seem to dislike road work. You'll know your road is complete though when you have a trail of random white tildes going waaaaaaaay off to the left, past the end of where you can build.