warning
If you want to try something like that you can just copy the Save folder before and then replace it after the game autosaves. It's also the only way to recover your fortress if you have corrupted files ("inflate -3"?)
I noticed that in the weapon traps you can choose several weapons, anyone has any idea how those work? I put several next to the river with restrained war dogs to protect me from lizzard- and snakemen and so far I managed to contain them to those areas. I think I even saw one snakefreak swim away as its partner's blood tainted the streaming river.
I'm afraid of crossing the chasm though.
In my second wave of imigrants (around 20 each time) I got a marksdwarf so I recruited a fisherdwarf to join him in a squad. I don't want to oppress my peace loving dwarves by recruiting more of them. But I'm afraid of what's out there. I think the game is telling me to keep digging because I lost a jeweler and metalsmith to madness because I couldn't get them the materials they wanted when they claimed the workshops to work on legendary items.
I'm assuming the magma doesn't flood once a year like the river...
Has anyone tried the Reclaim Fortress mode?
The end result (at midnight) was a really functional farm by late spring. The downside is I had basically have nothing else - I'm now in a hurring to get some crafting done, get bedrooms and dining rooms, inside stockpiles and workshops.
If you can feed your fortress, the rest is gravy. I also found that it is about a thousand times more efficient to have a highly specialized workforce.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only fortress with a dwarven hospital/euthanasia room, Montalban.
Oh, what? Are you thirsty? Here's all the water you could ever ask for you lazy sh!t.
Magma only seems to have a chance of 'flooding' once, the first time you hit it. I lost a legendary miner that way, so give your best miners a break when you're digging for it. Let the lemmings take the molten rock. The odds of it seem low. It happened to me once out of maybe 5 times.
Reclaim mode is kinda cool. You get a number of dwarves that is proportional to the amount you had when you abandoned it, or it may go by time or dug out space, either way a big fortress could start with a reclaiming force of 40 or more. So that's 40 armed and armored dwarves, each with a secondary non-military skill. You dont have to pay for their weapons, so you can actually drop the starting axes from the bundle and bring a lot more food, you may need it since you'll be fighting to take back your land too much to get farming. You'll also be able to reclaim the food, workshops and equipment left behind (You'll have a new option in the 'd'esignate commands for reclaiming stuff). Its fun, and once the fortress is clear you can pick up where you left off, only this time every single dwarf has some fighting prowess... make them all wrestlers at the beginning and they'll probably be unstoppable.
I got the Order of the Axe noble last night... then I abandoned my fortress 
This was the game where I lost 60 dwarves to demons. I couldn't run the huge fort with just that many and relief wasnt sufficient. The place was a mess with all of the demanded coins, the 50 axes I made to attract the Order of the Axe guy, and smelted bars, so I made a new one. This time I dug straight for the river, bridged it and set up on the other side. There isnt a single room between the entrance and river, so my fortress will be much more centralized as I expand past the chasm. Im also keeping my population low by not trading with the outside world, and I refuse to build coins this time. Until the game learns to store a dwarf's personal cash in a cabinet or chest, and it can re-stack all of the little individual coins that end up being made, I dont want to see another yellow $. If you set a forge on a repeating cycle of copper, silver, gold coin minting, you'll soon have your fortress overrun with the things. The bookkeeper will be happy, but he's a jerk and he'll never be satisfied with the # of coins you have.
Quintin, all your dwarves must be super happy. They say you only need a 3X3 to please the average worker.
Yeah, I decided to be nice to the average grunt and do 4x4. Unfortunately I kinda spaced when doing the southwestern bedrooms and made them all 5x5!
I noticed that in the weapon traps you can choose several weapons, anyone has any idea how those work? I put several next to the river with restrained war dogs to protect me from lizzard- and snakemen and so far I managed to contain them to those areas. I think I even saw one snakefreak swim away as its partner's blood tainted the streaming river.
Here's the link to the damage of trap weapons and traps in general which you have probably already read, but I don't know if adding in more weapons changes anything other than wasting more weapons to build it. Maybe it means that it can launch multiple times, so if one lizardman is killed by the trap and another walks under, instead of nothing happening since it needs to be re-set, the next weapon launches?
I'm afraid of crossing the chasm though.
In my second wave of imigrants (around 20 each time) I got a marksdwarf so I recruited a fisherdwarf to join him in a squad. I don't want to oppress my peace loving dwarves by recruiting more of them. But I'm afraid of what's out there. I think the game is telling me to keep digging because I lost a jeweler and metalsmith to madness because I couldn't get them the materials they wanted when they claimed the workshops to work on legendary items.
The game is relentless in its demands on you and your dwarves. It's true that once you have farming and brewing set up you're golden, but then the main threat becomes monsters. And the wiki pretty much admits that traps and containment are the most effective way to deal with monsters. You'll see why when a lizardman is rampaging through your fortress spreading a trail of blood and for the love of god your recruits/soldiers just happen to be in bed or uninterested in following the patrol route you set up to try and lead them by the hand to the enemy.
Has anyone tried the Reclaim Fortress mode?
Not me. This involves abandoning your fortress first, and frankly, my sweat and blood and sanity are engrained on the very living rock of those halls. To abandon that would be to abandon all that my dwarven lemmings have fought and died for.
edit: All this ASCII must hurt my spelling abilities.
I'm now at the point where I have to fight off sieges. I got a small goblin attack and fought it off fairly easily. Really, I think my dogs took the brunt of the attack. I then got an attack that was twice as many goblins, each goblin had a beak dog, and then up the middle came a wave of trolls first. Well, the trolls got slaughtered by my entry traps, but the goblins' arrows took out a number of my recruit marksdwarves and fought a bloody path into my main hall. The problem is that damn soldiers never seem to actually be on duty even while on duty. But I after reloading from my previous save, I went out to figure out how to get my soldiers to actually train. Melee dwarves seem reluctant to spar; the trick to getting marksdwarves to train is to not only build targets, but you have to build plenty of wooden or bone bolts at the craftsman's workshop. Now my dwarves are practicing archery in preparation for the inevitable attack.
I've also got a couple of ballistas set up to the north and south of my entrance, firing through fortifications. On the previous siege, I was unprepared and had no bolts for them. Now I've got my furnaces and forges gearing up for war. I've got iron bolts and wooden bolts for the ballistae.
On my first siege, I had catapults ready outside my base, to the SW and NW of my door. However, these can only fire NSEW, and the goblins approached from the SW and NW, which made the catapults completely useless.
Oops. Am I the only one nicknaming darves after Goodjers?
In case you were wondering, it went down something like this:
Damn liberal Unicorns hippies!
Well, that didn't work. All that drilling in preparation did help level up my marksdwarves, but put one of my speardwarves in the hospital. When the two squads of goblins attacked, there was actually a dwarven caravan slowly making its way up my road. The goblins swarmed over the caravan and still managed to do more damage to my guys then they did last time. They approached from the exact west, so my ballistae were useless. My soldiers did not come to their patrol points or stations, so the goblin archers picked off dwarves one at a time, because they are too stupid to a) keep away from goblins while civilian and b) follow my "don't go outside" order. I should have just locked the doors.
I'm not having near the problems you are with militias. You are putting your squads on duty before giving them orders, right? I think that's M-V-T. They'll go exactly where their patrol is so long as they are on duty. Paleocon even went so far as to charge out into my Unicorn hunting patrol without bolts. Results above.
Yeah, they were on duty. I think maybe they were running off to find their equipment. They seem to have problems storing them near their barracks or station point, even though there are several racks there set to accept any and all items.
Unless you deactivate the members of the squad, they should keep their equipment on them with the exception of bolts. I found my marksdwarves worked a lot better once I made enough bins that one of them got tagged as an ammunition bin that then was lugged to the ammo stockpile. No telling really. Dwarves is crazy.
This game sounds positively insane. I've installed it and got as far as the "dwarf selection" screen and realized I had no idea what I was doing. Will probably give another crack at it at work tomorrow.
This game sounds positively insane. I've installed it and got as far as the "dwarf selection" screen and realized I had no idea what I was doing. Will probably give another crack at it at work tomorrow.
Just wait until the Bookeeper shows up around the 6th year. Marxists to John Smithites in one, terrible swoop. Suddenly I have no control about who sleeps where, because I can only assign a bed to my legendary dwarves. The rest are left to find a room cheap enough they can rent, which is of course usually 200 squares away from their place of employment.
*sigh*
Yeah, the bookkeeper is a big source of complaints, I've noticed. One trick to avoiding the problems associated with him is to put off minting coins. Apparently the bookkeeper doesn't show up until after you mint coins.
Argh, the combat part of this game is frustrating me to no end. It's been so great up to now and this is killing my interest in the game, because at some point in every game it's inevitable you're going to have to fight.
I have crossbow squads reporting to duty without bolts. There are bolts available, they just start marching their patrol without any. That's when I can get anyone to show up to duty, that is. For some reason, many of my soldiers like to hang out by the magma channel, even though their rooms aren't out there, the main food stores are by the entrance, and they're stationed near the entrance. Then I discovered today that if the head of a squad is asleep or wounded, his entire squad will hang around his bed whether they're on duty or not.
Edit: Ahh, it turns out some keep their bolts in quivers. But I can't explain why they just stood there, not shooting through the fortifications. Paralyzed with fear? Others had neither bolts nor quivers.
Yeah, the bookkeeper is a big source of complaints, I've noticed. One trick to avoiding the problems associated with him is to put off minting coins. Apparently the bookkeeper doesn't show up until after you mint coins.
Yeah, after playing with the bookeeper and all the changes, I would recommend not attracting him if at all possible. It may be coincidence, but the whole mood in my fort, along with my own, dimmed and grew somewhat bitter when capitalism arrived. It, along with some bugs in the "Justice" system and the military problems you refer to Quintin, have finally broken my otherwise unbounded enthusiasm for the game.
Which is amazing, considering the game is in Alpha and I have been playing for so many hours without a single glitch up until now.
If the Bookeeper were unavoidable, I might even declare Dwarf Fortress to be a subtle critique of an individualistic economic ideology. Before: All working toward the common good and taking pride in one's hard work and achievement. After: Trying to scrape together enough money to buy a decent shirt and a better room. Beginning to complain either that there isn't enough work to earn money, or too much work just trying to stay afloat financially. Homelessness and evictions begin to appear. Lesser skilled dwarves suffer, and a hierarchy, almost classist, social structure forms. The need arises to build low cost housing and accept that some dwarves will be left behind to a mediocre existence while others become superstars (this, I suspect, happens regardless).
Again, it could just be coincident to my fort becoming unmanageably large and noisy, but the idealism is now gone.
I understand the thinking, that with the bookeeper, technically the fort should be more efficient as it is more quantifiable, but the reverse seems to be the reality. The increasing mass of dwarves and structures built on a now outdated economic system means suffering and chaos in the short term, and a less utopian, more utilitarian culture in the long term. You have to question a system where a dwarf, bed-ridden after being beaten by his own sheriff for not meeting production quotas and going to party at the well instead cannot then earn an income to support himself and pay for his room, and is consequently kicked to a rough stone curb and left to wander the halls and sleep in any empty bed he can sneak into. It's f*$king Oliver Twist in ASCII. 
The dwarves have an amazing talent for being rested, ready, armed and dangerous.... when there's absolutely no threat. Every other time they're scattered about, no matter how well you handle a troop rotation, patrols and stationing. The game needs to let you build an emergency system... gongs or bells or horns. Get the citizens inside, all troops activated and reporting to their posts. Real emergencies you do have a minute to prepare for, so it would be fair to make battle-readiness take a small amount of time.
Until they get around to implementing something like that, traps are going to have to make the difference. Use a bunch, put them inside and outside your main entrance (I always set the entrance in a few squares so I can put traps on the outside, and build fortifications to shoot at people trying to bang down the doors.) Your traps should be every kind of redundant. Cage traps followed by stonefall traps followed by weapon traps, followed by your troops.
Edit: I have to agree with Montalban.. the game gets less fun at about 100 dwarves, but Im trying this time to never attract the bookkeeper, see how that goes. On another note, the disenchanted should try Adventure mode. It takes some getting used to, but there's a good guide on the wiki for some of the rougher features, and I still die every single try, but its fun. I had both my eyes gouged out once and still killed my attacker! Big hint for the mode is that when you're on the 'overland' map, press '>' thats shift+period to go to the square you're on for adventurin and lootin.
The economy is a little weird. You have to keep in mind that for everything to run smoothly it is most important that there be jobs. Lots of well paying jobs. For me the six plus season magma project of doom provided enough income that the fortress actually became more efficient when the bookkeeper arrived.
Before the bookkeeper dwarves would look at the trench needing dug waaaaay up north and proclaim, "Nuts to that, I'll just do something else." But when a nice paycheck was attached to the dangerous project there was always at least two up there building away.
After the project was completed was when the everything fell through. In hindsight I should have just started another pointless magma tunnel next to the old one.
I would think that this is how things should work, really. The fortress is like a bank, it must keep expanding or it will implode. There is no stability to be had with stagnation.
I think the designer agrees with this and has pointed out that this is where the game starts to suffer the missing components that go along with the game being in alpha.
Are you guys leaving your squads on duty when there isn't a threat? I leave them all off duty until something happens and I don't end up with the problems you guys are facing. Now that I can make metal bolts easily Unicorn hunting is all the rage.
Also in addition to traps near the entrance I suggest tying some wardogs up near the doors. I don't think kobolds set off traps at all, but dogs will rip them a new one. I'm not 100% about them sneaking past traps since I'm not always sure if a trap is ready or not.
I read somewhere (I think on the Wiki) that cage traps are the only traps that work on kobolds.
I'm going to try out adventure mode for a bit tomorrow, as you suggest Poly. I think a bit more sleep and a break from the mass micromanagement of fortress mode will freshen up my outlook. The game really is a time sink, at least to enjoy it like it should be enjoyed.
I would think that this is how things should work, really. The fortress is like a bank, it must keep expanding or it will implode. There is no stability to be had with stagnation.
Definitely, and I quickly realized that was the case, since dwarves keep arriving and placing new demands, and ore and other materials are finite quantities that don't "respawn" as in other games. I guess I'm just bitter that with the bookeeper a lot of number crunching and product lists came with him that I didn't have to worry about before. However, the game stays awesome.
Zikelnokor, "Fiercedead", a Onyx scepter
This is a Onyx scepter. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is decorated with Oak, Tower-cap and batman bone and encircled with bands of Onyx, green glass and silver. This object menaces with spikes of Rock crystal. On the item are images of rope reeds in Onyx. On the item are images of dragonflies in turtle shell.
This is my fortress at the moment. As you can see, I'm still not doing anything with the magma, but that's because I have a getting steel. As of yet I have to find Iron still. I got around 108 dwarf and got 20-25 new dwarfs each time. I begin to dread those moments, because everytime that happens I need to expand, and as you can see, I didn't do much expanding planning ahead. The best part is the south part of my fortress, it's rooms are fully detailed, twice! I have 2 legendary masons for that and around 4 masons working constantly on the detailing. They are creating works of art by the minute (or so it seems). Problem there is that I can't expand to the south, because I heard the mason will go mad if u dig out his masterpiece.
But my biggest problem is food, As you can see I have a nice farm going in the middle, but it hardly gets used. From all the farm tiles I have, roughly 10% gets worked on, the rest just sits there, and no dwarf does anything with it. Anybody know why this is? edit: Ow, and 200 plump Helmet Spawns should be enough to fill that farming plot if u ask me.
link to full pic: http://home.hccnet.nl/fat.schrijvers...
Here's what happened in my most recent fight:
My save file begins right after the warning that the goblins are attacking, in paused mode. The squads are rearranged so that the new squad leaders are active (not asleep or wounded). One group of marksdwarves are assigned to the north barracks, another to the south (current post-fight map here). My melee squadrons were stationed just inside the innermost doors (out of 3 sets). These were 6 melee squads numbering about 50 dwarves total. Mechanics were set to operate the ballista.
Three goblin groups approached from the west and northwest. Trolls approached from the southwest. The first set of goblins reached the gates, killed the dogs outside and waited for the trolls. At this point, only a few of my dwarves had gathered. The archers were not firing. The trolls reached the gates and begin smashing through, only to hit my 4.5 layers of traps (my giant axe traps only protect 2 of 4 innermost doors). Most were killed outright. Some trolls were knocked unconscious and this was when I first saw a dwarf firing bolts (at the unconscious trolls). Unable to gain entrance with the trolls dead, the goblins kind of loitered outside the gates. The 2nd and 3rd goblin groups stopped at this point, far beyond my northwest bridge. About 20 melee dwarves were gathered inside the doors and there were maybe 8 marksdwarves divided between the two barracks. The latter were not at their squad stations nor at their patrol points. All were armed and armored, though not all carried bolts.
Suddenly several did start firing though, and the goblins took heavy casualties, as they did not fire back. With most of the first goblin group dead, all the goblins began retreating. After they were almost at the bridge, I opened my doors and sent out my melee units. Superstar miner Kol tore down the road and cut down a single goblin straggler. The rest escaped off the map.
In the end, a victory, though a very disappointing one. In previous incarnations of this fight, my melee dwarves rushed out in the fray even though ordered to stay close to their stations. They were cut down by goblins not afraid to fire their bows. I'm not sure why the goblins were so reluctant to fire through my fortifications this time around.
I'm severely tempted to build a magma moat across the entrance to my fortress. I've even already got the floodgates set up for my failed magma smelter experiment. I guess it would just be a matter of creating the aqueduct. Has anyone done this?
BTW, the last two times I've bought food from the human merchants, it all rotted inside the depot. Apparently one thing to keep in mind when buying food is:
1) have plenty of barrels
2) have plenty of dwarves who do nothing but haul food
Somehow that food stays fresh on the trip to your fortress, but rots a few minutes after being unloaded.
FYI, I'm playing with the "square block" mod from here:
http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/...
REALLY helps me, being colorblind. I don't mind the realy wide screen...
The law of dwarf town frightens me.
I just discovered that my captain of the guard went on a justice rampage. The victims include:
- My broker, 59 days in prison.
- My mayor, 65 days in prison.
- My legendary demi-god of a miner, 66 days in prison.
- A craftsdwarf, 68 days in prison.
- A farmer, 69 days in prison.
- My manager, no sentence pending.
- Another farmer, beating.
- Head of the miners guild, 57 days in prison.
- A craftsdwarf, beating.
- My governor, beating.
Now what did all of these people do to receive such harsh penalties? "Violation of Export Prohibition. Injured party: Nil Delernomal, Governor."
All these people got punished, including the governor, for violating the governor's export prohibition?! All this because I mistakenly sold a bunch of goblin copper items when there was a prohibition against selling copper items. The ban was apparently such a big deal that even the governor carried items to the depot!
Yeah, "Dwarven Justice" is a little out of whack and leads to lots of annoying situations. For example, only today did I realize that my Sheriff wants a jail, and since I haven't given him one for 3 years now, he's been going around beating rather than imprisoning lawbreakers. He hasn't been telling me this. I guess in one of the menus there's a "restraint 0/14" listed in red, but I never knew this was a problem until I dug deeper into the wiki. This, it turns out, is the root of all my bed-ridden, useless dwarves. My sheriff beats them so badly, that they're then too sick or maimed to work.
So I'm finally building a jail, and watching my one lone jeweler like a hawk to make sure he doesn't meet the same torture that the others did.
Fortunately, I haven't broken any trade embargos, and now that you've mentioned that Quintin, I'll be sure to be even more careful. There's a lot of cryptic stuff that needs to be explained more clearly to the player. It may be in the game manual, but that thing is no fun to sit and read. The wiki is much better, though still incomplete.
OMG. How did I miss this?
A new version has been released. No major changes or anything, but the guy is sick and still working on this.
I'm still on 104.21a, trying to decide if I should update.
Wow. Bill Harris has some user stories. The 2nd part of the second one is amazing... and I have to say it would really suck to get to your 5th year only to have this happen to you... What a way to go, but man, thats game over.... man.
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