Dwarf Fortress you sick temptress, you!

Oh so much to learn about this game. Why the hell can we not use the mouse more? would make it soooo much easier

He hasn't worked on the user interface yet. His theory has been that since he's constantly adding new stuff he would have to constantly revise the UI. So he's saving that for last and just bolting stuff on as he comes up with it.

Prozac wrote:

Good advice Niseg. I'm not too up to speed on squads, do you know if training works yet? what schedules do you set your military on?

I go with default because I'm lazy to set it up. There are a lot of options : captnduck (youtube account of captain duck ) has good DF2010 tutorials that explains how to use the military schedule( I don't remember which one just watch em all like I did ). The bolts assignment was fixed (I didn't check if it's true) so marksdwarves will train using bolts assigned for training and fight using bolts assigned for combat (they won't waste steel bolts on archery targets).

I'm also pretty lazy sticking all my melee dwarves into a danger room but I found that when they hang out in that confined quarters they tend to train on their own (they do it faster when someone pulls the lever but that's cheesy). If you want to train your archer you need to make a barracks out of an archery target tell them to train there (I usually do that to all archery targets just in case).

You can do all sort of stuff with a military schedule. I once had my marksdwarves setup to have 3 people patrol on the walls of my castle and that was in version 31.18~ . All I did is setup a new route in the route menu , then I setup a military activity called "wall patrol" and told my marksdwaves to patrol that route with at least 3 people ( I think I have 6 or 7 in that squad). I think that I gave my melee dwarfs a different order when they were told to "wall patrol" . I think I assigned them to a burrows by the gate .

Norfair wrote:

He hasn't worked on the user interface yet. His theory has been that since he's constantly adding new stuff he would have to constantly revise the UI. So he's saving that for last and just bolting stuff on as he comes up with it.

That makes sense. I'm amazed at the amount of updating he(?) does on his website with content news. Pretty crazy sh*t. I'll probably donate some bucks to him just on the sheer fact of the level of detail

My latest fort was going so well. And then somehow I lost track of the only axe in the fort. I think one of the new military dwarves grabbed it, since I didn't have very many other weapons yet. Since he didn't want to give the axe back, the woodcutters couldn't chop down trees. No logs, no wooden barrels. No barrels, no place to put to booze.

Now, this was fixable. We have plenty of iron, so I decided to just make some iron barrels and iron axes. Problem solved, right? Oh look, the elves are coming to trade. And the goblins are ambushing the elves! Now we get to really test the defenses.

In hindsight, closing the drawbridge that the goblins were on would have worked slightly better if they had still been on it, instead of half my squad of dwarves who were chasing them down (and winning easily). My best melee dwarves went splat, the goblins ran through the open door behind them, and the thing ended with my blacksmith dead and disturbingly sober dwarves throwing tantrums and smashing up the dining hall.

Tamren wrote:

Also, didn't migrant numbers have to do with fortress wealth? Because my fortress was a dump and I didn't buy or sell ANYTHING to the traders. As far as the merchants or liason knew, my fort was just a barren hole in the ground. And yet I get a constant STREAM of 50 migrants arriving faster than I can assign jobs to them all. No miners, no engineers, 20 farmers.

Immigration rules apply to all waves but the first two. No matter what the rules in your ini files or the condition of your fort, you will get two waves of immigrants, no matter what.

Heh, one of my hunters decided to name his crossbow, the one he's gotten ninety kills with, including a goblin hero of some kind. It shows up in my Artifacts list, with a value of 30 entire units... as opposed to the 90,000 credit platinum shoe. (yes, shoe, singular; I guess it's for Urist McHoppy.)

So far, according to the kill list on the item, he's taken out nine unicorns.

Man, I am getting sick of random raging badgers decimating my starting 7. I've just gone into the raws and deleted the prone to rage tag.

Prozac wrote:

Man, I am getting sick of random raging badgers decimating my starting 7. I've just gone into the raws and deleted the prone to rage tag.

Yeah, this fort I've lost more dwarves to badgers than to every other cause combined. It almost seems like we're on one of their migratory routes. I finally decided to set up a kill field outside the main gate just to have a hope of staving them off. Cage traps are helping somewhat.

Gremlin wrote:

Yeah, this fort I've lost more dwarves to badgers than to every other cause combined.

I love Dwarf Fortress.

I remember when elephants used to be the terror of the wilds.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I remember when elephants used to be the terror of the wilds. :)

Don't forget carp.

Also, I had one fort that was constantly besieged by mandrills. Eventually all my dwarves were wearing mandrill skins and eating roasted mandrill and carving horrifying mandrill murals into the walls.

I read that scheduled training is bugged but idle squads will still go to the barracks and spar. So far I'm still figuring it out.

Also, why silver hammers? I know material properties have changed but isn't it still better to use steel? Or does the material matter less for blunt weapons? Steel armour is far superior, I know that much. With the new armour system, steel might as well be adamantine in adventure mode.

Silver is denser than steel. (~10.5 g/cm^3 vs ~7.85 g/cm^3) The dwarven hammer is made with a fixed volume of material (dwarves are very big on standards), which means the higher density material makes a more massive hammer--and therefore strikes with greater force. For edged weapons, silver is not so good, since it's soft (and therefore bad at holding an edge).

And no, I'm not making this up for DF.

DF Raws wrote:

[INORGANIC:SILVER]
...
[SOLID_DENSITY:10490]
...
[INORGANIC:STEEL]
...
[SOLID_DENSITY:7850]

It's more unclear how exactly the myriad other material properties work towards producing a good edge. Adamantine, by the way, is super-sharp compared to everything else, but extremely non-dense. So it makes crappy hammers.

Boy, the goblin snatchers are really annoying in this version. I can't seem to keep the children inside where it's safe, and snatchers keep popping up next to them, killing or stealing them, and making a beeline for the edge. It's completely impossible to kill them unless they happen to pop up in bowshot -- and with the trouble I'm having getting my soldiers to actually carry any ammo, well, let's just say that the goblin population has been gathering dwarves at a pretty good clip.

It frustrates me intensely that Toady just leaves all those bugs, and doesn't fix them. I've given him a fair bit of money over the years, but I don't think I'm going to give him any more. Really basic stuff that should be working, isn't, and he's not even looking at bugs, he's off playing with new code.

The point of a game is for ME to play, not HIM. Grr.

Is it? Maybe that's why he takes donations instead of charges a flat price

Toady One wrote:

The dwarves' dog tried to hold off the zombies, but they tore its head off. Then the necromancer raised it, and the dwarves were attacked by a headless zombie dog, in addition to the others. The head was not animated. I haven't gotten to that yet.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:
Toady One wrote:

The dwarves' dog tried to hold off the zombies, but they tore its head off. Then the necromancer raised it, and the dwarves were attacked by a headless zombie dog, in addition to the others. The head was not animated. I haven't gotten to that yet.

:shock:

I hope that necromancer can reanimate my fps ;).

I'm about 4 videos into that walkthrough that you recommended boogle and I am hooked. I can see that I'm going to be losing a lot of hours here in the near future. That is a good thing in this instance.

TheWanderer wrote:

I'm about 4 videos into that walkthrough that you recommended boogle and I am hooked. I can see that I'm going to be losing a lot of hours here in the near future. That is a good thing in this instance.

Once you get to the point where a stable fortress and economy isn't hard the real fun begins. Like arranging a sacrifice pit above your meeting hall so that your dwarves may feast in the blood of their enemies...and trade caravans...and pets...and sometimes other dwarves.

Got my first trade caravan. There is so much going on right now that it's hard to keep track of it all. I have nearly 30 dwarves after 3 migrations in the first year, before the first caravan. Almost ran out of drinks! The walkthrough is essential.

I just dug straight down, like fogey said, below my farm to create a food store and get moving on apartments and a real meeting hall and all that. However, I hit a massive set of tunnels! 4 levels deep, spanning about half the map. Tons of deposits. I sealed it off for the time being, and dug down past it to set up my proper living quarters. Got any tips on what to do with all that area? Probably nothing in the first year, but later? Any concern from enemies only 9 or 10 levels deep where I'm putting the main structures?

These moods are troubling even as they are interesting. I have a carpenter that made a fantastic bed. Now, however, I have the expedition leader turned mason sitting in the mason's workshop for what looks to be most of a month. How long does it take to make a fabulous thing? Will his mood change before he, ya know... goes nuts instead of creating something wonderful?

Is he actually working? If not he is missing a material. if you examine the workshop while he is in it it gives you hints on what is required. You can compare that to what he has already gathered. Sometimes they will wait for a particular item before gathering all of the others.

Seems like he's missing an ingredient for his master piece, have you seen what his thoughts are?

His thoughts are good, he's happy but not ecstatic. How do I go about seeing into the shop and if there is an ingredient missing?

Q: To look at the building, to see if the dwarf has left any clues lying around the workshop
T: To see what is in the building. Check for stuff marked (TSK) - that's the stuff being used for the current task, and tells you what the dwarf already has.
V: To look at the dwarf, of course, in case the dwarf is muttering something useful rather than hopelessly cryptic.

boogle wrote:
TheWanderer wrote:

I'm about 4 videos into that walkthrough that you recommended boogle and I am hooked. I can see that I'm going to be losing a lot of hours here in the near future. That is a good thing in this instance.

Once you get to the point where a stable fortress and economy isn't hard the real fun begins. Like arranging a sacrifice pit above your meeting hall so that your dwarves may feast in the blood of their enemies...and trade caravans...and pets...and sometimes other dwarves.

What I did was make a drop off that was just high enough not to kill whoever I dropped down it most of the time. Then I had the new recruits have at them. The bottom of the pit was my prison room but making it the meeting room might have worked well. hmmm well the non soldiers might have just run away screaming.

Gremlin wrote:

Q: To look at the building, to see if the dwarf has left any clues lying around the workshop
T: To see what is in the building. Check for stuff marked (TSK) - that's the stuff being used for the current task, and tells you what the dwarf already has.
V: To look at the dwarf, of course, in case the dwarf is muttering something useful rather than hopelessly cryptic.

Fascinating. Pictures of a quarry and stacked leather. I'll have to set up a tannery right quick. T tells me he is using granite.

To get the tannery working I need butchered meat, but the butchery won't start being built as I have no one with the trapping, butchering, or small animal dissection skills.

Edit: Sentenced a stray tamed llama for slaughter, band butcher shop goes up. Hopes are high... VICTORY! Tanned hide created, mysterious construction begun.

I am now the proud owner of a... Granite floodgate called Emadoler Thetustros. WTF do I do with that?

It's a floodgate like any other, just your dwarves might admire how awesome a floodgate it is when they pass it. Oh and if it gets destroyed you could have a pissed off legendary dwarf to deal with.

Depending on the type of mood your dwarf was under, he may now be a legendary crafter. Check his skills.