Dwarf fortress

[Arachu]

I mined it... Unfortunately, I seem to need something a little more potent than charcoal to make it into a chain...

Damnation!

Scratch that

[kell the brute]

May I predict the end of that fortress?

Spoiler

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Legendary Axe Dwarf goes berserk, killing half your population before his comrads put him down. Depressed that they killed their good buddy and brother in arms, they go berserk as well.

Mine is called The Molten Halls if anyone would like to predict my end... shouldnt be too hard =P

I predict you will make a miscalculation and end up causing unforseen magma floods. Or magmen. Either way, DEATH BY FIRE!!!

[Arachu]

What if the axe-murderer pulls a lever that floods the fortress with magma?

[TheSummoner]

I like the invasion by magmamen end... its not as obvious as the flood, and would be marginally more interesting.

[Arachu]

If only the Magmamen used axes... That'd be a good one

[kell the brute]

I think (that's not a good sign) that I will make my next fortress with a special feature. I will specify one guy as our "leader on high" and build him a special room in the safest place in my fortress. In his room their will be mutiple levers, each activating a unique (until i have more than seven dwarfes) deathtrap in a dwarfs room. Piss of the leader, and you will be killed in your sleep! Traps will include: a floodgate unleashing a river into the fisherdwarfs room, a bridge to crush the carpenter, a cave in trap to kill the miner, a spiketrap to kill the trapsmith, multiple caged monsters in the hunters room, and pit to kill the weaponsmith (who will be droped into the weapon stockpile). Ironic eh'?

[TheSummoner]

Magmamen with crossbows =P

even scarier...

but they're trainable!

Edit: Got a small immigration wave like right after the first caravan left... A glassmaker, a bonecrafter, a woodcrafter, a cheese maker, a fish cleaner, a peasant, an armorer, a dog, a cat, and a mule...

The fish cleaner and peasant will be my first two military dwarves. The cheese maker is put on field duty. The rest can keep their given jobs.

[Destro_Yersul]

Well, I got bored, so I'm making a Dwarven Submarine.

Basically, a room that I'm going to hang from a support, fill with small amounts of stuff, and drop down a magma pipe. Best part is that once the support network is constructed, I will be able to craft other such rooms with ease.

[Arachu]

I think I'll make all those peasants milling about into Crossbowdwarves.

Interestingly, the fortress I neglect the most (I don't even stockpile in it!) is my most successful. Guh, I'm gonna have to forget that

[SolkaTruesilver]

Interestingly, the fortress I neglect the most (I don't even stockpile in it!) is my most successful. Guh, I'm gonna have to forget that

Loosing is fun. This is why you neglect the most successful..

Oh, wait. It is successful AFTER you neglected it?

...

Then I have no idea. You are probably mad.

[Destro_Yersul]

My most successful fortress was fun to get to, and is now basking in the glow of being host to some impressive stupid dwarf tricks. However, the latest was put on hold by a goblin siege. My captain of the guard, obviously enraged by the concept of a few goblins preventing the construction of the Magma Tube Submersible Project, decided to grab his obsidian shortsword and see them off.

So he did. I think his kill count is around 40 by this point, and they haven't even scratched him.

[TheSummoner]

My two woman dwarf military have mud-wrestled themselves to legendary status.

[SolkaTruesilver]

My two woman dwarf military have mud-wrestled themselves to legendary status.

Ahh.. the hard life of a Dwarven Overlord...

As long as they know how to take matter into their own hands, I guess you'll survive this struggle...

[TheSummoner]

My next project will be to dam up the river... despite being on a temperate map, that SHOULD freeze during the winter, it doesn't... so I have to use magma.

Edit: I also got my first visit from the filthy tree-huggers... I don't have the resources to deal with them yet, nor have they brought my precious sunberries, so they can live... for now...

[SolkaTruesilver]

Edit: I also got my first visit from the filthy tree-huggers... I don't have the resources to deal with them yet, nor have they brought my precious sunberries, so they can live... for now...

I personnally don't do anything against the elves until they really start to get annoying. In the meanwhile, they are a great source of diversified food and drinks, which is good for morale.

[TheSummoner]

Yes... they're useful for that until I get a number of the land plants... then they're just another source of sieges... one that I am more than happy to give a lava bath.

Edit: A giant desert scorpion has appeared! Better yet, they're tamable with a dungeon master!!!

I will have him... or her... haven't checked...

[Greep]

Hmm, I can't seem to get my haulers to take these animal "chunks" to any refuse pile outside. There's plenty of idle haulers that I know don't have cave dependency, the stockpile is right, dwarves are allowed to go outside, and they're taking any indoor refuse fine. DF is so frustrating sometimes :( I just hope my butcher doesn't go mad after daily bouts of miasma.

[TheSummoner]

Are the chunks inside the fortress or outside? By default, your dwarves won't haul outdoor refuse (and it doesn't generate miasma). You can change it by hitting o > r > o.

In other news, the scorpion left my map before I could catch her... I'll get the next one...

[Arachu]

Oh, wait. It is successful AFTER you neglected it?

Yes. Yes it is. People have to store things in workshops, there is no food pile, and no kitchen, and dwarves mill about for days before getting a bed, which is tucked in a tiny, dwarfmade nook under the earth that probably smells something like stagnant feces, and one of my Rangers got his head and leg torn off by wolves. I had to drain two creeks to get at hunters too stupid to circumnavigate it. My miner came dangerously close to a tantrum at some point.

And yet, this is my first fortress to have metal. And a chain. And a well.

And, in a few minutes, it'll get around to having a military...

Seriously, it's creeping me out

[TheSummoner]

That isn't success... its just luck that you found some metal without having to import it or melt down goblin items...

Currently, I'm working on damming up the river... with magma.

[Arachu]

History shows that success is mostly luck anyway

Anyhow, it's starting to backfire... Now my multitudes of dwarves are eating faster than I can hunt (plus, a cougar just infringed on my territory...)

Fortunately, I predict a whole mess of them to die very soon, which will result in either a food balance, or the opportunity to wheel in a reclamation army.

I do plan on irrigating in magma eventually, though. Heh, heh, the mountain will bleed molten stone...

[kell the brute]

I just came up with an interesting trap: Armok's Tapping Fingers.

Basicly, five dwarven atom smashers in a row, triggered by pressure plates beneath them. the last one triggers a then unreachable plate (that won't get stepped on) that brings them all up. crush crush crush crush crush rise reapeat. I havn't tested it yet, and i don't know if draw bridges will trigger pressure plates.

[TheLogman]

That's actually pretty interesting.

But wait, aren't you not allowed to build things on a bridge, and not allowed to build a bridge on things?

I'm afraid it may not work.

[kell the brute]

actualy, I predict that if the bridges are raised during construction with levers that can later be used for manual reset, you'll be fine.

[nooblade]

If you need to hunt for food, something is probably wrong, unless you intend to play a challenge. Hunting needs more than one dwarf and requires some investment in time and equipment, I do it mainly for the leather and bones that come with the food, oh, and productive marksdwarf experience. It's just more industrious, drawn out, risk-taking stuff than you really need when setting up. Plus it doesn't give booze so you need to get something else set up anyway.

Digging an underground farm is probably the easiest and most dependable option for food, you can make a temporary farm in any soil or sand (it's always fertile underneath vegetation), or (somewhat more advanced) use a few buckets to move water to an underground rocky spot.

No proficient grower is required, peasants (or skilled non-farmers) work fine, even without any fertilizer whatsoever. If you decidedly set one dwarf to growing and no other work, you'll have a surplus of food and booze for some time out of even a 3x3 (but hopefully bigger) farm to grow plump helmets and starting with 10 spawn.

Another option is going for a herbalist, not as useful when farming is in full swing but still really good in many cases. You can start with an unskilled dwarf here too, as long as you give plenty of time for the job, play on a map with moderate vegetation, and keep designating areas to harvest. You will want to watch out for nasty beasts in savage areas but they're already decent at running.

If you DO go for hunting, please make crossbows rather than paying for them at the start, as proficient weaponsmiths or bowyers (for metal or wood/bone crossbows respectively) can add quality modifiers to them which are really helpful. Believe it or not, an adamantium crossbow and a turtle bone crossbow and a copper crossbow of the same quality all add the same amount of damage to a bolt, the material of the xbow is only helpful for adding to the melee attack on that xbow, the material of the bolt is the base for damage there.

[Arachu]

Which reminds me: never tell a wrestler to hunt. They have a tendency to develop a delusion that they can walk on water...

[Rigel Cyrosea]

I seem to be encountering a multitude of situations where my dwarves simply ignore things that are right in front of them.
I seem to have a problem with dumping and wood-stockpiling. My dwarves will not dump stone I designated with the area-dump command, nor will they bring cut wood logs to the wood stockpile. My bowyer (I don't know if this makes a difference or not, but he has no skills yet) kept canceling 'build wooden crossbow' tasks, despite an abundance of wood. I know the wood was available (if distant) because my carpenter was using it to make beds. I think the bowyer may have been stuck in his workshop somehow, as he died of thirst with running water and some booze available.
Also, my brewer kept canceling brew tasks because of a lack of barrels, even though my booze stocks (which had once been as much as 60) were down to less than ten. Do barrels get used up when the beer does, or was there something odd going on with him?

[Suicide Junkie]

One thing I'd like to do at some point is to build some frames and pump/pour magma and water to make an obsidian tower up into the sky. Then smooth down the whole outer surface of the monolith.

[nooblade]

I seem to be encountering a multitude of situations where my dwarves simply ignore things that are right in front of them.
I seem to have a problem with dumping and wood-stockpiling. My dwarves will not dump stone I designated with the area-dump command, nor will they bring cut wood logs to the wood stockpile.

Sounds bad.

If the jobs are being canceled, that's something I bet you would know by now.

Check the items for the {forbid} (those brackets) tags around them with the loo[k] command, you may need to reclaim some things (dumped things need to be reclaimed before used (micromanagement is hard because there isn't a plain "move this here" command)). Trying to think of other possibilities... Dumping an object may require the hauling job to be enabled (like with stockpiles), but those are on every dwarf by default. You might be having problems with locked doors too, but that's one of the intuitive parts... There are plenty of little options like "dwarves can go outside" and the jobs to check.

Did you remember to set the "garbage dump" reg[i]on to a reasonable spot? It doesn't need to be a cliff or anything but it needs to be accessible. I can't think of anything else at the moment.

My bowyer (I don't know if this makes a difference or not, but he has no skills yet) kept canceling 'build wooden crossbow' tasks, despite an abundance of wood. I know the wood was available (if distant) because my carpenter was using it to make beds. I think the bowyer may have been stuck in his workshop somehow, as he died of thirst with running water and some booze available.

Yeah, unskilled should always be able to do a job if you have the labor set. A locked door is my best guess, that or another object like a statue blocking the way, or a channel, or restriction with the custom pathing for your dwarves.

Also, my brewer kept canceling brew tasks because of a lack of barrels, even though my booze stocks (which had once been as much as 60) were down to less than ten. Do barrels get used up when the beer does, or was there something odd going on with him?

Here I can help! Barrels are reusable unless they blow up in an exploding alcohol trap or a loose fortress fire. I bet they're being filled quickly with regular food if you were producing the stuff fast enough, which is really easy to do once things get going (Actually, story time, we had huge problems with innumerable seeds filling each bag fresh off our leatherworkers and clothiers before we could use it for gathering sand or something (this lead to cooking the leftover seeds after planting, which was great for cheaply training the cooking skill)).

With a small number of your dwarves specializing in farming, they will produce way more than your fortress consumes for quite some time. IMHO, it is a waste to start with a proficient grower when an unskilled dwarf or two can manage fields (full time) just fine for the first 20ish dwarves, but I guess it's better for some to be safe. Back on topic...

You could check if any barrels are lying around (maybe used for something else?), that's the way to be sure.


Also, DF is in beta so there may be problems, post on those forums if you think there's really a bug.

It's great to know someone who actually plays it in person so you can have them look at the game itself to see what's wrong... You could probably save any game where you experience problems, share the save file over the internet, and ask someone to look at it for you too, that may be similarly effective.

I'd rather do that than this dumb speculation actually.
Something to do if problems persist (hopefully not for someone's first sign of trouble).

[Greep]

Also, my brewer kept canceling brew tasks because of a lack of barrels, even though my booze stocks (which had once been as much as 60) were down to less than ten. Do barrels get used up when the beer does, or was there something odd going on with him?

Barrels are used for more than just booze, they hold food and some other stuff as well. They were probably stuffed with plump helmets >.>