Dwarf Fortress III: Instant Fun : Just Add Magma

[Gaelbert]

It looks to me like I have some dwarves trying to plant seeds, then as soon as they lay down the seeds someone else comes by and picks up the seeds and puts them in my food stockpile.
Also, another question. I have a dead dwarf, so I made a coffin and set it to be used by citizens. Nobody has moved the corpse to the coffin yet. Do I have to do something special to do that or will someone get around to it?
Thanks for everybody's help so far.

[Breltar]

It looks to me like I have some dwarves trying to plant seeds, then as soon as they lay down the seeds someone else comes by and picks up the seeds and puts them in my food stockpile.
Also, another question. I have a dead dwarf, so I made a coffin and set it to be used by citizens. Nobody has moved the corpse to the coffin yet. Do I have to do something special to do that or will someone get around to it?
Thanks for everybody's help so far.

Hit K and target the corpse and make sure it is 'claimable' so they can pick it up. Also make absolutely sure they can reach it and there are no evil things around ready to eat other dwarves.

[Rockphed]

Also, if it is outside, make sure your dwarves are 'o'rdered to gather 'r'efuse from 'o'utside

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Is your coffin set to be used as burial for citizens? Is the corpse forbidden? Standing orders can be set so that your dead are automatically forbidden. It's a nice feature so you don't have dwarves running into a dangerous area to bury dead people and then themselves get killed.

[TheSummoner]

Has anyone else seen this?

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=510839

Its made all the more epic by the illustrations and the fact that the fortress actually survived.

[Breltar]

Has anyone else seen this?

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=510839

Its made all the more epic by the illustrations and the fact that the fortress actually survived.

Yup someone posted all the pics for bronzemurdered here at one point, probably in one of the previous DF threads.

[Exachix]

*sigh*

Here is my story about the latest of my wonderful games.

I am planning on building a sort-of above ground city of sorts. With an outer wall built of Ice, and a tower or a few towers built of glass, with Minor buildings around. This is a pretty nice Idea, but previous attempts have been foiled by;
> Lack of Sand.
> Aquifers
> Lack of Fresh Water to allow dwarfs to drink/flood/etc.
> Oh Gods, Aquifers.
> Lack of Cold/Frozen Environment with a brook and sand and NO Aquifer.

I've not got very far, because I had a food sourcing problem.

I built a sort of sprinkler system connected to pumps and a reservoir. The top of the reservoir is on the top level of the brook. On top of this there is a pump which feeds into a set of tubes over the top of the farm plots, 4 of them of 7x7 size. (Something I would say is a minorly Dwarfen machine)

This took a while to do, and 3 months in, we had no food, and I overflooded the farming reigons so I had to build a drainage system to drain the excess water off. This, comparatively, didn't take long.

During this time my 21 or so dwarfs got unhappy. One died as I didn't have any shells to help them in a mood. One died to starvation, randomly as none others seemed to be having a problem - rats can feed dwarfs for a long time.
My Great Miner (Who we will call Urist McKittenKiller had a tantrum, and killed a cat and said owner of said cat, who we will call Urist McMayor.

Urist McMayor was also my bookkeeper, my Broker, my Manager and my Chief Hospitalier (Name I gave my chief medical dwarf).

I think you can guess why this is a problem. I cannot designate a place for Urist McKittenKiller to stand and accept capital punishment.

I ask you for assistance in this matter. Well, two matters.

1) Now I cannot assign Mayor, Bookkeeper, manager etc etc. They don't even show up. Will they show up again or should I abandon ship and restart? How long should this take as Urist McKittenKiller will remain at large or in jail for only so long.

2) No Caravan Showed up in Autumn. An elven caravan showed up in spring, but the first caravan did not. Not even a liason. Should I wait an see if I can get a Dwarfen Caravan or is it a forgone conclusion?

[Rollory]

Your basic idea is fine, but 1) it shouldn't take you three months to do what you described - are you letting it run unpaused while thinking about what to do next? I've done essentially exactly the same setup and had the fields irrigated and plantable by the middle of the 2nd month, 2) your dwarves shouldn't be starving by the end of spring, you can easily buy enough food and drink on embark to keep them supplied through the fall at least. Just ditch the medical supplies, you don't need them at the start, and can easily make your own once your fields get going.

As for aquifers, these are easy in frozen environments. Do a strip mine until you get down to it, let it fill the pit, and dig down in the middle. Something like

=======
=#####=
=#...#=
=#.X.#=
=#...#=
=#####=
=======

where = is unmined ground, # is channelled-out ground where the water flowed in and froze, . is channelled out after the surrounding icewall froze, and X is your staircase down the middle. Should be safe enough. Just make sure you go down another couple levels, rather than digging immediately under the aquifer level.

1) Now I cannot assign Mayor, Bookkeeper, manager etc etc. They don't even show up. Will they show up again or should I abandon ship and restart? How long should this take as Urist McKittenKiller will remain at large or in jail for only so long.

You're using an outdated version. .05 or .06 should fix this.

2) No Caravan Showed up in Autumn. An elven caravan showed up in spring, but the first caravan did not. Not even a liason. Should I wait an see if I can get a Dwarfen Caravan or is it a forgone conclusion?

If your dwarven civ has been overrun and lost all its cities and the leader is dead it may not send caravans. This is why the civ selection screen in embark exists, and displays where your civ's cities are. If you didn't check, well ... It's a nice challenge doing without the caravan.

[TheSummoner]

Here are my plans at the moment... I plan to mod the following into the game...

Races
Lizardmen (as an actual siege race, not just as something that occasionally attacks from a cave) - Easy enough to do
Snakemen (ditto) - Easy enough to do
Dark Elves (elves with no issues about using steel) - Done
Orcs (Stronger than goblins or elves or humans and don't flee when their numbers start to dwindle. Not as insane as some of the Orc mods since I'm going more for variety than to have everything be insanely hard) - Done
Undead Army - (containing castes for Skeletons and Zombies and possibly some others) - Probably going to be the hardest to get to work properly
Some other lower end siege race(s)... Maybe Gnolls or something?

Megabeasts
More dragons - Blue and Red are already done though they're essentially just beefed up versions of the default dragon.

I'm open to suggestions if theres anything anyone would like to see. I'd like to add more than just things that want to kill you to the game so don't feel limited to just siege races and megabeasts.

After that, I'm going to build a gigantic ice fortress with waterfalls and such.

[Rollory]

Why?

text

[TheSummoner]

Why mod them in?

Why not? The game is painfully easy once you know what you're doing thanks to the fact that there are defenses that goblins have absolutly no way to get past. Though theres nothing I can do about that and the fact that anything I mod in will likely have the same failings, I can still impose more of a challenge on myself by making more things want to kill me... things that are more powerful than a common goblin. It also adds a bit more depth and variety to the game, which is always nice.

Or why make an ice fortress?

Well, making it out of ice not only limits the materials I can use, but also the time during which I can build, since the map has to be frozen for me to make any progress. Aside from the added challenge, it will also be nice aesthetically and give my fortress (which will be called "Everfrost, the Frigid Citadel") a nice overall theme. Maybe I'm crazy (infact, I'm fairly certain I am), but I care about that sort of thing. I'll also be limiting myself to what sort of defenses I'll be using... Mostly military, though prisoners are too fun to pass up on cave traps.

[Shpadoinkle]

Why?

text

... Really? You're really asking a DF player "Why?" That's like asking "Why are we here?" There's no answer, that's just how it is.

[TheSummoner]

In light of Shpadoinkle bringing me to my sences, I wiould like to change my answer to...

"'Cuz it's Dwarfy ya daft fool! Ya been spendin too much time 'round the tree huggers."

[Rollory]

Well, gnolls, orcs, lizardmen, and so on, that seems like it's just variations on the same basic idea of a goblin. Sort of a Star Trek "these aliens are totally different, the wrinkle on their forehead is horizontal instead of up and down!" sort of difference. Fire imp thieves and ambush parties that set the woods on fire as they sneak towards you, flying cave swallowman sieges that go right over your walls, sieging giant civs where the entire army is buildingdestroyers - now that would be interesting.

Same with different types of dragons. Dragons is dragons, painting 'em different doesn't change much. Unless you can get them to breathe magma or water that insta-freezes, or radiate cold or heat, or something. Poison breath might do it but the game already generates forgotten beasts that do that.

edit: yeah, a dragonrider civ, that's what you need. 1) destroys buildings, 2) breathes fire, 3) flies right over your walls. Although, that's not so different from the clowncar, come to think of it ... you'd have to make sure they're not heavily armored, so xbows are a valid defense.

[TheSummoner]

Well, actually the orcs are all building destroyers, the snakemen have the venom and both snake and lizardmen can swim. Those three atleast have a bit of variation from the goblins, but I do see where you're coming from.

[Rockphed]

Shields still block firebreath, so you can still engage dragons in mano et mano combat. Not a good idea from my trials in the arena, but you can still do it.

[The Shadowmind]

Newbie's second fortress.

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Okay just started playing DF, 2010, currently .03 verison so there are no fish anywhere. This is my second fort than things are going relatively smoothly nearing the second year now.
Two dorfs have gotten the possessed strange moods each of which protected craft items, a spiked silver mug with Rhesus macaque leather spikes. The darn Rhesus macaque that showed up to the fort caused my first death, a war dog that wasn't trained not to long ago.
The five man military unit that I tired to make seems to be pretty useless till I figure out how to work the menus. And for some reason the levers I build to the floodgate, bridge A, and bridge B, all seem to just eat the mechanisms instead link to their respecting objects.
Up to 51 dwarfs now, 3 kids who appeared out of now where. Move of the fort is walled off, but there are some diagonal holes that need to be overlapped to prevent another "evil monkey" attack. Goblin thieves showed up late first year, no deaths on either sides. Butchers seems to refuse to use the Rhesus macaque remains for anything. I need them to start making soap soon for the hospital.
Been working with mostly silver as the only metal, only recently have we stuck copper, which with the tin that has been piling up we will finely have be able to produce some spare picks. We started with only two picks through the first year, but a second year human caravan has traded us four pick, bronze this time but with a tripling of actual miner now, they will be put to good use. The two topside wells that have been built have dried up now, but the channel that was dug to make mud has filled up with rain while I wasn't paying attention and now has become our third well.
For some reason the elf caravan that came during the first year forgot to pack up their goods, which has left us with over 20+ tame animals and increased over plant and ale stock over ten fold. Good times, but there might be a possible attack for their haste, so preparing for an attack I am.

How to you get tame animals out of cages, and any clue why my levers have decide to become black holes of metal?

[Rockphed]

To decage something, build the cage and then select the cage and toggle the critter to be removed from the cage as being assigned to that cage. If you have tame animals, just build one cage and select all animals you want removed from cages as being assigned to that cage. Then once you have them all in place, unassign them from that cage.

Make any sort of sense?

Also, if you want your butchers to use the remains of animals killed by your soldiers, make sure that the remains aren't forbidden and that your dwarves aren't ignoring outdoor refuse.

[The Shadowmind]

To decage something, build the cage and then select the cage and toggle the critter to be removed from the cage as being assigned to that cage. If you have tame animals, just build one cage and select all animals you want removed from cages as being assigned to that cage. Then once you have them all in place, unassign them from that cage.

Make any sort of sense?

From a logic stand point? None whatsoever, but from a game stand point, yes.

Also, if you want your butchers to use the remains of animals killed by your soldiers, make sure that the remains aren't forbidden and that your dwarves aren't ignoring outdoor refuse.

Opps, that was the problem, so now I should be able to start making soap. The second dworf caravan has came, waiting for someone to finally decide to start the trading process so I can unload a lot of this elf junk that they left me with. The stone smoothing in the hospital is going well, the smoothing in the dinning room is going slow, but so much to haul to the depot means few dorfs to work. No clue still with what is causing the levers to do nothing.

[factotum]

but so much to haul to the depot means few dorfs to work. No clue still with what is causing the levers to do nothing.

Unassign some of your more important worker dwarfs from hauling duties in their preferences menu--I'm sure you have plenty of Peasants or dwarfs with useless trades you can leave to do the heavy lifting!

As for the levers, not sure about the bridge, but it takes two mechanisms (over and above the one you used to build the lever in the first place) to connect up a floodgate, and the mechanic dwarf must be able to access both the floodgate and the lever to install those two mechanisms. Has that definitely happened?

[The Shadowmind]

Added the mechanisms to the levers, but it uses them and never actually links to anything.
Okay how do you slaughter a cow? One of my dwarfs needs shells, but I can't figure out how to slaughter the (tamed) turtles I have for their shells, so I'm going to mod the hooves of cows to make them count as shells, since there are no shells in-game at all due to the no fish bug.

[factotum]

Why don't you upgrade to 31.06 if you have problems with bugs?

You need a butcher's workshop to slaughter an animal. Once you have one, you designate the animal for slaughter by selecting it the same as you would a dwarf and toggling the option, then put a "Butcher live animal" task in the workshop.

[Bayar]

So I started playing Dwarf Fortress, hoping to make a fort that will actually manage to go somewhere and...

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...yeah, that is the dwarven liason.

And most of the engravings are about humans travelling or humans taming grizzly bears.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Yeah early engravings suck. That's why till I get a few years in and some artifacts + ambushes to give my engravers some inspiration. Although I did have one fort where it was a named alligator terrorizing humans. Biting off hands and stuff. It was pretty cool.

[Bayar]

My weaponsmith had a fey mood, and he wanted metal bars. I didnt have any, but luckily the dwarven caravan didnt leave so I bought all their bars.

What did he create ? Oh, just...

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I think it is overevaluated though.

[factotum]

You can't actually trade those items anyway, AFAIK. The main advantage you get is that the dwarf who made them gets boosted to Legendary craftsmanship standard in the appropriate discipline, although that can be a bit weird--get a Legendary carpenter and you end up with lots of masterwork barrels and bins!

[Artanis]

I certainly hope he gets around to some military fixes in this batch of stuff he's doing now. The military is probably my favorite part of the game, so it kinda kills the fun when it just plain doesn't work.

[The Shadowmind]

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Well now cows and bulls have shells, from an experiment in magic and genetic engineering the turtle and cow have crossbred to form the curtow and the burtull, why? because a fey wanted shells in a world without fish.

.I found out the problem that was with the levers, it was in between the keyboard and chair.
I was pressing \p\ to try to pull the lever, instead of \P\.
At 80 dorfs and and 20 free range animals the game crashed during save, before it was running a low carb low screen of 8 FPS. Transferring over to my much newer laptop to see how much better it can handle it.
Lost my first dorf, he was trying to deconstruct a floor while standing on it, got knocked out and bleed to death, the other dorf who did it lived though.

A puppy lost it's right eye tooth fending off a goblin snatcher attack, the puppy lived.
Still no iron ore anywhere, I'm coming close to having a variant of almost every ore type expect iron, maybe in the discover caves if I dig down much deeper and maybe fine some or something better. Maybe making magma safe walls every fun layers down so if some FUN shows up I'll have time to prepare.
Edit: Okay I've encounter a problem with I think the tame vermin, was trying to move them to the discovered cave so I could release them there and be my eyes till they died, but instead I'm getting mass spammed that "Could not move small vermin, missing animal trap" and Could not complete, Job item either destroyed or missing" Help?

edit2: Approaching another two to three thousand of the message now, gotten use to just ignoring them, but I think they are causing a bad frame rate drop. The message changes from the dwarf who is releasing it after about 300~4000 attempts so maybe when every has had their fun trying to do the impossible without a drill to aid them they will finally give up.
Bridges have been pulled up, so if any migrants/caravans want to come their out of luck, till I change my mind. Thought they will have the company of a long militarydwarf that that was on the wrong side when the bridge was raised. The broker decide to elect himself mayor when I was busy expanding the mine and decided that he wants to horde earrings for some reason, we aren't trading with anyone till the caves have been explored so that is irrelevant. He doesn't have his "required" room, but I say he hasn't deserved it yet, and the book keeper, the militia commander, the manager/arsenal dwarf(who wanted two rooms, and got them), and chief medical dwarf was done far more for our dwarven community.
Expansion to the hospital has begun, and the dug out parts have been smoothed.
We've had the military start exploring the caves, since operation cheapskate has a failure. we've found more ore, still no iron, should start mass construction on silver weapons, copper, and brass weapons soon since no iron means no steel. Encountered some swallow persons in the cave, one of the recruits got badly injured, another one only mildly so but she has been granted the nickname Bird Butcher. The second dwarf ever to get a nickname, but this time it was for a good deed. The other nickname was "That idiot" the peasant kept wanting to stand on the bridge when I keep wanting to raised, even telling everyone to get inside didn't deter him.
At least two swallow people where left after the military raid in the caves, but they've encounter resistance. In the form of dogs. Once of which was the puppy who lost her fang awhile back from the goblins, she has grown up and was adopted by someone not as important, she has gotten named Onol Onulesmul, I wonder if it means anything. She has tearing apart one swallow man, barely getting hurt herself and inflicting lots of wounds on to him. What a good doggy she is.
Started placing traps outside of the hallway of "A bit of death" in the cave, when I'm done you won't be able to take a move action without running into some kind of trap. The hall way has only kill one troglodyte, and wounded a Gorlak, who's trail of blood made him much easier to find.
A few sections of the cavern remain unexplored, one of which will require making a "bridge" across the pond that was discovered there. Despite it's placement in the way, it is the largest the small pond is the largest water source that has been found yet, so it will be beneficial.
A few layers below and quite to the west, we've started digging out a new section, this will contain the new workshops and secondary stock piles.
No one has yet started filled the pond up with water, despite having plenty of buckets and many periods with nothing better to do, , but with the cavern pool discovery this is a low priority.
Above ground watcher towers are slowly going up, for when we decide to to communicate with the upper world again. And to be siege engine stations if some goblins show up and don't take the hint. Maybe I should have some statues commissioned in the honor of Bird Butcher and Onol (Lady One Fang).
If the caverns has been fully claimed, we will use them as a start point the heads further downward to greatly reduce the change of fortress flooding.
Edit 4 Sadly the game crashed, so we are back just before we started exploring the caves. It is Autumn of year 3(?)Found the the cage that was causing all the spam messages, and remove it, so the spam is gone, and placed a butch of animals for slaughter. The military dwarf was has hurt badly last time has given birth so I'm holding out on a wide cavern exploration this time, and going to built fortification and traps as I go deeper in. Preparing a mass of bronze and silver equipment now as well

Fortress abandoned due to game crashes, new fortress being built in .06
Temperature and economy are off. Temperature due to FPS.
In the land of Tadinorid a fortress is being built. So now I shall command 6 ambush dorfs to Facepalm of Death. We have a breeding pair of dogs, and 4 copper picks this time.

It is now autumn of year 2 in Facepalm of Death, the fort has stray elephants wonder near the fortress from time to time, but no attacks from them. One child was stolen by goblins, one adult died of dehydration when he and another dorf mined refused to built stairs out of the area, the other one listened to reason before he succumbed to death's bony grip. Another when insane from after he was taken by a stranger mood and couldn't get the materials he wanted, the only thing we didn't have a variety of was cloth(silk). After a year of training the 10 man squad was dispatched to the caverns, so far the only hostiles have been a gremlin that didn't do anything, and a few pond grabbers that we just walked around. A magma sea was found but it seems like it is barely connected to the actual cavern, since most of the cavern has been explored and isn't connected a bit. It about 60 z levels down, so getting it up will be a problem. We've constructed a pond next to the hospital, so water will be in easy reach. Iron and flux stones are plenty supply and the caverns are full of gems for when we start strip mining the place. The floor are nice and muddy to, so will become a large farm as well, as long as we don't hit anything to nasty.

What is now know as the second cavern layer has been explored fully, the great lava sea was in deed connected, we just had to go up to get down. While mining a shaft from the lava we forgot that the soldiers didn't take breaks for food and drink so they nearly died from that. One once got back to the barrack's sat in a corner and just stood their till he died, once went mad and is still alive for now, and once decided to make a bin out of a passing dwarf. Mine you it is a very nice bin, it was even given a name, but still it is a bin. Some migrants showed up, some of them will be drafted into my second squad, maybe Urist Makesbinsofbones will craft some nice bone armor for them till I reload a large portion of the fortress closer to the lava sea.

[AgentPaper]

So, remember how I was experimenting with vertical space and roads before? Well, I think I've got a real winner here:

Side View:
_      __      __      __      _
X\____/XX\____/XX\____/XX\____/X
__/XX\____/XX\____/XX\____/XX\__

Top View:

++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++
X^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^X
X^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^X
++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++

X^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^X
++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++
++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++++v++v++
X^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^XX^++++^X

The basic idea, is that you have a normal 4-wide road, (though this works with any road at least 2 squares wide) and then just have ramps going up and down all down it, alternating each Z level. So the first level might have ramps going up in the middle, and down on the sides, the second level would have ramps down in the middle and up on the sides, and so on. Just make sure they're placed such that your dwarves can navigate the roads without using the ramps, or at least be able to get between the up-ramps and the down-ramps on the same level.

The best part is, far beyond just reducing congestion at your main staircase, this also makes travel time extremely efficient. Instead of travel time getting exponentially worse as your fortress size increases, you actually get more and more efficient, as long as you keep to a generally cube-shaped fortress. For example, let's say that you had a fortress that took up a total of 10,000 squares, or 100 by 100 squares, including hallways. To get from one side of the fortress to the other, your dwarves have to travel about 150 squares at best, probably closer to 200.

If you were using vertical hallways, on the other hand, you could fit the same 10,000 square fortress into about a 20 by 20 by 20 square area. The absolute longest distance any dwarf will ever have to travel is about 30-40 squares, reducing travel time by 80%!

And now let's say you keep expanding, so now you've got a 40,000 square fortress, or 200 by 200 squares. Your maximum travel time will be about 300-400 squares depending on hallway density. Whereas, with vertical hallways you'd have a 35 by 35 by 35 square area, and your maximum travel distance would instead be about 53-70 squares at the absolute maximum, a 83% reduction in travel time!

The secret is that when you're moving up and down ramps, instead of spending 1 move to go up 1 Z level, you spend 1 move to go up 1 Z level and move 1 square horizontally as well to reach the top of the ramp. What this means is that if you have a line of 20 ramps over a 40 square long hallway, instead of spending 60 movement you only spend 40, exactly as if you'd walked down just a normal 40-square long hallway!



TL;DR: Ramps are good, use them a lot. Try to make your fortress as tall as it is wide and long to be efficient.

[The Shadowmind]

21st Slate. 1054
We've had our first forgotten beast attack today in the underground caverns.
Anot Smespuarstruck, a bloated gigantic hairy earthworm, with stretched skin wings. With indigo hair. We got attacked by a fat flying purple worm. That shot web from it's mouth... I hope it was web.
It was chased into a unfinished corridor that was going to be the new sleeping/office quarters when it was done. There a lone dwarf sleep while the war leopard and the dog chased it. In a single strike the dog was dispatched by the worm's "maw"; the leopard grabbing onto it's wings, ripping them with each, bite and the worm's body got slashed in the body by the flailing leopard's claws. As the worm neared the sleeping dwarf, Anot turned his purple head and latched onto the head of the leopard, then shook the the leopard's head off. Poor leopard. The militarty units just arrive when the sleeping dwarf awoke and ran screaming out of the room. The Deler Adilrur(Walledruns-farmer/sworddwarf) approached the beast with a pick in right hand and a battleaxe in his left. The axe make merely dents and scratches. Seeming all is lost Adilrur switches to his pickaxe and strikes the beast. A strike rips open the wing, another, leaves a deep mark in the worm's gut, and a final blow in swung. This time is is straight through the worm's brain, ending the fight.