Tales from Dwarf Fortress

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 4th, 2010, 14:50

That's what I said

DAMN MY SOBER HANDS

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 5th, 2010, 12:47

Well the nasty CTD bug whenever I pressed 'm' for my militia seems to have worked itself out, so I'm back in business (that may or may not be a good thing...)

Last night I finished my first experimental pump stack to lift water from the river and flood my shiny new greenhouse, so now I can grow outdoor plants in the relative safety of my underground farm complex. The success of this trial led me to dig out a moat around the fortress entrance, but due to a technical fuckup, all 3 miners got caught in a cave in and hospitalised. All 3 are suffereing from numerous compound fractures and dust inhalation and I've had to draft in 2 part time paramedics to help with the surgery. The plaster I spent all that time making is finally seeing some use, as is the soap to clean the wounds (made from the rendered fat of a horse I slaughtered in a hurry for leather to keep a moody dorf happy). This has effectively put a stop to my exploratory mining though, so I'm taking the opportunity to tidy the place up, make an animal pit to try and encourage them to fuck a bit more, and build more traps for the revamped entrace.

A human caravan turned up. I was nice to them this time and bought a load of copper but they weren't much use. I think if they appear again they might have an accident....

I have a vast stockpile of stone. My initial plan of playing 'fetch' with catapults is good in that it trains up siege operators and keeps the peasants amused running around collecting boulders, but ultimately doesn't solve the problem, so tonight I am going to experiment with atom smashers!

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 5th, 2010, 13:02

Ooh, atom smashers. Shouldn't be too difficult. I go for quantum garbage dumps personally, but that's not as much fun.

After a few disasters (such as starting a map on top of a goblin fortress), I've started a new frotress that's coming along. I've hit the issue I have with many games of learning the basics and over-thinking. This has left me with an intricately designed workshop level, with production linked by specialist intermediate storage areas. When I actualy get some industry going it should be great, but for now it's just a huge white elephant. I also have a huge circular dining room that's taking ages to carve out, a cistern for irrigating my crops which accidentally flooded the workshops for a little while, and a troupe of monkeys stealing stuff from storage in the middle of my fortress. So next up I need to start building some bedrooms, because all 33 dwarves are currently sleeping in the barracks (which now has a squad occupying it), get my monkey defences up (cage traps for bonus monkey meat), and gear up my drawbridge so it opens into a pit.

Other innovations include ballista bays in the entrance to splat the enemy hanging around my bridge, a covered trade depot with causeway to help stop the traders getting gobbo-raped, and a secondary defence line on the living floor.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 5th, 2010, 13:30

My whole entrance needs a serious rethink. My fort is at the base of a small hill that sits on top of a deep gorge made by a stream at the bottom. Sadly it's a brook, not a river so it's crossable. Much of the etnrance hall is a legacy from day one when they hacked out a hole in the side of the hill so there's not a great deal to work with.

I think I might have to carve out a new entrance half way down the cliff, build a draw bridge/moat, some battlements and use the old entrance as a covered trade depot. Then again, that would still constitue an entrance to the fortress so I might just have to block it off altogether, which would mean redoing the whole internal structure as well....aaaaargh

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » May 5th, 2010, 13:37

either of you guys got any interesting regions/starting location saves to share? either my game doesnt like me and generates crappy worlds or im not very good at choosing starting locations

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 5th, 2010, 13:54

Someone posted a fun looking place on Scrapheap Challenge:

I have the perfect embark site, 3/4 of the map is a flat evil forest, the other quarter is a 57z level volcano has a super sharp drop-off. The only problem is there are no neighbors so no wars, trade, or fun stuff like that. I'm attempting to screw with the civ numbers and history/creature seed to stop the extermination of the dwarves. Does any one know how to make this happen?

world gen info is :
[WORLD_GEN]
[TITLE:SHC]
[SEED:2652201298]
[HISTORY_SEED:6]
[NAME_SEED:68040]
[CREATURE_SEED:8]
[DIM:129:129]
[EMBARK_POINTS:1274]
[END_YEAR:250]
[BEAST_END_YEAR:2:40]
[REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:1]
[CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:0]
[ELEVATION:1:400:401:401]
[RAINFALL:0200:200]
[TEMPERATURE:25:75:200:200]
[DRAINAGE:0200:200]
[VOLCANISM:0200:200]
[SAVAGERY:0200:200]
[ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[RAIN_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[DRAINAGE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[TEMPERATURE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[VOLCANISM_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[TITAN_NUMBER:1000]
[TITAN_ATTACK_TRIGGER:50:0:100000]
[DEMON_NUMBER:1000]
[GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:12:125:250]
[EVIL_SQ_COUNTS1000:2000]
[PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:12]
[PARTIAL_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
[COMPLETE_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
[VOLCANO_MIN:200]
[REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:260:0:1]
[REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:260:0:1]
[REGION_COUNTS:FOREST3:3]
[REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS2:2]
[REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER1:1]
[REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA1:1]
[REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND3:3]
[REGION_COUNTS:HILLS3:3]
[EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:250]
[RIVER_MINS100]
[PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:1]
[OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:1]
[SUBREGION_MAX:2750]
[CAVERN_LAYER_COUNT:3]
[CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MIN:35]
[CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MAX:100]
[CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MIN:0]
[CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MAX:100]
[CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MIN:0]
[CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MAX:80]
[HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_1:1]
[HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_2:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:15]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_1:5]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_2:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_3:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_4:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_5:2]
[LEVELS_AT_BOTTOM:1]
[CAVE_MIN_SIZE:1]
[CAVE_MIN_SIZE:1]
[CAVE_MAX_SIZE:25]
[MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:250]
[NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:300]
[ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:1]
[SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
[TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:5]
[TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:20000]
[PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
[ELEVATION_RANGES4160:2080]
[RAIN_RANGES4160:2080]
[DRAINAGE_RANGES4160:2080]
[SAVAGERY_RANGES4160:2080]
[VOLCANISM_RANGES4160:2080]
You will get an error but just press c, its the 4040'th gen'ed world.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » May 5th, 2010, 14:26

that does sound pretty good apart from the lack of neighbours, which is one of my problems, i either get really good looking locations and no neighbours or really crap locations in the middle of a gobbo fortress, i want something a bit inbetween, last map was good as it was just elves humans and dorfs, but after a while it got dull as the most agressive thing in the woods was monkey and it was such a remote location that the traders only appeared every few years, learnt alot though as i didnt need to worry about random attacks

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 5th, 2010, 14:44

Mine seems to be pretty good. There's quite a lot of area covered by aquifer, so it's hard to find a starting spot with the right credentials, but everywhere I've made a decent go has had trade from all three friendly races and enough goblin raids to stay challenging. In the case of both decent fortresses I've built I've been beaten by an invincible Hill Titan, which I suspect may be a bug.

I wonder how I find the seed for it.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » May 5th, 2010, 14:44

I always pick safe places, so I've never had a goblin problem. I'll rectify that on my next fortress.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » May 5th, 2010, 14:50

have you build directly where it has given you a warning about the aquifer then? ive always avoided it and found places that havnt got one as i didnt know if it was going to be near impossible to find stone/mine anything

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 5th, 2010, 14:53

I had no idea what all the symbols were on the start map, so I just picked something next to a river that had trees and rocks. Seems I'm reasonably close to dorfs and humans, but so far I've only seen one gobbo child snatcher who is now a smear of blood in the corner.

I've also noticed a mysterious trail of blood going right through my fortress which belongs to someone - or something - who I can't track down. Maybe it's a dog, cos none of my dorfs appear to be hurt.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 5th, 2010, 14:54

shot2bits wrote:have you build directly where it has given you a warning about the aquifer then? ive always avoided it and found places that havnt got one as i didnt know if it was going to be near impossible to find stone/mine anything

The wiki talks about it a bit. Getting underneath the aquifer sounds complicated, although it's doable if you have easy access to magma or the map freezes.

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 5th, 2010, 15:33

Are you still on your first expedition then Friz? I've been through easily half a dozen (admittedly at least two I quit because I thought I'd cocked up the farming when it was in fact a bug). Mind you, if you don't have much in the way of hostiles then I suppose there's not much reason not to be.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » May 5th, 2010, 16:54

ive started a new fortress, things are going well apart from ive had 2 sets of migrants show up in the first year, and ive only just got construction on my first farm set up

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » May 5th, 2010, 17:08

my brain is wrong....

ive inadvertently built my dwarfs bedrooms in a fractal design

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 5th, 2010, 17:52

Dog Pants wrote:Are you still on your first expedition then Friz? I've been through easily half a dozen (admittedly at least two I quit because I thought I'd cocked up the farming when it was in fact a bug). Mind you, if you don't have much in the way of hostiles then I suppose there's not much reason not to be.

Second or third attempt atm. But yeah, it does seem suspiciously quiet but perhaps that's because I'm not actually very far in (barely into my second year).

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 5th, 2010, 17:58

I captured a monkey, but it escaped into my workshops when I tried to chain it up for a taming attempt (a war monkey would be awesome). A passer by cornered it in my dump and killed it though, so now I have some monkey meat to cook. Nom.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » May 5th, 2010, 19:27

by the beginning of the second year i already had 37 dorfs, its getting a bit hectic and i need to make some more jobs, they tried partying and it distracted the rest of the workers so i made them all polute the ponds so theyd have something to do while i made more permenant positions for them so i can work that partying out of them

coincedentally i found out the fortress is called laborsweltered

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » May 5th, 2010, 20:45

im beggining to have some odd suspicions about this weaver who went mad, he got a bit naked and has been running round babbling, which is fairly normal for a bloke whos mad, hes been babbling mostly at animals, again, not too out of the ordinary for someone whos mad, but hes now "crawling" around babbling, hes been "crawling" on the same cow for quite a while now.

fucking wierdo

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » May 5th, 2010, 20:47

By the sound of it you'd swear this game is made by a 5punker.