Dwarf Fortress: General Discussion

[GuppyShark]

Woohoo!

I made it past my first winter with no casualties!

No, no screenshots. My fortress is a MESS. Learning experience and a half.

[Duckie]

Woohoo!

I made it past my first winter with no casualties!

No, no screenshots. My fortress is a MESS. Learning experience and a half.

Ah, the great first milestone.

Now, did you do it with or without the Wiki? I made it past winter with 0 fatalities my first try (the fortress before Palelabor that collapsed due to lack of booze), but I was reading the Wiki on how to farm and what to equip to survive.

Because if you did it without the Wiki I will gladly send you my save file and let you play Palelabor for us.

[GuppyShark]

I read the Wiki, but only to answer "How I mine for fish"-style questions. More importantly, reading Palelabor taught me lots of stuff like, "Fishing is good."

[Nephtys]

I never seem to profit from fishing. Getting a crapton of Helmets, brewing them then cooking seems to be the best food for me.

[Covenant]

I'm plopping down my territory in a Haunted realm. It's sure to be interesting. I'm digging out NORAD right away to keep the locals out.

[ColonialAdmiral]

How do you build a bed?
I have a carpenter, and a carpenters workshop, but he just sits inside and does nothing...

I can't find anything via the wiki on this subject...

[Covenant]

How do you build a bed?
I have a carpenter, and a carpenters workshop, but he just sits inside and does nothing...

I can't find anything via the wiki on this subject...

Press Q, and highlight the shop. Then give him a "build a motha'fuckin' bed" order. But don't actually give him that order, as it takes the mane of a Samuel L. Jackson in order to craft one. And those are quite rare.

[ColonialAdmiral]

Thanks covenant.
Although I just came over here to post that I figured it out on my own...
Its okay because I just flooded my fort....
Guess I need a new one...

[Duckie]

I never seem to profit from fishing. Getting a crapton of Helmets, brewing them then cooking seems to be the best food for me.

You need a Fishery, as fish can't be eaten raw, and someone with the Fish Cleaning profession turned on. Make sure you're not just letting them sit there uncleaned which would explain it.

Best thing to do is set it on clean a fish and repeat, so that you don't have to worry about that.

[Covenant]

So far my haunted zone is not that dangerous. Just a few Skeletal Cougars waiting to eat any unwary Dwarves that happen to wander outside Castle Greyrock.

[Duckie]

So far my haunted zone is not that dangerous. Just a few Skeletal Cougars waiting to eat any unwary Dwarves that happen to wander outside Castle Greyrock.

Skeletons aren't as dangerous as zombies, and Cougars, for all their fierceness, don't have the mass and thus dangerous unstoppability and numbers of a swarm of elephants.

Plus, Cougars will pursue enemies they see and kill them. An Elephant swarm pursues anything it thinks exists and stops at nothing to destroy it.

I once saw 5 non-undead elephants pursue and attempt to kill someone's pet lamb. Why? It walked near them. And by near I mean 10 squares away. The elephants broke the thing's back, but it managed to crawl away while they tried to chase down the other nearby targets, and lived a terrible life of frequent bouts of paralysis, crippling pain, and dragging itself around until I mercy killed it by dropping a bridge on it.

Undead elephants are just as angry and vicious, but without the vulnerabilities of the flesh to simple things like having their eyes gouged out or internal injuries.

[Nephtys]

I think the most efficient design I can think of early (pre-river?) could be the modular grid base. That is, split stuff up into grids of like 6x6 rooms, with a two-lane corridor between them. I can build three bigger places to use as underground forests or storage. If i need to change out a building's use, I can reconfigure the modules to workshops, storage, farms, each with openings in each direction to minimize hallway traffic and such. Hrm. I wonder what kind of base could be built with it's entirity post-river.

How do channels and floodgates/controlled flooding work? Can I just connect a floodgate to a river or channel that's full of water, open it, and it floods the room?

[Duckie]

I think the most efficient design I can think of early (pre-river?) could be the modular grid base. That is, split stuff up into grids of like 6x6 rooms, with a two-lane corridor between them. I can build three bigger places to use as underground forests or storage. If i need to change out a building's use, I can reconfigure the modules to workshops, storage, farms, each with openings in each direction to minimize hallway traffic and such. Hrm. I wonder what kind of base could be built with it's entirity post-river.

How do channels and floodgates/controlled flooding work? Can I just connect a floodgate to a river or channel that's full of water, open it, and it floods the room?

Make sure to read the wiki on irrigation to get this, but I'll try to explain. You want two floodgates hooked to the same lever (make sure to attach the first floodgate to the lever before installing the second or odds are you won't be able to reach it again without digging a new tunnel). So make sure you start with a mechanic/engineer who will make 4 mechanisms if you don't want to Nile-style farm. Then, lock the doors of the farm to avoid drowning the world, unlock the door to the control room (having a lever that might get pulled in the open is bad, put it recessed in a wall behind a locked, pet sealed door except when you need it).

1 Floodgate for some reason isn't good compared to two. I think it has to do with current fluid dynamics of flood and antiflood, the second one makes sure the water disappears after the lever is pulled again.

[ColonialAdmiral]

You can use the outside river. It's safer.

I'm not really going to fortify in the first year, keep everything close to outside for faster resource collection. Then second year, I'm going to clear out those caverns and turn it into a fortress.

[Stark]

I didn't read the wiki, and constantly butting heads over the 'na uh hands off' interface was irritating.

[ColonialAdmiral]

While looking through the changelogs for the next version of Dwarf Fortress I found this:

05/27/07: Added civilization selection to the new embark screen, handled reclaim in the new embark screen, allowed resizing of fort area from 144x144 to 768x768 (full map square) during embark (standard is 480x480), handled basic merging of sites if you select an existing one during embark, handled extension of inside features after dig designations, handled a range issue with river elevations, updated pits, pools and chasm to handle the new mountain tops

There goes the name "Dwarf Fortress"....

[Nephtys]

Ah. I'm using the Wiki as little as possible, mainly to look up stuff I really, really can't get (Like for a while how to get charcoal).

Hrm. the outside River is really safer? What about invasion? Or do closed Floodgates count as impenetrable walls?

[Duckie]

While looking through the changelogs for the next version of Dwarf Fortress I found this:

05/27/07: Added civilization selection to the new embark screen, handled reclaim in the new embark screen, allowed resizing of fort area from 144x144 to 768x768 (full map square) during embark (standard is 480x480), handled basic merging of sites if you select an existing one during embark, handled extension of inside features after dig designations, handled a range issue with river elevations, updated pits, pools and chasm to handle the new mountain tops

There goes the name "Dwarf Fortress"....

I'm quite sure that he means selecting which kingdom of dwarves. After all, race =/= civilization. Fuckin' dungeons and dragons >:(

And Nepthys, disregard what that man is saying. The Inside River is safer, because only river creatures can attack from it and they suck so much farmers with no weapons can defeat them with minor injuries on occaision. Sure, a badly designed farm irrigation system will flood your fortress but if you do it according to the standard formula and make sure your farm is watertight before irrigating you have nothing to worry about. Outside is way more actively hostile.

The outside river has packs of goblins invading and killing your mans while they're outside your base, trolls destroying your farm, hydra, elephants, and the inability to turtle up secure. I mean, harvest is a busy time, sending every damn dwarf out to the river to plant or harvest. Then you gotta trek all the way back into the mountain to eat, brew, or cook. Madness.

And any significantly sized building (even statues!) is impenetrable to light enemies like Goblins. However, large enemies like Trolls, some exceptional and determined Humans, Demons, etc. can break floodgates as easily as they can break workshops and doors.

[Covenant]

With the thaw of spring, a joy of seasonal migration has brought me a loud and boisterous troupe of zombie elephants! I think they've killed off and eaten all the other critters, as I see nothing but elephants now.

My base design is working perfectly too. I built my starting workshops outside, dug all the way past the river before I started, and have a 3-space wide corridor leading to my stuff. My farms are working well, controlled by a pair of floodgates, and stone doors keep the floodwaters from penetrating past the bridge when it floods seasonally. It floods often, actually. I'm actually planning a somewhat experimental test to see if I can dam up the river with floodgates or doors.

The only problem at the moment is that my base, since it's designed with security past the river in mind is that I have a fuckton of stones lying around which I just can't turn into doors fast enough. The caravan just arrived and I'm buying meat from them, and planting around 50+ish squares of food (if possible, I have 4 plots of 13 irrigated via switch).

I had a minor disaster where I mistakenly dug too far past my 3 lane corridor and gouged out a 6 wide hole in the wall. I decided to make the most of it and stuck a dining hall in there, with supports at the mouth of it to keep it from collapsing. Not ideal by any means, especially if a dwarf throws a tantrum, but it was by mistake that this happened, not by design!

I'm trying to figure out where to put my Dwarven Vaults to store stuff. I'm thinking about converting the space between the wall and the river into storage and a depo on one side, and a barracks on the other. As it stands, I have a brewery that has not yet begun to brew anything, a masonry workshop that I've moved indoors, my ironworking shop, sleeping quarters, dining hall, and farms inside. The rest, like the mechanist's shop, the woodworking bench, the current depo (which I made just to service the first caravan) and a variety of my stores, are outside.

We're not generating much refuse. I brought turtles which seem to just turn into bones and shell and not leave a miasma. I brought 4 puppies, and hopefully they'll breed soon. We just had a first foal born. I haven't really harvested much lumber yet, so I haven't had to deal with the newly arrived swarm of undead fucking elephants, but that's going to be a major pain. They're down and to the left a bit, but if they drift northwards they'll kill anything that tries to come and visit, and that'll be bad.

Minor problem... can't seem to be able to merge bridges. Once it's built it seems permanently as-is.

[Covenant]

Before I tell my story, I want to ask a question:
I have a lot of rocks on my terrain, which make it hard to build roads. Can I smooth them down to make them roadways? Or do I need to build bridges over them all? And, can trade caravans turn? I could build the road so it arcs up to a safer, less rocky area instead of having it go straight. Also, since I was making it indoors, will they follow the path to my Trade Depo if I have it turn a bit? I wanted to put a protective S-bend before you get to the depo, to make it more defensible.

Now, onto my story. I just got a bunch of migrants, again. I have like 40 Dwarves at the first new spring. Some minor food problems, but I'm just about to plant some seeds. Seems this one guy's nickname was well randomly chosen--Tombfocused.

Damn fucking Tombfocused the Trapper. Know what I hate about migrant trappers? They all have the Big Man complex, unlike my grizzled war-dwarves. So when I get an injection of 12 retards, one of them is going to be a trapper.

This guy decided he wanted an undead elephant skull on his wall, and shot the damn thing, then ran home while bleeding to death. Everyone else who was building the road turned and ran, and because of that, I wasn't able to simply let the foolish one kill himself, like I'd been able to do last time without such a huge outdoor project. It also seems some moronic dwarf of mine left ROCKS on the DOORS. Maybe they dropped them when they all fled in terror. My stray dogs attempted to defend us, but it was no contest. The Elephant killed two more on the bridge, and quite literally, the rivers ran with blood, and since I was irrigating at the time, it was quite the macabre scene.

Those elephants are nasty motherfuckers. I was able to kepe it from killing everyone, but I'll probably revert to an earlier time and do it smarter.

[Duckie]

Covenant, a strange rube goldberg idea to avoid the Rock thing is to rig your fortress' entrance to flood via a "doomsday" lever. That way, pull the lever, water rushes out, rocks all get flushed downhill outside. Close and lock doors.

The key is to hope you get two Lever pulls at close intervals, since there's a delay before the Lever will reset its mechanism. Otherwise you're in a bit of trouble.

Further, you can smooth outside rocks, building a bridge isn't nescessary.

As far as Trade Caravans turning, I'm 99% certain they can pathfind like less mobile and agile versions of other creatures, given that I've seen some trade depots at different North/Southwise placement compared to the roads.

[Covenant]

Covenant, a strange rube goldberg idea to avoid the Rock thing is to rig your fortress' entrance to flood via a "doomsday" lever. That way, pull the lever, water rushes out, rocks all get flushed downhill outside. Close and lock doors.

The key is to hope you get two Lever pulls at close intervals, since there's a delay before the Lever will reset its mechanism. Otherwise you're in a bit of trouble.

Further, you can smooth outside rocks, building a bridge isn't nescessary.

As far as Trade Caravans turning, I'm 99% certain they can pathfind like less mobile and agile versions of other creatures, given that I've seen some trade depots at different North/Southwise placement compared to the roads.

Good to hear! So far I've enjoyed my floodgates, they really make farming easy. However, if I had to redo my base, I'd make them wider. Right now they're 7x7 blocks stacked lengthwise along the river with a single unmined spot at the middle 7'th all along the line down. I'd have probably pulled it one or two more widths to the right to get the most out of it.

I'm also considering making the elephants penned in by putting a long line of floodgates end-to-end to block them off along their most common routes, though they stray way too close to my front door for my preferences.

What's the best way to get a military started? So far I haven't even bothered. I might actually start a new base again, even though things are going relatively great, just to have better organization and such. Not sure.

[Duckie]

A good way to start a military is to pick a couple dwarfs you don't need and draft them, build a barracks (put a weapon or armor stand in a room to designate it as such, although I think beds can also be used to make Barracks I've never tried it).

Make sure they're off duty on the Military -> View Squad screen. Then just wait. They'll fight hand to hand, which is safest, if you don't alter their preferences (similar to Labour, but for soldiering use V, P, S instead of V, P, L). Hand to hand combat teaches them how to wrestle and how to dodge blows.

You'll want them to, even if sparring, to equip armor, so as to reduce the chances of training accidents. Especially if they practice with weapons.

If you wait long enough, they'll be good soldiers.

Another way to mass produce soldiers, albeit with its own drawbacks, is to wait until you get a Captian of the Guard Noble and are forced to draft a Fortress Guard. They are under his direct command and you cannot order them, but they spar almost constantly and thus gain way more experience than the normally lackadaisial and lazy standard recruits.

[ColonialAdmiral]

The outside river is safer in the fact that your dwarves can't drown in it.

The inside river will take your dwarves, and they will rush down the current, and they won't be able to get out...
You can however cut a chanel that goes into your fort from the outside, so you will have a farming area inside, just the source is outside.

I take it back though, the inside river is worth the risk.

Next stop. LAVA!

[Covenant]

The outside river is safer in the fact that your dwarves can't drown in it.

The inside river will take your dwarves, and they will rush down the current, and they won't be able to get out...
You can however cut a chanel that goes into your fort from the outside, so you will have a farming area inside, just the source is outside.

I take it back though, the inside river is worth the risk.

Next stop. LAVA!

You're warned beforehand. Make sure that you have doors on each side of the bridge, and when you hear that the water is coming, change the doors to 'forbidden!' so that they can't pass. Wait for the rushing torrent to go by, and then open back up. You should never lose a dwarf if you do this. I lost THREE once... but that's because they decided to sleep on the bridge.

Really, when the river is discovered, they should realize it floods. Instead of just telling ME, the Dwarves themselves should 'flee' a visible river like an elephant. ;p

New question, how do you justify making stuff out of metal when it takes so much wood? Really, a forge... it's painful. I really wish I could buy logs from other people.