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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 8, 2015 19:28:32 GMT -5
GOOD GOD. So the first spring of the fort has arrive, and with it comes the big migrant wave... 17 working dwarfs... plus 11 freaking children.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 9, 2015 7:33:55 GMT -5
Every migrant wave so far has brought useless dwarf children. Total of 18 right now bringing the population to 70. Guessing this is to balance out the fact that previous playthroughs didn't bring in a lot of dwarf kids. I shudder to think how many more will show up on the second spring.
First squad is only 6 dwarves so far, armed and equipped with steel gear. Steel production is a bit slow, but more or less okay since I'm carefully picking dwarves that are skilled in the needed combat skills.
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Post by "Gentleman" AJ Powell on Sept 9, 2015 15:37:24 GMT -5
Man, I always wanted to get into Dwarf Fortress, but it's such a time-sink from what I've heard, I'd probably end up in a dark room playing for days on end knowing my usual self.
So I'm gonna live vicariously through you, keep posting your updates!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 9, 2015 17:21:14 GMT -5
Man, I always wanted to get into Dwarf Fortress, but it's such a time-sink from what I've heard, I'd probably end up in a dark room playing for days on end knowing my usual self. So I'm gonna live vicariously through you, keep posting your updates! It's not too bad really. You can have the game running while you're doing something else, though there is a slight risk to it. If you plan out the stuff you wanna dig out, build and craft, you can then do something else while the dwarves do their thing. Stuff like dwarves going on a strange mood, invaders entering the region, and caravans arriving automatically pause the game. On the other hand, it won't auto-pause if a wild non-invading animal attacks, or if the monster is already on the map - like an werebeast infected dwarf, for instance. More or less it more or less like playing a game of Civilization. As for the current base. Squad's fully covered in steel; training some crossbow dwarves right now. This run is just filled with dwarven children; so it's 30-plus kids drinking the booze, eating food and doing nothing else. Gah, if I didn't want to risk their dwarf parents going on a violent tantrum I'd be making them walk towards a goblin horde. Also, I got stupid. So I had a great idea to make an underground reservoir by tunneling to a river which will lead to a deep-ish pit to store the water. It was pretty much so that I can make a well underground to collect water for the hospital. As it turns out, well, that deep-ish pit wasn't good enough, and it submerged the hospital and threatened to do so on my base. So, thinking quickly, I made the miners go down the mine shafts that was at the level of the pit I channeled and made a tunnel through it so it would stop the base from drowning. That's a five level mine shaft sacrificed, though that's not too bad as the area dug there, while big, had no ores or gems to offer. Built a floor on the stairs that led to the mine shaft so the water won't rise back towards the residential area. Oh, and during damage control a goblin band tried to attack. Amazingly, everyone survived. The soldiers were prepped for it because they had all-steel armor and weapons. Three of the miners decided to be idiots during damage control by tunneling on the side of the pit. You know, the pit that was rapidly filling with water? By the time the tunnel was almost done, they were already have drowning and a cave-in happened. They survived, but damn that was close. Fun.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 9, 2015 17:40:16 GMT -5
Also, dfhack is amazing. I think you can use it for cheating, but what's amazing about it is that it can simplify the layout of a lot of things.
Like, without dfhack you can assign what jobs the dwarves will do by clicking on u which lists out all the dwarves in your fort. Then you click z on an individual dwarf, which will bring you to a window where pressing p lists out job categories, each one with it's own specialty where you can activate or deactivate. Doing it one at a time is amazingly tedious.
What dfhack does, is that it brings an extra command is that it creates a new window where you all the dwarves are in one page and you can select or deselect the jobs from there. Cuts down a ton of time spent on going through things one dwarf at a time.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 9, 2015 22:55:09 GMT -5
In any case, hauling of goods is still quite flawed in the game. Basically you really can't prioritize what you want hauled in a stockpile first, and the only thing you can do is remove some hauling jobs for each dwarf -as hauling is divided into a number of different categories of items.
So right now my fort is having miasma problems due as there's food that's rotting in the kitchen. Food placed on stockpiles won't rot, or at least won't create a constantly generating mist of miasma, but workshops like kitchens and butchers shops are unable to do that. There's also a corpse of that giant I killed a long while ago, and the dwarves are unable to haul that big lug into a dump because they get scared of it.
I suppose I could set my military to inactive for a bit and make them haul it out, but then they'd end up putting it in a dump, causing dwarves normally tasked to haul out junk to get freaked out whenever they go there.
Once I lost this fortress, I'm really hoping I can find a new embark site that can be mined for coal or lignite, so then at least I won't have to worry about kobold thieves and I can keep the doors to the fort shut unless I really need something done outdoors.
Though on the other hand that means the dwarves will become adapted to cave life and get sick if they ever go outside.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 10, 2015 9:27:49 GMT -5
Fort is still going strong. Five stonecrafters are pretty much ensuring that I got enough to trade for food and drink; in general I think I can make the fort survive on farming one crop, but variety in food is more or less needed to keep stress low. For other trading goods, iron weapons and traps give more than enough for the caravans.
Yet another raiding party of goblins came and got slaughtered. I'm still waiting for the big invasion force which I don't think I can fight off without some serious damage, or possibly complete defeat. All I got is one in a half squads, though for what its worth they come equipped with high quality steel armor and weapons, and five of them have been training long enough that they have legendary combat skills.
In any case, there was one injury in the military from the recent attacks. One of the new soldiers got a fractured leg and a dented skull, which seems to have healed up at least. My doctor dwarf has it tough... as basically he's the only actual doctor in the fort. Migrant waves as pretty much just more farmers and fishcleaners. The doc has skills in suturing, and wound cleaning... and knows nothing about diagnosis, bone setting, and surgery. Gonna be crazy when bad accidents happen.
Two deaths though from civilians. One is a pet goat. One is a dwarven baby - as dwarf mothers carry their babies until the grow up a bit, and that applies to soldiers as well. Instead of dropping the baby somewhere safe, the soldier carried it to battle and it got a goblin crossbow bolt due to it.
Still need to create a jail, though.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 10, 2015 11:17:27 GMT -5
One more death. Werelizard showed up, thankfully far from the base where it could do the most damage. However, one worker and her baby (yeesh, babies here are in danger all the time) got attacked. Mother was bit, baby was bit and killed.
The squad didn't have any trouble with the werelizard at all. However, maybe a bug, but due to some friendly fire things turned into a fight between two squad members and one got minor injuries.
Main worry right now is the mother is recuperating at the hospital and had been bitten already. There's a tactic of turning the whole fort into werebeasts, but that's a huge risk as killing is more likely than infection. Once she gets out of the hospital I'm sealing her in her room forever - or I could make the squad wait by her bedside by the time the next full moon comes and kill her when she transforms.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 10, 2015 12:39:01 GMT -5
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD. Winter ended, and on the second day of spring another batch of goblins came to invade - at a much larger force than before. 28 of them versus my 14 soldiers - technically 13 as one of them is the fortress captain who jails criminal dwarves, physically weak and hands out dwarven justice (beatings) with a common wood training sword.
I made them rush too early, so as the two forces met it was basically only 6 dwarves who were in goblin crossbow range. Still, 3 of them were skilled at their combat skills... and the 3 other dwarves were at legendary status. They came out unscathed, even one of the non-legendary of the 6 who was the dwarf that was pretty badly injured during the friendly fire fracas during the werelizard incident. The fact that his left arm was still in a cast and still badly damaged didn't stop him from going into the fray.
Also, the infected mother did turn into a werelizard... and the entire dwarven squad was waiting for her to transform. No bites done, and a quick death.
No dwarven babies were killed this time, amazingly. Still, I gotta get some cleanup done on those pile of dead goblins. Don't want to scare off the caravans entering from that area.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 10, 2015 22:54:56 GMT -5
Hoping to find some magma to dump all these goblin and werebeast corpses. Last thing I want is a necromance wandering into the area and raising undead body parts to wreak havoc. Or, at the very least, make an dwarven atom smasher made for the sole purpose of waste disposal.
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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Sept 10, 2015 23:10:29 GMT -5
Hoping to find some magma to dump all these goblin and werebeast corpses. Last thing I want is a necromance wandering into the area and raising undead body parts to wreak havoc. Or, at the very least, make an dwarven atom smasher made for the sole purpose of waste disposal. Maybe just create a dumping pit that is a couple of Z levels deep. They won't be able to escape so they're not going to be a particular threat when a necromancer rolls in.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 10, 2015 23:15:14 GMT -5
Hoping to find some magma to dump all these goblin and werebeast corpses. Last thing I want is a necromance wandering into the area and raising undead body parts to wreak havoc. Or, at the very least, make an dwarven atom smasher made for the sole purpose of waste disposal. Maybe just create a dumping pit that is a couple of Z levels deep. They won't be able to escape so they're not going to be a particular threat when a necromancer rolls in. Perhaps. I'm in the process of making the room that'll hold the drawbridge which will become the atom smasher, as it's probably the best option to dispose of corpses indoors instead of turning them into miasma factories.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 11, 2015 1:26:27 GMT -5
Abandoning my current fort. Not due to monster problems, or complete chaos to an extent. Mostly due to me being unsatisfied with the fort layout... like while I've managed to sort out my population and job management, but buildings wise everything is just thrown about here and there so it'll be hard to get anything done as I go deeper into the mines.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 11, 2015 11:45:01 GMT -5
Finding the right location for embark is hard. I'm not sure if I'm still ready for more challenging biomes like freezing or scorching areas, and places with small amounts of wood - though for that a small amount would be okay if I could mine some fuel producing materials. Evil locations I'm definitely not touching yet.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 11, 2015 15:15:24 GMT -5
Hoo boy. Iron ore is plentiful again, but the first few mining areas lack flux stones required for steel... and that pretty much means I have to dig a whole lot deeper into dangerous areas for whatever flux stone is available.
Still, layout of my base is shaping up fairly well. One of the first migrants is a talented armorsmith who quickly became a grandmaster and soon to be legendary thanks to my current output of two wood burners and one smelters.
Starting to use the manager profession so I can at least assign a dwarf to a specific workshop, which could possibly at least help somewhat in dealing with confusion when I want something constructed.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 11, 2015 15:40:09 GMT -5
Apparently, rhinos can be trainable to be war animals.
Hard to choose... full course rhino dinner, or war rhinos.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 12, 2015 3:31:47 GMT -5
Hunting rhinos was successful. Apparently they do make good war animals, but since they only graze they take up a ton of pasture space which could easily be not enough and they'll end up starved - plus they place is pretty uneven with the upper z-levels where my base entrance is set, so I'll have to wait until much later before considering nabbing one as a pet.
Need to build a reservoir to collect rainwater. No rivers in the area, unless there's one deep underground, so I need to collect rain in case of injured dwarves.
And yet again, werebeast attacks. This time a werepanther at the first spring before the big migrant waves. Only had one soldier, though amazingly he was enough to fight and win unharmed, thanks to having full masterpiece iron armor. One of the yaks I got from embark got killed though - need to butcher that before it goes ripe.
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Post by Hot Noodle Truck on Sept 12, 2015 4:21:37 GMT -5
Heard all about Dwarf Fortress but never tried it. Just wanted to say that this is actually super interesting to read, kinda like a history book being written in real time.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 12, 2015 6:14:40 GMT -5
It's quite fun to watch the fort progress, and have things go wrong from time to time.
Rhinos were pretty easy hunts. Lots of them constantly arrive on the area, and butchering one can get up to 100 units of meat, which can last a fort an incredibly long time and passing by herds usually have 8 rhinos. Problem is that they seem more content in running away in terror which can be time consuming for my soldiers - though they don't have anything better to do anyway. One slight problem is that corpses can rot away quickly, so I have to be careful killing too much unless I want miasma inside my tunnels.
On the other hand, hyenas come in packs of up to 18, are more aggressive. One of the new recruits, possibly due to being a novice in skills, has gotten nerve damage, so he's out of the squad as that can't be fixed.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 12, 2015 6:40:33 GMT -5
Well, damn. Unfortunately another werebeast got the jump on my squad. One was far away due to a recent hunt, and the recruits who were around the base got trounced - then it easily managed to kill most of the civilian dwarves hiding in the burrow by chasing a cat into the burrow. By the time my experienced soldiers reached the carnage, 10 dwarves were killed and several survivors were badly hurt... but not too long because they got bit and will turn into a swarm of werebeasts in the next full moon.
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