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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 28, 2015 9:57:53 GMT -5
Ya know, the killing of a swamp titan known in history would make a good engraving, but nope, it's all dead mules, donkeys, water buffaloes, camels, and yaks who went to a trip to the butcher's workshop. And the leatherworker dwarf holding up one of their masterpiece leather clothes.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 29, 2015 4:59:21 GMT -5
Goblin christmas happened. 24 goblins and 20 trolls, the largest siege so far, and hopefully later even more will come. A fourth of them got caged, and the rest went down by military force. No wounded on my side... well, nothing that requires medical attention. One dwarf lost a tooth, a maceman, who proceeded to return the favor by smashing the goblin in the face, which sent a whole lot more goblin teeth to fly out several tiles away.
Because I am a bastard, I removed the weapons and shields off the caged goblins and trolls, then chained them up outside in the fields... where I have the war elephant pastured. Blood for the blood god, and all that jazz.
So far, 5 goblins have been executed via elephant. Aside from getting limps stomped and exploded to gore, cause of death for all of them is getting gored in the head by the tusks.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 30, 2015 10:02:09 GMT -5
Got bored so I went and embarked on a new area. Savage biome, for fun. Ores are good, iron ore, lignite for fuel, and galena that can be turned to lead and a chance for silver, and flux to turn iron to steel.
Giant animals, and rhinos for meat. Managed to train a rhino that gave birth to three more rhinos. Caught animals can never be fully tamed, only trained, but children start trained and can be tamed... so war rhinos once those children mature. Most giant animals are fairly harmless; grasshoppers, louse, weasels... and the hell on wings, the giant kea.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Sept 30, 2015 10:05:40 GMT -5
edit: HUZZAH. Caught one of them giant keas. To elaborate, small kea are annoying pricks that'll steal any small enough item lying on the ground outside, and since they fly they become hard to catch without a hunter or a soldier who uses crossbows. Giant kea are several times more larger, can steal heavy objects like anvils, and have no qualms of entering a base and murdering a civilian dwarf to get items.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 1, 2015 12:51:39 GMT -5
Giant keas are hate. They don't steal, as the entrance of the fort has a squad stationed, but they damn well interrupt every single dwarf and pastured animal outside, which leads to some stress. They come every two seasons or so, and usually I catch 2 out of five via the many cage traps I littered all over the map.
Need to train a hunter or a marksdwarf, otherwise they'll just annoy me to no end.
Also caught two giant monitor lizards, and they're opposite genders. Female has hatched 21 eggs, and if I'm lucky those will be a big source of meat. More giant monitor lizards and I'll set up a breeding program, for lots of meat and eggs.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 3, 2015 1:47:52 GMT -5
Above-ground farming is kinda handy. All crops, as long as you're in the right biome, can be grown in all seasons, though you have to know how to get the water muddy. If you're fort is next to a river or a pool, then you're pretty much set with some simple screw pump layouts. If not, you're just gonna have to channel to a faraway source for that.
One crop I'm growing can be turned into thread, and due to a lot of farmers who reached legendary skill I'm getting a ton of crop, which turns into a ton of booze, and a ton of thread which gets turned into a ton of cloth and now I got a pretty much infinite supply for clothing.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 3, 2015 8:44:51 GMT -5
Marksdwarves can train their crossbow skills either via attacking creatures or hitting a constructed archery target. The latter gives a lot less experience, and due to the still buggy system for crossbow training in that manner is also real slow. So live training is preferable... and so I chain up some of the caught rhinos are chained up and turned into targets. Due to their size, unless a shot through the skull happens this can be an incredibly long process as the dwarf sadistically aims anywhere he damn pleases. If he runs out of ammo, he'll then proceed to train his hammer skills by bashing the now unconscious creature - which due to the size of the rhino is ineffective. So I set him to inactive duty to reload, and then continue on with the process until the rhino is dead. Then I get another rhino and chain him up as well.
On the bright side, my marksdwarf is now near legendary skill with the crossbow.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 3, 2015 11:02:13 GMT -5
Another herd of rhino got caught in the cage traps. Those cages are real easy to load as long as you use wood; since materials don't matter in cage traps, it's best to go with light wood and melt or dump the metal ones from trading with humans and dwarves.
Anyways, as I prepared for another marksdwarf live training, I noticed the rhino has the status wallowing in misery. I kinda felt sorry for it and let it go.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 3, 2015 12:32:01 GMT -5
Caught another female giant monitor lizard. So far, all the eggs the first female monitor lizard are unfertilized, but I'm still hoping that the next batch of eggs is good to go. Would be cool to have a meat/egg industry from those lizards, as they lay around 20 eggs per laying time, and according to the wiki the hatchlings only take a year to mature, so that could be profitable.
In comparison, the rhino farm I got is still just children, and it takes 10 in-game years before a rhino reaches maturity. Would be cool to have war rhinos, but as a meat industry I'm better off just waiting for the next herd to get caught in the traps that are scattered around the outdoors.
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pegasuswarrior
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Post by pegasuswarrior on Oct 3, 2015 21:48:03 GMT -5
Marking out for Cthulhu's posts. I wish I had time to soak myself in a game like this. Experience games (like a civilization flourish) and such are my cup of tea , but I can't ever dive in.
I've heard a couple of people who brag about this game, but I looked at it once and felt overwhelmed.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 4, 2015 3:33:50 GMT -5
MWAHAHAHAHA! 15 giant monitor lizard hatchlings have been born from finally fertilized eggs! They're also born trained, so if I'm correct in my assumption, one training session from the resident trainer will set their status to tame, which will need no further training as they will no longer go wild. They only need one year to reach maturity as well, and when they can breed that generation of tame giant monitor lizards will have children that are born tame, gahahahaha. Their big population will provide a large source of eggs for cooking, and as I don't need a ton of giant monitor lizards, some of them can be trade goods, or simply butchered. Meat products, and leather to tan and turn into clothes, and fat that can be turned to tallow which can either be cooking ingredients or soap. One more big industry for my fort! Though they can't be trained for war, I suppose they can be used as a impromptu defense system. A cage can hold any amount of animals, regardless of size and number. Set up a cage in the entrance hall, link it to a lever, and when a group of goblin saunters menacingly into said hall, pull the lever and release giant angry lizards! Set up a well outside, but currently in the process of digging around and turn the river path I made into an underground reservoir for an underground well area. Fancy materials for them wells, two will use rose gold buckets, chains, and blocks, and another two will have platinum. Both metals I got from caravans. Value-wise, it would have been better if I used gold instead of rose gold, or aluminum - which again I have a decent number of from trading, but aluminum has a similar color shade as platinum, and rose gold has a color that's fairly rare in the game. Aside from that, the well will be floored with either gold or steel blocks, and decorated with statues and tables and chairs - a little sweet spot for my dwarves to relax in - far from the relaxation areas above-ground, which is puke and rain city. Marking out for Cthulhu's posts. I wish I had time to soak myself in a game like this. Experience games (like a civilization flourish) and such are my cup of tea , but I can't ever dive in. I've heard a couple of people who brag about this game, but I looked at it once and felt overwhelmed. I'd say give it a slow and steady spin. The learning curve is true, but a large chunk of it is during the first dive into the game. Once you've got the basics down, it becomes easy enough to manage. Once I set up fort, I end up busying myself with other things outside the game, and check in a couple of times for adjustments. When I do have time I take a more direct approach to managing the fort, but it can be done casually, more or less. Fun stuff.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 4, 2015 8:35:12 GMT -5
Today I learned a little something about water pressure, plus reaffirmation on the belief that dwarves have the smarts of a dry kumquat. I set about digging a reservoir for a well that would be set in the main living floor of the dwarves. In there is where multiple industries are set; cooking, brewing, tanning, milling, lye-making, soap-making, and several other stuff that doesn't involve rocks and metal. Living quarters are there, and a few other things and it leads down to the metal and stone industry areas.
The reservoir is under there, two levels deeps, with the well in the main hub area. So I build that, and once the reservoir is filled up... because the water I'm sourcing to the reservoir is from a level above the living hub, the well starts to overflow. Uh oh. Thankfully I managed to seal the area in, as the tunnel that leads to the well is one tile wide. Of course, the idiot dwarf who made the wall to stop the water from flowing into the main hub made the wall on the side where the water is. I briefly considered letting the fool drown, but that'd taint the water, probably, so I dug him out and made another wall.
Well has been fixed by setting it above the living area; still underground, so alls well that ends well.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 4, 2015 10:02:52 GMT -5
Two female giant monitor lizards laid 40 eggs in total that hatched. Out of those 40, 4 were able to reach tame status via training. They're now caged as I wait for them to reach adulthood in about a year, while the remaining 36 will take a trip to the butcher's workshop. At least a hundred units of fat came from all of them, which will be made into tallow and then soap.
The parents will continue to lay eggs, but I've given orders for the remaining eggs to be sent to the food stockpiles. No more point in hatching not tame lizards, when the four tame lizards will produce tame offspring when the time comes. The original breeders, one male and two female, will be sent to the butcher once the four tames become adults.
The tame ones will most likely produce all-tame offspring, and to prevent FPS slowdown those offspring will be kept caged, to be either butchered, traded away, or become the replacement breeding unit for future generations of giant monitor lizards.
I shall make a structure of giant monitor lizard soap bars, just because. Maybe a new butcher's workshop, tanning area, and soap maker's workshop built from giant lizard soap, in a room of giant lizard soap bar floors and walls.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 4, 2015 14:58:26 GMT -5
Werebeast flavors for this area so far are weregeckos, who don't seem to bite as often, and werebears - which sound terrifying but so far all encounters save one against it have been against a trained squad. The one encounter that wasn't initially against a squad was from a woodcutter. He somehow managed to survive with little injuries, and more importantly no bite wounds. That dwarf got an immediate promotion to military service.
Only have one marksdwarf, but so far that guy has been essential to prevent giant flying creature annoyances. I spotted two giant kea lounging around in one area - in the ground, and the markdwarf managed to sneak up on it. I had the kill order for only one, but after the first shot I checked and saw that the target was unconscious after the bolt hit bone - and with a pause I managed to get him to target the other one. A headshot followed.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 5, 2015 11:53:58 GMT -5
Just waiting for the hatchlings to mature. Just a month or so more. In any case, been thinking about the various other industries that I haven't really tried.
Gem cutting and setting, for example. Cutting gems can increase a gem's value for trade, but in general you rarely get a ton of gems, and if all you have is low value gems in the biome, stone crafts is better. However, having some high value cut and rough gems can come in handy in case of a strange mood where a dwarf wants to use either. Depending on worldgen, human and dwarf caravans can bring some high quality cut gems, but not rough ones, and even the high quality ones don't have that big of a trade value. Still, it comes in handy for artifact crafting.
Setting is a bit random. Gem decorations can only be applied to finished goods, furniture, and ammo. Ammo can fetch a fair price, and having a value increase with set gems can make trade easy - so long as you make sure marksdwarf squads don't use the ammo.
There's also beekeeping, which seems like a ton of work with tiny returns. For one thing, if there are no honey bees in the biome, then there's no honey industry. Getting honey requires several items, and in the end you get some wax and royal jelly as an ingredient, the latter of which is hardly used as dwarf cooks rarely ever use liquid ingredients. You also get mead... which is one of the four low value alcohol products.
Milking is another one. Milk is a liquid ingredient, but at least you can turn that into cheese. On the other hand, milkable animals require pastures, which can be somewhat problematic.
In the end, overall best trade good seems to be steel trap components. Like, a gold minecart at masterpiece quality has a value of 25k. A masterpiece large serrated disc made from steel has a value of 45k, and it's a whole lot lighter than gold minecarts. On the other hand, all you need for gold minecarts is to turn gold ore into gold bars, then turn that into minecarts. Steel requires iron ore to become pig iron, then turn that into steel, so smelting takes a lot more time, and it requires flux stones as well as iron ore.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 5, 2015 13:18:30 GMT -5
And so the hatchlings have become adults, and so I proceeded to callously send off their parents to the butcher's capable hands. Immediately after chaining the new adults, the two females laid eggs on the nest box immediately. Not sure if the eggs are fertilized, and it'll take a year to find out. Even so, I'm pretty sure that as the generation of monitor lizards is tame, so their children should be born tame as well. Egg and birth production should be booming.
What I really want though, is either a giant black mamba or a giant desert scorpion. The latter, aside from the really nasty black mamba poison, is that due to their giant size they're large enough to tear apart arms of an armored being in one bite, which makes the poison somewhat moot. The giant desert scorpion, on the other hand, has a poison according to the wiki that causes the brain to rot - so it's pretty much fatal to anything with a brain. Their pincers can apparently also pick up weapons. Both can't be trained for war, but with those qualities it doesn't really matter.
Alas, I'm not in the right biome for either of them. I can still get war rhinos, but the fact that they need a lot of pasture area makes having a small group hard to manage.
edit: all of a sudden I realize that I caught ibex men and women on the cage traps. Probably tried to steal my stuff. Unlike normal creatures, animal people can't be butchered, so they're in for a trip to my soldier training area, or caged in the zoo alongside the aardvark man.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 6, 2015 9:18:59 GMT -5
*sigh*
For this current fort, the one time when a dwarf finally gets a strange mood to create a weapon artifact, he demands copper. For most strange moods, dwarves would just ask for any type of a certain item catergories; like if they say metal bars, then any metal bars will do and you can forbid several metal bars for use except one, like steel or platinum. This however doesn't apply if a dwarf has a certain preference for an item, and in this case copper as a metal.
So I'll end up with a junk weapon artifact. As I recall, weapon artifacts get a 3x attack/accuracy increase, but that's a moot point for copper. For one thing masterpiece quality weapons get a 2x increase, and when it's already steel that pretty much makes the copper whatever weapon made inferior.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 6, 2015 9:55:28 GMT -5
Been amassing a lot of steel lately. While my military is a total of 11 dwarves - two five dwarf attack squads and a one-dwarf marksdwarf squad mainly used to scare and/or kill giant flying pests, I already have a set of 30 masterpiece armor, all parts. The remaining non-masterpiece armor could be used for trading in case I really need to, which so far I haven't.
What I request in trade right now for dwarves and humans are metal bars. Steel and platinum is what I want most, but it's good to have more or all types just in case. Two of the nobles prefer the same type of metal, which is black bronze, so I have to trade for that anyway in case they make demands.
One thing I forgot to mention on this run; on the first year of the game the current king of dwarven civilization seems to have died and somehow one of the dwarves in my fort ascended to king - which became a crazed rush early game to provide him royal quality rooms. He likes amulets, bucklers, and querns. While the mayor likes rings, also bucklers, and splints. So I set a separate stockpile for amulets and rings away from the other craft goods so there won't be trouble during trading season. Querns count as furniture, so they can't be sold anyway. Bucklers... I don't really trade shields, so it's moot.
As I'm the one who gets to choose the baron/duke, I picked a dwarf who has no item preferences. He's also captain of the fort guard.
Used to trade away trap components, but with craft industries set I now mostly trade in craft goods, musical instruments, and flasks made from stone and the non-weapons grade metal that I mine out, namely zinc, lead, and silver. Clothing items too. Due to the biome, I can grow an aboveground plant that can be turned to thread, which then gets turned into cloth then clothing. Even without the trap components I have a massive amount of stock, so I end up intentionally giving away a ton of profit to the merchants. Like I get about 33k in value from the merchants and I trade away 120k for the 33k.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 6, 2015 11:28:50 GMT -5
Herds of rhinoceros still continue to appear and land on cage traps. In general, I've set up lines of cage traps around the edges of the map, while setting up some paved paths for caravan wagons to travel through, and while it was time consuming, it does the job. Rhino leather seems to be higher value than the leather I get off trade, so they're pretty much reserved for strange moods.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 6, 2015 13:06:52 GMT -5
One of the handy commands of dfhack is to automatically set worn out clothing to be marked for dumping. This can help prevent lag somewhat by making sure items scattered in the floor are dumped, plus even when worn out the clothing can still be used as trade goods.
But yeesh, I should do this once per in-game year or two. There's 2k items to dump over the course of almost ten years.
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