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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 3, 2016 9:30:36 GMT -5
More violence! A whopping 5 attacks in the year of 98. Three forgotten beasts, one wereskink, and one marsh titan.
The marsh titan was a memorable battle. It happened one week before the end of year 98. My melee squad was underground, clearing away some of the underground riffraff when the marsh titan appeared. Some sort of giant goat who walks on two legs with poison bite. Titans appear on the surface, and the only ones guarding were two crossbow dwarves. They managed to buy some time, firing at the beast while moving away from the creature, and they managed to would the marsh titan. First the marsh titan followed them, trailing a line of blood behind it until it stopped moving. The crossbows kept firing, and when the bolts ran out both dwarves tried to bash it to death with their crossbows. The melee squad arrived by that point and helped finish the job.
And then, at the start of the year... like seriously just a day since year 99 began... AMBUSH! Before embarking I knew the elves were at war with the dwarven civilization I chose, and it took this long for an attack force to come to my fort. I guess unearthing the candy is great advertising.
Anyway, the difference between an ambush and a siege is that the latter won't be spotted until a dwarf detects them, and that an ambush force is far smaller than a siege.
In this case, it's an ambush by 10 elven bowmen against my 6 militia dwarves; four melee, two crossbows. Hilariously, they broke stealth in front of the fort while the entire militia was sparring, so the battle began quickly. Five elves fell, and the other five got caught in cage traps. The militia is more or less unharmed, though a few civilians got wounded in minor places.
According to the civ screen, the dwarves export terror to the elves, and offer vengeance. Perhaps war has finally made its way to the gates of my fort, and the people will welcome it. Perhaps it's time to draft some more members into the militia.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 4, 2016 0:48:57 GMT -5
Candy vein starts two floors up where I found it, went down fifteen floors below where I found it, and so far there's no sign of the magma layer. The third cavern is no longer around at this depth, and furthermore exploring said cavern revealed a SECOND vein of candy.
Yeah-uh! Arming my militia with candy seems possible, but for now I got a ton of raw candy so mining will be halted until I need more.
Order of business now is to increase the fort's wealth. While I end up exporting massive amounts of wealth, doing so doesn't seem to count towards the current value of the fort, so I reckon that it's time to use up some of the resources I have into increasing the value of my fort.
The raw candy is tempting. As the raw ore is already high value, so having a mason craft statues from it will bring in tons of value easily. For the record, the raw stone of candy is several times higher in value than already smelted bars of platinum. I can also make a statue made from smelted candy, but considering that forging anything from candy takes up more bars than regular metal, it would be wise to make use of the raw candy instead should I choose to do it.
For now, though, I'll just make use of the bars of non-military metal I've stocked up. I always end up requesting them in caravans, but I never really use them. I'll do so now, giving every dwarf a platinum statue they can ogle at in their rooms. Maybe replace all bins with metal ones.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 4, 2016 8:26:03 GMT -5
Close call, and I mean real close call. Forgotten beast attack in the end of the 9th month. This time, the beast was made of clear glass, and its special attack is deadly dust. One of the deadliest special attacks possible, due to its range and possible effects.
Fortunately, I had a small ace up my sleeve. I had set up a cage trap filled with crundles and trolls at the entrance to the stairways up to the fort. Released all the small beasties when the forgotten beast came close, and the dust spread upon them. This gave enough time for my squad, who was stationed a few floors above, to swoop in and kill the best before it spewed dust again. With candy weapons, it was easy to slice it into pieces.
All the crundles are dead, though. Ah well. For butchering, they don't give much meat anyway. Either way, the dust effect was nasty.
A hauler dwarf was in the vicinity and caught the dust. So far, he got diagnosed with sensory nerve damage, numbness in pretty much the entire body. Oh, and he needed surgery because several body parts were rotting. Yeah. He was generating miasma.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 4, 2016 9:00:47 GMT -5
Seriously? Seriously.
As I just finished posting, another FB attacks. Poison bite, nothing serious to worry about. Third forgotten beast attack for the year of 99. The first 9 months of year 99, aside from the elf ambush during the start of the year, has been a lull. Start of month 10, and now it's month 11 day 13, and basically those forgotten beast attacks happened in that short span of time.
And you wanna know what tops it off? Just as I ordered the militia to go down and deal with the beast, and they're at the stairs at this point... a werebeast shows up!
One thing I gotta say is thank Armok for having more than one squad for moments like this.
However, before I deal with this mess, something real interesting happens. The werebeast is close to the unsealed animal fight club chamber, where I got a few animals chained up waiting for their moment to fight in animal fight club. There was also a dwarf next door hauling in some unicorn cartilage to the refuse stockpiles. Basically instead of heading for the fort entrance, the werebeast tries to go to the nearest target, and I manage to seal him in thanks to the quick efforts of a dwarf toward a lever. The gates closed, and the werebeast is sealed inside animal fight club. A few war dogs were sacrificed, but that's no big deal for me.
The werebeast has reverted into a human, and with that they lose their immunity to traps. ...so now I got a caged human, and when the next full moon comes... well, it'll be an interesting episode for animal fight club.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 4, 2016 14:00:45 GMT -5
I don't think the tree-huggers understand what ambushes are. Another new year, and at the exact same date, they appear at the same spot, which incidentally is just a short distance east of my fort entrance. They managed to do one kill, though; one of my dwarves' pet bunny. The bastards.
At the start of summer, at the same time the merchants showed up, another forgotten beast reared its ugly head. Giant, hairy slug with fleshy wings, and emits noxious secretions. Noxious was an understatement. Not wanting to risk my melee militia, I sent my marksdwarves first. The captain was first on scene, and he almost killed it in one shot (battle reports note that he did two shots before a third hit the beast's brain. Unfortunately, just after the first shot, a new recruit to the marksdwarves squad moves in a little too close...
At first, the recruit seemed fine. Then the symptoms showed up as he was going up back into the fort, in the form of miasma going out of him.
I looked at his health screen, and it was a doozy. Nearly every body part was swollen, blistered, and rotting at the same time.
First step was cleaning the patient, then surgery and removing rotting tissue, then finally setting casts and splints. Every part is also mangled beyond recognition.
Thankfully, I have a skilled medical team. It was a problem earlier on the fort because every damn migrant was someone in the medical field when I wanted skilled blacksmiths and smelters. Well, in any case, the medical dwarves got their time to shine to rescue the poor sod.
And so they did. The dwarf is covered in casts and splints, and who knows how much rotting tissue was shaved out of him (entire stay in the hospital was three months filled with surgery and setting up casts). Unfortunately, the noxious gas hit his eyelids as well... so he's a blind marksdwarf. In other words, useless in any sort of military duty.
Alas. He was very young; as in migrated to the fort as a child. Just a year or two after reaching adulthood, and nearly all his body melts off into a pile of rotting tissue. Oh well. He's now a hauler. One of the new haulers will replace him in the squad.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 4, 2016 14:26:21 GMT -5
In general, it seems best to have multiple small squads instead of stuffing all dwarves in big 10-dwarf squads. There's some micromanagement needed when it's time to attack, but there's less risk of all 10 getting killed because they rush in immediately.
Though, one benefit of having one big squad I suppose is that training can be done faster due to sparring and learning from demonstrations. Setting up the first squad with the first two members being permanent members, with new recruits joining the first squad until they get polished then sent off to form mini-squads of their own seem to be the most ideal choice.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 5, 2016 6:31:11 GMT -5
Year 100 is almost over. After the forgotten beast that blinded my recruit, three more came to the fort. Number two came just a day after number one, even. All three were inorganic beasts. One was made of water, the other salt, and the last one was made of rhodolite (a type of gem). First two were ridiculously easy; one was sliced in half by an axe, the other punched in half.
You'd think that a being made of a gem would be hard, but when you got masterwork steel weapons and some super sharp candy weapons, he was as laughable as the rest. In direct physical combat, my melee dwarves have nothing to fear so far. It's the ones that emit poison gas or shoot out webs that will be the real danger.
The wereskink I caught has died. On the other hand, he managed to infect three trolls, so I can carry out my infection project to other humanoids. Also, I thought for the longest time that the skink is a skunk spelled differently, but as it turns out the skink is a type of lizard. The more you know.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 5, 2016 7:46:15 GMT -5
Gas spewing forgotten beast defense measure has been built and tested successfully!
At the entrance of the first cavern layer, I increased the space of the room somewhat and set up all empty floor tiles with spike traps. Spike traps, compared to standard weapon traps, are triggered via lever, so trap avoiding creatures like forgotten beasts can't avoid it, so it's a matter of luring them in place. Also, each spike trap can fit up to ten spikes, and each one I set up has 9 steel and one candy each.
So, that room can be sealed by raising bridges. There's a cave crocodile chained inside as well. Forgotten beast homes in on that croc, and the bridges are raised and the spikes impale him. The cave croc as well, if it somehow manages to survive a forgotten beast. Since it's the only way to the fort, the hapless forgotten beast has no choice but to go through that and get trapped.
No need to set up similar rooms in cavern 2 and 3. It'll lead back to cavern 1 anyway. Also, just above cavern 1 is an artifact hatch. Artifact furniture can't be destroyed - though in general hatch covers can't be destroyed from below.
Still, due to dwarves being stupid one died anyway. My animal trainer, which was a pretty important job early on the fort, happened to stand under the bridge as it was getting lowered. In other words, splat. Don't need a trainer as much now, since all I really need are cave crocs and the ones being laid are tame now.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 5, 2016 12:12:12 GMT -5
Here be Cthulhu's lazy guide on how to populate a fort of humanoid creatures with the werebeast curse:
1. Build a 5x5 room. One way in via a raised bridge. Set up some cage traps past the bridge just in case. 2. In the room, dig a one-tile space where you can set a cage. 3. As for the 5x5 room itself, channel it down one z-level, and remove the ramps. On that 5x5 space make a retracting bridge. 4. On the room below the retracting bridge, place cages everywhere. Also dig a tunnel out, and line it with cage traps. Tunnel out should lead upstairs. 5. Place a hatch cover on the stairs up and out of the tunnel. Forbid use until infection process is finished.
Now that you have the setup done, it's time to do the infecting!
1. Catch a werebeast. Get lucky, or infect a dwarf or something. 2. Cage the werebeast before it transforms. Just avoid full moons when transporting the infected. 3. In the cage by the retracting bridge, stuff in your werebeast and other humanoid creatures. The more the merrier! ...though not too much that there won't be enough cage traps for them. 3.1 Humanoid creatures are ones that can be caught, but can't be butchered or tamed due to being sentient. Trolls, animal people, blind cave ogres and the like. 4. When you've caged in your creatures, seal the room via the raised bridge. Don't forget to rig the cage to a different lever. 5. Wait for the full moon. 6. When it's full moon and the infected transforms, pull the lever to open the cage. By this point chaos in the room will erupt. 7. Just a short time after, but not immediately after opening the cage, pull the lever that'll open the retracting bridge.
At this point, everyone will fall down to the cages below. Werebeasts are immune to cage traps, but the wounded creatures are and the fall will trigger the traps, caging them and preventing further werebeast attacks on them.
8. Don't open the hatch just yet! Wait for the curse to wear off so the infected ones transform back and get caged like the others.
In the next full moon, check the creatures you stuffed in the cage alongside the werebeasts. The ones bitten have a decent chance to have become werebeasts as well in the following full moon.
9. Cackle like an evil man. This is a plan that will *totally* not bite you in the ass!
In general, it's best to have a decent amount of creatures in the sealed room. Werebeasts can quickly kill creatures, so you need a little numbers to ensure that some survive and hopefully become murderous bastards.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 6, 2016 7:52:10 GMT -5
A thought occurs to me. One effect of the werebeast curse is that when the werebeast transforms back when the full moon subsides, is that all wounds get healed.
With that in mind, perhaps there might still be some future for my recruit who got blinded by the poison gas emitted by that one forgotten beast.
It'll be a matter of making sure said recruit survives the actual werebeast attack, but if he does, he will no longer be blind and can be deployed to combat forgotten beasts that will emit similar dangerous poisons, since he'll just recover on the next full moon.
If he doesn't survive the initial werebeast encounter... well, that's life.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 6, 2016 11:03:26 GMT -5
Success!
So, instead of giving the werebeast curse on the blind recruit, I went and chose one of my elite soldiers for this experiment - cause, you know, there's *totally* less downside when I end up killing a veteran dwarf and skilled warrior if this experiment fails.
Stationed the guy in the sealed room where I infect animal people; armored in all parts except the hands. Two infected trolls in cages. Full moon comes, wereskinks released. Being a veteran warrior, my dwarf actually badly injures one of the werebeasts, but he doesn't have enough stamina to finish off the werebeast, and there's still one uninjured one trying to kill him. Eventually, he's bit, and now I gotta act since the day isn't over and the werebeasts haven't transformed back to their original form.
I get a dwarf to pull the lever that retracts the bridge. The bitten dwarf is now unconscious, which is vital because dwarves won't trigger cage traps unless they're knocked out cold. All three fall down, and the dwarf gets caged, now protected from further attacks.
Still, he's not out of the woods yet. He's bleeding and the full moon isn't gone yet. After some waiting, the wereskinks transform back into trolls, and they get caged so it's safe to collect them and the injured dwarf.
Result? Sensory and motor nerve damage, major blood loss and he now needs to use a crutch.
Next month, I station the dwarf again in the cage room, and set up a werebeast and animal people to infect. The dwarf transforms! Going werebeast removes all the clothes a dwarf wears - but in some cases some fit... like the masterwork candy axe he wields as a soldier. Heck yeah.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 6, 2016 13:50:17 GMT -5
Update: further success. A forgotten beast with poisonous gas entered the fort's vicinity, and I sent in my lone werebeast curse infected dwarf after it. The guy can solo it, considering that he comes armed with a full set of candy armor (minus shield, chose steel because bashing attacks with a candy shield is useless due to how light it is) and a masterwork candy axe.
He got hit with boiling extract, but shows no sign of illness of any sort. Maybe the sickness takes a long time to show symptoms; the one that blinded the recruit started rotting his body after a short time. Whatever the boiling extract was, it doesn't do anything because a few weeks later on a full moon the werebeast soldier transforms and heals all wounds. Not that he had any from the fight. Masterwork candy blades can cut things with ridiculous ease. Furthermore, while most of the armor is removed during transformation, the weapon and shield stay on and the werebeast retains their skill with the weapons and shield. They also don't need food, drink or sleep.
Would like to infect the blind recruit. Having at least a two dwarf team as specialists against creatures that emit poison gas/dust can be valuable to the protection of the fort. I don't want to werebeast my entire military, since it'll be chaos if something attacks during a full moon. I also have to watch the date so I can quarantine the werebeast soldiers so that they won't attack civilians.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 7, 2016 7:22:28 GMT -5
So, apparently, there's a bug with werebeasts and dwarves. After the curse wears off, dwarves, even when they're infected, after seeing someone transform into a werebeast, will attack the dwarf after they revert back. Such is the case with the blind recruit. The first werebeast militia punched him in the head after their transformation, causing the skull to explode into gore. Whoops, heh heh.
Still, I am undaunted in having a werebeast militia. Two one-man squads this time, kept in separate sealed rooms during quarantine time to avoid that bug from happening again. Already had the perfect candidate, even.
Brush titan; blob made of water. Would have been an easy fight if not for the fact that it flies and shoots webs. One wood burner died, and the candidate was another axedwarf who got his hands mangled beyond recognition during the fight. One bit from a wereskink and one month of waiting and he was as good as new.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 7, 2016 10:18:09 GMT -5
Most recent forgotten beast was a giant spider made of amber with poison dust. It doesn't mention it, but since it's a spider it also shoots webs. So... nope. If it was made of flesh I may have considered sending a melee squad at it, but even with candy it can take a while to chop it down, and since it shoots out poison dust and webs, I opted to lure it in the spike room.
Took a while to kill it, as the steel spikes that hit it chipped only the surface at the start.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 7, 2016 11:13:31 GMT -5
Also, forgot to mention this, but got one artifact weapon. Sadly, it's made of platinum, because the dwarf who had the strange mood chose that over the steel bars lying close by him.
It's not a bad weapon. Platinum blunt weapons are excellent for bashing due to their material properties, and normally you can't use platinum for weapon making - usually you'd go with silver, though steel is also acceptable for maces and hammers. The main problem, I suppose, is that bashing weapons can crush bone, causing pain, which is kinda moot against forgotten beasts and werebeasts who don't feel any. Still, it's powerful enough to cause body parts to collapse, so there's still some upsides.
It's fun to watch my commander chasing around crundles. A small-ish underground animal. Comes in big packs, not a lot of meat or value, and a general nuisance. Any time the mace hits a crundle, whatever part hits it explodes into gore and launches the crundle a few tiles away. Wonderful.
If I see crundles loitering in the caverns I send a squad to exterminate them. So far, this season brought crundle packs one after the other. A total of 85 crundles killed during the winter. Not butchering any of them; disposing of them all via falling bridge.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 15, 2016 4:22:31 GMT -5
Laptop is currently being repaired, so my fort escapades are currently halted for now.
Borrowed my sister's laptop, and tried playing a game of DF on there. Latest version that supports the latest version of dfhack. That program is more or less an essential for me now. Like, I can play the game without it, but without the UI conveniences dfhack provides, such as the autolabor function to lessen micromanaging in the long run, is somewhat annoying.
The game can run, but right now I'm trying to figure out how to set the graphics back to the default ASCII-like graphics. The tileset looks real nice, and while on some games that let you choose between ASCII and tilesets, usually I'd go with the latter but for DF going with the default feels more right for me.
Until I figure that out, I'll just not play DF. Hopefully I can before my laptop gets fixed, so I can finally get a taste of the new features. I'll stick to the older version on my laptop, until the point where I end the life of the fort I had there.
Just looking at the wiki, the new version has giant bears and giant wolves, making a start at a temperate savage fort more appealing - though on the new versions there's also giant elephants and rhinos, making savage tropical biomes still more interesting for me.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 15, 2016 9:46:14 GMT -5
Here we go again! Borrowed laptop, new fort, with semi-latest version of the game, 11 in-game months in.
Biome is tropical forest with a bit of badlands; both savage zones. Neutral alignment on both zones as well. Very little soil, no aquifer, sand, shallow and deep metal. Rocks so far seem to be andesite (unremarkable), and very small clusters of realgar is found as well.
Realgar is just an ordinary stone, but somewhat unique thanks to its striking red color. Now, one of the really neat things about the new version is that you can finally designate what material be used in the workshop. So while I can tell my masons and stonecrafters that all the mundane stuff like pots be made from andesite, I can also tell them to only use realgar for blocks, to give my fort to go with an #AllRedEverything design. Not really. Andesite is still used for floor blocks and tables, while realgar blocks is used for workshop construction that can be made with it.
Not all workshops can be made with realgar, as the stone is both not firesafe and magmasafe. In real life realgar is also apparently toxic, though in the game dwarves won't give a crap if their drinks are stored in realgar.
As for ore... well, one thing I found out that iron ores only show up in shallow metal layers, and sadly the shallow metal I found is tetrahedrite. Might forge billion instead of copper and the chance for silver, since what I want is steel, and I'll go with the melting method for my steel.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 15, 2016 9:53:27 GMT -5
Also, set up a tavern, and peeps are now visiting. A dwarf even petitioned to join the fort as a soldier. I want non-dwarf races, so I denied the petition, though maybe I shouldn't have so I can focus less on picking fort-based dwarves to be drafted into the military.
Anyways, aside from that, musical instruments seem less viable as a trade good now, as they now require multiple parts to build.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 15, 2016 13:36:28 GMT -5
Majority of the visitors so far have been either dwarf or human. A couple of tree huggers, and one goblin dancer and a dingo woman poet.
Beefed up my military by a small bit by allowing two dwarf and two human mercs to join the military. They got weapons, but right now I'm in a slight pickle with a lack of bars for metal armor for all of them. Gotta remember that the humans need to be fitted with large armor as well.
For entertainment, I also allowed a human musician to join the fort.
Would really like an exotic animal person to join the fort. A tree hugger could even be ideal, considering that they won't age and all that.
Also, you can't change the jobs of visitors who join your fort. Musicians will forever be musicians, and soldiers will always be soldiers. They won't even do hauling jobs, so I gotta keep my fort balanced with actual migrants who'll do fort work.
Still, hiring soldiers is nice. They start off with decent combat skills, so less training required. In general, this should also make combat less of a risk. Losing experienced fighters will still be a blow, but at the very least there will be decently trained replacements.
Also, freaking 11 children in total.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 17, 2016 0:18:54 GMT -5
So, after about three years of peace, the goblins invade. Just 8 invaders, nothing grand. My militia, still one fort migrant and four mercenaries, are more than enough to handle it. Mercenaries are also permanent residents, but they can't do other jobs except the militia, by the way.
Anyways, I haven't gotten a big supply of steel yet. Got iron and pig iron, but can't turn them to steel yet since the fort doesn't have flux stone (or it does and I haven't dug deep enough; can't remember if the biome stated if the area had flux stone or not). Still, it does have tetrahedrite, and while most of that ore I turn into billon, I still smelt actual copper from it to give the militia some protection. The small steel supply I had I made into weapons, too.
So, militia meets invasion force and routes them. Just as they finish, the game announces that a goblin snatcher has been spotted... as well as one invader who managed to slip past the skirmish. Goblin snatchers kidnap children to indoctrinate them into the goblin way.
I had forgotten to seal the fort, so a little bit of chaos ensues. The invader manages to injure a dwarf and a visiting bard before the militia returns to kill him. The snatcher escapes... fortunately or unfortunately, he doesn't snatch one of the many children loitering in my fort. The invader is a crossbow user, and injures one dwarf and a visiting human bard.
It's been a couple of months since that time. The dwarf is walking around with a crutch, and the human bard, since he's just a visitor, didn't go to the fort hospital and died from infection.
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