| Just a few notes from a newish player. Posted: 06 Jan 2021 02:37 AM PST Finally "finished" my first fort, Scarmetal, from start to becoming Mountainhome and finally satisfying the King's needs, figured it'd be worth jotting down a few takeaways from my experience. Nothing special embarkwise, light aquifer / forest and nothing really shocking in the surrounding area. Gray languars were about the worst the place offered. Played the fort for a lil' under 5 years, so not too much experience with later game issues but still had fun regardless. - My Outpost Liason was a goblin baron consort of Sorrowhate, which I can only assume was a goblin civ / location in the world. I didn't even know that could happen.
- I always took "FPS death" to not be serious but man, it's no joke. Once my population started going past 120 it got a little slower, but once the king's entourage pushed it up to 180 it gradually just became unplayable alongside the eccentricities that came with that population. It pretty much forced me to retire since a new start seemed much more fun by comparison.
- Gather / pick fruit zones were pretty helpful in the beginning while I was still trying to figure out farms, but as the game went on aboveground gathering seemed to become more a hassle than a benefit. Idiots were always getting caught in trees & needing to be rescued, gatherers always seemed to be in a bad spot when an ambush or siege happened, and as my plump helmet industry got chugging my fruit stocks just seemed less impactful because they were so far from the fortress heart and terribly inefficient due to travel time. Amazing source of seeds though, and maybe the variety helped in a way I just didn't really notice.
- Farming was something that just hadn't clicked before on early forts, but once I got the handle of it things became so much easier. Honestly might be something worth a screencap and a breakdown since I feel it's a lot of information and the wiki, much like the game, has a bit of a penchant for the mechanics over accessibility. All things considered, farm plots were probably the most important thing for my fort's success.
- Seed production was a major issue early on for my crops, even when I was avoiding common mistakes like cooking plump helmets. Smaller fields may have helped here, and if I had another chance I'd definitely try to fully optimize a small farm instead of making large, mostly underutilized fields. Had a hell of a time with cloth production too until I realized you have to process things like pigtail / rope reed at a farmer's workshop to get the seeds back.
- Pigtail, rope reed (or surface equivalent in other biomes), and plump helmets honestly seem like the go-tos for crops; cave wheat seemed pretty subpar with all the processing and everything else was difficult to get in sizable amounts. Wasted a lot of time setting up varied seasonal fields when pigtail ended up being the only really notable seasonal crop I bothered with. If aboveground crops are available for future embarks, I'd probably just channel out an area and floor it up for a secure surface farm and just grow the local scavenged plants instead of messing with the other subterranean stuff. Considering how some of that stuff grows wild underground as well, I wonder if digging out a large subsurface room in the dirt is a common way of getting plump helmets without risky cavern expeditions.
- Potash seemed like such a waste since the extra production just felt excessive and a waste of wood / labor. Definitely would apply it for the first few harvests just to get seed numbers to a good level, but after that a good farmer should result in all the plants needed.
- Buckets are surprisingly effective for water transportation. It took a season or two to fill up the half-dozen tiles I used for my well, but the water in there was enough for my hospital to run for years (though, near the end, it was admittedly starting to get low). All the work I spent on building elaborate aquifer systems for water reservoirs and to muddy larger farm plots seemed like a waste, all things considered. Next time I'll just designate a few ponds and drain an aboveground water source or two.
- Soap efficiency is ridiculous, hardly went through it throughout my years. Made nineteen bars at the beginning and I swear, my hospital didn't even go through a full bar by the end of it despite cleaning dozens of wounds.
- Goblinite's value is honestly underrated. My map only had silver so armor was out of the question, putting the fort in a pretty dicey situation. My first military force, wielding only silver hammers and a devil-may-care attitude, was absolutely decimated by an early major goblin siege of 50 invaders, but managed to do enough damage to send the survivors fleeing. The next batch of recruits, garbed in looted armor, ended up faring far better for all other engagements over the years.
- Can definitely understand the value of efficient corpse disposal, battlefield cleanup nearly killed my fort after a single battle because someone would find a dead rat, bring it to the refuse / corpse pile, and immediately take a mental plunge from seeing tons of goblin and troll corpses and being caught in the stink. Everything started to improve only after I made a small shaft with a dump zone to chuck everything down, and even then they took their sweet time to do even that.
- It felt like the fortress' efficiency started to nosedive as the population increased. I had a dwarf drained of blood in the middle of a hallway and everyone was absolutely freaked out, but none of the little twerps decided to, you know, haul the guy away so he wouldn't traumatize everyone. So many corpses ended up just being left around near the end, I swear...
- Speaking of vampires, lacking the "Euphoric due to inebriation" thought seems the best indicator from personal experience. The wiki mentions food / sleep / drink and the like, but doesn't mention that euphoric is both easy to find when sweeping dozens and dozens of dwarves due to the unique green 'euphoric' and omnipresent among the population. Food / sleep thoughts vary and are much less consistent. The leader of my military being the culprit was certainly a twist, though.
- Starting the fort, I expected the clothing industry to give me the most trouble, but honestly it ended up being butchering and tanning that the was the biggest pain. I feel like a lot of the time someone would kill something, bring it in to the stockpile, and some part of it, like the skin, would just rot. Maybe butchering some of my animals would've made it better, but I didn't really feel like a leather industry really offered me much, compared to how nice clothing is for keeping people in a good mood.
- I noticed a lot of dwarves not making acquisitions despite my craftsdwarves pumping out masterpieces like crazy. I wonder, does moving crafts in a container reduce the likelihood of dwarves taking them because of compressing all the haul jobs to moving a single bin?
- Picking a few dwarves to follow made the fort a bit more alive and a lot more fun. I noticed a weaponsmith constantly going to the mayor for meetings and crying on her, and that the guy's mood wasn't looking too good. Bit of a gut punch to realize that the dwarf was the husband of the mayor, and was depressed because his only daughter died. Turns out, she was in the military and was one of the fifteen that fell in the first siege the fortress had. They eventually had a second kid, a son, and that kinda shook him out of his rut that I hadn't been able to get him out of with job changes alone. He ended up being my best weaver, surprisingly enough.
- One time, I switched everyone to an emergency burrow underground during a siege . A few minutes later, 'there is nothing to catch in the central swamp' popped up on my screen. I immediately zoomed in on the announcement since I was scared a dwarf was stuck outside somehow and about to be killed via splinters by a couple elves, but to my surprise the guy was inside. He was fishing in my hospital's well water.
- A weird occurrence near the end of the fort: a human force sieged my base, and as usual I just set my squads to go on a killing spree on all the listed units. Strangely enough though, about midway through the battle I realized an absolute bloodbath in one of the temples. From as far as I could tell, some of the monster hunters decided to just go renegade and were put down by those around them / my squads. Was it possible that killing the human civ attackers caused some of the lord / lady monster hunters and others belonging to that civ to treat it like a small scale civil war? I was honestly worried the fort would go full chaos, but only a few ended up being killed and no long-term effects happened.
- Speaking of monster hunters and other petitioners, total waste? They never did anything but were treated like additional population so I had goblins take an interest in me much faster than I would've liked. A lot of them had amazing gear, though, surprising amount of artifacts. I wonder if them dying negatively impacts the chance of migrants, because if not I feel like turning a bunch of tavern beds into a drowning trap could be really lucrative. Bard goes in, loot comes out.
Anyway that's pretty much all I have to say. Thanks for readin'. submitted by /u/Spazgrim [link] [comments] |
| A gang os keas is stealing my fortress Posted: 05 Jan 2021 06:44 PM PST |
| A simple fort layout and an overcomplicated welcoming device Posted: 06 Jan 2021 08:39 AM PST It took me quite a few iterations until I was happy with the aesthetics and functionality, maybe someone else finds something useful here. Blueprint The rectangular chamber next to the entrance will contain my industry. I like this open, with a few gratuitous minecart tracks. The residential area reflects my dislike of corridors, the t-square fractal allows me to do away with them and gives me useful rooms with recesses for unique zones. 3-way doors are a pain to build (repeated accessibility complaints) but allow for less wasted space. Now to the colourful maze in the northwest: If the 1x3 drawbridge is closed, unwelcome guests have to path through the whole thing. Connection via diagonals only, because some may smell bad. The bridge right at the entrance controls whether they pass over cage traps or not. The magma misters consist of N/S ramp tracks in the channels filled with 6/7 magma, surrounded by fortifications except at the ends. Iron or nickel minecarts will jump from one ditch into the other and create magma mist in the process, a central floodgate provides a shutoff. Hopefully, this disposes of invaders cleanly. If not... well, they aren't quite through yet. The uncovered down stairs enable drainage from the drowning maze. When the drawbridges raise, they block the exits and cease to cover the inlets, routed from a reservoir above through the central tile. They are triggered by a pressure plate in addition to a lever. The minecart loop relies on impulse ramps to spin multiple carts (5+) clockwise, contrary to expected direction of invader travel. More impulse ramps allow feeding carts safely, and automatically redirect ones that would be thrown out somehow. Retracting bridges on the corners allow a shutoff. From my experience, this system recovers gracefully from crashes and jams, at least when all minecarts have the same weight. There's another magma mister in the middle, against my better judgement: it's too close to water really, and while minecarts haven't been tossed through fortifications (all 3 tiles to the north and south are solid walls here, lest our bridges throw carts where they don't belong), I'm not sure it's safe. A final drawbridge allows walling ourselves in entirely, or atom smashing junk/stragglers. submitted by /u/Iranon79 [link] [comments] |
| I unretired my fortress and all stockpiles are covered in ice Posted: 05 Jan 2021 01:06 PM PST |
| Forgotten beast composed of steam is furious but does 0 damage Posted: 06 Jan 2021 11:56 AM PST |
| I hear their quite painful to listen to Posted: 06 Jan 2021 05:07 AM PST |
| df therapist with steam version Posted: 06 Jan 2021 08:56 AM PST does anyone know if you'll be able to use DT with the steam version or will it (hopefully) have an integrated more accessible tool for job management? i honestly cant imagine playing DF without the therapist. edit: Typo submitted by /u/MrMelonMonkey [link] [comments] |
| Pit traps and other Dungeons and dragons style traps Posted: 06 Jan 2021 12:24 PM PST hi to all the "bearded basterds"! I have a few questions but i would also love to hear your ideas for ways to implement D&D traps in DF. 1- how many Z lvls a pit need to be to ensure death by falling? (to to dstroy/mangle even undead.) 2- Would it be more "deadly" by having something like 2 z levels of water ? 3- Is there some way to create a "gas chamber trap" ? (only one i can think is to capture the right kind of ancient beast) 4- I would love to hear your ideas for "dungeon like" traps too. thanks! submitted by /u/RamonDozol [link] [comments] |
| FYI: Skeeya trojan was found in DwarfMockup (probably false positive) Posted: 06 Jan 2021 01:07 AM PST |
| While messing with some modded files i generated a world that looks like a goblin with a crown Posted: 05 Jan 2021 12:39 PM PST |
| Dwarf Fortress bei Steam Posted: 06 Jan 2021 06:35 AM PST |
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