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Just wait til the real "fun" begins....

Read this for some good entertainment: http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/

Actually I kinda like having workers instead of doing the mining myself. I'm more of a construction type person, IE, building design, aesthetics, etc.


edit: Have you read Bronzemurder?


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lol, I just realized...

I forgot to bring an axe with me. Fun!

But I can still survive until the trader comes at least. All I can do is expand until the trader comes and brings me some wood or fuel, heh.

Melissia wrote:lol, I just realized...

I forgot to bring an axe with me. Fun!

But I can still survive until the trader comes at least. All I can do is expand until the trader comes and brings me some wood or fuel, heh.

Relying on the trader? That's not very dwarfy!

Ok, you've got a pick, right? In that case, dig until you find some copper (or silver or one of the iron ores). Then, build a smelter, wood furnace, and blacksmith from various stone and your anvil (you brought an anvil, right?). Now, deconstruct your wagon (select it like a building using q, then hit x to deconstruct it) which will yield a 2 (maybe 3?) wood. Turn two of those into coal at the wood furnace. Use one coal in the smelter to turn one of the ores into a bar. Then, use the other coal and the metal bar at the blacksmith to make an axe!


Or, if you feel like taking advantage of a bug, wooden training axes currently chop down trees. So, deconstruct the starting wagon and use one of those wood at a Carpenter's Workshop to make a Wooden Training Axe.


(One of my favorite challenges is surviving with minimal embark supplies. All you need is an anvil and a single copper nugget and you can produce everything you'll ever need.)

Actually I only realized I forgot to make/bring an axe when I had run out of wood and noticed they weren't chopping trees.

Melissia wrote:Actually I only realized I forgot to make/bring an axe when I had run out of wood and noticed they weren't chopping trees.

Have you happened to already have made a charcoal? If so, you can still make an axe (mine until you find coal or ignite for the 2nd fuel needed to forge the axe). If not, you'll have to wait.

I have to wait.

BUT! I got a shipment of four (relatively useless in my situation) migrants! So now I have them all smoothing the floors in my residential level.

They will have to work for their food and booze.

And I now have quite a few floors with smoothed walls and floors. Yay for increased property values?

Melissia wrote:I have to wait.

BUT! I got a shipment of four (relatively useless in my situation) migrants! So now I have them all smoothing the floors in my residential level.

They will have to work for their food and booze.

And I now have quite a few floors with smoothed walls and floors. Yay for increased property values?

You can give them new professions. Do you have someone manufacturing trinkets to trade to the elves? Enough furniture builders? A local militia?

Yeah, I had lots of cut jewels to trade off for wood. But it was a dwarven caravan rather than elven.


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I'm now experimenting with windmills to try to get a milling stone running. Let's hope I can figure this out without letting goblins in.

I'm planning out an underground forest.

Basically like this:

EEEEEEEEEERRRR EEEEEEEEEERRRR EEUUUUUEEERRRR EEUUUUUEERRRRR EEUUUUUCCFRRRR EEUUUUUEEERRRR EEUUUUUEEERRRR EEECEEEEEERRRR EEECEEEEEERRRR EEVVVVEEEERRRR

IE, essentially build two underground areas, and build a set of canals down into the first, the last block being the final barrier (F) to the river (R). The river flows in, floods the underground forest area (U). I then put a floodgate (where F is) to block the water from continuing to flow in. Then I complete the second canal to the reservoir (V) where my well will draw water from, which will be larger than the underground area so it drains entirely, leaving a muddy floor for trees to grow from.

I dunno how possible it is to do this without drowning a dwarf though.



For reference, the purpose behind this is to let my dwarfs gather wood without risking being attacked by gobbos.

Melissia wrote:
IE, essentially build tw underground area, and build a set of canals down into the first, the last one being the final barrier (F) to the river (R). The river flows in, floods the underground forest area (U). I then put a floodgate (where F is) to block the water from continuing to flow in. Then I complete the second canal to the reservoire (V) where my well will draw water from, which will be larger than the underground area so it drains entirely, leaving a muddy floor for trees to grow from.

I dunno how possible it is to do this without drowning a dwarf though.

I'd consider making the tree farm area MUCH larger. Trees randomly start growing and take a year to mature, so with only 20 grow spots, you won't be getting many.

To do that safely, you'll need to consider water pressure. If you're digging out significantly below the river, the water will flow very fast. Have an emergency shutoff and drainage ready.

To prevent drowning a dwarf, I'd suggest you move the floodgate back a single tile, so you can install it before opening up yourself to the river. Then, you can mine out the last location (if pressure is minimal), or you can make a tunnel on the level above and channel out that last tile from above. This lets you keep that floodgate closed. But, be careful, water can still flow upwards if it's under pressure.

I like to install all of my plumbing systems with plenty of floodgates in them, and then finally break the seal for water to access it at the surface level, so pressure is minimal. I also like to instal automatic shutoffs and drainage into the system, just in case I miscalculated the pressure and Urist McLeverPuller decides he needs some more booze before he can throw the switch to prevent all his friends and family from ending up in a watery grave.

Ah, good point. My idea was to have the floodgate be basically a hole in the wall, so that when closed it'll block all outsiders from getting in. I would choose to only use the top layer of the river (I'll check how deep it is in a bit) to prevent overpressurization?



edit: Oh yay, I found a serene area that fits most of my requirements (lacking only clay and having some soil but not deep soil). I'm gonna explore, perhaps I can find some sunberries for trading

Melissia wrote:Ah, good point. My idea was to have the floodgate be basically a hole in the wall, so that when closed it'll block all outsiders from getting in. I would choose to only use the top layer of the river (I'll check how deep it is in a bit) to prevent overpressurization?

Water pressure in DF is actually really complex and modeled pretty accurately. It retains pressure around bends, so if left unchecked, it will fill to the same level as its source. The rate at which it fills is highly dependent on how much water in the source is above the tile it's flowing into.

For example, if you pierce the ocean from underneath, it will fill your entire fort in only a few frames. But, if you pierce a river or stream on the same level as it, the flow will be slow enough you can react to it.

There is currently a bug with waterfalls, so watch out if you have them. The game interprets the source of the water to be the highest level of the waterfall, so you can get some unexpected results if you use water downstream from a waterfall.

Melissia wrote:edit: Oh yay, I found a serene area that fits most of my requirements (lacking only clay and having some soil but not deep soil). I'm gonna explore, perhaps I can find some sunberries for trading

Just beware the unicorns!

Edit: Also, if you feel like micromanaging (or setting up the proper permissions and stockpiles), Feather Trees are pretty amazing for things like Barrels. They're super light, so your dwarves can haul around objects made from Feather Trees at basically no impact on their speed.

Well, I intended to have the first floodgate at the SIDE of the river, not the bottom.


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Why is it that on a good-aligned, low-savagery area the first thing that happens to me is I get attacked by a remarkably aggressive vulture?

Melissia wrote:Well, I intended to have the first floodgate at the SIDE of the river, not the bottom.


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Why is it that on a good-aligned, low-savagery area the first thing that happens to me is I get attacked by a remarkably aggressive vulture?

A philosopher once said "Life's a b*tch and then you die"
This is remakably true.

Okay, vulture's dead, my carpenter's got a few bruises. Yay?

Now to strike the dirt! Aaand I find clay despite it saying there wasn't any, odd.

Melissia wrote:Well, I intended to have the first floodgate at the SIDE of the river, not the bottom.

Excellent! That means you should have plenty of time to react to any unforeseen issues.

Melissia wrote:Why is it that on a good-aligned, low-savagery area the first thing that happens to me is I get attacked by a remarkably aggressive vulture?

Vultures can appear in Tropical Grassland, Tropical Savanna, or any Desert. They're not dependant on being good/neutral/evil or benign/neutral/savage. Plus, they're pretty weak. Your dwarves may run from them, and they may steal your food. But, even a single, unarmed dwarf should be able to fight one off if need be.

They're more a nuisance than an actual threat.

Well, it was a nuisance. Now it's the first item in my new fort's refuse pile.


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I've leanred something important.

When you want a specific place dug first, you DON'T queue up lots of other dig sits after it. They don't do things in order, they do them at an incredibly random whim.

My three diggers switched randomly between four levels of digging and didn't get any but half of one room of the first level of digging done, the first level being the one I wanted done first lol.


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I was pondering starting a game with an Aquifer and utilizing the aquifer for power (let water flow from one level of aquifer, re-route it into another level with pumps and using waterwheels to get power). How difficult do you think this is?

Yeah, when it comes to digging don't designate large areas unless you either have a lot of miners or aren't terribly concerned when they get the job done.

For water control I tend to go to a bit of an extreme:



The orange boxes with X's are flood gates. The G are grates. L's are levers for actuating the flood gates. D are doors. I dig out everything and get everything hooked up except for that last single tile separating me from the river. Then I open the flood gate, dig it out, and my miner runs like hell out the doors as the system goes in service. I've tweaked a few things here and there based on fort design but it gets my cisterns filled. The extra floodgates to no where are for expansion later.

How far away should I put my residences to make sure there's no noise pollution? I'm not sure how noise works...

Melissia wrote:How far away should I put my residences to make sure there's no noise pollution? I'm not sure how noise works...

Noise travels in 3D and creates a cube, centered around the object creating noise. Workshops currently do NOT create noise, but this is assumed to be changed in future releases.

The main sources of noise you need to worry about:

1) Eating!!! It creates noise 1 tile away (meaning a 3x3x3 cube around the eating dwarf) and happens pretty frequently. So, don't put a bedroom directly above or beneath your dining room.

2) Engraving (3 tiles), mining (8 tiles), wood cutting (8 tiles). These can last quite a while, so they can be somewhat problematic. If you need to do any of these around your bedrooms, do them in quick spurts. Your dwarves can handle getting woken up every once in a while, but don't make it too frequent.

3) Placing (or removing) buildings (16 tiles!!!). This can be a major problem if you aren't aware of it. Placing a building can be anything from a workshop to a chair. As your bedrooms expand, you'll be forced to place a ton of new buildings that will make noise across almost all of your existing bedrooms. So, when doing this, I make sure to create all the beds, doors, chests, etc that will go into the new bedrooms. Then, I turn on everyone's furniture hauling, stop any unnecessary work, and create a huge wave of placing everything.

4) Siege Engines (16 tiles), or Water Wheels (3 tiles). These are near constant noise creators (well, Siege Engines only if you are training a dwarf on it), so make sure these are far enough away from the bedrooms.

5) Combat (16 tiles). This is rather sporadic, and when you're in an extended combat, your dwarves will either be fighting or locked away in the panic room, so I don't worry at all about combat noise. But, if you build a colosseum and use it consistantly, it needs to be far enough away from the bedrooms.

Hm. My residential level is seven floors below any other level, and a cheap dormitory is below that. I should have stuck them off to the side instead apparently...

edit: huh. How do you remove down stairs? Pave over them with floors? I don't want a flying creature to come up from the cave I just discovered into my dormitories.

Down stairs are really just a hole in the floor. Build a piece of floor over it and you'll close them off.

Aaand now it's not letting me build an up stair to get back up. lol, my best mining dwarf is now shut off from the rest of dwarf society.

Guess I'll have to build around and get a new way up.

Another helpless victim dragged by DF. Can't wait to hear stories about undead fish killing dwarves, lava defensive contraptions gone wrong, unkillable monsters slayed beacause of game bugs or farmers going berserk because snailman was looking at them.

Melissia wrote:Aaand now it's not letting me build an up stair to get back up. lol, my best mining dwarf is now shut off from the rest of dwarf society.

Guess I'll have to build around and get a new way up.

Are you trying to construct a stair? Because he needs a piece of stone to build a stair from. Or are you trying to dig a stair?

No, it showed me a red X when I tried to build a ramp or up stair, and it simply didn't place the designation for an up stair when digging.


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Macok wrote:Another helpless victim dragged by DF. Can't wait to hear stories about undead fish killing dwarves, lava defensive contraptions gone wrong, unkillable monsters slayed beacause of game bugs or farmers going berserk because snailman was looking at them.

None of that's happened yet, but I HAVE doomed a few fortresses to starvation or insanity through sobriety so far because of some basic mistakes.

Everyone does that when you start.

Yeah, I imagine. There's a lot t o remember.

I need to remember to take along at least one cat next time, for example. It'll help keep vermin down and thus keep my workers happier.

Melissia wrote:Yeah, I imagine. There's a lot t o remember.

I need to remember to take along at least one cat next time, for example. It'll help keep vermin down and thus keep my workers happier.

Immigrants sometimes arrive with animals, and you can trade for them as well. So, you should be able to eventually get a cat. And, eventually, a breeding pair.

Just be sure to get a butcher up and running to keep the cat population in check. Unlike other animals, cats choose to become a pet, rather than you designating them as pets. And, you can't butcher pets. So, 2 cats can quickly become 200 unkillable cats.

Eventually leading to the aformentioned thermonuclear catsplosion?

http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/movie-518-nuclearcatsplosion