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[Merendel]

He did also have a very early titan running around webbing and killing everything that walked for quite awhile taking out those precious early migrant waves.

I think I skiped a few of the early episodes so that would explain it.   I do tend to build a couple tunnles out to the corners of the map to open and close fairly early on to try and get those waves in but that wouldnt save them from a weber that got close to the spawn.  Generaly if there's only a few things attacking they go after one target and chace for a while and then the others sneak in while the enemy is busy.

My current fort just had an event that has me feeling awful.   I had a migrant armorsmith go into a mood.  Well I didnt have an anvil from the remains of the first caravan (didnt get wagons due to closed gate and the one mule that died didnt carry one)  As it was geting close to the dwarven caravan I held out hopeing I'd be able to get an anvil quick and build him a forge.  sadly he whent nuts about 1 day after the caravan arived and got himself cought in a cage trap.   Well I didnt realize that if a dwarf dies in the trap and reanimates they pop out of the cage so he pops out and starts runing around.  No problem send my 1 squad to go in and beat him back to death so he can go into the garbage chute.  Now here's the awful thing... he was the husband of my malita commander, who was the first one on sceen and got to beat him to death...er redeath.
Vabok Odlorbam has been miserable lately.  She has complained about the draft lately.  she has lost a spouse to tragedy lately.  she slept without a proper room recently. she has been attacked by own dead husband lately.  She had a pretty decent drink lately.
I think I'm going to have to lock her in a room with some food and booze and see if she calms down.

On the bright side the caravan got in with its wagons and was carrying a bonanza.  I've now got a full larder, a supply of all the seeds, 3 anvils, enough wood to provide sufficent beds for everybody and breeding pairs of most of the domestic birds... eggs here I come.  I even ran accross a magma tube in the first cavern so I've got a temporary setup down there for forges, smelters and glass furnaces (sand on the map) till I can get the magma safe materials to transport some up to near the surface.

I do have 46 dwarves and 13 children but the surface is aproching critical mass.  probably will get at best half the next migrants and none of the next or the caravan after.

[WanderingKid]

He did also have a very early titan running around webbing and killing everything that walked for quite awhile taking out those precious early migrant waves.

I think I skiped a few of the early episodes so that would explain it.   I do tend to build a couple tunnles out to the corners of the map to open and close fairly early on to try and get those waves in but that wouldnt save them from a weber that got close to the spawn.  Generaly if there's only a few things attacking they go after one target and chace for a while and then the others sneak in while the enemy is busy.

Yeah, webber caught the majority of the first wave (I saved *2*) and that was it from there.  No way to recover any more.

[Merendel]

I've found that often times if I'm quick about doing it I can contain a zombie outbreak to an extent.  a long tunnle with a remote way to seal it at both ends.  have one end open into your fortress the other to the outside.  the dead migrants tend to want to get into the fort to eat your dwarven brains so they'll run into the hallway.  just before they reach the barier to the inside seal both ends and hope you traped enough of them in.  Its really easy with 2 z lvls to work with because you can go down then back up and use a hatch cover for the inside, forbid it just before the zombie reaches it, no need to wait for a dwarf to pull a lever.   safer to use a bridge on the far side.  very short time to setup expecialy if your diging through soil layers.

I also try to setup entry tunnles that go off to near the 4 corners of the embark.  agian use 2 zlvls and hatch covers so you can selectively open and close access remotely and instantly. when migrants arive unforbid the entry nearest them if the bulk of zombies are not too close to it.  some will run in, some will get chased by zombies leting others get in.  if a zombie manages to enter the tunnle seal it befor it reaches the hatch and open another one.  you can also preemptively try to herd the zombies befor the migrant waves arive.  open one corner, close it before they get in, open another corner to bunch the zombies up on one side of the map and pray the migrants dont come out right there.  you still eventualy reach a point where containment and zombie baiting are not an option but you can stretch that point out into year two or early year 3.

Oh no
The WereCamel Rovod Sibrekotost has come!  A large camel twisted into humanoid form.  it is crazed for blood and flesh.  its eyes glow green.  its cinnamon hair is patchy.  now you will know why you fear the night.

he ran in killed most of the surface undead, detransformed and then left... oooooh scarry.

[WanderingKid]

I've found that often times if I'm quick about doing it I can contain a zombie outbreak to an extent.  a long tunnle with a remote way to seal it at both ends.  have one end open into your fortress the other to the outside.  the dead migrants tend to want to get into the fort to eat your dwarven brains so they'll run into the hallway.

Never had the chance in the early time, was too busy trying to survive and get the aquifer pierced.  Once I had rock... too late.  *shrugs*  I may just not be efficient enough.  If you get the chance, can you check out Furnace 1&2 and see if you have any recommendations?

Oh no
The WereCamel Rovod Sibrekotost has come!  A large camel twisted into humanoid form.  it is crazed for blood and flesh.  its eyes glow green.  its cinnamon hair is patchy.  now you will know why you fear the night.

he ran in killed most of the surface undead, detransformed and then left... oooooh scarry.

LOL.  I already fear the crap out of the day, why should the night be any different? 


On a side note, something interesting happened so I'm setting up FC 12.  However, I'm looking for recommendations.  What do YOU think I should drop on the heads of corpses under 10 levels of magma to kill their asses off so I can build some frickin' grates to block off exploding body parts?

Also, daaaamn goblin heads are NASTY little things.  Thing killed off two kids.  I really need to daycare the children.  They don't have armor and the parents are too stupid too leave them in the burrow.   

[Hans Lemurson]

Back from a vacation, and I see you've made some AWESOME progress on that zombie-grinder!  I am impressed by your knowledge if minecart operations.  It's a pity you can only have one "torpedo" in play at a time, but it seems to be sufficient.

When I butcher animals in an evil biome, I generally have a butcher and tanner right next to each other so that the skin can be dealt with productively.  If the butcher is also a tanner, he will usually be able to grab the skin immediately after butchering and start turning it into leather.

Also useful is arming various civilian dwarves with crossbows so that they won't be helpless in case of a zombie outbreak.  One well placed bolt usually takes down a corpse.  If you set up some fortified balconies, you might be able to get a crossbowdwarf to dispatch the burning zombies in the trench. 

For the zombies deep in magma, you could do worse than simply dropping stuff on them.  Boulders are plentiful and should be able to kill a head.  Magma-unsafe items are preferable since they will clean up their own mess.  The biggest difficulty (as you've had painful experience with) might simply be making sure your haulers can dump items without freaking out from seeing a zombie.  I'm sure there's a dwarven engineering solution to this.  If not, you can see if crossbowdwarves can fire over the rim of a pit.

(...Unless of course you're doing a "no crossbows" challenge in protest of their unholy strength.)

[WanderingKid]

Back from a vacation, and I see you've made some AWESOME progress on that zombie-grinder!  I am impressed by your knowledge if minecart operations.  It's a pity you can only have one "torpedo" in play at a time, but it seems to be sufficient.

So far, so good.  Welcome back!  Hopefully you had an enjoyable time.

When I butcher animals in an evil biome, I generally have a butcher and tanner right next to each other so that the skin can be dealt with productively.  If the butcher is also a tanner, he will usually be able to grab the skin immediately after butchering and start turning it into leather.

Yup, it's just a timing thing of when the skin will come back to life.  So far I'm 1/2 on dog skin staying dead until the tanning is complete.

Also useful is arming various civilian dwarves with crossbows so that they won't be helpless in case of a zombie outbreak.  One well placed bolt usually takes down a corpse.  If you set up some fortified balconies, you might be able to get a crossbowdwarf to dispatch the burning zombies in the trench. 

I've gone with iron maces and (mostly) masterwork armor on all the starting 7.  Only the miner and the woodcutter aren't fully geared.  Due to the problems with bolts on occassion and me not having a cheap alternative to tin/iron bolts, I went with melee.  Eventually we'll get marksdwarves too.

For the zombies deep in magma, you could do worse than simply dropping stuff on them.  Boulders are plentiful and should be able to kill a head.  Magma-unsafe items are preferable since they will clean up their own mess.  The biggest difficulty (as you've had painful experience with) might simply be making sure your haulers can dump items without freaking out from seeing a zombie.  I'm sure there's a dwarven engineering solution to this.  If not, you can see if crossbowdwarves can fire over the rim of a pit.

(...Unless of course you're doing a "no crossbows" challenge in protest of their unholy strength.)

Nope, I love me some marksdwarves.     I've taken to dropping green glass blocks on their head.  Infinite ammo supply, worked like a charm.

[Hans Lemurson]

I've gone with iron maces and (mostly) masterwork armor on all the starting 7.  Only the miner and the woodcutter aren't fully geared.  Due to the problems with bolts on occassion and me not having a cheap alternative to tin/iron bolts, I went with melee.  Eventually we'll get marksdwarves too.

Magnetite is practically a layer-stone, and magma gives you infinite fuel.  What could possibly be cheaper than iron bolts?  Anyways, your dwarves have protection and that's what's important.

Nope, I love me some marksdwarves.     I've taken to dropping green glass blocks on their head.  Infinite ammo supply, worked like a charm.

But...but...green glass blocks won't melt in magma!!!  You'll have items lying around which cannot be gotten rid of!  THE HORROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Then again iron bolts wouldn't melt either...)

I've found that I was able to train my crossbowdwarves up to an acceptable level with a normal "Train Minimum 10" training order at a barracks without the need to spend ammo on archery targets.  Then again, the captain of that squad was a master hunter, so that might have helped with teaching.

[Merendel]

I've gone with iron maces and (mostly) masterwork armor on all the starting 7.  Only the miner and the woodcutter aren't fully geared.  Due to the problems with bolts on occassion and me not having a cheap alternative to tin/iron bolts, I went with melee.  Eventually we'll get marksdwarves too.

Magnetite is practically a layer-stone, and magma gives you infinite fuel.  What could possibly be cheaper than iron bolts?  Anyways, your dwarves have protection and that's what's important.

you'd be surprised of my last 5 embarks only my most recent actualy had magnetite.  Of the remaining 4 one had no weapons grade materials aside from candy, 1 only had hemitite mixed in with the aquifer(that was a pain to extract) although plentiful Tetrahedrite down lower.  the last 2 had no iron baring stone although they had copper and tin aplenty so bronze was my metal of choice.

I'll try to look at the early episodes later WK.  dont have time right now.  either way my method of isolating things wouldnt work till you had access to sufficent stone to at least make a number of floor hatches and preferably a bridge or two so if the aquifer pierce took too long you could have some trouble.   Things do reach a point where there are just too many to easily trap and contain or distract without building excessive numbers of tunnles to trap the undead in.  if your already at that point you may as well just build a grinder of some sort to wipe the things out.

As for killing zombies in the botom of the pit really any old junk will do.  I've had the zombies in my disposal pit killed off by throwing the knocked out teeth from various brawler fights down the chute.  I tend to throw various bolders down there if I actualy want to kill them on perpous.  Clay works great if your map has some, ice would probably survive long enough to kill before the magma melts it.  Baring that any odd item or stone you want to throw down there works.  The only thing with useing magma safe stuff is you may want to build in a way to get the stuff out later.

you know I just thought of an ingenious way to dispose of the undead if you have them siting in magma down there... have the dwarves throw a bucketful of water down the chute, send in a miner to channle the obsidian back out, seal the lower end back off and refill the magma.

My own fort has reached critical mass up on the surface.  I only got 2 dwarves in of the last 15 strong wave that showed up.   To make maters more fun my malitia captian who I thought had goten over the loss of her husband suddenly died in her room while I was distracted by the migrants on the surface.  Not sure if she went meloncoly or if she had some wounds I didnt know about.  She killed 2 other dwarves before I managed to contain her.  now all 3 of them are locked in a smaller section of the dorms.  I'll get them out of there in a bit.  I'm half considering just useing cage traps to capture her and the other two corpses.  Since I have her husband still in a cage I'm thinking of just building the two of them togeather in a small tomb.

I've got some production of iron and glass going down by the magma tube I found.  I'm still trying to decide if I want to just bring the magma up to the surface or just send materials down.  One way or another I'm planing on captureing a number of the surface zombies in a little bit.  There is one very handy use for a reanimating biome, live(well sorta) fire target dummies for the marksdwarf squads.  Just deposit them on a platform with some bridges to remove LOS and station the marks dwarvs on the other side of the room, never ending target pratice.  I've got a good supply of leather from the last caravan that made it in for quivers so I'll probably end up outfiting my entire population and rotating them through training over the next couple of years.   The last leison also made it out and I ordered a ton of leather as well although I'll probably have gofer hole the crates in after the next caravan wipes out.

[Hans Lemurson]

Water from a bucket won't make obsidian.  It will eliminate the magma from the tile, but have no other effect.  I believe that only Magma->Water forms obsidian.

My experience with marksdwarves and Zombies is that the zombies tend to go down in one hit, limiting their effectiveness as targets.  They'll reanimate, sure, but you'll need a LOT of them to get a steady supply of meat-targets.  Undead Yaks will take more of a beating, but still drop pretty quick.

[Merendel]

Water from a bucket won't make obsidian.  It will eliminate the magma from the tile, but have no other effect.  I believe that only Magma->Water forms obsidian.

My experience with marksdwarves and Zombies is that the zombies tend to go down in one hit, limiting their effectiveness as targets.  They'll reanimate, sure, but you'll need a LOT of them to get a steady supply of meat-targets.  Undead Yaks will take more of a beating, but still drop pretty quick.

Good thing I've got plenty of volenteers on the surface to fill the training hall.   As to obsidian casting you can dump water on magma to get obsidian.  It is afterall how a repeating magma piston works although for that I use a bridge to dump the water all at once not a bucket line.   If you want to turn a single tile into obsidian with a bucket you need to do it from at least a couple Z lvls up otherwise you get steam and not much else.   Asumeing his trash chute is 7-10 levels deep so dwarves wont have issues throwing stuff in there with live zombies there should be no problem obsidionizing the magma from the same area up top.  Acording to the wiki the minimum is at least 1 full Z lvl of freefall from a bucket.

[WanderingKid]

Non-Magma  proof droppings: I wasn't sure they'd go through 2 Z-levels worth of magma before they burnt up, so I went with magma proof.  I'll get it out of there sometime in the year 4000 or so.

Obsidian/water droppings: There is no way in hell I'm risking obsidianizing the grinder.  Just no.  Not even by accident.  It took my little dorfs 8+ years to carve this thing out.    You know, I'm going to 'drybuckets' just to be sure.  I realize now I didn't mention this was to kill off stuff in the magma there, but yeeeaaaahhhh... Nononononono.

Be VERY careful of using the undead for target practice.  Fighting the undead or attacked by the undead is an amazingly negative hit on happiness.  I don't know if it triggers because of the target or because they were attacked by them.  If you find out, please let me know, but I'd recommend using a single squad as a test subject first.

Magnetite as layers: One of the problems with digging out full layers is FPS loss.  With some careful doorway usage I could probably get away with it, but even then iron is still a limited resource.  Until I get a caravan in I'm being careful with *everything*, even things that I normally would consider temporary boons.

Down from 666 to ~400 undead and still churning.  Go OMG go!

[Merendel]

You can use undead for target practice just fine as long as they cant reach the dwarves.  Really what causes the negitive thought is if the undead manage to hit your dwarves (or posibly take a swing at them, not sure)  long as the undead never reach your dwarves your fine.  I've used captured necromancers in non evil bioms to creat live targets for my marksdwarvs in the past.

I did have time to watch furnace clans 1 and 2 and wrote up what comments I had on what I'd probably do differently.  kinda a wall of text so puting it in spoilers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

furnace clans part 1
Right off the start to get your men inside. set that initial pasture as a meeting area. your dwarves will attempt to move inside for the most part. Instead of using military order, setup a burrow that only contains your underground area and use a civilian alert to force them inside, this helps avoid the draft badthought and is just as quick.  If you also set the burrow so it does not include the tile on the far side of the wall(but includes the wall tile) it should help prevent some moron from going and standing on the far side just as your carpenter gets to work.

To the pierce itself I kinda prefer diging over closer to a map edge or corner when possible to help avoid flyers.  If you start in the center wherevery the flyers path they can end up geting close to you very quicly and you have to wait till they leave the map.  Near the edge however you can try and get some work done while they are on the far side and use a civ alert to call your workers back inside if they get close.   However this tactic is somewhat riskier with deadly dust/smoke as that is more likely to flow into your tunnles if it happens to spawn close to your chosen edge.

dispite what you mentioned during the aquifer pierce claystone cant suport an aquifer just FYI.

I'm curious why you made a dump pit down in the stone layers instead of useing that one you made up in the soil layers for your first butchering.  It would have saved you some time with the dwarves being hungry and that one up top would have made an exelent one use dump pit.  pick a spot dig 1 square and 1 downstair, dig an upstair below the down and dig out below the slot the level above, back up top channle out both squares.  This is a single use dump pit.  Once you butcher the first animal all reanimating parts go in the pit and then you seal the area off at a later date (cause your dwarves wont approach it otherwise due to the undead inside.  If you butcher the first animal before they get hungry they wont stop to eat before doing the dumping, also dont designate the food stockpile till after the dumping happens so they prioritize dumping over hauling food back so you dont risk a reanimation any longer than needed. alternitively turn off food hauling on a dwarf not assigned to other tasks so he does the dumping first. food wont rot in a stockpile even without pots although you'll start loosing food to vermin without pots.  its a judgment call on if that is worth it to you.

Part 2.
When that titan arived you probably should have tried to trap him right away.  I would have pulled the miner off room diging imediatly although you probably could have used your initial cubby hole as the trap in a pinch.  To trap a building destroyer you need  a 1x5 hallway.  At the far end you need a raising bridge, at the near end you want a door and a wall(dont build the wall till the last step). final setup should be something like bridge openspace openspace door wall.  Once the bridge is ready have the miner channle up to the surface just past the bridge.  as soon as he breaches get him back inside, forbid the door, and get that wall built.  the titan will path to destroy the door.  while he's breaking that close the bridge. the titan will finish breaking the door and then be stuck between the wall and the bridge and unable to leave.   you can make a longer coridor with more doors in it to make this procedure a bit safer but this is the minimum.  unless you reperposed your entrance you may not have had time to save the first wave.  If you wanted to reperpouse your entrance you could have goten everything out of that first room dwarves included, moved the lever to the next room over, built a door/chair/table or something in the first room and then wall that room off.  flip the lever till the titan comes inside to destroy your sacrificial building and then close the bridge agian and cut a new hole to the surface for the next migrant wave.

Asumeing you hadnt traped the titan before the migrant wave arived I would have assigned a burro to the meeting area in that first room with the lever, set citizen alert to that burrow and then opend the bridge.  Any of your dwarves above ground that got out of sight range of the titan would have belined inside imediatly.  the reason for useing a civ alert over military station is with a civ alert they will try to keep runing away vs trying to fight like you had with that station order.  Some might run off in the wrong direction but they may lead the threat away from the others so some can make it inside. You probably could have goten the majority of that first migrant wave in if you'd done this.

Since everybody would be packed in that room with no job lever pulls would be near instant as well.  As soon as it looked like the titan was about to head to your fort pull the lever and sacrifice anybody still outside.  If after closeing the bridge he took off chaseing something you could risk reopening and hope one or two more could make it in.  Either way if anything hostile got close to your stairs shut the door ASAP. the burrow also keeps dwarves from trying to run outside. 

I personaly dont bother diging out nice orgonized areas for workshops till after I breach the caverns.  I dig out a decent sized room with enough room to build critical workshops and plop down some tables and chairs to use as a dining room and call that good for the short term.  Once I hit the caverns I start food colection and I also mine out some large rooms in the soil layers to start a safe tree/herb farm to suplament whatever I can get from the caverns.  after that is when I start makeing orginized rooms for shops.  Another reason for skiping the nice rooms is if you prioritize reaching the caverns you can potentialy get there before your miner starts going into serious booze withdrawl and slowing down that much.

I also personaly would have goten at least 1 dwarf choping wood and or harvesting plants ASAP after breaching the caverns. even before going off and exploring for a caravan accessable edge.  the thought behind this is you really want some wood for beds if no other reason and at least a few plants to start makeing booze and to get a farm going.

I doubt I could have saved that second wave considering the state things were in by that point.  If you'd saved a bit more of the first wave and traped the titan by that point maybe but you kinda already let things get too far out of control on the surface by the time that wave arived.

cant think of anything I'd have done differently after you got that depot up although to be honest I dont think I would have thought of puting a depot down there in the caverns, never tried before.  I'd have just goferholed any needed supplyes wiped out caravans droped on the surface.

[vanatteveldt]

I'm going through the videos at the moment, at episode 8. They're really great, it is fantastic to see the amount of thought and planning that goes into a design, and the patience of a small group of dwarfs working on a megaproject with the world burning (freezing) around them, eating their little plump helmets and drinking their dwarven wine. The surface can wait, no?

Anyway, I was wondering why you go through the bother of setting up water reactors when you have a nearby aquifer. Wouldn't it be just as easy to drain from the aquifer to the map edge, so the water gets 'flow', and put wheels over them? Or do reactors have some advantage that I don't understand?

Another thing I don't fully understand is why you go through the bother of creating a holding pattern loop and the use 1 lever per two torpedoes, when you might as well use one lever per torpedo and control the release rate with the levers? Or is that for the thrill of being able to say "fire torpedoes 1 and 2!"? [EDIT: never mind, you want two mine carts circling the track simultaneously and the 100 ticks are about right to get the to be on opposite sides. Which I'm sure you knew before starting construction ;-) ]

EDIT2: but I do have another question: you are very concerned with blocking up the cavern part of the route, assigning everybody to masonry etc. In such a case, I would set up a block stockpile nearby and make sure the masons are around with a burrow. Why did you do it as you did?

Back to the videos, can't wait to see the OMG in action! :-)

[Stochasty]

I've been following this thread with some interest, and have decided to take a stab at this challenge myself, but I had a question for you regarding choice of embark site.  Tundra makes things difficult due to the lack of vegetation, but I have to wonder if it's not possible to find an even more challenging biome.  Because tundra is frozen year round, this makes aquifer pierce via frozen mining a relatively quick (if risky) task.  Thus, it strikes me that the difficulty could be increased further if one could find a no trees / no vegetation biome in a hot climate with a multi-layer aquifer (and no rock veins piercing it).  Do these exist?

[Snaake]

Some of the sand deserts (red, black?) have no trees and very little plants. Channeling out an area of the surface to be 1 z-level lower starts at least grass growing, but of course that's far from safe if you're in a terrifying reanimating biome. Don't really know how common aquifers are in sand deserts, realistically you'd at least have a relatively deep sand layer first though.

...
EDIT2: but I do have another question: you are very concerned with blocking up the cavern part of the route, assigning everybody to masonry etc. In such a case, I would set up a block stockpile nearby and make sure the masons are around with a burrow. Why did you do it as you did?
...

I get the feeling that in a lot of situations he's brute-forcing stuff to get done ASAP by using mass labor assignments. Sure, it can be done more efficiently by first hauling blocks to the site, making burrows etc., but that's more fiddly (and the burrows for masons wouldn't help as much as having everyone build, anyway).