Bay 12 Games Forum

Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: Pseudo on November 10, 2015, 09:45:39 am

Title: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 10, 2015, 09:45:39 am
So. I've played for a while (on and off since, and most of my forts lately have ended in a decided lack of !!fun!!.

With that in mind, I have had a thought. Most of the reason why my forts aren't !!fun!! is because of my choice of world / embark. So what if someone else sets up an embark for me? Could be interesting.

As such: Vanilla 0.40.24 please, new 2x2 embark, no larger than a small world. Other than that, whatever, have fun. Note that I am not the best player, so this could be a (very) short game, depending on where I get placed. But meh. I'll take a stab at whatever gets thrown at me regardless.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Immortal-D on November 10, 2015, 12:22:42 pm
I think the WorldGen Cookbook thread is what you are looking for; http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140180.0
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 10, 2015, 12:25:36 pm
I'll crosspost there, thanks. I had initially discounted it, for what now seems to be a silly reason (embark versus world).
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 11, 2015, 11:33:36 pm
(The below quote is from another thread.)
The mountainhome has set the following guidelines for your outpost:
Your primary goal is to reach 5M in created wealth as quickly as possible.

Our mountainhome scouts have reported the following:
It is 10z to Armoks tears (cavern water)
It is 13z to Armoks blood (magma)
This region is ideal for producing steel.
Dust devils have been observed at the site.

Enjoy!  :D


Challenge accepted!

(http://i.imgur.com/P6kdme1.png?1)

I got it on the 23rd of Limestone (i.e. early Autumn), 102 (founded in spring of 100). Almost all of that is from *spiked steel ball*s, with a little bit from misc. other things. I could have done it sooner, but I decided not to raze the fort (it's actually set up reasonably well, all things considered. Trying to keep stress down, building extra bedrooms, etc.)

Though I shall keep on playing, it's fun (although not very !!fun!! besides the insta-husk dust on the surface, which is mainly just micromanaging pain). A weird embark.

DFFD (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=11271) link. I'd upload it to DFMD as well, but the compressor segfaults on my computer.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 12, 2015, 12:43:41 pm
Nicely done.  Yep, didn't want to give you something too out of hand to begin with, and the huskification is random enough it can wipe out the embark 10 seconds in, or co-incidently huskify an entire caravan, which is always bucket-loads of !!fun!!.

In any case, if you want something more challenging, would you accept:

[ ] - no cave water, aquifer or surface water of any kind on the embark
[ ] - no trees/plants of any kind on the embark
[ ] - no cave plants of any kind on the embark
[ ] - so inhospitable (weather/temperature) no animals visit the embark
[ ] - all corpses instantly become undead, on the surface
[ ] - next to 10+ necro towers
[ ] - guaranteed dozens of megabeast/semi-megabeasts

? any or all of the above? :)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 12, 2015, 03:51:14 pm
My first caravan was husked immediately, in fact. Luckily I had boxed myself in before then, but it cost me in terms of migrants, due to the liaison.

I can't say I particularly like the insta-husking though. It's too RNG-dependent. Or rather, there's not much you can do to prepare for it (at least that's relatively short-term. If you roofed off the entire surface, I suspect it'd work. Or redirecting the caravan to the cavern, assuming that glitch still exists.). I don't mind corpses instantly causing fun, but the generic sudden death without save... meh.

Running through...
[X] - so inhospitable (weather/temperature) no animals visit the embark
[X] - all corpses instantly become undead, on the surface
[X] - next to 10+ necro towers
[X] - guaranteed dozens of megabeast/semi-megabeasts

Sure, to any of the above. Well, assuming it's possible to dig down before being killed.

[.] - no cave water, aquifer or surface water of any kind on the embark
...Maybe? I can see how you'd survive, but not really how you'd thrive... In particular, drinking water and dwarven footbaths, and obsidian (for later).

I'd be perfectly fine with hard-to-get water (cavern, a few tiles of aquifer, glacier, etc), and probably fine with a limited supply of water (muddy pools assuming it occasionally refills, etc) though.

[.] - no cave plants of any kind on the embark

Define "cave plants".  If you include trees, see below. If you don't, and you start with seeds, sure. If you don't... maybe? Depends on the surface plants, and what you have access to.

[.] - no trees/plants of any kind on the embark

Plants, see above. Trees? Does that include caverns? If no, sure. If yes... maybe? It'd be "fun" to make enough beds, especially given that caravans are likely to die...

If you don't start with seeds... I'm not sure how you'd survive - mead (or water, although that causes other issues) and butchering I suppose. It'd be difficult considering some of the other things here.



Feel free to ignore any/all of the above.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 12, 2015, 04:20:47 pm
If the area is too inhospitable for wildlife I would expect there wouldn't be any undead to greet you either, meaning you'd have to create them yourself out of invaders (or possibly clashing invaders, if you can get several at the same time)?

No water means no working hospitals, since you can't clean anything (and soap would be worthless)? Glacier as water supply would work fine though, provided it's thick enough that you can actually "mine" some. Come to think of it, no water means no way to mine magma sea candy, since you can't use cave-ins there.

No plants either topside or in the caverns would mean all farming would be embark/caravan seed based, which in itself is no big deal (provided, of course, you're not both water AND soil less, so you can't muddy any rock. Then you'd have to dig fast and try the SMR -> sand conversion trick). In some biomes (deserts, for instance) you can nevertheless create grazing grounds topside by channeling off the top soil/clay layer. You'd then get grass, but never herbs or trees.

No trees either topside nor in the caverns would mean you'd have to rely on what you bring on embark and on caravans. If you've got metal, many of the things usually made out of wood can be made out of metal.

Mead require bees, which requires a suitable biome plus some luck. Also, no seeds at all means a severe lack of clothing.

It would be interesting to piggy back on something provided for Pseudo; it's sure to be different from what I normally embark on.

Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 12, 2015, 04:32:43 pm
Alrighty, that's good feedback.
I'll see what I can cook up.  :o
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 12, 2015, 05:22:30 pm
If the area is too inhospitable for wildlife I would expect there wouldn't be any undead to greet you either, meaning you'd have to create them yourself out of invaders (or possibly clashing invaders, if you can get several at the same time)?
Quote from: wiki
It is possible to have multiple sieges at the same time. If the attacking civilizations are at war with each other, they will start to fight with each other as well.
Clashing invaders would work.


No water means no working hospitals, since you can't clean anything
You can still attempt other stuff, but good luck (infections all round! Also: death by dehydration). Also: no casts, I believe.

(and soap would be worthless)?
You can still build things out of it :P

Glacier as water supply would work fine though, provided it's thick enough that you can actually "mine" some.
Yep. Although note that if you have *any* water on any freezing biome you have infinite water, as frozen water will melt to 7/7 always, but you only need 2/7 to freeze.

Come to think of it, no water means no way to mine magma sea candy, since you can't use cave-ins there.
Pumps. Lots and lots of pumps. And sacrificial miners.

No plants either topside or in the caverns would mean all farming would be embark/caravan seed based, which in itself is no big deal
It does mean you're stuck with whatever your civilization has access to for seeds. (And caravans, I suppose)


(provided, of course, you're not both water AND soil less, so you can't muddy any rock. Then you'd have to dig fast and try the SMR -> sand conversion trick).
One wikiwalk later... Huh. SMR is weird.

In some biomes (deserts, for instance) you can nevertheless create grazing grounds topside by channeling off the top soil/clay layer. You'd then get grass, but never herbs or trees.
Grazing (almost) doesn't matter, I've found. I tend to butcher grazing animals immediately - they aren't worth the trouble for me. Then again, I am not you.

No trees either topside nor in the caverns would mean you'd have to rely on what you bring on embark and on caravans. If you've got metal, many of the things usually made out of wood can be made out of metal.
Yep. Though unfortunately most of the substitutes are for things that dwarves haul around. The difference between a wooden bin and iron one can be significant. (And actually, generally glass is better than metal.)

It's beds that are the main problem.

Mead require bees, which requires a suitable biome plus some luck.
Yep. It'd be interesting to embark somewhere where that was the only option, though. Beekeeping isn't generally used much.

Also, no seeds at all means a severe lack of clothing.
Why? Webs and wool work quite well. (Especially GCS farms.) Though you can't really dye anything.

It would be interesting to piggy back on something provided for Pseudo; it's sure to be different from what I normally embark on.
Hence why I asked!

Also: preferably a deeper embark next time. Especially if there isn't infinite water. (Not so much cavern levels as levels of rock - preferably below the cavern...)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 13, 2015, 03:43:46 am
Yes, I realized that in a freezing biome all you need is a single block of ice in a location you can cave in (has to be at least 3 tiles from the edge, possibly at least 6 [if the "no building closer than 5 tiles" rule gets extended downwards when the area is exposed to the surface]).
The only reason I keep grazers is to get wool for moods, since the bulk of the clothing is produced from plant fibers early on and silk later.

I agree it's the beds that are the main problem with no local wood supply, and also that glass is very good for a lot of purposes, but I don't think you can make a glass bucket, for instance (if you don't have any water buckets are of use only for lye, I think, and lye is good only for...soap).

I generally try to get bees because I want to give my dorfs the widest booze selection possible, but mead as the only booze would require a massive bee keeping industry. Interesting is the word.

Wool require grazing, and silk farming requires at least a bit of luck to catch a GCS. If I had had to rely on silk farming in my latest fortress they'd all go naked for more than 5 years, because GCS' were late in appearing, didn't catch my bait, and were few between (and at least once the lazy dorfs took too many days to pull the lever to display my bait that the GCS had passed by my entrance). Of course, after 10 years or so one of the big FPS drains is massive covering of caverns in cave spider silk, so there should be a sufficient supply, but a fair bit of walking to collect it.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 13, 2015, 07:42:23 am
Yes, I realized that in a freezing biome all you need is a single block of ice
Yep.
in a location you can cave in (has to be at least 3 tiles from the edge, possibly at least 6 [if the "no building closer than 5 tiles" rule gets extended downwards when the area is exposed to the surface]).
Nope! Adjacent magma will also melt it, including below it. And you can build bridges and raise them to channel the resulting water. The only tricky case would be if it's right on the edge, and I suspect (although I do not know) that you can do it there too.


The only reason I keep grazers is to get wool for moods, since the bulk of the clothing is produced from plant fibers early on and silk later.
True... Though generally I find caravans and butchering to be enough.

I don't think you can make a glass bucket, for instance (if you don't have any water buckets are of use only for lye, I think, and lye is good only for...soap).
Also minecarts, wheelbarrows, and chains, among other things.

I generally try to get bees because I want to give my dorfs the widest booze selection possible, but mead as the only booze would require a massive bee keeping industry. Interesting is the word.
There's a flat limit of 40 / 60 hives, also.

Wool require grazing, and silk farming requires at least a bit of luck to catch a GCS. If I had had to rely on silk farming in my latest fortress they'd all go naked for more than 5 years, because GCS' were late in appearing, didn't catch my bait, and were few between (and at least once the lazy dorfs took too many days to pull the lever to display my bait that the GCS had passed by my entrance). Of course, after 10 years or so one of the big FPS drains is massive covering of caverns in cave spider silk, so there should be a sufficient supply, but a fair bit of walking to collect it.
Good point.

Bleh, it's raining.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 13, 2015, 08:08:13 am
I didn't know magma on the level below would melt ice. Thanks for that info. Wouldn't magma beside the ice just result in obsidian and a reformation of the ice as the obsidian cools, though (provided the water pours out into the magma, and not the magma pouring into the ice, in which case I'd expect either mutual annihilation, or an obsidian block with some magma beside it)? If it's right on the edge you ought to be able to pour the magma on a bridge on top of the ice (supported by something other than the ice, preferably). Some of the resulting water would off course run off the edge, but the part running "inwards" ought to be a sufficient seed for a water making industry.

Hm, the hive limit would probably put a significant damper on the mead production.

And yes, it's raining, but that's outside and I've got a roof over my head and don't need to go out, so I don't care...
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 13, 2015, 11:17:12 am
Keep in mind that 1 unit of lava won't flow. This is untested, but you should be able to set up a pump pumping from the ice tile and drop one unit of lava next to the ice, which'll cause it to melt - some'll go off of the edge of the map and be lost, some'll obsidianize the lava, some'll be picked up by the pump, and some'll freeze again. And then you'll (probably) have 2 or 4 units of water not next to the edge, which you could use as a seed.

I don't know if lava above melts ice, although it'd make sense.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 13, 2015, 12:38:21 pm
Digging under lava results in hot stone cancellations, so lava on top OUGHT to work. To be tested at some time or other!

Using the magma beside ice method close to the edge is tricky, because mine carts deliver magma in lots of 2. Also, you'll have to build the track stop on a natural feature off the ground or you'll run the risk of magma flowing back onto the track stop to potentially burn the hauler. Also, you'll need a fairly complicated diagonal access to the edge tile beside the ice to deliver the magma there when dumped diagonally away. Also, the hole the freed water runs down into will probably get frozen solid immediately, since you can't put a roof over it, so you'd have to use a second magma melt trick to get it from there further inwards where a roof can protect the water from the freezing elements.

Pumping the water from the edge tile will result in an immediate formation of a new ice block at the pump's output (happened to me when I tried to drain an aquifer directly under a glacier, so the output was at the cold lowest glacier level). I THINK the ice block will be supported by the pump, but I'm not sure. However, we've now effectively moved the ice to be able to use the cave-in ice melting method.
You can't build a wall or floor to place your screw pump on, but if you can build a pump at all, you can build a stack, where the lower pump is purely a complicated platform to build the operational pump on. You can't build a support below the output tile, since it's too close to the edge still, so you'd have to get the cave-in by deconstructing the pump (with the associated danger to the worker).
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 13, 2015, 01:12:11 pm
Alrighty, so this is what I've managed to get so far:

Embark temperature 10117 degrees Urist on the surface, in the summer (body fat melts at 10078)
no surface animals
no surface plants
no surface trees
no surface water
instant nobles (parent civ is dead)
no cave plants
no cave water

However, a few interesting ... bugs came to light while attempting to get this just right.

That is, evidently temperature updates don't always happen.  You can make them happen, and flowing liquids is a way to do that, so what I've had to add is..

Evil Rain
which in some cases, as that's an evil biome feature, also adds:
Instant zombie-fication of any corpses on the surface.

Given that, there is the great potential for the following to happen...  Embark starts, blood rain falls, temperature update happens, fat starts to melt off of all animals/dwarfs, bleeding ensues, death very likely, instant zombies, crumble.  It doesn't happen -every- time, but it is a strong possibility.  You basically have to turtle instantly, within the first few seconds, and pray the rain doesn't fall until you get all the supplies underground.  Without the evil rain to cause a temperature update, often the dwarfs and animals can walk around in 10120°U+ for weeks without incident.

So my question is, Pseudo, is all of these, in one embark, too much !!fun!!?  (also, this is all with a much deeper embark, as requested)

Maybe something closer to 10090°U rather than 10110°U+ would be better, to give a little more time?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 13, 2015, 02:32:52 pm
It sounds very brutal: if the giant decides to step on where you are it's game over (save scumming can obviously be used to retry until the giant steps elsewhere), but it's Pseudo's call.

I have to admit I don't know how fat melting works in detail, since all my fat melting cases have been caused by fire/magma.
- If I understand the description correctly, a slightly lower temperature means fat melting doesn't happen virtually immediately but with a short delay after the rain starts?
- Once fat melting starts, my understanding is that there is no way to stop the bleeding; bleeding will continue until all the fat is gone on the affected body part?
- The temperature update triggered by the rain is independent of whether the dorf gets hit by the rain or not: the important thing is whether the dorf is present in the the scalding climate?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 13, 2015, 04:06:17 pm
It sounds very brutal: if the giant decides to step on where you are it's game over (save scumming can obviously be used to retry until the giant steps elsewhere), but it's Pseudo's call.

I have to admit I don't know how fat melting works in detail, since all my fat melting cases have been caused by fire/magma.
- If I understand the description correctly, a slightly lower temperature means fat melting doesn't happen virtually immediately but with a short delay after the rain starts?
- Once fat melting starts, my understanding is that there is no way to stop the bleeding; bleeding will continue until all the fat is gone on the affected body part?
- The temperature update triggered by the rain is independent of whether the dorf gets hit by the rain or not: the important thing is whether the dorf is present in the the scalding climate?
Yep, those presumptions seem to be accurate, from what I've seen so far.  Bleeding out, oddly enough, doesn't seem to be fatal under all conditions.  I've seen yaks, for example, that had no fat left at all, and were perfectly alive and well. 
I've seen partially melted body parts on dwarves who seem.. fine?  "Her head is slightly melted" in the description, and yet, just hanging out in the meeting area like it's 1999. :)

But yes, if they're outside when it starts or is raining, that seems to not go very well at all (they ded)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 13, 2015, 04:10:55 pm
No water or cave water? Yow. (I assume that includes aquifers?) Brutal is the word.

Do season changes trigger a temperature update?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 13, 2015, 04:15:27 pm
No water or cave water? Yow. (I assume that includes aquifers?) Brutal is the word.

Do season changes trigger a temperature update?
No aquifers, correct. 
And no, no temperature update that I saw, even crossing two seasons, without rain or some kind of flowing liquid to trigger it.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 14, 2015, 08:41:52 am
I'd take a stab at it.

I'm kind of liking the idea of an embark that sometimes/always freezes with "finite" water, though. Is there a way for cavern lakes to generate such that they aren't connected to an edge?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 14, 2015, 01:52:41 pm
Here's #2 (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=11275), for your embarking pleasure.  :P

Again, the goal is the same as the first embark, Pseudo: Reach 5M created wealth as quickly as possible.

I've played this out to about 2 years, so it is possible to survive and thrive, you just have be very attentive to farming, brewing, cooking, and slab engraving.  :o
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 15, 2015, 01:29:01 am
Thanks vjek!

Some surprises, both positive and negative. The lack of hot sauce (at least I haven't found any where it ought to be) definitely calls for a revised strategy.

Edit: Nope. It failed when a bugger pathed where he shouldn't, and thus merrily slaughter everyone else. Restart from scratch...Now with even more attempts to keep them from going where they shouldn't, but it's almost impossible, since they ignore both burrow and traffic restrictions when selecting the tile to stand on while working on an adjacent one. Extreme micro management might work.

Edit2: Two failed attempts where they didn't have time to get into cover before the rain set in (in the second case, everyone was inside, nothing from the wagon recovered, and one moron ignored the civilian alert banning the surface for an unknown reason. The alert had been in effect for some time, so it wasn't a case of a pre existing order). An attempt that was initially successful (well, a DFHack Exterminate of an unkillable reanimated head wool was required) failed because the morons totally disregard traffic restrictions, so they walk out onto the 25 cost surface for long distance travel to channel down rather than follow the 1 cost route below ground to dig the up ramp that was actually ordered (it was an up ramp for a reason...). The active civilian alert burrow excluding the surface is ignored since the up ramp tile is permitted (but NOT the surface tile dug down into...). So much for extreme micro management.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Sanctume on November 15, 2015, 02:28:18 pm
It took me 8 restarts and it's a matter of luck when the blood starts raining. 

Stairs are slower, so 1 ramp next to wagon seems the best first opening with 1 tile for a block (log) wall. 

All 7 have miner, so take off 3 to do hauling.
I did a 3x5 dig with priority 1, then work outward to get a 3x11 room that should be enough to put everything in. 

The 3x5 is also immedately set as meeting room, and the animals go there, so less animal hauling distance. 

After the 3x11 is dug, priority is to haul everything then deconstruct wagon.

At which point, 1st Inside Burrow, and 2nd Outsite burrow seems to help micro things.

That's pretty much the first challenge. 

If I were to continue, the farm is for next season, so nestbox is more important.

I dug all the way down, all rocks, no caverns? 

If there is at least one, will surface or indoor pastures start growing moss?

I was also thinking digging tunnels at every 5 tiles with a ramp 1 tile away from map edge.

Then just do door and bridge air locks for when migrants manage to avoid blood on the surface.

Oh, heh, I did a reload and lnp / dfhack did an auto clean :p
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 15, 2015, 05:02:21 pm
It took me 8 restarts and it's a matter of luck when the blood starts raining. 

Stairs are slower, so 1 ramp next to wagon seems the best first opening with 1 tile for a block (log) wall. 

All 7 have miner, so take off 3 to do hauling.
I did a 3x5 dig with priority 1, then work outward to get a 3x11 room that should be enough to put everything in. 

The 3x5 is also immedately set as meeting room, and the animals go there, so less animal hauling distance. 

After the 3x11 is dug, priority is to haul everything then deconstruct wagon.
 ...
That's pretty much how I started as well.  Immediately designated stairs down/up, dug a room in the dirt, designated it the meeting area, everyone moves down, the second the dig is complete, setup a stockpile that holds everything, deconstruct the wagon, seal up the path to the surface, and get started on the farms.
I think it was just a few days of game time passing before it was all done.  I tested it four times and got it done without the blood rain starting, so yeah, the RNG can be a cruel mistress.  8)

There are caverns, they're just quite deep, but no, there is no cave moss in them.  I didn't use any burrows, just a single meeting area.  Glad to see some people are checking it out.  As it turns out, this is a great way to have just the starting seven in an attempt to reach a competitive goal, regardless of init settings.

I'm going to test out setting the titan attack limit to 6, and see if the megabeasts, titans, and semi-megabeasts start showing up right away.  Naively, I set it at 22, which is far far too high, given the mortality rate of migrants.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 15, 2015, 05:25:41 pm
I'm considering giving up my umphteenth attempt close to the 1 year mark. Will have to reconsider the strategy once again.

Blood lying on the surface isn't fatal in itself, it seems. It's the falling stuff that's dangerous (possibly excluding small animals, see below).

Long story with no real info below, so feel free to skip.

The first part is actually easy, technically speaking. If you're unlucky, you're stomped on, and if you're lucky you'll make it indoors. I actually deconstruct the wagon immediately, since there's spare dwarfpower at that time anyway. I've dug down two ramps (old habits die hard; there are no trees here, but also, the HOT indication when setting up the pen/meeting area caused me to try to dig deeper, but it seems to be hot everywhere...), then two tiles in, and then a small room (6*6 or so). As soon as the first tile of the room is dug, that tile is designated as a meeting area and animal pen for the animals, and they tend to move on their own accord. It's then removed and reconstructed in a larger version as soon as the room size increases. When the room is dug a stockpile is set up, and I cross my fingers. There tend to be a number of times nobody seems to be willing to do any hauling (nothing hauled, 7 idle).
Meanwhile a civilian alert burrow is set up excluding all of the surface except where stuff to haul is, since I've had buggers idling on the surface. This is then reduced to exclude all of the surface and the tiles down, plus one tile of the two tile corridor when the hauling is done.
At this time you can breathe out, since you're out of harm's way for a while.

There is a cavern (I missed it on my first dig as well), but no moss or herbs, as indicated by vjek (but there ARE creepy crawlers).

I tried to actually dig a ramp all around the edge (3 tiles away, in case wagons need to get fully onto the map before starting to descend), with the intention to allow immigrants and caravans a chance to get below ground without dying, but that seems to be impossible without save scumming since the dorfs ignore all attempts to keep them below ground (traffic restrictions, burrows, dig UP RAMPS, DAMMIT! Nope. Us dorfs love the surrfass wif no horrible green stuff!
I then tried a more cumbersome version where only a single 3 tile wide ramp would be open at a time, using drawbridges to close them off. Unfortunately, the notifications only tell you when blood rain start, not when they stop, and with a map completely covered by blood there is no way to time it (considering reenabling DFHack's performance tweaks just to be able to see the rain stop). I didn't think my miner was exposed but he died in a trail of blood a bit further on...).

My most successful attempt yet (the one I'm considering giving up) just gave up on trying to help immigrants and just went for turtling. I changed my mind a little bit into the summer and built a little loop from my initial entrance (thus avoiding all surface exposure to my dorfs) with two doors (will keep non building destroyers out), and managed to get it ready just as the first immigrant entered the map and immediately died. Some of the batch actually made it though. I built a double 10 tile raising bridge hooked up to a pressure plate. Good theory. The big animals were no problem. Step on plate, continue in, splat. The undead dorfs, however, are FAST!!! Manual door locking got them, though, but it's cheaty. The small undead didn't trigger my plate (set to min weight, to no avail), and a peacock mutilated my "militia" dorf (pick, no armor) so he died of dehydration while resting and everything was brought to a halt by a no bucket bring water (hah) spam lock until he died. His undead self managed to climb out of the smoothed refuse dump hole late winter (i.e. now) to kill one dorf and probably send 3 other into dehydration slow death (where this rambling ends way further down).

Sometime during the summer I tried the cavern. Just two drawbridges and a door, and the report said a giant rat was about. Should be safe, right? Dig the last tile. Oops, a troll there as well, and the rat ran like greased lightning into the fortress. Managed to keep the troll outside, and sent my militia guy chasing the rat. Killed it eventually. Ok, set up a refuse stockpile for the mangled body (had read somewhere than mangled bodies don't rise). A while later an undead rat kills another dorf, before being put down (note to self! Mangled bodies DO rise!).

Autumn brought a caravan, but I didn't either have a trade depot or any open path. The merchant died within a minute (probably a lot less), while the pack animal survived surprisingly long. A large immigration batch arrived later and all dorfs survived. Two small animals (bird and puppy) just died on the way (heat stroke?). Since they were in the middle of the dorf pack, it can't be rain.
Got a mood and the bugger wanted a smithy and a metal bar. Ain't got neither, but a smithy was built, and the caravan did actually carry a bar of pig iron, so let him out. Better an undead on the outside than an insane-to-become-undead inside. Shielded by madness, he sprinted, picked up the bar, made it back, and produced... a goblet. Yay!

Finally go a critter break in the cavern: a giant cave swallow. Out and get some very important resource and send a horde of dorfs trying to brick up a part of the wall, and succeeded in creating an outside pocket, but a named giant bat suddenly appeared. Civ alert! Run! Everyone made it back in, and the bat was still outside. Just sit tight and wait for a new break, and rebuild the badly depleted store of blocks. Dorf has been missing for a week! Hm, yes, undead in the cavern, might be what gave the bat a name? The dorf entered an epic fight with a troll, and actually lost, but the troll's last breath of life was taken by an undead bat. The bat won't path to the fortress (the troll hadn't risen when I opened the path), and I'm not keen on sending a bunch of dorfs for slaughter. Cave-in? Nope. Can't do it there without being exposed. Possibly carve a fortification and pelt it with bone bolts made from my non existent stores of bone (made armor out of it). Could wait for the batch of soon to mature peafowl, though, or make use of their parents.
My engraver (and untrained militia guy) suddenly found dead? Yes, first dead dorf climbed up out of the pit. I think I've been able to throw all the dorf bits down again, but 3 more probably dying dorfs? Might be better to restart and set up an atom smashing garbage disposal system instead.

Conclusion: This is hard...

vjek came in while I wrote my (not so) short story. I was actually up to 23 dorfs after the second immigration wave...down to 21 "now".
Moods are a brutal issue, but won't happen unless you get immigrants. Sitting tight with only the starting 7 should work, given a lot of time (at the current rate it will take less than 100 years...). Risking the cavern and trying to recover caravan items can help a fair bit (mmm, I can SMELL the logs the caravan brought), but it's, well, risky.

Well, vjek, this brutal embark of yours is sure both interesting and frustrating. Good job!
With a mega attack threshold of 6 I wouldn't have let the migrants in, or at least have made a significantly safer entrance that could be locked quickly. As the surface (or cavern) fills with undead, it self propagates and gets very hard to clean up, and I'm not too keen on meeting undeath boosted dragons etc.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 16, 2015, 12:03:22 am
Conclusion: This is hard...
Agreed.  Even after years of playing, this one tests my patience.  At least now I have something to give players who think the game is too easy and/or are getting bored. :)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 16, 2015, 09:06:09 am
Another failed attempt...
It looked so good. Got a complete migrant wave of 4 in the summer, and even a caravan that made it in without dying. I traded, and suddenly a caravan cow somehow died and was reanimated, killing two of my important dorfs and two caravan members. One other was probably set to die of dehydration, despite him making it on top of a barrel and having the drink task (Give water cancellation spam), and another got two broken arms and an infection, but seems to work anyway. Annoying that lack of water means they won't skip the clean state to go on to set broken limbs (I DID actually trade for two splints..).
An autumn migrant wave of 6 made it in successfully as well, the caravan was reported to leave (although it stopped trading after the cow incident, leaving all the stuff in the trade depot), but didn't actually move from where they fled (one of my 4 exit tunnels), I slaughtered a bull calf the immigrants brought, and despite the hide being taken for tanning immediately it reanimated and kills off everyone it encounters. Forgot to check if it was an unkillable head skin. Sigh...
And I'd even made a short foray into the cavern to recover a small supply of precious resources without incident...

Playing it safe, i.e. turtling immediately and not opening for anything, as well as ignoring the cavern, isn't hard (apart from bad butchering luck), once the RNG check during the initial rush to safety is passed, but it would probably be quite boring (unless you're used to generation fortresses), as well as giving up the "first to 5M" championship medal to someone willing to take careful risks without having bad luck.

Time to ponder what can be done better...

Edit: I went back to my last crash recovery save to try to figure out what happened. The save was done immediately after trading. At that point the dead units screen shows a stray cow missing. I don't have any cow, nor have I had one. However, I saw patches of cow tallow and water buffalo cow tallow smeared in my entrance tunnel after the caravan entered, and at that time no cow was show on the units screen which I found fishy even then, so it was probably dead at that time. The caravan brought a cage with a water buffalo cow, as well as an empty one, which I bought. Examination of this cage's contents shows a dead cow inside, and by forbidding the cage I bought no cow has been reanimated for a fair while (a lot longer than the other replays).
Thus, the extreme weather apparently puts caged creatures on an extreme (sometimes fatal) stress. This is quite odd, since I believed a cage protected the contents against anything that doesn't destroy the cage. Hauling the cage away apparently dumps the contents, which promptly reanimates.
A lesson for fellow challengees: empty cages might not be empty, so check them carefully before trading.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 16, 2015, 11:22:37 am
... I slaughtered a bull calf the immigrants brought, and despite the hide being taken for tanning immediately it reanimated and kills off everyone it encounters.  ...
I just have to say, PatrikLundell, that the mental imagery conjured by this phrase made my day. :)  :P  Big flappy calf skin flailing and bashing dwarfs.  That's some good stuff, right there. hehehe.

I got rid of the 'no water' cancellation spam by disabling some labors ... what is it now, feed patients and/or recover wounded? 
Yeah, I think then they just ignore the dead & dying unless they're a doctor and the patient is in the 'hospital'.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 16, 2015, 12:00:37 pm
I appear to be taking a completely different approach to the start than you guys. Interesting.

Deconstruct the wagon immediately. Dig 2 ramps down and a small area connected to one of the two ramps, and a tunnel just disconnected from the other ramp. Also: rush down to get two stone.

Pasture the animals in the small area, and make a 1x2 stone stockpile there as well. It will be needed.

Dump everything into the disconnected ramp. Connect it. Unforbid everything there and build a wall under both ramps. Now you're "safe".

Took me three tries to do the above.

Rush to build a farm, actually, a couple farms. No plump helmets, but one for each other type.

Ditto, build a still and kitchen. You'll need to start up brewing ASAP.

Either build a temporary butchery or atomsmash the grazers. They'll die and reanimate otherwise. With a butchery, you'll need a tanner right next to it, and a raising drawbridge. If you want to play it (somewhat) safe, it should be in a room with a door. I tried to atomsmash the remains before it raised, but didn't succeed. So I now have a room with ~3 undead misc. parts.

Also: wagon has 3 wood. One for a wooden training axe. One for a cage. One for a dormitory. Better than nothing.

Next step is caverns, for wood. Have to be careful, there are baddies. Built a door, then drawbridge, then a cage trap, then another door. I managed to rush in and get ~10 wood before I was driven out by a cave crawler. Enough for beds at least.

Want to gain better access to the caverns, both for wood and for a semi-safe caravan exit.

Problem is dealing with any large creature permanently. You kill them, they'll just reanimate. And atomsmashing won't work against creatures that are large enough. Trapping them, or caving in a natural wall on top of them, works, but is a limited solution. I suspect that the only "good" way is to kill them then immediately atomsmash the corpse, but that is tricky in and of itself. Perhaps drop them down a pit that's as deep as possible with an atomsmasher at the bottom. Preferably with a dense floor at the bottom. Cobaltite? Or maybe copper.

Normally I'd just magma-dump the corpse, but I don't think there is any magma on the map. Or I'd drop a natural wall on it - but I have no way of casting obsidian.

I suspect that I'll end up dropping something on their head repeatedly until they "die", then atomsmashing immediately. It'd have to be something I don't mind getting destroyed, though. Which I suspect will be some crop type. I'd say wood but I'll need it. And no magma so it's needed for glass. Or clay, but there is no clay. Sand, perhaps? If I can dump it out of the bags... Or stone or copper. Thanks for the copper picks. They will be useful for bootstrapping. (I have no problem with melting exploiting copper when there seems to literally be no ore on the map. Thanks for that, by the way.)

Or cage traps, potentially. Though until / unless I capture a GCS that's not the be-all and end-all, by a long shot. Once I do, though...

I've been ignoring the surface for now. Migrants would be nice, as would a caravan, but until I can dig enough to let the caravan in immediately it won't happen.

An idea w.r.t ramps: dig one ramp, remove it and build a wall in its place, dig a second ramp, remove it and build a wall in its place, dig the third ramp, construct the other two ramps again. Hopefully it'll work.

I suspect it is not worth it, aside from the start (and maybe not even then), to butcher animals. At least not until / unless you have cage traps.

I am currently trying to bottle up the caverns. Pretty much: run a bit, check unit list, repeat. Rather boring. Need to for trees, unless I can expand onto the surface, and I cannot.)

Also, chugging numbers on best value per log. Barring caravan, only options are green glass, clear glass, and copper.

For copper, barring coins (which requires trading), best route is probably making bunches of copper corkscrews and melting them down. Return of 150%, so you melt down 2 you can make 3, so 5 logs per output (either serrated disk or spiked ball) with a material multiplier of x2.

For green glass, multiplier of x2 with 1 log per output.

For clear glass, multiplier of x5 with 3 logs per output (1 for ash, 1 to make pearlash, 1 to make the glass).

Overall winner is green glass.

I suspect it'd be better to get a caravan and hope for steel trash (or iron trash).

The caravan cow dying may have been due to lack of food?

You'll want to keep recover wounded on, and have your "hospital" bottle them off forever. But yes, remove feed/water, I suspect.

Edit: wait. Bronze, not copper. Still not worth it though.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 16, 2015, 12:21:21 pm
My thoughts for cavern access was to use a lever-controlled collapsing constructed floor trap.  Kills -anything- and/or stuns it so you can put traps on the side walls and catch whatever, because it'll be unconscious when it gets slammed into the wall/trap.

A series of them would handle many/any cavern creatures without any risk to the fort.  Just need to time the use of it, and build it properly, which can be tricky if you haven't done it before.

And you're welcome for the no ore, Pseudo.  ;D That was a goal.  Traders could bring it, but you'll have to work for it, for certain... 

you know... giving it some thought, depending on how fast you were, you might be able to build and expand a sort of surface airlock, to avoid being rained on.  If you could build a wall and roof above, you might be able to establish a beachhead on the surface, but it's a dubious endeavor, I think.  I don't know that any creatures in the caverns would ever have metal on them.  Trolls?  I don't think they typically have metal clothing or equipment.  ah well.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 16, 2015, 01:21:04 pm
Good to hear from you, Pseudo! This is your hell hole, after all ;)

Farms: I actually build a lot of 1*1 farms. In my normal games I use this to cut down on the over production of food by disabling them gradually. Here I use it to balance the two crops during a dual crop season.

Brewing is not that critical. You can wait well into the summer, but yes, getting it going is good.

I build a permanent butchery (there are peafowl after all, and immigrant animals if you go that way). A short distance away from the butchery I dig a hole (with a staircase two tiles away, connected at the bottom only, unless the digger climbs out, in which case I have to dig a hole to let the digging continue).
At the bottom of the hole I build an atom smasher, with a wall behind it for good measure (hence 2 tiles to the stair). Immediately after butchering I order the dumping of all 3 garbage items (although it's probably safer to dump the hair first, and take the cartilage and whatever the last thing was after the hair is done). All dorfs are given the tanner profession, as well as the spinner one, and I don't butcher unless most of the dorfs are idling to do tanning and dumping immediately. I've spun immigrant alpaca foal wool without incident.

I've done one axe and two beds, but I've considered a cage instead of the second bed.

Caverns: I only venture out when there are reasonably benign creatures about. To increase my view, I've carved a fortification in the tile I'll dig away when I open my entrance tunnel.

Killing baddies: I've managed to kill titans without problem using cave-ins of built constructions. The immigration/trade tunnels i dig are deep enough to allow first a natural cave-in, and later on engineered ones.

Given the scarce access to metal, I'd use cobaltite for a hard floor, but I don't really care. My garbage smasher hole ought to keep the garbage down long enough for the bridge to do its magic.

Personally I won't do melting exploit, but you're going to be limited by fuel anyway...

You can't dig enough to let the caravan/immigrants in immediately: you're having to hope you're lucky enough to enter the map close to one of your entrances or get through without rain (I used 4 entrances the last time, and that's the maximum number I'm going to risk, given miners will take every chance to channel from the surface [I think I stopped such a suicide venture when the bugger rushed north towards the entrance at the north end of the map to dig down on the tile opening up the entrance at the extreme south end. There was a straight shorter path below ground, and the only reason the bugger could try that was that everyone was too busy to pull the lever to close the north entrance off]).

Provided you entrance tunnels are long enough for bleeding to show up and you can seal them, I think they're worth the risk.

You've missed something regarding butchering: There are no plump helmets (probably intentionally), so you'll have to rely on eggs and dwarven sugar for solid food unless you butcher.

I'm eventually going to secure the caverns, unless I get undead campers there first. If I can get in 2 or 3 good runs it should be possible to cut down all the trees, and that would open up for a cave-in divide-and-conquer approach, should sealing during safe periods not be sufficient. Also note that there is enough soil for a tree farm.

My approach is to use wood when I can (cages), glass when I can use that, and thereafter the best metal I can get for my future militia, using leather/bone initially for the single untrained "militia" early on (used to scout the remote corner of the cavern, and try to kill of any undead small things that make it through the pressure plates, which hopefully should not be needed when the tunnels are covered by bridges that can be activated by a lever as well as the plate).

I've never had a caravan caged creature die on the way in to the depot. I suspect their starvation meter only starts ticking when you buy them. I'm quite sure the death (and the tallow) was caused by the hellish weather.

I think you should set up a "hospital" zone, get them hauled there (I actually did get someone stitched up!), and then remove the zone. Those who wander off will hopefully recover, while those who remain should be moved to an atom smashing "hospital" for observation and probable disposal. I didn't think of removing the feed/water job. Thanks for that!

vjek came in while I wrote:
My thought on cavern access is to build an airlock with doors to slow critters down, a lever controlled atom smasher instead of the cages I usually use, and engineer a cave-in only when needed (I can take my time, since the victim is trapped in the airlock). The problem with a gremlin stun trap is that you don't have any cages to trap the critter in (until you get more wood), and FB's are stun immune anyway. I don't think stone drop traps are of much use, and that's about the only thing available without metal, glass, or wood.

A surface structure is rather useless, and probably deadly. It's a lot better with underground tunnels with surface access, and that's quite dangerous as it is. I've tried to build an umbrella cover in a 3*3 embark with the NE tile being neutral savage ocean (the rest sinister glacier). The goo raining down wasn't lethal (blisters all over), but it's still impossible to get the morons to path through the safe areas and stand in safe areas while building. I built a 12 (I think) tile high tower and built bridges out, with new bridges built from lower towers under the cover of the higher ones. Might have worked if I hadn't built under the edge of the cover, but one tile in from that (builders insisted on standing outside the burrow on high cost traffic tiles to build more often than not). However, on this embark it seems getting hit doesn't matter. What matters is the temperature calculation that hits everything on a "surface" tile while it's raining if I've understood your description correctly. A tile covered by a roof is still surface...
I've never encountered a wild troll using any equipment, only goblin siege weapon type named trolls [i.e. Snodub, Lasher troll, etc.] (metal weapons, but no metal armor, probably metal shields when appropriate). No cavern dwelling animal people I've encountered have used metal (wood usually. Don't remember if they wore clothes, nor if they used bone weapons). This means metal comes from caravans and occasional miner, woodcutter, or hunter immigrants. Also note that caravan guards tend to have both metal weapons AND armor...
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 16, 2015, 02:31:02 pm
Huh. An interesting exploit / quirk.

If you fell a tree on the lowest level of the map, it'll make a bottomless pit (well, it just shows "open space", but it acts like one).

The lack of plump helmets isn't really that bad.  Just annoying. Also: don't forget about eggs.

I haven't been having any trouble digging up to the surface: just make sure that you have a door right next to the ramp and forbid it as soon as a ramp is dug, and never order >1 ramp dug at a time.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 16, 2015, 02:45:00 pm
Huh. An interesting exploit / quirk.

If you fell a tree on the lowest level of the map, it'll make a bottomless pit (well, it just shows "open space", but it acts like one).

The lack of plump helmets isn't really that bad.  Just annoying. Also: don't forget about eggs.

I haven't been having any trouble digging up to the surface: just make sure that you have a door right next to the ramp and forbid it as soon as a ramp is dug, and never order >1 ramp dug at a time.

Well, THAT'S interesting (the bottomless pit) something fun to drop the undead into, maybe? heheh. 
Cave wheat can also be querned/milled into dwarven flour, which is a solid food for cooking. (biscuits and the like).
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 16, 2015, 03:30:16 pm
Hm, I'd forgotten about flour. I never do any of that, since everything brewable goes into booze, normally, except plant threshables.

Sounds like you're using the same workaround for surface passage as I do, Pseudo, only I use drawbridges rather than doors (or rather, I use both, so slow lever pullers can be compensated for by doors. Tactics update imminent!).

I've seen the pits (bluish tiles) but thought it was just a another graphic glitch (there are a fair number of those for me, with these tiles). I think I'll plug them, eventually (once I manage to get into the cavern. My discovery breach caused a crundle to race up the stairs and seems to be camping, and the rest seem to be camping in the cavern below). I managed to block the racing crundle with a floor at the top in the nick of time, so there were no injuries.

Another interesting find is that a reanimating hide (that I managed to kill with no injuries) resulted in TWO hides that could be tanned. It was my first draft animal, so there shouldn't have been more than one tanned hide in the stockpile afterwards (apart from me seeing two hides prior to tanning, both an original on the workshop, and one I'd killed). I've seen a similar kind of replication with reanimated hair, by the way.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 16, 2015, 04:41:14 pm
How did it get slain? Did it get cut in half, by any chance?

I can't be bothered to have a lever hookup per ramp, so I just have them all feeding into one access tunnel with a drawbridge. It does mean that if/when a building destroyer shows up I'll have to rebuild all those doors, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 16, 2015, 05:36:41 pm
I didn't check the battle report, but given that a pick probably was used I doubt it. Also the animated part was in the leatherworks next door (5 or so tiles away).

Given that I have 4 tunnels (roughly one in the middle of each side), I need those drawbridges anyway. I'll consider upgrading using your method at a (much) later stage. A large number of doors is just production (counting towards the target, I guess), and I'll still keep my current 4 tunnels anyway.

The camping crundles in the cavern seems to be a blessing in disguise. They didn't move when I breached the cavern, and I've partially closed off one cavern entrance (as in: wall along the bottom one tile from the edge with a drawbridge in it and a wall on top. Haven't done anything about the space above, though (ran out of blocks as well as time, as the caravan was due). I've harvested a neat pile of wood (60+ logs?) before turtling up again, and, by the way, I've dug out a tree farm, but it'll take time before that will result in any trees. However, given the floor holes, the cavern is a finite tree resource (and would have been anyway, since it's muddy rock, and the mud disappears when you cut down such tress).
Mmm. Everyone to get their own (low quality) bed, in their own bedroom (once I get to digging those out).

6 immigrants during the summer, all survived, no animals.
Just before the caravan arrived the rain started. They made it into one of my tunnels before croaking, but some are missing (as in not present as dead bodies, nor present in any of the unit lists), so I guess they made it off the map before expiring. Got an undead trader and a soon to become undead donkey locked up, plus a pile of stuff (including what probably are cages with a dead boar and a dead cavy, since these two are reported missing). I've got no extermination means yet, but I'm building one in one of the other tunnels. Once the autumn migration wave has arrived I'll try to let these undead out to take that route (fingers crossed). Hm, only two, and wood for cages. Could there be an easier way... Meanwhile a pile of stuff sits "safely" under cover, waiting form my grubby fingers...

A very good start so far, but you never know when things go pear shaped.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Sanctume on November 16, 2015, 08:51:46 pm
Would it be cheesy to melt bronze leggings for more metal? 
I mean, since wood is scarce resource:

1 wood: melt 1 bronze pick = 1.0 bronze metal bar in smelter
1 wood: make bronze leggings
1 wood: melt 1 bronze leggings = 1.5 bronze metal bar in smelter
1 wood: make bronze leggings
1 wood: melt 1 bronze leggings = 2.0 bronze metal bar in smelter

So a gain of +1 metal for consuming 5 wood. 
But at this point. 2 wood to gain +1 metal.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 17, 2015, 02:22:13 am
Pseudo's already discussed using the melt exploit (and without looking closely at it, I think his calculation was for a more efficient route).
In my view it defeats part of the purpose of the metal scarce embark. Now, the amount of wood is limited (but the trees have a very good yield), so you won't get extremely far. Personally I'll use the wood supply to provide everyone with masterworks beds eventually, plus a ton of cage traps (I've yet to have too many of those, but on the other hand, I've never had more than 1000 (I think my last embark had something like 500 cage traps). Hm, probably a few mine cart repeaters (impulse ramp exploit driven...) and some glass spike traps as well, down the line (provided, of course, the fortress isn't cut short again).

However, unless it's an official competition, you'll play this hellish embark the way you want.

Edit: It seems creatures that die in cages can reanimate outside of it. I'd forbidden all the merchant stuff, a merchant and his donkey reanimated, and later a "missing" boar reanimated from not providing any visible body, so it was probably brought in a cage (pigs aren't used as draft animals after all). The cavy boar is missing without a trace, however. All the stuff has been recovered, and the undead have been atom smashed (caged, cage hooked up to lever, release into atom smasher).
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 17, 2015, 11:40:35 am
Advice for living:

Cage traps everywhere.

On an unrelated note, I am currently blocking off the caverns. Going rather well, although I have a bunch of dwarves that are brused and scratched from crundles.

I also have a king. Who took the throne in, like, <2 years. I'm still scrambling to make his rooms good enough. Unfortunately, he likes gauntlets and large gems. Gauntlets I can make out of bone, but large gems are trickier... There are some gems, but the RNG god hates me.

As for the melt exploit, there are three routes:


Without iron / steel things are going quite slowly.

Fakeedit:

Darn it. Just got hit by the "cages get opened when sent to the trading depot" bug.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 17, 2015, 12:41:00 pm
I've got a king as well (about 2 months in). The fight with a reanimated skin seemed to have triggered it.

I can't understand the rain heat logic, though. In my spring migration wave, everyone except some animals were well inside when the rain started, and they didn't start bleeding until they'd reached past the halfway point of the map. Nevertheless, 5 migrants (2 of them kids) and a single animal died of bleeding (none of the other animals bled at all), and another 4 dorfs were lost in the dorf reanimation mess. Two more are hurt, and I've got my doctor (ironically) infected after a crundle fight since earlier (sloppy. I should not have let that happen). Of the dead 8 were immigrants, but the 9:th was my farmer, and none of my dorfs have any farming skills except those gained through harvest. Well, I don't think I'll starve anyway. The caravan brought plump helmet spawns... Yum!

Still a net pop profit, since I've got 14 surviving immigrants, for a total pop of 34. However, given the strange rain heat logic, I should probably designate a meeting zone in the closest entrance tunnel when immigrants show up and lock all the entrances' inner access. If they succumb, pull the lever and atom smash the lot. if they didn't croak, let them in. Should probably reroute the tunnels so they all have a path through the trade depot, so the caravan can go there (and be isolated, if need be) without passing through the fortress proper.

I've dislodged the camping crundles. Some of them caught in cages, and the rest left the map. Before that I made another foray into the caverns to collect another 70 or so logs, but all have been converted into cages and beds (save for a small mood supply). A GCS ignored my juicy door bait and left the map, but there will probably be others. Waiting for a new opportunity to get out into the caverns and continue the sealing operation (and collect more wood). All wood cutting holes in the floor have been floored over, however.

I assume you ordered cages containing hostiles to be sent to the depot? I hope the resulting fight went well. It also implies you managed to get a caravan in successfully?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Dozebôm Lolumzalìs on November 17, 2015, 02:49:08 pm
It's summer, and four of the initial seven remain. Two lie undead of scalding rain, behind a sturdy wall. One lies mangled (and therefore firmly dead) underneath "Smoothnesssick", the water buffalo cow hair, behind a sturdy door. (Don't ask.) And also a water buffalo lies alive but starving behind a...

OhnoIdidn'twallitoffgodoitRIGHTNOWmydwarvesoryouwillalldie

Okay, I'm safe now. Slabs have been engraved, and we have a fine dining room.
Farms have produced some sweet pods, and we'll start brewing soon. But will the fortress survive its first few seasons? I'm doubting it.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 17, 2015, 03:05:27 pm
Well, I lost one fortress to the assumption tha mangled means firmly dead. The undead giant rat killed everything it encountered.

It's heroic to struggle on with 3 remaining dorfs and both draft animals dead. I've given up on the attempts where I failed to bring everyone in alive (On the other hand, they WERE doomed, since I didn't have any stone to wall off the exterior, even if I managed to dump the dead there). I do believe, however, that undead animals can be butchered if killed again. I even think reanimation revivifies the flesh, so even if it was spreading rotten miasma before rising, it yields fresh meat when butchered, if you can find a way to kill it again, that is. I'm not completely sure about that, but I think I've seen that on my previous attempt at a reanimating embark.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 17, 2015, 03:23:37 pm
Ended up reverting to the beginning of the season. (Personal view: I don't mind reverting when bugs are the cause.) Tantrum spiral quickly destroyed the fort, and what was released was building destroyers so doors didn't help (blind cave ogres), and none of my dwarves would pull levers because dead dwarf in lever room aah!

Note to self: my dwarves are way too social and nowhere near scarred enough. Normally I'd gib things beside the dining room, but reanimation causes problems. Also: more cage traps. Or rather better placed ones.

Taking another stab at it now.

(Also, I noticed something. It appears that deep underground, things won't reanimate.)

Edit: second attempt they didn't spawn at a good location, and so I lost the caravan. Still better than last time though, and not due to a bug, so I'll keep it. There's a water buffalo bull running around being chased by an undead peasant head. I feel like playing yakety sax in the backgound...
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 17, 2015, 08:03:20 pm
... I can't understand the rain heat logic, though. In my spring migration wave, everyone except some animals were well inside when the rain started, and they didn't start bleeding until they'd reached past the halfway point of the map.  ...
I've been trying to refine this particular style of embark by creating a purely swamp world with 100% rain, and much higher temperatures, to ensure the surface is universally fatal for animals, migrants and caravans alike.
However, it's... very frustrating and inconsistent.  There are times when being on the surface kills dwarf and animal alike in less than one second.  Then there are times when they can walk around freely, rain or no rain.  And then there's the very repeatable " that yak/water buffalo/horse has no fat, yet is perfectly happy and alive " thing, which... I'm pretty sure is a bug.  :P  I even had a titan show up, and saw all his fat promptly melt off, which it ignored and chased the no-fat water buffalo around for a few days.  There's a no-fat/low-fat joke in there somewhere, I'm sure.

On the plus side, I found an embark where the entire ocean turns to steam as soon as you unpause the embark.  That was.. interesting.  The ocean seems to be slightly better at causing consistent temperature updates, so that may be my path forward.  We shall see.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 18, 2015, 03:04:34 am
A few things:

- I suspect using a cave-in at the lowest cavern level might not plunk down a wall, but rather punch a hole in the floor into the unknown.
- I found a hospital can actually have some use, but you have to enable and disable it to release those resting there before they get too thirsty. Some treatment actually seems to be performed though, and one dorf that was bad enough to be able to crawl to a barrel and not being able to drink recovered enough to drink, and seems to even have picked up a crutch. Annoyingly, dorfs that have no damage left still have the cleaning job on them, and go to rest/sleep in the hospital as soon as it's enabled.
- A whacky thought: I think it should be possible to build a windmill farm reasonably safely by building the mills underground and then make a ramp hole over the center of each windmill. I don't know if there's any wind at the embark, and even if there is, there's no fluid to pump, so all power would go to mine carts, which I normally power with impulse ramps.

Rain heat logic:
Yes, it seems very inconsistent. I think I've had a migrant wave that showed up just after the rain started, but very close to an entrance, and they all made it. To clarify the quote: the immigrants made it half across the map 4 levels under ground before they started bleeding, and were inside when the rain started.

Save scumming:
I think reverting to an earlier save is OK on a crash and when things go bust because of a bug (unkillable head thingies, for instance, although they can be exterminated with DFHack, but if they've already killed a few dorfs who reanimate it doesn't help). I've also decided to restart my attempts from a save where everyone have made it inside with the gear, since I do the start the same way every time, so I've cut away a section of tedious repeat (which is, of course, followed by another section of tedious repeating of the same actions).

Reanimation:
The giant rat that killed off one fortress as it reanimated did its reanimation act in the staircase between the fortress and the cavern, but I don't know where (at a guess, it was about half way). On the other hand, I had a dead crundle by my entrance to the cavern for a fair while before I managed to get someone to dump it on my atom smasher in the entrance, without it reanimating. It might be worth testing out.

Edit:
I had a reanimated skin resulting in 3 parts when killed. I also had a crundle scale that reanimated, was killed into several parts, and the head one reanimating (fortunately, it was already down in my garbage compressor). Since the first generation of peafowl matured I'm having my full time militia (4 dorfs) stationed in the butcher's shop to handle any reanimations. I've also secured the cavern, which is a big step.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 18, 2015, 07:24:31 am
A few things:

- I suspect using a cave-in at the lowest cavern level might not plunk down a wall, but rather punch a hole in the floor into the unknown.
I shall have to test this...

- I found a hospital can actually have some use, but you have to enable and disable it to release those resting there before they get too thirsty. Some treatment actually seems to be performed though, and one dorf that was bad enough to be able to crawl to a barrel and not being able to drink recovered enough to drink, and seems to even have picked up a crutch. Annoyingly, dorfs that have no damage left still have the cleaning job on them, and go to rest/sleep in the hospital as soon as it's enabled.
Also note that you can have a CMD with no actual hospital. Won't actually do anything, but you can at least glance at the medical screen and see who needs diagnosing.

- A whacky thought: I think it should be possible to build a windmill farm reasonably safely by building the mills underground and then make a ramp hole over the center of each windmill. I don't know if there's any wind at the embark, and even if there is, there's no fluid to pump, so all power would go to mine carts, which I normally power with impulse ramps.
Making windmills secure in this version is actually rather difficult now that things can jump and climb. I wonder if a windmill will operate under a bridge?

It'd certainly help with milling. Hmm... May be a use for that artifact grate, now that I think about it.

Save scumming: [snip]
Normally I'll revert to the beginning of the season without a second thought. That being said, for this challenge...? I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Reanimation:[snip]
Looks like things reanimate quite slowly underground, but they do reanimate. I've been running operation splat for a while now, and unfortunately it seems to be producing more cages than it is freeing up...

Since the first generation of peafowl matured I'm having my full time militia (4 dorfs) stationed in the butcher's shop to handle any reanimations.

(Operation splat: exactly what it sounds like on the tin. Hole dug from ~2 levels below surface to ~2 levels above the bottom, cage trap corridor at the bottom leading into by butchery leading into more cage traps. Drop things, they go splat, dwarves grab the remains to butcher / etc, I lock the door and repeat. Generally a couple parts reanimate (hair in particular), but they are caged quickly.  Haven't lost a dwarf yet.)

I've also secured the cavern, which is a big step.

I've "secured" the cavern. By which I mean it is safe against non-fliers, but not safe against fliers.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 18, 2015, 09:36:45 am
I do have a CMD and, as indicated, I've set up a hospital zone that I enable and disable.

I know how to make a building destroyer invader proof windmill farm (after help from the forum) and can try to describe it from my memory, if desired. It's a lot of work, though. For a single mill I think you can get away with only two wind mills if you still want to do it safely. A windmill requires free access to the sky above the central tile, but I don't know if either drawbridges or grates block it. It has to be outdoors as well as sun lit. If you build everything underground and then dig an up ramp above the center, you shouldn't have to be exposed to the elements at all, in theory. I think you have to channel down as well after the up ramp to expose the windmill to the elements.
And, by the way, I don't consider it cheating to make a copy of the current DF game to test things out and then discard it (I've considered doing it with the windmill, in which case I'd just make a standard mill on top of gear test, but since I don't mill, I don't really have any use for power).

Save scumming: I generally do that a fair bit, since DF normally is about enjoying yourself, not competing (which I'm not really doing: I'm trying to achieve the goal, but I'm playing normally without trying to explicitly maximize wealth). Another thing I've done is the set the pop cap to 10 above the current pop, since I dislike huge immigration waves, and that is what I do normally (which usually means 6-9 immigrants). On the one hand, it reduces production due to the lower number of dorfs, but on the other it reduces risk, since an immigration wave is exposed for a shorter time.

I just had my second attempt at receiving the second caravan (a DF crash stopped the first one, which had resulted in a fleeing caravan and the loss of one of my dorfs, but the situation under control). In the second attempt I noticed the patch of horse tallow on the ground as the caravan came in, and sure enough, even though they were all healthy, they had a dead horse in a cage, so I quarantined them in the trade depot, and yes, the horse reanimated outside of the cage, killed one merchant, a draft animal, and two guards, but didn't chase the other animal and attendant dwarf who fled down a bit in one of my tunnels. I managed to get the horse to catch itself in a cage trap, and after waiting a couple of weeks more, I sent dorfs to collect and disposed of the bodies and body bits lying around, with no incident (no reanimation). I've engraved a slab for the merchant, but the guards don't show up in the list, so I can't engrave any slabs for them. IF ghost for them show up, I consider it legitimate to kill them as a bug work around (the same as for unkillable reanimated head body parts). Anyway, it looks like I have no choice but to loot the remains of another caravan (waiting for the survivors to leave, but the last time I had survivors hiding out like that they didn't leave even when the message said they would).

Operation splat: I don't quite understand what you do, since tame critters cannot be butchered after death? I do it the traditional way, i.e. lead the animals to the butchery and have them killed. The hide is taken next door to the tanner (all dorfs have the tanner task enabled). So far I've dumped all hair into my garbage compactor (right beside the butchery), while wool has been spun without incident (everyone has spinning as well). I'll try to spin some hair when I get the next chance, since the on/off hospital means thread won't be stored there, but taken for looming. I did encounter a bug when a crundle scale reanimated. It was quickly killed by my militia, but it generated a lot of bits to be dumped. One of them refused to be dumped, hauled to a temporary refuse pile, etc. It was stuck on/in the butchery, and was released when I finally dismantled the butchery (but I'm sure it would have been free to move just fine if it had reanimated).

Unless I misunderstand you, I think you haven't secured the cavern against non fliers either. Non fliers can enter the embark on top of walls built flush with the embark edge and climb down (I think they couldn't before) and if a wall is one tile away from edge they can climb normally. I've got 3 places where I can let critters in if desired, and I'm building my first airlock. I haven't caught anything interesting yet (a bunch of crundles, the last of which still remains to be butchered), but with a secure cavern I've build a loom at the bottom to collect webs, so some silk clothing should be in the pipeline (the pig tail yield took a nose dive with the loss of my farmer, and none of my immigrants have any skill, but on the flip side, I've bagged a level 10 carpenter).

An amusing observation: I've discovered some (grass type) vegetation on one or two of my entrance down ramps, so it might be possible to grow surface crops if you got hold of seeds. I wouldn't test that, though, since I suspect a roof over the plot won't protect the farmer below from melting. I know that kind of farming (and creation of grazing grounds) work quite well in normal desert embarks.

Edit: The "parts stuck in building" bug is rather annoying. A donkeys skin as well as its hair attacked and both split into multiple pieces, one piece of each stuck in their corresponding processing building. The donkey head hair part reanimated again, and I DFHack exterminated it, since I know from previous experience that head hair is invincible. I've also DFHack exterminated a reanimated cavy sow pup, since a pile of dorfs with real weapons did nothing but scratch its skin and knock out its teeth (a number of lost teeth, a broken nose, and a smashed ear, plus bruises on the dorf side, plus battle exhaustion. One of the dorf teeth stuck in the kitchen building). By the way, the caravan brought dimple cup spawns, so I'll try to dye thread for the first time (after harvest, of course).
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 18, 2015, 12:21:09 pm
Operation splat is for reanimated critters. Or ordinary ones, who fall down, die, then reanimate, get picked up by the cage trap, and then I send them down again.

Actually works pretty well, assuming I make sure to not send too much down at once.

Also derp, fixing up wall now. Still used to non-climbing things.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 18, 2015, 01:31:28 pm
Spat: Ah, I see, clever. Does it block reanimation of hair and skin as well? I normally hook up the cages of reanimated critters to a lever and then atom smash them. I'm considering saving the two of them for future silk farm bait (just need a GCS...).

Wall: Glad to be of service before "reality" came came smashing down ;)

I've just killed my first FB a first time. The repeating glass spikes take their time dealing with the reanimated version, though, probably partially because they array of two only has two spikes in each tile (rather than my normal 10). I'm not in a hurry, though.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 18, 2015, 03:21:30 pm
Does it block reanimation of hair and skin as well?
No, no it doesn't. As my multiple bruised dwarves can attest to.

But my refuse quantum stockpile, my corpse one, my tanner, loom, and butcher, all have cage traps surrounding them. (And I have dedicated dwarves for each task burrowed there) That being said, I've had to uncage dwarves from cages a few times due to unfortunate dodges  :-\

Something interesting is that reanimation seems to be random - I have a number of full carcasses that haven't reanimated. Perhaps it's a "max number" thing? If so, that could be exploited...

Now I'm running into the tree - construction crash bug - time to start cleaning up the edges of the caverns I guess. A shame to lose farm-able land.

I have a titan up on the surface. I suppose I should deal with him at some point, though I think I'll finish up the caverns first.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Dozebôm Lolumzalìs on November 18, 2015, 04:29:58 pm
Only bruised?  Wow.  :o

Mine die from "pushing" the belly a few times.

Edit:

What the hell?  And by that I mean, what the apparently nonexistent hell?  How did you remove the magma layer?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 18, 2015, 04:51:19 pm
You just found that out?

Also, see here (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Advanced_world_generation#Magma_Layer).
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 18, 2015, 06:04:59 pm
... What the hell?  And by that I mean, what the apparently nonexistent hell?  How did you remove the magma layer?
Removing it has some consequences, some known, some surprising (the chopped down tree bottomless pit thing), but I removed it in this case because having it makes dealing with certain problems (like undead) too easy.  It also provides infinite forge/furnace fuel, which I wanted to be a rarity to drive the player into the caverns.

In the 0.40.x (after 34.11) world, you need a demon to lead a goblin civ, and you can't have a demon without the HFS, which is beneath the magma.  As a result, the removal of magma has the consequences of preventing goblin civs. 
IMHO, it's not a big deal in this case, as the titans, megabeasts, semi-megabeasts, fb's, and undead are more than enough fun for this embark.  8)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 19, 2015, 04:34:58 am
I no longer have any trees in the cavern. They all went down while I was plugging the exits (well, I don't know if the 3 trees that have sprung up afterwards have been felled yet). My tree cutting priority is to always get rid if the trees near building sites first. However, I've dug out 2 30*30 or so tree farms in the soil layers (but have yet to see any sapling mature).

Loss of farmable land? If you want to farm, you've got two whole soil levels plus much of the cavern for farming. I guess that's one way to increase the fortress value quickly, though.

The cages around the workshops is a good approach, which I'll adopt. I'd already decided to surround the trade depot with cage traps for the same purpose. Surrounding the loom with cages is overkill, though. Once spun the wool/hair is pacified, but I guess you meant the farmer's workshop dedicated to spinning? Dodging into cages keep your civilians out of harm, so I'd consider that a bonus.

My reanimated FB seems to regenerate as fast as it's hurt. I guess deanimating it requires complete destruction of one body part at a time, but luck to get the same part targeted a sufficient number of times in a row. If I tire of waiting, I just cave-in kill it (it's a the western edge, so it's off the bottom).

Surface titan vs securing the cavern: I think securing the cavern is the higher priority, but delay too long and you'll get a surface crawling with undead migrants and caravan members. If it was my embark, I'd try to lure it into one of my entrance tunnels and lock both ends to keep it contained until I could cave-in kill it. Isn't the titan killed by the weather and reanimated?

Reanimation maximum count: I don't think there is a maximum, apart from the total creature one (2000 or so, I think). My single previous reanimating embark had the second cavern crawling with undead that converted everything that migrated into it, and before I purged it the count in there was above 100 (probably about 120).

I think the removal of hot sauce to increase the challenge was an appropriate one.

vjek, is the scantily clad dorfs with their bare bottoms (and associated bad thoughts) intentional or just a lucky coincidence?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 19, 2015, 09:41:13 am
Tell me if the tree farm works - I thought it required 3 z-levels...
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 19, 2015, 10:49:18 am
...
vjek, is the scantily clad dorfs with their bare bottoms (and associated bad thoughts) intentional or just a lucky coincidence?
That's the way they appeared, and it's consistent across multiple embarks in this world.  It's possible the lack of access to certain plants, leather or materials(?) has led to an entire dwarven civ without pants. :)

I didn't try to get them that way, so it's just lucky coincidence.  But it is interesting that they can turn out that way.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 19, 2015, 11:40:21 am
Trees grow naturally with only two levels (including in 2 z level deep water: a fair bit of work to get rid of), but I'll let you know. The first ones should be due to mature within a year, I think.

The cage trap ring around my tanner caught a reanimated skin. Great innovation that!

Pant-less in hell: I have no problem making pants from pig tails (haven't tried leather, but don't expect any trouble there, since they're in the list). The caravans bring leather as well. I can't make dresses, but will have to do with togas instead, for my full set of clothing.

Another observation: My now undead FB is no longer interested in destroying doors (foiling my attempt to lure it to a better spike trap). I believe I've seen that change in undeads before.

I've nabbed myself a GCS, but currently have no undeads for bait. I guess the second generation peafowl growing up should provide that, though, unless the caravan arrives before that (my latest immigrant batch arrived without incidents and without animals; that is, on the second attempt. DF crashed on the first one, when I had a dead puppy inside (in the middle of a cage trap array) and a dead bird outside, and think things were under control). I've also found that it is quite possible to quarantine migrants by using temporary meeting zones and locked doors, but for some reason morons have tried to escape out again (there's no legal destination, since all such doors are locked, and all the outside is outside my burrow). A locked door put an end on that stupidity, though. Happened on both attempts.

Ah yes: I've seen a few animals who die without other animals or dorfs being affected. It seems they start with getting hurt paws, so presumably they pick up the heat from the blood on the ground. In one observed case the blood trail started with human blood (from a dog). Note that the trail started by the trade depot around the center of the map, not by the entrance. I've yet to see any blood being dragged in and getting smeared on the ground by feet.

And finally: My king has gotten a lover! (No couples in my embarks, generally, and none have arrived here [although I assume the kids that died had at least one parent with them, but not among the surviving]).

Wacky question: What would happen to a vampire exposed to the weather?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Sanctume on November 19, 2015, 01:55:29 pm
Leather Armor, Bone Greaves, Leather/Bone Helm, Bone Gauntets should not become ratty as they are uniform armor. 

That should leave the need for clothing to the occasional wood cutter and miner.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Dozebôm Lolumzalìs on November 19, 2015, 02:48:07 pm
Answer to a wacky question: their fat melts off and they die. Rather straightforward answer. Vampires aren't magma-immune, so...

Wait! The slabs said "bled to death." However, that may be a sort of stand-in death message, I know I've read something like that.

So actually not straightforward! Great! Somebody put a 34.11 vampire in magma and see if they die!
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 19, 2015, 04:14:16 pm
Yes, I know you can get non training civilians to wear armor by drafting them, but there isn't that much stuff you can produce on this embark, and I assume clothing adds to the fortress value.

I've now crossed the 1 MDwarfbuck line, just before the 2½ year line. It was a hectic summer/autumn, however, with a titan topside, a second FB in the cavern, a caravan that croaked outside my tunnels (so no goods unless I venture out), and an immigrant wave where 3 out of 6 died (and all animals). There's still a mess with dead animals outside, plus one dead dorf in my tunnels (with another one caged on the same tile). The titan has been eliminated, as has the first FB, with the second one under way.
Just got a silk farm going with an undead yak as bait (I didn't really feel comfortable with using the caged undead dorf, so that's good). Also bagged a cave dragon.

Those reanimated dorfs are scary with their lightning speed. Fortunately a pressure plate activating 3 10 tile raising drawbridges is just enough to smash them (but I sure was worried for the dorf reloading the cage trap after the yak at the end of the last drawbridge).

Well, a vampire in magma ought to burn, so it's not the same as having the fat melted off the body. The undead animals topside shed tallow without dying (again), and the titan did shed both tallow and ichor, with a lot (all?) of body parts' fat melted off, without it dying. If I get a vamp I'll send it on patrol on the surface to see what happens.

Edit: My first tree farm has gotten its first two trees, so 2 z levels is sufficient (which is also what's stated on the wiki page when I finally checked). I did however make a third one with a 3 z level headroom using a cave-in just to confirm it was possible. You can also increase the cavern yield by shearing off the roof where the height is lower than 2 (which I haven't bothered to do).
I've also realized I have a better use for a vamp than patrol duty: someone ought to haul the stuff left on the surface to safety. Now I just need to get one...
I just had a severe booze scare. The stocks were suddenly down to 13 (for 69 dorfs to share). I think too much valuable booze source material has gone to the quern. Looks like I've made it, though, without anyone getting thirsty.

Edit 2: GAME OVER! The save repeatedly crashes during loading (seemingly different locations within the loading phase). Carry on without me...I'm not starting over again.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 22, 2015, 09:29:39 am
@Pseudo: I've tried to understand what you did with this, but don't get it:
Quote
Deconstruct the wagon immediately. Dig 2 ramps down and a small area connected to one of the two ramps, and a tunnel just disconnected from the other ramp. Also: rush down to get two stone.

Pasture the animals in the small area, and make a 1x2 stone stockpile there as well. It will be needed.

Dump everything into the disconnected ramp. Connect it. Unforbid everything there and build a wall under both ramps. Now you're "safe".

My interpretation (skipping some clear bits) is this:
Channel out two separated tiles from the surface, and enter the nice darkness through one of them, while all the embark gear is dumped down the other one. Connect the second ramp and unforbid the dumped stuff, and build a wall on the ramp tile, with the wall building forcing the builder to move the stuff dumped off the ramp tile in order to get a clear access to it.

However, with that interpretation I cannot see any advantage of using two rather than one ramp, since you should be able to do exactly the same with a single combined access and dump ramp.
Another way using two ramps would be to channel the second ramp down an additional level (requiring an access/exit tunnel at the level just below ground to get the miner in/out) and then build a wall covering the upper level (the hole at the level just below ground) from the side once everything has been dumped. The stuff would then be inaccessible below that wall, but if you dig a ramp up below the stuff (3:rd level below ground) the things should fall onto a ramp that's not considered to be surface, and thus should be completely safe to unforbid and get stuff from.

The part that throws me is the building of a wall under the ramps, since there's sand there?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Max™ on November 22, 2015, 11:42:06 am
They meant build a wall under the channeled tile, where the ramp was.

When I wall in a fort for a face of armok I do a similar thing.

Whip up a perimeter wall around the wagon with one tile left as a ramp, the dorfs put the walls up and once the ramp and adjacent wall are up I have them slap a floor into place, when that is finished they remove the ramp and put a wall there to seal it.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 22, 2015, 12:03:38 pm
@Pseudo: I've tried to understand what you did with this, but don't get it
Walking through:

You need to get your stuff under cover ASAP. There are two ways of doing this: either move the stuff under cover or construct cover over the stuff.

Constructing cover over the stuff would require a minimum of 12 constructed tiles (9 to cover the wagon itself, 1 to cover the stairs down, and a constructed up and down stair to get to the roof). Given that you don't start with 12 blocks, good luck with that (either you'd need to dig ~48 stone tiles to get ~12 stone, or you'd need to dig ~16 stone tiles to get 4 stone, 1 for a mason's workshop and 3 for blocks, make blocks, etc...). Probably possible, but not easy.

So, you want to get the stuff in the wagon under cover ASAP. There is ultimately two ways to do this: either via a stockpile or via a garbage dump. Either way, you'll either need to dig out a relatively large amount of space or quantum stockpile the stuff somehow. If you're going the QS route, you'll either need a minecart or a drop. Minecart's pretty much out (again, it'd take too much time, and use valuable wood too...), so you'll need a drop. Except you'll need to be careful or the dwarves will drop things on each other's heads. Easiest way to do that is to have an entirely separate area for the dump.

The "build a wall" thing is just the easiest way to move the items actually under cover and to seal up the hole in the surface. (Also: note that building a wall can be a viable method of moving large numbers of items quickly. When building a wall, the dwarf doesn't wait the usual "find a new job" length of time before moving the next item...)

...Except that I just remembered that garbage dumps QS even if there isn't a pit to dump things into. Derp.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 22, 2015, 12:33:29 pm
Thanks for the explanation.

OK, I now understand why you use two ramps. I'm not sure that's needed, though, since the items are sort of sliding down, but I haven't tried to find out if dorfs actually do get hit.

Building a roof probably won't help on that embark, even if it was doable with a reasonable effort, because the tiles under the roof are still "outside" and thus probably lethal when the temperature check sets in.

A dump generates a QS effect, yes, but if the wall builder doesn't enter the ramp dumped into while moving the things (quickly, as you pointed out), it would be completely safe and faster than a dump tile inside. However, does the builder keep into safety, or does he subject himself to the elements while moving the stuff away? I'm not sure we'll get an answer to that question (well, if the answer is "no" someone might find out the hard way).

@Max: It's not quite the same thing, but along the same lines. When I build a courtyard I place the ramp up the outside wall so I don't have to remove it to seal the box, but I'm not concerned about the looks.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: Pseudo on November 22, 2015, 04:43:13 pm
The question is: does the temperature check set in? I thought it was the rain that triggered the temperature updates...
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 23, 2015, 04:58:42 am
Yes, that's what vjek said. However, it can trigger in several ways:
- As soon as it starts to rain, everything that's "outside" is evaluated.
- When it rains, everything hit by rain is evaluated.
- When it rains, everything that's in contact with blood (from above of from the ground) is evaluated.

My experiences are inconsistent, since i believe I've had migrants arriving during rain who made it without harm, while other seem to have died without there being any rain at all, as well as migrants dying when the rain started while they were well into my tunnels. I also had one case where I resumed the embark up and it ran at 30-40 FPS. A DFHack clean all returned the FPS to full speed, which to me indicates there were some severe temperature calculation effects going on (nothing was outside at the time, or even due to arrive shortly, so it shouldn't have had any effect.

I'm considering mustering the energy to restart to create a "surface" pasture for wool producers by digging out an area 2 levels under ground and then ramp/channel away the soil above one tile at a time, plugging the hole with a wall afterwards. The result would be a two tile wide, arbitrarily long strip sealed away from the rain. Ideally, you'd have blood on the pasture when you pasture animals there, and then wait for a couple of rains. If they die, DFHack the blood away and repeat. If it's done as a test save scumming can be used to set up the pasture "safely", without the single tile at a time method, and save scumming can obviously be used to retry the pasture with the same animals but without the blood.

Edit: I've mustered the energy:
I built a 12*2 or so slit, let it rain down it (not complete), and covered it. I then pastured animals there. When it rained a peafowl standing on blood died.
I then repeated it using DFHack to clean off the blood, and neither dorfs nor animals seemed to fare ill while in the area during the rain. I thus suspect death is caused by being contaminated by the blood (either by standing on it or having it on the body) when temperature calculations are made. That also matches what I've seen with animals who first hurt their paws. Dorf shoes ought to have provided some protection, one would have thought.
The above also indicates using DFHack to clean away blood to see when it's raining and when it's not increases caravan and migrant survivability, and thus shouldn't be allowed for the challenge.
A consequence of the above is that an above ground shelter ought to actually be safe if free of blood, and that a drawbridge might be a safe way to create a larger sheltered area.

Another note is that I didn't see any vegetation in the area, despite the second attempt took a long time for the rain to appear, so I suspect the grass growth is rather slow, requiring a large grazing area. I also built a farm plot in the area, and, as expected, it supported various over ground crops (rather useless without the seeds, of course, but if a dwarven caravan did actually bring some vegetables you could get seeds).

Building a wall and then removing it gets rid of the blood without using DFHack.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 23, 2015, 11:25:14 am
Regarding inconsistent temperatures..

I'm trying severe cold.  It works, but it's not quite as deadly as I would like.  In 4 days on the surface, everything is dead, but that's actually quite a while in game time, plenty long enough for caravans to get inside and migrants, too. :(

The other problem is that... everything not a dwarf/pack animal is pretty much instantly destroyed on the surface (non-homeotherms/corpses/supplies) due to cold damage, to the point where I don't think re-animation will work.  I'm still testing it, and will be happy to provide the embark, but another problem has come up, too. 
I've set mineral scarcity to max (100000) and I'm getting tons of metal bearing ores, platinum, gold, iron, everything.  It's really strange, I've never seen a world produce so much below-ground wealth with this value set where it is, so I'm suspicious there may be a bug at play with wrapping/negative values somewhere, but I'm not sure what the root cause is? (the goal here is to have zero ore of any kind, which normally is quite easy to achieve)

Spoiler: mmm, frostbite (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 23, 2015, 12:25:32 pm
I usually use 80000 as mineral scarcity, and I don't have too much trouble finding embarks devoid of ore. The reason I don't set the scarcity to max is that I'd prefer my mother civ to have iron/copper, since bronze/steel eats up a lot of embark points.
I doubt the issue is a wrap around one, both since it usually works and because the value range is way outside of 16 bits. I'd rather double check you didn't lose a zero ending up with 10000 instead, or, for that matter 1,000,000, since out of bounds probably ignores the value and uses a default, rather than shifting the value to the closest legal one.

And I doubt a frost bitten brain has any impact on the average dorf's intelligence...

Are there any other horrible environments possible? Such as e.g. a 99 degree Celsius environment with a lot of water that creates a lethal heat shock after a short time (thus not quite as hot as your boiling ocean)? I'm not sure the heat load of humidity is modeled by DF, though. Another possibility is if it's possible to create a permanent noxious haze over a swamp (again, instakill is pointless). You might consider Fortress of the Blind, where a permanent surface effect causes blindness (and/or other non lethal disabilities). The only hale dorfs would be children born inside.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 23, 2015, 01:38:06 pm
I've tried swamps for high temp, and it doesn't work (thinking all the surface water would help).  It -only- updates with actual rain falling from the sky, or non-rivers flowing, or being covered in ocean spray.  Even then, it's more a matter of it being less inconsistent (or more consistent) rather than it being 100% working as expected.  For example, while being covered in ocean spray eventually kills the dwarf, it doesn't instantly kill them, which it should, as rain does.

I've found an embark where a riversource empties over a 1Z cliff, next to the ocean, and that works ok, as soon as the flowing surface water touches the dwarves, they die.

But honestly, it's all a bit... contrived?  Given that the real source of the problem is high temps are simply bugged.  If it's over 10078'U, those dwarves should be dead in a matter of seconds, as all their fat melts off. 99% of the time that never happens.

If that were true, then I could tune it so finely that dwarves could only go on the surface for a single day, or a single week, or any variation on that theme up to 1, 2, or 3 seasons being deadly, if desired.  If only the temperature updates occurred asynchronously based on the dwarf entering the new temperature/environment/biome/z-level/tile, rather than the rainfall/liquid-flow trigger. 
I mean, all you'd need to do is a compare, tile to tile while a creature is moving, is this temp more than 1 degree different than the old one?  Call the temperature update.  If it's not, don't bother.
---
EDIT: Hm, I tried this again, and although it does have some... interesting side effects, it may be possible that super high temps (over 10180'U) might do as you suggest, PatrikLundell.  I'll do some more testing here today.
EDIT2: 10176 is fatal, and permits pathing.  Over 10200 is also fatal, and does not permit pathing. (dwarves won't walk on 10200+)  So this may work, and it might be faster than freezing to death.  :P
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 23, 2015, 02:07:54 pm
I'm happy if acting as a sounding board to bounce ideas off (while still having little knowledge of the underlying mechanisms) helps you to find new angles to explore.

It sounds by Edit2 that you've found a small wriggling room to tweak the melting probability?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 23, 2015, 02:24:53 pm
Yeah, 10175-10199 works, and it's fatal, and requires no rain, as far as I can see.  Large pack animals survive, but dwarfs do not.  I'm not actually sure what the lower range of "open hot air" fatality is, but it's likely somewhere between ~10150 and ~10174.

I had a migrant wave show up in a test world and while most of the dwarves made it inside, a peafowl died before it could path inside, which is ideal.

I'm going to re-gen the second Pseudo world with higher temps and see if works as expected, long term.  I also had the idea of a world with 9200 <-> 10199 temps right next to each other, which could be all sorts of fun. :)

EDIT: The surface... is sand, that's normal, but every tile of surface sand also has "a pile of human boiling blood" on it.  I think... that the rain is falling, but there's no message, and then it's boiling on the surface?  In any case, the message showed up that migrants arrived, but there were no migrants.  Also, in spring, the temperature is below 10200.  So, things will path on the surface.  But then in summer, the temperature is above 10200, and you can't station military, build, pen/pasture, or do anything else, on the surface.
Caravan message... and... no caravan.
I mean, it's neat and all, and meets some of my goals of basically cutting off the surface, but it might be a bit punitive?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 23, 2015, 05:27:50 pm
I assume the boiling blood is red on top of the white/black/yellow sand? If you're using DFHack you can remove the blood to see if it rains or not in the form of more red tiles appearing.

Have you tried to zoom to the migrants/caravan to see they haven't immediately melted into a puddle or something?

If the temperature is unpathable I wouldn't be surprised if nothing actually enters the map despite the message. For the summer, I would prefer the migrant wave not to appear rather than having them die immediately (or slowly, while standing still in agony) and litter the surface. For the autumn you might want to adjust the temperature so that the caravan can actually path to the fortress, or change the dwarven caravan season to winter. Possibly a better alternative?

No caravans at all means no metal at all (except RNG luck with getting miners, hunters, or woodcutters as immigrants), unless you provide black towers (they quickly run out of steam, in my experience: 2-3 sieges) or goblins. Those would usually quickly be zombiefied and fight their former comrades, for a really messy surface, and the goblinite would be quite hard to get since it's mostly lying outside (and with goblins you'd probably want to change PROGRESS_TRIGGER_SIEGE_POP [if I remember the parameter name correctly] to 1 so they may arrive with a pop of 20).
With the Pseudo 2 embark I don't consider metal to be a big deal except for moods, but I send militia out as a last resort, not as the first response, so it might very well be quite punitive to some play styles. Ehrm. Scratch that. I remember having a significant lack of weapons (using most of the metal for armor), and I didn't find any obsidian for "stone" ones.

If you want to cut off the dorfs completely, I'd just state that dorfs are required go down, seal up, and never open up again in an otherwise non lethal embark (so the caravan can mill around before leaving). I'd then also set the pop cap to 1 to block immigration to stop the formation of a hill dwarf community topside.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 23, 2015, 07:40:55 pm
Yeah, it's on top, and if you clean it, it comes back, so I think it's some kind of boiling/vaporizing blood-rain situation.

The migrants/caravan haven't melted, they just don't appear, even if you zoom to their location after the announcement, there's nothing there if the temp is 10200+.  Under that, they appear and then start melting.

As far as setting guidelines, I've been down that road before, and while it's true Pseudo is only one person, my long term goals are a bit more ambitious.  If I can put together an embark that doesn't rely on init settings, that would be better for community competitive forts.

I think a starting embark temp of ~10190 would be ideal.  It means summer and autumn nothing can arrive/path, but in winter and spring, you can go out on the surface for short periods of time.  The problem now is I can't seem to get a re-animating evil biome.  >:(

DFHack wishlist:  prospect and/or probe would tell you the nasty features of the biome, if evil. (evil rain, evil cloud, re-animation, undead trees/animals, etc)
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 24, 2015, 03:50:33 am
I'm not quite following you regarding init settings. If you mean guidelines I agree, the less the better. If you mean changing things like caravan seasons and attack limits I don't see that as different from changing other world settings. I assume the starting position would be an embark save with all of these set up (although I wouldn't mind an instruction on exactly where to embark on a provided world, allowing the challengee to spend the embark points as desired, as well as getting a chance to see the pre world).

I think you need guidelines anyway, but I agree the less of those you have the better.
One example is that you may have to mandate not to "clean all", or those who do might get more migrants/caravans through. Obviously temperature calculations have to be on.

Inaccessible summers and autumns leads to a slow pop growth. Sieges blocking migrants can sometimes cause them to arrive during winter, but it's obviously unclear what happens if the migrants "vaporize" during summer/autumn. Also, summer/autumn inaccessibility means the two guaranteed migration waves are blocked off.

By the way, how do you determine the temperature? I tried to figure out what it was as my meeting area zone was marked as "hot", but checking the temperature of boulders and other item (via DFHack extended info) gave a temperature of 8 degrees Celsius, which is rather chilly...

I think your DFHack wishlist items make sense. have you proposed them in the appropriate thread?
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 24, 2015, 10:38:45 am
What I mean by init settings is that if you prepare a community fort, and set a goal, and then give it out for people to play, everyone needs to be able to reach the goal regardless of their init settings.  For example, if someone sets their population settings such that there are no babies, ever, and no child migrants, and a pop cap of say 1 or 20, and someone else has tons of kids and a pop cap of 200, you want either to be able to compete.  In particular, for settings like the single pick challenge, or the starting 7 only challenge, and similar scenarios.

Init settings like invaders, artifacts ( moods ), and a few others can have a drastic impact on difficulty.  In any case, I've seen situations in the past where things like the LNP will overwrite existing saved world raws, as well, so if you change those, to stop caravans for example, there's no guarantee that will actually 'stick' for some people.

So, I agree, guidelines like: don't use DFhack are great, except when people want to play with tweaks, or binary patches to fix bugs, or performance improvements.  Anyway, you get the idea.

As far as temperature goes, I use 'probe' in DFhack to determine temperature.  It's sort of .. odd that the worldgen temperature settings have no relation to what you get in game.  For example, the typical below ground temperature is 10015'U, but if you set the temp limits to -1000 and +300, you get something like ~9200 to 10200, which... isn't linear and/or doesn't correlate.  Further adding to the muddy water is that these values are completely different with or without a pole or poles (north/south) in the world.  In particular, you can't get lethal temperatures without a pole, and/or if you use PSV's to place temperature values. 
As well, where the temperatures end up is different based on world size, as is the gradient between regions.
It's only when you have a pole or poles, and you let the game create the gradient that you get lethal temps.  Finally, a min temp setting of -1000 (cold) isn't instantly lethal to dwarves walking around, despite it being the lowest you can set, but if something dies, it instantly removes the corpse and any non-metal items.   Those non-living items are far LESS resistant and affected far more than dwarves.  In fact, if you get a caravan in 9200'U?  Everything dies, and everything is destroyed (even corpses) by cold damage.  All that's left are metal/gem items on the ground. :)

I've asked about nasty/evil feature enumeration before, in DFHack, but there was no interest/no response, maybe with the new version I'll bring it up again.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: PatrikLundell on November 24, 2015, 11:43:37 am
If you mean being able to reach the goal when you say "compete" I agree almost all setting changes should allow that, but if you mean "winning" such as "reach this goal in the shortest possible time" there is no realistic chance someone not close to an optimal setting will "win". A competition in the traditional sense needs to provide the rules (and some people will cheat anyway, of course).
Another aspect is that some changes will modify the difficulty without the player being aware of it. Using DFHack, for instance, mostly provides convenience (unless you use the powerful command line things), but Performance Tweaks that removes contaminants can make a major difference if there are nasty versions of those about, even though the player just wanted to keep a decent FPS.

Getting modified raws trashed is nasty. That might be the reason LNP doesn't fix the lye in bucket in barrel bug, even though I understand it to be a raw error that should be easily fixed. It's a bit of work to compare the player's file with the default one and only patch if there is a complete match (or locate the buggy location and update only that part).

Temperature:
Wait a minute: If I get it correctly, you say the underground temperature range becomes 9200-10200 when the limits are set to -1000..+300, but are those limits for the underground realm only, or are they for the world as a whole? I would expect the underground to be a fair bit more stable than the surface.
I assume you've already established that the odd resulting range isn't caused by a limit out of bounds that's been brought back into range.
I guess with a single pole the gradient needs to cover the tropics to the pole, plus altitude effects. With no pole you COULD treat the range as a pole to tropics range and the world as a patch of a larger world, in which case the range within the generated world would be smaller. The only logical difference I see with two poles versus one is that the temperature gradient would be twice as large. Similarly, a smaller world would presumably get larger gradients. Again, I assume you've already covered this, and the stuff I write above is purely speculation: I have no knowledge on how it's actually done.
It sounds like the cold is bugged, at least at extreme temperatures. In real life cold generally preserves decayables, although stuff can become brittle; the main thing destroying things is ice crystal formation, and if that is repeated in a thaw/freeze cycle that can be quite destructive.

I would have thought there would be a demand for knowing what you're getting on an evil embark in order to avoid things you're not prepared for/interested in, and get the ones you want. It might be as simple as it not being easy to get hold of, but that doesn't seem to have stopped people in the past.
Title: Re: Could someone please set me up an embark?
Post by: vjek on November 24, 2015, 05:02:48 pm
... Temperature:
Wait a minute: If I get it correctly, you say the underground temperature range becomes 9200-10200 when the limits are set to -1000..+300, but are those limits for the underground realm only, or are they for the world as a whole? ...
Just the surface.  Underground is always the same, 10015, unless magma is involved or the surface is breached from below.
Quote
...
I would have thought there would be a demand for knowing what you're getting on an evil embark in order to avoid things you're not prepared for/interested in, and get the ones you want. It might be as simple as it not being easy to get hold of, but that doesn't seem to have stopped people in the past.
Yeah, it's stored in memory somewhere (obviously), and I think you can even parse it out of uncompressed saves, if desired.  It's probably just not been a huge priority so far, compared with other desired features.

As far as gradients go, yeah, I've tried most of that, but the short version is, without a pole or poles, all the temp values are clamped/trimmed/limited to non-lethal values.

What I've learned from this endeavor: For a certainty, 10180-10199 is lethal to dwarves, outside, rain or no rain, period.  It's a bit of a race which is more lethal, 9200 or 10199, but either will do the job without any help, regardless of biome, in under 5 days of game-calendar time.