Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: javascripter on January 04, 2019, 12:41:29 am
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Is there some way to avoid the evil rain long enough to get underground?
As far as I can tell the evil fog / undead always starts off the map, so I have enough time to haul some seeds / wood / anvil underground, but the evil rain starts immediately, so I can only survive if the rain is stunning/nauseating, and then I have to wait for the dwarves to wake up and finnish hauling everything underground.
Only other major problem I've ran into is my dwarves starve to death fighting yak skins, but I can try putting the yaks in a pasture outside so they don't go to the meeting area.
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My best advice is that less is more with evil biomes. Don't bring many pets - especially dogs as they will attract fights with undead and potentially draw them over to the dwarves. Embarking on a 4x4 or larger area will help put distance between you and the baddies, but cost framerate in the long run.
Again, less is more. With less stuff to haul, you'll spend less time outside. A few bags of seeds and an anvil plus some tools can be scurried inside quickly.
I'd suggests kindly depositing the yaks or horses into nearby magma. Butcher them asap and toss the unprocessibles far away. The hair will get back up, probably. Leather won't reaninate, though. Good luck and remember, losing is fun.
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A common recommendation is to get underground ASAP and then recover the embark wagon goods with the help of a cave-in.
As far as I know the unkillable reanimated stuff bug has been fixed, so you shouldn't starve to death fighting skin, in particular not yak ones, as those are large creatures in the first place. You may have to fight the first skin, "kill" it, resulting in a bunch of skins, and then have the "head skin" reanimate so you have to put that one down as well. The good thing of that process is that you'll get more leather from the yak that way.
This is typically beyond the first week, but anyway...
Going without animals is one way to avoid issues with butchering. The other one is to take protective measures around butchering and processing of the skin/hair (militia stationed to deal with any reanimation, prompt processing of the products to avoid reanimation incidents as far as possible [unless you want skin/hair duplication]. Cage traps to catch reanimating parts and dodging civilians [to get them out of harm's way] is also possible). Obviously, great care should be taken when bringing single time kills from the caverns (and the surface).
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Oh, and hammers - less parts fly off, less parts to fight. Crush some skulls. You can equip a group of three people in copper armor with copper warhammers for not a lot of cash in the embark screen.
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I've been taking very little but I'll try taking just one trip inside and seeing if they can survive the rain, or maybe I'll end up in some place where the rain isn't lethal.
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In my experience it usually isn't - it's random though, so you might just have bad luck.
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As delphonso said, it's rarely deadly. The worst I've had was one that induced permanent tuberculosis (coughing blood), resulting in everything covered in blood, with a few kids dying due to it (not counting an incredibly hot embark where the rain caused all fat to melt off because of the heat, rather than any syndorme).
Now, evil fog is different, but I've turned that one off.
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Dig out a 3x3 room and if rain starts, set it as a burrow and sound the alert. If there is a full-sized tree and you have not dug fast enough, put the burrow under the tree and sound the alert.
Less is definately more... It is easy for a dwarf to mangle a yak skin that animated at the butcher's shop, but after ten or twenty times, the dwarfs that were involved will be nervous wrecks. Reanimating biomes are more difficult in version 44.x than in 43.x due to the accumulated emotional trauma. As an individual, you may be forced to adapt new standards of ethics for your fort to survive.
If you like to spend a lot of time choosing the right location and embark setup, consider setting the data/init/d_init.txt file's INITIAL_SAVE:YES and reloading that save.
Get an underground source of water as soon as possible, for dwarfs to clean themselves at, and set standing orders to zone-only water. Otherwise, they may walk to an above ground pond to clean themselves and then walk back, in the same rain.
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Start with three miners.
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try "embark-assistant" and deny all reanimating weather etc. and still have evil biome.
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Start with three miners.
I expect by this time all experienced DF players start with 5-6 miners plus 1-2 woodcutters. Dig up a hole big enough for all-items stockpile and dismantle wagon asap. Even on safe normal maps. Why? Keas and similar pest. :)
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1 deconstruct the wagon
2 channel out the drop
3 build a bridge/floor over the pit
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1 deconstruct the wagon
2 channel out the drop
3 build a bridge/floor over the pit
i wonder if that really doesnt take longer than building an entrance the traditional way.
all the hauling of construction materials for that can take as much time.
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The advantage with bringing the wagon contents down from below is that it can be done from below, i.e. mostly or wholly out of reach from the weather and non flying undead. Hauling off the contents takes basically the same time regardless of whether it's from the surface or a few Z levels lower, but with a bridge over the head the danger from above is taken care of.
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Dig a stairway right next to the wagon, and build an everything stock pile ?
That usually avoids most of the FUN in my experience.
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1.) Get everybody underground ASAP. Underground is safe.
2.) Dig a stockpile underground and start transferring essential items as weather permits.
3.) Get a militia ready to deal with any undead.
4.) Prepare to slaughter any grazers that you can't provide pasture for.
Build workshops:
- Butcher (to carve up the body before it reanimates),
- Tanner (to tan the hide into leather before it can reanimate), and
- Farmer's (to spin any hair into thread before it can reanimate).
5.) Seek out the caverns to release its life-giving spores into your dirt domain. This will allow for underground pasture for some of your animals, and also seeds for cave-plants if your wagon supplies suffered an unfortunate accident.
A dwarven colony that has found the caverns can survive indefinitely. You don't even need to venture into them and risk the dangers below. So long as you have at least 1 pickaxe and 1 anvil, you'll make it.
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don't have any experience myself but based on what others have been saying, it seems like protecting from the rain is important, but you don't want to haul goods. couldn't you bring wood, and have your 7 dwarfs build a roof over the wagon and a roof over the staircase you dig down right next to the wagon so you can have extra time to haul? but that only protects from rain and not creatures/undead.
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Yes, it's possible to build a shed, but that often takes longer than the time until the first rain/appearance of nasties. You can make the shed with complete walls, so nasties can't get in (and you can't get out, unless you build a door and the nasties aren't able to destroy doors), but you'd still have to get it done before things get unpleasant. Unless you spend your embark points on skills and just a few essential goods, hauling still takes longer than building a shed though.
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You could build a shed out of metal bars to save time ... however that isn't going to do much good is it randomly decides to rain puke before the roof goes on ...
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Note that very few evil rains are really harmful, so I'd be more worried about undead (and mists). However, if I was to build a shed I'd start with a ramp and a wall, then the roof, and end with the remaining walls (and have a miner dig the stairs while the ramp and first wall segment are built). I'd probably have 4 additional wall segments built initially with the dorfs idle otherwise, though, as that would also provide space from which to build further roof segments in parallel, and monitor the building to make sure all dorfs have work to do.
Also, I doubt you save much time by building with metal compared to logs (brought on embark, rather than cut locally), as the logs don't slow down dorfs that much, the hauling distance is very short, and logs cost fewer embark points. If I was to try to reduce weight I'd probably go for stone blocks of the lightest stone available (or even wood blocks, if those can be brought on embark).
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Shed takes too long. Dig 1x1 stairs deep for 2 levels. It should be fine even on aquifer embarks. Mine some 11x11 space for all items storage there. Don't do it on 1st level, as chopped trees will make holes in your cover. Design storage as meeting area. Start bringing your stuff from deconstructed wagon in. Cut 1 tree btw too. Cover entrance with some log when you're done. Leave building on surface for later. With your starting 7 dwarves, you may wish to bring 2 copper battleaxes and 5 copper picks instead of bars. Don't make walks too far from your wagon to the hidy-hole. You can tunnel later to the middle of the map underground and make your proper settlements there. Under ground, above ground or how ever you want. Make sure to make 3x3 butcher room to deal with your wagon pulling animals asap. Butchering renders dead safe from re-animation I think. Though you may need tanner & farmer workshop for that too. 1 tree should provide enough construction materials, so don't get greedy. :D
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Shed takes too long. Dig 1x1 stairs deep for 2 levels. It should be fine even on aquifer embarks. Mine some 11x11 space for all items storage there. Don't do it on 1st level, as chopped trees will make holes in your cover. Design storage as meeting area. Start bringing your stuff from deconstructed wagon in. Cut 1 tree btw too. Cover entrance with some log when you're done. Leave building on surface for later. With your starting 7 dwarves, you may wish to bring 2 copper battleaxes and 5 copper picks instead of bars. Don't make walks too far from your wagon to the hidy-hole. You can tunnel later to the middle of the map underground and make your proper settlements there. Under ground, above ground or how ever you want. Make sure to make 3x3 butcher room to deal with your wagon pulling animals asap. Butchering renders dead safe from re-animation I think. Though you may need tanner & farmer workshop for that too. 1 tree should provide enough construction materials, so don't get greedy. :D
this sounds like the safest method so far.
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So would this work to bring a full load of stuff?
Immediately dig a 5x6 trench 2z deep around the wagon. Make sure your dwarves are all on the inside. Get underground with 6 rocks. Then, dig under and collapse the plug of land with the wagon on it (4 rocks = 3 mechanisms and a support), and build a bridge (2 rocks = 8 blocks) over it from the side, 1z underground.
I'm not sure, but I think if you collapse it an extra level deep you can build a floor over it, under the bridge, and that will make it Inside so dwarves will clean off any evil syndrome rain that already fell on your stuff.
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I personally prefer to build around the wagon with walls. Wood is light and cheap, and the walls can be dismantled later if you want to reclaim the surface and still need wood. I make my walls with a 5x5 interior. Once the walls are up, which takes about a day, you can worry about the rain. Build a ramp to get up to the top level, cover everything with flooring spare for the tile right above the ramp. This takes about another day. Once the roof is finished, deconstruct the ramp, and build a wall where it was to hole up the last tile of roof. You now have a complete seal from the outside world in three days, and all your stuff is safe. I still suggest moving your supplies underground with a dump zone in a moderate amount of time, but that can be done at your leisure.
Using this method of securing the fortress, I embark with two miners. The miners can start digging right away while the other five build the walls, and later the miners can be drafted into the military, which is normally done when the first migrants arrive. The miners that I bring do not have any mining skill and instead have soldiering skills. Casserite, malachite, and a skilled arms/armorsmith are brought to supplement this, so a functional and equipped military is ready to be created by the start of the first summer. With a military in existence, the caverns can be breached with some degree of safety for the purpose of agriculture (if you're on a biome with no soil) and the pack animals can be butchered without fear of their skins causing injury.