Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Gameplay Questions => Topic started by: Insanegame27 on September 22, 2014, 07:21:35 am
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please edit your previous posts to add PROTIPS to your list
layout eg
User 1 gives
PROTIP 1
PROTIP 2
PROTIP 3
User 2 gives
PROTIP 1
User 3 gives
Protip 1
Protip 2
Do not continue the last persons list because they might add something later on
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PROTIP 1: sell all masterwork ammo, instead of using it, using it equates with dwarves going beserk because goblins run off the map with masterwork copper bolts stuck in their head
RELATED: Don't leave anything in the open unguarded, especially early game, you don't want keas grabbing your only anvil
RELATED: Kill all keas
PROTIP 2: Cage traps: you will never have a better siege-stopper (not counting various lategame stuff)
PROTIP 3: Make bedrooms and dining rooms/meeting hall out of stone so it can be smoothed and engraved for good thoughts
PROTIP 4: After receiving candy from the clowns, if someone gets a mood, grabs a piece of candy and claims a metalsmiths forge, hope to Armok it's a edged weapon
NOOBTIP 1: Savescum if PROTIP 4 happens to turn out as a blunt weapon or useless craft.
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PROTIP 4: A legendary dining room/statue garden/bedroom will prevent many tantrums. (Remember to engrave!)
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PROTIP1: With the addition of jumping to the game, using a retracting bridge to create a one-tile gap in your fortress entrance can be used to draw invaders in in a more controlled manner, reducing the number your squads have to deal with at once. Particularly useful for large zombie invasions, as zombies seem to path more randomly than other creatures; station your squad on the other side of a one-tile gap, and zombies which pass closely to your bridge will charge at them, jump the bridge, and attack, without drawing every pathfinding zombie in the map to your point of defense at once and overwhelming your outnumbered defenders.
PROTIP2: Evaluate each Dwarf's preferences before choosing a profession for them. A dwarf who loves shields (and no other armor types) will -always- produce a shield when entering a strange mood with a profession that can produce shields. Likewise, a dwarf who loves maces should never be assigned to be a weaponsmith. A dwarf who likes doors is a shoe-in for mason, carpenter, glassmaker, or metalcrafter (artifact doors are quite useful). Once a dwarf enters a mood, check their profession and preferences, and forbid materials on that basis.
PROTIP3: It costs only 1-3 copper bars and one fuel to turn a peasant into a mood-worthy armor or weapon smith; enable professions, then disable them as soon as a dwarf has enough experience in that moodable profession to make it their highest moodable skill.
PROTIP4: Moodable professions with worthless products are best performed by dwarves who have already produced an artifact.
PROTIP5: Dwarven immigrants with useless moodable professions, or moodable professions for which they have terrible preferences, make excellent soldiers, as being trained in war will prevent them from producing a worthless artifact.
Using 2-5, I have a fortress with two artifact steel greaves, two artifact steel shields, one artifact platinum war hammer, one artifact steel helm, one artifact grizzly leather cloak, one artifact alabaster door, one artifact alabaster throne, fifty soldiers who didn't make the artifact cut, and a cast of artifact-worthy dwarves. The only liabilities are children, and a craft workshop behind a lockable door prevents them from wasting an artifact slot on a worthless bauble.
PROTIP6: Nickname one or two dwarves with no preferences for craftable objects; they're your noble class, and will never trouble you with mandates if you make them your baron/count/duke.
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protip6: To avoid crafters being driven insane about masterpiece destruction, export at least 20 or so of their masterpieces. If you destroy a hundred of their 120 total masterpieces it will still have a risk to drive them insane, but the exported ones will still count in their totals so it makes it harder to do the more masterpieces you've exported.
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PROTIP7: Cats make an excellent food source.
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Military:
Protip: In uniform assignments, replace clothing to avoid layering problems with civilian clothes.
Protip: Never give marksdwarves a kill order. Station them near where the enemy will be. But don't ever let them have a walkable path to the enemy, or they'll charge when they run out of bolts.
Agriculture:
Protip: Make several small farms (2x2 to 4x4 at most), not one huge one. Diversify crops to avoid "same old booze" thoughts.
Protip: Disallow barrels in the seed stockpile.
Protip: Have 2 or 3 highly skilled planters, not a whole bunch of mediocre ones.
Industry:
Protip: Build feeder stockpiles around (literally surrounding) the workshops they feed. Link the stockpiles to the workshops, so dwarves don't haul a stone by hand from 30 levels away.
Protip: Learn how to make a minecart quantum stockpile.
Protip: Learn how to use iron or nickel minecarts to move magma up to where you want your magma smelter(s), forge(s) and glass furnace(s).
Protip: On maps with sand, make non-magma glass furnaces just to queue up "Collect sand" jobs. Don't actually make glass in them.
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EMBARKING:
Protip: In relatively safe embark areas bring metal ore and melt it to forge your own picks(and maybe some weapons), you'll save a lot of points you can spend elsewhere (like on bituminous coal(if it's available)).
Protip: Mining skills level up very fast. If you're in an area with a lot of soil try starting out your miners with some other useful skills(like some military ones) instead of mining. They will quickly level up their mining skill digging out the soil. When you get some more dwarfs, replace the miners with some useless immigrants.
Protip: Turkeys grow quickly, give decent amounts of meat and lay a lot of eggs. A great animal to bring with you.
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Protip 1: Use several different dining rooms to avoid mingling among all dwarves. When ONE dies, it affects NUMEROUS ones. With 6-8 dining rooms, When ONE dwarf dies, it does not necessarily affect ALL. Do the same with bedrooms as well.
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Protip 1: Use several different dining rooms to avoid mingling among all dwarves. When ONE dies, it affects NUMEROUS ones. With 6-8 dining rooms, When ONE dwarf dies, it does not necessarily affect ALL. Do the same with bedrooms as well.
Or do this, but with wells, zoos, and statue gardens instead of multiple dining rooms.
PROTIP: Learn how to use the workshop profile
PROTIP: Make several masons workshops, queue up "make rock blocks" to infinity, and set the workshop profiles so that only dabbling, novice, and adequate masons can use the workshop.
NOOBTIP: Once you have lots of dwarves, turn off the hauling labors for critical dwarves, ie broker, skilled smiths if you have few, Chief Medical Dwarf, the expert planter, etc.
PROTIP: Make one corner of your refuse stockpile a dump. If your stockpile gets full, dump the things you don't need or are waiting for to rot. They will go the short distance to the dump and be quantum-piled, clearing room. They'll also be forbidden, and since they're still on the refuse stockpile, they will rot faster. Easy way to get workable bone items from dismembered sapient creatures.
NOOBTIP: When using levers for defensive barriers or to control water flows, don't place the levers too close to the mechanisms they operate. Would be silly if you couldn't close the bridge/floodgate because a breach prevented you from getting to the lever.
PROTIP: To keep track of levers and mechanics, leave a notes with matching patterns on top of the pair-wise joined mechanisms. The note title and text give you additional ways to describe the mechanism.
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NOOBTIP: Make your barracks aboveground to prevent cave adaptation and facilitate faster response times to goblins. If you're doing work in the caverns, then have them train near your breach.
NOOBTIP: Build your archery targets like so:
(top down)
+. . . . . . .||
+++++X .||
+. . . . . . .||
+++++X .||
etc.
This can save you many bolts (In theory, every miss is preserved). Don't have them falling into a populated area, or do, if you're wanting some sort of danger room.
NOOBTIP: Heavily forested biome? Caravan has no clear route? Cut down the offending foliage (elves be damned!) and the new multi-tile trees will often yield enough logs to make a constructed road to prevent new ones from ever growing there.
PROTIP: Forbid any extracted candyfloss until you're ready to smelt it, lest Urist McMedic decide to give his patients fancy blue stiches.
RELATED: Consider not stocking your hospitals, in 0.34, there was a bug that essentially resulted in stocking a hospital at all resulting in it ultimately gobbling up your whole fort's supplies of thread, buckets, plaster, etc.
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RELATED: Consider not stocking your hospitals, in 0.34, there was a bug that essentially resulted in stocking a hospital at all resulting in it ultimately gobbling up your whole fort's supplies of thread, buckets, plaster, etc
Pretty sure this is fixed.
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protip6: To avoid crafters being driven insane about masterpiece destruction, export at least 20 or so of their masterpieces. If you destroy a hundred of their 120 total masterpieces it will still have a risk to drive them insane, but the exported ones will still count in their totals so it makes it harder to do the more masterpieces you've exported.
That's what I do (I got a High Master Mason in an immigrant wave.) Well, actually, it was to buy more useful stuff in the knowledge I could always make more, but its nice to know that it'll protect him.