Bay 12 Games Forum

The outpost liason dropped dead immediately upon entering the map. Upon further examination, her description reads:
A short, sturdy createre fond of drink and industry.

She is incredibly muscular. Her upper body is gone.


This may not be a bug, so feel free to ignore it if it is.

When one of my dwarves throws an object into a chasm, it creates a noticeable 1/10 second or so lag in the game. Normally this isn't a problem but when I have more than just a few dwarves dumping at once it can more than halve my fps.

Is this just the game going through the overhead of permanently removing items from the game? I suppose depending on how Toady has written it, it must take at least a bit to remove the appropriate entry in the array/linked list/binary tree/sparse array/etc ... which ever method he uses to keep tabs on everything.

In one of my recent fortresses, I had two mothers with over twenty children each. I couldn't give them any job that would require them to go outside because the resulting tsunami of following children was just too tempting a target for the snatchers.

It would be incredibly handy to be able to set the "Dwarves Stay Inside" flag for individual dwarves. That way the people I need to stay indoors can still perform useful hauling jobs inside without trying to run halfway across the map to grab xXPig Tail SockXx.

I started a new fortress under 39b but due to the pathfinding bug I put very little time into it. I played until late autumn of my first year, but never built a trade depot and so I have a merchant who has been stricken by melancholy.

However, within moments of seeing the message for the merchant going melancholy, I get the message: "Donkey has gone stark raving mad!" Are animals capable of going insane now? I've never seen that before.

For those that have played Nethack, you'll know what Demogorgon is: Arguably the most powerful demon-prince in that game, rated even more difficult than Death, Famine, and Pestilence.

In a normal game of Nethack you are unlikely to ever encounter Demogorgon because he doesn't spawn directly; he must be summoned by a lesser demon, or another demon prince. A typical encounter by an unprepared player with Demogorgon goes something like this:

You miss Demogorgon.
Demogorgon stings!
You feel very sick.
Demogorgon stings!
You feel worse!
Demogorgon casts a spell!
Dreadful wounds appear on your body!
Demogorgon hits!
You zap the wand of death!
The death ray hits Demogorgon!
Demogorgon is uneffected.
Demogorgon stings!
You die from your illness.

What makes him so deadly is he has two attacks that cause deadly sickness, as well as generally hitting very hard anyhow, AND having the ability to cast high level magic, possibly even summoning other demon princes to his aid. The sickness attacks are the worst part, if they are not cured immediately the effects will stack with each other and you can be dead in less than five turns.

After fighting a Giant Cave Spider last night I was immediately reminded of Demogorgon... simply because it has so many insta-death ways of killing you. If you are lucky and don't get instantly paralyzed by webbing, then it will bite you and you will almost instantly be paralyzed by poison. From that point on it could nibble you to death if it wanted because you are completely helpless.

I'm perfectly okay with having nearly unbeatable enemies in the game, in fact it was quite thrilling to actually engage a GCS in melee combat and win (even thought it was by pure dumb luck.)

... However, I would expect such an epic foe to be a little less common. As it stands I more often than not run into at least one in every cave, and usually more than one. My wife had a good laugh at me the other night because I had just barely survived a spider encounter only to run into another one just around the corner.

The chances of even another demon prince summoning Demogorgon are less than 1/200, so the chances of running into him (unless you are trying to) are pretty low.

Why are Giant Cave Spiders so common?

[ January 26, 2008: Message edited by: Coriantumr ]

A batman and giant cave swallow duo recently ripped one of my fisherdwarves to shreds, leaving behind a baby ... I checked the baby's thoughts and got this:

Likot Relgeshud has been ecstatic lately. He has lost a mother to tragedy recently. He has witnessed death. He is happy to be free.
He is a citizen of The Full Gold. He is a member of the Mountain of Targets.
Likot Relgeshud likes Satinspar, Brass, Lavendar, jade, Kapok, clear glass, the color pale chestnut, crescents, crossbows, grates and werewolves for their howls. When possible, he prefers to consume two-humped camel cheese and Dwarven wine. He absolutely detests cave spiders.
He is very quick to anger. He often feels discouraged. He is somewhat reserved. He enjoys the company of others. He prefers stability and security to ambiguity and disorder. He is modest. He dislikes contracts and regulations. He is extremely cautious. He needs alcohol to get through the working day and is starting to work slowly due to its scarcity.

Recently lost a mother to tragedy and is ecstatic and happy to be free??? With the foremost thought on his mind that he hasn't had enough wine lately? Loves to listen to werewolves howl???

I think I should probably toss this one in the magma vent before he leads a goblin insurrection or something.

Edit: Not necessary ... baby just hurled itself off a cliff.

"Likot Relgeshud, Baby has died after colliding with an obstacle."

[ February 18, 2008: Message edited by: Coriantumr ]

A short question: If the population of a fortress exceeds its population cap, do children stop growing up?

I have set an artificially low population cap so that my dwarves must replenish their numbers the old fashioned way. I did this because I feel that it doesn't really hurt your fortress to lose dwarves when you can rely on dozens more showing up every other season. Doing this makes it hurt when an ambush takes out a couple dwarves as their replacements must be grown from baby to adult.

However ... my children don't seem to ever grow up. It is the year 1066, my fortress is 14-15 years old. The current population is 58 ... 26 of those are children. They seem to progress from baby to child okay, but I thought it only took 12 years to grow to adulthood from there. Am I just being impatient? It's a huge drain on the fortress infrastructure when half of the population is essentially useless.

When melting an object, how much of the original material do you get back? For instance, I thought I would be clever and increase the skill of my armorer by having them make copper chain mail, and then melting it all, making more, etc.

However, it takes two copper bars to make a chain mail, but when I melt that I get back practically nothing. Is this normal? Does it depend on the skill of the furnace operator melting it?

Where does the extra copper go? Does it just disappear?