Sorry about the length of this, but I've got a number of questions after trying the new DF version in adventure mode. I'll try to be as concise as I can, but... that's not very.
Note that I wrote the whole adventure up in more detail here, if you want to read the whole thing:
http://garthright.blogspot.com/2014/08/just-flesh-wound.htmlI'd welcome replies either there or here. Now, for my specific questions:
1. I dropped out of fast travel, with an uneasy feeling, while traveling through a small town. It was an ambush,... sort of. I mean there were goblins, but they weren't immediately hostile. The townspeople said there was a bandit gang harassing them - these goblins, I suppose - but there was no sign of combat in the town.
The goblins said they were on a mission, but I couldn't ask what that mission
was. (There are a million different conversation options now, but almost none of them actually seem useful for anything. Certainly, I couldn't find any way to ask what I needed to know.) As I talked to them, they got right up in my face, but they still didn't act hostile (maybe because I'd accidentally left my weapon in my backpack? LOL). But when I walked away, they followed us - again, staying very close.
What am I
supposed to do in a situation like this? Will it inevitably end in violence? Are there conversation options I missed?
2. Eventually, not finding any other useful conversational option, I asked one of the goblins to yield. He refused, called me a coward, and demanded that
I yield. About this time, I realized that I wasn't wielding a weapon, so I took my axe out of my backpack. One or both of these things caused the situation to go to hell.
I don't know if it just takes a long time to remove a great axe from a backpack (reasonable), or if I just hit the wrong button when there were multiple pages of combat options (and therefore skipped my turns to act). Either way, I missed most of the combat and didn't find out what happened until I went back afterwards and read through the announcements. So what key am I supposed to press when there are a bunch of announcements with [more] at the bottom?
3. To keep this as short as possible, I'll skip that combat. Later, I was in melee range of a goblin bowman, but he parried every attack I made. (I find this typical of DF. Enemies are either easy or completely impossible to harm in any way - nothing in between.) However, the second time I swung my axe at his neck, he said, "I yield! I yield!"
OK,... but then what? What am I supposed to do then? He didn't drop his weapon, and I couldn't find any new conversation options. So was that just local color, or did it actually mean something? In desperation, not finding anything else to say, I demanded that he yield. So he shot an arrow at me!
Does that mean he hadn't actually yielded? Or did I miss the appropriate response to his apparent willingness to yield? Plus, how in the heck can someone shoot a bow at an enemy standing right next to them, swinging an axe at their head?
4. I couldn't hit the goblin bowman, because he kept deflecting my attack with his bow, so I reached out with my left hand - my "lower left arm" - and grabbed his bow. I'd heard that you could disarm enemies that way, but I didn't seem to have that option. (Admittedly, my character has no wrestling skill. Was that why?)
I don't remember how the top option was worded, but it wasn't at all clear what that would do. When I tried it, I just adjusted my grip on the bow. The only other option was to release the bow, and I didn't want to do that. What am I missing here?
5. Since I was holding tight to his bow, I tried swinging the axe in my right hand, but
again he deflected the attack with his bow. It seemed to make no difference that I had the bow in my hand!
So I grabbed his left arm with my
right hand ("lower right arm"). Note that the bowman was standing on a ledge, so I hoped to throw him off the ledge, but I didn't have that option, either. Well, at the very least, I figured he wouldn't be able to shoot me with his bow, not with me having one hand on the bow and one hand on his arm.
But no, he shot me in the lung! "Mortal wound" started flashing on screen. (The arrow went into my chest through my leather "dress" - my character is male, so I don't know why he started with a dress -
and through my iron chainmail shirt!)
Apparently, the only thing I accomplished by grabbing the bowman was that I could no longer dodge
his attack. That's just nuts, isn't it? Again, am I missing something here?
6. The bowman ran away, eventually. With an arrow in my lung, I couldn't catch him. But there didn't seem to be any way to injure him, anyway. I
know I've heard that you can throw enemies off cliffs or disarm them by grabbing their weapon, but how do you do that? Nothing worked for me.
7. On the bright side, I survived my "mortal wound." Five minutes in fast travel and I was perfectly healthy again. So my last question has to do with buying and selling in a shop. It used to be that I could make an offer and then press 'a' (ask) or 'o' (offer), which would get the merchant to tell me what he'd pay for an item or how much he wanted for an item (depending on whether I was buying or selling).
But that doesn't seem to work anymore. All I got, when I tried that, was the option for
me to enter a number between zero and zero (0-0), whether I was buying
or selling. Note that, when I tried this, both the merchant and myself had gold coins (the same kind of gold coins, too).
So how in the heck do you use currency now? Is there a simple way to buy and sell items? I don't want to spend all day just trying to figure out the price of prepared giant toad brain (which seems to be just
ridiculously expensive in gold, anyway; gold must be common as dirt in DF!).
If you've lasted this long, thanks for any help you can give me. Dwarf Fortress is great, but it's almost equally as frustrating and annoying as it's fun. Almost.
Bill
