Bay 12 Games Forum

I've recently been trying to get a fortress going with a fairly standard setup, and no danger rooms at all. The problem is, it takes my militia forever to get anywhere with training, and I only rarely have anywhere near enough metal to outfit even a meager squad of 10.

Add to that that my dwarfs are pretty much always Partying or have No Job due to general uselessness (fishers on a map with no fish!), and therefore everyone knows everyone, meaning a tantrum spiral if someone dies, eliminating the "zerg rush, train the survivors" method, and I can't really get anything working.

So, yeah. How do I get a working military without the use of danger rooms? I've tried with danger rooms, and all that happens is I have 10 Legendary Everythings that obliterate sieges single handedly. I want a balance between "lololol crush everything" and "tantrum spiral".

As per title.

After a few dorf years of exploratory mining, and finding nothing but worthless gems, I caved and got DFHack to prospect my land. After learning that prospect doesn't work well without revealing the whole map, and then revealing said map, I discover that there is no ore whatsoever. None. Not even Tetrahedrite, which the wiki claims "appears everywhere".

Alright, there is some ore, hidden in a nice large unrevealed patch, but I'm guessing that's bluemetal since it's so far down, and in a tall spire shape, and I'd much rather not tick off the clowns. Or reward my dorfs with such awesome weapons until they've proved themselves, which is unlikely to happen until they get weapons made of a more dangerous material than wood. And that's not going to help my hammersquad anyway.

CLearly, my only recourse is ordering metal en masse from the caravans, or goblinite. But the former takes forever to obtain in any real quantity, and the latter, again, requires that my dorfs have something more dangerous than an +ash training axe+.

No, a masterwork training axe does not count.

Help?

I am intrigued. One of my hunters has seen fit to go hunting in the caverns. Perfectly reasonable, since the most dangerous thing in there is only a GIANT CAVE SPIDER.

I wished to capture this magnificent beast, and lock it behind some fortifications to produce a silk farm. This was met with failure due to success.

I believe there was a saying at one point? "If it bleeds and it isn't a Giant Cave Spider, crossbows can kill it."

Take a guess as to what happened.

My hunter shot it. Once. With a no quality iron bolt. This shot was fortunate enough to strike the Giant Cave Spider in the Cephalothorax, tearing the muscle and tearing the brain.

So, yeah. Decide for yourself whether this was lucky or unlucky.