Bay 12 Games Forum

Any ideas what would make a dwarf child seemingly impervious to damage?

I took a long break from DF, but recently went back. I thought I was having a good run: hadn't quite set up the military yet and the fortress defenses were perhaps not as good as they should be, but I had an above-ground walled in area for foreign crops, fortifications on top of the wall, a spiral runway descending to a depot, a well fed by an aquifer, and plenty of underground pastures, so the dwarves could at least hunker down and survive an invasion. First vile force of darkness lost their leader to serrated glass disks, which put an end to that siege very quickly. And the minotaur walked right into a cage trap.

Then the second siege happened, right as the dwarf caravan showed up. I tried to keep the gates open a while for the wagons to make it inside, but when I saw the wagons were already being slaughtered, I shut the fortress up. Glass disks did some damage to goblins, but didn't break the siege this time. Goblins slaughtered every animal they could find and then just hung around... so I came up with a plan to lure part of them into a trap, but this required opening the main gate temporarily and then closing it.

It got jammed. Goblins and trolls swarmed the fort and started slaughtering every last dwarf, including the babies.

... Except two. The mayor was badly wounded and had crept away somewhere to rest, and the goblins didn't know where he was yet. The other was a child; I watched her creep out of hiding, trying to make it to a food stockpile, then running away as a goblin pursued her a short ways. This happened several times, then at one point she made it all the way out to the main fortress and fled down some stairs. Goblins surrounded her and attacked her, but... her health status was "stunned", "hungry", "thirsty", "drowsy" and "unhappy".

She was only a year old and born in the fort, so I don't think she was a vampire. Combat reports were showing goblins armed with silver maces and scimitars swinging and missing, repeatedly.

So were the goblins just incompetent, or is there some other way a kid could be invincible?

So, although I haven't tried out every basic technique yet in "safe" embarks, I got interested in the minimalist/survivalist build listed on the wiki. I decided to try out a slightly modified version, still very do-it-yourself, but not as extreme: two copper, one anvil, but animals, food, booze, and seeds are also allowed. To make up for relaxing the equipment restrictions, I only gave craft skills to one dwarf; the others are a medic, trader, administrator, clerk, and two Chatty Cathys.

Embark wasn't too difficult, although it's a lot slower than I'm used to. Some damned kea women stole several chunks of charcoal I made, but not until after I made my pick and ax. No other metals yet, haven't really set up the industries other than stonecrafting.

First dwarven caravan arrives on the map, so I start moving rock mugs to the depot, since that's all I have to sell. Except for some reason the caravan doesn't show up. Turns out the kea men attacked them and "killed" one wagon (it was listed as Deceased.) The other wagons, if any, and the merchants all fled. Only the diplomat shows up at my fortress.

On the plus side, the kea men didn't hang around, and the "dead" wagon was only 10-15 tiles from my entryway, so I was able to safely claim all the caravan goods. Of course, that makes survival even less of a challenge...

I'm working on my best fort yet when I get a warning that a minotaur has arrived. Crap! I have a retractable bridge over my volcano, but no military, weapons, or traps yet!

I activate my "safety" alert that sends everyone to the burrows, wait a bit, then pull the lever. Oops, a couple fishermen were lagging behind. I'm thinking "tough, you get to die," but then notice I left an open "side entrance" to the fort. They just pop down the stairs. And I'm getting combat reports that the minotaur is fighting one of my yaks.

I try to come up with a plan, but stop to check on the (u)nits screen to see how far away the minotaur is and thus how much time I have. Wait, where'd he go? Did he leave? Nope... he's on the Deceased screen.

I built a memorial slab for him to find out more:

In memory of Mut Arspunremzu Turostro Tospas
Born 235
Struck down by the yak cow Savagelabor in The Rampage of the minotaur Mut Slaughtersrouted the Red Cut of Strife in Quietflame in the year 279
Slayer of the Human Ozo Bunnyspice.

i suppose I'm not allowed to slaughter my name-level yak cow now. Are they valuable?

Hi, all. I'm fairly new to Dwarf Fortress, just started a couple months ago (after hearing about it for a year or two.) Switched to the newest version(s) as they came out the past several weeks. I've gotten the hang of the basics, but haven't figured out everything, so I have two questions, which I've combined in one post because a superficial search of the forums suggests that maybe there's no solution to one of the problems.

Problem #1: I have a dehydrated baby in a fort of 160 dwarves, about fifty of whom are idle. The baby's been fed recently, but no one is offering water (or booze... do babies drink booze?) Father's still alive, but the mother was killed by a vamp, and it looks like in the past, if the mother dies, the baby will die, because no one will take care of it. Is this still true?

Problem #2: I only recently figured out how to get the pigtails and rope reed processed into thread (used to be constantly short of bags, now I typically have so much thread I run out of places to put it...) What I'm doing is frequently checking z -> stocks -> plants to see if any process-able plants are present, then queuing Process Plant (repeat) at the farmer's workshop. This seems a little micro-manage-y, though. Is there a better way? I know you can't just leave it on repeat, since it will cancel when you run out of pigtails and rope reeds, so you have to keep checking.