Bay 12 Games Forum

Hi all,

I created a human adventurer, and after a run of luck I had slain a couple of dragons and a few titans for my starting civilisation, and I decided to boldly take my party deep underground with the aim of meeting some of the more unsavoury beasties below.

I couldn't find any caves locally, despite spamming "surroundings" with most of the locals, so I decided to try exploring the world and perhaps visiting the dwarves or elves. However, I can't find a single civilisation outside of the towns and hamlets I started in. The fast travel map says I'm standing near a mountain hall (nothing is marked on the map, but it says in the bottom left the name of the hall), so I zoom in and follow the "compass" to the nearest site. However, the "compass" says *** (as in I'm standing right on it) and yet I can't find an entrance anywhere, it's just terrain. This happened at around 5 different mountain halls in different regions.

Disappointed, I stumbled across a forest retreat on the fast travel map (this time the icon did actually show up on the map) and so I zoomed in again, and once again the compass said I was stood right in the retreat, but there were no elves. Nothing. Same happened with another forest retreat nearby.

As far as I can tell, the whole world is empty and deserted outside the civilisation I started in, despite the embark screen claiming there are active civilisations all over the place. I would try rerolling a dwarf to see if there is a problem, but I don't want to restart, I'd rather find out if my world gen is bugged or something. Asides from the occasional ambush by a tiger, there is nothing to do. I can even sleep in the middle of the wilderness without being attacked by anything.

Anyone else come across this problem?

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to start up a militia for my fortress but I can't tell if the game is bugged or if I'm doing something wrong. I've tried following the step-by-step guide on the Dwarf Fortress Wiki, as well as reading other topics on this forum, but I can't seem to get my militia working properly. Here is a blow-by-blow account of what I did:

1. Assigned a noble to the "militia commander" position, I chose a dwarf who was a proficient axedwarf (best fighter atm)
2. Assigned a noble to the "arsenal dwarf" position and gave him an office, and removed all labour jobs so he can focus on the role
3. Created a squad from the militia commander, so he is in position 1 of that squad
4. Assigned 6 other dwarves to form a decent sized squad (7 in total including commander)
5. Assigned the whole squad the "metal armor" uniform, with an individual melee weapon of their own choice
6. Built a wooden weapon rack, defined a barracks from it and set it to "train"
7. Checked the schedule, set to train all year round.


I have numerous problems now. Firstly none of my militia have turned into recruits or axedwarves, they're all still listed as "miller", "peasant" etc and their icon is a civilian one. Secondly, only 4 of the 7 dwarves have geared-up and gone to the barracks, the others are carrying on their normal civilian jobs and haven't picked up their gear, but the military screen says they have (it has the little "square root" sign next to the item, I assume that means they have it?). Finally, the dwarves that are training aren't actually sparring, they're all standing away from each other doing "individual drill".

I don't understand what I've missed out, if anything. I followed the guide in the wiki exactly as far as I can tell, but it doesn't seem to be working properly, anyone got any advice?

This program is awesome except for the fact that Dwarf Fortress has a really frustrating bug where map features appear on the embark screen, tricking Ultrafinder into thinking it's a match when in reality they aren't there once you start playing.

I left ultrafinder on indefinite loop for a while, and it had 6 perfect sites waiting for me. Loaded each one up, found each area on the embark screen, everything looked perfect so I went ahead and embarked and what did I find? No chasm, no bottomless pit, no HFS and no lava. What the hell?! EVERY SINGLE ONE had 2 or more missing features that the embark screen swore blind was there.

I must be doing something wrong because nobody else seems to have this problem. Any clues?

You could make an arena, with captured goblins being thrown in to fight THE BEAST. You could even make it more fair by setting a pack of goblins or wild animals on the spider, they'll retain their weapons while captured unless you specifically ask the dwarves to disarm them.

I tried that with a group of wolves I'd captured, but for some reason when I threw my goblin captive in there, they just ignored each other and aimlessly wandered around the arena instead.

Has anyone else had a problem with megabeasts dying much faster than vanilla DF? I normally have my megabeast death percentage set to 80, and in vanilla DF it usually takes 300-500 years to reach that threshold, but with the ME mod every beast had died by year 50. It's not the end of the world, but I prefer having a much longer history but with some megabeasts still left alive as a challenge.

Hopefully a future version of DF will fix this. Someone who loses a limb but does not die as a result of the injury does recover eventually, that's why prosthetic limbs exist.

The fabulous continent of nourishment? I bet you'll be disappointed if your dwarves start starving to death.