Bay 12 Games Forum

They're fodder.

Armor can be thought of as a tiered system. Steel is better than bronze/iron, which is better than copper, which is better than leather. "Better" in this case means "blocks or deflects blows made by equal or lesser material."

So your leather-clad FRUs will have serious trouble against any enemy wielding so much as a copper spear. Since goblins usually carry silver or iron weapons, you will want to have your militia wearing at least bronze or iron.

Cloaks are a good idea (and can only be made out of cloth-like material), as they will help deflect some blows and soften the impact of others.

I, too, have a first alert team (or FAT), which I burrow at the entrance to my fortress. They eat, drink, sleep, and train all in the same place, and all of their needs are met by non-burrowed haulers. This keeps them always ready for sieges or other emergencies, in which case I can activate them and station them wherever they're needed (since move orders ignore burrows).

Uton and Rotun were teaching the new migrant Sorek on the ways of mining.

"It says here," said Rotun, unrolling a large piece of blue parchment, "that we need to dig a tunnel two urists wide and twenty deep, straight through there." He gestured at the south wall.

"I think this is a prime opportunity," said Uton as he produced a shiny new pick. "It's a simple enough task, and we'll be just over in the next room carving out some new farms."

Sorek took the pick from Uton carefully, as if it were made of glass. "Straight south, twenty urists," he intoned.

"And two wide, don't forget," reminded Rotun.

Sorek nodded, turned, and tapped the south wall with the pick so lightly that there was only the barest sound. It was so quiet, in fact, that it was overwhelmed by the sound of the legendary miners' laughter.

"Strike the earth!" called Uton. "Hit it like you mean it!"

Sorek wound up for the next hit, slamming the copper point into the solid rock so hard that he almost lifted himself off the ground.

"That's the spirit!" applauded Rotun. "Keep an eye out for damp or warm rock, and we'll be just 'round the bend." With that, the pair left Sorek to his task.

As Sorek approached the twentieth urist, he felt he was getting a hang of mining. It was calm, peaceful, diligent work, shaping the rock into homes for your fellows. It was almost relaxing, really.

Less relaxing when magma poured out of the hole you just made, though.

It's all very well and good to think "Don't panic," but the truth of the matter is that eminent disaster tends to contract the mind something fierce. That, perhaps, might explain why Sorek did not turn to run. Instead, all he could remember was Rotun's reminder that the passageway be two urists wide. As the magma approached, threatening to set his beard afire, he set his pick to widening the path.

And then he burned.

"You see?" said Rotun. "I told you there wouldn't be enough time to mine out that passageway *and* run for the stairs."

"Why else do you think I gave him a copper pick?" asked Uton.

The safe way is to use "t" to look inside the cage. I think it needs to be built first, though; I've never had any luck using "t" when the cage is in an animal stockpile.

The FUN way is to build the cage, hook it up to a lever, and pull the lever. Whatever is inside the cage will leave (if it is alive) or be hauled away (if it is otherwise).

1) The wiki says this is true.

2) You need to constantly pump the magma anyway. I'm pretty sure that the magma beneath the body of water must be in motion in order for the game to register that the area above it is heated, and thus prevent ice from forming.

That said - why keep the river flowing? There should be an abundance of water in the caverns that will never freeze (unless you've exposed it to sunlight). Wouldn't that be easier?

If it's just the challenge of it all, then a closer reading of that wiki entry suggests that the heat from the magma might radiate as far away as two tiles, which could provide a method for keeping the final squares of the river free of ice. Experimentation is needed.

As with all interesting things, this was not a "Eureka!" moment, but a "Well, that's funny ..."

I've gone and created a pumpless water reactor. But I don't know how I did it.

Here's the top of my farm level. The water is coming down from the caverns, and the diagonal walls prevent overpressure.



Note the waterwheel at the bottom is turning away, currently powering a millstone.

Here's a picture of the level below my farms:



Originally, the idea was that I needed a two-level water reservoir so that any buckets from the well (above my farms) wouldn't have any mud, and would thus protect better against infection. I was going to let the water flow right off the map.

But I messed up the design when I confused real-world pressure with DF pressure. I effectively created a U-bend, and the reservoir filled up only halfway (just the level shown in the second image). To get it to fill the rest of the way, I had to create a path for the water (note in the first image the little "L" connecting the pasture to the water, now walled off? That was my access tunnel for the miner to fix my mistake).

So I hit my emergency bridges on both levels, stopped the water flow, mined out the "L", connected the top of the reservoir with the water source that originally only went down the ramps, sealed everything up, and let the water come in again.

And that's when this weird thing happened. The waterwheel started to turn *before* I put the lower level's bridge down. That means there's water flow somehow.

I experimented with a lot of similar u-bend configurations, but I couldn't manage to replicate the effects. My working theory was that the u-bend was confusing the water physics - water flow would go up and down the ramps, up and down the reservoir, creating some kind of flow against the bridge. But any method I tried to make it all happen again failed.

So ... how did I do this? The waterwheel works, and I suspect that I could channel out enough space to power a dozen waterwheels, and thus a pumpstack or two. But this design is a little unwieldy, and I'd like to be able to miniaturize it in order to use in other forts.

I once had a fortress that only received a caravan every two years. I think I was so far away from my home civilization that the caravan had to take quite the circuitous route to reach me. That made the first four years ... interesting.

If that isn't your problem, and you don't have a siege, you should check around the edges of your map for stray dwarves. There's a long-standing bug with a migrant, who formerly accompanied a caravan, who wishes to become part of your fortress. But once he shows up on the map, he's stuck, and blocks the way for *everything* - migrants, caravans, titans, etc. Nudging him out of the way or using DFHack to claim him will resolve the issue.

I also suggest killing all of your goblin captives (you never know), and sending at least one squad (preferably greenhorns, as this is dangerous) to explore your entire map looking for hostiles.

Now if only there was a way to make rock bins...

I always mod in a reaction to make rock bins.

I've had three facepalms recently.

The first was when I was puzzling about how to make humans survive worldgen. It turns out they have a much higher chance of surviving if you don't delete them entirely from the raws (I think it was the script I used to get rid of animalmen).

The second was when I was trying to get my jeweler to cut all those nice rough gems cluttering up the place so I could decorate and/or sell them. I must have scrolled a little too fast through the list, because I ended up with a lot of marble cachabons ... when I desperately needed that marble for steel production. Now that I think of it, that's a double facepalm, since I should have turned off all economic stone.

Speaking of steel production, it had been a while since I've had huge iron deposits, and I was enjoying the sight of my iron stockpiles filling up. I made three magma smelters, made a bunch of iron bars, but what's this? I can't seem to make pig iron? It took me several hours to realize that I still needed charcoal as flux, even if I didn't need the coal as fuel.