Bay 12 Games Forum

Unfortunately, you can't do anything with eggs (dragon or otherwise) at the moment in Adventure mode besides simply collecting them. You can't even eat them:


Also just FYI, you can block dragonfire if you have a shield. But it's much more Fun to go without.

Obviously you shouldn't travel at night, especially without companions, but if you have absolutely have to... Here's some tips.

Regarding avoiding bogeymen at night, I've noticed that they don't pop up when you're travelling in deserts, badlands and the like. Instead you might have to deal with trolls, bandits, animals, other night creatures and stuff but never bogeymen for some reason.

Never sleep outside at night. Sometimes they get the jump on you and get a few hits in while you're still unconscious. That really sucks. Plus, when you get up you may still be 'stunned' so that slows you down quite a bit. It helps your chances, even if only by a little, to stay awake.

If you want to outrun them, then the best thing to do if you can't get to a town before it turns dark is to get as close as possible, then run as fast as you can while trying not to get into a bogeyman's range. An adventurer with average speed can accomplish this with luck (i.e. the randomly-generated bogeymen aren't super-fast or strong) but it may take a long time before you actually get there because you can't use the travel screen. You can also use cleared-out monster lairs or caves.

Once you get strong, fast and skilled enough it's pretty easy to just slice bogeymen in half until they stop coming. Simply aim for the lower body. If you're not on the level to take them out in one hit, then I wouldn't recommend engaging them because they have a tendency to hit really hard. If you're confident, then you can jump around a bit and wait for them to come into range before you get into range of them (that's basic DF adventurer mode combat, really) and try to cripple them by lopping off limbs etc. before going in for the kill. Decapitation works best. Make sure they don't surround you; take them one at a time. It's best to aim for the extremities, i.e. hands and feet, because they are easier to hit. Also keep in mind that they can still die of blood loss. If you're using a blunt weapon then smash their bones up a bit, then stab in the face with a spare dagger or sword. If you don't have one, pulverise their faces. Patience is key, as always, when it comes to killing with blunt weapons.

Another good tip is to have the best equipment possible, but I guess that goes without saying. A good helm can be a lifesaver, and gauntlets and boots can prevent cripplingly painful bone damage. I've noticed, though, that for some reason armor works only half as well when you're asleep. Not sure if that's just my luck and the RNG likes spawning bogeymen with armor-piercing fists when I'm asleep, but I guess it probably has something to do with armor skill.

Are you positive the dragon has to sit on it? Sitting may be a byproduct of laying eggs rather than a requirement. I haven't seen the results of any tests on the subject yet.

A male of the egg-laying species needs to fertilize the egg for it to hatch. Try it: get a few hens on embark and get them to lay eggs, then leave them be. Do any of them hatch? Ninja'd

No, you missed the part where a dragon needs to sit on the nest box after the eggs are in the nest box. Given wildlife don't use nest boxes anymore, how are you going to convince the dragon to sit there when it sees a building to destroy?

And that's what a dungeon master is for. Not sure how hard it is to get one though. I hardly ever have a fort that lasts over three years, and most of the ones that do are quasi-hermit fortresses. Despite being home to some epic projects, they still wouldn't be able to house over fifteen dwarves without collapsing on themselves.

Considering how long you might be searching for female dragons that have laid eggs in adventurer mode (not to mention the time it would take to prepare an adventurer skilled enough to sneak past or strong enough to defeat a dragon), I think it would be far more convenient to bypass that part entirely and simply wait for opposite sex dragons to arrive at your dungeon-master-containing fortress. Yes, it could take quite a long time, but you don't exactly have any better chances in adventurer mode unless the guy with the dragon eggs uploads a save for us all. And even if someone actually manages to get a dragon hatchery running, dragons take a while to grow and megabeast eggs don't sell for much so I doubt it could be made profitable quickly. Then again, the only reason we're actually doing this is to get the privilege to feed our dwarves +dragon egg omelet+s, keep pet dragons and satisfy our own ego.

tl;dr sounds like a dwarfy idea to me. I'll get on it.


EDIT: A simple modding solution to this would be to switch [PET_EXOTIC] to [PETVALUE:X][PET] in the dragon's raws to get past having to get a dungeon master, but some would call that cheating. Also, an egg can't be hatched after it's been taken out of the nest so we can scratch the adventurer idea entirely.

Meanwhile, in another timeline...

"Now you will know why you fear the night."

Started with Mayday tiles, but once I got how the game generally works I switched to ASCII. Still, I get annoyed sometimes in adventurer mode when I see a group of 'g' moving around, only to find out they're groundhogs. If anyone can suggest a tileset (not a graphics set) where similar creatures appear as the same characters, kinda like in Nethack, then I'd love to use it.

Quote from: eepkeep on March 04, 2011, 01:45:53 pm

Well, I just made a breakthrough in the dwarven water reactor model. I can't find any mention of this method, even though it's a pretty obvious one. Aquifers act similar to rivers in their water producing and draining, right? Apparently a water wheel built over a channeled aquifer will produce perpetual motion without the need for a pump. It's worked for me and it has potential applications, the most obvious one being that the pump method for aquifer breaching will be made much easier.

From the wiki entry on waterwheels:
(* Exceptions are aquifers, which can sometimes have naturally occurring flow. This is sometimes a good thing, because then a wheel simply works by itself - or a bad thing, if, for example, you want the wheel to not provide any power while you build a pump adjacent to it. It's not clear what causes an aquifer to have flow and then keep it - it's difficult to replicate reliably, and can be lost with additional channeling, so designs will have to be adapted if such are found.)

Oh, seems I missed that bit... And here I was getting excited about nothing. :/

It's semi-molten rock. Does that mean it's only !science! ?