Bay 12 Games Forum

As someone who was spoiled without consent, I'd like to make a suggestion. Create a sticky thread in this (and probably the discussion board, too) that is titled: A note on spoilers, read this first. This thread explains that the game has a feature that many players prefer to discover on their own. Discuss that the feature is related to adamantium, and that readers of this board wishing to keep the surprise intact should avoid reading threads with certain terms in the subject.

Even so, we'll still get people who write threads with actual spoiling terms in the titles, so we need to probably have mods enforce some sort of title restrictions--assuming this is a toady one policy. Which all leads to my real point...why do we care about this subject so much? No one "spoils" that goblin sieges bring trolls and flyers. No one "spoils" that mining an adjacent tile to a magma sea is potentially hazardous. Why the touchy feelings around this?

This is a forum about a [poorly documented] game. People come here because they want to learn the mechanics. I think it's expected to be spoiled on some level. As I said at the top, I was spoiled by my coworker who turned me on to DF. One of his leading points about why I should play was the HFS. He didn't think much of telling me and I didn't feel spoiled--until I came here and found out that you all use it as a means of entertainment.

My two cents.

With the case of my marksdwarfs, it won't let me toggle any profession (just noticed that, thanks). But I have a mason who I can either have mining or masonry enabled. Enabling one removes the other. That guy can have any other labors enabled, as near as I can tell.

assuming you have baddies in a cage trap...


• build your arena space
  
• place the occupied cages in there by (b)uilding a ca(g)e
  
• select the appropriate cage by changing the view (either X or tab, can't remember) so that you see each cage, rather than grouped by material
  
• repeat for as many enemies as you like
  
• build a lever (probably outside your arena)
  
• link each cage to the lever using (q), finding the lever, and (a)dding a task. select cage with (j). It'll take two mechanisms
  
• keep track of which enemies you've selected as it doesn't remove the cage from the list
  

when done, pull lever by adding a task, the (P) the lever. Have fun.

This is the first time I've ever created a danger room. I've got a 2x3 room with two tiles of booze and four tiles of upright spears on a lever. Works so well that I'm considering not using it in future. Too broken.

If I do decide to go ahead with it, though, I have a problem. I embarked four years ago with two breeding pairs of cats. I now have fourteen metric tons of kitten wandering around and they keep getting splorched in my danger room. I love a dead kitten as much as the next DF player, but my dwarfs are starting to get bent out of shape over it.

I tried making the door tightly sealed (not pet passable, right?), but they sneak in every time a recruit opens the door. I tried making an airlock with sealed doors on each end, but that just requires a few extra seconds before the inevitable.

My danger room is the bloodiest room in the fort, excepting my execution chamber (which has too much miasma to see the blood). Why are the f--king kittens so determined to get a training spear in their pancreas and is there a way to keep them out?

I had a urist mcnohands. No labors and still got spam about storing owned item every two minutes. My urist really had motor nerve and I read about editing the init to allow healing nerves. In the end, I put him in a squad and assigned him to cavern three.

Cave croc mcfullbelly.

World map is likely small but I don't remember. I usually don't see any value in large worlds for fortress mode so I usually pick a quick world gen option unless I want something specific for embark. Can't remember.

Is there a way to check?

Just don't do what I did once: assume you know how much water you have, assume you don't need the floodgate, drown your carpenter while he sleeps and all your cows.

Actually, I had done this creating a cistern channeled off a river, so I knew how much water there was (unlimited). I just assumed my cistern was on the same z as the river and it wouldn't overflow.

I have a fort that's about three years old that's never had a goblin raid or a siege. Goblins are in the [c]ivilization screen and I've seen goblin snatchers (about two a year, probably). The embark screen said surroundings were calm, IIRC. But I'm pretty sure I've had calm surroundings in previous forts with a raid or siege every year. I have 84 dwarves and a created wealth of 453k dwarfbucks.

So are the gobbos just lulling me into a false sense of security or can I start disbanding my military? Is there a way to tell the status/strength/distance of the goblin civ?