Bay 12 Games Forum

I build my access stairs indoors and leave them there with a bridge above to seal it off.  In case I want to add a floor later. Not particularly useful for a chicken coop I guess, I tend to have just the one access building above ground.

The early siege hit early Winter. I had two Axedwarfs in training for about half a year by that point, but I also drafted the Competent Speardwarf who was in the second migrant wave (and gave her an axe).  When the 7 Gobbos showed up, I'm pretty sure her Discipline was still Dabbling. So she had roughly half a level if Discipline and one of Axe.  Fully clad and armed in iron.

Anyways, the Goblin embark team was two crossbows, two lashers, two maces (one a silver maul!) and a speargoblin. I wasn't too confidant of my Defense Forces so the grazers were pulled inside and the drawbridge raised. I figured the liaison and caravan were both gone and no one expected until spring - we could just wait it out. I had just bought a pile of Fish and my fort was stocked with several hundred food and drink. I had also just popped up a wood stockpile inside the curtain wall so I would still have a good supply of iron smelting fuel. The wood stockpile filled pretty fast because dwarfs could pop out the back door and collect logs from both sides of the fort.

Oh, better lock that back door. It's "f" to forbid, right?

Imagine my surprise when my axe carrying Speardwarf charged out through the door. Nuts, I did not want to set up a graveyard yet. Harrumph.

Less than one minute later, the goblins routed. Well, the three that were left - and she killed one of them too as they tried to flee. Urist McFreshRecruit just slaughtered them. Took less time for it than to recover enough to come back through the now lowered drawbridge.

It was a martial trance. Limbs and heads sailing off in arcs everywhere - with her lamenting the horrors with each one. Her morale "broke" half a dozen times as she singledwarfedly dispatched the siege.  The trance ended after all enemies were gone and she immediately fell into a quivering cowering mass of fear. Of amazingly badass fear.

She gained two levels of Discipline, presumably from repeatedly getting frightened.

Moral of the story?  It's "l" to forbid doors.

I like to make my Manager and Bookkeeper the same dwarf, so you only need one office for both roles.  I actually give him an office too and not just a designated chair in the dining room.

There's other ways of making water supply other than directly tapping into the river.  You could dig out a well chamber and just i-p-P-f zone a ton of Ponds on it, wait until it's almost full and then cap the hole with the well.  You could even put a Levered floor hatch next to it for refilling.  You do still need a water source for that to work, like a stream or brook (i-w zone it as a water source).  This has the advantage of greatly reduced flood risk, but it does take longer for the dwarfs to fill the chamber - one bucket at a time. You'll need multiple dwarfs and zones as well to overcome the rate of evaporation of 1/7 tiles.  A Screw Pump can also work and will purify Stagnant Water from Murky Pools but you need to create a path for the water to get to where you are going to use it.  I haven't had a fort run very long in 40, but my experience is that the dorfs don't use much water at all.  Anyways, IMHO, bucket brigade is an easy and safe method for watering a near-surface well.

Anyways, the key is "Subterranean" water doesn't freeze.  An underground cistern/reservoir is your solution to winter water access.

On the plus side, being terrified trains Discipline. Pasture it somewhere unobtrusive, and then expose your dorfs to it in batches once you can spare the manpower.

"Beware its noxious secretions?  Whatever, that thing ain't half as scary as Fido McEatsHamstermen."

Hey look at my user number!

Maybe when 0.63.01 comes out I too can be a ranting curmudgeon, but for now I'm still shiny and naive and have that new-Urist-smell.  Want to know my perspective?  Probably not, but here it is anyways.

It's an alpha.  Apparently one that is going to run a significant fraction of a century.  That is frigging awesome.  There's an engaged mod community that cobbles together awesome stuff for this game - apparently just out of love for it.  And I can see why.  If I knew more about modding I'd be sorely tempted to join them.  I consider the DF community part of the game - how could you not?

As a newbie, I play with graphics packs and Manipulator (but not Therapist for some odd reason) and really have trouble understanding the core "vanilla" game.  Utilities and graphics packs certainly make the game more accessible to me.  Using the unmodded interface is really tough.  That said, I am struggling along with DF 2014.

As someone else mentioned, 0.34.11 is stable and all the existing mods and utilities work on it.  As a newbie, I know I've barely scratched the surface of the game and have really only gotten to the part where I can get to a stable fortress under minimal !FUN! conditions.  And I have a couple of them that I'm feeling pretty good about right now.  Playing 0.34.11 has immense draw for me right now.  But I am still struggling along with this latest release.

Because omg, all the new stuff is too damn exciting.  Pulling up a dwarf's thoughts for example.  I did that for the first time in 0.34 and I knew right away that I had found a unique and truly amazing game.  I was astounded and flabbergasted.  When I do it now...  Just wow. 

That the outpost liason brings news and rumours of world events - ones being simulated in the world you're playing in - ones being impacted by your interactions with it.  omg.  Even at this rudimentary bug-filled stage, this is more meaningful and effective world interaction than any other game I can think of at the moment, although I guess it's a pretty subjective metric.

I am frigging hyped about 0.40.  Even though it's mostly unplayable for me right now (and yet I'm still playing it!) because I expect the utilities to get updated and probably significantly expanded upon.  That tree canopies will get sorted out in various graphics packs.  That bug squashing will progress and more and more stable and optimized releases will follow.  I am truly bewildered at the idea that anyone who plays DF isn't tingling with anticipation and agog at the possibilities right now.  Really.

Maybe that's the problem.  The new versions bring about a staggering amount of promise but never live up to it.  I dunno, I have not been around for even a significant fraction of a release cycle.  But hearing that this game used to be 2-D and seeing how integrated multiple z-levels are in the versions I've played - my enthusiasm is not dulled.

Here, let me lend you a pigtail bag full of innocence and deconstruct some of those constructed jade(d) pillars.  Dwarf Fortress is still totally awesome and this new release is so full of amazing, birds are literally falling out of the sky (and exploding into pulpy masses) over it.

Edit: clarification, punctuation and typos.

Quote from: Larix on July 06, 2014, 07:32:36 pm

No, what matters is becoming legendary +xx. Legendary +5 is no relevant cutoff in military skills.

DFhack's labor view shows military skills as maxing out at Legendary +5. I can't find any reference to military skills not maxing out. Reference?

Takes a long time to get that many XP. You'd need some sort of glitch to go that high. But, it has been done.

If I look at the creatures with DFHack, in one case the dwarf went from rank 1 to rank 89 in axe skill, where 0 is dabbling, 15 is grand master, and 20 is legendary+5. The other skills that became "legendary" also gained about 89 ranks.

So yes, the bug does appear to convert the creature into a god of war.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun put me onto Bravemule. Then I read bits of the wiki. Found the forums from the wiki while looking for more about Cacame. Lurked on the forums for a bit before starting to play.