Bay 12 Games Forum

I didn't realize the tavern update would take so long, so I kept waiting to try my "no-farming" fort until it rolled out.  Seeing as the kinks STILL aren't all worked out, I'll at least do some test runs!

So, I brought one herbalist at embark.  I've embarked into a region with both "thick" vegetation and "heavily forested" as far as trees go.  I didn't bring any food or seeds (but I did butcher pack animals since those are "free").  Watching my herbalist, he would always bring back 100+ units of food in about 2 weeks worth of game time.  Eventually he got "tired" and returned with "only" 166 units... slacker.  By the time the fruit trees were blooming I had roughly 600 or so units on stock (I did set up a bookeeper).  This is after I brewed up about 200 units of booze and minus w/e my bums ate.  Deciding to take this into silly territory, I made 11 step-ladders (I got 4 migrants), put out 5 max sized "plant gathering" zones, and enabled said labor on EVERYONE.  By the time autumn wrapped up, I had a total of 2400 units of food on top of the few hundred booze I had made up.  Basically, I used 11 dwarves to gather more than enough food to supply an entire 200 strong fortress (640 brewable plants= 3200 booze @ 4 per season and 4 seasons/ 1600 "food" at 2 per season over 4 seasons)  in about 2 seasons.  Granted, I hadn't begun processing the material that couldn't be eaten raw (rice, rye, alfalfa, etc) nor had I brewed up enough yet... but the raw materials were there and I still had nearly 2 seasons to work with my 11 dorfs! Since I am not farming, I also get to cook up the seeds.  Again, at 640 units of plant matter brewed up per year, you can then cook those seeds into roasts vastly supplementing your food stores.  Only ever brewing plants that return cookable seeds (sadly we can't seam to eat them all) would drop your yearly needs down to just that 1600 mark! Better yet, alfalfa/rye seeds seem to be cookable.  So brewing those and then cooking your seeds gets you both booze AND food out of them without needing to grind them into flour! Some fruit-tree seeds (like Rambutan) seem to be cookable as well.  To make matters even sillier, once I breach the caverns I can begin harvesting subterranean crops that can be stretched even further.  Each quarry bush can be processed into 5 sets of leaves and have the "seed" stretched into two more units of food (press cake and oil), thus generating 7 units of food out of 1 units of quarry bush harvested.  One final tactic will be to construct platforms allowing my dwarfs to reach higher into the tree tops.  As it stands, stepladders only let dwarves pick two levels of a tree's canopy.  Some trees can have 2-3 more full canopies ripe for the picking!

To recap, you need to selectively brew plants/fruits that can have their seeds cooked up.  Bonus points if the plant in question would need extra processing (like flour) to be edible originally.  Done perfectly, this will reduce the amount of harvested plant matter down to just 1600 a year (double duty out of brewed plants) without need for booze cooking.  Custard-apple roasts cut with rambutan and rye seeds washed down with rambutan wine! All quarry bushes will also be split into 5 leaves and have their nuts split between rock nut press cake/rock nut oil further reducing plant need. 

I'm actually starting to think a farm-less fort might be entirely doable now.  I'm envisioning an underground "herb farm" created from hallowing out a layer of dirt on top of enclosing in ~20 trees with walls and overhang to protect against all but flyers.  Then you can send out herbalists to scour the ground in between any sieges.  You'd likely need to have at least war dogs accompany them to allow them to escape.  I'm likely going to have to just grow textiles, but I might can keep enough sheep/collect enough silk to supplement what I pick up normally.  If I get something like jute/cotton/kanef, I might just be good. 

I'm not actually going to keep going on that fortress, instead I'm going to crank the stupid up to 11! I'm talking about embarking with 7 herbalists into the thick vegetation of a jungle.  My goal will be 0 farming tiles.  Other than butchering my pack animals, I'll see how far I can get without butchering any crundles or elk birds. 

On the first day of summer, I had already gathered 2114 units of plant matter.  This is BEFORE tree harvesting and diverting a little dorf-power to get a dining room set up and build containers (imported leather for bags and found a layer of jet for pots).  I also set up a bookeeper who told me I had already collected 321 units of cotton.  While I didn't have a tailor, my smartest dorf told me that would make "a shit ton of clothes"  (300 cotton a year will cloth 200 dorfs, right?)  Now, that 2114 included the cotton, but even so I have enough brewable plants with cookable seeds to have already hit the required amount of raw materials needed to feed/inebriate/cloth 200 dorfs for a year.  With just 7.  Without farming.  Without picking trees.  I've even seen some herbs already growing back around the wagon (which was already picked). 

The wiki actually suggests digging from below.  You'd have to invest FAR too much time making an entire floor of hatches outside (each linked to its own lever).  Now, for w/e reason dorf's bloody HATE to dig from below, but you can force one to with burrows.  Otherwise, a dorf already standing under what you want to dig (from below) will travel 200+ cells to dig from below (if they are able).  Then you just dig out from below and "collapse" that necro onto a waiting trap. 

Otherwise, no, they don't actually seek out corpses (so no corpse traps). 

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peasant will be struck by mood only when he have some "moodable" job turned on.

this seems to be what I observed. though it seems to be against current understanding.

Just got my first fey mood this game.
Profession of Clerk; adequate record keeper, misc. novice farming skills, Dabbling armouring skill with armouring job enabled.
took a magma forge, created a pig iron helm and became legendary armourer.

So working as expected. I still want to test if having the job disabled affects things.

Labor settins ARE irrelevant- profession is actually the deciding factor.  A dorf's profession will be whatever his highest skill is, so a peasant with a big 0 in all skills that gains 1 rank in weaponsmithing will become a weaponsmith.  He and a legendary+5 weaponsmith will have the chance for entering a strange mood AND will produce the same quality of artifact once they do.  THIS is what the wiki was referring too.  "useful" (aka non-crafting) moodable skills also have a higher chance of being selected.  So weaponsmiths have a ~3x higher chance of entering a mood than a farmer.  With both of these in mind, investing a little effort into making your hauler monkeys into a useful profession will increase your odds of winning the artifact lottery.  Now, if you get a legendary cheesmaker you aren't going to bother making him a legendary +1 armorsmith for strange moods.  However, if you get a dabbling fish cleaner it doesn't take -that- much work to make him an armorsmith (or w/e you want to mood).  Once they flip professions you can safely turn the labor off and let them resume being scud labor hauling monkeys. 

You said it yourself... those "farmers" will just make useless wood goblets and become legendary wood crafters.  This is because non-moodable skills default to wood crafting (or maybe stone crafting too) when that dorf is selected for a mood.  These are at hte lowest "weight" thankfully.  So if you can turn most of your armor of scud labor into "weaponsmiths" or another moodable skill, you can drastically reduce the chance of getting another artifact toy mini forge and actually gain more useful artifact weaponry and armor (or a some other legendary crafter of your choice). 

It would be nice to have venus fly traps/pitcher plant like monstrosity.  You could place them in your food stockpile and they would eat all the vermin, both protecting your food AND disposing of the remains!  No need to worry about cat reproduction, no need to haul the vermin corpses away constantly. 

Give the seeds to the elves.  The really big dorf eating ones sound like something you'd find in an evil jungle or a the third cavern layer though.

Silver warhammers > maces

Under normal circumstances, yes.  However, the great lethality of warhammers is due to their small contact size which allows them to masquerade as a piercing weapon.  All those delicious insta-kills with your warhammer are due to the hammer crushing the skull and destroying the brain... which is futile since zombies are immune to organ damage.  What does work with a zombie, though, is breaking every bone in its body and puling all of its muscles.  Its the one thing maces are great for- take out zombies and making sure they don't get back up. 

Should I train a mace squad?

The whole point of having mace-dorfs is splattering undead! Other weapons rely on piercing damage (organ failure) or slashing damage that causes loss of limbs.  Now, while cutting a zombie apart makes it a little less threatening , it just won't have the same effect.  Zombies are immune to pain, have no need for organs, and won't bleed out.  Worse, those chopped off bits can return if in an evil biome/necromancer is present.  Thus, the best way for dealing with undead is to mangle their corpses to the point that they can't reanimate... aka mace-dorfs. 

Also, undead have double/triple physical attributes and keep the skills they had when alive.  So long as the undead retain their equipment (ala Tower siege), they are a significant threat.  I wouldn't send 10 mace-dorfs against 20 undead yet alone 50.  As someone else stated, use a series of "airlocks" via drawbridges to only fight a handful at a time.  All it takes is one bad roll in combat (or a really lucky hit on the zombie's end) to cripple/kill one of your legendary dorfs.  I"m not saying don't use them, I'm just saying be smarter about it than throwing 10 dorfs against 50 zombies.  Divide and conquer!

Wooden spikes? You don't need to deal much damage, just make him bleed. 

It helps to have multiple animal-trainers who have no other enabled labors. The point is that one animal trainer might decide to go on break for the rest of the season when that dragon hits semi-wild then fully reverts.  Having 2-3 increases your chance of always having a trainer on hand to prevent !FUN! As has been said, you don't technically -need- to fully domesticate the animals.  Its more work, but dwarf labor is horribly cheap.  What fortress doesn't have 20-50+ loafers just hanging around at any given time?