Bay 12 Games Forum

So I was playing Dwarf Fortress yesterday and things were going along interestingly. I had my first Vampire in the fort, and upon discovery I locked them up in my dwarven prison. The murder sentence was only around 165 days, so that's kind of short, but life goes on.

The vampire had been in the prison for a few seasons and I was playing along. I got a note that a mandate had ended, and when I went to the noble page to see what was up, I noticed the dwarves had elected a new mayor.

The Vampire, still in prison, had been elected mayor.

This isn't terribly surprising; the Vampire's social skills are almost legendary while most of my fort barely even has social skills. I'm not terribly sure what to do about it, though. The Vampire was released at the end of their prison sentence, killed someone, and I put them right back in prison. Soon after that I assigned a new Hammerer, but it seems that once a sentence is given you can't change it. I guess I have to wait untill they're released and kill again. ^.^;;

But gosh, how can this even happen? High social skills or not, the vampire was isolated in the prison, only seeing dwarves that brought her water to drink. Not to mention she was a convicted murderer! You'd think that would keep you out of the election pool.

Anyways when I realized what had happened I laughed for a whole minute, so I thought everyone else would like to hear about it. Crazy, huh? I already submitted it to that mantis bug report thing. Hopefully this is a bug, and not a feature; I don't know if a mayor can do their duties in prison!

In my last few forts I've noticed that my dwarves tend to leave most of the prepared food in the kitchen, letting it rot and stink up the joint. On my latest fort I decided to do a single cook order, and my cook made a stack of 9 plump helmet roast. And everybody left it there. At least five of my dwarves had food hauling turned on. Before long I got my first immigrant wave, and they all started doing the haul jobs that had stacked up, but none of them had done anything about the roasts. I took a look at the Jobs page and checked each individual job, and the job to put the plump helmet roasts into a stockpile didn't even appear on the list.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it seems like it ought to at least appear on the list; or maybe something is preventing them from being hauled in the first place? I'm used to my dwarves taking a while to get to hauling what I want them to haul, but they almost always ignore food untill it rots. And often after it rots, they just leave it there instead of taking it to the garbage dump, despite my designating at least a couple peasants to trash only.

I'd only heard of these beasts in myths and legends, but I just embarked on a hill where I found some "Giant Cave Spider Silk Web" inside a bottomless pit.

It's pretty far down there. Can/will the spider climb out and devour the world? Can I build cage traps and lure it out of the chasm and train it to guard my fort? Will it eat the herd of Naked Mole Dogs that also spawned on the same layer? I just noticed there was more webbing on a higher z level. Is it possible there are two Giant Cave Spiders? Or more? Oh god what if there are invisible giant cave spiders in other parts of the map than the chasm? We are so screwed?

This is going to be fun.

I started a new fort with the 39f version and so far it's been going great... except just now, when I had my first Goblin Ambush.

The first thing I do during a Goblin Ambush is set it so that my dwarves can't go outside, and as soon as the goblins get close to my gate I close the drawbridge. (if I close it any sooner the goblins just stand around and don't approach)

This time something very different happened. My dwarves started suspending and cancelling jobs all over my fortress, citing the 'forbidden area'. Normally they would cancel jobs outside of the fort, like building outdoor walls or roads, or chopping down wood or fishing. But this time it was including jobs all over the inside of my fort!

The fort I'm using right now has a different design than I normally use. It's square-shaped with five levels arranged around a core staircase. Each level has a cross-shaped five-square wide hallway, with four areas forming a square. The core staircase has a single pillar in the middle surrounded by eight staircases, which are surrounded by a single square of 'floor', then the cross-halls are bordered by a line of grates up to the 'top' of the fort, to let light in. My last couple forts had problems with cave adaptation so I thought I'd try this.

The grate/light thing was my first suspect, but there are a few other ways to get around my fort that didn't involve going through this staircase, and a few of the jobs warnings didn't make any sense at all. The top level of the staircase core has all twenty grates installed, already, and everywhere beneath them is marked as "Inside, Light, Above Ground"

My fort also features a front gate that is mostly made out of constructions. When I built it, I channeled away part of a hill to make a bold cliff face. I left 1 z-level of natural rock that was 13x11, and cut a 5 square wide hallway into the heart of my fort. I channeled away part of it, so that my archers on the walls could shoot both at targets outside the fort and at targets that make it over my drawbridge before I raise it. I had just finished adding a constructed roof to this gatehouse when the goblins attacked. I haven't finished adding fortifications, just a big floor floating over the gatehouse. Like with the core staircase, this is all marked as Inside, Light, Above Ground. When I set my orders to 'dwarves stay inside', my marksdwarves refused to go onto the U-shaped portion covered by the constructed floor, untill I set it to 'soldiers can go outside'.

So, it seems like 'above ground' means 'outside' but that doesn't explain everything that's going on. The middle three levels of my five-level fort are connected by a 'storage room' that is connected to my Trade Depot on the middle floor. The second floor from the top is connected to my farms, which are entirely underground with no constructions above them, and a straight route from most of my fort without going through any of the constructed areas, yet I got a lot of 'Cancelled Farming Job' messages.

In any case the whole thing is awfully chaotic. The one that stuck out most to me was a door construction job on the middle floor, at the mayor's house. The door was left on the staircase and the job was cancelled because of 'forbidden area', but then when I unsuspended the job, another dwarf went onto the stair case, grabbed the door, and cheerfully placed it, crossing the grates several times.

So, what in the world is going on? Is this a bug, or was I mistakenly thinking that constructed spaces count as inside, and my dwarves were too dumb to pathfind around the main stairs?

I just embarked with 39f and it's really neat having such a wide view... but when I tried using any selection commands like k or d I found that the cursor appeared in the middle of the top part of the screen, where it would if the game was 'normal sized', and if I tried to drag it down to someplace lower on the screen, the map would scroll when I reached the edge of the former size.

So, it's nice to be able to see more, but it's really confusing being able to only interact with the same size. ^.^;;

I've been noticing some strange behavior in the animals in my fort lately. I'm not terribly experienced in handling animals in Dwarf Fortress so I'm not entirely sure which, if any, of these issues are actually bugs. The two things I want to focus on are ways animals are misbehaving due to doors.

The first strange behavior was encountered when I noticed a lot of animals were running through my woodshop. The way I had built my workshops, I made large rooms dedicated to different types of building. Each of these workshops has several double-doors on its sides, leading to a five-square wide 'main road'. The main road is set to high traffic, so the dwarves all use it for getting around, but the animals don't pay any heed to traffic labels and were walking through the workshop with gleeful abandon, in order to catch up to their various owners. I didn't like this, so I decided to set the doors to the woodshop to 'shut tightly', and not let animals through. There were still some animals in the room, so I left one pair of double-doors pet passable.

To my surprise, the animals did not leave the room. They became confused and started flashing question marks, the way they would if I put them in a room with only blocked exits. Worse yet, as I left it for a while, more and more animals were piling up against the shut door. After a bit, I realized what was going on. The animals were pathfinding through the doors, even though they couldn't pass them, and were unable to take the longer path out of the room, even though it was the only path available. I set all the doors as pet-passable and let them get back to their lives.

I had ignored it at the time, but something else is happening that made me remember this problem. The second strange behavior. I just cleared out the monsters in a cave pool and mined out the area around it to make an indoor park for my dwarves. I walled off a small area in a corner and put a single door sealed tightly against pets. I also set it to restricted traffic, to keep nosy dwarves out. It's a web farm; the idea is to give the cave spiders someplace to do their thing without dwarves crushing the webs, or cats killing them.
While passing by the web farm I noticed something... there was a kitten standing at the door, trying to get at the spiders inside. He could pathfind in to where there were spiders, but couldn't pass the door. This is a really annoying problem, since it means my cats will constantly be standing at the door trying to get in. I figure it's a pathfinding bug in animals... And decided to report it.

I accidentally caged four goblins, who somehow ended up in a place where I set up cage traps for 'something else'. I heard that goblins will escape from cages eventually. Is that true? And if so, is there a way I can kill them before they get loose? What should I do?

I've got an underground pool next to my fort. Or rather, my fort kinda surrounds it... It's full of critters. Olmmen, Frogmen, Lizardmen, and a single female giant toad. I walled it up when I first found it, but I'd kind of like to 'use' it. There's a ton of spider webs all around it, and I've read that if you muddy the ground in a place like this, Tower Caps will grow. I want to mine out some more room around it, and make it into a park!

But in order to do that, I have to get rid of the creatures. The first thing I tried, I dug out some of the walls next to it and put in fortifications. I was hoping my marksdwarves would 'pew pew pew' them to death, but it turns out they're all peaceful 'wild animals' and while one of my dwarves went into a martial trance just from lookin' at all these guys, they refused to shoot at them.

My latest evil plot involves putting lots of cage traps down a hallway connected to the cave pool... But I have to wonder. Can these monsters even leave the water? I mean, are they trapped in there? I'm worried that once I open this 'tunnel' the monsters are just going to stay in the pool and not get trapped. ^.^;;