Bay 12 Games Forum

I don't think there are any goblins nearby, and for some reason we are at peace with the local kobolds.  Perhaps I've just settled upon a creampuff area of a creampuff world?  I should initiate a mission or two to mix things up in this place.

Awash in food and booze, not feeling threatened by the environment, and having plenty of resources is actually making it kind of a dull fortress, successful though it may be.  I think my next fortress will be back in a more hostile environment.

Speaking of the devil, the goblins attacked last night.  Conveniently, they did so right after I temporarily opened a second entrance to the fortress.  Not an entrance proper, but rather I was building a very long stairway from the surface to the caverns so that I could have a direct route to the caverns that did not go through the mines and consequently into the fortress.  However, in the process of digging this very long stairway I went through a few levels that I had strip-mined, this exposing it to the fortress proper.  (My plan was to subsequently wall off the stairway as it passed through these mining levels, thus isolating it, but that plan didn't come into play by the time the goblins showed up.)  Naturally instead of moving to go through the front door (where the cage trap carpet is) they beelined for the cavern stairs that would put them in my mines, which would be a nightmare because they could scatter into a thousand tunnels in there and make their way directly into the "secure" area of the fortress.

It was a siege of about 15 goblins, all archers or crossbowmen.  My military is 30 strong with 20 infantry (equally divided among melee weapons) and 10 archers.  10 of the infantry are legendary warriors, and the other 10 and the archers are all at levels 5-7 on their weapons of choice.  I decided to counter the goblins with an attack by that latter 20, to buff their skills with actual combat.  There was a violent melee on the surface near the cavern stair entrance, where about 10 goblins died, but a few made it inside and as I feared, scattered throughout the mines.  Luckily I was able to hunt them all down and my military, along with some local mercenaries finished the job.  No Dwarven losses, though a couple of mercenaries were seriously injured.  Now some of my dwarves are grumpy because they had to witness combat and clean up goblin guts from the mine walls and recover loot from the battle on the surface.  SACK UP, GENTLEMEN.  THIS GAME IS NOT CALLED DWARF TEA PARTY.

The cavern stairway has since been completed and secured, so the mercenaries love hangout out down there harassing crundles and giant cave toads.  I've had my squad down there to explore and even had my lumberjacks bring some tower cap home, but I have never had good luck with civilians NOT wandering randomly into the caverns and getting themselves in deep %#(*%, so that is happening too.  Urist McDeathwish cancels recover dropped article of clothing:  interrupted by giant cave crocodile.  I wish there was a way to set the orders to "recover this item, but not in this place" without having to manually forbid or claim tons of stuff.  Web gathering is strictly forbidden because, well, I've had more than one mass murdering GCS ruin my day.

If the corpse was not consumed in fire or magma...

Ah yes, the ole' Urist McNosey has not been seen in over a week.

"Well, I guess it's time to engrave a slab."

I've noticed that the liaison doens't leave with the caravan any more.  He just hangs out around the fortress as a visitor.

If the liaison dies a new one usually arrives with the next caravan.

I've noticed mine go berserk a few times, as if he wants to leave but can't.

Did you claim the equipment? To strip equipment, I usually 'd' 'b' 'c' on the stockpile, then 'd' 'b' 'd' on the stockpile, then go to each cage with 'k' and 'd' to un-dump designate it. This claims all, dumps all, then un-dumps the cages. If that is not working, make sure you have a dump zone. If you create a dump zone first, near to the stockpile, the dwarfs will have a shorter walk to dump it all.

I have a dump zone right there, but I just did d-b-d and then cleared the d from the cage itself.  I will try d-b-c, d-b-d, k-d.

Update:  I just tried.  I have a naked goblin now.  Thanks!

There's this kind of idea that I tested once and It wasn't terrible. Embark with 7 skilled miners, lotsa food and booze, picks and nothing else. Use all these miners to dig the foundation of the fortress. All the workshops, and stockpiles, and rooms, offices, Meeting hall, zoo, temple, library, barracks. Dig everything (Or the most you can) and them abandon the fortress to ruin. Now come back and Reclaim it with a normal pack. Usually people go with 2 miners, but as you've already made all the digging for now, you could take just one and have an extra mason.

Interestingly, this is the opposite of the embark I thought of this morning that I want to try:  seven peasants with no skills.  Let them learn everything on the job.  Suboptimal as all hell, but I get my enjoyment out of Dwarf Fortress by trying various odd loadouts.  For example, I'm on a 2x2 fort right now (just for kicks) where I started with only raw materials and no tools (except for an anvil).  I had to build a forge, smelt some brought-along tetrahedrite and forge picks before I even started digging.  Also I I'm in the desert so there is no water and no lumber so the wagon was basically two rocks to build the smelter and forge, two chunks of tetrahedrite, some booze, some food, and a $(*$)(*^ton of logs.  Oh, and two delicious breeding pigs.

The fortress is now 100 strong, doing acceptably well.  I was late to get a military set up so I was sure I was boned.  Sure enough, right after I start training, a cyclops shows up.  Now I have level 0 and below fighters with armor scattered around the fortress furiously trying to get ready to fight and...  wait.  He stumbled into a cage trap.  We're good.  He's in storage now, right next the goblin snatcher that tried to break in.

I think I have more soap in my stocks than I requested, which really makes me think it's pulling stacks of tallow at once.

The lye does not show up anywhere, looking in the ashery, the lye stockpile (Which has an empty barrel) or the soapmaker. 

I was pretty sure that was how work orders worked, anyway.  You're not always requesting items; you're requesting tasks.  So a work order for "brew 1 alcohol from fruit" might actually produce 25 units of booze because Urist McMoonshine could grab 5 strawberries at once.

A series of unfortunate events made me move on to a new fortress from my prosperous not-so-little 3x3 city.  We reached a peak population of 203 and were doing well...  until...

Something odd happened involving the undead.  I'm not sure exactly what--I think I accidentally slaughtered an undead peregrine falcon and the remains escaped into the fortress and started an outbreak.  However it happened, at one point I got an alert that one of my furniture movers got attacked by a peregrine falcon foul vapor husk (and there are no foul vapors in my territory) and within a few minutes, several dwarves were infected.  OF COURSE this happens while my best warriors (20 soldiers) were out raiding the elves again, thus leaving my only option to burrow until reinforcements came home.  Somehow they all got struck down; I'm not entirely sure how.  If it hadn't said "foul vapor husk" I would have thought a necromancer was hiding in the bushes somewhere and then died suddenly, killing all the zombies.

So, that was unfortunate, because now I had a biohazard to deal with, and among the infected were some high-skilled dwarves.  Meanwhile, I had about a dozen goblin prisoners I wanted to execute, so I built their cages down in a hollowed-out mine tunnel and wired them to a level across the room.  I had designated the cages' contents for dumping to strip the goblins of their equipment, and waited for a long time as all the mechanisms were hooked up.  When it was all done, I set up my archers about 20 feet away and pulled the lever to release the goblins.  However, the first arrow that was fired was going THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.  The goblins were still armed!  Now I had a dozen armed goblins running free in the mines!  There was a skirmish, and three of my archers died in the melee.  Meanwhile, some passing citizens saw all of this and FTFO, at which point the goblins started chasing them down and killed a few.  The military proper came home at this point, so I immediately ordered them into the mines to clean up the mess, but the populace was already very spooked.

Does designating cages sitting in stockpiles (I had actually done d-b-d before "building" the cages to wire them to the lever) not strip enemies of their equipment?  I see it marked as dump in the stocks screen, but no one ever comes to claim it. 

I could have taken the time to recover everything, but at that point I decided I wanted to move onto a new fort.