Bay 12 Games Forum

On the first year of my fort, one of my Dwarven children entered a strange mood and made a chalk scepter. Nothing special, just a boring old scepter, worth very little by artifact standards. But a few months later, a mercenary shows up in my fort, demanding that very scepter. My swordsdwarf takes care of him, but then immediately after, another one shows  up. Then another one. Then another one. My swordsdwarf forgets his sword and is killed. I put a few of my miners in makeshift squads in a desperate attempt to stop them. As soon as one falls, another one, sometimes two, show up on the map. This causes a massive bar fight to erupt in the tavern and every visitor is kicked out if the fortress, but more treasure hunters keep showing up. Eventually, I put the scepter behind copper bars in a display room, along with the other artifacts, but they still keep coming. I've got an entire team of trained swordsdwarves now, steel gear and all. The bodies of fallen intruders are piling up in the river. The constant fighting has made the morale of my dwarves plummet. And eventually... it stops. As if every mercenary in the region was hired by someone very powerful to steal the scepter from us and we had killed them all. We were finally safe.

Until the mountain titan showed up.

Add in a ways for dwarves to fulfill their basic needs that reduce the amount of micro-managing for the player to do. For example you could assign a workshop and associated stockpile for “leisure crafting” and dwarves that would get the “craft object” need would then use this workshop as a way to entertain themselves during their free time. You could assign a zone as a “roaming area” so that dwarves with the “wander” need could go to when when they’re on break. You could even have the family members of your dwarves visit occasionally from time to time, that way the dwarves with the “be with family” need would actually get to see their loved ones every once in a while. You could add some sort of sparring gym for dwarves with the “martial training” or “fight” need to go distract themselves, instead of having to manually assign each bored dwarf to a military squad with all the associated repercussions, and so forth. All of this would lessen the amount of micromanagement as well as make the fortress more lively.

I was minding my own business when some really depressed zombie just wandered into my fortress. He hasn’t spoken a single word and has been wandering the halls non-stop for years. I guess he’s our mascot now?

You could add different cavern biomes. It would probably make exploring them less repetitive and more exciting.

I’m modding a new creature in and wanted to know if it’s possible in any way to have it shoot a projectile which explodes upon contact with a creature or the terrain. Is there any way that I can do this?