Bay 12 Games Forum

As soon as you get cocky and stop farming, you notice everyone in the fort is starving, and you have 5000+ drinks of alcohol and 0 food in the stocks.

Then you stop everything, produce plump helmets, and 20 dwarves die from starvation.

I throw them at traders. Exports might count for something. And if not, at least they're not taking up space that way.

Quote from: nirodragon on September 14, 2008, 12:08:04 pm

"Too cheap to buy a surge protector?" in the thread where I mentioned my files being corrupted when my house was struck by lightning.

THAT is signature material. The combination of the quote and your house getting hit by lightning is so... Awesome.

Well, if you were in a woodland biome you could just set a bunch of peasants on making barrels in your sweatshop, but you might have a problem if you're out of wood. Try to make sure you don't have any empty barrels sitting around anywhere, and if needed, reserve barrels for alcohol only.

Also, about the fortress layout, I have a suggestion:

Just make wide hallways and put related workshops together. Build bedrooms and dining rooms on the same level, in a stone layer. By related workshops, I mean things like a wood furnace, a smelter, and a metalsmith's forge. Just put them in nearby rooms. Other sets of related workshops include things like a butcher's shop and a tanner's shop, although putting those two outside might be a good idea if you have a lazy butcher.

If you can, make the halls 3 squares wide. Try and make it so each workshop can be sealed off in case an Ultra-Mighty carpenter claims something and wants crystal glass. Make a very large (think between 30x30 and 90x90) room in a stone layer. Build bedrooms around it, branching off from it. Make sure the walls between the bedrooms are two squares thick, so they don't overlap (overlapping decreases value sharply), and make sure they all have doors. Smooth and then engrave the whole thing, put decorated tables and chairs in the center room, and make it a dining room and meeting area. If possible, build a well in it. This configuration works very well if you want happy dwarves.

Also, try and capture large animals alive. Don't declare things available for adoption. Get a herd of about 10 to 30 large animals (camels, elephants, whatever your map has) and then use them for food and skins. This can really be a big help early in the game, before you can buy so much leather. If you have a map with spiders on it, leave parts of their habitat untouched so you can harvest their webs at a steady pace. If you don't have webs, farm some plants you can make thread out of and some you can make dye out of. Getting a stable cloth or leather industry pays off.

A good way to make money is with prepared meals. If possible, try and get very high quality ones made with things like Dwarven Syrup. Otherwise, expensive meat (elephant meat and things, not cat meat) will do fine too.