Bay 12 Games Forum

To go even further with the cherry-picking, if you have a dwarf who has been trained with some weaponsmithing skill, like warhammers/maces and they enter a mood, try to make sure the metal bar they first pick is of some heavy metal. Silver, lead, gold, platinum. I think that's the order of "lightest" to heaviest on the heavy metals. Whacking things with blunt weapons made out of those materials hurts a lot. Although you just can't beat a good old fashioned adamantine battleaxe.

Also, I vaguely recall that once you get 20 dorfs in the fort you are able to get moods even if your dorf number drops below 20. Although at the same time, I recall a 60-70 person fort that stopped getting artifacts after about 50 or whatever were made, so maybe you do need 20 people who haven't made artifacts to keep the rare moods rolling in.

Also also, if you are doing this just to get some adventurer-goods out of moods, remember to disable enemy invasions so you don't have to screw around with defenses and military.

It's nice having free time, and spending it all on modding like crazy.
Elemental avatars are actually close to being finished, just need to tweak a few colors here and there. They still need to be tested for real in fort-mode and whatever though, but they function like normal "I wanna be immortal!" driven fools. Gods give them knowledge, they turn into an avatar and can then teach others their skills. Which is nice because avatars tend to have really short lifespans as far as I see. All those elemental lines of Avatars, cut forever because Megabeast #8 decided to visit the avatar right after they got their upgrade.

Looks like the next update is going to be "The Big God Damn Hero update" since most of this crap will affect Adventure-mode more than Fort-mode. Unless an avatar migrates to your fort, although even then they won't use the transform skill because god damn I can't figure out how to get it to function in a sane manner.

Anyway.
The quick rundown on Avatars is as follows:
- Once you learn in Adventure-mode how to become an avatar of some element, you can use it as an acquired power. It momentarily transforms you into an elemental, during which you can pretty much wreck whatever is against you. Let's just hope you don't run out of your powerup before all the enemies are dead, what with the fact that you lose all your held gear the moment you transform to and back.
- Most of 'em are big humanoids(80000, a few don't have legs though because I don't know, ask the devs), sturdy as hell(aw shit, adamantine-strength "skin" layer under which all your sweet sweet mana is contained) and twice as strong. Talking about "you punch the bad guy in the upper body with your left hand, and they are propelled away by the force of the blow!" strength here. I think I stated that earlier. But now this is actually working a lot better than back then so yeah.
- The elemental forms of avatars have their own speshul tricks besides being able to snap foes like dry twigs, list of which is as follows:

Water:
- Able to swim REALLY REALLY FAST. Also UNDERSWIM, if that works by now. Wiki says it hasn't since 31.25 but whatever.
- Able to cast 2 offensive spells, that flick condensed water spinning at foes, breaking their bones and sometimes propelling them by the force of the blow.

Energy:
- Able to cast 3 offensive spells. Lightning is a TRAILING_DUST_FLOW spell, Big Zap Attack a TRAILING_GAS_FLOW spell(don't ask, I work with what I have) and Megashock an UNDIRECTED_DUST attack. They tend to cause a lot of discomfort to your enemies, what with being shocked by electricity. Dizziness, paralysis and impaired heart functions ahoy!

Earth:
- Able to cast 2 offensive spells. Boulderdash throws a piece of stone at your foes, doing what you'd expect. Sands of Suffocation is an UNDIRECTED_DUST attack, that wraps your foe(s) in living sand, slowing them down like hell as well as causing suffocation what with having their lungs full of sand.

Wind:
- Able to fly.
- Able to cast 2 offensive spells. Vortex is an UNDIRECTED_DUST attack that knocks your foes out, and Invisible Blast is a nice blast of magic meant to break bones.

Light:
- Illuminates the darkness! Go forth, and destroy the forces of Darkness!
- Able to cast 2 offensive spells. Light Blast throws condensed light(MAGIC!) at foes, snapping bones. Illuminate is a nice TRAILING_VAPOR_FLOW that robs foes of their sight, as well as causing burn damage. I actually don't know where the burn damage comes from, but it amuses me so I left it in.

Darkness:
- Able to cast 3 offensive spells. Tendrils of Darkness is a tentacle-rape spell that snaps bones, Shadowbat Swarm is another that snaps bones and Mayhem Burst knocks your foe(s) out as their minds get ravaged by nasty visions and nightmares.

Fire:
- You are REALLY SUPER HOT. Literally. People don't like being too close to you, since they'll probably be set on fire.
- Able to cast 4 offensive spells. A lot of fireballs, firebreath and of course a nice "fuck you" in the form of a dragonfire-ripoff spell.

Ice:
- You are REALLY SUPER COOL. Stay away from water, or you'll end up encased in ice pretty much immediately.
- Able to cast 3 offensive spells. IceBall and Ice Needles are there for you when you need to break the bones of your foes, and Ice Nine when you just want to give 'em a good oldfashioned frostbite.


Next up, I guess I'll try making moglins able to heal friendly units of all injuries, because moglins don't get the "chicks dig scars" thing and do their stupid magic on every war-grizzled veteran. Moglin chicks dig tails, you know?

Anyway, spells for moglins, some for naga and I guess I can think of something for all the rest of magic-using civ creatures. Then I STILL need to check the 3-eyed trobble frequency thing, maybe add an alloy for dragon-, night- and zardbane so you could make nice and heavy blunt weapons out of 'em(they're steel-weight right now, they're okay but they could be EVEN BETTER). And then I need to check whatever the hell I've said here in the past and try to remember if I did something or not. Probably not.

A mech civ eh? Well, not really. If I would add anything mecha-related to the game, it'd be something like intact mecha pieces that you could find underground, put 'em together in a workshop and... Dunno. Probably the most sensible solution would be to have a blast of MAGIC occur from the reaction, changing the person putting the mecha together into a "mecha pilot". And of course the machine would have to be insanely big, and armed with such weaponry that you could crush everything forever and laugh about it.

Anyway.. I must admit that for a loooong while I haven't done shit about this mod. I blame it on "oh I'll just wait until the new version is out", "I'll just wait until minecarts are done" and "I'll just wait until I'm finished with school and vacation starts".

Now all those are over and done with, meaning it's once again time to get my lazy ass off from the workbench and squatting down in front of my computer, editing away.

I guess I'll start with the obvious, adding the new stuff to the civs in the mod, messing with the ore numbers, if that wasn't hardcoded(can't remember) and... I guess that's it? OH RIGHT, those god damn FIRE_IMMUNE or FIREIMMUNE or whatever creatures need to actually be immune to fire as well.

Maybe I'll add a poison gas attack to Dragon Slayers too, so they can take down dragons at even better efficiency. And of course I need to mess about with the super-power skill activation thing so it'd work as intented at Fortress Mode as well. So much to do.

After all that is done, I guess I'm going to finally get cracking on the avatar issue. Especially the dragon avatar thing. Need to check whether or not having a megabeastie leading a civ can result in the megabeast paying a deadly visit all of a sudden. Maybe I should just make 'em random large beasts in the wild, that might help, although then I need to check that they don't just show up to talk treaties and smash and burn everything. I'll get started on that after the new version update to the mod though, wouldn't want to release a shitty product, like I usually have done with this mod.

This would be all so much easier if I actually knew what the fuck I was doing, but that's what you get with a Dabbling Modder. But yeah, stay tuned all you two people who use this mod!

Make miniature farm plots in every cell. Kids will have to twiddle their thumbs and hope they grow up and can work their spot of land before starving, or just dump-fed. If they can't feed themselves and starve, too damn bad.

You could just add the [NOEMOTION] tag to your dwarves or whatever you play with. They will never go above or below "quite content" and also never end up enraged in combat, not that it ever helped anyone I've had enraged.

This post will probably not contribute to the discussion in any way except telling you people what some guy thinks of the new update to mining.

I like it. A lot. Ever since I meddled with the 2D version of Dwarf Fortress, I've missed how miners weren't quaranteed to leave pieces of rock where-ever they went, but were able to mine out mineral veins perfectly at legendary level. Coal was a special case, but anyway.

This new version? Aww yeah. I don't have a bazillion boulders everywhere anymore, with mining tunnels looking for metals I still get more than enough of those than I would like, and the "1 ore rock = 4 metal bars" thing is great too. As far as the rare metals go, that is easy to get around. More abundant minerals at worldgen, I just order what I want from the caravans instead of digging for the ore myself. It's not that big of a deal then, but I guess it can become an issue if you prefer less mineral-abundant worlds.

And I can actually have a huge mining crew too and it won't hurt my metal operations that much, it just speeds up the process as long as I got the crew to haul the ore and process it. Sure, it comes down to luck how much ore I get from a vein, but a lot of things in DF get down to luck. Ah RNG, you are a cruel mistress, but I love you so. Hurt me more and send some of those deadly dust titans my way again.

After starting a decent fort on .09 to test out the new hauling and minecart system, one of my weaponsmiths was possessed. Eh, they were Great already and I had a crapload of masterwork weapons for every soldier, no harm done.

They made a god damn lead axe.
I gave it to my guard Captain, because god damn that is one useless axe. Maybe it'll be worth something if they end up bashing with it more than slashing.

You guys still take ideas for utilities to add on this thing?
There used to be a tool that told you how many "ticks" you needed for the next strange mood to hit one of your dwarves, or just set it straight to 0 and wait until inspiration struck.

Think that's good enough to hunt down and add?
...after the version update, because I have a feeling I'd get beaten by a mob if I throw a suggestion that delays the release of DFhack for this new and glorious updated DF.