Bay 12 Games Forum

Hmm. Might I suggest that some of the extra gems have their appearance rate toned down a little? My entire map doesn't have much else in it but fairy droppings, molasses, and a whole lot of Pokemon-related gems.

Since there's a bunch of other gems in the mod itself, and the vanilla files also list a load of 'em, it's kind of a waste for the rest of the stuff when every room for gems is being taken by about... 8 or so sorts of gem.

Or maybe it's just this site.

Also, I have about 20+ clusters of "rare" metal.

The fortress/city of Strikehelms moves on, progresses, lives and shapes the valley around it.

The moment I embarked here, I knew the place had THAT SOMETHING that dwarves love. And I found out exactly what in about 7 days to the game year. The river which goes through the other half of the map, while strong and constantly flowing, also was flowing slow enough for flooding to occur. It was due to the waterfall above, which spewed water constantly, and with more force than the river below could remove.

Instead of beds and tables for my dwarves, the first thing I had to do was build a dam/floodway for the entire river, and at the moment of the construction, the river had already started to flood the level I decided I'd start the fort on.

By Autumn, I finally had the beast under control, and finally, the mass of 7/7 entered the floodway and began it's slow journey to the end of it.

It should be noted, that I got this idea from both boredom, and having my previous super-fort places all fail to crippling below 10 FPS speeds, with 15 dwarves.  So I decided "I wanna do something like New Crobuzon, with corrupt officials and so on!" Then again, I can't make this big city big enough to fill several map areas but OH WELL.

About 7 seven years to the game, the city has finally managed to get ahead of housing the inhabitants, and our first actually free flat is currently being finished. Everything built after the dam/floodway has been of obsidian/snowflake obsidian blocks, walls, floors, furniture... Trade has been erratic, having to juggle between housing and making goods is troublesome, but luckily, the dwarves I trained for military are exceptional at defense, given how the only attacks so far have been of kobolds, and raids of rhesus macaques.

The years also brought up another issue with the river. It freezes during winter for a few days. But not all of it. Only the lower half of the river freezes, and during those few days, the waterfall pushes extra water, which these days starts a whole new wave of flood on top of the pre-existing extraflow.

Each Winter at this point onwards, I have to remember to pull the anti-flooding lever, or the lowest level of the city is sure to get flooded. And that's never good.

For productivity's sake. My mayor and clerk live down there.

Here's a crappily taken screenshot.

Once I manage to get nobles to show up, I figured I'd carve them actual rooms inside stone like normal dwarves would do. Somewhere near the waterfall, for them to be all "oh my, would you look at that", instead of "why are those dwarves sleeping on mud? Oh well make me HFS mugs!"

I also need to start up on the roads to connect everything.

Yep yep. Life is good, unless you live right next to the floodway. At that point, life is slightly dangerous.

Once in the good days, I played a lot of Kobold Camp rather than with dwarves. I embarked on the mountains, and headed straight for my destination.

The bottomless pit.

Having already discovered the UG pool, I had a vision of emptying the pit of the creatures, flooding it with the river nearby and then emptying it all, carving around the pit levels to make walkways and rooms and so on.

It worked, armed with a lot of wooden arrows, every critter inside(which were surprisingly few in number) were soon full of more arrows than organs. The kobolds did a little victory dance, moved their stuff inside and began work.

By the time my camp was eligible for moods, I had managed to get the pit filled with water and closed the pathway. Probably dropped a few levels of ground on it, or something, or maybe I had gotten a mechanic migrant by then. That's not important to this thing.

Finally ready to get started on the housing around the pit and so on, my miners got to work after I designated every level. The mood was ecstatic, the camp was all thrilled of the bone toy boat a pup had made in an estranged fashion, and all was good.

Until the point where I noticed a message saying the said kid had fallen into a deep chasm.

It was odd, I checked around but there were no enemies, suddenly angry kobolds or creatures that could have pushed the kid over the edge, literally in this case.

I should have looked around more carefully, but that's that.

I unpaused the game, and kept going. Nearly at the end of the mining, I suddenly got an announcement that a kobold had starved to death. This time I had a corpse to zoom into, which I did.

And I found two other kobolds, in a small ledge which had yet to be mined open to the rest of the camp for some reason. All were upset, starving and dehydrated. That, and wet.

By the time the miners got there, they all died off, one by one.

It was not really my most shining of moments with kobolds, but I at least found out the reason for so many of them to fall victim to mysterious forces.

While my memory is sketchy, I'm pretty sure I also used the flooding-source as a water-source. And my map was one with two biomes nearby, unfortunately, this was where the river was at.

Came Winter, the river froze first in the lower part of the map, gradually working it's way upwards. Now that wasn't bad.

But when Spring came, and the top part thawed out, it was unable to push through the ice, so it pushed out straight into my camp.

I had yearly floods that by the end of the camp had claimed those three kobolds to starvation, and a dozen had walked by at the wrong time and were swept in the pit.

Then the goblin ambush party showed up at the top of the pit, and sniped enough kobolds dead to start the tantrum's.

It was sort of hilarious.

It's only going to get worse next version onward.
I mean' were getting souls, aren't we?

"The Legendary Steel Hammer has been possessed by the malignant ghost of Urist McMandateVictim!"

Bonus points if you take Daseb along. Double bonus points if both her and the kid actually survive. Triple bonus points if you make it back to a city to retire in, without getting killed by a pack of wolves on the way.

DO IT. FOR THE CLOSURE. TO THIS RIDICULOUSLY SAD STORY OF PEOPLE IN A RANDOMLY GENERATED GAME.

Ahem. Sorry about that. When I get excited, I start screaming.

I'm worried more that I get tired of having to redo my fort.
For some reason, my game save tends to suddenly kill itself and I can't load it up.
At least this time I didn't lose a week of work.

Sad face. : (

Those nobles are going to be the death of you anyway, if you don't "deal" with them, if you know what I mean, and what others have hinted already. You might as well give them something to think about.

"Punish Zagrib for this insolence! But why does that name sound so familia-"
*sound of head splattering against a legendary dining room wall*
"ZAGRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIB, MY ONLY SON, BORRRRRNNN TO DIE"

Also, I have a flashback to people still holding onto stuff even if it's forbidden. If you want to neuter your Hammerer, order the hammer dumped, in magma if that's what it takes. Or lock him up somewhere and dump food down randomly so he/she won't die and a new one steps in your gates and splatters Urist McLegendaryMetalcrafter because the old one couldn't get to him.

Why not? They can be soothed by the lovely stench of burning hair.

While not a total loss, my current fort required the use of seven insane Armok-blessed(no eat, sleep or drink) miners and the removal of about 150k pieces of stone before I could start on it.

It wasn't so bad. Until I forgot about a ledge that I had left for some reason or another, which then fell down.

Into the future fort entry tunnel.
Where the liaison was.

So, now without a liaison, right off the bat, I knew things could only get better.

And of course, they did. During the removal of a level access stairway, Bim the Miner went BAM when the entire staircase fell down on him. Several others were injured, but I kept on working. This place was nearly finished externally and I could then move on to work on the towers.

Of course, things are never easy when you are a super dwarf. Especially when Itod went very unhappy, and insisted that she had to talk with the expedition leader. While tantruming. And throwing rocks and god knows what all around the place. The whole thing ended with her beating the crap out of the guy, getting better and going back to work. So I was down to three able dwarves now.

It was at the point where I had started to finish off the last layer, that the kobolds attacked. Two squads suddenly jumped on a miner, and despite the heroic efforts of a legendary miner, seven kobolds proved too much.

They were now marching relentlessly towards the bottom floor, where the expedition leader laid broken, and the other two were now very unhappy campers over the loss of their friend.

There was only one thing to do.

I finished the work extra fast, ignoring smoothing the ground level because it wouldn't matter anyway, and then, I mined open the magma pipe, from all levels.

The miner who finished the task didn't make it, caught on fire and was swept down eventually what with the torrents of magma now flooding all over the place.

And the remaining dwarves?
They kept the kobolds busy, long enough for the magma to reach the only way into the lowest level and cut off any exit.

And then, they fought to the bitter, horrible, agonizing and burning end.

So I reclaimed the place, because hey, I don't want to mine this thing out again.

The lava is flowing, and from the looks of things, it'll take a loooong time for the levels of the pipe to rise back up to it's former glory until the entire city is submerged within magma.

It's a good thing, means I have enough time to install those doors in the towers that are the only thing keeping out the magma, for fun, you know?

That and steel bridges to work as blastdoors. Obviously they are located in the level the door was broken at. If no one is close to pull it in time, TOO BAD.

It's gonna be fun until the next version comes out.