Bay 12 Games Forum

bleh, i've already disassembled the thing. but most of the time there would be literally no water at any of the pump exits except the top, with the occasional 1/7 or 2/7 flickering for a moment somewhere along the line, and then being re-absorbed into the system. surround the floor with grates and it's virtually lossless

Dwarves like to feel the mist, not actually stare at the waterfall itself, IIRC.

Falling water produces the mist, not the landing of it.

do they have to touch the mist to get the thought?
does the mist spread outward from where the water falls? if so how far? or does a dwarf actually have to walk through a waterfall to enjoy it?

I've got my glass tower fortress going nice and steady, and even though it's not quite so tall yet (only 7 floors high or so), i'm thinking of skipping ahead in my designs, to my artificial waterfall.

basically the idea is to have a pump tower up through the center of my tower, and have water cascade over the roof and down the walls (which are made of windows). but will dwarves get the associated happy thoughts if the falling water in on the other side of a window? i know they can see enemies, will they see my waterfall?

I've doodled some examples because I can't seem to adequately explain this without getting alot of basic but un-helpful replies about traders needing 3 tiles of access.

I have an almost completely flat map, with a small ridge that goes up 1 z level along the southern border, like this:


Z0:Z+1:

If I were to completely mine/channel out the Z+1 level, leaving a 1 tile wide wall like this:

New Z0:

would traders ever be cut off from my site if they tried to spawn in the south, since there's the 1 tile wall i can't do anything about? or will they automatically choose one of the accessable sides of my map to arrive from?

I don't suppose there's a way to get the dwarves with the cleaning labor to clean up vomit is there? (it's odd that they'll waste all kinds of time 'cleaning' archery targets to no apparent effect but happily traipse past pools of vomit)

essentially, no. popcap is pretty much the only option. unless you can run your fortress without generating signifigant wealth (which is hard considering anything you mine out or build is more wealth), immigrants will continue to arrive with the cats and legendary fish dissections skills.

well, i moved my meeting area to the top floor of my tower.

the green squares are glass flooring.

guess what the wavy tiles are

I would recommend the following:

make him a new install with a graphics pack installed, and go through the init and streamline everything.

set him up a basic embark package focusing mainly on the basic 'get everything going' skills, and give the dwarves Novice levels in skills you wouldn't otherwise give them, just so they'll start with that labor enabled and he won't have to spend time figuring out how to enable architecture labor on a dwarf just so he can build such-and-such. I actually still do this just for the convienience.

perhaps even start a save with the bare basics already set up, build him a functioning farm, food stockpile, some beds, a small dining area. In my experience one of the major hurdles to my newb self was just figuring out those things. Name the dwarves so they're easier for him to keep track of.

turn him loose on that and show him the wiki.

when i get around to it I think I may write a 'your first fortress' article of my own, but much more simplistic. the current article is definately very helpful, but i find that (As often the case with people trying to teach someone) it still has a tendency to overload you with information, and it's difficult for the beginner to understand what exactly they should be doing when presented with so many things they could do.