Bay 12 Games Forum

Several times, I've seen recursive Artifacts... such as a Table which is engraved with an image of itself, which is engraved with an image of itself, which is engraved with an image of itself...

But here's a new one:

My Weaver Dodok Sazirlokum was taken by a Strange Mood, and created an Artifact Cave Spider Silk Thong named... "Dodok Sazirlokum".

It menaces with spikes of utter confusion.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well now I'm a little confused because I think you linked the wrong image.

Goblins come to your fortress to die, they have an understanding like that.

Anyways, elves and humans and goblins and such won't reproduce, but you could always breed almost-people creatures like Mountain Gnomes or whatever if you want to create some set-up to butcher sentient creatures for leather shoes and trade goods.

Well according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian obsidian can range from normal-looking, dirty looking rocks, to black glass, to gemstone quality rarities like sheen obsidian, rainbow obsidian and snowflake obsidian.

So I suppose it stands to reason you'd have your valuable obsidian gems found if you made your fortress in an obsidian layer without being able to make an unimaginably wealthy fortress just because every stone in your fort can be cut and encrusted on something (like other obsidian crafts) and buying out caravans with giant cut gem of obsidian and making windows out of obsidian that you cannot even see through.

Quote from: Albedo on November 07, 2009, 06:33:08 pm

The combat system is not transparent.

Toady did post the combat formula, which is getting scrapped for the next version.

There's lots of information that thread, a lot of it confusing at first glance.

Anyways, there's lots of good advice in this thread so far, so I'll just drop in to mention that some aspects of combat have been illuminated.

Thats a bit enlightening and it follows what I figured was happening, although its much more complicated then I assumed. I can see why combat results are so unpredictable though.

Yeah, mass designating ramps instead of channels or mining+collapsing works best since a ramp clears the z-level and the floor above it too.

I'm not too certain with the game mechanics with armor, but from personal experience and getting shot at in adventure mode, even a dwarf with a masterful set of steel platemail and three layers of chain can still randomly get a bolt through the heart/ lungs/ ect. While a champion from an abandoned dwarf fort, with a crappy wooden sheild and leather armor with Legendary Sheild user can completely block every single bolt a legendary marksdwarf adventurer fires at them.

So it seems that sheilds have a percentage chance to completely block an attack, depending on the sheild skill, while armor simply reduces or aborbs a portion of the damage done from an attack, but doesn't seem to stop criticals from instantly killing.

I'm not sure what happens if all of the damage from an attack is completely absorbed by armor though (or if armor even can actually absorb all damage) or if a zero-damage attack can still inflict critical wounds, peirce hearts or lungs, ect. Or if reduced damage attacks have a reduced chance of inflicting a critical.

I guess I'd need to lock some masterwork adamantine-plate wearing champion without a sheild on a little channeled out island have goblins shoot at him to see if it makes him invulnurable or not.

About the sheilds, maybe try assigning your marksdwarves as melee untill they pick up a sheild and then make them marksdwarves. I usually make my soldiers wrestle with sheilds before I let them use a weapon so maybe thats why.

From what I understand, armor simply reduces the damage taken. Since what makes bows so deadly is they destroy internal organs with criticals. So it doesn't help much to just absorb the damage with plate or chain.

All armor, even clothing and a dorf's pigtail socks help absorb damage. So leather DOES help a dwarf survive even crossbows, if it hits an arm or leg it will reduce the damage done and thus the severity of the wound, but If a bolt strikes a dwarf in the chest or in the head, there is always a chance that a vital bit will be injured and the dwarf killed or maimed no matter what type of armor they wear. This is why bolts and spears are so deadly.

Which is why armor is more important for melee dwarves since melee weapons are usually slashing/ bludgeoning types that don't score criticals as often and kill just by dealing damage that can be reduced with wearing armor.

So sheilds that completely block bolts in the first place is really what allows a soldier to survive a withering hail of goblin bolts. So a training them up with a good sheild skill is more important then giving them good platemail. Of course its kinda weird to have marksdwarves with sheilds, I assume they set them in the ground as pavises and duck behind them or something.

Still, nothing wrong with giving your marksdwarves platemail if they have a good armor skill, it can definitely be better then just wearing leather if they can wear it without being slowed down by encumberance penalties.

Hammermill, ground level fortifications are the best. If you put fortifications higher up, it takes everyone longer to get into position and they lose line of sight to the tile diagonally in front of them. Just put a little moat around it.

I set all my archery targets and ammo in a barracks on the second floor of my aboveground fort, so I always have marksdwarves around incase of an ambush. I used to do ground level bunkers, with 2-wide channels untill I had an elite goblin slaughter everyone in there and stroll right on by. Putting the fortifications a z-level up makes its much harder for them to hit your dwarves.