Bay 12 Games Forum

That's the thing, they aren't aggressive at all, no one is harmed, and my walls aren't complete. They circle carefully around my little fellas, and since they don't steal or anything, or attack anyone, I've left them alone. I'm not sure about why they are going in and out of being enraged, or why they have decided to live in my 9x9 little tin mine, but I was wondering if they were starting a tribe or something. Could I enslave them, teach them to kill my foes? So much to learn anew.

Miner/Engraver <-- between digging and smoothing, these two
Miner/Engraver <-- can get a lot done pretty quick.
Mason/Mechanic <-- suspend Masoning for any engineer jobs
WeaponSmith/ArmorSmith <-- Does odd jobs until excess of wood/sweet magma
StoneCrafter/(GlassMaker || Architecture) <-- if there's sand, I get one, else the other
MetalSmith/Metalcrafter <--Metal!!! also I tend to forget which skill does which jobs
Farmer/Weaver <--High quality Pigtail cloth socks FTW!

The two diggers get busy and with engraving on whenever there's a lull in my expanding, they're off smoothing everything. I've also yet to not get agility bonuses this way.

The Mason/Mechanic makes blocks, mechanisms, tables, anything staying in the fortress really. Also allows for fast set up and take down of things.

While having the Weapon and Armor in one fella is a bit risky, especially due to a skeletal camel, as long as you make sure none of his "temp" jobs pass his primary two, he shouldn't mood into something useless. And having even *copper* or +bronze+ early on is wonderful, and if there's iron hoo boy...

StoneCrafter/GlassMaker is good early on, making money for the caravans, and even if he's a legendary StoneCrafter I typically get a couple more from moody peasants, so he can be free to make glass full time. With no sand though, Having Archi SEEMS to be a poor choice due to being busy with rock, but suspend him and the mason and roads, walls, and bridges sprout up hella fast.

The Two Metal Jobs here, like Weapon and Armor boy, is risky when the Giant Leopards are hungry and he's cutting wood. But this means I can devote a whole forge to him and be certain no crappy metal bits will be made by him. Plus he and The W/A can take care of odd jobs.

Farming and Weaving. Depending on the quality of the stone nearby as well as the level of hostilies I may need walls up in a hurry, and socks with dyed thread, died cloth, and an image of a dwarf laboring with dwarves can bring in quite a bounty. Since woven cloth has a rating on top of the dying, weaving, AND imaging, well, imagine this:

A human brandishes an axe. It's Iron, studded with bone and leather spikes, and all in all is quite fearsome in an Italian gothic'y sorta way. The dwarf nods approvingly, digs into a bin, and brandishes a Red and Blue Sock with a picture of a Melting elf stitched into it. They exchange goods, and shake hands.

While I can't make dye without glass or spare metal(not sure about the metal), I can use the oodles that gets traded to me, and dyers and cheesemakers(well one each of them) get steady jobs if possible.

My first useless Potash Maker or Lye-Guy gets to be bookkeeper, then a manager, and often in the first wave, a bookkeeper and sheriff as well.

Teams get formed in the (m)ilitary screen, the miners and engravers get one batch, the mason the next(complete with rank dependant jobs no wasting the good workers with blocks), and all valuable fey skills get set to haul jobs to not lose them.
Peasants get military, be it Guards, Royal Guards, or plain useful soldiers. The Sheriff/CotG makes the guards actually work, so thieves are cut down and baby snatchers seldom get far. This minimizes the amount of "useless" dwarves running about.

While having a starting Brewer/cook is nice, I've found having a good dining room makes up for plain biscuits, and great beds can be forgone for plain ones + decent apartments.

But that's just me y'know.

Hmm, while this area is awesome, I think it's a bit too much.
A picture being a thousand words and all.
http://img410.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hothothot3im8.png

Those are the merchants, whose booze also burst into flames...

I tink I'll a less warm map thank you very much... :p

I always thought it was, as Toady did say something about the inside of glaciers being 85f or some such. My booze WILL boil away if left outside, but indoors it's not, so I assume it's cooler in there.

Neoskel: A question to you then, if I recall rightly, wooden weapons are worth half damage if unmodified. Assuming I don't get nothing but * or higher, is it any different than plain iron?

Demonic Gophers: what goods a pointy stick that won't put an eye out? In a more serious note, if they get plain bludgeon damage, does it affect their overall training speed?

Danke again, I was going to ask about that.

A question though, with the damage but a tenth of what it was, I have not altered the crit rating of any of them, and thus I can ask this with a straight face:

Will a pointy stick be able to put out an eye? :p

As in, with the crit pierce unchanged, will even a low damage pointy stick be dangerous in the hands of a novice? I recall it's not the damage, it's the piercing that drops dragons and the like.

After watching my umpteenth novice axedwarf lop off yet another limb in a spar I thought to myself "There's got to be a better way!"

Then I watched the first episode of The Legend of Neil, where Neil gets his sword, a sword so dull he beats people to death with the handle whilst holding the blade.
Then I thought, "Where be all the training weapons?".

In theory, all one need do is create wooden "practice" Weapons (Bone in a pinch I suppose, as crossbows can be made in wood metal and bone), that sets the damage extremely low so that only the Ultra-Mighty can do any serious damage with it (though they don't need much more than gravel to do that). Of course, you'd still have to do the song and dance routine to swap the weapons to their shiny sharp steel equivalents (Here's hoping the Army Arc fixes that!), but having dwarves with... y'know...limbs kinda outweighs that (or spleens, if your dwarves are playing with spears).

But I don't think I can make the game accept wooden weapons. So I decided to make additions to the regular weapons, made deliberately bad, that do only one tenth their normal damage.

Thus, I made a bitless axe.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/An_axe_labelled-2edit.svg/213px-An_axe_labelled-2edit.svg.png

Here be bitless axes, doily padded hammers, dull practice swords, pointy sticks, and kitten-headed maces.

Much thanks to those who Helped me!
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_AXE_BITLESS]
[NAME:bitless axe:bitless axes]
[DAMAGE:10:SLASH]
[WEIGHT:80]
[SKILL:AXE]
[TWO_HANDED:5]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:5]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:4]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_HAMMER_DOILY]
[NAME:doily padded hammer:doily padded hammers]
[DAMAGE:12:BLUDGEON]
[WEIGHT:40]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[TWO_HANDED:4]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:4]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_SWORD_DULL]
[NAME:dull practice sword:dull practice swords]
[DAMAGE:10:SLASH]
[WEIGHT:30]
[SKILL:SWORD]
[CRIT_BOOST:1]
[TWO_HANDED:4]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:4]
[CAN_STONE]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_POINTY]
[NAME:pointy stick:pointy sticks]
[DAMAGE:10:PIERCE]
[WEIGHT:40]
[SKILL:SPEAR]
[CRIT_BOOST:2]
[TWO_HANDED:5]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:5]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_KHMACE]
[NAME:kitten-headed mace:kitten-headed maces]
[DAMAGE:12:BLUDGEON]
[WEIGHT:40]
[SKILL:MACE]
[TWO_HANDED:4]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:4]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]