Bay 12 Games Forum

"Skarp" is clearly the word of the day. Thank you!

Well, there were Skelks and Skelephants before (luckily, no Giant Skadgers), so Skarp seems the logical follow-up. The usual swimming kind was more dangerous in v28..40d, but the undead kind is still one of the worst things that can happen to a young fort.

I heard that eventually that civilization will declare war on you and send sieges. This will only stop, when they send a diplomat with a peace offering. I never got anything like that, but I only stole their stuff every other year. I guess, you'd need to repeat it for a few years. Sadly, your own (dwarven) civilization will never declare war.

In a single quote from the combat reports (about 15 seconds after embarking): "The skeletal carp stands up"

I usually embarked in wilderness or untamed wilds, but this time I wanted a little more challenge... so off to a haunted stream it is. This may have been a mistake. I took some silver war hammers and dwarves trained to use them and also a woodcutter/axedwarf and 10 war dogs, but that didn't help much at all.
The wagon materialized right next to the river with a horde of skeletal carp which promptly walked out of the river (how, exactly?) and ate 2 war dogs before my improvised military even managed to pick up their weapons.

The final death count of the first minute:
12 assorted undead fish (mostly skarp)
1 skeletal doe rabbit (fierce little bugger tore the woodcutter's face off before being hacked in two)
3 war dogs
1 weaponsmith/hammerdwarf (fell into the river)
1 expedition leader/cook (as above)
1 woodcutter's face. But it healed while he walked back to the camp. I'll keep an eye on that guy.

I already love this embark, though my dwarves may have a different opinion

That's completely normal and usually not a problem, unless your cook is very inexperienced. Butchering and cooking large animals does take some time and then some more, because the workshops get cluttered right away. If your cooks aren't legendary yet, suspending the job every few days, is indeed a good method to stop them from "Urist McNoviceCook cancels make roast: Getting some booze/food/sleep."
I once got some giant panda (had firebreath too) that needed several months to be completely cut up and cooked into delicious roasts...

Oh right, I forgot to show pictures of my custom almost-ASCII 12x12. If you use/like it, feel free to drop me a PM.



There's also a version with true diagonal (not only rounded) walls and slightly different faces, but that one's not ready for the public yet.

[...]so my dwarves built magma pumps out of wood (!) and powered the whole thing with perpetual motion... take that, real world physics! So far, there's no damage and I thinkg it's pretty stable as long as there's no magma on the pumps.

I have no idea, where I went wrong, but after restarting the pump stack to fill the magma reservoir (for magma landmines), the whole thing disintegrated. The pumps deconstructed themselves and the magma that already was at the surface trickled down and right into the perpetual motion generator at -2z, completely destroying it.
Building this thing took a freaking year and now it breaks down with not apparent reason? Oh man, this is neither Fun nor fun... 

At least the military is restored to its former glory and even further. An armorsmith got possessed and made "Bembulmeng" - "The Mechanical Lash", an Adamantine mail shirt with several menacing spikes, but no interesting images. It now protects the captain of "The Armored Uncertainty", my elite squad which will eventually be clad completely in the lovely blue metal.

It is a known bug and very exploitable. An even easier way is to deconstruct the trade depot when the caravan has unloaded all their goods. The traders will just stand around for a while and leave normally, but without their goods - they're now yours.
But be aware that this counts as stealing. The traders just count all the goods they entered with and all the goods they leave with. If they leave with less than what they arrived with, it's stealing, no matter how you do it. They'll be unhappy and bring less stuff the next year. If you keep doing this for some years (didn't find out the exact number of dwarfbucks you'd need to steal), humans and elves will eventually declare war. Dwarves won't declare war, but will still come with less goods. You have to make them very good offers or make gifts to get bigger caravans again.

Just churn out a few tons of rock crafts or masterwork meals and buy their stuff rather than stealing. Later on, you'll have so much to sell (mostly clothing and weapons from siegers) that you can buy out the whole caravan anyway.

I had a spearmaster once. She got attached to (mostly) copper armor and a bronze spear, so I thought her rather worthless... until I sent her squad of 7 against 40 goblins, many of them ranged attackers with one master marksgoblin. Her friends all got slaugthered in the first few seconds, but she just ran in and finished the whole siege off alone. There were moments, when literally every tile around her had a bolt flying in it. 20 bolts aimed at her and she just kept going, casually dodging projectiles as she went to stab one goblin after the other. Spear to the head, grab, twist, pull out, spear to the heart, grab, twist, dodge a few times, spear to the head again, dodge some more, repeating the whole thing for several pages of combat reports. I imagine the situation as a mix between Matrix and Hero. Later on, she also killed some fire breathing badger titan almost single-handedly, but died from infection after the thing had chewed off one of her fingers
A always preferred hammers and axes for my military, as they seem most dwarfy, but now I always keep a few speardwarves as well... playing golf with heads is one thing, but winning a 1:40 battle with a pointy stick is just epic.