Bay 12 Games Forum

Somehow, I feel like attacking each other in-game will only end badly (which of course means it should happen). I remember times when my whole party was confused, including my warrior holding a Wreck Whip and the cleric that kept everyone from dying. It got worse from there. Anyway, I can sit this part out since there's already three more waiting (unless one of them backs out for whatever reason; I'd like to jump in then if that somehow happens).

Yes. Oh, god, yes, my childhood is in this game. I was so sad when my cartridge of the game became corrupted right before the final battle on my last playthrough. On the other hand, it filled out my medal book completely, including loads of medals not actually in the game. That was cool to look at, anyway.

You might need a cleric so keep people from dying too much, unless everyone ends up so awesome that they'll never die ever. So, can I join as one when the time comes, please? Name is Tsu, and I say just shove 5 Agility seeds down her throat and see what happens (just wanna break from the standard INT-packed magiciany type, at least to start, and it might keep her from doing a lot of cheap revives down the road if we can keep it up since it sounds like we're trying to avoid too much of that). I think you can go for Weepy, Naive, or Silly with that, but again it doesn't really matter. (Storywise, it'd probably be a Silly-Defiant mix, although you can mess with that if you need a different type for the plot.)

And then when we can afford to do so, we can give the squishy mage types giant weapons and laugh as they try to hit stuff.

I like how you edit things around to help with plot and such. It gives this an extra bit of character, along with said plot and dialogue.

-My farmer was out hunting wolves when one got the upper hand on him and mangled his lower body and guts. Doesn't that count as entrails shooting out of the wound, too? If so, then yeah, that was messy.

-Any time someone gets their throat "lopped off" and they get to run around in a panic for a while. Doubly so when two of my Champions were lost this way in my first goblin ambush.

-An elite hammerman/champion wrestler met a kobold indoors. He hit her so hard that when she hit a wall, she splattered, losing all four limbs and her head. For the record, Dwarf Companion seems to show no injuries to her torso, so she died when she hit the wall (her body parts were all in the same spot) and likely had suffered a mangled limb or head right before then.

-Forgot about this: An unarmed, berserk dwarf managed to mangle another one's heart (and upper body, of course). I like to think he pulled it out a bit. Unlike the many creatures that received blows from bolts that mangled both lungs and the heart, then panicked and ran out bleeding, this poor dwarf just fell unconscious immediately and bled out after a while.

Try singling out anyone that's not miserable yet (if you're using outside programs, some will have mood checkers -- miserable is rock bottom and prime tantruming/insanity fodder) and turning off their hauling labors so that they can go to a hopefully-engraved meeting room and talk to each other to cheer up a little. Everyone else is still hauling clothes and bodies, and if they tantrum they'll be more likely to hit people already totally miserable. If they cheer up any, let them go back to the meeting room.

If you have good jails, or just any jails at all if you're desperate, allow some dwarves to be jailed (you'll want two or three guards, likely also unhappy/miserable dwarves, as they'll be happy about beating criminals and sparring with each other). If their sentences are short, they'll be able to get a huge mood boost when they're released and rejoin society that much quicker. If they're approaching over half a year or even over a year, they're likely habitual trouble-makers that keep killing everyone anyway, so you'll want them out of the way (they'll also get that mood boost upon release, but it won't be for a while). When things are a bit more under control, you can try hooking some cages up to levers if there's anyone you want to break out early for whatever reason (say, a liaison showed up and your mayor's jailed, or there's a strange mood, or everyone's neglecting to feed the prisoner). It'll destroy the cage and the criminal may be beaten or put into another jail, but if you dismiss all the guards temporarily, he/she can do what he/she needs to do before then.

As an aside, throwing a bunch of cages together in a group and assigning all of them as jails seems to be a bad idea. The prisoners in the middle cages were all neglected and one of them died -- not sure if my game was being weird or if that's supposed to happen.

The main issue with letting the others speak with each other to cheer up is that if another death wave happens, they'll be friends with each other again, which will have the same result as this. I suggest picking out a few really miserable dwarves you want to save and recruiting them as military, then let them wrestle off-duty. The sparring will make them happy, they'll get stronger and hopefully learn how not to die, and eventually if they kill a lot of things, they'll care less and less about death. I was in a similar situation, and my Champions were still amongst the happiest when everyone else was unhappy (this didn't last forever, but it kept them alive until the worst was over). Just remember to armor them up if you can. If you can't, try to avoid giving them weapons so they won't injure each other too badly.

On the subject of military, be prepared to deploy your best in case someone goes berserk. If you're lucky, they won't be able to cause any damage to anyone before they get mobbed by soldiers.

Try and have a huge refuse pile (above-ground if you have to) and a lot of coffins to cutting down on thoughts about rotting bodies. I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble to try and save any bodies that are underwater, but it's worth trying to take care of everything else.

Granted, I think a true spiral may be irreversible, and I'm not sure how bad your situation is. I had similar issues when I had recruits help fend off a siege, though, and it took out nearly two-fifths of my fort -- not really a spiral, but there was a berserk child, if that says anything about how low it got. It's better now, and while I don't think my strategy works for every situation, it can't hurt to try at this point if things are that bad.

Now that my fort's developed some more, here's my absolute best, which will never be topped:

"This is a cedar puzzlebox. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of cedar."

Took only one cedar log to make, is worth 2400 dwarfbucks, and the best part? It's named "'Kooks II' Shipink". As in, after its creator. Granted, its creator was probably not even two years old at the time and had a broken arm, so I probably shouldn't expect wonders.

But, seriously, right now my best worthwise is Clawlauded the Stirred Banner, worth 94,800 DB. It was my third artifact.

"This is a lead spear. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is studded with silver and encircled with bands of lead, ruby, and pike leather. It menaces with spikes of lead and giant cave spider silk."

In terms of coolness, there's the recently-made Pointyold, worth 50,400 DB and the result of a possession, I think, but still cool for the images. Screencap here because it's a bit long.

Triflingmatch is a boot that menaces with a lot of spikes (some fishbone), is covered in the blood and vomit of goblins, kobolds, monkeys, and dwarves, and is equipped by a Champion Founder Wrestler who 1) was the first dwarf in the fort to gain a title and 2) can crush people's spines by sneezing on them. Tun is the current queen and is rather boring aside from that. Belinzy would go insane sometime in summer 206 and have to be put down by a Champion wrestler and a lot of trigger-happy marksdwarves, but this is still the only record on my artifacts of my dwarves killing things.

That explains why my Champion pair that wrestles with each other all the time or my two founder pairs (one had a Champion, the other has an Elite Marksdwarf) never got married. Well, dang, I was hoping the surviving founder pair would marry.

As for gender switches on dwarves and the fact the change is superficial, it'd be fun to mess with the mind of other viewers with, especially if it's a succession fort that allows changes like that. "btw, I made a few changes." "oh, okay, I-- hey wait a second..."

My fortress just barely survived something like that, although on a bigger scale (six dead adults and two dead babies, immediate tantruming and miserableness that swiftly became insanity). I let it run its course for a couple of seasons, then had to step in forcefully because one founder went berserk and two more were on the verge of joining the ranks of the miserable. By then things were starting to improve, but it was still threatening to take down all sorts of favorite dwarves.

I pretty much just grabbed everyone that wasn't miserable and turned off their hauling labors so they would party and socialize near some pretty statues. The ones that already hit rock bottom were allowed to continue dragging the lost clothes of the dead to stockpiles or their rooms, and I built up a fortress guard to throw them in jail to help keep them out of trouble (which didn't really help when the mayor broke out of jail by himself and no one bothered to feed another prisoner until it was too late, but hey). If they cheered up on their own or were thrown and jail and then released, they were allowed to join the socializers. In the end, I went from a fort of near 140 to somewhere around 80 (immigrants decided to join the fray, which threw off my numbers), most lost to insanity (maybe about ten murders and executions/severe beatings/failures of prisoner care combined). A shame it was such a slow trickle of crazy, or else I would have let the fort die. Maybe I just need to pick a location with magma next time so things will get really interesting.

On the plus side, this whole debacle killed off the count, his consort, and the tax collector, and it gave the hammerer injuries that left her bedridden for two seasons and gave her a minor spine injury. I think we can all agree this is a wonderful thing, especially because the countess went berserk and became a pincushion.

I keep seeing mention of looking over their accomplishments and reflecting on them or something. (And also I've been wondering if there's a way to do this): Can I see the kill-history or any such things without having to save, backup the save, abandon the fortress, and load it in Legends mode?

You won't see specifics about the kills, and it won't work for dwarves that went berserk (their info can't be accessed), but there's a screen on the general dwarf info page (u -> v on a dwarf in the list) that shows up if there are any kills. If that dwarf is dead, his/her info can still be seen if he/she shows up on someone else's relationships screen.

It says nothing about the method of death, and I don't think there's any info about how many dozens of masterpieces they're belching out, but it at least quickly confirmed my children were killing animals and getting away with it.