Bay 12 Games Forum

I was browsing digg and noticed this Science Daily article about the Yellowstone supervolcano.  I thought it might be of interest to the rest of the DF community, especially those of my fellows who've found themselves interested in geology.

Paraphrased FTA:  It's been discovered that the Yellowstone supervolcano has a magma plume going down at least 410 miles (and perhaps all the way to the core boundary of 1,800 miles), which directly contradicts many who believed it to have a shallow, convection-fed reservoir.  Capable of eruptions over a thousand times bigger than the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption, the supervolcano could bury the western US magma and ash.


Supervolcanos could theoretically end life on Earth.

If you like cats as verminslayers, you could always just kill the females to curb reproduction.  It takes a while to take out all of them, though.

And if they all die off, just import some more from traders.

-If embarking in a full mountain biome, your essentially screwed because there is no water and no wood?

You can find underground rivers or pools to muddy some ground for food production.  It's not impossible, even in frozen climates.

-Finding a perfect embarking spot seems so hard it pops my brains out, there is either no flux stone, no usefull ores to use with flux stone, no sand, no lava or an aquifer and so on son. Am I overprioritising some things here or is it supposed to be that hard

I think it's important to remember that this game is supposed to be hard.

-I tend to abandon my fortresses after migration wave 5 since then ill have more then 20 idelers somewere and it feels incredibly messy -> startover feels better for some reason. Is this a normal for a beginner or should I just /ignore the idlers and keep at it?

If you're having a lot of idlers, no worries.  It might behoove you to turn off the economy, though, or have lots of really cheap bedrooms.  I don't have much of a problem with idlers when I assign them to military, fortress, and royal guards.

-How many deaths are acceptable during a siege and the likes. Managing an army is a risky business as it is (ouch hai injured dwarfs) but having to bury some more after a siege plus strange mood madness (got messages of dead crafterdwarfs, only to realise they were not slaughtered by goblins but by a crafter who went strange mood berserk during the siege 4 floors down in my fortress) makes things very frustrating. Losing 3 of my 4 diggers/masons most of the time makes me alt ctrl del -> end task in a fit of rage.

Try not to lose any!  In my forts, especially early-on, if the military must join in hand to hand combat, something has already gone wrong.  Use traps and entrance design to foil sieges without actually having to fight.

-it seems to take forever to haul stone, even if i dedicate 10 haulers with soely stone hauling on they take so long befor they fill up a stone storage thats only 5 floors away from the quarry area.

Don't store it in stockpiles.  Create a zone for garbage dumping, then dump the stone (d-b-d) in it.  It will still take a while, but at least that's more space efficient.

-how dangerous is terrifying surroundings? really I don't dare to attempt in fear ill be overrun just after ive built some farms and crafter shops just to find my dwarfs dead.

It really depends on the map.  Some are deathtraps, others are just mildly annoying.  The type of wildlife in terrifying biomes has a big influence.  Skeletal whales = run for your life.  Zombies = dangerous, but not scary.

-Can things like skeletonzombiemonsters actually be tamed?

I don't think so.

How does someone build into the ocean?

There are a variety of methods, from draining the ocean first to dropping in magma to form obsidian, then mining upwards from underneath the ocean floor.  You just have to take your own map into account.

I see Doomshifter answered, too, so I'll cut off here.

Cool, stickied.

I just started using Dwarf Companion.  I can't believe how much easier it is than the game interface.  Managing dwarves can be fun again!  All that time editing professions. . .

You could abandon and reclaim.

On the topic of z-level drops: I routinely drop goblins 8 levels.  They die about most of the time.  But a few live long enough to become target practice for my fortress guard.

It may be that they've drank something for which they have a preference, or just generally like to drink in the same way they generally like to sleep in beds.

[ is now my sworn enemy and must be destroyed.

Trousers?

Very, very sweet.

For everyone else: from our messages, she's going to get it animated to flash like a legendary craftsdwarf.