March 6, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.12 has been released.
News: February 3, 2024: The February '24 Report is up.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
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Thats why i never piss off elves to that level; you can't directly defeat them in a siege like you can with goblins and humans.
And this is why i simply cannot accept permanent death in adventure mode. I've spent too many hours and built upon days in real life training adventurers to let it all come down to the simple words : "inflate error" which is why i ask for the help of more relaxed gamers to give me the key to eternal adventuring life, so to speak ;
How can i make a back up save file of all the information in my dwarf fortress file incase i have to end-task again?
This is very important to me, i don't know what ill do if i lose this next adventurer...
If by underground tree farms you mean dug out a patch of land by the underground river, let it seasonaly flood, and occasionaly cut down the growing trees, yes, i use them. My fortress of 200ish dwarves (raises and lowers from sieges and the randomly occuring demons and monsters and what have you) NEEDS a huge supply of wood for all the food we have, not to mention the beer! It wasn't until my 12th year that i finally caught up to my food supply, and that was ONLY because for 2 years i stopped farming food entirely so i could use barrels for beer instead of just food which my dwarves had more than enough of. I've nearly deforested the entire map, and go to great lengths to get any wood that isn't surrounded by steam (longer story).
* Where do you like to build your fortress relative to the cliff face, river, chasm and magma? Why?
I always build it right before the river. Mainly out of conveniency; starting out on 7 dwarves and 100- food with limited time to farm really limits options. Not to mention how much farther my dwarves would have to travel to get wood, fish, trade with caravans, hunt, or fight sieges off. How ever due to spacing issues, i often end up building past the chasm anyway, because even if i try building vertically, it gradually becomes a longer distance from the top of my fort to the middle, than from the chasm to the outside.
* How do you relate with the other civilizations? Do you depend on trade? Is it irrelevant to you? Do you think of caravans as opportunities, nuisances, or irrelevant?
I rarely care about the ecoterrorist elves, if they have berries ill buy them, but if i make the mistake of selling them something i encrusted with turtle bone, i just sieze them and save my self the trouble. I really couldn't care less about elves. Humans i only like because they bring 400 units of alcohol a year, but beyond that i dont care. Dwarves are similar to humans for me.
* What's most important to you when you design your fortress? Aesthetics? Efficiency? Defense? Mining out every last ounce of valuable ore? Overcoming obstacles as the game presents them?
My fortress is like how a real society developes over many centuries, but maybe a bit out of order. First i focus on survival (bare minimums:food,beds,protection from the wilderness), then industrialization (upgrading my armies with better weapons, training, and armor, making metal objects, mass producing furniture for dwarves), after that i work on culture/aesthetics; stone detailing halls, putting statues in geometrically correct places infront of my fort to make it seem more grandiose. I once went as far as full detailing a 6 by 6 room with smooting, detailing, and furnished it with obsidian and limestone gem encrusted statues in alternating order around the sides. There was a long hallway leading to the room which was subsequently smoothed and detailed. At the center of the room was a lever, pulling that lever let loose lava into the world 
, i called it the death star control room and cackled every time i had a dwarve pull it.
* What's your pace? Do you rush out your entire design in the first five minutes and then impatiently wait for the dwarves to get to it? Or do you slowly progress through the mountain, designing as you go for years?
I plan out ahead of time where i want things, to make sure i dont dig it first and regret it later. But i dont go as far as digging out the nobles quarters in the first 10 minutes. For the most part its dig as i go, but know what im planning in the big picture of things.
quote:
Originally posted by Jaqie:
<STRONG>Hm that makes me wonder if demons can walk through locked doors instantly. If not my 'layers of doors and traps' should work fine to fell them.</STRONG>
Oh no.. they dont want to waste the energy walking through them, they simply crush them and set them aside...
If the economy has started, they are working until they have enough money to afford clothes (assuming you built a clothing shop) if it hasn't, theyll probably eventually get new ones on their own. Don't worry about it too much, my fortress is full of poor naked dwarves but they get over their unhappiness when they dine in my grand dining room and have some nice cow biscuits with a fine glass of dwarven rum.
2) How do I make coal into charcoal instead of using wood? I have lava access and steel for buildings.
Simple! Make coal bars, from your magma smelter, it will turn ambiphous(whatever) coal into coal bars which will be used automatically for fuel
3) What stockpiles do cloth go in?
They have their own stockpile ; cloth !
4) What stockpiles do leather go in?
They have their own stockpile ; leather!(make sure its not a raw hide and its been tanned first)
5) How on earth do I throw things into the chasm? (I know it pisses them off)
Go to O[rders], then [R]efuse, and change the options for everything your getting rid of from save [this] to chasm [this].
6) How the heck do I store more then one clothes item on a square? I have coffers (supposedly stone bins) but they dont seem to be being used for this...
Coffers wont hold finished goods (which include clothes), i believe only bins will, and if a dwarf owns the item, he will put it in a cabinet if he has one, but it runs out of room fast and he might end up with clothes and random items all over the floor of his room.
So there we were, 15 goblin archers led by a goblin macelord had entirely infilitrated the main center of our city, and were having a large skirmish with the humans that had come to trade. The smart dwarves had gone to sleep, and were hiding in their locked rooms as the battle raged on, and some were hiding in the large building that made up the residential area which was behind the humans, and thus, also safe. But one dwarf among them, the Countess her self, decided she wasn't going to stand for the outside area being forbidden anymore- she was going to get that drink.
So she climbed up the stairs to the topside, dead center in the middle of the crossfire, and started to take a few steps before the 'outside being forbidden' kicked in, she came to her senses, but it was too late. The goblins picked her off very quickly, and she dropped her baby on to the ground. Amazingly enough, the baby crawled from her arrow-ridden mother, back down the staircase, and remainded below ground for the remainder of the fight.
-End of story
Question: Is there any way to keep dwarves from walking outside, besides doors, when they choose to ignore the "all dwarves forbidden from outside" order is given? They always ignore it, take a few steps outside, and THEN remember the order. Problem is, thats more than enough for the REASON for the order having been given, to kill them.
Actually im glad that the countess was the only casualty of the battle, she was a bad mother. Her first daughter she left for dead when a goblin snatcher tried to snatch her; when the goblin was detected, it was in the countess' room, and her child was there with her, so i locked the door, thinking "goblin thieves are pansies, i'm sure the countess will defend her daughter at least until i can get a real soldier up there (9th floor up)". So instead of running like all goblin thieves do when they are detected, it cut the child's chest open, and i tried opening the door for it so it would leave before the child died- as soon as it was open, the countess ran away and left her daughter for dead. And now, she ran into a goblin firing squad while holding her BABY, so, good riddens i say.
Fortifications are only made on 1X(any length) walls, and only after they have been smoothed over. First hollow out a wall so its only 1 space thick, smooth the wall over using (d)esignate, and then in that same command tab you designate those smoothed over walls to be fortified. Then your archers/ballistas/whatever can shoot from one side without being shot back at from the other.
As for stones, no i don't believe any normal stones have any difference except that you should avoid using light or dark stones since they are used for various other tasks (obsidian for obsidian swords, limestone for pig iron/steel)
Support holds exactly 7X7 areas, i suggest you instead leave one space open as a natural support, it's alot more efficient for farming and you don't have to think about caveins later if you do it right away.
Farms can ONLY be built on muddy terrain INSIDE the cave. You can force muddy terrain to appear with floodgate systems, or using seasonal floods and building the plots off those.
2. (if not), Can you have a dwarf fortress save file, and an adventure mode save file both loadable from the start up menue?
If a siege-ballista is destroyed and then rebuilt back up again with the same parts by the one same dwarf, over and over, will he gain experience in siege engineering?
