Bay 12 Games Forum

A play, by Fishbulb:

Curtain rises.

Fishbulb: I know. I'll train up my engravers by smoothing the entire fortress all the way down to the magma forges, then having them put some masterwork-engravery action in the bedrooms!

Dwarves: You're a genius!

Fishbulb: Okay, little engravers, do your stuff.

End of act one.

Curtain rises.

Planter dwarves: Dum de dee de dum. Hey, nice dining room.

Fishbulb: Oi. Shouldn't you guys be planting?

Planter dwarves: Can't help you, mate. No seeds.

Fishbulb: I'm looking at the stockpile right now. You have many seeds.

Planter dwarves: Oh, right. Plots. We meant no plots.

Fishbulb: There are many plots!

Planter dwarves: Right, not plots. That stuff. You know. Whatsitcalled. Like magma, but not burny.

Fishbulb: Blood?

Planter dwarves: Rhymes with blood.

Fishbulb: Mud!? There's mud all over the place! I rerouted the brook into the … and then … I … oh no.

Super-legendary engravers: Oh yeah. About that.

Fishbulb: Mein leben!

Exeunt, pursued by a bear.

Back in 40d, I went into a strange mood and tried to tweak the worldgen to get an embark that was so hot my dwarves and pets would die of exposure outdoors after a while, but not instantly.

I gave up after spending several hours on it. It turns out it's very tricky to get an embark to be that hot without cooking off the booze as soon as you unpause.

Fightcave. Those dwarves knew what they were getting into.

I am Jack's withered plump helmet.

For my most recent fort, the game chose the name "Certaintomb."

It was appropriate. In the fall of the eighth year, the fort fell to a beast syndrome that destroyed my dwarves' brains causing them to suffocate to death. It was horrifying.

Years later, rumors persisted that Mayor Zasitakum was killed by Goblin Castro, the Dwarf Mafia or even the militia-industrial complex.

What's the current thinking on give-food and give-water jobs? My fort, Certaintomb, is about eight years old now, and so far I've had two jailed dwarves and three hospitalized dwarves die of thirst. I've got a functioning well, like two dozen empty buckets, and two "nurse" dwarves with no labors turned on except "feed patients/prisoners" and "recover wounded," but they just don't seem to be doing it.

I never get any "cancels give water" jobs. I see dwarves with blinking blue and brown arrows in hospital, but when I check the jobs list I don't see any give food or give water jobs waiting in the queue.

Most recently I've tried making my hospital a meeting area, on the off chance that a dwarf needs to be in some kind of proximity to the hungry and the thirsty in order for the jobs to kick off. So far, it hasn't worked. I've still got hungry and thirsty patients … although admittedly, none of them have died yet, so maybe it's working after a fashion. Or maybe it's just a matter of time.

Are there any — and believe me, I hate this term — "best practices" around this? Any tricks for keeping your hospitalized dwarves fed and hydrated?

Hmm. Maybe if I figure out the first thing about modding the game, I'll think of a way to mod in TPN and IVs.

Same thing happened to me a while back, only without any cave-in messages. It just dragged.

The funny part is that I'd already spent half an hour in pause designating stuff.

That day I learned to always let the game run for a few seconds before I get to work. Just to be sure.

There's a healthcare crisis in my fort.


This guy got it pretty bad from an ogre or something. Multiple fractures on both of his legs.

It's taken my doctordwarves — two full-time diagnosticians, a full-time bone doctor and a couple of full-time suturers, plus two full-time nurses — more than a year to get around to fixing him up. And he's still not done; his left shin still needs a splint.

In the meantime, despite having been cleaned with soap repeatedly, he's managed to get himself infections in his left shin and ankle.

Do dwarves ever recover from infections? Or is it a permanently debilitating thing, like "phantom limb pain" was back in 40d?