Bay 12 Games Forum

So I had another go at The Hill of Death, which more or less lives up to its name. I've survived three tantrum spirals and a couple of invasions, and each time the fort gets back up and running again - mostly since every carveable surface has masterwork engravings on them from the numerous legendary engravers that have showed up every time the previous ones get killed. It was also a bad idea to remove all the beds before I made new ones, so I had the fortress tantrum for a while before I got that figured out. One result from that is that I now have a melancholic dwarf sitting in an underground cistern alone with water over his head, but still somehow alive. I suspect it's because he's able to drink a lot, but it's still odd. I have a whole floor dedicated to memorial slabs, since I atom-smash all the corpses to prevent them from accidental necromancer raising. I also noticed the corpses were tagged as "friendly", which was strange. Maybe because it's a friendly dwarf raising them or something? One thing is for certain - the elven caravan getting ambushed was the best thing to happen to the fort ever, since they brought a breeding pair of dragons that have since been war trained and is now the fortress' primary means of defense. Last siege they single-handedly wiped out 24 orcs on mounts, and before that several dozen undead that came along. Right now I have pastured them in the first entry room with double doors, followed by a pasture of turrets and armored dogs/horses, and a third room for military dwarves if they got that far. Behind that is the hatch to the underground fort and a cage with dozens of war dogs if need be. Works out well if you don't get in the way of the dragonfires...

Some things of note: I can't see what the selection is on in the menus, as the selection bar is completely opaque. This is rather annoying, as I have to either scroll up and down to see what the selected dwarf is doing and all that, and in categories with only one member (like the "other" in the unit menu or if a category has a full list +1 in it) I have to enter their profile to see anything about it. Not unusable, but quite bothersome. Weapons are awesome and useful, and so is the armor that the caravans nicely provide. Most features are good, but the documentation could use more work in determining what workshops do what. I'll be trying out libraries next to see what they have to offer. Also see the melancholic dwarf thing above - all the others that went crazy from being miserable have died, but he's been there for two years and still seems ok despite having a literal bridge dropped on him, being introduced to weapons of various kinds and flooding the cistern to the brink with water. I don't want to kill him violently though, as that risks contaminating the well, and that would be bad. Will have to wait on this... maybe a fall would work nicely? Must test...

No caverns or metalworking as of yet, but since I have literally hundreds of weapons and armor in various conditions lying around from destroyed caravans and invaders, this is hardly a problem. Gotta make a military, eventually. Or so I think.

Also, I like the little easter eggs! So far I've noticed burning elephant statues, orcs with "waagh" battle axes, and some more fun things amongst the craftings and engravings and stuff. You do a great job, keep it up!

It was supposed to be a nice addition, because dwarves like mist and it makes them clean too. Forgot to add a floodgate to the river, which caused a lot of trouble, but it finally worked!

So I got the fortress up to 2½ years now. Marked drop in FPS from around 150 to 25 halfway through, not being helped by hundreds of puppies and a lot of clutter. Trading works well, especially considering I only produce huge amounts of valuable food, but I haven't really had a chance to test the military as I just bred fifty war dogs for any trouble. The turrets seem OK though. Just after an elven caravan showed up, an ambush attacked and killed all of them except the diplomat. Good thing is they left their dragon cages that they were gonna sell me, so they're now mine A vampire stalks the fort but haven't yet been found. Almost lost the fort to a huge tantrum spiral that killed 2/3 of the population; I was down to just 23 dwarves before some migrants showed up. Good news is it might have killed the vampire, because I haven't seen any more attacks since. I also had a legendary engraver/stonemason survive the tides, as well as my broker (the only starting dwarf left), and right afterwards got another one in a 10 dwarf migration wave. Currently hard at work cleaning up all the corpses and destruction, but have good hope to be able to rebuild despite no metal production at all since fort beginning. Dogs are nice...

Some things I noticed:

- You can't burn things in the bonfire as advertised. They just go on a separate pile to the side and stay there, untouched.
- Skeletons and corpses randomly started reanimating and attacking me, despite being in a neutral biome and not having any necromancers near. Odd?
- If you capture a pet from the caravans, they don't get added to your fortress records despite being tagged as friendly and you being able to release them. Strange?

Other than that, great mod! It'll be nice to test it out in the future as well, but for now I gotta sleep. Have fun!

So far the Hills of Death are not living up to their name, thankfully. It is now autumn the first year, and we've gotten two migrants. The underground areas are up and running, and we're about to get more booze just in time for the last of the stockpiled variety to run out. We're not starving for food at least - a single fisherman has fished about 150 units of fish from the small brook just outside the main door, and thus we're still at full stock of meat that was brought at embark. Other than that, no crashing and no major problems at all (and it's cool to see my dwarves swimming!) Expecting a caravan soon, and nothing otherwise of note. The only dead thing is so far a mongoose that attacked my militia commander/axedwarf/woodcutter/carpenter, was struck down in a single blow and then turned into bone crafts. Right after autumn started, all 8 of my brought-along female dogs gave birth to puppies, and a stray horse starved to death. Quaint. I thought grazing had been removed? It's going well in Berontak!

Copied from the "Dear Urist" thread, where I posted last April. And yes, I have pictures too, here.

Dear Urist McHunter,

Though I warned you quite sternly on what would happen if you killed any albatrosses, you went and did it anyway, and now we have a little more than we can deal with on our hands, I'm afraid. In the few months that has passed since the incident, we've been ambushed by illithids, had a kobold try to steal our gem cabinet followed by an illithid baby-snatcher, had a goblin army come and siege us, been attacked by a glass forgotten beast, locked ourselves up only to notice there was no food in the main stockpile resulting in the fortress almost starving to death, then the animals all killed each other, three militiamen bravely charged into a horde of pike-wielding goblins in search of socks, and to top it all off the main drawbridge was set to Retractable rather than Raisable, meaning we now have an open door into our fortress through the gates that is also impossible to close as a single chopped off dog tooth is resting in the main support area of it. Now, I don't mean to blame you for all of this, but if anything more of this sort happens and I could in any way, shape or form construe that it was your fault that it did, I swear to Armok I will have you stripped, dressed again in solely the Long Guts and tallow of that poor albatross you killed and have you thrown from the fortress walls in an attempt to appease the goblin siegers to either go into our trap-filled corridor, leave us be in disgust or at least chase you across the map into the ocean so that I may be rid of seeing your smug, insanity-inducing face every time I go looking for our marksdwarf squad militia commander. If you weren't a Legendary ambusher, commander of our brave marksdwarves, friends with half the fortress and the only one to be able to handle a crossbow with any sort of skill whatsoever, this would all have happened a long time ago. This is your last chance pal, and I mean it. Now go pick up all the feathers of the poor bird as a symbolic punishment, and if I ever catch you doing something like this again... [pictures of horrid things done to scared looking dwarf]... yeah.

Dismissed.

Sincerely, your overseer.

Quote from: Serrational on April 29, 2011, 06:40:03 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 29, 2011, 05:59:29 am

The entire adventure consisted of three images: me standing on ice, it showing me flying and submerged under water after I'd moved 1 square, and the entire screen filled with white ice walls.

Y'know that situation sums up a lot of DF in one go.

Someone should draw it.

Or screenshot.

Anyway, I tried in vain to reclaim my old fort with an adventurer. 16 different ones in a row, every single one of them dead by various hilarious means, mostly the guy who drowned in a pond after single handedly slaughtering an entire goblin camp, because I forgot to give him Adequate Swimmer. Then the next one did have it... and was promptly encased in ice as soon as dusk fell and the pond froze completely solid. Apparently the nights here are REALLY cold...

The best attempt I got was a Steel Dwarf with a good sword and armor who actually managed to reach the site after starting out with the orcs close to the site. He did in fact get into it, looking for the full set of Adamantine Armor that the fortress left behind complete with short sword and maces... when the cat demon master that had killed the fort came and scratched him in the head. Literally. And it sailed off in an arc. Oh woe.

At least it was kind of a fun adventure, if frustrating...

(And I now know why I was getting so many sieges - apparently I set up the fort in the middle of Snakeman territory, right next to two other Snakemen tribes, two demon civs, three illithids and a couple of werewolves. Plus gobbos and kobolds. The centaurs didn't survive worldgen, along with the nords, or I'd probably have gotten them too. It does explain a lot, in fact... )

//A, off to party!

Mine was genesis too. Makes it a lot more interesting when you're never quite sure exactly how dangerous the things facing you actually are, and you have to learn from experience instead of the wiki. Basically assume that everything is trying to kill you.

Dwarves can make even pickle juice to be a substitute for the alcohol . Yeah, I know that they are not alcoholic, but you can fool the dwarves to believe otherwise .

I just found it hilarious that julmust was specifically designed to replace alcoholic drinks... and is also a huge commercial success in Sweden these days

//A, FPS dropped to 1=reset game