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Hrm... in that fortress with particular bad luck (I swear it's not my fault! The location looked nice enough!), the human diplomat turns out to be a vampire. Legends mode from my clean backup of the world says she killed 817 people before my fortress was founded.

So far, I took great care to not have her chase my duchess around for months as it sometimes happens in busy times with other diplomats. Let's say that I forget to do that some time because I am busy with some stupid project, and the vampire gets hungry. Will she eat my dorfs then?


I am worried. She already has one dwarf bone earring. And she has always some armed guards standing at her back, looking menacing.

Ever since that one wereanteater just zoooooomed to that wood hauler and just butchered him, I am somewhat afraid of the creatures of the night.

I generated a cute little pocket island with a somewhat long history (the year is 350). Right after it was generated, I noticed that the goblins were off on an isolated tiny island instead of with the bigger main island. So I kept it and started to browse the legends.

Now, I can't quite pinpoint it, but something about the dwarven queen Aban Cloisterfondle seems a bit odd.

It could be the fact that she has been queen for 106 years already, which seems somewhat long in comparison to the other rulers. Or that she worships Rakust the Tombs of Spring ardently. Or that she worships a bronze colossus somewhat dubiously. Or that her third youngest daughter has the pretty title "wife of the moon troll". Or that her last entry in her biography is that she became obsessed with her own mortality and sought to extend her life by any means (23 years ago).

I then looked through her family, and they're all somewhat... off.

Her husband, who has been off adventuring for the last 108 years (and still alive) for instance has a "dark creature bride" as mother.

Her mother became also obsessed with her own mortality and tried to extend her own life. But she did not achieve that goal and just died 84 years afterwards of old age. Her father seems to have been a bit more normal and also died of old age.

While some of her children are still alive - one is the general of the kingdom, another is adventuring, and another seems not to be too extraordinary, two of her  kids died at about 2-3 years being eaten by some monsters. And well yeah, the "wife of the moon troll" daughter.

The entire family worships that Rakust the Tombs of Spring, who is not surprisingly most often depicted as a rotting male dwarf and is associated with disease, death, rebirth and birth.

Oh yes, and the outpost liaison... she also had a bunch of hostile encounters with various dark creatures as a kid, worships Rakust the Tombs of Springs and that bronze colossus, but seems otherwise okay.

Oh yes, that bronze colossus is notably because he killed two hundred fourty-two humans and dwarves, I guess. And kobolds. And elves. And thee hundred thirty-six "other kills". He has been around a bit and still at it, though now worshipped.

I just looked at the artifacts and noticed that all (?) of these 271 items seem to be books written by necromancers. Dwarven and human ones.

The island itself isn't particularly evil or sinister. It's mostly neutral and good biomes. In fact, I think the only sinister biome is that island with the goblin town.


There is a dwarven necromancer tower next to the tiles with dwarven settlements. I made a backup of the world and opted to "embark anywhere" and had a quick look before getting slaughtered rather quickly by the inhabitants of that tower. None of the tomes seemed to be written by my dear queen Aban Cloisterfondle. So that might mean that she isn't a full-grown necromancer yet?

While I was at it, I also embarked right onto Paddlebells and went searching for Aban Cloisterfondle. Found her sitting in a room filled with horse cheese, but not looking particularly special. Mountainhome had some interesting fortress design though.


Oh! Aban Cloisterfondle is a descendant (4th generation or so) of one of the first necromancers of this world. The name was Urist Boldswines, and he was the one to do things with the Fated Belch and started the whole necromancy business in that tower. Well, that explains the widespread worship of Rakust at least.



So anyway. I am not too certain what is going on there, but should I try and stick to a fortress in this world until the queen arrives? There are some suitably looking 2x2 spots around with access to dwarves, humans and that tower. Also some suitably looking 2x2 spots with only access to dwarves and humans. And there's of course the tiny island with just access to dwarves and goblins. The elves perished a long time ago.

With my normal speed of fortress development, the queen might just die of old age before it's ready though...

My last fortress was on a scorching beach; nothing too scorching, but the grass turned yellow and dry each summer. Because I had the rare event of a birth of dwarven twins in there, I looked at the appearance of my dwarves - and found out that all of them had ochre eyes, dark peach skin, burnt sienna hair colour. All the dwarves had to spend most of their time outside in the open.

I was a bit freaked out that they all looked so similar, and decided that my raw edits must have had some strange side effect on the variety of skin tone, eye and hair colours.



Right, now I am on a frozen map. It's always below 0°C, i.e. water in the murky ponds won't ever thaw; the grass thaws during mid-summer for a week or so though. Once again, I am forcing my dwarves to spend most of their time outside in the open. Anyway, I was bored and checked out if the dwarves still looked like in the last fortress.

All have chestnut (or clean-shaven) as hair colour. All of them have pale pink skin. Eye colour varies though, from indigo over amethyst (what?) to emerald.


To me, this looks like Toady actually implemented some checks of "sun duration/temperature can have an effect on skin tone and hair colour"; i.e. Dwarves in scorching environments get a tan; Dwarves in freezing environments don't. Perhaps they even turn pale if you lock them up inside for a couple of years? Omg.

Am I just experiencing some modding side effect here, or do you notice something similar in your fortresses?

I am thinking about civilians and the protection of these from rampaging flocks of horses and badgers.

Since I am already utilizing the military interface to keep them dressed even after their original clothes have rotted off, I am wondering now if it might be a good idea to not only equip them with regular clothing, one crossbow and some bolts each, but also with some chainmail and helmets (plus some more metal armor, all on top of the clothes they're already wearing)?

Would that slow them down to unreasonable movement speed? Or any other disadvantages I am not considering yet?

I thought that I was getting a bit bored with my fortress and the normal icy settings, so I increased the temperature maximum in the world gen to 150. (I already know what happens if you increase it to 1000... burning grass, burning trees, burning wagon, burning dwarves - oh my!  )

The world generated looked quite promising, since most of it was coloured yellow.

So, I found a neat little spot and was fascinated by a yellow "NO TRADE" exclamation behind every civilization, except the goblins. I thought: "hey, wonderful! A real self-sustaining fortress without diplomats pestering me with their annoying trade talks!" and pressed e for embark.

As usual, I brought my copper nugget, anvil, some live stock, some kittens and the wagon.


Right.

Things looked fine, though the murky pools were empty right away. Dwarves gathered some shrubs, the woodcutter got his wooden training axe, and the production of the pick was well on the way - until it started to rain.

The effect was quite spectacular. First, the kittens bled to death, then most of the dwarves, then the yak bull assaulted my expedition leader before they melted away as well. I can only assume that they got hit by boiling water and were cooked to death. Or it was acid rain. Very classy, very 31.01ish.


Alright. Do you think that living in such a place would be actually possible? You'd have to bring along at least one pick, of course and start digging immediately, before the rain hits. I guess that any yaks or water buffalos or whatever wagon carriers you got would be in trouble if the caves are too deep down; and the plant gatherers and wood cutters as well. How about 1 pick, 1 anvil, and a bunch of plump helmets? Dig a hole, break down the wagon, gather a few handful of shrubs, rush everything inside and seal the entrance with one of the wagon's logs to keep the cats inside. You'd need a weather forecast if you want to build a little shed for aboveground farming, but even that should theoretically be possible with fast reactions and burrow setups: "it started raining" -> "oh damn, everything to burrow 'inside'!!!"

The allowed values for the temperature in a custom world gen are -1000 to 1000 temperature units.

Well. I am frustrated at the moment because my hunt for the holy freezing grassland island has been in vain for the last 3 dozen world gens, so I tried the extreme values this time.

With a min: 500, max: 1000, I received an interesting looking pocket world. Mostly because none of the civilizations would be able to trade with me, but the goblins had access. I embarked and saw a fascinating wildfire consuming everything, including my dwarves after a short while. The stream was evaporated already when I embarked.

With a min: -1000, max: -500, the worlds looked also fascinating. No trade for the dwarves, and everything except the goblins was extinct. When I embarked on a random spot, the game would crash after about 3 seconds. A reload reproduced this crash reliably. Not a big surprise, really, since the temperature was probably below absolute zero.


So, what I am wondering now is why these insane values are allowed as min and max values anyway, if they cause you to lose to a wildfire or to a crash after a few seconds anyway?

I have a bunch of questions about beekeeping in Dwarf Fortress.

Firstly, I learned the hard way that you should only have one beekeeper dwarf, not many. If you have many, then one might become permanentely stuck at a "install colony in hive" job: For instance, he wanted to split Hive A to install a colony in Hive B; however the other beekeeper did rip Hive B apart in the mean time to harvest some honey. Also, the beekeepers tended to get stuck when they tried to install colonies from a wild bee hive on both Hive A and Hive B. So, one beekeeper it shall be. Fine.

However, I still have questions. In particular: Mead.

In z-kitchen, I can't forbid or allow cooking with Mead. And I observed two mead pots in the stockpile for a while, that means. for a couple of years: the contents didn't seem to be ever consumed by anyone at all. But of course, I did have other drinks available at the same time.

So, do dwarves actually drink this stuff or is it just an export item for the caravans?

I have been on/off playing DF for about a year now. When Toady release 31.x, I switched over, looked at the military, got a headache and left that screen. When I re-visited that page, the headache got combined with a feeling of helplessness and nausea, and I never bothered to try to understand what the heck this GUI is trying to tell me. DF is a game after all, and I don't want to have to get a PhD in DF just to set up certain things.

But I did try to set up a military a few times anyway.

One time, I even managed to tell them successfully to kill a rhesus macaque. That was the only success though.

I've had two dwarves in the military, told to train. They just did sit there in the barracks and did nothing. When I, after some years of this "training" told them to please kill that grizzly bear, one got disemboweled and the other went 10 steps out of the barracks and then froze completely.

Just now, I tried to assign some dwarves to the military to make them put on clothes. As a result, the woodcutter (who was accidentally in the squad) chopped two other dwarves to death. They were set to "no fucking schedule, just put on clothes, you disgusting nudists", so I have no idea what happened there.

When I check the magmawiki, I get a headache at the sight of the the military pages as well.


Is there any comprehensive, step-by-step guide for complete dummies around?