Bay 12 Games Forum

It occurred to me, would it be possible to make stone-fall traps more efficient if the boulder fell from a higher elevation? Is it even possible to arrange the trap as such? Keep in mind, I've never laid a single stone-fall trap. Or what if you dropped loose boulders from a few z-levels higher, with the assistance of hatches, pressure plates and mechanisms? Can falling objects damage the creatures below, and if so, does additional height add more damage?

It is perfectly possible for many FB to have wandered into the caverns. Having captured/trapped/sealed off one will not prevent anything, but can be released against other cavern critters

Are you sure? Surely there's some (reasonable) maximum to how many live FBs can exist the same cavern at the same time.

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Achievement name: I LAVA YOU
Act: Flood the surface tiles with magma.

Let's do an experiment. This is for the new or the casual DF players, or those who have not yet memorized the entire list. I specifically want to subject DF newbies to this experiment.

Put the words of both groups in order, from worst to best, without looking at the list in the first post. I believe it is possible to come up with such a list of words, that when any two words in the list are compared, even a newbie could instantly tell which one is of greater value, with a little pondering. Because is this not what you do when trying to find The Best Dwarf For The Job? Do you not compare the skill levels of two dwarves?


Vanilla descriptors (16 in total, in random order):
Professional, Dabbling, Proficient, Adept, Grand Master, Great, Adequate, Talented, Novice, Master, Skilled, Legendary, Expert, Competent, Accomplished, High Master


The revised descriptors (20 in total, in random order):
Master, Accomplished, Passable, Aspiring, Grand Master, Dabbling, Proficient, Unskilled, Excellent, Veteran, Experienced, Great, Hopeless, Novice, Revered, Legendary, Lousy, Professional, Skilled, Competent


My own test results, with commentary



Ok, fine, maybe I'm starting to see the point. A better system would now seem to be either:
A) A number next to the descriptor, indicating the rank as well. This would include the best of both worlds.
B) Shrink the list down to 5 words and let each word have various ranks numbered 1-4: Novice I-IV, Competent I-IV, Expert I-IV, Master I-IV, Legendary I-IV

Personally, I find the list bit lacking. Or it just needs to be worked on a bit. There are several descriptors I confuse ALL THE TIME. To me, the worst part is the midlevel, the titles between Talented and Accomplished (that's 5 titles). I'll never memorize their order. At "Great" I habitually sigh in relief. On the other hand, I'm non-native English speaker (writer). Perhaps this could be a mod if not an official change.


So, I came up with my own list for new descriptors. It retains most of the old words, adds a few negative ones for lower skill levels, and replaces 4 out of 5 Legendaries. I tried to come up with a bigger and smoother scale.



Format: new title (old title)

Unskilled (Dabbling)
Hopeless (Novice)
Lousy (Adequate)
Dabbling (Competent)
Aspiring (Skilled)
Novice (Proficient)
Passable (Talented)
Experienced (Adept)
Competent (Expert)
Proficient (Professional)
Skilled (Accomplished)
Excellent (Great)
Professional (Master)
Accomplished (High Master)
Great (Grand Master)
Veteran (Legendary)
Revered (Legendary II)
Master (Legendary III)
Grand Master (Legendary IV)
Legendary (Legendary V)



Other words I considered including: Chief, Grand, Known. Suggest your own words!
Another random idea I had was to make a list of nothing but negative souding descriptors, starting from something like "Idiot" and ending in "OK" instead of "Legendary".

I'd suggest using DFhack 1) to list the ores on the map and their amounts, just for a quick glance, and 2) to pause the game, reveal the map and see if the underground portions are at least not unacceptably tedious to deal with. Then undo the 'reveal' cheat, simply because playing with 'reveal' on can ruin the map. I have experience about that. If you have an iffy memory like mine, and if you can resist the urge to not use DFhack again, you'll have fun time trying to remember where the good, the bad and the ugly stuff were

- Weapon racks.
- One of each type of weapon.
- Terrariums for various insects and vermin (Urist McGrissom).
- Bins filled with bolts made out of every possible material.
- One crossbow. Your military standard-issue. Whatever that is.
- You might also have to mod in something to craft dummy targets, or statues made out of cloth, leather or wool.
- Skull collection. One of each type of skull. Try not to go all Predator on this.
- An interrogation room. Build a room and build a glass wall in the middle of it. Pretend it's one-way glass, the other side is mirrored.

Now consider that there are typically several million wall tiles that would need to be checked if every map feature were vulnerable to melting.

Or just check the ones that are in direct contact with lava at the moment. Why would they have to be checked constantly? Once magma enters a tile, do the check once and be done with it! No reason for constant checks. Also, I never suggested that every map feature should be checked for magma-safety. Just furniture and constructions.

all that you say is true of furniture: doors, grates, etc, they will burn and melt,

Not true. I have doors made of magma unsafe materials that hold back magma.