Bay 12 Games Forum

In fact in every skill I've seen, an unskilled dwarf will reach dabbling almost instantly after their first task has been completed.

Sidenote: Dabbling is mechanically identical to unnskilled; they're both level 0. Dabbling only lets you know that the dwarf in question has some experience points in the skill but not enough to move up to level 1 (novice) yet.

That... seems like an awful lot of options with no description as to what they all really do. Any suggestions on which mode to try out, or should I just start picking at random?

Cloaks, for some reason, are ridiculously effective at protecting creatures, dwarves too. I suggest investing in leather cloaks for your melee dwarves to wear. Have them equip multiples; theoretically a dwarf can wear up to six cloaks while still having room for a breastplate and three mail shirts. I only equip mine with four cloaks out of suspicion that backpacks and flasks take up space on the same body slot, though.

Quote from: Flaede on August 31, 2010, 03:45:06 am

I have heard a rumour that if you create obsidian at the Top Of The Sky then it can attach itself to heaven, and be supported without contact with the ground.

...this may or may not be true, since I have never managed to get magma and water up that high, let alond get them into contact, considering that you can't build walls on the top level.

This has been tested over in the Mythbusters 2010 thread and found to be "true, but useless". Any walls at the Top Of The Sky will be supported by the "sky ceiling" but will be unable to provide support to anything. So all you can do with this method is a single layer of obsidian walls at the top Z-level; try to build ANYTHING else up there, and instant cave-in.

A single ground-based pillar is still necessary.

I wonder if you attach magma-made walls below it if those will act differently than constructed walls....

Really Khift?  Thats not right.  My I7 handles that with no prob. All I get is a small drop from 100 fps to around 75-90 depending on what is specifically happening.  I think you should work with your print buffers, cuz 8fps is really wrong for an I7

I honestly couldn't tell you why it's so slow. I know the map has a ridiculous amount of z-levels (162 in total) but no more walkable space than any other map. I honestly suspect that my installation of DF is somehow screwed; my next map I'll be using a different tileset than Mayday's to see if it helps any.

Also, what does printing have to do with DF?

Danger rooms definitely train Fighter and [Weapon]dwarf. My archery range is a danger room in it's own right and when my marksdwarves were actually training they gained ranks in Fighter extremely fast, faster than any other skill, and they gain Hammerdwarf very fast as well, often faster than they improved at Marksdwarf!

Quote from: Khift on September 01, 2010, 10:03:59 am

I echo the above sentiments of having fewer farmers. My single legendary +5 planter with a 192 square farm produces more food than my 220 dwarf fortress can even PROCESS, let alone eat. If I were to allocate all of my labor to the food industry I still wouldn't have enough haulers to deal with the sheer mass of product he produces; I don't really have a need to, though, because I have 17,000 lavish meals built up and the entire industry has been off for years now.

Go with one planter. Press (o) and then (h) to make sure that only he harvests because harvesting gives you skill in planting and you want him to level up as fast as possible. Once he hits legendary you can revert that and let other dwarves harvest for him, though.

Also, 192 tiles is way overkill. Most of that went towards my cloth industry, but even still half or more of it went to food and this lead directly to my massive overstock of food.

Totally offtopic. But what kinda frame rates you get with 220 dwarf fortress? Would nee mega computer to process that with more than 15 fps

I get about 8 FPS on average, on a 3x3 embark with an i7 processor. It is less than ideal.

Once they train up to a certain level, they'll start sparring with each other (just like they did in the past), and sparring dwarves seem to level up quite rapidly.

Definitely has nothing to do with it. They'll spar at any skill level, as long as the two combatants are relatively equal. Legendaries typically won't spar with raw recruits, but accomplished will spar with talented; I've seen it many times before. No amount of waiting is ever going to increase the rate at which a squad spars; if they've got basic skills they start sparring, and that's as fast as you'll progress for that size squad.

In other news, the issue here is you have a 10 dwarf squad. Break it up into three 3 dwarf squads and you'll train three times faster because each squad can only have one sparring match going on at once. With three dwarf squads you get almost non stop sparring from all members and it trains really fast. With a ten dwarf squad you'll only have one sparring match going on at once and it progresses at a snails pace. It's not intuitive in the least, but it is the way it is.

The danger room is insanely effective. Using it, you WILL get Legendary+5 shield users all across the board in approximately a year. A legendary +5 shield user is essentially immune to all attacks -- five years after hitting that rank in my current game after dozens of fights and once using the squad to take out an entire siege by themselves (six goblin squads plus two troll squads vs. 12 dwarves, mostly 5x legendary) these dwarves have not taken a single hit since. Not one hit. It feels almost like cheating. They're still vulnerable to many special attacks (deadly dust foremost, of course), but conventional enemies can't even touch them.