Bay 12 Games Forum

"An often overlooked ability of an upright spike trap is that it also inflicts damage on a creature that falls onto it while it is deployed. And since they are built in the deployed state they can be quickly built to make a pit trap more lethal, without the need for extra mechanisms. However, you will still need the mechanisms that cause your victims to fall onto the spike from above in the first place. "

Taken from the Dwarf fortress wiki, so, yeah
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Trap#Upright_Spear.2FSpike

I'm quite certain that you can disable weaponsmithing and metal smithing while leaving Armour smithing active, and vice versa
...
I use dwarf therapist, admittedly, but I've managed to do that and its worked, beacuse I have 4 "smiths", 1 legendary weapon, 1 legendary armour, 1 legendary metal, and one general all rounder I'mt raining as a replacement in case something happens
In all of them except the all rounder, they're legendary in their respective professions, and 0 exp in the rest...

Oh thank god, are you serious?
My best axedwarf has been running around with a sliver axe for I don't know how many years
He was one of the original 7, so I'm guessing for a while...
You have my eternal gratitude if it works, Arekis

Hans Lemurson, That was awful
And Leonidas, I used 4, but that was only because I couldn't be bothered to create enough spears to fill a 4*4 pit
keep in mind that a single spear costs 1 wood, and 15 spear traps with 10 each comes up to a LOT of wood

In all honestly, as long as your guys have fully steel, I don't think you should have any problems
I've basically managed to train up my entire fortress to legendary just by drafting them, telling them to put on masterwork steel I keep for the occaision, and tell them to stand around in the trap
Why stand around instead of having them train? Simple
whatever you use to designate from doesn't block pathing, hence if you have too many dwarves, naturally, some will be standing on the bed/armour rack/weapon rack/ whatever you used, and not being trained
and In all honesty, I think that extra training spot is more worth it then getting incredibly slow paced dodging and fighting demonstrations that give like 1 exp an hour
and no, you can't jam the spears, cause the dwarf pulling it will wait for the spear to raise and lower b4 pulling it again

...
How the hell did I never think of moving my entire bloody fortress down there?
You're a genius

tys
hmm that means I have less booze then I originally though...
and I'm out of wood for barrels
is there any advantage to using gold for barrels?
only cause I have something like 200 bars of it
I'm making statues to litter around my fortress for now, in an attempt to boost morale...

Also does the overall skill of the squad have any effect on the individuals learning pace?
Like, if I have a squad with a novice Axedwarf and a Legendary+5 axelord, will the novice learn faster under the axelords tutelage then having, say an expert axe dwarf teach them?
assuming all other variables like student, teacher and personality are the same, ofc

I just noticed on one of my dwarves Kill lists
"Snang StealCarried the Diminished Virgin the human"
I lol'd

I've got a fortress running, and tbh, I'm rather fond of it. However, recently my FPS has slowed down to something like 5-10 on average, rendering the game godly slow
I've already put all my animals in a cage, and I'm not sure what else I can do =/
I have a moat running round my fortress, would that be the thing slowing me down? if so, how would I go about draining it, cause its connected directly to the river, and fool that I am, forgot to add some form of door

It freezes in winter, but thats several in game months away, which would take ages @ 5-10 FPS

Any suggestions on improving FPS?

Alternatively, set up a danger room to train up your dwarves shield user ability =] a dwarf with a metal shield and legendary +5 shield user is essentially immune to all ranged attacks

-------
|XXXX|-
|BXXX 0
|XXXX|-
-------
the B a bed, or an armor stand to designate a barracks, 0 is the door
The "X"s are Spear traps
Load every spear trap with wooden spears, and link those to a lever or a repeating mechanism of some sort
have your dwarves train in the barracks, and the spears should make them level fighter and wrestler incredibly quickly
As long as you're wearing leather armour or above, I think the weapons should bounce off even then they hit, Admittedly, my guys are in steel, but I've seen some of my worker dwarves walk into the danger room, clean around a bit, and walk out, while the spears are active, totally unscathed
Also, make sure your dwarves don't have any stalkers, i.e. pets, children, babby's, or else... they'll die
painfully
alternatively, set a series of tightly locked doors and burrow your children away