Bay 12 Games Forum

Found one of these in my stocks screen, hinting that there must be a big top somewhere down there. Since this is the first time I've come across one of these, a question:

Does the value of said pole count towards the required wealth for goblins to start ambushing/sieging me? I'm already dealing with enough opposition from the evil tundra I'm on and building an ice fortress at the same time and so really couldn't use a bunch of degraded elfs running around at this point.

While i'd agree that most war animals are inferior to a steel clad dwarf, a pack of war dogs does wonders for an early fortress facing its first few ambushes.

Plus they make good meatshields/surplus targets. It takes the average goblin a week to hack through an elephant, giving your dwarves ample time to backstab 'em.

IF they're quick enough that is. A pair of war elephants can easily crush squads of poor-skilled melee goblins by sheer weight. Not to mention puncturing them with their tusks.

wtf? are you saying.... I CAN HAS WAR BEARS??

War elephants even. If you're lucky, and nice to the elves, they will even give you giant eagles and giant desert scorpions. And with a liiiitle bit of modding, you could even get an armored, flame-spewing dragon for a pet.

Disclaimer: By "nice", I mean just steal their stuff, as opposed to killing them. You want them to come back.

Actually, it's coming in now through where the !!wooden!! pump stack was.  At least there wasn't much down there yet.

Ok. What gave you the brilliant idea to build a pump that would soon have incredibly hot, molten rock flowing through it out of wood, of all things?

Unless you were using said pump to get water up from the lake before it started flooding with magma. Because that would be more understandable. And hilarious.

All right.. Oceans and freezing comply with Dwarven physics.

Apparently the area I'm in (part terrifying tundra, part savage arctic ocean) has a Freezing climate that makes water unfreeze mid-summer and freeze up again at the start of autumn. Really small time-frame.

That's where things get wonky. Only the first two z-layers of the ocean are frozen. Even if I tunnel through these and expose the third layer (7/7 salt water) to the outside, it still won't freeze. On the other hand, the aquifer that's another 3 levels below that, further in land, does freeze. Though I suppose that can be explained by a difference in biomes as the ocean is salt water and the aquifer is fresh.

Another thing is this: As I said before, water unfreezes in summer and freezes in autumn. However, that only applies to mined blocks of ice. Those turn into puddles. Unmined ice won't melt. Ever. Since I'm working on a surface fortress made entirely out of ice (dun-dun-DUN), and hence require tons of the stuff, I have to manually pump water from the lower ocean to the surface in late summer and let it freeze a month later if I want to replenish the ice I mined.

On a side note, this is the most awesome fortress for me until now. Just in the first year I had to cope with food and water shortages, snow storms, breaching the caverns for wood that's non-existent on the surface, setting up farms in the middle of a frozen wasteland, and of course fending off herds of zombie and skeletal Elks and Muskox that constantly threaten my budding fort.

Needless to say EVERY migrant gets two things shoved in their hands: an ice saw for masonry and an axe for the undead.

Dang, 2 pages! heh

Just getting home.. it turns out I'm a total newb, because the "Find Desired Location" menu is what I needed to try..

Will post again if I still can't figure it out. heh

Thx fellas.

Don't use that. The site finder is utter bollocks.

Just do as people have said. Move around the world map (upper right) with the arrow keys and the local map (upper left) with u,m,h,k. The highlit 3x3 or 4x4 area is where you'll embark. The right screen will tell you what natural resources the site offers.

wow a forum not filled with idiots all trying to be internet tough guys....i think this is a first.

So yous the new noob I hears 'bout. Gimme your e-lunch money.