Bay 12 Games Forum

Magma smithing. Digging to the magma sea is one of the first things I do on any given embark (just after setting up the kitchen, still and plump helmet farm), provided there's ore on the map to be smelted. Later I usually build magma pump stacks, abandon the deep forges and build new ones closer to the ground level. This is also roughly the moment when I start to incorporate magma into my defenses and fortress layout.

I learned to do this after my 5 or so embarks in a row didn't contain any coal. Now I use coke/charcoal only to produce steel. Magma is just so much more convenient, and dwarfy too.

Though your Photoshopping skills are quite, quite decent, I have several issues with this picture:

• You do not have a proper light source. The shadows are placed in arbitrary locations, making the picture look less than stunning.
• No shadow on ground. No ground.
• The nose is... Phallic. I'm sorry, but that's about the best I can describe it. Perhaps some practice with references is in order.
• The drapery on the chainmail shirt especially is unconvincing and stiff.
• There are several issues with space, positioning and perspective such that you create unconvincing angles and positions for several components in the picture, as well as some very queer joint and body part positions.
• Anatomy is lacking.

I think you'd benefit from time away from the computer and stylus when you sketch or practice.

Thanks for the critique! You managed to nail down most of the issues I have with this picture myself. Also, the legs are very underdetailed in comparison to the rest of the figure. Did I mention I'm not especially happy with it?

I'm practicing both with pencil on paper and a Wacom tablet in Photoshop. The problem is, I'm better at Photoshop than I'm at drawing, as you have noticed. Perhaps I should shift the ratio in favor of pencil sketching.

No, nothing is forbidden. The hypothesis about the gradual retardation of the dwarves does seem to ring true, though.

The problem was solved by un-desidnating the pit and designating it again in the same place. Now everything is working, and I feel stupid for not thinking about it before.

"Ooh, Urist, look, the overseer gave us this new shiny hole-to-throw-goblins-in! Let's celebrate by stuffing all those stinky gobs in it!"

Seriously, I have no idea what was wrong.

I've started a new fort and haven't yet gotten around to training the military (still waiting for the metal industry to take off in order to manufacture weapons and armor of adequate quality), so my primary defences consist simply of lots and lots of cage traps. I'm getting regular sieges now, and until recently they haven't been much of a problem - gobs go in cages, cages go to the drop chute, gobs go splat, gob bones go to crafters, goblinite items go either to melting or trade depot stockpile. Rinse, repeat.

The problem is, my dwarves have recently been unable to drag the gobs to the chute. The occupied cages just sit in the animal stockpile. Before, when I marked a gob for pitting almost immediately some dorf got to the hauling and dropped the bugger 15 z-levels. Now they ignore the cages altogether. They are neither forbidden nor marked for dump, there is an unblocked route to the chute and I have around 30 idlers, with animal hauling job enabled. They're also not all attending a party or on break. The problem has persisted for some time, and now my animal stockpiles are close to overflow and producing new cages eats up a metric shitton of wood. I'm speeding the process of equipping the military so they could execute the gobs in the arena, but what I'd really like would be some help with this problem. Any ideas?

I've had two forts which got visits by kobold snatchers. No ambushes though, not to mention sieges (if kobolds can actually siege you at all). In 31.25. History was set to 125 years, standard worldgen.

Can thieves/snatchers be pitted this way? The wiki says they escape as soon as they're out of the cage.

Great. Just what I wanted to hear. Thanks!

Okay, first of all, sorry if the question has already been asked (because it almost certainly was, it's just that I cannot seem to find it by the search function and 900 pages of little questions is too much to browse through).

Is there any way to stop the hospital from claiming all thread I produce whenever it has container space, other than creating a locked hospital storeroom? Setting limits doesn't work, the dorfs just haul the thread anyway.
I know I can't prevent the candy thread from being claimed for sutures, so I'm setting up a closed processing plant that converts raw candy into wafers. Do I have to set up my clothing industry likewise, or is there some workaround?