Bay 12 Games Forum

I built a modest fortress into the side of a volcanic mountain-island. Water was scarce but I dug deeply enough to find a subterranean ocean. The winters were long and came early, all surface water freezing over in Autumn and holding over until late-spring, and it took three embarks before a team of dwarves could survive through it. Once the first winters were passed, things grew easier. A nearby pond was drained from below to make plots for farming and everything seemed up and up.

But somewhere along the line, as it often does, trouble reared its ugly head. Although some minor enemies stepped out from the darkness of the caverns, they were too far down to reach my dwaves on a completely different cavern connected only by a large cylindrical open shaft in the middle. Forgotten Beasts came and went, none able to reach my dwarves... at first. Then one day a one-eyed gecko that shat webs somehow spawned in the waters at the edge of the map and came up to my dwarves. I had defenses in place but none of my highly-skilled marksman-spear dwarves could maneuver all caught up in the strings of sticky webbing. They fought for a long time but they all died.

By the time the Forgotten Beast made its way up to the fortress itself I realized I had deconstructed the bridge that blocked the hallway off from the caverns. I had gone maybe 4 years without any noticeable threat and when I decided to expand a bit I was going to rebuild the bridge. And the forgotten beast came when the new bridge was not yet linked to a lever.

I had to abandon the fortress. It took over half a dozen expeditions full of weaponized dwarves to reclaim the fortress. Each time they arrived four foul and frenzied forgotten beasts would come from the depths and slaughter them. Finally the last was dispatched and the dwarves entered the fortress only to find the bottom caverns where the water source lay absolutely covered in armed and named amphibian men, olm men, and the remains of numerous beasts -- including a cave dragon which apparently came out of the dark and fought the armies of whatever was there to kill it. I held on to that fortress for another two and a half years but that entire time was spent trying to piece together the remnants left behind from the dead. And dwarves started dying by the tens or going mad from the legion of ghosts that arose from previous occupants. My list of dead and missing were pages and pages long, encapsulating the entire history of the fortress and all the ghosts seemed to come out in my farming fields where my brewers were. No one wanted to work. The ones that did literally died of fright or went mad, killing their kin. Dwarves starved. Rot began to spread, probably the remnants of the blood of one of the ancient beasts newly dead.

In the end it was too much.

I abandoned.

Reclamation isn't worth the trouble. All the magma forges and obsidian in the world can not make that endeavor sweet again.

Miners dug stairs into a cavern, 1-Zlevel above the floor, but also into the open air which is enough for FB's and all sorts of monstrosities to appear, apparently. Access to the caverns are blocked off by a raised bridge right now. But how do I reclaim the upper floors on the caverns and seal off that stairway leading down into that section of cavern?

Right all the FBs are fighting the, something like, 50 amphibian men, but eventually I'm going to have to go in and try to clear out the remnants to seal off the cavern.

I do have access to a volcano which goes down just below the bottom of those stairs (and exists on all Z-levels upward from there). Don't think just dumping magma is going to help. Just be lava flowing down infinitely and killing my framerate. There is an underground ocean in a cavern a couple z-levels above where the stairs start... I might mix the two? But again, need it to not last forever and I don't have free access to the area right now without confronting numerous baddies. I could mine in from above, would take forever and I might lose a miner or two to starvation first.

Like 40 Amphibian men appeared at the reclamation of a fort. Sealed off the lower caverns were they are but lost some dwarves in the process. Now in my units list, about 3 of the amphibian men are listed as Friendly. WTF?

A Forgotten Beast destroyed my fortress. If I Reclaim and it's still there, what then? Will it always be there? Do I have to into the game in adventurer mode and try to kill it?

EDIT: Make that two Forgotten Beasts...
EDIT#2: Make that 3 Forgotten Beasts........
EDIT#3: Four. Four Forgotten Beasts. I'm starting to think this is bugged.

I can't seem to catch animals unless they are enraged and come directly after me. I've tried fashioning some sharp rocks, going into Sneak mode and getting about 4 or 5 squares away and throwing stuff hoping it hits. How do you guys hunt?

In adventure mode I can be a demigod, find the corpse of my previous demigod, pick up his equipment and equip all of them, and still die in my first battle.
Most recent of these was when I, being idled, fashioned some sharp stones. Two men came at me a Macedwarf and a MasterLasher. I threw a stone and it sturck the macedwarf in the head (which surprised me since I never assumed it was a real attack, just sort of waiting for the dudes to draw closer) and the stone broke his spine, and the guy crumples in a heap on the ground. The master lasher gets to me, hits me and misses 3 times. I miss him 3 times. And then he does like 3 rapid attacks in the span of one turn and basically cripple-kills me, causing to fall to the ground, drop everything that was on the left side of my body, and then striking me down.

A demigod.

Useless.

I dug into some caverns with an endless ocean on one level. I dug a channel from the ocean to an open cavern because there was a Forgotten Beast on the bottom, one of the nasty kind with clouds of insta-death roiling around it. I figured I'd flood the cavern and drown it. Fast forward almost 10 in game years and the cavern is barely full. I've only filled about 1.5 z-levels (the channel has a Fortification in it which I believe is slowing the flow).

Anyway, long story short, I dropped an entire cavern floor overtop the water flow and it didn't block it. I'm not really sure what else to do. I can't build anything, there's too much water in the channeled aqueduct and sending in buildings or miners will cause them to drown anyway.