Bay 12 Games Forum

... my smithy forged a statue of a dwarf making a door.

Amusing.

Okay, cleared out a 10x15x2 area for my oxidane/dihydrogen monoxide reactor for Pump Stack A.  This is excessive, but seeing as I'm collecting lots of marble, tetrahedrite, galena, sphalerite, yellow beryls, etc I'm fine with excessive.

What exactly can I do with this artifact ring-- can I sell it... or is it just somethign I'll have to give to a dwarf to make them happy... or just sit there looking pretty in my stockpile?

In vanilla DF... nothing, really, since you can't sell artifacts, and currently dwarves will only own clothing/military food rations.  They won't even get happy thoughts from it being around.  Since artifacts are indestructible, you can possiblyhave fun by making a permanent ‼ring‼ (depending on material flammability?).  For the next world, you can mod in Display Cases in which to put otherwise useless Artifact trade goods, so at least then you can use them to boost room value/induce happy thoughts.

For the OP, the wiki has a great selection of both full graphics sets and just modified tilesets, most with either screenshots or at least pictures of the tileset used. 

Personally I have tried using graphics but get the "leaning in and squinting" problem as it's just so much easier to distinguish a 'g' from a ':' than two similarly shaped and shaded detailed multicoloured tiles.  It's funny; before I started, I was all worried about the graphics and wondered if I'd be able to keep up with all the info on screen and catch what was happening so I looked into graphics sets and everything.  I think after about 10 minutes I got tired of not being able to look up a particular tile on the wiki based on sight and switched back to vanilla.  At the moment I'm using an ASCII set with a few tweaks I edited in (put an 'x' inside 'off' levers to make it clearer, etc.)

I heard a rumour about creating a tower of gear assemblies parallel to the pumpstack to act as a temporary 'scaffold' and support it during construction, but can't speak to it's effectiveness. 

Honestly, all the horror stories I've heard about pump stacks have led to me never even bothering with them.  If you're working with magma, there's always the Magma Piston.  Although I suppose if you found a large undergound lake it could work with water as well.  I ended up genning a world with only 2 caverns and a few less layers so I only have 50~z-levels to magma, to try and mitigate the headache of all of that (Plus save a little FPS).

I've been using Ironhand, I might try Mayday or Phoebus for a change.  Reading an ASCII map sober just results in headaches, and the last time I played Dwarf Fortress drunk my mail lady got caught in a cage trap.  Took some fast talking to get out of that one.

Seriously, though, I don't get all this that using the ASCII promotes imagination.  Reading ASCII is like reading a foreign language: All that time I spend translating the symbols is time I'm not spending imagining the Saga of The Ashen Bulwark.

It's the same as with any language; once you have a good grasp of it, you don't spend anytime translating anymore.  You just think fluently with the symbols.  On the other hand, the main reason I don't use graphics packs is because of all the extra time I have to use distinguishing different tiles, so your point works both ways. 
Some people just think and learn visually vs. textually vs. verbally etc.

I'm brand new to this, so I'm sure this is a really dumb question, but I can't figure it out.  When I catch a goblin in a cage trap, he ends up in my stockpile forever.  How do I kill him so I can reuse that cage?

If you want to do this with more than one goblin at a time, Mass Pitting can end up being more efficient in the long rong.

A few thoughts that may add to the already good advice here:

I hear that the size of migrant waves is increased by wealth production, and decreased by deaths (with noble deaths counting for a whole lot of deaths).  So if the waves are too big, consider replacing your good bookkeeper with a random hauler, then killing the hauler-bookkeeper, and reassigning the good bookkeeper.  Try doing it annually and see how much of an impact it has.

I'll echo that using the macros is essential.  In particular, remember that macros apply to any kind of function in DF, not just mining.  For some very common actions, like digging a 3x3 up/down stairway downwards a few levels, or making a diagonal 3-tile wide hallway in the 4 diagonal directions, or DEFINITELY the 'Enter+down'x15 macro for getting items to the Trade Depot and then trading things, I save macros.  For lots of other things I just create and use macros on the spot without saving.

For example, with my latest population explosion, I made a macro that digs a 3x3 room out, then rests the cursor below it, so I could just spam ctrl+p and get a whole bunch of rooms in place, then make a few hallways connecting them.  Once they were dug out, I made a macro that places a bed, a coffer, two cabinets, and a door, and rests the cursor in the bedroom below it.  Again, spam ctrl-p.  Finally once everythings in place, I make a similar macro that designates a room from each bed and spam again. 

For finding gainful employment for them all, again, as said before, Dwarf Therapist is great.  I'm really liking a custom job I made in DT that has all hauling labours + masonry on.  The masonry isn't for making furniture (I have skilled masons for that, to do it faster and makes higher quality goods), but for all the outdoor construction/rewalling after digging a giant sunlight shaft/ etc. jobs I do, often with hundreds and hundreds of floor tiles to build at a time.  I set all my mason workshops to only accept "Adequate" or higher skill levels, so the haulers don't waste time trying to craft things, and only my skilled mason's craft things there.  Since constructing walls, floors, etc. doesn't yield experience, the haulers always stay at 0 mason experience (This is also useful as I set all the haulers to Armourer or Weaponsmith labours, and have my forges set up like the mason's workshops, except for one forge set only to accept Dabbling-Dabbling skill level, which makes bolts and caps.  This way when a hauler moods, they make an Artifact weapon or armour if they have no other moodable skill levels).  Masonry is something I never seem to have enough of, on account of all the stone furniture and big towers/floors I make, but with my construction haulers, it goes much, much faster. 

Quote from: Guardian G.I. on September 24, 2011, 04:53:10 pm

Quote from: Nyxalinth on September 01, 2011, 10:48:31 pm

Quote from: Guardian G.I. on July 03, 2011, 10:08:39 am

[PREFSTRING:unicorpion]

  Someone needs to draw this!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

SHITTY DRAWING SKILLS ARE SHITTY

Quick doodle on the same topic:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I vote an entirely new thread made dedicated to making this wonderful creature a reality( Possibly merged with the pony mod).  (As real as a virtual ASCII game can get. )