Bay 12 Games Forum

(my bad, double posted because the site glitched out and I didn't think it posted lol)

Quote from: Finn on January 23, 2013, 12:34:36 pm

At this point I would suggest that a new player just start over.  You were only two years into the fort, start a new one.  There are many other things to learn that are more important and less tedious.  Loyalty cascades are relatively rare.

The only way to get good at Dwarf Fortress is to lose Dwarf Fortress. Abandoning because you're losing goes against the spirit.

I get the "Losing is Fun!" as a sort of joke/motivator, but if I know I'm going to lose, I'm going to abandon. There's no point in sitting there watching as my dwarfs die. I like my dwarfs. I don't maniacally laugh, I just get irritated. Still love this game though.

First, make sure you have a dwarf with the Carpenter labor enabled. After you've done that, make sure your Carpenter can actually walk to the workshop. I suppose you should also make sure you have wood.

Quote from: Numeroid on November 21, 2012, 09:13:28 am

Mother of Armok that's amazing. I say just let the battle rage until there's a victor and then lock them in a room made of candy and filled with magma as their prize.

Good idea, except for one detail, both demons and undead are immune to magma to the best of my knowledge.  So you would just have a (by that point) super skilled !!Skeleton/Deadly dust demon!! locked in a room waiting to break out.  That does sound like !!Fun!! though. 
I would collapse the area around them, then use them for archer training, minecart weapon testing, or just flood the room and let it freeze.

That's what I was going for. Perhaps on the level above you could have glass floors over the room so it's a magma demon/zombie zoo.

"Yeah I'm gonna have to do a full inspection before I can be sure what the problem is."

Alright, thanks guys, just got a well going in my hospital.

I find it helps to have a path with one drawbridge at one end of a hallway-entrance and another at the other, so you can pull one and it will stop the invaders and you still have a backup one in case they get past the first, or you could simply have a really large drawbridge that covers a massive drop and use it to kill your enemies. Although I can't stress enough that there's no replacement for a nice strong military. Use traps for saving manpower, reducing losses, etc.

I'd recommend getting a hospital going as one of your first projects. It's fairly simple, just dig out a room, fill it with beds/tables and some chests or bags to be filled with cloth. A water source is also a necessity for a hospital, as resting dwarfs will only drink water and it is needed to clean wounds.

A marksdwarf tower is a nice thing to have as well. As for training marksdwarfs, the general opinion is that the best way to train them is to set kill orders on animals that are around your fort. Bolts are easy to make as wood and bone can be used, although some metals are better apparently.

I have always used plump helmets at every stage during my fort, I never really found the need to switch to anything else. I guess if you're a perfectionist the bad thought gained from only eating one type of food is a big problem but I don't really desire my dwarfs to be as happy as possible, they can be ecstatic and still have some minor bad thoughts. Also, I like to embark in areas that have clay so I don't have to bother with irrigation.

Also, you can deconstruct trade depots that contain goods and the goods will all drop and be claimed by your dwarfs. I often do this for the first 1-3 caravans and by then I usually have some goods that I can actually trade with.

If you have an abundance of stone you can make use of it by not making barrels but rather by making rock pots at a Craftsdwarf's workshop.They do all of the same things barrels do and stone is often considerably more plentiful than wood is. Not to mention it allows you to use more wood on other things that are wood only, like beds.

If you can't find a dwarf you can press U to view the units screen, select his/her name and press C to zoom to his/her location, if I'm right.

I think you should be able to pasture them somewhere and then unpasture them, releasing them outside the cage, or build the cage and link it to a lever if you want to drop them on invaders.
Back when pastures didn't exist, I used to pit them down a 1-z level drop, silly me. I never got into husbandry much.

Ah, thanks, worked. Turning them all into war dogs at the moment. I'm hoping to get some polar bears for my military later but my hunters weren't aware of this and killed the only one I've seen so far.