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Topics - Shazial

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DF Gameplay Questions / Furniture Construction Priority Questions

« on: November 18, 2023, 12:38:59 pm »

Hello,

I'm playing the newest Steam version and am stuck with a ton of ghosts (13 ghosts currently) 'cause my dwarves refuse to construct coffins and memorial slabs.. I say refuse but it's probably something to do with the construction queuing, as I do have the hauling and other labors all set up and it works with everything else... I'm also running a rather big fort, almost 600 inhabitants, so it's not exactly a lack of labor force either. If memory serves correctly, furniture is built with the first in, last out queue technique, so I do recognize a part of the fault's been me assigning many, many big construction jobs after placing all the coffins and slabs. With this in mind I do have a couple of questions to my fellow fortress keepers to see if you can help me solve this mess:

Is the queue type still the same (first in, last out) or has that changed? Wondered about this, since it should also mean last in is first out, yet the dwarves seem to go haul and build whatever they want, even if I put in new coffin and slab assignments up, and then assign no other furniture, wall, floor, road, etc. to be constructed.

Would creating a specialized labor policy with nothing but furniture construction related labors in it help the matter, if I turned everything else off, or is the current priority such that the dwarves would just.. go socialize or pray instead, like the seem to prefer to do? I've seen this suggestion float around in many boards and wondered if it actually works.

If I suspend all other construction tasks from the tasks menu except for slabs and coffins, does the whole construct building -queue stop to wait for that task to be completed or do the dwarves skip the suspended building task and pick up the next unsuspended one in line? Thinking about this, since I'm sort of testing it out, and now they're not.. constructing really anything, just focusing on other things like hauling items to barrels. Or does it just take time for the game to catch up to it?

Related to the earlier question, does the tasks menu screen actually show the construction line in the actual order you've put the furniture down to be constructed in, or is random / alphabetical?

Do having a zone over the construction zone mess with the building queue? With how tedious setting up graves is currently, I've pre-emptively set up zones over the construction slots. Does this sort of mark the grave as "Done" and thus the dwarves will not get around to doing it?

Would the best solution be to one by one cancel all the current coffin and slab setups and then place them back? Would this push them to the front of construction queue or does the game remember that hey, you set this coffin up to be constructed 15 ingame years ago so I'ma put it back into its original queue slot?

DF Gameplay Questions / Moving a Submerged Artifact

« on: July 23, 2023, 08:39:57 am »

In my tutorial/testing fortress I uncovered an artifact. Problem is, I uncovered it while playing around with DFHack commands, especially dig-now. Thus said item is in the middle and at the bottom of a two-level subterranean ocean (Both sections of the sea are 7/7 water). Being the greedy dwarven overlord that I am, it would be lovely to retrieve it and put it on display.

Having accidently created this self imposed challenge, it's time to start planning for a small engineering project. For that I have a couple questions I couldn't find a good answer to: Do artifacts move with water pressure / flow of water or is that solely dependent on size and weight of the object? The item somewhat close to a wall (2 tiles away), so my first idea was to create a "sieve" with fortifications / bars / grates, floodgates, levers, and downward channeling.

Fortifications, bars and grates allow for fluids to pass by, but from what I've gathered they should stop animals, and items? (Outside of aquatic creatures, according to the Wiki). The wiki mentioned that items can be jammed or get stuck in fortifications, but that it can be fixed by removing and reconstructing the fortification. If such a situation occurs, does the item get destroyed, or does the fortification get broken down to its construction material plus the item stuck into it?

If using above mentioned constructions and goods for sieving the artifact from water doesn't work or risks it getting destroyed, my second idea is to flush it from the sea into an artificial lake that I can dry up and then retrieve it from the mud.

However, if artifacts can't move with water flow, I'll probably need to look into somehow damming a part of the sea and draining it to retrieve the item. The only idea I have for this would be to cause a controlled cave-in, since constructing in 7/7 water is impossible, if memory serves? Any ideas on how this could be achieved?

The ocean it self is connected to the edges of the map at multiple points so draining it completely would be nigh impossible, or at least one massive project that I dunno if I want to partake in.

Using DFHack would probably make that easy, making walls with magma etc., but I'm also taking it as a learning opportunity, since I don't often dabble in the liquid side of the game. I know it's a bit hypocritical since I gained this fortune while messing with the commands, but it's fun to try and solve the dilemma with the non-DFHack tools at hand as well. Sort of like a self made challenge.

Though, if my engineering seems quite impossible, is there another command outside of autodump that could be used to move the item? Artifacts cannot be marked for dumping so that command cannot be used.

DF General Discussion / Who's your favorite Dwarf (or other creature)?

« on: December 14, 2022, 10:07:15 am »

While playing a fort or adventure mode, lets face it, we all play favorites. Someone catches our eye. Someone gets a fancier room than the others or more attention than the other little ones. A story forms and we want to follow it through. So who's your current or old favorite / memorable dwarf (or other creature) in your play throughs? What makes them so interesting? Do they have some quirky habit or did they do something epic to make them stand out?

Out of my current population there's four who keep catching my attention:

Kubuk Blotpulley and Solon Bridgeclouted - These two dwarven children seem to enjoy spending their time in the grave yard. Some sort of little glitch with the tombs caused them to enter a loop of "Place item in tomb" and "Play make believe" tasks. Kubuk trying to place the head of a falled Dwarf into a coffin and Solon trying to stuff a foot into the coffin next to him. This odd behavior gave me the head canon that these two pre-teens are wanna-be necromancers practicing their (not-so) dark arts in the communal cemetery together. Can't wait to see what they get into when they grow up in few years.

Zemri Prowledsmouldered - No particular story. He's just a massive and adorable Black Bear Man, who loves to dance. Seeing him on the screen at a random spot doing his little tasks makes me smile.

Asën Relicboot the Certain - A little lass who got killed by an elven ambush, then resurrected into an intelligent undead by a local necromancer, and then absolutely decimated 21 elves for vengeance. She's since raked a lot of other kills, with the record of 40 notable ones. All while being merely 8 years old. There's something sad and yet epic about how she'll never grow up and just wanders the fortress playing and slaying. Her personality of "She's utterly fearless when confronted with danger, to the point of lacking common sense. She finds a chaotic mess preferable to the boredom of harmonious living." is also quite fitting in her situation..

DF Gameplay Questions / Altars & Dice not craftable?

« on: February 04, 2022, 11:07:38 am »

Hello,

I'm newer to the newer versions of the game, and just noticed they added neat stuff like altars and dice, that you should be able to craft (according to the wiki at least). However, despite having the option to build an altar in the building menu, there is no option to actually craft either of these items in places it should be.

My fort was started in a version without these items, and then upgraded to the most recent. Do new crafting recipes not automatically transfer over when updating versions, and if so, is there a way for me to enable them? Though being able to place and build said things do tell that the game on some level recognizes their existence.. Is it just a recipe not available to my current civilization?

After looking through the bug tracker, it appears there's an opposite problem of being able to craft and not build them, but that didn't really serve any hints to solving this little oddity.

Thank you for your assistance!

DF Gameplay Questions / Replacing a Forever-Travelling Noble?

« on: February 01, 2022, 08:34:19 am »

Hello,

In the youth of this fortress of mine, I made the mistake of sending of my Captain of the Guard / Hammered out on a military expedition. 10 years have passed, and only 3 of the squad ever returned. The rest.. are still travelling. They aren't listed missing (no rescue mission for them), dead, or anything. They just have the travelling status and have never returned. All war trained animals are free from pastures, DFHack didn't retrieve anything from the Abyss regarding them. I've even converted my save to a newer version of the game in hopes of potentially fixing it. Are there any other possibilities to explore for replacing the CotG or removing them from the position of a noble so I can assign someone else?

I'm not well versed in Raw editing or other cheats, thus the question.

Not that crime is a rampart issue in the fortress and not having a hammerer to deliver gentle justice is a huge loss, but it's still an aspect of the game I'd like to regain. Plus it would be an amusing sight to see the enforcement of 10 years worth of crime in one go...

DF Gameplay Questions / Dwarf not leaving for a mission?

« on: March 04, 2019, 01:36:54 pm »

An interesting thing happened in my fortress - I sent several squads two days out to save my poor necromancer squad (that got captured by humans..), but in one squad there's a dwarf that didn't leave with her squad, and is just.. hanging around in the fortress? She goes through the Military Schedule of training - inactive, and rest of the squad is out marked as traveling.

I think this is also why the mission won't complete, and I've been waiting for folks to return for two weeks now (I know they haven't been captured, the Civilization screen only shows the two necromancer captives, and I have a hard time believing a hamlet of 100 can stand up to 50 fully adorned, mostly elite military dwarves).

Is there a way for me to force her out into the world so the squads can do what they are supposed to do, or should I just... track her to a deep dark hallway and kill her? Would that fix the issue?

[EDIT]: The squads finally returned. Apparently the amount of loot slowed them down.. still the one dwarf spent all her time leisuring around being all Urist McLazyPants while the others did all the raiding. Never seen that happen before.

DF Gameplay Questions / Creating a Necromancer Squad?

« on: January 01, 2019, 08:46:38 pm »

In my test fortress I've ran into the joy of retrieving one scroll that concerns the secrets of life and death. Good thing I caught it with only one of my civilians having turned into a necromancer so far (though I do need to go through rest of the literature fetched from the necromancer towers to check that there truly was only one scroll..). This has got me thinking: Now I have the potential to create more necromancers(, and fun)!

First thought with it would be to militarize it. A squad of immortal skeleton creators does sound fun. Questions remain, would this actually be useful when sending the squad out to raid sites? Would they use their necromatic arts during the battles or be just regular soldiers? If they do, would the creatures they rise during out of home combat follow them when they return?

The plan does have some gaping questions to it. I believe there's no way to control who reads which scroll, so the squad would most likely be completely randomized? Can children read the necromancer scroll and become necromancers? If this is possible, do childmancers ever grow up to adulthood?

And well.. I've now forbidden the book. IS this enough to stop anyone from reading it for now? Can this scroll be duplicated and if it can, do the copies of it also turn people into necromancers if read?

Possible downside of the plan is of course the fact I have huuuge piles of bones everywhere as my animal industry got a bit out of hands. Thus I'd need to constantly pay attention and be sending the squad out the moment they arrive so they won't cause any fun at home. One sketal Emu doesn't harm anyone but if they get into the butchering area we got other issues..

Of course if this all is viable, I am sitting at the edge of a civilization changing question: Should I try and turn my whole fortress into necromancers? It'd be a big project, since I now have over 700 workers + children on the site.

Anyone have any experience with friendly necromancers and have tips and tricks on what I could do with this (un)fortunate acquisition of mine?

[EDIT] I have discovered I have a total of THREE Nercomancer scrolls and thus I now have a squadful of Necromancers. That fixed itself quick... Now to experiment.

DF Gameplay Questions / Best Uses for Caged Sentients

« on: December 22, 2018, 01:13:50 pm »

I have a habit of building traps around the cave entrances in hopes of capturing exotic cave dwellers for silk production and advanced animal training. Sadly this does also mean that I end up usually having dozen or so cages full of Troglodytes and Trolls. Trading them doesn't seem to be an option, as they get out of the cage whenever I try to haul them to the Depot (tested with two Gorlaks.. that ended up wandering into my rattlesnake farm..).

So what's the most fun way to deal with them? Or what'd give me most value/use out of them?

In earlier fortresses I've had a sacrificial pit, once I built a live training range for my archers.. but now I'd want some new ideas. The wiki has some suggestions, but game play wise, what's brought you joy?

DF Gameplay Questions / Catching up on Slaughtering?

« on: November 10, 2018, 08:03:25 am »

I've recently come to a realization my test fortress is headed towards an inevitable FPS death as my efforts to become self sustained for cheese, cloth, and leather have led to a situation where my butchering backlog is at least 500 animals deep (with a total of over 1800 animals and pets in the fortress) - there's no way I can catch up to that with their breeding speed without some dire steps taken (the few males I've kept for breeding purposes seem to be extremely.. virile cases..).

With the limitations to butchering (No butchering of animals that weren't slaughtered by a butcher), I've come to ponder on if there are ways to get around it somehow and regain population control. Of course I could just put them into an atom smasher and clear the queue through that, but it'd be a waste of a ton of leather, bones, skulls and other vital by-products.

Is building a huge animal grave yard with 10+ butcher shops the only way to solve it, or does anyone's brilliant mind have some good suggestions for this particular issue?

DF Gameplay Questions / Traveling Dwarf Not Returning?

« on: October 27, 2018, 10:29:35 am »

Urist McCaptain of the Guard led his trusty Helmed Meshes to demand tribute to a human hamlet half a day's travel away. The troops returned triumphant - announcing that annual tribute will be brought upon us every winter. However Urist McCaptain wasn't with them. No problem, some come back slower.

Days pass. Helmed Meshes continue their military life of practice and elf bullying, yet Urist McCaptain hasn't returned.
Days turn to weeks. First of Helmed Meshes turn into Elite Mace Dwarves. Urist McCaptain still hasn't returned.
Weeks turn to Months. Troglodytes and toads and other nasties are being slaughtered by other squads, but Helmed Meshes keeps practising, 'cause Urist McCaptain is still not back.

It's now been over a year. Tributes have been received. Urist McCaptain hasn't returned from fetching tribute from half a day's travel away. The Army cannot be expanded, 'cause he isn't home. He was also the hammerer, so criminals are running rampart and hammerings haven't been dashed out to those who break production mandates. He's not listed in missing people either, 'cause he's just.. travelling. Endlessly. Somewhere, where he cannot be replaced.

As a Fortress Guardian.. I'm not sure why and what to do about it.

DF Gameplay Questions / World Lost?

« on: September 15, 2018, 01:19:04 pm »

Hello,

Hopefully I'm directing this to the right board.

I've ran into a situation where the game seems to have lost the world I generated after I had to move it from one drive to another on my computer. My save files are there, so by all logic the world should be there too. However, the menu has "Continue playing" and "Generate new world!" options, and when hit continue and I load up the save the game just shuts down.

I'm not sure what to do or if there's a way to load up the save and the world so I don't have to completely start over. The fortress I've was working on had a pretty perfect set-up with a river, moat, most of the industries already set-up and a population of 300. Losing is fun but this wasn't the kind of loss I was planning for. Haha.

I'm running DF 0.44.12 and using the PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack 0.44.12-r03 on Windows 7.

DF Gameplay Questions / Taverns and Possessed Dwarves

« on: November 26, 2017, 06:45:11 pm »

The taverns have been quite an interesting and fun feature in the game. However I didn't even realize just how fun they can be:

Urist McCook got possessed roughly a month ago, but rather than claim a work shop, he high tailed to the Tavern and has been hanging around there watching performances. Within the last season, he was interested after watching a performance. He was bored after leading an unexciting life for so long. He was uneasy after a lack of decent meals for too long. He was bored after being unable to wander for too long.

I'm quite puzzled by it. He has no health issues, yet he just stands in the tavern even after I removed the zone to give him a hint he should get on with it. He is a legendary chef so I would love to encourage him to get on with his life and get back to churning out masterpiece lavish meals, but I'm not quite sure how to fix it.

I'm currently playing the 43.05 version. I haven't yet updated to the newest release.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Problems with babies

« on: December 04, 2014, 06:59:28 am »

Greetings from the hills.

I updated my dwarf fortress version to a newer one, and moved over my old save. It's not completely compatible, as I think this fortress was started at 40.11, and the version I currently have is 40.16 (Surprisingly stress hasn't been an issue in my fortress despite this version having a bad reputation for it). Transitions between versions have been rather smooth and I've been using the LazyNewbPack while playing.

Now however, the babies are proving a bit problematic. Not really because dwarves breed like rabbits, but because their mothers refuse to take them to the hospital despite quite a few of them having numerous body parts mangled beyond recognition (thanks to my McCheaterson style danger room on a popular hallway). Is this.. normal? I know dwarven ladies are prone to using the babies as shields and I've had it happen quite a few times myself, but I think I've always seen at least some of them in the hospital later on. My hospital is fully stacked and has free beds and traction beds too, so there's no reason not to take them there.

I spoke to mr. Google about the issue and it seems to be a known bug from somewhere earlier, but I wonder if anyone else has ran into it in recent times?

There is also another very annoying baby created problem. One of my miners recently spawned a little one. This now makes 6 kids for her (makes me want to geld her husband...) i.e. She currently has 4 babies of different ages and 2 children of different ages. I don't mind them breeding, future work force and cannon fodder is always nice, however the problem is that ever since the birth of the youngest one, she keeps spamming Cancel Job: Seeking Infant. At worst I had 24 pages of only this report and it annoyingly drowns every other announcement made by the game.

It doesn't really even make sense to me, she's already carrying a baby, a badly mangled one at that (see earlier baby problem). I don't know if she's looking for another baby that she's trying to carry at the same time, or... Never mind, I just checked, 3 out of 4 kids are in a grave with their upper body missing. So I guess trying to find another baby isn't really the cause of it (Should I be worried about her having such a high infantile death percentage..?).

Any ideas what could be causing it and how I could stop the spamming? She does seem to do some work e.g. item hauling despite all the time spamming a cancellation message. Is concentrated baby/child camp somewhere in the depth of the fortress a viable idea (Build a big hall with food and entertainment and lock them all up in there)?

Ideas appreciated!

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Horse on a tree

« on: November 07, 2014, 05:52:39 am »

Things have been calm in the Heavymire of Practising. Booze flows, trading's good, the King moved in and is surprisingly benevolent, there is a horse and its foal growing on a tree...

Wait, what?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Stuckos Asteshoshosh is a very confused dwarf, because his pet is starving, and apparently has somehow ended up on a tree, and given birth up there. Now Stuckos Asteshoshosh is trying to figure out a way to get the horse down without killing it or its foal.

Ideas?

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Cloth trouble

« on: October 23, 2014, 02:47:43 am »

With the new version out and what not, I got back to the game, and after two destroyed Fortresses, the third one, Heavymire of Practicing, has been rather successful with 189 happy dwarfs going with their daily life. However, I'm facing an odd problem..

These happy fellows are ignoring the bins upon bins of different wool cloths I have bought and weaved for them, and rather cancel the clothes making jobs if they don't have any plant cloth available. The cloth quarter has the loom, two clothier's shops and the cloth stock piles side by side, so distance should not be an issue. The bins haven't been forbidden either, so by all logic, they should be happy to have such plentiful materials to work with.. Unless they all have a severe wool allergy?

Am I missing something blatantly obvious? Is there a specification or limit on which cloth type is used for which type of items (kinda how you can't make weapons out of some metals)?