Bay 12 Games Forum

Was playing my most recent fort of about 10 years, and I happened to spy a big "C" in the populated areas of my caverns. Check it out, it's a cave crocodile. Guess I better deal with it.



Except wait. It's been crippled, and it's not moving. My dwarves are walking past it? What's going on?



Apparently at some point it had a run in with a well armed military dwarf who was off duty. It had been sitting there long enough that it's combat log had disappeared. My guess is that the dwarf beat it until it passed out from pain, then seeing as the crocodile was no longer a threat, went on about their business. Dwarves walk past it carefree, and now it doesn't move at all from it's spot. It simply sits there.



So I've left it sitting there. It sat there for a whole 'nother in game year, never moving. It's really quite pathetic to look at, seeing such a vicious predator reduced to this sad, unflinching husk. I eventually decided to put the thing out of its misery.



Anyone else having similar experiences? A friend in a discord chat says he currently has a similar occurrence going on with a troglodyte a passing dwarf beat senseless. Sadly I do not have a backup or save of this crocodile to show off. Apologies!

My tale here is quite a simple, albeit slightly funny one (or at least to me)

Sadly I have no screenshots to upload for this one as I did not quite expect this to occur.

T'was a normal day at my newly founded outpost, Asgongith "Cavesquid", not even a year old yet, but the migrant waves had gifted me with quite a few hunters for the wide open forests my fortress was planted on, a nice home dug into the mountains. A hunter, going about his day to day activities suddenly spotted something odd not far from him, a filthy elven ambush of bandits! There were seven in all, and the hunter was keen to take off running as quickly as he could, but not before firing off a single bolt at the first elf he saw, and a miracle shot it was! Planting the bone bolt firmly between the elf swordsmans eyes, the invader fell like a stone as the dwarf fled to safety.

Thankfully I had actually planned ahead with this fortress (still somewhat of a beginner, despite a few hundred hours in DF) and had build a quick drawbridge at the entrance of my small mountain home, the hunter fleeing inside and the burrow restrictions coming about as a dwarf in the dining hall quickly pulled a lever and sealed off the Fortress from the outside. I had ordered my dwarves to begin donning their weapons and shields, as I hadn't yet but begun to craft quick copper weapons so early in my forts life. We prepared for war.

This however, left my pastured animals who needed grass outside, vulnerable to the Elven horde. The elves were quick to dispatch my two egg laying geese that I had brought along with me on embark, and quickly moved on to my other pastured animals cutting them down in much the same fashion. They then encountered a goat that one of my migrants had brought along with him. And they began to attack this poor, wall-eyed creature.

But something in this creature had snapped at the onslaught of the elves, and reared a mighty kick at one of his attackers, hoof impacting right into the elves cranium, shattering his skull and splitting his brain! A fitting end no less! The elves were wholly distraught at this, having already lost two of their seven men to what was a miracle shot, and a clearly possessed, elf hating demon goat, and decided to turn tail and flee back to wherever it is they came. The battle over, the day won, all before I even had chance to drop my drawbridge and send my best men to drive away the invaders.

The champion of Goat-kind was scarred and bleeding from his attack, but lived to survive another day. Two years have passed since that battle, and the goat which I call "Elf-Killer" stands proud outside his now custom pasture just outside my main gate, waiting once more for the return of his attackers.

Why is it always a single bolt or a single arrow is ALWAYS enough to down your character. When you start off as a peasant or hero, you don't have any points you can really dedicated to the willpower/toughness/endurance slots, so any sort of chipped bones is enough to cause you to pass out giving enemies free reign over your soon to be lifeless corpse. How exactly do you deal with these cheap ass bastards so they are as much a threat as any other unit is?

I know the basic strategies for fighting them, disarm them, grab the crossbow/bow from them, put things between them and you, or just run, but when they can shoot you from 15 squares away, approaching them to kill them can be a near suicidal challenge should just 1 of those bolts hit you.

So I decided to try to play Adventurer mode as a dwarf today, started off as a Hero Axedwarf, and while traveling by myself I wind up confronting some bogeymen in the night, my Dwarf immediately enters the Martial Trance the moment I wake up and I literally 1 shot all 7 of the bogeymen that approach me with a Bronze Great Axe, and the cackling fades away. Even when the shots were difficult, or tricky, every strike landed, severing parts off in a single hit.

Should I just play dwarf from now on?

Seems like no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I grind my skills on the local wildlife, all it takes is one little scrap by any sort of weapon toting enemy and 1/3rd of the time you're going to die.

All seems to take is just 1 well aimed shot to something like a foot, leg or a arm and that's it, even when wearing full iron armor that I've scrounged up, just getting into a fight or 2 is enough to get me killed.

What skills are truly needed to ensure your first few fights aren't your last?

Unless my maps history is only like 5 years long, nearly every quest is to kill bandits or vampires, both of which are awfully hard.