Chapter 2 - Of Caves and KoboldsWe are on a cave. A cave, on a cave. A CAVE! Get ready, hide, run, give me my machete and run. Keep the animals out, I go first. I explore. Run into cave, cut up strange burrower creature for good, all good now. Come on. Come, go in. OH NO. Bronze man, run, run, go out. Go Out.
Thats our start. First thing you should do is to assign your nobles and equip your military, if you have any. Caves always have inhabitants, and kobolds are not very strong. I started out against a brown burrower, and a few levels deeper a Bronze Statue. I retreated... no cave for now.
Kobolds carry food. Carry wood, dig dirt, make home. Bring rats and make kitchen. And carpenter for door. And bring the shalswars to protect food. And the trolls to protect kobolds from becoming food. And all is here. Except the shalswars. Too curious, now dead. All nice shalswars dead.
I starting digging a hide-out into the nearby hill. Its easier then digging a moat and building a wall, especially if you dont have any stone. I made a little maze-like entry, put both trolls in it, butchered the horse, and brought all the rats in, our herd. Very important to keep a breeding pair of rats. By that time the shalswars went hunting vermin in the cave... and all four got killed of course, by the Bronze Statue. I noticed that the Statue hit people with a Sandal it found, so I dared an attack and killed it with the brave bold, War Marshal Hanim. But too late. All my vermin-hunting pets are dead. That not only hurts our stockpiled food, it also means that we cant cook the vermin remains into more food.
While the rest of the bold was digging, stockpiling and making wooden thingies, our War Marshal run into the cave. Killed a nith. Run deeper. Run into the first cavern. Found a way tunneling underground. Run deeper. Run into the second cavern. So lucky. But then it struck me: Kobolds dont have the facilities to use the caverns. They cant use the crystal wood from the 2nd cavern. They cannot even dig the gems that are just in front of them, or the metal. There is nothing in the caverns, but a lot of free space and death. And probably wood and water, but we have that on the surface, with less death.
Lesson learned: Next Kobold Camp version will give Kobolds uses for caverns. Maybe dig the exposed gems. Breaking the crystal trees into pikes. Gathering some nice fungi in the first cavern. We will see. Currently there is no reason to go down there, except hunting and roleplaying. Like building a wooden "aboveground-fort" in the cavern. I will try this.
Here is the brave bold, leading the fray. One lonely kobold, deep below the earth.
Tutorial: Assign nobles just like in Dwarf Fortress. Quickly start a simple military. Take care of your pets, they are both your main food income and your best defense. Learn to use less space, because you only have a few z-lvls of soil. Rely on wood. Make wooden furniture, doors, blocks, everything. Its ok, you are Kobolds.