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Author Topic: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened  (Read 73263 times)

Ravendarksky

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #15 on: August 17, 2013, 03:23:09 pm »

Okay so I just checked, you can survive with a NO item embark without trees or plants.

Deconstruct wagon
build carpenter
build bucket
build fishery
deconstruct carpenter and make second fishery

Fish until a summer migrant brings you a pickaxe
Dig to the caverns for wood
???
Profit

If you don't get a pickaxe then deconstruct your fishery and make shell crafts to trade. You need to deconstruct almost everything to make a trade depot. However I don't know if the dwarfs will last until autumn as the bad thoughts were piling up on mine by summer.

I got a lvl 11 miner in my first wave of migrants in summer so challenge ended very quickly. (Also got an uber doctor, the likes of which I've never seen before, 10 in most doctoring skills)
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edgefigaro

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #16 on: August 17, 2013, 03:50:15 pm »

Well, trial one is currently failing. Didn't find the path through the aquifer in time. Currently, all dwarves are hunting for vermin. I'm hoping migrants can make it past the lone yeti corpse to make it inside.
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Tevish Szat

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #17 on: August 17, 2013, 04:11:18 pm »

Okay so I just checked, you can survive with a NO item embark without trees or plants.
Can you do it without open, fishable water, though?  and will fish stocks in mot places last until the start of winter when you can trade?
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Tevish Szat

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #18 on: August 17, 2013, 04:15:45 pm »

Okay so I just checked, you can survive with a NO item embark without trees or plants.

Deconstruct wagon
build carpenter
build bucket
build fishery
deconstruct carpenter and make second fishery

Fish until a summer migrant brings you a pickaxe
Dig to the caverns for wood
???
Profit

If you don't get a pickaxe then deconstruct your fishery and make shell crafts to trade. You need to deconstruct almost everything to make a trade depot. However I don't know if the dwarfs will last until autumn as the bad thoughts were piling up on mine by summer.

I got a lvl 11 miner in my first wave of migrants in summer so challenge ended very quickly. (Also got an uber doctor, the likes of which I've never seen before, 10 in most doctoring skills)

If you don't get a pick or axe with migrants, I don't think you can trade.  You turned one of your three logs into a bucket, after all... where's the third item to build the depot coming from?
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wierd

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #19 on: August 17, 2013, 04:23:39 pm »

(why this is a challenge)

The rules were:

NO PICK EVER
YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIG AT ALL
No axe to start, may only own ONE axe total
Embark on terrifying tundra with auto zombies and evil weather
Zero surface vegitation
Zero trees
Zero surface water

Despite these limitations, create a thriving metal industry, and a proficient metal-clad military
Become the mountain home

So, understand why it is a challenge now?
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WanderingKid

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #20 on: August 17, 2013, 04:29:07 pm »

Raven,

No one component of this makes the challenge difficult.  It's the overlapping problems that makes this more adventurous.

First, there is no safe form of food gathering to start.  Since anything that's dead can come back and kill dwarves, butchery, at best, must be undertaken with extreme caution and prejudice.  There is very little vermin to be used in the ice for food to recover from a hunt for vermin spiral, except on the surface, where the undead roam.

Next, you have no water that's usable quickly unless you have the aquifer, which compounds the other side of the problem, how to get to the caverns.  If you don't have water by mid-slate, your embark dies on a dime.

So, you've got time problems.  Compound that issue with unskilled dwarves who take FOREVER to do anything.  You've got two months to breach a cavern for plants and water or you have to come up with alternate methods, without using that wood you brought because you're going to need a few axes for trees.

On a number of test embarks I outright MISSED the caverns until I hit the magma sea, and that's a 2x2 stairway.  You don't have time to miss, because those caverns aren't empty and your dwarves are not armed in any fashion, so usually you have to be canny about where you go in.  And hope there's water if you're not using an aquifer.  Wrestling training can kill your dwarves outright if they're not metal armored, so you can't let them train while they're sitting around twiddling their thumbs, either.

So, I agree in a way, there's no particular challenge directly revolving around the single pick.  It's the environment you're doing it in that goes from 'eh, okay' to 'huh, how the hellll....?'

Which, to bring me to my point... the next video is up.  Food, water, migrants, and the cavern search shaft has begun.  See the first post or just click here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C2EVbxVQNk

EDIT: Oh, yeah, sorry guys, when I go back in for Part 2 I'll get your names in on the dwarves.  This attempt was recorded while the first one was just going up on youtube and was taking a bit so I hadn't fired up the thread yet.

WanderingKid

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #21 on: August 17, 2013, 04:30:21 pm »

The rules were:

NO PICK EVER
YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIG AT ALL
No axe to start, may only own ONE axe total
Embark on terrifying tundra with auto zombies and evil weather
Zero surface vegitation
Zero trees
Zero surface water

Despite these limitations, create a thriving metal industry, and a proficient metal-clad military
Become the mountain home

So, understand why it is a challenge now?
Um, Weird, not to be arrogant, but go make your own thread with those rules and don't hijack this one.  I'm sure Raven was commenting on the rules I setup on the first post, not your arbitrary inclusions later... which have nothing to do, really, with a single pick challenge.

acetech09

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #22 on: August 17, 2013, 05:17:55 pm »

I just realized... doesn't a glacier make the challenge easier?

When I embarked on a tundra last night, I didn't have any Ice layers, which meant the only build materials I had were 3 logs until I breached the aquifer (which I did quite quickly). If you have ice, you are much much much better off.

I'm going to try another embark, this time on a terrifying tundra. Let's see what happens.

P.S. Does anyone have interest in watching a hour-long video on how an '06 veteran player who is comically tired do a one-pick challenge? There might be some things people can learn from - if so, let me know and I can shoot last nights' attempt up to youtube.
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WanderingKid

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #23 on: August 17, 2013, 05:30:12 pm »

Depends.  You can get seams of useful stuff in soil, but yes, it's possible the ice is making it easier.  However, I also have no soil, so even if I found food I either have to irrigate an area in stone or can only use the caverns.

Flipside, ice will never have anything other than ice in it, so no chance to find stone or the like to make mechanisms, no clay, etc.  Also, ice melts, so your workshops end up on a time limit.

End result: Not entirely sure there's much difference.  Either you get some stone above the aquifer, or you don't, and if you don't you're screwed on either terrain.

edgefigaro

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #24 on: August 18, 2013, 11:01:14 am »

Yeah... Took 6 attempts to get set up in the caverns. Aquifer was ~7 layers thick, or there were two aquifers. Found out the fraps demo doesn't take videos longer then 30 seconds at the end of it all... ~sigh~

The wildlife certainly made it easier. On the surface the only thing that wanted to spawn was a single yeti corpse at a time. Going to gen some maps looking for no vegetation aquifer tundra with some more ferocious wildlife: read, flyers.  Even tundra aquifer gets you ice immediately, because the water will freeze...
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Ravendarksky

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #25 on: August 18, 2013, 01:18:36 pm »

Sorry if my posts seemed disparaging, I was just genuinely wanting to know where exactly the challenge lay. Can someone clearly define 'worst possible biome' so I can give this a go? Or better yet a fresh embark so I can compare how I do :-) thanks for answering my questions, however poorly phrased they may have been!
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WanderingKid

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #26 on: August 18, 2013, 01:35:53 pm »

Sorry if my posts seemed disparaging, I was just genuinely wanting to know where exactly the challenge lay. Can someone clearly define 'worst possible biome' so I can give this a go? Or better yet a fresh embark so I can compare how I do :-) thanks for answering my questions, however poorly phrased they may have been!

Sure, relatively simple list:
No vegitation to use for wood or food.
Undead Terrifying so you can't butcher and certainly can't hunt food.

The aquifer is 50/50.  While yes, it slows down your hunt for the caverns for food, a lack of water kills you a LOT faster than a lack of food.  It's kind of a pick your poison thing.

If you watch some of the videos off the earlier thread, getting into the caverns and setting up is also pretty dangerous, as there's a lot of critters down there that can break your unarmored, weaponless dwarves pretty easily.  Depending on if you have soil, you may have to move the entire embark down there, too.

Ravendarksky

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #27 on: August 18, 2013, 04:25:30 pm »

I will report back on my success once I've generated a suitably death dealing world and had a chance to play :) (Tuesday evening?)

Thanks!
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edgefigaro

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #28 on: August 18, 2013, 05:12:36 pm »

Well, I've done ~10 runs at it. Notes: Glaciers and tundras play out differently. Glaciers have easy ice and you can build structures easily. Also, glaciers sit above rock, rather than soil, so, no matter the height of the aquifer, you are likely to find a vein or a cluster of some non-aquifer material for a layer or two. It may not get you though the aquifer, but it will get you stone.

With stone, you have pots, with stone you have mechanisms, and with both of these, it is much easier to hold out until the caravan, regardless of finding a hole through the aquifer.

In tundra, you will have to go through multiple soil layers of aquifer (just one aquifer layer? psh, regen the world, silly person.) There won't be a cluster of hope somewhere in the map. You have three wood, and are not going to find any stone for at least a layer or two. You are going to need to freeze the aquifer in a 4x4 square (maybe you can 3x4 it, i dunno) to decend through.  This can be done rapidly, even with a single miner, but you open yourself up to surface undead flyers.

And, this is the main difference between the two in my opinion. Glaciers have a calmer cast of wildlife then tundra. Specifically, there are no glacial flyers. Undead yetis always showed up solo in glaicers. Undead weasel people horde spawning immediately? You may not even be able to get your wagon torn apart (I didn't). In the tundra, you are going to have to breach the surface, to a more ferocious set of creatures, to get through the aquifer. 

On a side note, I've gotten better at butchering pack animals in a reanimating area around late slate without it's various parts blowing me to bits.
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Maul_Junior

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Re: Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened
« Reply #29 on: August 18, 2013, 06:10:36 pm »

I just don't understand why this is seen as a challenge. I often just take a pick/anvil because I'm too lazy to pick embark items.

You don't really need anything and even in glaciers you can always go down to the caverns for wood. As for the haunted/evil biome stuff, lets face it, once you're underground and have sealed the roof it's just a regular embark.

A challenge I'm going to try is to have a fort where we defend ourselves only using military (no retracting bridges, no sealing ourselves in). However I will only be training my dwarfs in kicking biting and wrestling.

Anyway I see no reason why you can't do a NO skill NO items embark. Your wagon provides all you need, as long as there are trees on the map. Even then you can always hope to get lucky and get a pickaxe with a migrant.

that.....makes sense. Lately my embarks have been stone+ore+coal, with breeding pairs of many different kinds of animals (as many as I can take), and seeds.

.....no more training axes on embark for me.
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