Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DoctorMcTaalik]

He obviously found a way to save the fallen dwarves, but that involved something dark, like making pacts with shadowy individual or selling one's soul. The price proved to costy, and now the late Doctor is gone...

Let us learn from his mistake: One shall not bargain with Krhan-Zelag, the ancient volcano spirit, for his schemes are as the fire itself: Warm and inviting, but in the end, they shall consume all. Except for a yearly sacrifice, obviously. We don't really want the volcano god to get MAD at us.

Moldath, the Dwarven Goddess of Volcanoes (check the Doctor's mythology post), does not take kindly to Dwarven sacrifices, however.  And she weeps to see good Goblinite and Dwarf-sized clothing burned within her fires if Goblins are thrown into the volcano depths without being properly stripped first (you can due this by "Dumping" all the items being worn or held by a Goblin while they are caged).

The only PROPER gift to such a fierce yet benevolent goddess is something cute and fluffy- like a whole litter of newborn kittens that just *happen* to have all adopted owners immediately after birth (making them ineligible for being made into delicious +Cat Roasts+), and threaten the fortress with a cat-splosion...  In which case, the kittens shall be duly "pitted" within the volcano rim as a due and fitting sacrifice of cute, furry, softness to the secretly cat-loving volcano goddess who yearns to hold them within her fiery embrace.   

My sacrificial plans are more elaborate, and may involve makeshift catapults.

[Northstar1989]

Obtaining the save now. Might keep the ridiculously small bedrooms for children and other parasites.

I've learned one too many times the hard way- a tantruming child can still kill a full-grown adult Dwarf.

Tear down the tiny bedrooms (what you do with the space is up to you) and dig something more spacious elsewhere.


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

He obviously found a way to save the fallen dwarves, but that involved something dark, like making pacts with shadowy individual or selling one's soul. The price proved to costy, and now the late Doctor is gone...

Let us learn from his mistake: One shall not bargain with Krhan-Zelag, the ancient volcano spirit, for his schemes are as the fire itself: Warm and inviting, but in the end, they shall consume all. Except for a yearly sacrifice, obviously. We don't really want the volcano god to get MAD at us.

Moldath, the Dwarven Goddess of Volcanoes (check the Doctor's mythology post), does not take kindly to Dwarven sacrifices, however.  And she weeps to see good Goblinite and Dwarf-sized clothing burned within her fires if Goblins are thrown into the volcano depths without being properly stripped first (you can due this by "Dumping" all the items being worn or held by a Goblin while they are caged).

The only PROPER gift to such a fierce yet benevolent goddess is something cute and fluffy- like a whole litter of newborn kittens that just *happen* to have all adopted owners immediately after birth (making them ineligible for being made into delicious +Cat Roasts+), and threaten the fortress with a cat-splosion...  In which case, the kittens shall be duly "pitted" within the volcano rim as a due and fitting sacrifice of cute, furry, softness to the secretly cat-loving volcano goddess who yearns to hold them within her fiery embrace.   

My sacrificial plans are more elaborate, and may involve makeshift catapults.

As long as you're sacrificing surplus "adopted" kittens and not dwarves, goblins in full armor, or still-butcherable animals...


Regards,
Northstar

[Deus Asmoth]

Asmoth’s Log, 11th of Sandstone:

Pagetower, the next great fortress of the Aqua Treaties. Hah. This place barely qualifies as a hovel, if we’re being generous, but apparently it’s my burden to try turn it into a place someone might be willing to take refuge in if their life depended on it. My first order of business is going to have to be removing all those traps in front of the depot, since they’re preventing any traders actually getting into the fortress. I’ve just been shown the bedroom they expect me to sleep in, and it looks like that’s going to have to be rectified as soon as possible as well.

In order to train up some weaponsmiths and protect our fortress more adequately, I’ve commissioned the forging of a hell of a lot of copper trap components, which ought to stop invaders from murdering us all in our sleep. The glassmakers aren’t out of work anymore either, since the new bedrooms I’m having dug will require some nice furniture.

1st of Timber:
A voracious cave crawler gained access to our main stairway, which is apparently directly linked to and completely undefended from our subterranean caves. I sent our militia to deal with it, only to find out that they’re completely unequipped. This didn’t deter Limul Thobevost, who punched the creature to death. In any case, I’m sealing off the caves for now and will create a more defensible passage once the miners are finished with the bedrooms.

15th of Timber:
I just noticed that we actually have quite a lot of bismuth and tin, so we won’t be using up all of our copper on those trap components then.

20th of Moonstone:
Excavation of some burial sites has begun, which I imagine will be helpful once the place descends into anarchy and bloodshed like it inevitably will. In other news, we caught a few crundles in the caves, so I’ll have to think of something to do with them. Probably befriend them and then butcher them for their delicious innards.

27th of Moonstone:
Asob Lolokrurast, one of our miners, has withdrawn from society and taken over our mason’s workshop.

14th of Opal:
Asob created this thing:

I'm sure we'll find a use for it somewhere.

That picture got cut in half for some reason. Hrm.

[Northstar1989]

Asmoth’s Log, 11th of Sandstone:

Pagetower, the next great fortress of the Aqua Treaties. Hah. This place barely qualifies as a hovel, if we’re being generous, but apparently it’s my burden to try turn it into a place someone might be willing to take refuge in if their life depended on it. My first order of business is going to have to be removing all those traps in front of the depot, since they’re preventing any traders actually getting into the fortress. I’ve just been shown the bedroom they expect me to sleep in, and it looks like that’s going to have to be rectified as soon as possible as well.

It's good that you're focusing on living quarters.  Maybe you'd also consider expanding the above-ground portions of the fortress outwards with the next migrant wave?

In order to train up some weaponsmiths and protect our fortress more adequately, I’ve commissioned the forging of a hell of a lot of copper trap components, which ought to stop invaders from murdering us all in our sleep. The glassmakers aren’t out of work anymore either, since the new bedrooms I’m having dug will require some nice furniture.

1st of Timber:
A voracious cave crawler gained access to our main stairway, which is apparently directly linked to and completely undefended from our subterranean caves. I sent our militia to deal with it, only to find out that they’re completely unequipped. This didn’t deter Limul Thobevost, who punched the creature to death. In any case, I’m sealing off the caves for now and will create a more defensible passage once the miners are finished with the bedrooms.

Wait, WHAT, we breached the Caverns?  Not only that, but the 2nd/3rd level caverns already?  WHY wasn't this is the previous updates?  This kind of thing is a MAJOR development, but yet InfiniteCastor didn't think to mention it (in fact, just the opposite, he said he was having trouble finding the caverns...)

In the future, this kind of thing NEEDS to be mentioned in updates, rather than catching us all by surprise when a Cave Crawler (or worse, a Forgotten Beast) makes its way into the fortress...

Did the Cave Crawler do any damage before it was slain? (Cave Crawlers are build destroyers, you know...)

15th of Timber:
I just noticed that we actually have quite a lot of bismuth and tin, so we won’t be using up all of our copper on those trap components then.

Yeah, I was just going to point that out before.  Somehow, player after player keeps thinking that all we have is piles of copper, without looking to see we also have loads of bismuth bronze, and bismuth/tin to make more of it...

20th of Moonstone:
Excavation of some burial sites has begun, which I imagine will be helpful once the place descends into anarchy and bloodshed like it inevitably will. In other news, we caught a few crundles in the caves, so I’ll have to think of something to do with them. Probably befriend them and then butcher them for their delicious innards.

How did you catch Crundles if you already sealed off the caverns???  Some pictures would be nice- considering nobody even though to mention before that we already breached the caverns...

27th of Moonstone:
Asob Lolokrurast, one of our miners, has withdrawn from society and taken over our mason’s workshop.

14th of Opal:
Asob created this thing:

I'm sure we'll find a use for it somewhere.

What is it?  Since the picture is cut in half, nobody can actually see what it is...

That picture got cut in half for some reason. Hrm.

Whatever it is, what do you plan to do with it?  If it's a piece of furniture, obviously it should be placed in one of the larger communal bedrooms (to split up its value among many Dwarves, rather than going overkill on just one or two...)  If it's armor or a weapon, it mgiht prove mighty handy for our militia.  If it's something like a grate, it could be used to filter out building destroyers from the caverns before they penetrate deeper into the fortress... (also, beware- I think there are some Goblins that have migrated underground to the north, if that's even possible- you may need to be prepared for sieges from underground as well as above.  A sealable bridge is advised.)


Regards,
Northstar

[Deus Asmoth]

Er, yeah, it's a floodgate so I'll probably stick it in some noble's bedroom.

I put some cage traps down where the cave crawler got in while I was ordering the stairs sealed up, but didn't take them back up again, so they caught a few crundles.

Only the first cave was breached, it just feels weird writing it in the singular when talking about something as big as they are.

[Northstar1989]

Er, yeah, it's a floodgate so I'll probably stick it in some noble's bedroom.

You're kidding me, right?  Artifact-quality floodgates are just about one of the MOST USEFUL artifacts (aside from weapons and armor made out of high-quality metals) a fortress can obtain.  We were EXTREMELY lucky to have one of our Dwarves construct one... (first an artifact table, now a floodgate?  Moldath must be smiling on this fortress...)

Please post the save IMMEDIATELY so that, in case something happens to your copy (like it gets corrupted) we still have a copy of the save available with the artifact-quality floodgate...

Artifact floodgates are extremely useful as *COMPLETELY INDESTRUCTIBLE* entrances/exits to a fortress.  Unlike a bridge, they can't be destroyed by Dwarves throwing a tantrum.  Unlike a door, they can't be destroyed by building destroyers (and in fact, such floodgates can be used to "filter out" building destroyers from an attacking force).  Even magma can't destroy an artifact floodgate- no matter what it is made of (even one made of wood will simply burn for all eternity without ever being destroyed- though I wouldn't recommend this for lag/FPS reasons...)  The only weakness of such a floodgate is that, like a door, it can't close with anything occupying its tile- even the remains of a simple sock or monarch butterfly will prevent it from closing.


The floodgate should be great for a lever-operated entrance/exit to the caverns.

I put some cage traps down where the cave crawler got in while I was ordering the stairs sealed up, but didn't take them back up again, so they caught a few crundles.

I see.  Keep the Crundles- they are superior egg producers to Turkeys once fully-tamed (taming will take multiple generations of Crundles).  Despite their humanoid appearance, they are not sentient and quite butcherable, and though they yield less meat when butchered (and scales rather than tannable hides), they live up to twice as long (10-20 yrs instead of 7-10), and lay a potentially larger clutch of eggs (5-20 instead of 9-14).  Their children are also smaller at birth (size 50 instead of size 85, and size 1000 by 1 year instead of size 2500), though their adults are larger (size 10,000 instead of size 5,000) reducing the chances of babies harming their parents when fighting due to overcrowding; and they are sexually mature at birth (making it less likely that the population will naturally die out than with birds).  Finally they have the advantage of being native to the area- we're not going to capture any wild turkeys if our bird population dies off naturally or gets slaughtered during a siege.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Crundle

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Turkey

Only the first cave was breached, it just feels weird writing it in the singular when talking about something as big as they are.

I didn't say "cave", I said "Cavern Level".  Based on the presence of Crundles and Voracious Cave Crawlers (both level 2-3 creatures), it appears we skipped straight over Cavern Layer #1, and breached layer #2 or 3 instead:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Caverns

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Voracious_cave_crawler

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Crundle


Also, was there any cave fungus/moss growing on the cavern level?  If so, that would be EXTREMELY important to the future of our fortress- since it affects our ability to create additional underground pastures for animals once we find a source of water (by the way, have we found any water yet?)


I'm excited- it's been a *long* time since I've even had a fortress live long enough to breach the caverns (though I didn't get to do it myself).  My observations on caverns generally being the doom of fortresses come from reading the stories of MANY, MANY succession fortresses- not so much from my own experiences (my forts generally fall to tantrum-spirals resulting from Goblin ambushes within the first year- strangely they always seem to arrive *extremely* early in my games, this fort being no exception...)


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Oh, by the way everyone, 0.40.10 is now out.

The raws didn't get changes from 0.40.09 though, so all you need to do is update your DF+Ironhand install to version 0.40.10, and the save will work as updated for 0.40.09 (you remembered to update the raws in the save file InfiniteCastor, right?  If not, we might start seeing some bugs soon due to certain incompatibilities between version 0.40.09A/0.40.10A of Ironhand graphics and 0.40.08 raws in the save file...)


Regards,
Northstar

[Taupe]

I for one like the bedrooms. They make our dwarves akin to the very magma fueling our home: Volatile and fiery little things crammed full into thight stone veins, ready to boil up and erupt at the worst moment. Clearly it is in accordance with Moldath's design.

Plus it just builds up character. How are they to live daily and safely on a friggin volcanic cliff if they cant climb over a cabinet to get in/out of bed?

[Northstar1989]

I for one like the bedrooms. They make our dwarves akin to the very magma fueling our home: Volatile and fiery little things crammed full into thight stone veins, ready to boil up and erupt at the worst moment. Clearly it is in accordance with Moldath's design.

Plus it just builds up character. How are they to live daily and safely on a friggin volcanic cliff if they cant climb over a cabinet to get in/out of bed?

It's far too late for that- the slums have already been ordered demolished (and probably already cleared out by Deus, although I'm waiting on the save to confirm that).

It would be one thing if that was the *initial* housing for our Dwarves- but it's entirely another when we already had quite a bit of adequate housing for many of our Dwarves, and InfiniteCastor suddenly wanted to take them out of their comfy communal bedrooms and cram them into lonely, vampire-prone, individual Dwarven cubby-holes that provided a lower quality housing experience and were a much less efficient use of time and resources (besides taking an average of four mined out tiles to create a rock door, it takes much longer to craft and deploy a door than for a skilled engraver to smooth and engrave several tiles of wall/floor- and the engravings greatly enhance room value).


I *strongly* believe the first priority of any fortress overseer should be the happiness of his/her dwarves.  This means, primarily, great bedrooms (we're not there *yet*), a legendary dining hall (done), even better rooms for the nobles (and some quality noble tombs- peasants don't much care where they're buried), a good variety of booze, plenty of clothes, high-quality grub (masterpiece-quality lavish meals to maximize the chance and strength of happy thoughts), and lots of high-quality statuary and such to create even more happy thoughts...  This also means taking every conceivable measure to minimize the chances of death and unhappy thoughts.


After that, the second priority should be industry and the generation of wealth/trade, and the third priority should be safety and overwhelming military preparedness.  Stupid Dwarven Projects (like temples/shrines) should only take a distant fourth.


Regards,
Northstar

P.S.  Taupe, I *am* starting to question your sanity as a fortress overseer, however.  You don't seriously want our Dwarves to kill each other off in an orgy of murder this early on, do you?  Do you?!!!   

[Wacksonoff]

Requesting an update on who I've been doffed as, and how I'm doing.

[Deus Asmoth]

Asmoth's Log, 20th of Opal 254.
Now that some of the new bedrooms are reasonably kitted out, I got one of our up and coming artists to make a drawing of the rooms:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The rooms to the left are going to be converted into office space and various chambers for the nobility if I get any say in it. Doubtless they'll just end up as stockpiles for turnip seeds instead.

He must be pretty good to remember the locations of everyone while he drew it, but I suppose that's what you get when you take the time to find a good artist. Unfortunately, that obsessive attraction to detail seems to be carried over to every part of his life, judging by this description of our militia commander that was written on the back.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In accordance with the wishes of our founder, I've also taken the time to send directions to our fortress back to the mountainhomes so that they can locate our amazing floodgate in the case of an emergency.

25th of Opal
With the laying down of a layer of cage traps at the top of the stairs, the caves have once again been opened for business at this entrance. We also have three crundles, one male and two female (we had another male but someone killed him for food). In any case, this should make sure that our fortress is adequately supplied with food and wood.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Northstar1989]

Asmoth's Log, 20th of Opal 254.
Now that some of the new bedrooms are reasonably kitted out, I got one of our up and coming artists to make a drawing of the rooms:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The rooms to the left are going to be converted into office space and various chambers for the nobility if I get any say in it. Doubtless they'll just end up as stockpiles for turnip seeds instead.

That's an awful lot of rooms.  Are you anticipating a massive population boom?  You probably would have been better off digging out a smaller number of even larger rooms- as it stands, the rooms you carved have almost exactly the same (in fact, slightly higher) housing density (measured in dwarves per tile, and tiles per room divided by occupants; 11 usable room floor/wall tiles per Dwarf vs. 10.25 floor/wall tiles per Dwarf) as the slums before- their only real advantage is use of less doors, a lot more floorspace for furniture (but relatively less wall available to engrave), and improved resistance to vampires...

Also, why did you lay down the furniture *BEFORE* smoothing/engraving the floors of the rooms?  The rooms will have higher value (and thus make Dwarves happier) if the floors under the furniture are smoothed+engraved as well.

Shouldn't you be using green glass doors though? (they are listed in the Magma Glass Furnace as glass "portals")  Rock boulders would be better-used for making large rock pots- which are capable of holding booze (the more we store up the better), unlike the cheap Earthenware pots our Magma Kilns can churn out (unless they are glazed- which costs wood or tin ore), or for rock-fall traps and catapult ammunition...  I *strongly* recommend stockpiling (or quantum-stockpiling if you don't feel like digging out huge stone stockpiles) the boulders and making the doors out of green glass instead...

He must be pretty good to remember the locations of everyone while he drew it, but I suppose that's what you get when you take the time to find a good artist. Unfortunately, that obsessive attraction to detail seems to be carried over to every part of his life, judging by this description of our militia commander that was written on the back.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's nothing in the spoiler.

In accordance with the wishes of our founder, I've also taken the time to send directions to our fortress back to the mountainhomes so that they can locate our amazing floodgate in the case of an emergency.

Thanks.  I also wanted to see what the current state was of the fortress, so this should be helpful...

25th of Opal
With the laying down of a layer of cage traps at the top of the stairs, the caves have once again been opened for business at this entrance. We also have three crundles, one male and two female (we had another male but someone killed him for food). In any case, this should make sure that our fortress is adequately supplied with food and wood.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What's with all the stairways into the Caverns?!!!!  It should only take ONE entrance to get in and out of the caverns, and the caverns are DANGEROUS- so the more entrances/exits you dig the harder the fortress becomes to defend.  You're also opening a path straight into our fortress for Forgotten Beasts, which are building destroyers (meaning they can smash anything blocking their path except artifacts and raised bridges) and trapavoid to boot (making those cage traps COMPLETELY WORTHLESS when it *really* counts...)

I would respectfully request that you block off one of the entrances to the fortress- and preferably that you also build a sealable bridge (that is, one that raises to present a solid wall to intruders) or the artifact floodgate across the other ASAP- linked to a lever of course.

A 3-wide entrance would be useful for letting the caravan escape into the caverns during surface sieges, but is useless for that purpose if you use stairs.  And what the heck is with the 3x3 stairwell?!!  You should only need a 1x1 or 1x2 (to reduce congestion) stairwell for most purposes, and making it any larger is just a waste of valuable space.  This just joins the list of new features added to the fortress that are silly, inefficient, and I am really *not* liking...


Regards,
Northstar

[Askarn]

Furniture doesn't block dwarfs from smoothing/engraving.

[Deus Asmoth]

The entrance to the caves on the left is already blocked off at a higher level, and the empty spoiler has Wax's profile in it. Not sure why you can't see it.