Print

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

[PatrikLundell]

It sounds very brutal: if the giant decides to step on where you are it's game over (save scumming can obviously be used to retry until the giant steps elsewhere), but it's Pseudo's call.

I have to admit I don't know how fat melting works in detail, since all my fat melting cases have been caused by fire/magma.
- If I understand the description correctly, a slightly lower temperature means fat melting doesn't happen virtually immediately but with a short delay after the rain starts?
- Once fat melting starts, my understanding is that there is no way to stop the bleeding; bleeding will continue until all the fat is gone on the affected body part?
- The temperature update triggered by the rain is independent of whether the dorf gets hit by the rain or not: the important thing is whether the dorf is present in the the scalding climate?

[vjek]

It sounds very brutal: if the giant decides to step on where you are it's game over (save scumming can obviously be used to retry until the giant steps elsewhere), but it's Pseudo's call.

I have to admit I don't know how fat melting works in detail, since all my fat melting cases have been caused by fire/magma.
- If I understand the description correctly, a slightly lower temperature means fat melting doesn't happen virtually immediately but with a short delay after the rain starts?
- Once fat melting starts, my understanding is that there is no way to stop the bleeding; bleeding will continue until all the fat is gone on the affected body part?
- The temperature update triggered by the rain is independent of whether the dorf gets hit by the rain or not: the important thing is whether the dorf is present in the the scalding climate?

Yep, those presumptions seem to be accurate, from what I've seen so far.  Bleeding out, oddly enough, doesn't seem to be fatal under all conditions.  I've seen yaks, for example, that had no fat left at all, and were perfectly alive and well. 
I've seen partially melted body parts on dwarves who seem.. fine?  "Her head is slightly melted" in the description, and yet, just hanging out in the meeting area like it's 1999.

But yes, if they're outside when it starts or is raining, that seems to not go very well at all (they ded)

[Pseudo]

No water or cave water? Yow. (I assume that includes aquifers?) Brutal is the word.

Do season changes trigger a temperature update?

[vjek]

No water or cave water? Yow. (I assume that includes aquifers?) Brutal is the word.

Do season changes trigger a temperature update?

No aquifers, correct. 
And no, no temperature update that I saw, even crossing two seasons, without rain or some kind of flowing liquid to trigger it.

[Pseudo]

I'd take a stab at it.

I'm kind of liking the idea of an embark that sometimes/always freezes with "finite" water, though. Is there a way for cavern lakes to generate such that they aren't connected to an edge?

[vjek]

Here's #2, for your embarking pleasure. 

Again, the goal is the same as the first embark, Pseudo: Reach 5M created wealth as quickly as possible.

I've played this out to about 2 years, so it is possible to survive and thrive, you just have be very attentive to farming, brewing, cooking, and slab engraving. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I think it's only fair to warn you that this entire embark is a re-animating biome.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks vjek!

Some surprises, both positive and negative. The lack of hot sauce (at least I haven't found any where it ought to be) definitely calls for a revised strategy.

Edit: Nope. It failed when a bugger pathed where he shouldn't, and thus merrily slaughter everyone else. Restart from scratch...Now with even more attempts to keep them from going where they shouldn't, but it's almost impossible, since they ignore both burrow and traffic restrictions when selecting the tile to stand on while working on an adjacent one. Extreme micro management might work.

Edit2: Two failed attempts where they didn't have time to get into cover before the rain set in (in the second case, everyone was inside, nothing from the wagon recovered, and one moron ignored the civilian alert banning the surface for an unknown reason. The alert had been in effect for some time, so it wasn't a case of a pre existing order). An attempt that was initially successful (well, a DFHack Exterminate of an unkillable reanimated head wool was required) failed because the morons totally disregard traffic restrictions, so they walk out onto the 25 cost surface for long distance travel to channel down rather than follow the 1 cost route below ground to dig the up ramp that was actually ordered (it was an up ramp for a reason...). The active civilian alert burrow excluding the surface is ignored since the up ramp tile is permitted (but NOT the surface tile dug down into...). So much for extreme micro management.

[Sanctume]

It took me 8 restarts and it's a matter of luck when the blood starts raining. 

Stairs are slower, so 1 ramp next to wagon seems the best first opening with 1 tile for a block (log) wall. 

All 7 have miner, so take off 3 to do hauling.
I did a 3x5 dig with priority 1, then work outward to get a 3x11 room that should be enough to put everything in. 

The 3x5 is also immedately set as meeting room, and the animals go there, so less animal hauling distance. 

After the 3x11 is dug, priority is to haul everything then deconstruct wagon.

At which point, 1st Inside Burrow, and 2nd Outsite burrow seems to help micro things.

That's pretty much the first challenge. 

If I were to continue, the farm is for next season, so nestbox is more important.

I dug all the way down, all rocks, no caverns? 

If there is at least one, will surface or indoor pastures start growing moss?

I was also thinking digging tunnels at every 5 tiles with a ramp 1 tile away from map edge.

Then just do door and bridge air locks for when migrants manage to avoid blood on the surface.

Oh, heh, I did a reload and lnp / dfhack did an auto clean :p

[vjek]

It took me 8 restarts and it's a matter of luck when the blood starts raining. 

Stairs are slower, so 1 ramp next to wagon seems the best first opening with 1 tile for a block (log) wall. 

All 7 have miner, so take off 3 to do hauling.
I did a 3x5 dig with priority 1, then work outward to get a 3x11 room that should be enough to put everything in. 

The 3x5 is also immedately set as meeting room, and the animals go there, so less animal hauling distance. 

After the 3x11 is dug, priority is to haul everything then deconstruct wagon.
 ...

That's pretty much how I started as well.  Immediately designated stairs down/up, dug a room in the dirt, designated it the meeting area, everyone moves down, the second the dig is complete, setup a stockpile that holds everything, deconstruct the wagon, seal up the path to the surface, and get started on the farms.
I think it was just a few days of game time passing before it was all done.  I tested it four times and got it done without the blood rain starting, so yeah, the RNG can be a cruel mistress. 

There are caverns, they're just quite deep, but no, there is no cave moss in them.  I didn't use any burrows, just a single meeting area.  Glad to see some people are checking it out.  As it turns out, this is a great way to have just the starting seven in an attempt to reach a competitive goal, regardless of init settings.

I'm going to test out setting the titan attack limit to 6, and see if the megabeasts, titans, and semi-megabeasts start showing up right away.  Naively, I set it at 22, which is far far too high, given the mortality rate of migrants.

[PatrikLundell]

I'm considering giving up my umphteenth attempt close to the 1 year mark. Will have to reconsider the strategy once again.

Blood lying on the surface isn't fatal in itself, it seems. It's the falling stuff that's dangerous (possibly excluding small animals, see below).

Long story with no real info below, so feel free to skip.

The first part is actually easy, technically speaking. If you're unlucky, you're stomped on, and if you're lucky you'll make it indoors. I actually deconstruct the wagon immediately, since there's spare dwarfpower at that time anyway. I've dug down two ramps (old habits die hard; there are no trees here, but also, the HOT indication when setting up the pen/meeting area caused me to try to dig deeper, but it seems to be hot everywhere...), then two tiles in, and then a small room (6*6 or so). As soon as the first tile of the room is dug, that tile is designated as a meeting area and animal pen for the animals, and they tend to move on their own accord. It's then removed and reconstructed in a larger version as soon as the room size increases. When the room is dug a stockpile is set up, and I cross my fingers. There tend to be a number of times nobody seems to be willing to do any hauling (nothing hauled, 7 idle).
Meanwhile a civilian alert burrow is set up excluding all of the surface except where stuff to haul is, since I've had buggers idling on the surface. This is then reduced to exclude all of the surface and the tiles down, plus one tile of the two tile corridor when the hauling is done.
At this time you can breathe out, since you're out of harm's way for a while.

There is a cavern (I missed it on my first dig as well), but no moss or herbs, as indicated by vjek (but there ARE creepy crawlers).

I tried to actually dig a ramp all around the edge (3 tiles away, in case wagons need to get fully onto the map before starting to descend), with the intention to allow immigrants and caravans a chance to get below ground without dying, but that seems to be impossible without save scumming since the dorfs ignore all attempts to keep them below ground (traffic restrictions, burrows, dig UP RAMPS, DAMMIT! Nope. Us dorfs love the surrfass wif no horrible green stuff!
I then tried a more cumbersome version where only a single 3 tile wide ramp would be open at a time, using drawbridges to close them off. Unfortunately, the notifications only tell you when blood rain start, not when they stop, and with a map completely covered by blood there is no way to time it (considering reenabling DFHack's performance tweaks just to be able to see the rain stop). I didn't think my miner was exposed but he died in a trail of blood a bit further on...).

My most successful attempt yet (the one I'm considering giving up) just gave up on trying to help immigrants and just went for turtling. I changed my mind a little bit into the summer and built a little loop from my initial entrance (thus avoiding all surface exposure to my dorfs) with two doors (will keep non building destroyers out), and managed to get it ready just as the first immigrant entered the map and immediately died. Some of the batch actually made it though. I built a double 10 tile raising bridge hooked up to a pressure plate. Good theory. The big animals were no problem. Step on plate, continue in, splat. The undead dorfs, however, are FAST!!! Manual door locking got them, though, but it's cheaty. The small undead didn't trigger my plate (set to min weight, to no avail), and a peacock mutilated my "militia" dorf (pick, no armor) so he died of dehydration while resting and everything was brought to a halt by a no bucket bring water (hah) spam lock until he died. His undead self managed to climb out of the smoothed refuse dump hole late winter (i.e. now) to kill one dorf and probably send 3 other into dehydration slow death (where this rambling ends way further down).

Sometime during the summer I tried the cavern. Just two drawbridges and a door, and the report said a giant rat was about. Should be safe, right? Dig the last tile. Oops, a troll there as well, and the rat ran like greased lightning into the fortress. Managed to keep the troll outside, and sent my militia guy chasing the rat. Killed it eventually. Ok, set up a refuse stockpile for the mangled body (had read somewhere than mangled bodies don't rise). A while later an undead rat kills another dorf, before being put down (note to self! Mangled bodies DO rise!).

Autumn brought a caravan, but I didn't either have a trade depot or any open path. The merchant died within a minute (probably a lot less), while the pack animal survived surprisingly long. A large immigration batch arrived later and all dorfs survived. Two small animals (bird and puppy) just died on the way (heat stroke?). Since they were in the middle of the dorf pack, it can't be rain.
Got a mood and the bugger wanted a smithy and a metal bar. Ain't got neither, but a smithy was built, and the caravan did actually carry a bar of pig iron, so let him out. Better an undead on the outside than an insane-to-become-undead inside. Shielded by madness, he sprinted, picked up the bar, made it back, and produced... a goblet. Yay!

Finally go a critter break in the cavern: a giant cave swallow. Out and get some very important resource and send a horde of dorfs trying to brick up a part of the wall, and succeeded in creating an outside pocket, but a named giant bat suddenly appeared. Civ alert! Run! Everyone made it back in, and the bat was still outside. Just sit tight and wait for a new break, and rebuild the badly depleted store of blocks. Dorf has been missing for a week! Hm, yes, undead in the cavern, might be what gave the bat a name? The dorf entered an epic fight with a troll, and actually lost, but the troll's last breath of life was taken by an undead bat. The bat won't path to the fortress (the troll hadn't risen when I opened the path), and I'm not keen on sending a bunch of dorfs for slaughter. Cave-in? Nope. Can't do it there without being exposed. Possibly carve a fortification and pelt it with bone bolts made from my non existent stores of bone (made armor out of it). Could wait for the batch of soon to mature peafowl, though, or make use of their parents.
My engraver (and untrained militia guy) suddenly found dead? Yes, first dead dorf climbed up out of the pit. I think I've been able to throw all the dorf bits down again, but 3 more probably dying dorfs? Might be better to restart and set up an atom smashing garbage disposal system instead.

Conclusion: This is hard...

vjek came in while I wrote my (not so) short story. I was actually up to 23 dorfs after the second immigration wave...down to 21 "now".
Moods are a brutal issue, but won't happen unless you get immigrants. Sitting tight with only the starting 7 should work, given a lot of time (at the current rate it will take less than 100 years...). Risking the cavern and trying to recover caravan items can help a fair bit (mmm, I can SMELL the logs the caravan brought), but it's, well, risky.

Well, vjek, this brutal embark of yours is sure both interesting and frustrating. Good job!
With a mega attack threshold of 6 I wouldn't have let the migrants in, or at least have made a significantly safer entrance that could be locked quickly. As the surface (or cavern) fills with undead, it self propagates and gets very hard to clean up, and I'm not too keen on meeting undeath boosted dragons etc.

[vjek]

Conclusion: This is hard...

Agreed.  Even after years of playing, this one tests my patience.  At least now I have something to give players who think the game is too easy and/or are getting bored.

[PatrikLundell]

Another failed attempt...
It looked so good. Got a complete migrant wave of 4 in the summer, and even a caravan that made it in without dying. I traded, and suddenly a caravan cow somehow died and was reanimated, killing two of my important dorfs and two caravan members. One other was probably set to die of dehydration, despite him making it on top of a barrel and having the drink task (Give water cancellation spam), and another got two broken arms and an infection, but seems to work anyway. Annoying that lack of water means they won't skip the clean state to go on to set broken limbs (I DID actually trade for two splints..).
An autumn migrant wave of 6 made it in successfully as well, the caravan was reported to leave (although it stopped trading after the cow incident, leaving all the stuff in the trade depot), but didn't actually move from where they fled (one of my 4 exit tunnels), I slaughtered a bull calf the immigrants brought, and despite the hide being taken for tanning immediately it reanimated and kills off everyone it encounters. Forgot to check if it was an unkillable head skin. Sigh...
And I'd even made a short foray into the cavern to recover a small supply of precious resources without incident...

Playing it safe, i.e. turtling immediately and not opening for anything, as well as ignoring the cavern, isn't hard (apart from bad butchering luck), once the RNG check during the initial rush to safety is passed, but it would probably be quite boring (unless you're used to generation fortresses), as well as giving up the "first to 5M" championship medal to someone willing to take careful risks without having bad luck.

Time to ponder what can be done better...

Edit: I went back to my last crash recovery save to try to figure out what happened. The save was done immediately after trading. At that point the dead units screen shows a stray cow missing. I don't have any cow, nor have I had one. However, I saw patches of cow tallow and water buffalo cow tallow smeared in my entrance tunnel after the caravan entered, and at that time no cow was show on the units screen which I found fishy even then, so it was probably dead at that time. The caravan brought a cage with a water buffalo cow, as well as an empty one, which I bought. Examination of this cage's contents shows a dead cow inside, and by forbidding the cage I bought no cow has been reanimated for a fair while (a lot longer than the other replays).
Thus, the extreme weather apparently puts caged creatures on an extreme (sometimes fatal) stress. This is quite odd, since I believed a cage protected the contents against anything that doesn't destroy the cage. Hauling the cage away apparently dumps the contents, which promptly reanimates.
A lesson for fellow challengees: empty cages might not be empty, so check them carefully before trading.

[vjek]

... I slaughtered a bull calf the immigrants brought, and despite the hide being taken for tanning immediately it reanimated and kills off everyone it encounters.  ...

I just have to say, PatrikLundell, that the mental imagery conjured by this phrase made my day.     Big flappy calf skin flailing and bashing dwarfs.  That's some good stuff, right there. hehehe.

I got rid of the 'no water' cancellation spam by disabling some labors ... what is it now, feed patients and/or recover wounded? 
Yeah, I think then they just ignore the dead & dying unless they're a doctor and the patient is in the 'hospital'.

[Pseudo]

I appear to be taking a completely different approach to the start than you guys. Interesting.

Deconstruct the wagon immediately. Dig 2 ramps down and a small area connected to one of the two ramps, and a tunnel just disconnected from the other ramp. Also: rush down to get two stone.

Pasture the animals in the small area, and make a 1x2 stone stockpile there as well. It will be needed.

Dump everything into the disconnected ramp. Connect it. Unforbid everything there and build a wall under both ramps. Now you're "safe".

Took me three tries to do the above.

Rush to build a farm, actually, a couple farms. No plump helmets, but one for each other type.

Ditto, build a still and kitchen. You'll need to start up brewing ASAP.

Either build a temporary butchery or atomsmash the grazers. They'll die and reanimate otherwise. With a butchery, you'll need a tanner right next to it, and a raising drawbridge. If you want to play it (somewhat) safe, it should be in a room with a door. I tried to atomsmash the remains before it raised, but didn't succeed. So I now have a room with ~3 undead misc. parts.

Also: wagon has 3 wood. One for a wooden training axe. One for a cage. One for a dormitory. Better than nothing.

Next step is caverns, for wood. Have to be careful, there are baddies. Built a door, then drawbridge, then a cage trap, then another door. I managed to rush in and get ~10 wood before I was driven out by a cave crawler. Enough for beds at least.

Want to gain better access to the caverns, both for wood and for a semi-safe caravan exit.

Problem is dealing with any large creature permanently. You kill them, they'll just reanimate. And atomsmashing won't work against creatures that are large enough. Trapping them, or caving in a natural wall on top of them, works, but is a limited solution. I suspect that the only "good" way is to kill them then immediately atomsmash the corpse, but that is tricky in and of itself. Perhaps drop them down a pit that's as deep as possible with an atomsmasher at the bottom. Preferably with a dense floor at the bottom. Cobaltite? Or maybe copper.

Normally I'd just magma-dump the corpse, but I don't think there is any magma on the map. Or I'd drop a natural wall on it - but I have no way of casting obsidian.

I suspect that I'll end up dropping something on their head repeatedly until they "die", then atomsmashing immediately. It'd have to be something I don't mind getting destroyed, though. Which I suspect will be some crop type. I'd say wood but I'll need it. And no magma so it's needed for glass. Or clay, but there is no clay. Sand, perhaps? If I can dump it out of the bags... Or stone or copper. Thanks for the copper picks. They will be useful for bootstrapping. (I have no problem with melting exploiting copper when there seems to literally be no ore on the map. Thanks for that, by the way.)

Or cage traps, potentially. Though until / unless I capture a GCS that's not the be-all and end-all, by a long shot. Once I do, though...

I've been ignoring the surface for now. Migrants would be nice, as would a caravan, but until I can dig enough to let the caravan in immediately it won't happen.

An idea w.r.t ramps: dig one ramp, remove it and build a wall in its place, dig a second ramp, remove it and build a wall in its place, dig the third ramp, construct the other two ramps again. Hopefully it'll work.

I suspect it is not worth it, aside from the start (and maybe not even then), to butcher animals. At least not until / unless you have cage traps.

I am currently trying to bottle up the caverns. Pretty much: run a bit, check unit list, repeat. Rather boring. Need to for trees, unless I can expand onto the surface, and I cannot.)

Also, chugging numbers on best value per log. Barring caravan, only options are green glass, clear glass, and copper.

For copper, barring coins (which requires trading), best route is probably making bunches of copper corkscrews and melting them down. Return of 150%, so you melt down 2 you can make 3, so 5 logs per output (either serrated disk or spiked ball) with a material multiplier of x2.

For green glass, multiplier of x2 with 1 log per output.

For clear glass, multiplier of x5 with 3 logs per output (1 for ash, 1 to make pearlash, 1 to make the glass).

Overall winner is green glass.

I suspect it'd be better to get a caravan and hope for steel trash (or iron trash).

The caravan cow dying may have been due to lack of food?

You'll want to keep recover wounded on, and have your "hospital" bottle them off forever. But yes, remove feed/water, I suspect.

Edit: wait. Bronze, not copper. Still not worth it though.

[vjek]

My thoughts for cavern access was to use a lever-controlled collapsing constructed floor trap.  Kills -anything- and/or stuns it so you can put traps on the side walls and catch whatever, because it'll be unconscious when it gets slammed into the wall/trap.

A series of them would handle many/any cavern creatures without any risk to the fort.  Just need to time the use of it, and build it properly, which can be tricky if you haven't done it before.

And you're welcome for the no ore, Pseudo.  That was a goal.  Traders could bring it, but you'll have to work for it, for certain... 

you know... giving it some thought, depending on how fast you were, you might be able to build and expand a sort of surface airlock, to avoid being rained on.  If you could build a wall and roof above, you might be able to establish a beachhead on the surface, but it's a dubious endeavor, I think.  I don't know that any creatures in the caverns would ever have metal on them.  Trolls?  I don't think they typically have metal clothing or equipment.  ah well.