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[BoltsFogs]

Update time! One of my masons went fey, and he claimed a craftsdwarf's workshop. The fruits of his labors are very strong in every category, a legendary engraver, and this item.

   

I was so sure he was either going to make a picture referencing either our dwarves killing the undead population or the metalsmith who couldn't accomplish her fey mood withering away in her room, cause she died of thirst after she wandered into her room and I promptly locked her in.

[ March 23, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]

[BoltsFogs]

Update time! The second winter is well upon us, and we recieved seven or eight immigrant dwarves in the autumn season, which consisted of a sworddwarf, a grower, a miner, a peasant, ANOTHER bloody mason, and some other guys. My magma forge and smelter have been built and we're under way on cranking out some copper weapon traps. We have around 50 or so fish and 90+ plant so I'm sure we'll get through winter.

My legendary engraver, God, she just now hit perfectly agile status, and I am simply in awe by how fast she walks around. I swear, she makes Speedy Gonzales look like regular Gonzales. At any rate, They just finished the initial stone detailing of the legendary dining room (37x13 tiles with five support pillars.). Speaking of the support pillars, I had my legendary engraver fully detail them with some pictures. Out of the five, one of them is considered a masterpiece. Let's roll down the line of pictures shall we? For starters, two of them consist of dwarves laboring, so that's nice, commemorating the hard work I'm putting in the fort. One of them consist of speaking with the humans, I traded some of our crafts for all of their leather, and gave the rest of our crafts to them as an offering. Another pillar has crescent moons engraved into it, and that's the masterpiece picture. And the final engraving is...well...a bit different from the others. It consists of a dwarf in a fetal position. I have no idea how that got in there, heh. The only deaths so far have been my first legendary miner when he triggered the magma flood, and the fey metalsmith who went insane and died in her room. Oh well! At any rate, my military has grown to five dwarves, all immigrants, which consist of two competent marksdwarves, a marksdwarf, a novice marksdwarf, and a swordsdwarf, all immigrants. I'll keep things updated as winter rolls along.

UPDATE: Well, it's the middle of winter, and my native (One of the original dwarves) mason, who also happens to have the most experience in said mason skill decided to withdraw from society. After claiming the mason workshop, he made this little number and earned legendary mason status.

   

This brings my total to a legendary miner, engraver, and now a mason. The mason and engraver are masons, which leaves my three other masons as novice masons, or spares. I'll have them build the road or something. It's about time I got it started. Wow, two fey moods and a withdrawal from society in one year. Amazing.

[ March 24, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]

[BoltsFogs]

Update: It's a new year and our dwarves our prosperous. It's the beginning of the third year, the farthest I've ever gotten, as this is quite a milestone. A funny happenstance occurred actually, in the winter time, I was down to less than ten drinks and I had about 70 or so plants in reserve. I built a second still and ordered two brewers to brew up wine non-stop at both stills. Well, now I have less than ten plants but 120+ wine.

I'd like to direct everyone's attention to the local Goddess

I really wouldn't want to see her throw a tantrum if one of her masterpieces gets vandalized. She made a few more engravings, mostly more dwarves and humans and stuff like that, but two that stand out are pictures of demons. In one picture, a demon is screaming, which is a masterpiece. The other picture consists of a demon making a submissive gesture. I am going to order her to make some pictures in the barracks to inspire our military once she gets done with smoothing out the walls and floor on that area of the fort.

[Kylaer]

quote:Originally posted by herrbdog:
<STRONG>Very interesting! Seems weird, but I'ma try it. Then if it is as you say, coal is for... well, extra fuel, that's about it!

As I understand it coal (well, coke) is necessary for steel production IRL, charcoal is too impure.  But that is what I gleaned form wikipedia, and honestly (even though the DF wiki is not part of the main wiki) I can't trust the wikipedia as a real source. It is a great starting place for research, but since anyone can submit information, it is definitely questionable.</STRONG>

Charcoal works just fine for making steel in DF, I've made steel many times without mining any coal. The only thing you need to mine specially for is iron, no need to seek coal for the first smelter and forge, although you'll probably want it later when you start mass-producing steel.

Boltsfogs, any chance you could post a picture of your overall fortress? I'd like to see how you laid it out, it sounds interesting, and congratulations on making it this far!

[BoltsFogs]

quote:Originally posted by Kylaer:
<STRONG>

Charcoal works just fine for making steel in DF, I've made steel many times without mining any coal. The only thing you need to mine specially for is iron, no need to seek coal for the first smelter and forge, although you'll probably want it later when you start mass-producing steel.

Boltsfogs, any chance you could post a picture of your overall fortress? I'd like to see how you laid it out, it sounds interesting, and congratulations on making it this far!</STRONG>

I'll be more than happy to show you and everyone. Bear in mind I'm still no master at the game, and I'm leaving the front entrance small because I'm going to try and emulate a setup Sankis had when he/she made Boatmurdered.

But I'm afraid I don't know where to go to upload the schematic. I managed to make it into JPG form but it's still too big for imageshack to host. Any suggestions?

[ March 24, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]

[Another]

Convert the original BMP to PNG format. It is also lossless conversion in Dwarf Fortres case unlike JPG.

[BoltsFogs]

Thank you Another. And now, for the image of my fortress in all it's infamy. I'd like to point out that the engravings in the barracks, some consist of the two other dwarves raising their artifacts into the air, one engraving has our legendary miner burning up as he found the magma river. Several of them are either dwarves laboring, traveling, or speaking with humans, and some of them have humorously appropriate titles for them too. And then there are the demon pictures, I don't know why, but they all consist of a demon either cringing or screaming, and in the food storage, there's a demon making a submissive gesture. A nice way to inspire our troops =)

   

I'd like to say this fort already has a bit of history. Down there where all the gold and ore is, I've been ambushed by two troglodytes, each at seperate times. The first one made his way up when no one was down there and triggered a rock trap by the door, wounding him. and when my miner came down to mine out some more ore, the troglodyte sprang from ambush, but it was an injured troglodyte, and he was stunned. After my miner ran back a bit, I drafted him into a one man army, and he made quick work of the poor trog before getting back to work.
Fast forward to later, one of my jewelers was going down to haul some ore near the magma forge for storage when another troglodyte ambushed him from the northern bridge by the door. He ran back into the mines a bit and the troglodyte was hanging around the bridge when one of the war dogs came running down the hall and attacked the troglodyte. Unfortunately the troglodyte wound up wounding the dog to the point where it bled to death a few seconds later, but another war dog was charging down the hall to attack the troglodyte and my jeweler got a backbone and joined in with the second dog, wrestling it and killing it in short order. Both the dog and troglodyte were hauled to the outside graveyard.

Asyou can see by the chasm, I've made several tombs, one for Mr. Boatmurdered just because of his name, and the others for my legendary people. In the middle by my huge dining room are my housing units for any and all immigrants, which I need to get started on beds and doors. That food storage used to be full of plump helmets. At one point late in the winter, I had around 70-80 plump helmets and around less than ten drinks. I made an additional still to help production of the drinks, and I order both stills to repeatedly brew the plants. Long story short, when spring rolled around I wound up with roughly 10 plants and 120 drinks, funny when you think about it. All those workshops and stuff on the left side of the river, the only permanent industries there are the carpenter, the craftshops, and the mason. Those bedrooms are reserved for the original cast of dwarves, which, sadly has been reduced to 6 thanks to my legendary miner unleashing the deadly flood of magma.

[ March 24, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]

[schnobs]

regarding steelmaking: charcoal works a treat.

As to charcoal being insufficient for real life steelmaking: I don't know exactly when the idea of making coke came up, but it sounds reasonably modern to me. Certainly renessaince or later. Steel was known long before, although I'm open for the possibility that 10th century "steel" has little in common with what we call steel today.

And about where you can find coal: anywhere past the chasm, really. On rare occasions (in places where the chasm deep in the mountain), there may even be some small amount of coal on the outdoors side of the chasm. I've seen that once or twice in a dozen-odd fortresses.

[BoltsFogs]

Well everyone, hold on to your hats cause things at Menrack just became alot more interesting. I just recieved my first nobles ever, and I have NOTHING prepared for them so far. No rooms, no nothing. Here's a screenshot of the incoming migrant wave.

   

I predict difficulty, especially since I've had no experience with nobles and these two being my first ever... GOOD THING I JUST MADE TOMBS!

In total, the dwarf immigration total is 22. That's right, 22. Twenty normal dwarves plus the two nobles bringing me to a grand total of 55 dwarves. Lord help me. Lord help me indeed.

I must say, my legendary mason, miner, and engraver have proved themselves once again by bailing me out and setting up their rooms with all speed. All that's left to do to make themselves comfortable is to build a few doors, and make some tables and chairs for their offices and dining rooms as their bedrooms are already set up fully. And yes I am making the cages and chains, the immigrant wave gave me two spare metalsmiths bringing my total to four. And now I have two carpenters, and one in the making cause I assigned one of the new peasants to be a carpenter. The immigrant wave had the perfect mix of skills that I needed, and a ton of normal peasants to do the peasant work and to customize into specific tasks at a later date.

[ March 24, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]

[Jaqie Fox]

just make a nice 6x10 room, engrave it, and put about six of the highest quality beds, chairs, and tables in, along with at least four armor racks, weapon racks (or whatever those are called), and chests in there.  Everything but the beds can be made of stone.  Assign each of them a table, chair, and bed and they will be happy.

[AlanL]

I would just like to point out that more often than not actually, my first steel bar is produced with no coal, charcoal only.

[schnobs]

You may relax about the nobles' rooms. My first nobles in the current fortress have been without any rooms for 18 months, and nothing bad happened.

[BoltsFogs]

quote:Originally posted by Jaqie:
<STRONG>just make a nice 6x10 room, engrave it, and put about six of the highest quality beds, chairs, and tables in, along with at least four armor racks, weapon racks (or whatever those are called), and chests in there.  Everything but the beds can be made of stone.  Assign each of them a table, chair, and bed and they will be happy.</STRONG>

Unfortunately you're a tad late with that tidbit of info, however I WILL store it for future use.

In unrelated news, twenty two years ago today, men have cried, women have screamed, children were driven mad, and the ram known as Aries rejoiced, for I was born.

[Bas Cost Budde]

Happy birthday then, BoltsFogs!

[BoltsFogs]

I want to ask everyone who has been interested in reading my fort updates. Currently my legendary engraver has made several pictures of demons screaming or cringing, including one of a demon looking confused and one of making a submissive gesture. If anyone wants me to post them, just ask.

Update: My nobles are now situated in their new home on Menrack, the jail has been built, and production of plants is on a steep rise. However I am now facing another problem, it seems all of my dwarves want to drink in unison now, forcing several to drink from my only well, which has lead to several drinking from the river which has now problably triggered an eventual chain of attacks from groups of monsters. I don't have any experience in battles with monsters aside from the packs of rhesus macaques, and the solitary troglodytes springing from ambush, but those are hardly fights. I think I'll just chain some dogs up on the bridge and let them take care of any problems, as I also have a few weapon traps on one side of the river. If I have any interesting battles occur I'll be sure to keep you all updated.

Edit: Thank you very much Bas Cost Budde =)

[ March 25, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]