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[jellyman]

Having fun and frustration with this interesting game.  After a few fortresses and lots of reading I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.  I decide I'm going to follow an idea for a long term starting build on the wiki.  I want good armour for safer training of my miltary.  So I invest maximum starting points into an armour smith's skill.  Then add a maximised metal smith and weapon smith as well.  To round it out I invest in a maximised stone crafter, and a few skill points in growing I think.

Things go fine with my new fortress.  And then my first strange mood hits - my intended pride and joy armour smith.  I frantically dive with my miners looking for whatever ore he is demanding and fail.  Arrggghh.  Then my next strange mood hits - its his side kick Metal smith.  And he fails as well.  And I haven't smithed a single item yet.

I push on gamely.  A few more strange moods, some fail, and I think an engraver succeeds.  Nothing consequential.  Then my stone crafter hits legendary.  Then my next strange mood is successful - and I have two legendary stone crafters.  A while later I get another successful strange mood and a legendary jeweller.  Haven't explored jewellery yet so I decide to start experimenting with some green glass.  Get it all going and give my jeweller a command to start cutting and encrusting.  I notice he has the first gem cutting task as his current job.  And then suddenly there is a 'XX is struck down' (my legendary jeweller).  No warning of a dwarf interrupted due to a monster of any type or any other reason I could figure out what happened to him - totally out of the blue and never seen anything like it.  Maybe it was one of the unicorns or gorrilas wandering the map.

So I guess the game has had its fun torturing me.  I'll just grab the other novice jeweller and get started.  And he gets a strange mood.  And is successful.  Hooray its balancing out a little.  Except that the new legendary skill is gem cutting.  And I find that apparently there is not such thing as a high quality cut gem...

At least when I decided to forge some moderate quality battle axe and give it to my still dabbling recruits they've managed to gain a few skill levels with hurting each other.  So far....

[Matias]

Actually there is something like a high quality cut gem. It's called large gem and it is finished good on its own and it can be encrusted and decorated as well... It's not very common though and I think it has nothing to do with gem cutters skill...

-Matias

[Lightning4]

quote:Originally posted by jellyman:
<STRONG>Get it all going and give my jeweller a command to start cutting and encrusting.  I notice he has the first gem cutting task as his current job.  And then suddenly there is a 'XX is struck down' (my legendary jeweller).  No warning of a dwarf interrupted due to a monster of any type or any other reason I could figure out what happened to him - totally out of the blue and never seen anything like it.  Maybe it was one of the unicorns or gorrilas wandering the map.
</STRONG>

If you let your hammerer and captain of the guard roam free and you let a gem mandate from a noble slip, a jeweler can be punished. The first few only give them maybe a broken limb or mangled limb, but repeat offenders rarely live. I'm going to guess that since he was able to do his job, it was probably a really bad lucky shot by the sherrif/captain beating him up. Beatings normally aren't fatal.

Tantrumers also can accidentally kill someone in a fit of rage. I think this is pretty rare though, I've only ever had tantruming military dwarves do it.

But I'm willing to bet it was one of your pompous asshats who threw a fit because he didn't get his obscure hard to find gems. This is why most people make noble processors.

If you want to know for sure if this is still recent, check the sherrif or captain of the guard, or the hammerer. If one of their recent thoughts is "Took joy in slaughter recently", give him an all expenses paid trip to the chasm.

[ September 10, 2007: Message edited by: Lightning4 ]

[John Johnston]

An alternative method would be to train a peasant up as an armoursmith by using low-quality or readily available metals.  Allow hir to get a small level of armoursmith skill (just enough for it to be hir highest tradeskill) and then send hir back to hauling and nursing duties.  If you like, do this for several dwarves.  If one of them should be struck with a legendary mood (apart from possession), it will either make or break them; either you will end up with a legendary armoursmith (and artefact!) or they will go mad, but you shouldn't need to spend huge amounts of time training them (although you might struggle to find a use for a hundred bronze helms     ).  

This seems to work for me better than spending points at startup - in my current fortress I tried to start with a highly skilled metalsmith, and while they haven't reached legendary yet in any smith skill (despite being busy) I'm dreading the moment a strange mood hits them.  By contrast I've trained up a couple of novice smiths and had both of them fall victim to strange moods that they couldn't complete ("you want blocks?  we've got rock blocks and stone blocks of every flavour, we've got glass blocks, knives, sharp sticks...  PUT DOWN THAT BATTLEAXE, BOMREK!") but hey, if either of them had found the stuff they were looking for, I'd've been quids in with a legendary armoursmith.

[ September 11, 2007: Message edited by: John Johnston ]

[CautionToTheWind]

In my current fortress, i spent some starting points to get an proficient armorsmith and a weaponsmith, and the sacrifice of one proficient grower (so i started with 1 grower instead of 2).

One grower instead of 2 made the winter close, but without famine. I had trouble because the river didn't flood at initial digging and it also didnt flood until i had my farm setup with floodgates on the other side of the river at late summer.

Anyway, we survived, so soon we have the first mood. Who else but the armorsmith? I had all workshops except leather and the lava ones. I only had a lava smelter, not the other ones. But he couldn't find a workshop he would like to take, so he just idled at the dining room until he went crazy.

So, how wrong can it go? Lets say he decapitated the pro. grower, and killed the weaponsmith, before dying himself. So there went the plan of having good armor and weapons. And eating too.

[flight]

Supposedly, once you hit magma the regular metalsmith's forge isn't good enough. He was waiting for you to build a magma forge.

[CautionToTheWind]

Thanks for the tip. The problem is that he started the mood JUST as the miner dug magma. I still hadn't found hematite, and it took a lot of digging to find. I dug vast tunels up and down in the area between the chasm and the magma river and iron could only be found about 4 screen lengths vertically away from my middle corridor, which was vertically aligned with the default starting position by the rock face.

By the time he went crazy, i had just finished the magma smelter.