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[NCommander]

I had to look up what a nightjar was; there's no entry on the DF wiki for them but ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightjar ...

*welp*

[Dame de la Licorne]

FYI, the cutest ones are the most dangerous. 

-Dame de la Licorne

[Fleeting Frames]

I suggest seeing if blowgunners get taken out by the FBs, if you plan on using marksdwarves. I wouldn't consider ranged attacks too dangerous on their own, but they can maim, and they are coated in GCS venom.

Otherwise, I'd probably try caving in either ceilings or sealing-in boxes, depending on geography, or if that is not an option minecarts (a more permanent solution, but more tricky to set up).

Meanwhile, being webbed from behind a fortification just gives you a silk farm. Which is good, since your 4 GCS are not likely to survive with that fauna (maybe first one to seal in should be some native cavern critters).

That said, with climbing I'm not sure there's all that big difference in defending from flyers than regular spidery ones in the caverns. They'd still scale the top of walls on their random wanderings, see your dwarves, and come in from the sides even if you have an overhang, so you'd still pretty much need an airtight box.

[NCommander]

Really game? Really? I'm starting exploration of the caverns via carefully placed dropshafts. I'm using hatchcovers so I can rapidly seal the place up again

[NCommander]

This is a masterwork dog leather journal owned by Kogan 'NCommander' Kelnakuth. On its covered is adored images of seven dwarfs. The image related to the founding of Scorchedgravel, the last Dwarven settlement.

Spring 553

We must look towards long-term survival here. That means we need to defend ourselves. The archery tower is a start, but we need to go further. As such, I'm working in the magma forge.



And have the first squad setup.



Looking long term, we need to gain access to wood. There's no way around it. We might get a few logs every decade or so on the surface, but it will never be enough to sustain us. We need the ash for soap, as well as beds. To put it more bluntly, we need to dig deeper.

Unfortunately, that's not going to be easy.





Evil is lining up in the caverns to wreck us, and webbers can destroy lords. If we are to survive, we need to go better. I've given everyone a silver hammer for the time being; we're out of leather and thus don't have any quivers. At least if we get in caught melee, we won't be completely defenseless, and we can work on building up other useful skills. Like discipline.

(NOTE TO FUTURE OVERSEERS: Order the quivers first, then the rest).

Late Spring 553



What a noise. We can hear the beasties fighting below. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll annihilate each other.



Nothing we can do yet. However, I'm getting concerned that we haven't found more iron. I'm starting to suspect we need to go up, and order Nix to dig several Z levels above the base. She quickly hits paydirt.



I have a new hallway and minecart route ordered constructed so we can start moving the ore down quickly.



Summer 553

We're getting there.





Slowly but surely, we are getting there. As our newest members of the fort get close to their first birthday, I realize we need to be able to cloth them. Most of the pig tails have gone to brewing, but we have a flock of llamas to sheer.



And more leather on the way.

I'm also happy that our iron supply is growing nicely. Perhaps this time next year we'll start having a nice supply of steel to go with it.



Despite our good fortune as of late, I worry that trouble is lurking. Are we going to be ready for it ...

[Imic]

We must diiiiiiiiiiig!!!!!!!!!

[Dame de la Licorne]

Wow!  This fort really hates you.  On the plus side, these are nice updates.  Keep them coming!

-Dame de la Licorne

[NCommander]

One of the things I'm getting used to is building almost everything out of metal due to a lack of wood and getting bolts cranked out. They're starting to level up in marksdwarf but its slow going, and actually having to run the entire cloth production chain; usually I simply buy out the wagons which tends to keep up with supply nicely. I'm fairly impressed with my metal industry given I've only got seven dwarfs, I usually can't manage this type of production in forts with much more.

EDIT: Turkeys exploded; I'm going to have a legendary butcher/tanner at this rate ... I've stopped farming all together; we're now entirely a meat based fort.

[Fleeting Frames]

...Somehow, I doubt the effectiveness of silver war hammers against flying webbers, and you didn't embark in range of a tower either. What's up with that?

However, I take it that white layer next to hematite is marble?

And yeah, blacksmithing is indeed mostly-neglected labor. Why make things out of gold when you can make them out of native gold, after all. And as for barrels/pots, iirc you struck jet.

[NCommander]

Marksdwarfs (or more specifically crossbows), when forced into melee use the hammer skill. They won't train it while holding a crossbow unless they spar (which is rare, or a bug). As such, giving them some time as a hammer dwarf makes them significantly less squishy should I screw up.

I've got a trick that gets them to use ranges much more frequently (its on the wiki), but it won't build discipline which is a problem. Handing them a hammer solves two problems at once. Assuming you've got enough bolts, you can get an elite marksdwarf within a year. Bolts are a headache for this fort, usually I have excess power or can train up a ton of bonecavers. Right now, neither is an option :/.

[Fleeting Frames]

Bow hammers....Is something I have not tested. Looking at the wiki, they're about half as effective?

I wonder if giving them a second weapon wouldn't work better...Though my experiences indicate that a dwarf with pick primary and bow secondary is not likely to use bow when chasing stuff down.

Iirc the "fail to shoot around a bend downwards" trained legendary marksdwarves in about a month with bait while saving all the bolts - effectively demonstrating that live training is much faster ( a year is quite a while, if acceptable in generational fort ). Though usefulness with 0.43 kealess map is limited.

As I take it you dislike FBs, while it may not keep all the bolts, how about solving two birds with one stone with FB training ranges instead?

Looking at the list of FBs, only Ayanu has deadly spittle, which in my experience tends to be frequently harmless, even if Bugsud has fire and Thiliri gas.

You lose their meat, granted, but not like you're running low on food.

[NCommander]

I'm aware that live training is actually very fast, but there's a major downside to saving the bolts is they get split. That causes a LOT of lag, and reloads take forever because they go hunt for each bolt in the fortress plus you can't bin ammo, they won't find it.

What I can't find are the forgotten beasts. The flying webber is the only one I can see, and I think its trapped in the bore shaft I drilled way back when I embarked, and I have a few FB corpses. My cavern boreholes found another dead FB as well, and land in Atlantis (yay!) with accessible trees. Cavern 2 (which I'm calling Bone Valley), is pretty lifeless, and very corpse filled, plus a magma pool; I don't have much of a map of it yet. I've got five FBs listed on the deceased screen.

Once I have a complete picture of what the caverns look like, I'll move from there, but I'm looking at a lighting in and out on 1. The downside is the slip of land is right near the edge. I can easily get ambushed but I *really* need the wood.

[NCommander]

The Scorchgravel military had their first sorte and the first beast has fallen to our crossbows!

[Fleeting Frames]

Congratulations! May the single gremlin fall before your bows soon.

Hm, haven't considered the FPS issue in splitting. More lag than they should be causing by their item counts? That's unexpected.

[NCommander]

Congratulations! May the single gremlin fall before your bows soon.

Hm, haven't considered the FPS issue in splitting. More lag than they should be causing by their item counts? That's unexpected.

Stacks exist as a single item with a quantity modifier. Split bolts exist as separate items. Right now, the fort is floating at about 50 FPS due to the birdsplosion. Butchers are working on it but they still have another 70 birds left -_-