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So what kind of Necromancers are we wanting....

Are we looking for a revemap of the old warlocks?  I can begin looking at the old warlocks, I'm hoping they was still in ye olde...
- 12 (46.2%)
Are we looking for all new?  Tell me what you would like to see it in it..
- 5 (19.2%)
something in between?  comment below on what you want back in and what should go/replace...
- 9 (34.6%)

Total Members Voted: 26

Voting closed: June 28, 2017, 02:28:53 pm


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Author Topic: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities  (Read 4969 times)

Amostubal

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #15 on: August 03, 2017, 07:45:28 pm »

okay I'm back to work on the project... I need a walk through... I've started 3 warlock fort on ye olde masterwork and I just don't have a clue what I'm doing lol... I need to get to a full successful fort somehow before I really can say I understand what is in and out...

On the whole port over issue... its not easier... the warlocks easily contain some 20,000 to 50,000 lines of code(potentially) that will have to be reviewed and determined what did what... your pretty much either going to go ground up recreation of the warlocks or a lengthy search fix and replace of bad entries... and there is literally a whole different code system to accomplish half the tasks...  I'm not even sure if the magic part is even code effective...

If I can get to a fully functional fort and play it through for a few years... I can get a cooncept on how they actually function, then try and determine how they accomplish it and what is no longer available to 43.05...

I am every second I look at this closer to scrapping the project and going full rogue with either my own creation or just going on to some other project.
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LMeire

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #16 on: August 04, 2017, 10:15:30 pm »

So are you looking for tips or should we provide you with some functioning examples of Tower/Dungeons? I can do either but the example would likely take me a while if I were to be thorough with warlock-specific notes and such. I've started on the fort now, should be done by at most next week.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 04:13:09 pm by LMeire »
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Rekov

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #17 on: August 06, 2017, 01:30:33 pm »

I've never played the old MW Warlocks, so I don't have a particular nostalgia for them.

When I think Necromancers though, I do think of living people controlling the undead, not a faction comprised exclusively of the undead.
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Amostubal

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #18 on: August 07, 2017, 03:17:16 pm »

So are you looking for tips or should we provide you with some functioning examples of Tower/Dungeons? I can do either but the example would likely take me a while if I were to be thorough with warlock-specific notes and such. I've started on the fort now, should be done by at most next week.

Yes I would love to see a write up on how this race works... because currently I've shot in the dark enough I'm mad at them... Additionally... I'm not use the system of MW 6.02 / DF 35.04 and honestly I just don't know what I'm suppose to be doing... I'm not even sure if I'm doing things right... It seems that some of the menus I use in 43.05 don't give me the same acurate data in 35.04, so yeah I feel like a complete newb in DF when I operate on that system.

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LMeire

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #19 on: August 07, 2017, 07:13:22 pm »

The main thing with them is that you need a constant supply of dead bodies to do anything notable, Dwarves might rely on "goblinite" every now and then but they still have other options that Warlocks don't- like trade and metallurgy. Warlocks have to grind all their natural resources to dust for magic and get all their real weapon metals from the meat/bone/leather industry- and they also spend those critical resources on making more minions as well as physically enhancing the ones they already have.

Also it's basically required that you have DT open to assign labors to zombie slaves  when you make them because the game's UI thinks they're just livestock.
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Amostubal

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #20 on: August 08, 2017, 08:38:01 am »

yeah I'm putting this on the back burner for now.  I just can't wrap my head around the old version... and I don't want to make a whole new creation, since the masses really want their old version brought back.
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coolphoton

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #21 on: August 08, 2017, 05:10:18 pm »

The main thing with them is that you need a constant supply of dead bodies to do anything notable, Dwarves might rely on "goblinite" every now and then but they still have other options that Warlocks don't- like trade and metallurgy. Warlocks have to grind all their natural resources to dust for magic and get all their real weapon metals from the meat/bone/leather industry- and they also spend those critical resources on making more minions as well as physically enhancing the ones they already have.

Also it's basically required that you have DT open to assign labors to zombie slaves  when you make them because the game's UI thinks they're just livestock.
It helps that you can force attacks with the overseer raids. Do this early and often. Raise zombies and use them for all non-quality work(you will need a lot more workshops than for dorfs) and as haulers. Early on they can stop an attack cold. Later they can still hold the army back until you can use the 'raise all undead on the map' spell, this will get you 2 or more years to train and equip some dredknot skellys. If you can get a full library set up and the Overseer trained your nearly unstoppable. Mind you, if you got lucky with the local wild life(high multiple berths and a quick maturation time) you could be set for every thing(weapons grade metal, food, drink, souls, leather) but scalps and coal, provided you neglect zombies to start. Peat and sand are huge boons for the warlocks, infinite coal and green glass gems(for training up your skelly craftsmen), respectively. I have had 2 separate 20+ year forts with them(decaying undead really helps)... and one of those had the last 5 years with the circus in town.

There complicated, but honestly there easier to play than most of the other races defense wise.
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burrito25man

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #22 on: August 09, 2017, 12:35:51 pm »

yeah I'm putting this on the back burner for now.  I just can't wrap my head around the old version... and I don't want to make a whole new creation, since the masses really want their old version brought back.

I actually really liked the idea you posted, especially with the master-apprentice theme. But alas, it is what is is.

I'm just coming back from not playing for a few months. Is there a workaround for butchering sentient corpses now? I noticed you brought the possibility up
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It's a slippery slope.  You start out modding, then move on to hard DFHacking, and next thing you know you're making your own games...

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wrightly678

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #23 on: August 09, 2017, 09:13:12 pm »

Hey Amostubal,
I'm a bit late to the party - I'm on vacation and can't upload any of my old warlock forts, also none were perfect endgame forts but I think it seems like they're the only saves you'll get (I wont be able to upload them till friday/ Saturday when I return to a land line connection -Also is there a preferred site for uploading DF saves?)
I'm gonna open up my saves and see if I can give you a write up of the race in general.

But Before all that I just want to thank you for even considering this project.
I loved the warlock theme and really appreciated Meph  making them in the first place - their absence in the "New" DF has largely soured my interest -
though I've been meaning to play a succubi fort sometime.

But I'd really implore you not to be too rigid to the old warlock blueprint.
From what I've seen there are 12 votes out of 26 for you to rework the olde version.
You said the code-lines likely number between 20 000 and 50 000.

Now I can only speak for myself But I'd much rather have "Amostubal Necromancers" than have you get burnt out half way through trying recode 20 000 lines of  "Meph warlocks"

Your idea sounds awesome, if that creative spark is what you need to follow through on the project run with in - The masses be damned!(only 12 people)


that being said I will provide a write up/ overview of the old system.
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wrightly678

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #24 on: August 09, 2017, 10:55:27 pm »

For simplicitys sake lets start with the primary Civ members

Warlocks
These are the most important members of the Civ, You'll only ever have a handful unless, like me you resort to shamless save scumming.
There are 3 times when you get warlocks 1. the embark 2. your first migrant wave 3. your third and final migrant wave.
Outside of buying skills during embark warlocks are restricted to Research, Writing, Alchemy and Chemistry, Herbalism, Medical Experiments, Working with Gems, Trading and sorcery
they can use magic and are required workers for many high level workshops
Ghouls
These guys are crucial in the begining. Warlocks NEED bodies and souls basically right from the begging 2 or three ghouls set as a military squad and ordered to attack local wildlife can supply that need -they're fast and somewhat durable. In my opinion their importance fades over time as the skeletons become more important but in the beginning ghouls are key.
To help with this role their natural butchers - they'll hunt down Kea's rip the heads off  and after you.
order them to dump the bodies next to the butcher shop they'll rip out the meat/bones/souls for processing
They're created at the Graveyard - there's supposed to be a way to create ghouls from caged prisoners but In my experience it just creates loyalty cascades - Graveyards the way to go.
(also if later in the game you want to armor them stick to leather, they need to stay fast to hunt down wildlife metal Armour slows em down)
Skeletons
Its likely you'll end up with some skeletons in your embark typically I made them miners or stonecrafters to carve out a shelter/ provide hourglasses.
But their real role is in the later game - they dont sleep - dont tantrum -dont eat or drink - they can fight - and they can do most non-magical crafting.
They don't learn skills normally and must be deliberately trained at the inscriptor.
Vampires
Vampires are tricky - I never got the to work you're supposed to be able to keep them inline with blood wine - To keep a steady supply of blood there's a special pet (Bloodpig or something -no wait a blood goat) that can be milked to provide blood, but in my fort Milking resulted in a blood filled bucket which I couldn't figure out how to get it into a barrel, which is important because to make blood wine you need a BARREL full of blood rather Than a BUCKET. My inability to supply bloodwine meant that every vampire alive in my fort posed a threat to my precious warlocks as feeding is fatal.

hence forth all vampires are starved to death in a locked room.

The Actual Embark
Embarking on top of a necromancer tower provides a level of defense as all warlock units are UNDEAD friendly. you'll want as many warlocks as possible all though its RNG based so if you only get 1 out of 7 as warlocks the only out is to abort the fort. You also want atleast one ghoul whom you should buy a few skill levels with dodging, and biting.
you'll also need miners and wood cutters (usually skeletons).
But you also need crafters, a mason/carpenter a Stonecarver now usually warlocks cant learn this stuff but by purchasing the skills at embark it becomes doable
unlike dwarves you probably need 2 anvils, rather than one

Starting off build a crafterswork shop a carpenters and maybe a masons you want doors beds and hourglasses
send your miners off to carve you out a shelter. and the sick your ghoul squad after the local wild life. Build a soul siphon near you're other buildings asap and make some stone hourglasses at the crafters workshop(rotten corpses provide no souls , and souls rot rapidly - these next steps have to be done quickly ) .
Once your ghouls have successfully killed a couple badgers or whatever have the build you a butcher shop and then designate a dumping zone near by.
using dump commands have the ghouls bring the corpses back to the butchershop, reclaim the bodies and make sure butchery is enabled on your ghouls.
the shop will be spitting out souls/meat/bones in no time - Make sure sorcery is enabled on your warlocks, then go to your Soul Syphon and order your warlocks to store
the souls in a phylactery - This stores the souls in an hourglass to stop them from rotting.

Make a totem out of some meerkat's skull throw in a couple stone blocks and 3 phylacterys and you can build a Necromantic Shrine(don't bother with necromantic circles they're cheaper but can only make uncontrollable zombies) this will allow you to start producing skeletons A warlock worker is required, alongside 8 bones a totem a scrap of leather I think and a single soul phylactery.
making a bunch of these creates you're workforce - but be aware if skeletons are away from warlocks for 2 weeks they turn neutral and wander around aimlessly - in late game you'll likely endup pasturing pylons(LARGE GEM and a Soul phylactery at your necro shrine) around your base to keep control over them - but in the beginning its to expensive- if a skele wanders off on you just create a military squad under overlord assign a warlock and station a warlock near by any lost skeletons, after a couple seconds your warlock will smack you skeletons around abit and they'll come to their senses (This is combat logged as "The Necromancer Takes control over an undead servant")

Once you have a good work force and a small soul Stockpile you'll want to build an ethereal gate, This is technically a Furnace so your hotkey s will be [b)[e][a].
It costs 3 souls and a couple stone blocks, it allows any sorcerer you have to make you furniture and blocks for free.
Later on you can create an ethereal forge which creates weapons and armour for free aswell but the melt after 1-3 months unlike ethereal gate products.

to make lasting metals you'll want a crematorium and a corrupted forge both under the [b)[e] menu.
The Crematorium can create ash from vermin remains/wood/bone aswell as coke(furnace fuel) from wood.
Add some coke and some ash to your growing bone supply from your ghouls wildlife expeditions and you have all you need to create some Iron bone at you're corrupted forge.
this is a cheap metal but I think its better than bronze - making a couple whips/ scourges for you're ghouls might be a good idea
also Making a graveyard to produce more ghouls might be a good Idea, as they make up your main defense early on other than walling yourself off(which really hurts you since you need to be collecting souls/ meat/bones).
Just be careful the job to try to create a ghoul has a 5% success rate(I think) and takes a whole stack of meat - irrespective of the number of meats
(so if you have 3 stacks of [Chipmunk meat(33)] you can consume 100 units of meat for three 5% success rate ghoul summoning attempts) add in the fact that ghouls only eat meat and unlike skeletons will tantrum without it means you have to be careful

What else would you like to know, all of it?
« Last Edit: August 09, 2017, 10:57:18 pm by wrightly678 »
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coolphoton

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #25 on: August 10, 2017, 03:22:29 pm »

I can't argue that ghouls are useful. My problem is that they are resource heavy early game. I find zombies almost as good early game(for everything but hunting), and if you can get a large breeding stock of snakes (scale leather clothing is nearly as good as bronze armor on something with no pain) zombies are not bad mid game too.
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LMeire

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #26 on: August 11, 2017, 12:29:59 am »

Some of that is a bit outdated, I'm pretty sure the final .34.11 version doesn't have vampires as a caste in it. Unless they're just much rarer and I haven't gotten one as a fluke or something, would explain why the vampire feeding reactions are still in the bloodwinery. BTW since you mentioned not being able to control your vampires though, .34.11 had a quirk with burrows that if you knew if someone was a vampire (even actual vampirism and not a weird caste) you could assign them to a burrow and they'd be perfectly harmless as long as nobody fell asleep in that burrow- because feeding on a sleeping person is actually just a "job" that they qualify for and they're not allowed to take jobs outside of their assigned burrow. It's technically an exploit that no longer applies to .43.03 and s doesn't really help Amostubal, but I figured you might like to know.

--

Speaking of possibly outdated ideas, I somehow forgot that tantrum spirals were a thing once upon a time and need to start my dungeon from scratch. Sorry about that.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2017, 12:33:18 am by LMeire »
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Wyzack

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #27 on: August 24, 2017, 10:02:44 am »

I was planning on making a thread about this but i suppose this thread is a better place for it.

I was initially really bummed when I heard that Warlocks would not be returning in favor of a necromancer civ because I assumed it would be more akin to vanilla's necromancers. I think that doing this would be a huge mistake. The Warlocks such as they were in .34 were a buggy mess but thematically they were so interesting and the faction itself had so much character.

A race of not quite human creatures, doomed to near extinction at the dawn of time and yet with unparalleled mastery of the dark arts. Hiding out in the fringes of the world until a sufficiently powerful overlord can put out the call, gather the remaining strength of Warlock-kind and begin their fel research anew to bring about doom for the so called civilized races of the world.

Having the Warlocks themselves in such short supply was a really interesting dynamic, especially since it was possible to restore them from the dead at a massive cost in souls. Managing souls and soul gems as well as corpses for your two most important resources and assembling hordes of skeletal minions from whatever parts are available was always so kick ass. They had a ton of interesting workshops like the various arcane libraries that are gated behind how many scalps you could get for book binding, the raiding workshops, the ethereal gate that allows you to mass produce coloured blocks and furniture, the ability juice up your warlock's stats using soul energy, the ability to raise all dead on the map. This last one was really cool because you could tactically scatter corpses all over the map and then raise them all during a particularly troubling siege to get some extra cannon fodder.

Some things kinda sucked, mostly because of bugs. In particular transforming captured prisoners to ghouls never seemed to work right as your guys would always kill them right away, and i had a similar problem when building the huge bone collossus guys too. I know the scripting is pretty complex and the major update broke it all, but if these features could somehow be made to work or at the very least removed the mode would be even better for it

I may have gushed a bit too much here but i cannot stress enough how sad it would be to lose all the things that made the last iteration of Warlocks so damn interesting and fun to play

TL:DR Old Warlocks were not only really fun to play but really thematically interesting and losing all that with a port to Vanilla's (by comparison) less interesting necromancers would be a huge shame
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Wyzack

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #28 on: August 24, 2017, 10:04:31 am »

Also if fairly far along warlock fort saves are still needed I think i have pretty good one kicking around someplace
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Amostubal

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Re: ☼Necromancers☼ Discussion of possibilities
« Reply #29 on: August 24, 2017, 07:59:42 pm »

I'm sorry but I will not be resurrecting the warlocks/necromancers/etc. I've decided not to release any more updates for the time being, preferring to wait for the next DF version and its companion DFHack/TWBT.  Even then I probably wont be bringing back warlocks or necromancers... I've decided if I'm working on masterwork it will be primarily to continue repairs and leave new races up to the community to create.  Besides I'm hoping Meph will return before then.
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