Dwarf Fortress > DF Adventure Mode Discussion

Iron Man Adventure Mode

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sionlife:
I have been trying to play adventure mode exclusively these past couple of months. I am used to following the advice given in the Powerplay guide, but now I am wondering if the real challenge is to do things by the book so to speak. If you power farm your skills in the beginning without facing real danger, then things become a bit too easy later I find.

So I was wondering, how many of you have played "iron man" mode and what is the furthest you have got before getting killed? What I mean by iron man is basically you do not do most things as recommended in the powerplay guide, including but not limited to:

repeatedly doing low damage strikes to defenceless animal training dummies
repeatedly throwing objects like mud and coins into thin air to level up the throwing skill
very selectively choosing the character traits so as to end up with the most easiest to satisfy needs as possible
stealing armor items at your starting location, ie just walking out without paying for them
the use of macros to level up skills when and wherever possible
using strategies, while not being outright exploits, feel a bit cheaty such as sneaking everywhere, using the OP status of throwing, etc.

So basically, a squeaky clean adventure. How far have you got?

mikekchar:
You can go quite far. I have cleaned out entire dark pits with an elf before.  He defeated a vampire weapon lord among other exploits.  I've never actually defeated any mega creatures, but I've basically not tried to (I'm more interested in other aspects of adventure mode).  I'm even the kind of guy that thinks that using a shield is "cheaty" :-)  I also almost always start with peasants. So super, duper, squeaky clean.

The main thing is to understand the combat system.  The combat system is ridiculously fun if you RP it.  There are *tons* of ways to cheese it, so I think the best thing to do is to handicap yourself so that it's just a little bit harder than you want -- then try to figure out how to survive.  The kisat dur thread is required reading.  But you also need to understand the tick system.  You'll want to use "," almost all the time and "." almost never.  It's best to take the point of view that each fight is going to be a long, tactical one with each party trying to outsmart the other.  You don't just rush in and expect to hit the other person.  You should be waiting until the exact right time to attack and then you should know how to recover from the attack in the most defensible way.  You need to understand the number of ticks each move will take, what the advantages and disadvantages are, etc.  Additionally you need to understand the importance of positioning in the fight (it makes a HUGE difference) and how to move to get an advantage.  Finally, you need to understand what all the options in the combat menu mean and what the tradeoffs are (you have a blue difficult scratch to the fourth finger on the right hand and an easy strike to the head with your battle axe -- which one do you take in each situation and why).

Additionally, I often play adventure mode without combat.  It's very fun (especially if you have legends viewer running somewhere so that you can explore the world effectively).

rhavviepoodle:
I don't really run demigods (nor will I, until they live up to their namesake), and never minmax my stats. My favorite adventurers are warrior-skalds. You get to murder monsters and then tell stories about how cool you were while doing so.

Granted, I'm not the best at the DF combat system, so I usually do -some- skill grinding. Wrestling (and fighter) are the most important (as well as the least tedious), and they train relevant attributes as well. So often once I've hit legendary fighter, I might train my weapon skills a tad (proficient for primary weapons, or competent for the brawling skills). From there, I try to let the rest of my combat skills raise naturally. Defenses, it somewhat depends for (as they can be tedious to train, too). I normally don't train them higher than proficient, though.

What it boils down to is that I'm not quite at the point where I feel that combat is easy, so I like to have a somewhat level playing field. I also don't usually murder whole villages or dark pits (genocide isn't particularly heroic imo), and instead usually choose to fight beasts (which devour unskilled adventurers for breakfast). I don't really bother clearing out bandit camps, either, since they just repopulate. I do do terrible things to bandits who pick fights and ambush me, though!

ZM5:
I didn't even know there'd be a name for this sort of playstyle - its how I've always played adventure mode.

I don't like using the word immersion, but I do think it is kind of immersion-ruining to just maximize stats and skills off the bat, since on one hand the methods to do so are rather ridiculous, and on the other it does make the game way too easy. Admittedly vanilla adventure mode I did find rather easy regardless (short of vaults and fluke 1-hit kills from bandits or peasants), which is why I started modding.

This also kind of reminds me of one of the DFtalks, where Toady mentioned deincentivizing this sort of behavior by adding appropriate reputations - so sure, you could be an asset to the local community that kills beasts who threaten the safety of the village/city, but people would also remember you as the large village idiot who wrestles squirrels all day.

Urist McVoyager:
Eh, that last part is pretty silly, IMO. Results matter. You might LOOK like an idiot for wrestling squirrels all day, people are going to laugh a lot less when they see that translating to more quickly being able to wrestle that goblin bandit commander who keeps beating the rest of the village guard and ransacking the place. Soon after that the militia's going to be going into the woods to wrestle squirrels too.

The best way to break people of that is to base skill gain on what you're facing. If you have a good choice between joining the militia and sparring against an even opponent who can reliably level you up, or going into the woods and taking your chances on what you find, you're probably going for the militia. Unless you've got a character who can wrestle bears, near a forest full of bears. Then you might go for the woods instead.

And while I don't like the idea of throwing things like mud into midair, you do train with throwing knives in real life by hitting specific targets. That's a simple-to-say tweak of just tying that skill gain to marking specific targets when you throw. I don't know how simple it is to program, mind you, but it's a simple thing to point out.

I've played Iron-Man mode (it's the official name for the playstyle) in enough RNG games like this to know it isn't for me. I never got far in DF adventure mode until I figured out how to savescum so I could revert a mistake and learn from it with that one character.

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