While I know dwarf fortress is supposed to contain a lot of !!FUN!!, as a new player (okay, I started playing awhile ago but never really got into it) I wanted to get an easy starting position to truly setup a fort, and not find myself as incapable as a two year old within the first year of gameplay. I allways chose starting positions with two billion layers of aquifer or No weapon grade metals (only COBALTITE GOD DAMIT! AND NOW THERE IS A TROLL AND MY DWARVES HAVE BEEN WRESTLING IT FOR MONTHS.). Needless to say, I probably picked bad starting locations for a novice, though they were a lot of FUN. I mostly picked those locations because of some obsession with having an island fort, but finally I decided to let go of that. Now that I have less starting hurdles, I find myself doing very good progress, and i've decided to post here to get advice for the fort and for showing off/storytelling. Because i'm very familiar with some aspects of the game (construction, obtaining food, designations, the basics youknow) but completely unfamiliar with others (currently considers nobles useless vermin, what the heck are import agreements, dont talk to me about livestock and animal training ffs why do I allways get trapper migrants...) I feel like this could be pretty interesting.
Before I start getting into the meat of this though:
SPOILER WARNING
I spoiled myself HFS on the wiki
worth it for knowing about archcrystal that run is amazing. Curiosity killed the expirience, but I feel it wouldent be in the spirit of the game to just exploit what I learned from the wiki without consequence. Therefore, I will not be using any adamantium, at all, untill I breach into HFS. That dosent mean I wont go in prepared though...
The world settings were not customized, but the embark was a tad more fine tuned to trade off dwarf skills for more containers and whatnot.
The settings for world creation changed from default are: Very large size, very many civilisations, very short history, many sites.
the main landmass on which the fort is located:
The progenitor civilisation of the fort is the artificial seal, a group of forts on a mountainside overlooking... Elven towns.
Currently, Our civilisation is at war with the elves of the southeast. the war has lasted for a few years now, and though our civilisation has the population advantage by far, I cant figure out if any of the two sides are winning. Either way, our outpost is pretty far away from that conflict.
The outpost of Tongsblunted is decently far from the Mountainhomes. About eight days of travel to the north. We are positioned in a valley surrounded by mountains. A good defensive position for a civilisation in my opinion, but I dont know if my position will influence future settelments. In the meantime though, we are ALONE alone Al- (cue squidward alone clip). The closest "neighbors" we have are the elves downstream and the only human civilisation on the continent.
The year is 7, meaning it has been two years since "embark!". Here is the main surface Z Level:
I picked the site specifically to build a river moat. Only the southern arm of the river is artificial. The moat has caused a few dwarven casualties, mostly due to a floor overhang that needed to be channeled out and dwarves not understanding that standing where someone else is digging on a thin dirt ledge is a bad idea.
one group of people really dont like the moat though. Merchants:
even though i've built a perfectly functional bridge they still decide to swim. I just... *sigh*. Well I kindof find trading to be a hassle anyways. Wait holy thats a lot of blood
Oh right, the humans! For some reason I have a constant influx of humans armed to the teeth that just want to kill cave monsters all the time, and that's fine by me! I really dont understand why. Maybe the human military in those coastal towns are getting bored and travel here for some FUN. and man, do they get FUN.
As you can see in the main surface z-level image, i've started the construction of a wall. I'm planning the construction of a huge marble castle. My military do their training on the outside. the west flank will be the main building, while the east is planned to be food production in an enclosed wilderness. Most of our food is gathered by herbalists, but we also do have fisherdwarves and a fishing industry, because I decided to figure it out when I got frustrated that migrants allways seem to be fisherdwarves.
The first layer of the underground: Storage, Food processing, carpentry
Also contains the grand dining hall. Yeah, i'm starting to get annoyed that its all white aswell. I'm going to get my mason to make some stuff out of colorfull rocks eventually.
Second layer: Sleeping, masonry, hospital and graveyard
Smoothed bedrooms with space for a peice of furniture, looks cozy! (or claustrophobic). For those with a keen eye for detail, you might have noticed the bedroom with a "king sized" bed. For a bit of background, I wanted my for to have a dwarven couple so I could have dwarven generations. I dont think I will turn away migrants when I get a second generation, but having it would be nice. So I resolved to leave my population cap at default untill I got an immigrant couple. Any Urist Mcmarriedcouple would do. Welp.
Urist Mcmarriedcouple is what I got! the fort now sits at population cap of 50. I'm currently asking myself if I need to increase it to get dwarven children, but I dont want to get immigrants either. help on that would be nice.
Next floor is the metal industry workshops and the mechanic's workshop, which are pretty boring. Instead i'll go over the exploitation of the undergroud so far.
The first event of significance was the striking of Galena a few z levels down. It kickstarted the fort's metalsmithing industry and military, leading to the creation of the first squad, the Grooved Boats, equiped with "the meta": SILVER MACES SENPAI, and wooden sheilds because, whynot. Lead has remained unused for now, but I plan on using it for military applications later. The second ore hit was, uh... let me check... Ah right. Sphalerite. Followed immidiatley by
SENPAI
TETRAHEDRITE
Copper FTWWWWW. This let me create my second squad, the Inky Conjunctions, only equipped with copper crossbows and bolts, and start making copper armor for the Grooved Boats, starting with breastplates.
Otherwise, all three caverns were breached. PRAISE THE MINERS, RAW ADAMANTINE-PRAISE THE MINERS, RAW ADAMA- of for f- shut up! -which i'm not going to use for a *long* while. My main staircase has hit semi-molten rock, though I cant seem to see any magma yet. The only other mineral of note I can think of is Pitchblende, which i'm planning to quarry and link to a minecart system to use as effective catapult ammunition.
Finally, we get to the history room:
Yup. I got tired of not having any artwork to look at description wise and just did that. I'll go over some of the better enravings but first- I got some artifacts. Best of wich is Lor Paintedpasses, a hazel wood grate
I'm just suprised he fitted that onto a grate! like, arent those things supposed to have holes?
a few of the engravings are masterpeices, and as you can see i'm expanding it.
Anyways, I guess thats it for now. I'll try to share the save eventually if people are interested. I'm hoping the fort gets attacked by... something (seige-forgotten beast whatnot) eventually so my dwarves can get in on the FUN.
Those humans, stealing all the FUN for themselves.