You gotta get into Dwarf Fortress if you haven't already.

[The Utilitarian]

Aye I knew about the sedimentary layers, I just can't seem to FIND any of these layers!

abandoned my fort and my entire world, made a new one and put the minerals up one notch and HOLY CRAP, I spawn on the side of a mountain surrounded with iron jutting from cliff faces just begging to be mined. madness. This is my new home, "Backgate", I kid you not.

*edit* this is ridiculous! I went from zero iron to having areas of my base CARVED out of iron ore because I have more than I can store!

[Protomith]

I recently succumbed to fun by flooding. And before that, I almost got fun by starvation. There was one dwarf left in the fortress, and then 22 immigrants arrived. These guys are the ones who died of flooding. The team I sent to reclaim the fortress flooded even more of the fortress.

[The Utilitarian]

just survived my first dwarven insanity spiral. lesson learned: don't wait until after they start dying to build coffins. I think Backgate is a keeper.

[SecondTalon]

Yeah, I pretty much got to where my Mason Training consisted of "Build one coffin, one table, one chair, fill the rest of the list with blocks, repeat"

[The Utilitarian]

So how can I use dead animals better? Seems like unless I slaughter a live animal I can't get my dudes to use it, for instance if I want to butcher one that just starved, or use a long dead skeleton for bone bolts

[Menacing Spike]

So how can I use dead animals better? Seems like unless I slaughter a live animal I can't get my dudes to use it, for instance if I want to butcher one that just starved, or use a long dead skeleton for bone bolts

Unfortunatly, you have to use an older version for that.
Alternatively, kill hostile animals.

[SecondTalon]

So how can I use dead animals better? Seems like unless I slaughter a live animal I can't get my dudes to use it, for instance if I want to butcher one that just starved, or use a long dead skeleton for bone bolts

Before one starves, mark it as butcherable. Might fix the issue.

[Menacing Spike]

You could try attacking him with your military, it may make him an enemy of your civ, therefore proceed-able.

(it could also lead to a loyalty fuckup, hence HILARIOUS massacres, so I really hope you will try this)

[The Utilitarian]

So how can I use dead animals better? Seems like unless I slaughter a live animal I can't get my dudes to use it, for instance if I want to butcher one that just starved, or use a long dead skeleton for bone bolts

Before one starves, mark it as butcherable. Might fix the issue.

Aye I'm sure this works but if I knew they were going to starve to death I'd just make sure they got fed.

*edit*

God damn it. Backgate is lost thanks to retarded bugs. Fortress is going fine, I'm setting up he magma forge.. boom... half my dwarves are stuck being "interrupted" but some troglodytes on the other side of a wall that can't get to them. I wait, it doesn't stop.

I figure what the heck, I'll rally up my military, tunnel into the cave, slaughter the trogs, seal it back up, problem solved.

As soon as I breach the wall THREE forgotten beasts swarm into my base. The first one gets hacked to a bleeding torso but lives, but another one has some kind of fucking dust attack that prevents anything from getting close to it, and kills one of my squad. No problem I figure, I can still take this.. but.. where are all my guys.... where is everyone?

EVERYONE, all FIFTY dwarves in my fortress have packed themselves into one corner of the hospital and gone to sleep. There is nothing I can do to make them leave, and if they're stuck on a traction bench or something I can't fix it cuz no one's awake to move the bench, while the remaining beast just rampages through my fortress
fuck. me.

I was really liking that fortress. I don't care what the tagline says, losing is not fun once you actually manage to get a decent fortress going.

*edit* save scummed to avoid that problem, made lots of further progress.... and then...

"canceled, interrupted by forgotten beast" there is a beast sitting in a cave completely unconnected to my fortress, which is somehow magically interrupting them from twenty stories below the earth. I can't even tunnel into the caves to try to fight it because my diggers get inturrupted

[Mishrak]

Finally took a dabble into this. I've worked my way through a bit of tutorial, which has been extremely helpful in lowering the learning curve. Should be fun.

[Shivahn]

Is there any easy way to find caves in Adventure mode? I can't seem to find any, and I'd like to go caverning.

[savanik]

Is there any easy way to find caves in Adventure mode? I can't seem to find any, and I'd like to go caverning.

During mapgen you can edit the config to always display caves on the overland map. That should make it slightly easier.

Also, certain missions will require you to find caves - you could pick one of those up.

[Levi]

Is there any easy way to find caves in Adventure mode? I can't seem to find any, and I'd like to go caverning.

They're everywhere. They're that round grey thing in the travel screen. There should be an indicator in the top left that tells you which direction to go after you've zoomed back in. Be forewarned, there is often naught in the caves but a single horrid beast.

[Shivahn]

Thanks. I meant more the caves that turn into caverns.

Funnily enough right after posting that I found one! This lead, half an hour later, to the realization that caverns are pretty boring and confusing, and when I finally found a cliff (because I have a backup) I was so frustrated I jumped off of it for fun.

This resulted in unicorn parts everywhere since I'm playing a My Little Pony mod.

[Levi]

Is this the one? The grasping horn is an interesting implementation of their magic.

[Shivahn]

That is the one!

Being a pony makes Adventure Mode pretty easy since you're so much bigger than a humanoid. And you can rip hands, feet, and heads off with biting and shaking. I've got to say, though, playing as a pegasus is the best, because there's something satisfying about tearing a giant eagle's wing fourteen Z levels above the ground.

[TaintedDeity]

I would be in complete support of a gritty reboot of MLP.

[Levi]

OOOoooooh god. I'm feeling a little bit nauseous now. The graphic descriptions of combat combined with pony imagery is a sickening combination of awesome/disturbing. My first adventure concluded with a mob of hostile ponies stabbing the fuck out of my head with carving knives.

[Shivahn]

Awesome/disturbing is exactly how I'd describe it.

I don't know why it's so much fun to play a gritty survivalist game involving horrific combat as a Rainbow Dash clone, but it is.

[eculc]

quick question: if I put a lever in a noble's room to lock/unlock a door, and another to open a floodgate causing magma to flood his room and burn him to death, will he pull the one to unlock the door and escape before he dies, or are dwarfs not smart enough to do such a thing brave enough to accept their fate?

[Josephine]

Dwarfs are nowhere near that smart.

[Paimon]

Oh man, it's been ages since I've played this. Never figured out how to run a military after the 2010 release, and stuck to adventuring.

I am very much looking forward to Interactions.

[Levi]

The only things they do on their own are eat, sleep, take breaks, and make babies. Sometimes fight/run away. Oh, and they throw parties. And maybe get new clothes when their old ones wear out. Not sure.

[Xanthir]

And adopt pets. Or get adopted by pets, whichever.

[eculc]

so, what would be the best way to capture an alligator in a murky pool? I think it'd make a nice addition to my fortress, either as a trophy or a beast of gladiator-killing.

[MisterCheif]

so, what would be the best way to capture an alligator in a murky pool? I think it'd make a nice addition to my fortress, either as a trophy or a beast of gladiator-killing.

Build a tunnel to the side of the pool and place a cage trap in it, as well as cage traps around the tile you will channel out to connect to the tunnel. It should eventually either wander up the ramp into those traps, or down the tunnel into those traps.

Actually, you could probably do without the tunnel, and just build cage traps around a tile to channel out on the edge of the pool.

[Soralin]

so, what would be the best way to capture an alligator in a murky pool? I think it'd make a nice addition to my fortress, either as a trophy or a beast of gladiator-killing.

Build a tunnel to the side of the pool and place a cage trap in it, as well as cage traps around the tile you will channel out to connect to the tunnel. It should eventually either wander up the ramp into those traps, or down the tunnel into those traps.

Actually, you could probably do without the tunnel, and just build cage traps around a tile to channel out on the edge of the pool.

I did something like that, except with a bunch of cave crocodiles in an underground river, with grates after the breach, leading down to a pump tower back up to the surface (to separate the water from the crocodiles), and a bunch of cage traps after that. Due to 2 separate oversights made in construction, it required constructing a new pump tower to unflood a portion of my fortress and stop the water from coming in (not to mention dry out the surface, since I still had my original pump tower to the surface running, to try to slow down the flood while I sealed off the area. ) But I did get an small army of tamed cave crocodiles out of it.

[eculc]

just found some gold nuggets and tetrahedrite, and some native copper. I guess it's a good thing I set up my metal industry in anticipation

EDIT: Just in time to lose all my dwarves to a lack of water source. *I* think that the river shouldn't freese over in a "warm" environment, since I'm not getting any snow. also, I think that the brew drinks on repeat in my still should have provided plenty of drinks.

[Technical Ben]

That sounds like a future addition. Only the surface of rivers freeze right? It needs to be very cold and very shallow to totally freeze.

[SecondTalon]

just found some gold nuggets and tetrahedrite, and some native copper. I guess it's a good thing I set up my metal industry in anticipation

EDIT: Just in time to lose all my dwarves to a lack of water source. *I* think that the river shouldn't freese over in a "warm" environment, since I'm not getting any snow. also, I think that the brew drinks on repeat in my still should have provided plenty of drinks.

And now you've learned 1 of the 2 reasons to always have an internal water source.

1. So you always have liquid water, no matter what happens outside.
2. So you can always fish in complete safety, no matter what happens outside.

[Okita]

just found some gold nuggets and tetrahedrite, and some native copper. I guess it's a good thing I set up my metal industry in anticipation

EDIT: Just in time to lose all my dwarves to a lack of water source. *I* think that the river shouldn't freese over in a "warm" environment, since I'm not getting any snow. also, I think that the brew drinks on repeat in my still should have provided plenty of drinks.

And now you've learned 1 of the 2 reasons to always have an internal water source.

1. So you always have liquid water, no matter what happens outside.
2. So you can always fish in complete safety, no matter what happens outside.
3. So you can create a well/waterfall/meetingplace combination so that dwarves get happy thoughts from mist
4. Reservoir for power generation later on

Added to the list.

Jeez, I love DF so much and yet haven't played it in ever so long a time.

[Ortus]

I'm trying to get in to DF so hard right now, but I just can't I'm having trouble discerning what is what and what those whats are doing.

[Vaniver]

I'm trying to get in to DF so hard right now, but I just can't I'm having trouble discerning what is what and what those whats are doing.

Give it time. You'll pick it up quickly enough. If you haven't seen it yet, the wiki is tremendously helpful. There should be an option to make all the grass look alike, which you might want to turn on (can't find it in the init file, which means it's in-game or it's gone).

[NieXS]

It's on data/init/d_init.txt now. The init.txt file is only for graphics settings and the like, and d_init.txt has the gameplay-related ones.

[Vaniver]

It's on data/init/d_init.txt now. The init.txt file is only for graphics settings and the like, and d_init.txt has the gameplay-related ones.

I could have sworn I checked that one- but there it is. It's [VARIED_GROUND_TILES:YES] (and you'll want to change the YES to a NO).

[The Utilitarian]

I'm trying to get in to DF so hard right now, but I just can't I'm having trouble discerning what is what and what those whats are doing.

Pick up the Lazy Noob Pack, which is a streamlined set of mods for those of us (like me) who aren't hardcore enough to take on the game as is. Includes a couple good tilesets and some useful apps for modifying game parameters and interacting with your dwarves (Dwarf Therapist alone is essential)

On a personal note, after making and abandoning a few fortresses I've taken to advanced world building, specifically cutting out the third cave system. Frankly the cave systems just end up being a both for me most of the time and I've seen a significant framerate improvement since eliminating one.

Also made the caves a little less map-covering so as to better facilitate Magma Piston construction, which I'm currently in the process of making. My last one ended up killing off my best miners, and let that be a lesson to you: never issue multiple stacked channel designations, you never know when one digger will decide the other is going too slow and remove the floor from under him o_O

Kinda excited to get it finished and start dredging up magma, It's going to be so nice not to have to create and power a huge pump stack just to roast incoming goblin sieges. I will enjoy not having to clean out the trap after ^_^

That said, I did have an awful lot of fun with my previous fortress and its massive Goblin Flusher, though I felt a little bad for littering that cave system with goblin possessions, bodies, and cripples, as fun as it was to watch the Forgotten Beasts sniff out and chow down on the poor ogres with broken legs that would end up down there

[WarDaft]

Oh dear.

I haven't tried it yet to see if it even slightly compares, but it does seem to suggest a bit that you're going to die horribly, just like DF. I don't think anyone's mentioned it here yet.

Downloading demo now.


Okay, no, it's slightly more like DF than Minecraft was when it first came out. It might be more someday, but not now.

[TaintedDeity]

BlueXephos did an LP of that game. It didn't appear to be much like DF or Minecraft from the video. It's broken into levels for a start.

[Vaniver]

Okay, no, it's slightly more like DF than Minecraft was when it first came out. It might be more someday, but not now.

The primary difference between DF and Dwarfs!? is that in DF, dwarves have names, and everything seems to flow from there.

In Dwarfs!?, you're micromanaging idiots who respond to arrows on the ground that you can draw with gold. As they mine out dirt you get gold, and they'll open up caverns that sometimes have lots of gold, sometimes have monsters, and sometimes have lava or water. The only way to deal with caverns that have lava or water is to suicide a dwarf to make an impassable hole. As your cavern extends and your number of dwarves increases, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of everything- and eventually time will run out or you will die.

With DF, there's a bit of work establishing your fortress, and then everything gets easier, and you can unleash your vast horde of dwarves on whatever project you want. In Dwarfs!?, it's the other way around- things just get harder, and as you get more dwarves it becomes harder and harder to keep them alive and not murdering the town center through carelessness.

I found it a fun arcade game, but the similarities to DF are just thematic. They're very different games that will appeal to different people.

[mrbaggins]

Yeah, I bought it without playing the demo cause it was on special ages ago. I despise it

On DF, I got the craps with a number of features/bugs/operations that I started making my own spin off. Should be interesting.