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

[ahammel]

O_o

The Weretortoise Ip Uselkesmel has come! A large tortoise twisted into humanoid form. It is crazed for blood and flesh. Its eyes glow azure. Its brown scales are oval-shaped and set far apart. Now you will know why you fear the night.

He mauled a horse, turned into a human, and ran away.

[mrbaggins]

Yeah, I can't seem to get armies up and running in shiny full-steel armor in time for the sieges. The game pretty much requires you to use elaborate traps from the start. And by elaborate, I mean anything that requires more planning than "place weapon trap here". That or sealing everything off until you are ready. Supposedly you can build and raise bridges on the edge, so everything can only spawn in 1 spot, so everything goes down your corridor of death.

Luckily there are danger rooms until you can figure that out.

Seriously, hooray for danger rooms. Nothing like having legendary axedwarves for the first gobbo siege. My main problem is the lag now. IDK if it's my computer or not, but some fortresses I get to 200 dwarves no problem, others it lags out and becomes unplayable after 100 dwarves.

You should never need full steel armor before you can get to it, unless you're producing too much wealth somehow. High wealth = bigger and harder seiges.

I've never used a danger room (outright refuse to)and have yet to lose a fortress to anything other than fps death or crazily fatal syndromes. I limit myself to 3 cage traps, and use their victims as training dummies. Makes very effective soldiers and much more "legitimately" than danger rooms.

[Thadlerian]

Good thing about having an undead siege locked out from my fortress: it kills everything that threatens me.

Bad thing: it assimilates everything it kills. Now including a Minotaur.

[New User]

I'm giving this game a try. I've pretty much followed the Quickstart Guide on the wiki, and it's made me a pretty decent fortress. I already had a dwarf with a strange mood, and even though the dwarven caravan is parked at my depot, I'm having him crank out the stone craft masterpieces so I can get something from them. I'm digging around looking for coal, but haven't found any. I don't know what is a wise choice to purchase from the caravan, so I'm getting arms and armor. I have 22 dwarves (plus children maybe? I haven't figured out how babby is formed yet). I also don't think I quite have a grasp on how food works. I hope plump helmets is enough for the population.

[SecondTalon]

It is, but they'll get tired of it eventually. Things like Quarry Bush Leaves (Requires a Farmer's Workshop and a cloth/silk/yarn/leather Bag to be an ingredient, using the Process Plant to Bag command), Cave Wheat (Requires a Millstone or Quern, and a bag to be an ingredient) and Sweet Pods (requires a Farmer's Workshop and a barrel, using the Process to Barrel command) can all be cooked in a kitchen (I don't bother with anything beyond Lavish meals, but if you're hard up for food, the simpler ones will work) and at *worst* you end up with the same amount of food in a meal that may give a positive thought. If it's lavish, it probably will give positive thoughts. Once your cooks get better, it becomes an insane way to make gobs of food, as 5 Syrups, 5 Wheat, 5 Leaves and 5 units of Wine, for example, can be cooked into 50 meals. 50 Masterworked Meals.

It gives rises to the Dwarven Happy moods of "I just saw my wife and two children killed in front of me, and the Masterworked Statue of my family that I carved was accidentally thrown into the lava and destroyed, I'm wet, covered in vomit, and I got jumped by a kobold and the little bastard stabbed me so I've got stitches, so I was doing pretty shitty... but then I ate a fucking awesome meal, so I'm doing okay now. I mean, seriously, this fucking meal. So good."

[CorruptUser]

I always build a large dining hall, like 6x19 with 32 chairs/tables, just for the "ate in a legendary dining room" thought for nearly every dwarf. The nobles are a bit harder to deal with; aside from having to give them fancy dining rooms, I have to pay attention that the baron doesn't get a worse room than the captain of the guard.

I also build a sealed tower with a few statues and some gem windows, so when my dwarves are on break they get some tastefully arranged thoughts and the occasional admiring of their favorite gems.

[New User]

So the nobles that have a dining room requirement must have their own personal dining room?

Also, I've heard that having an isolated vampire means the fortress cannot be conquered. Is there a way I can allow my fortress to be conquered and allow the vampire to live so I might encounter the vampire again in another fortress in the same world? Would abandoning my fortress do that? What if the vampire is walled up inside, and I abandon the fortress; can I go there in adventure mode (or even embark to the same site in fortress mode) and find my vampire still alive in his tomb?

[Vaniver]

So the nobles that have a dining room requirement must have their own personal dining room?

There is a penalty for sharing a room- so you either need to have a really, really nice shared room, or adequate rooms for each noble.

[New User]

I need some military advice. I have one squad of soldiers, consisting of nine dwarfs. I'll probably soon make it ten, and also start another squad, since my population just exploded from 22 adults to 49 adults plus three babies. Until now, I've had my squad do nothing but train in the barracks. The Job List typically says either "Individual Combat Drill" or "Leading/Watching Demonstration" for each individual dwarf. Following the advice on the wiki, I have set the order criteria lower than the total number of dwarfs in my squad (I set it to seven, since there are nine dwarfs in the squad right now) so each individual sometimes gets to take a break. What is annoying is that sometimes the other dwarfs in the squad will try to organize separate demonstrations simultaneously. Right now, I have two soldiers current Job listed as "Organize Fighting Demonstration" and "Organize Dodging Demonstration". One soldier is "Waiting for Fighting Demonstration" and three are "Waiting for Dodging Demonstration". It's my understanding that the "Organize..." job means that dwarf is the class instructor and the "Waiting for..." job means that the class instructor is waiting for all pupils to arrive before starting the class. Since two dwarfs are trying to instruct a class at the same time, I think they might both be waiting for seven dwarfs to attend, which will never happen since each will not attend the other's class. Is there a problem?
Solutions I've checked:
I have applied the order criteria to all months.
I have only one barracks.
I have only one squad.

[SecondTalon]

Personally, I usually set it to minimum 3 for a 10 dwarf squad.

Because dwarfs are stupid.

[New User]

Thanks. They did eventually get to the demonstrations. They are indeed teaching both at the same time.

I'm having trouble getting started with metals. I have dug around quite a bit and found no coal, and I'm on savanna so not a huge amount of trees. Most of the trees have to be turned into beds. I guess I'll have to try finding magma to get magma furnace/forge technology.

[CorruptUser]

Or harvest underground trees. I like building fungal gardens; dig out the soil in the top layers, and once you breach a cavern all the underground plants grow in there.

Once I had breached the 3rd cavern first, and only blood thorn existed on that level, so my gardens were nothing but blood thorns.

[Thadlerian]

Once I had breached the 3rd cavern first, and only blood thorn existed on that level, so my gardens were nothing but blood thorns.

It's amazing how often your single exploratory stairwell just narrowly misses both the first and second cavern level. It's almost like it's intended that way.

[CorruptUser]

I'm waiting for the next release before I start another fortress. Mining carts, and ability to set workshops to specific stockpiles! Now if only we could get vein mining so that I can ignore my miners as they dig out all that tetrahedrite, instead of having to micromanage or stip-mine.

[New User]

Assigning stockpiles to workshops would be great. I just went through way too much trouble to get my mason to make a statue out of gold nuggets. I had to designate the stockpile next to the workshop to store only gold nuggets, then I had to dump every stone that was already in that stockpile. That still didn't work, so I had to create a burrow containing the workshop and stockpile and assign the mason to the burrow. When it still didn't work, I realized it was because gold nuggets were restricted to be used for smelting only on the z-status screen. Maybe if I'd realized that sooner, the burrow would have been unnecessary, if he would pick up and use the stone nearest to the workshop. After I was finally able to make a couple gold nugget statues, I had to undo all that nonsense. Now I'll probably have to do something similar to get my gem setter to encrust those two statues.

I'm still having issues with food. At least I have enough food, and my dwarves are eating. But it looks like they are eating raw food instead of prepared meals, since I don't have to cook often and my prepared meals quantity goes down very slowly. I don't know how to get them to eat the prepared meals and save the raw food for cooking. Maybe they are eating less food than I expect, but at the rate my alcohol storage decreases, I expect my prepared meals stock to decrease more quickly.

[CorruptUser]

I think the dwarves just grab whatever food is closest to the dining room, but I haven't really cared too much about that. Since my dining room is huge and everyone gets the "amagad this dining hall makes up for the fact that I just watched by only son get dorfnapped by a goblin thief that ripped my wife's throat out, I'm so ecstatic!" thoughts, I don't need my dwarves to eat all my finely prepared tallow roasts with exquisitely chopped tallow and finely prepared tallow and superiorly minced tallow.

Anyone know if there is a way to get cooks to vary the ingredients rather than grab what's closest?

[New User]

I doubt there is a way to do that, but I'm pretty new to this game. Now my dwarfs refuse to put their prepared meals into pots. They are lying on the ground in the stockpile, attracting flies. I don't have furniture allowed in the stockpile, but that isn't stopping them from using pots and barrels in that stockpile to store unprepared food, so I don't know why they just throw the roasts on the floor.

[Goldstein]

There's a limit to the quantity of things that can fit into a barrel - I think it might be 25. Prepared meals can be made into large stacks that don't fit in barrels, and your Dwarves are unable or unwilling to split them.

Is it possible to designate a food stockpile for prepared foods without having to specify what types go in it? If that can be done, both of the above problems can be addressed by having one stockpile for unprocessed food and another for the prepared stuff, and letting the prepared food lie closer to the dining room. This should ensure that Dwarves favour prepared food, and may also reduce the amount of large food piles that don't fit into barrels. However, it might be that selecting 'prepared foods' only makes the stockpile store prepared versions of already-allowed foodstuffs, and in that case this won't help.

[New User]

Thanks, it's probably the "stacks too large for a barrel" problem that's causing it. I guess a way to prevent that would be to make sure I have enough pots/barrels available before preparing the meals, ya? I tried to find a way to make a stockpile for prepared food only, but if it's possible, it looks like I'd have to go down the immense list of meat and check every one that says "prepared (meat product)." To make it more confusing, meat is divided in to normal meat and prepared meat, and they are both listed in the same category on the stockpiles customization screen. Fish is divided into two categories: normal fish and unprepared fish, and separated by the fish's gender. Since fish is listed under food, I don't know why I'd want to stockpile male fish in one pile and female fish into another. Eggs and plants don't appear to have a prepared/unprepared descriptor, so I don't know about them. I have a stack of roasts on the floor that is made of minced hen egg, minced mussel, minced mussel, and minced mussel. I equate minced with prepared, but I don't know if that's correct. That makes me think that minced mussel would be "fish" instead of "unprepared fish" but the roast doesn't tell me if it's male of female minced mussel. Also, if minced means prepared, I don't know how to designate that to a stockpile without having that stockpile store unprepared eggs as well.

[Hyphe]

"Horse meat" and "prepared horse intestine", for example, both mean the edible foodstuffs you get from butchering a horse. The "prepared" descriptor just refers to the fact that these are edible organs as opposed to bits that have been cut out through fighting/combat. The "prepared" meat has not been cooked into part of a meal - everything in the meat list is edible and raw.

"Fish" and "prepared fish" refer respectively to fish that have come straight from the water (which are inedible) and fish which have been gutted & cleaned (which are edible). Again, a prepared fish is edible, but still raw. The separation by gender is a minor bug, I believe. All eggs are edible as soon as they come out of the creature in question; as with the edible plants, they don't need "preparing" to be edible so they have no descriptor.

All this is separate to the idea of "prepared" or "cooked" meals, which are in the stockpiles under the "prepared meals" toggle, which what you get when you cook roasts and such in a kitchen. "Minced" is a descriptor saying what the cook did to it; it indicates the quality of the meal, but not really anything else.

To get a stockpile with just your tallow roasts in it, create a food stockpile, disallow everything (b), and then make sure "prepared food" is on (u). I am pretty confident this works and stores all cooked food, but it's been a couple of minor versions since I played last, so I'm going to go test it right now. Yep, works fine.

Yeah, this part of the game is ridiculously complicated for what you can actually do with it.

[CorruptUser]

Set a stockpile to prepared meals only, and set the barrels to minimum. Once in a stockpile, prepared meals never rot. You can make a prepared meal only pile by creating a food stockpile, disabling everything, and then press "u" to toggle prepared meals on or off. It's weird that way, like sand bags in furniture.

I almost always make a couple kitchen, stills, and fishery workshops in clusters near each other. Around my fisheries I have a stockpile for unprepared fish only, around my stills the brewable plants only, and the rest that is cookable goes around my kitchens. Making sure not to let it store prepared meals of course, those get store elsewhere. I disable the cloth plants, because I store those near my looms instead. Anyway, I surround the workshops with the pile, rather than have the pile next to them. For example, let's say I have 4 stills, I'd make a 3-thick pile around them. So there would be a 12x12 space, with the middle 6x6 filled with stills and the rest being a stockpile for the brewable plants.

My butcher shops are a bit of a ways away, with the tanneries, ashery, and soapmakers shop. A small stockpile for lye and fresh skins is nearby. Depending how I'm feeling, I may having a windmill connected to a mill shop practically next to the kitchens. I make my mill in the center of a 5x5 stockpile set for the millable dyes; I honestly don't care to make dwarven sugar or flour, but if I do, it's ok. My farmers' workshops are a bit weirder, as I have a bunch next to my clothing industry. Sometimes I decide to make rock nuts and bags of leaves, but I get overwhelmed by all the leaves, so I end up having my cook make stacks upon stacks of leaf roasts.

It's a pain in the ass trying to set prepared meals to trade, since they don't have a category, but if you sort by value rather than distance at the depot they are near the top. Very valuable goods, pity the traders hardly ever bring me anything in bulk worth trading. Come on, bring me 200 steel bars or something!

[Larry]

Now if only we could get vein mining so that I can ignore my miners as they dig out all that tetrahedrite, instead of having to micromanage or stip-mine.

Dfhack can do this. Set your dig cursor on an exposed wall of ore, run dfvdig.exe, enjoy.

[CorruptUser]

Version 34.08 released

Basically, minecarts and wheelbarrows! Now I have a lot of stuff to figure out. Considering I don't use too many mechanisms (I just find an atom-smasher to be all I need, and I never seem to get a fort to the point where I have a 100-story pumpstack with magma), might be a bit complex.

[Jessica]

Damn, I had just started a new world/fortress under the old version

[Menacing Spike]

Can you put animals/cages in mine carts?

[SecondTalon]

Carts basically use the same rules as stockpiles - same menu and everything, so yes.

Setting up minetracks - Kinda a pain.

Moving shit around when your minetracks are set up - HOLYFUCKBALLSISTHISAWESOMEHOLYSHITZOOOOOM!!!!WOW!

So.. uh... they're worth the added pain.

And yeah, your stops can be around curves, and across Z levels. Stop 1 (The dumping area) is at Z: -8. My pickup is at.. Z:-50. For a dwarf to push it up the various ramps and around the various curves takes maybe twice as long as the dwarf walking, carrying nothing. The minecart s/he's pushing has 5 stones in it.

So in less time it takes one dwarf to move a stone under old hauling rules, I can move 5 times as much stuff.

Completely worth it.


Now to add rollers thanks to my brand new 2000+ power plant I built on the river....

[Thadlerian]

My first minecart run over a carpenter and his cat. Serious injuries.

Any immediate suggestions for what minecarts should be used for?

- Bringing goods to depot from my underground city?
- Bringing rock from far-away limestone mines to said underground city mason workshops?
- Bringing magma from the deep?

Also, how do I effectively get dwarves to put stuff in the wagon and get it out? Should it take from one stockpile and give to another?

Food harvesting is kind of bugged now.

[Menacing Spike]

Any immediate suggestions for what minecarts should be used for?.

Well, you could have your blacksmiths and stuff living on top of the magma sea, export food and booze and clothes and ore to them, and have them export back finished products?

Usually I have 3 "towns":
Magma sea, farms, most workshops
Currently Explored Cavern (only military on those)
Surface (guard animals, trade stockpiles, depot, cages, kennels, bone workshop, butcher, kitchen...). I survive by plant gathering until the farm are set (usually by flooding the lower level with a river for a while)

When Surface is attacked, dwarves are told to fuck off back to the bottom layer and invaders have to pass through the Cavern (where military dwell).

[SecondTalon]

My first minecart run over a carpenter and his cat. Serious injuries.

Any immediate suggestions for what minecarts should be used for?

- Bringing goods to depot from my underground city?
- Bringing rock from far-away limestone mines to said underground city mason workshops?
- Bringing magma from the deep?

Also, how do I effectively get dwarves to put stuff in the wagon and get it out? Should it take from one stockpile and give to another?

Food harvesting is kind of bugged now.

Currently, the way my experimental cart run is going is as follows.

The cart track is engraved and a (h)aul of two stops (the first being "When full, go this way" and the second being "When empty, go thataway" to send it back).
I have two Track Stops constructed -([b] - [c] - [S]). The one down in the pit does.. well, nothing except stop what could be a runaway cart. The second is set to dump the entire contents of the cart NORTH. North of that stop is a 1x1 Stone Stockpile.

The first stop of my (h)aul (At z:-50) is to take items from a stone stockpile.

So, the workflow is as follows - dwarves down at -50 (which is a giant, open space at this point) take stones to that stockpile and nowhere else. They then load a cart from that stockpile. When full, a dwarf pushes it up to Z:-8, and the contents dump out into a 1x1 stockpile. The dwarf then returns the cart to the depths.

Not too many spaces away from the 1x1 stone stockpile are several stockpiles (a 30x30, a 10xsomething, and so on) which accept different varieties of stone - metal ores, regular stone and so on. These other stockpiles are set to only accept stone from the 1x1. The 1x1 is set to not accept stone from anything (as the cart is dumping on to it, whether it wants it or not).

So from the depths to the filter point, I'm just grabbing all the stone I can and sending it up. At the filter point it gets sorted and stored for use.

[eculc]

so, has anyone created a minecart railgun yet? I have some ideas, but I'm not sure how acceleration and speed work for minecarts yet.

[SecondTalon]

so, has anyone created a minecart railgun yet? I have some ideas, but I'm not sure how acceleration and speed work for minecarts yet.

See, first you figure out how to make an automatic minecart system, where no dwarves are needed to push them, and no harm comes to your dwarves or animals.

In the process of doing that, you'll figure out how to weaponize them, as your first six forts fall to runaway minecarts plowing into your meeting hall, where coincidentally everyone has gathered to celebrate some Dwarf Child's Birthday.

[eculc]

Nonsense; that's the entire reason my testing area is directly adjacent to the Nobles' dining room exquisitely carved room that serves no particular purpose!

[CorruptUser]

Making a railgun;

Build a straight track in a tunnel about 12 spaces in length. Place a roller at highest speed 10 squares long on the the middle squares squares, and power it. Connect the track to a "magazine" a bit of a ways away. Build a drawbridge at the end of the tunnel, and raise it. Build pressures plate on the 12th and 1st squares of the railgun track. Connect the pressure plates to the bridge, telling it to open/close when a cart passes over it (this is for security; the railgun opens then closes just after the cart speeds out). Designate a route from your magazine to the railgun, but turn off the departure. Load a giant shotgun slug; copper cart filled with lead coins to the route. Set it to be pushed off (needs additional power if starting at lower z-level). Launch when you want to.

Making a machine-railgun;

In your magazine, have 10 different rail lines connected to the railgun. Set the route to guide to the point where they all merge, then push the rest of the way.


Honestly, it's easier just to have minecarts traveling back and forth in either your halls of doom or your nobles' bedroom. Yes Urist von Fancypants, your dining does come with toy trains!

[Okita]

I realized today that I am completely spoiled on Lazy Newb Pack to the point that I'm not even considering trying out the new version until I get it. But...minecarts! D:

Maybe I'll try cobbling the current LNP with .10 and make some magic happen or something.

[Menacing Spike]

I realized today that I am completely spoiled on Lazy Newb Pack to the point that I'm not even considering trying out the new version until I get it. But...minecarts! D:

Maybe I'll try cobbling the current LNP with .10 and make some magic happen or something.

IIRC there is a .xml file describing the new version's memory layout updated with DFHack and used by the others programs, if that can help you.

[Magnanimous]

I seem to be re-addicted. Whoops. And I remembered why I had to quit the first time: my instincts are always to forgo food and defense and things in favor of engrave all the thiiiiiings.

It's interesting that I'm playing more Minecraft-y, instead of city-builder-y. Hm.

[CorruptUser]

I stop with the city-building around 100 dwarves. For some reason, editing the raws and setting the cap of 100 dwarves doesn't seem to prevent more migrants. Too much lag as a result...

[eculc]

hey, caravans don't go over traps anymore? well, I'll just remove some to let them through, and then rebuild them later.

...yeah, I think you guys know where this is going. granted, it's my fault for forgetting, but that doesn't make it any less fun.

[Magnanimous]

My latest fortress is expanding a little slow, because one of my two miners decided to sleep for an entire summer. =/ I can't even give her pick to someone else, because apparently you can't take things when they're sleeping.

[CorruptUser]

I always start with 3 miners and picks. Sometimes 4. The other guys are stoneworker, woodworker, planter, and depending on whether I had 3 or 4 miners an architect/trader (he's my expedition leader being the only one with social skills). Mechanic is usually a migrant, as is cook and brewer. Not big into bringing too many animals with me, I've yet to start a major egg or leather industry in my forts.