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

[Jessica]

I need to open up my dwarves again. Last time I played, I played for 1 1/2 hours, and the humans showed up to trade. Once I finally got my dwarves to actually trade, I accidentally gave the humans everything I wanted to trade.

So, close, open, and there's an hour and a half wasted time. :\

Also, I really wish I could find magma. I started in an area filled with obsidian, but I haven't found any, and probably won't.

Next fortress is being built on a volcano so I can guarentee magma. except I'll have no trees probably... :\

Also, I need to figure out irrigation. Both my starting fortresses have (thankfully) started with either peat or sand, which you can grow on without irrigation. which is awesome.

[Benitosimies]

Next fortress is being built on a volcano so I can guarentee magma. except I'll have no trees probably... :\

Also, I need to figure out irrigation. Both my starting fortresses have (thankfully) started with either peat or sand, which you can grow on without irrigation. which is awesome.

Dogg you can import lumber. Let someone else hack those things down.

Irrigation is a bit of a dewzy. Here are two good pages for it:

http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Irrigation
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index. ... sure_plate

Also: The river will flood *up* until it reaches the elevation where the water surface is. So you can't dig a channel into the side of the river underground. It'll fill the channel right quick and you'll have to either seal off the area or get flooded or figure something else out.

Fragging irrigation.

[Jessica]

I wonder if it's possible to make perpetual motion machines...

hook a waterwheel up to a screw pump to pump water up a level, then make it cascade down and back into the area the waterwheel is.

[SecondTalon]

Yes.

That's a primary source of power for a lot of people, as the waterwheel generates 100, but a screw pump and piping to it and so forth needs.. maybe 20?

[Jessica]

That's awesome. Can you power multiple things with one waterwheel? How do you do that?

When I get home, if I'm not tired, I'm gonna load up dwarves, and play some more. Maybe make a waterwheel of awesome.

[4=5]

I've built a fishery and a mason's workshop

how do I get them to gut fish and make doors

[SecondTalon]

That's awesome. Can you power multiple things with one waterwheel? How do you do that?

When I get home, if I'm not tired, I'm gonna load up dwarves, and play some more. Maybe make a waterwheel of awesome.

Basically, you use Gears (cost - one mechanism) and run horizontal (or vertical if you need to move up and down a X axis) wooden axles to transfer the power. All the gears and such need power to run, but for the most part one or two waterwheels should provide enough juice to get a millstone powered.

I've built a fishery and a mason's workshop

how do I get them to gut fish and make doors

Q, select the building in question.. I think (b) (d) for doors, and (p) for Process Raw Fish. Game isn't up, so I can't confirm that. Hitting R will repeat the action indefinately... I will say that I always have Make Blocks in my mason's workshop.. dwarves prefer things made from blocks over raw stone, and the more happy thoughts the less likely your fortress will die in an orgy of violence and suicide.

/just sayin'

[4=5]

(b) is just building stuff, I don't know how to select a building

edit nevermind (q) is the select building key

[SecondTalon]

I will add that getting Dwarf Foreman helps in buckets and heaps.

The basic gist is that it allows you to quickly set jobs among your dwarves.. basically allowing you to give all your peasants the jobtask of Stone Detailing (Engraving), for example.

This doesn't seem like much when you've got 7-15 dwarves running around. Once you've used it, it's impossible to live without when you have 70+ dwarves running around.

[4=5]

my jeweler keeps canceling "cut rubies" because he doesn't have rough rubies even though a stockpile of them is just outside his door

edit, I removed the door just in case it was the problem, he's sitting in there getting thirsty but not moveing

[I Zimbra]

Great moment last night: My fortress' one child went into a fey mood and made a legendary ring. Said ring was then stored in my finished goods stockpile, which is right by the entrance of my fortress to facilitate the trading. Not five minutes later the ring gets stolen by a kobold thief. The child then proceeds the flip the fuck out in the middle of my great hall and killed seven dwarves (including my legendary engraver) before taking a crossbow bolt to the head. Pure gold.

Has anyone else had a problem with dwarves going outside when you place an order to stay indoors? The other day I had 5 or 6 dwarves decide to take a walk in the middle of two goblin ambushes. It didn't turn out well for them.

4=5: Is your dwarf in a mood or is this just a normal order? One possible problem could be if the rubies are tasked to be moved to a stockpile or some such they won't be available to cut.

[4=5]

how do I tell if he's in a mood ?

and I thought of that so I removed the stockpile designation once they were all there


and wow that's a ferocious child

[SecondTalon]

Yeah.. Berserk dwarves, if they catch a couple of dwarves off guard, are goddamn fierce. I wish I could cage them and unleash them on invading goblins.

As for moods... Usually the game will pause itself and announce that "Blahblah has [been taken by a fey mood/been possessed/withdrawn from society]" or something to that effect. A purple exclamation mark (Like this "!") will flash on the dwarf in particular, and they'll move towards whatever workshop they wish to claim (If the workshop doesn't exist, they'll hang out in a meeting zone until they either go insane or the workshop they need is built. And no, they don't tell you which shop they need... when in doubt, it's probably Craftdwarf.)

Once they claim the shop, it kills the queue you have going (goddamn it!) and replaces it with "Blahblah has claimed this workshop". The dwarf in question will then run around and gather what they need to create the artifact they want to build. If the objects they want don't exist, they'll sit in the shop and bitch about what they want.. (You can see this by hitting (q) and putting the cursor over the shop. Let it sit on the shop for a while until the demands repeat themselves). Sometimes in clear {Blah blah screams "I DEMAND SHELLS AND BONE!"} but usually it's a cryptic {Blahblah sketches pictures of tulips/elves} or who the hell knows.

The Wikipage on the subject is helpful.

That being said, it doesn't quite sound like that's what's going on, as you might have noticed it and probably included in your post "This idiot dwarf won't get the rubies, has somehow locked me out of controlling the shop, and keeps flashing this purple ! on his face. What's up with that?" - so.. it might just be stupidity on the game's part.

[zenten]

There's something very wrong about an ascii game that uses OpenGL.

I'd play it if there was a Linux port that was text or ncurses based, but that will never happen (even if there will eventually be a Linux version). I don't want to have to set up X tunneling (or VNC or whatever) just to play this game at work, and I'm not installing it on my work machine.

[Benitosimies]

My favorite thing is finding wounded guards laid up in a barracks because they were off enforcing some impossible mandate and the dwarf they were going to beat breaks their legs.

I like having guards around because they're like the only people that bring food & water to wounded people.

[Phen]

This game seems immensely fun, but will take some time getting into...

I can't make my fisherdwarf go ahead and build the fishery, so my storeroom just got filled up with raw fish. And now I purposely flooded the little fortress I had, just to see what'd happen, but the game wouldn't just let me leave without saving... So I had to abandon ship

[Jessica]

You can always end the program. That'll stop the game without saving.

[Azrael001]

Or you could try opening another version of the game, reloading your previous save and then quiting the old one. Then resave the good one.

[Jessica]

I've lost all desire to play this game. I'm not sure why. Every time I think "I should dwarves" I then think "wait. No, I really shouldn't. I'd rather do ANYTHING ELSE."

I think I shall retire my dwarves for now, and come back again later.

[Phen]

It's too late for my save game. But oh well, loosing is fun... Maybe.

[Benitosimies]

This game seems immensely fun, but will take some time getting into...

I can't make my fisherdwarf go ahead and build the fishery, so my storeroom just got filled up with raw fish. And now I purposely flooded the little fortress I had, just to see what'd happen, but the game wouldn't just let me leave without saving... So I had to abandon ship

Re: The fisherdwarf won't build the fishery.

You have to turn off fishing in his labor preferences. What he's doing is postponing construction until he's done fishing. And he's never done fishing.

EDIT:

What do you guys do with your goblins?

So far I put them in my moathole full of levered spikes, sealed off with a grate I can open to get their loot later.

I made a special room in the Halls of Rad where I want to fight them against other creatures. My only other creature I have caged though is a bronze colossus who would knock down the arena grate and proceed to destroy all of Snailhammers. I did have a Titan but he bled to death from walking through two serrated iron discs before walking into a cage. (I had to melt the cage to get the corpse out. I'm sure I could have dumped it from the stocks menu but eff that.)

I'd like to push them off a cliff but nothing seems high enough while also being a convenient place to leave their bodies.

(Idea: Breeding them.)

Also, are there any cool anti-kobold measures besides living guards?

[Snoof]

What do you guys do with your goblins?

I push them off my fifteen story Death Tower (TM) and watch them splatter. I once managed to get a head to go nine spaces from the body. I also toss kittens off when I get bored. [1]

Alternately, I dump them in a pit and let my marksdwarves use them as target practice.

Drowning them in a flood chamber is quite fun too, although, as always, getting a working drainage system can be a bother. I'm glad I have a chasm for that purpose.

Just remember to recover the bodies. Goblin bone bolts, goblin skull totems, and you can melt down their armour to get iron. Goblins are a renewable resource!

Also, are there any cool anti-kobold measures besides living guards?

Wardogs. Chain them up in your main entrance corridor [2] or let them run loose. They'll happily devour any kobold thieves unwary enough to enter your fortress. I'm pretty sure a sufficiently large number of traps will catch kobolds too, since they no longer totally ignore them.

[1] I have to kill kittens! Else they'll breed out of control and overrun my fortress! No, really. Honest. It's that or butcher them. Mmmm... cat tallow biscuits.
[2] Just make sure there's not line of sight from the entrance to the wardogs, else goblins with crossbows will shoot them and they can't retaliate.

[4=5]

what is the most efficient fortress design?

[Coin]

It all depends on the area you're in =)
Sometimes you have lava, sometimes you don't, sometimes you have a river, sometimes not, you might be in a glacier with barely enough wood to make beds or in forest above an aquifier with only wood to build with. Have you got sand? What about the minerals?

It's all about adapting and surviving.

A good fortress should have well defended entrances (preferably just one), a well planned living and crafting area wich minimises distances that dwarves have to travel and finally an insane, gigantic project that might possibly flood the world with lava.

[Vaniver]

This game kept me up late and not studying during midterm week :\

I've got a fairly good place set up now- I decided to ignore trading, and instead focus dwarves who would have been making crafts on engraving. I've now got a large number of rather beautiful rooms and a giant, wonderful dining room. All my dwarves are ecstatic all the time, and I'm starting to take more defense precautions.

Although, really, can't I just seal off the entrance? My fortress is self-sufficient and doesn't trade. It'll keep out immigrants (unless I make a tunnel to welcome them), but will also keep out goblins and kobolds (I hope?).

I'm also starting to run into the problem of more productive power than I know what to do with. With a previous fortress, I dedicated that to quarrying out enough stone to make a large pyramid- I'm considering doing that again here, but it seems silly to have a giant pyramid above the Secret Secrethalls the Secret. I could devote the spare dwarves to making crafts for export- but there's nothing I really need to import (I sort of want to import more wood, but have plenty of spare beds now and have the trees to cut down) and I'm not particularly interested in slowly accumulating platinum bars.

[SecondTalon]

I've adopted an approach of routing the enemy.. basically, my entrance is a short path right to the trade depot that has a series of floodgates set up so that with the flip of a switch, the whole thing closes. Leaving the only way in (so that the AI *hopefully* doesn't just smash through the floodgates) a long winding path around the barracks that's covered in traps.

Sadly, I never tested it's effectiveness.

As for what to do with all that production power...

Build roads? Everywhere?

Compute?

[Xaddak]

This is... different. Hrm.

Seems kind of fun. I have the feeling I'm doing something horribly wrong though.

[SecondTalon]

Losing Is Fun

[Kag]

Very true, but losing because you're a beginner and don't understand the game very well is significantly less fun than, say, the hammerer showing up and slaughtering half your fortress for sneezing at the salad buffet.

[Xaddak]

Something the wiki doesn't explain. I c(h)anneled a brook to get stone... the stone appears, alright, under the damn water. How do I get at it?

[SecondTalon]

Quick answer - it's hard to get to it.

Basically, you have to wait for the river to freeze in winter, then build staircases/tunnel down into the frozen river. And hope it all gets hauled out before the thaw.

Alternately, if you have a source of Magma and don't mind pumping it around (as well as having the steel equipment to do so) you can use that to damn the river, dig the whole thing out, then open up the obsidian dam and whatever.

A final, more likely solution is.. multiple screwpumps rigged up to suck water from the river faster than it can put it back in, thus draining it long enough for you to install floodgates, thus creating a movable dam. This is the solution I usually employ. Though it should be noted that you'll need to build walls and such to channel the water, as if it goes over your power-generating building(A waterwheel, I should hope, or a windmill that's not on risers) it'll destroy it.

So either use Walls to channel the excess water off-map, or build windmills on walls with staircases leading up (Remember, you have to build the staircase up, then move up a level and tell it to build a staircase down to connect them) and floors on which to build the windmill arranged like a square with a hole in the middle

Code: Select all

Ground Level

O O
   >
O O

One Z-level up
OOO
O O<     
OOO

Sadly, I can't remember if > is stairs up or down.. so.. uh, if it's wrong, just pretend that > is up and < is down.


But.. due to the massive power output, I recommend a waterwheel or two to run the river-drain operation (For a cost of 3 wood per wheel to make 100 power) versus the Windmills (4 wood for 40 power? Bleh!)

[Xaddak]

*sighs and goes for the pumps option*

Unfortunately, as I said, it is a brook, not a river. SO tempted to restart elsewhere with an ACTUAL source of water, not the pretend kind (brooks) that somehow defies physics. They can walk on the water's surface, despite the 7/7 deep water one z-layer below...

[SecondTalon]

Yeah. It's.. probably better to just dig down and get stone that way, rather than trying to get brookstone.

[Xaddak]

Unfortunately, I can't. The first rock I found was rock salt (not a problem)... and flooded (problem).

So I can't make gears without stone, and I can't get stone without gears.

*starts new map*

[SecondTalon]

Yeah.. if it doesn't freeze, then you're out of luck.

DF1.JPG

If you see that blue bar thing I circled, that means there's an Aquifer, and if you dig down you'll eventually hit water. Sometimes there's two blue bars.. I haven't quite figured out the difference, but I assume it just means the Aquifer is larger.

You might want to look around for something like this...

DF2.JPG

There's sand for glassmaking, two different shades of white/grey for stones (Basically the lighter one means you can likely find Flux material, if I remember correctly.. meaning you'll be able to make steel) and the red squiggly in the corner is exposed magma. And I've got lots of flowing water with no aquifer.

Problem is, that's a HUGE area.

[Jessica]

Actually, the red squiggly is the red sand. Not lava.

The only way to guarentee magma is to have a volcano in the area.
otherwise, you might find lava if you're in an area with obsidian. But not necessarily.

[SecondTalon]

df3.JPG

Looks like Magma/Lava to me.

Red Sand is a bright cherry red (I think) and usually in patches. Exposed Lava is a dark red and usually all by it's lonesome.

[Jessica]

hmm. Maybe the wiki is wrong then.

I shall attempt to find lava again on the map. Though, the next time I make a place it will be in a volcano. Just cause.

[SecondTalon]

The wiki seems clear enough to me

Magma that reaches all the way to the surface (Primarily Magma Pipes and Volcanos) is visible on the "local" screen in the starting location chooser. It is represented as a red ≈ mark (a double tilde) - essentially it looks like red water. Note that red ≈ marks in the "region" screen mean something different entirely (e.g. red sand). However, it IS actually possible for a volcano that shows up on the "local" and region screen in the starting location chooser to be entirely underground - Although you could see it in the starting location chooser, it would not be visible from the surface once your dwarves have arrived at the fort's site.

That being said.. yeah, the documentation for the game in the wiki, is mildly misleading at best, outright wrong at worst. Thought I think you are right in the red sand = lava tube coloration being almost exactly the same, if not identical.

[Jessica]

Hmmm.
Damn wiki...

...
...
...

losing is fun
I'm gonna abandon my current fortress and find that volcano again and carve my civilization out of it.