User:Kidinnu

Scouting reports:

In brief:

• Slozgo Udo (1066): 285 rejects! Southern hemisphere, seas peripheral, deserts mostly good.
• Thadar Kajeth (20130): Southern hemisphere, mid-sized seas central and south/east.
• Mon Ebno (50105): Northern hemisphere, dominated by an evil desert in the east, small seas in the west.

Active Fortresses

Using version 27.176.38c.

Kidinnu stops playing Dwarf Fortress; interrupted by work. Kidinnu is bored; stops working to play Dwarf Fortress. Kidinnu stops playing Dwarf Fortress; interrupted by work. ...

Region	Seed	Fortess Name	Location	Game Date	Last Played	Concept
w3	Mon Ebno (50105)	Koladiger (Ghoulriver); 7x5	256, 108: Near the northmost point of the Crest of Sadness (haunted warm mountain; shale/quartzite/gabbro), where it ends in the Dune of Mesh (warm sand desert wilderness; yellow sand aquifer/...). Just within the malign influence of Amxueb.	Autumn 1052	21 May 2008	Storytelling: desert dwarves digging in to find long underground river, clear it out, & establish large farms off of it
	Current State: 56 dwarves, thriving w. uppermost (longest) segment of river clear; there's a Giant cave on site, and one of the Trolls just wandered out to chase my haulers. Next digging task: canal south of upper river, with closeable drain to lower river, and treefarm chambers off of it. Bethabara is well-established, but main fortress is really completely unplanned.
w4	Thadar Kajeth (20130)	Zikeldolek (Fiercecomet); 6x4	80, 40: Along the Guardedstruck in the Mire of Sun (warm/hot temperate freswater swamp; silty clay loam/basalt/marble/gabbro, clay loam/chalk/phyllite/gabbro) at the base of the Fingers of Clasping (rhyolite/gneiss/granite). Signs of lava nearby.	Summer 1053	22 May 2008	Educational: get steel industry going, learn to exploit magma
	Current State: 76 dwarves, my first Dungeon Master. Core industry - food, metal - is thriving, but need to get secondaries (clothing) going. Cleared imps out of the magma pool, once apprentice miners finish digging upper bedrooms should be cutting channels to place magma smelters & forges on. Immigrant armorer stepped on the map, immediately had successful mood, so high-quality steel chainmail is easy to get. Fort was built into mountains, while all the iron & flux are across the river under the hills, so mining has come relatively late to my fortress.
w7	Slozgo Slospu (The Universe of Omen: 1667825290)	Tobulrithzam (Canyonbulwark); 6x7. An outpost of Nadakzulban (the Defended Banners), founded by Gusilrigoth (the Copper Craft).	154, 103: Where Leafhushed the Lazy League comes down out of the Allied Towers (warm untamed mountain; dolomite/granite/gabbro, claystone/schist/granite) into the Hills of Evil (terrifying warm savanna; red sand/claystone/schist/granite). Leafhushed leads most of the way through the range towards Keskalmomuz, and needs to be interdicted.	Winter 1054	25 June 2008
	Current State: 65 dwarves and ready to grow. Excellent industry, too much food, 8 champion marksdwarves busy wrestling to pass the time. Have just started receiving goblin ambushes, sometimes several times per month, but most of map is inside defenses and accesses are guarded by dogs, so at worst we lose a hauler. Design successful, if a bit overly-orderly. Quite a lot of fun, but frame rate crashed to 30; turning off weather & temperature got it back up to 50, but it intermittently drops back down. What's left to do? Improve defenses, penetrate the pit in the SW & start harvesting cave spider silk, prepare for more noble arrivals and eventual sieges, ...? Managed without a Bethabara.

Fortress Ideas and Philosophy

I wrote the first versions of Challenges#Hunting_Party and Challenges#Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement, and still find myself drawn to variants on those for my roleplay attempts (i.e. just about all my forts).

I've historically taken a "Bethabara" (18th century Moravian German term for "House of Passage" - they literally built a small village where they lived comunally in order to have a place to live while they were building a well-organized city) approach since DF moved to 3d: build a tiny fort of 6-8 6x6 rooms, get food, masonry, carpentry, and crafting going there, and then dig the "main fort". However, I tend to find that (1) I end up with main fort layouts that I don't like or that have something ill-considered/rushed about them, and (2) moving from the Bethabara to the main fort is often awkward.

I avoid traps, and rely on marksdwarves behind fortifications. I start slow. I get frustrated by the (high) rate of immigration. I take extensive notes as I play, but haven't yet written them up in story form.

Starting Builds

My generic starting build is:

• Proficient Miner / Proficient Weaponsmith
• Proficient Miner / Proficient Armorsmith
• Proficient Carpenter / Proficient tradeskill (woodcrafter or stonecrafter)
• Skilled Woodcutter / Novice Persuader / N Negotiator / N Judge of Intent / N Appraiser / N Consoler / N Pacifier
• Proficient Mason / Competent Building Designer / Mechanic
• Proficient Brewer / Proficient Cook
• Proficient Grower / Proficient tradeskill (metalcrafter)

I don't like pairing woodcutter with most other starting skills because I tend to clear-cut. I used to use Herbalism heavily, but have move away from it in the current version. I don't understand builds like [Starting_builds#Rapid_expansion], since one skilled grower is so much more efficient than several unskilled growers (the broad-sets-of-skills in that build don't make sense to me either).

To try more of

• Underwater river/chasm-centric construction. Dwarven Venice? Seems tougher in 3D, where both terrains are infested with creatures.

Previous Versions

User:Kidinnu/old