40d:Legends

Legends mode is a recording of the myths that you uncover in Adventure mode. Legends can be found by talking to people in a town. Legends can also be found by viewing coins or items with images, or by visiting an abandoned Dwarven fortress and viewing the engraved tiles within.

You have to not have an adventure or fortress game active in order to use legend mode. Currently it doesn't support much. You can set up a fortress at a site you find in adventure mode, such as a cave or ruin.

History

The following are listed:

• Number of historical events left to discover
• Historical Figures
• Sites
• Regions
• Religions
• Civilizations and other entities
• Structures
• Historical maps:
• (Here it will list "The Age of ..." epochs which your world went through.)

Historical Maps

In this mode, which can be entered by selecting an Age in the initial Legends screen, the user can see why an Age is named thus (for example, "The Age of Heroes was a time when the last of the powers fought their final battles." One can read a chronology of all the events which occurred in this epoch, including viewing battle sites on the world map, seeing the attack and defense strength of the opposing forces and the number of units involved. The reader can see a detailed "blow by blow" rundown of the battle. The army names can be amusing, such as "The Key of Ignition" and can give rise to hilariously named battles.

Viewing territorial disputes

This section needs to explain the workings of the historical territory view mode.

In this mode you can view the territorial disputes between different civs and entities(i think of them as factions) including those who where destroyed before your starting year. You can move the years in increments of 10yrs through each epoch. Hit "c" to change between faction/civ territory and "enter" to switch between the territory view and normal view. Something of note is that each faction looks like it can take another's territory even though they're in the same civ/kingdom. Haven't found out yet if it will show a previous fortress you lost or abandoned and if it does, I wonder if it has territory of its own?

Exporting maps

Also, you can export the regional map and seed info by pressing p. A highly detailed map can also be exported with d. Be warned, this can take a while and puts a highly detailed bitmap in your root Dwarf Fortress directory. Both maps are 4112 by 4112, and are uncompressed, so take the same amount of space, even though one is more detailed. Each bitmap is 48.3 megabytes.

Features in a high-detail map include:

• Different biomes are shown with different colors.
• Different shades show elevation, light being high and dark being low.
• The same shading is used for water depth.
• All rivers are shown, small streams and brooks are light blue, small rivers are blue, and large rivers are dark blue.
• The elevation shading overlaps the rivers, so they might appear quite dark near the ocean and it can be difficult to tell different river types apart.
• Points of interest are displayed as grey blocks on the world map.

Both of these maps can be used to search for appropriate fortress sites, however the high detailed map might be more useful for seeing small details.