User:GhostDwemer

Dwarf Fortress. It's not a game, it's a lifestyle. I've been playing video games since the early eighties, and this game beats them all. Below you will find random musings, my own notes to myself, really.

My Current Fortress

The Fortress of Channeled Kisses

Deadlock

I saw a funny thing today. I'm digging out a pit trap, and I've accidentally dug out underneath. You know, you deisgnate channel down on two levels, they channel down one square on the first, then descend and channel out underneath before channeling down from above? Anyway, I have this three tile wide tunnel I'm digging out, and I'm designating three tiles at a time for channeling. So two guys head over, one after the other, first guy removes the first floor tile, then the second guy gets there. One of them stands on one tile and begins digging the other, which the second guy is standing on digging out from under the first, and it's a four z-level drop down. But they both realize what they are about to do, stop, back off, then start the exact same thing again. I watched them do a merry dance for a minute to see if they would stop on their own, or actually start digging under the other guy, but nope, they just keep doing the Chip and Dale "After you, nononono, after you, I insist, no you first," bit. I eventually de-designate one tile to get them to stop.

In computing, we call that a deadlock.

Deduk SabreOrbs the Solitary Evenness of Owls

That's his name. Don't wear it out. He is a militia commander at ChanneledKisses, and until Irith killed the giant, the best fighter around. He's a great teacher, too. I picture this Zen Master wardorf patiently drilling his recruits in the arts of war. Usually the long names come out kinda goofy, but "The Solitary Evenness of Owls" actually makes sense. Owls are solitary, and pretty calm, one might even say even tempered.

I, for One

I for one would love to know how dwarfs make cages. I just caught a cyclops. Good thing, too, steel bolts weren't doing much. Bastard went straight for my 'adorable puppy on a leash' trap. I guess they just can't resist stomping puppies, the bastards. Rock traps didn't do much either, but by the time the squad got down off the walls, he was caged in the first cage trap, he never even got to the menacing spikes by the puppy. Those cages must unfold out of another dimension or something. Cool, now I've got a cyclops for the zoo. Maybe I'll get a dungeon master eventually, if I can beat the liaison bug. I just haven't had a reason to want anything more than a mayor until now. But a War Cyclops, now THAT is tempting. Oh poop, I just looked it up and they are not PET_EXOTIC, so no training, but I bet I can make a pretty awesome cyclops trap. Just wall him into a pit with a retracting bridge over it, mwahahaha!

I was wondering how they would carry him, the answer is "very, very slowly." The poor dorf lugging him to cage storage is very quick to tire, too.

Ingiz Tiristthum Is Not a Blowgunner

He has no skill in blowguns. He isn't carrying a blowgun. He is skilled in crossbows, which he carries. Why then, do I read that Ingiz Tiristthum has become a Blowgunner? I just checked his actual inventory, rather than the equip screen, nope, no blowgun. Standard steel chain armor, steel crossbow, individual choice melee which he has filled with a steel short sword.

Whoah. Did you know DF records kills on weapons? I just looked at that masterful short sword. Five Notable Kills: four goblins in one raid, one kobold thief who came knocking on the wrong door. This is the sword that beheaded the kobold I was just writing about! Two other kills, pestiferous raccoons I got annoyed with and sent the squad after, hehe. Sakzul Urnjoy with four kills, the four goblins. He was a brilliant fighter, may he rest in piece, but the dumbass rushed them. Sure he took out four of them before he got clobbered, but as they said of the charge of the light brigade at Balaclava, it was magnificent, but it was not war. It was madness.

That is a fairly epic sword you carry now, Ingiz Tiristthum, Blowgunner. Use it well. I expect to see more than just dead kobolds and raccoons from you, lad!

Made In ChanneledKisses!

Am I the only one who is endlessly amused by making lead based toys for export? I've even come up with an advertising slogan to promote our goods: You Can Taste the Kisses! Go Ahead, Try! Maybe I'll start making lead pipe sections for export, too. And lead flasks. I crack myself up.

Knock, knock

Knock knock knock, Oh hi! Large bronze dagger salesman, could I interest you in a large bronze dagger? Kobold thief? Me?!? No, ahaha, no, I'm a traveling kobold salesman. Not interested? I'll just show myself URKH! So a Kobold thief decided my upper barracks looked like a nice back door into my fort. Too bad for him that two full squads were inside training with their pair of War Jaguars. He made it one step into the room. He might have made it back out, had he not lost his head. Silly Kobold, tricks are for mechanics. Did you really think it would be that easy? Have any of your compatriots in crime EVER even made it inside?

One Got Loose

So a goblin axeman prisoner escaped, I forgot to lock the door before pulling the lever and he somehow escaped. Next spring, and no ambush yet. Coincidence? Probably. Okay, it has now been over a year since the last attack. When I looked at the Goblin civ before, I could swear they had some kind of general as well as a leader type. Now they don't, they only have a 'Master.' What happened? Is it possible for a civ to be destroyed during play, as they might be during world-gen, or wekened to the point they will no longer attack? Goblins are far, far away from me on this world, could that have something to do with it? Maybe I'm just not worth their while.

Gems and minerals in your walls

Once I build out rooms, I'm often left with tempting gems and minerals in the walls. Do you take them out or leave them to engrave and add value? For me, it depends on the room, and how much I need the stuff right then, but mostly I try to leave them. I picture the dorfs using the shape of the clusters and veins when they engrave, dwarven eyes gleaming with red grossular anger at the Goblin begging for his life.

Do you hate Goblins?

'Cause I REALLY hate Goblins. I have never felt such righteous anger towards an ASCII character before. No game has made me care this much, not even when "I" die in a first person game. It was Limpy Dog that did it. This poor dog they crippled, always limping after his master, showing up right when Master gets done and goes off someplace else, then slowly limping after him. It got to the point I couldn't even have Limpy Dog on-screen, it was just too sad to watch. Goblins must pay for this. At least my Goblin Blood Waterfall alleviates the pain somewhat. Just throw a bunch of Goblins in a murky pool and drain it into your waterfall, viola! Instant homage to Dwarven vengeance.

UPDATE: Limpy Dog got better! It took two years, but he gets around just fine now. Oh Limpy Dog, I shall ensure that when you finally pass, you get a fine tomb. Who is a good boy? Who is? You are! Yes you are.

Thoughts and Strategies

I would rate my skill level at DF at, hmm "dabbling." After about 200 hours of play I think I'm starting to figure things out. I had the best fortress ever, a volcano with limestone! It lacked one crucial thing, though: enemies. No goblins at all. I had siege engines and full metal kit before the second spring, and no one to use them on but megabeasts. Boring. So I abandoned, little did I know how RARE a volcano with sedimentary stone is. Now, I'm trying to get a very dorfy fortress up and running. I know dorfs can make it anywhere, but I want METAL! and STONE! Dorfs are not made for leather and cloth. So I'm playing chalk/limestone/dolomite biomes for the HEAVY METAL (guitar licks and head banging ensue.)

My current strategy, 1 leader/speardorf, 1 mech/axedorf, 1 doctor/carpenter, 1 brewer/leather worker, 1 cook/gem cutter, 1 mason/architect, 1 brewer/metalsmith. No miners, I train 'em up in dirt right off the (giant) bat. First dig a huge farm room and flood it. Then build entry hall... OF DEATH! Then dig a big stairwell down seven levels. Near the top, arranged in a spiral around the stairs, four workshops: mechanic, jeweler, mason and carpenter. At the bottom, the initial living quarters. One floor above, the kitchen complex. One floor below, the engineering level with control room, plumbing, cisterns, and my pride and joy, the indoor waterfall which took me five tries to get right. Pro-tip: make a water reactor separate from your pump stack, don't try to build a reactor/pump stack all in one, couple them up with a gear. The reactor wants a full load of water in it to run right, the waterfall wants as little as possible to avoid overflows.

A free keg of dwarven ale for anyone who gets the reference in my username!

Weirdness and a Glimpse of Hell

Okay, whoah. Just started a new game. I normally get 100 FPS up until I've got twenty dorfs or so. I'm getting about 3-20 now. Anyone know what this means? Here's another clue, I've got half limestone and half obsidian on my map. Any guesses? I know what it means, and I can't wait to get below to see it, because it truly is an impressive sight. I only hope things even out a bit so my FPS gets high enough to actually get down there in any reasonable time frame. I won't play a regular game on this map, of course, but I think I'll delve down right away to find what I think is going on down there. I'll save the map if that's the case so others can see it, I've only seen it once before. I'm just surprised I haven't gotten a string of cave in messages...

Okay, crud, this map is 140 levels deep. It probably isn't happening in the first cavern level, based on the fact that I didn't get any cave in messages. Probably way down deep.

Yup, it is down deep, and I've stepped in a situation, too. I hit the first cavern level. The magma pipe goes up through it, but it's empty up here. I can't even see the magma. But I am willing to bet that somewhere down below, it is flowing in great rivers through a cavern level. That is the only explanation I know of for my FPS drop.

My problem is Batman. Or more accurately, bat men. I just dug straight into a nest of them and I don't even have a mason's shop set up to make hatches.

Okay, hmm, they are hostile but seem content to stay where they are. Still, I think I'm going to save this map and move on. I'm trying to proof my QuickStart instruction, not find a natural wonder.

By the way, I bought Fallout: New Vegas yesterday. I haven't even opened the package. I've got Fortress Fever!

Okay, forget it, I'm going down. I got the hatch in place before the bat men attacked, and I bypassed the first cavern level.

Oh. My. God. No, no, no, nonononono! It wasn't what I thought. It wasn't what I thought at all. Well, this should be over quickly. And it should be instructive, I've never seen it first hand before.

Literally five minutes into this game, I've somehow hit an OPEN eerie cavern.

Oh HAH! HAH to the HAH-HAH power. No horrifying screams from the darkness below. It appears the magma has flooded Hell. How else would the cavern be open? I don't even know what to say here. I'm just saving this game in a very special place and moving on.

That was certainly exciting. I'm creating a stock new medium sized world, and recording the seeds. I'll find a good site therein. I think that will be better than having newbs download a 40MB map. Oh, the only change from stock params is 1800 embark points, we'll start the newbs out with decent dorfs and gear.

A 'Normal' Start?

Oh HAH! This game, I swear to you it is haunted by the ghosts of tricky nobles slain by exasperated players. It does things. It lives. Do you know what I found on this first stock map I generated for educational purposes? Well, I didn't find sedimentary flux stone with a warm climate, a river, and some trees. Nope. What I found was a volcano with trees around it, and get this, sedimentary stone in the same 4x4 zone. Rock salt, but the volcanic biome has marble for flux. A river, too, if you are willing to expand to 5x5 and take less forest. Goblins are present, but far, far away. All dorf civs are pretty far, too, I don't know how that affects immigration. Obviously, this is not a normal start. Stock worlds have one volcano, the odds of finding one like this are next to nothing.

You want the seeds, don't you? 3507106834 480448902 3609199234 165037949

It is on the eastern side, near center north to south.

Oh, forget it. It's one of those lame volcanoes that sticks out weirdly above the ground. Those are just lame. And it's frozen at embark. I don't want to play a map like that, well, back to finding a 'normal' start for newbs. Okay, no, the top is frozen but the bottom isn't, that makes sense but I've never seen it before. There are murky pools. It is twenty four z-levels up to the lip of the magma pool, and it isn't entirely outside the ground, meaning it can be mined for magma. Not too bad, actually. Kinda chunky and artificial looking for my tastes in landscape, you can see the square boundaries clear as day, but then I've only really found one volcano that wasn't that way. Plenty of sand. I haven't seen the rock salt anywhere yet, nor the coal it should contain, and I'm afraid things are going to be a bit spread out. Still, it looks promising. The only question is, should we start the newbs out on such a 'perfect' map?

Oh, look, Hoary Marmots. They are such Hoars.

Oh, look, Goblins!

So, you know, I played through 1058 on a really nice fortress, one of my first. Volcano with limestone, wow. But no Goblins! It was too easy. The occasional giant beasts were never a match, they never even made it to the Pillar of Smash and the triple ballista battery before my squads cut them down. Well it is amazing the difference with Goblins present. I was right to quite that fortress, it was WAY too easy. I had too much time, and without the constant threat of death, I had over 100 citizens within a few years. With Goblins, you never have enough time or dorfs.

I've pretty much got the military thing down now. Training is working correctly, including archery practice, demonstrations take place, sparring takes place, all militia and guards have civilian and military skills, nobody gets unhappy going on or off duty, nobody starving or dying of thirst. Everyone has marksdwarf and at least one weapon skill. Last ambush, I moved them around right, putting them up on the battlements, then reopening the front gate to lure the Gobs in. The had top charge through a hail of bolts from above, it was awesome, except for the one idiot who always thinks charging them is a great idea. We lost a woodsman and hunter who were outside, one of them had his kid with him, they killed the dad and stole the kid. Man this game is brutal.

Uh, you got that wrong, Engravers

Nobody refused her. She didn't 'depart the position.' She was 'killed by Goblins.' Okay? Sheesh.