40d Talk:Exploit

Deadly bridges

As far as I recall megabeasts can't be killed with bridge, and they destroy it when it tries to smash them. Article does state that bridge can destroy everything. --Someone-else 00:24, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Also I often hear that demons are not affected by the bridge and that it is destroyed if it lowers on top of them. We need some verification on this.--Richards 00:57, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Quantum stockpiles

GreyMario wrote an exploit about Siege engines that doesn't makes much sense. We need someone to expand it.--Richards 01:09, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

You fire the stone into the wall, which then falls into the trench. As the trench is limited in space, stones start piling up. (Apparently, catapults are no good at doing what they were historically used for - destroying walls... And they fire in flat trajectories - i would have honestly expected stones to travel up z-levels - but having tested catapults with roofs over them, they work, which i find silly but what the heck...). Note that this is only a quantum stockpile for stone, as opposed to dump, which is much more versatile, but there's also no need to reclaim. --Squirrelloid 02:15, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Thanks. I'll add that in.--Richards 02:37, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Well I guess eventually there will be a limit of how many items can be on a specific square... but for the moment there can be an infinite number of items no any square. --AlexFili 06:10, 9 June 2008 (EDT)

I'm trying to use the Quantum Stockpile technique to toss everything from my wagon to a single tile, but the Dwarves won't haul anything I've marked for dumping! I've made sure that nothing is forbidden, and the Dwarves all haul Refuse/Stone/Wood etc... but they won't move. --Anfini 00:55, 13 July 2008 (EDT)

Ha! Nevermind, fixed it myself. I didn't realize DF toggled "Dwarves ignore Refuse from outside" by default. --Anfini 00:58, 13 July 2008 (EDT)

Ideological point of views

Given the endless discussions on the net on what is considered or not cheating (as opposed to modding, or fair use of game mechanics, etc.), I suggest being extra careful of not asserting what is or what is not cheating.

Exploits are distinct from cheating because ...

Some would say

Exploits are a distinct form of cheating because ...

Plus, the justification

Whether a player chooses to make use of an exploit or not depends on their personal taste;
given that Dwarf Fortress is a single-player game, no one is actually harmed when you use an exploit.

equally applies to all forms of cheating (or non-cheating).

I would also stress that DF is currently more of a sandbox than a game with difficult goals, and that players boast more about their devious schemes and grand projects than about winning.

--Aykavil 05:20, 10 July 2008 (EDT)

Don't forget, many cheaters 'cheat' because they want to find out how particular functions work or to 'test out theories'. Then of course there's the people who cheat to simply save time. These are different from the people who would cheat just for 'kicks'. --AlexFili 05:31, 10 July 2008 (EDT)

I would say that it's indeed true that exploits are distinct from cheating. Cheating in a game involves breaking the rules; in a computer game, the program itself is "the rules" that one plays by. In fact, in some cases the "exploits" are unavoidable (such as children being legendary in six or more skills before they reach adulthood).

It's like in gridiron football, if the ball carrier goes out of bounds the clock stops. This can be considered an exploitation of the rules to keep time from running out in the half, but it certainly isn't cheating.--Gandalf the Dwarf (No, really! Look it up!) 14:01, 13 November 2008 (EST)

My attitude toward such things generally revolves around what I imagine the creators of the game intended. In Stronghold 2, for example. I am certain that the creators did not intend players to create gigantic stacks of siege engines coexisting ipon a single point, but last I saw it was the 'best' strategy. That upset me. But it doesn't upset me when someone exploits DF or 'mangles' it with modding. There is very little a player can do to subvert Toady's intent with this game, even with modding, because it's more than just a fuedal economy/fortress defense simulation. I'm all for rules and restrictions in bloodline games, though--cheating and exploitation can be fun, but they almost always ruin stories and make the game less challenging. --Navian 15:36, 13 November 2008 (EST)

Legendary Wrestler (Adventure)

I found a bug in Adventure mode that could be quite readily exploited. I wasn't sure if I just plonked it on the page, or chucked it here, so I'm just putting it here for now.

When strangling anything, you get 10xp for every 'choke'. If you hold down the directional button towards the creature, it will still get choked, but time will no pass, and the creature will never die. By placing something heavy(ish) on your keyboard, you can pretty much leave your adventurer to strangle for about 10 minutes, while you go get a drink. You come back, press Z to check your status, and, whadya know, you are now a Legendary Wrestler.

For reference, I use Windows XP. Don't know if that helps at all.

Thanks, Doom.

Infinite Power Not An Exploit

No really. I know it makes no physical sense, but as there is little good way to create power generation on most maps otherwise, and power can be used for all sorts of fun projects, the possibility of creating a battery anywhere you need it makes all sorts of fun things possible. I also doubt implementing a realistic physics model of energy is at all possible, much less sensical in a game which allows productive underground farming - which is honestly a far more serious violation of conservation of energy than waterwheel batteries. Doesn't work like reality does not imply it isn't intended or its exploitive of the system. The fact that the easy availability of power leads to more fun projects strongly argues it is a feature, not an exploit. --Squirrelloid 17:29, 12 December 2008 (EST)

The line between Exploit and Feature is entirely subjective. The fact that a significant player population considers something an exploit makes it so, I would think. It's not like "exploit" in this sense is a pejorative term. --Erom 14:58, 17 December 2008 (EST)

Seeing as it violates fairly basic laws of physics (unlike underground farming, what with fungi not requiring sunlight), I'd say that the infinite power thing is as much of an exploit as any other mechanism that generates an arbitrary amount of an otherwise-limited resource. You are, after all, exploiting the gaps in the game's physics engine.
This isn't explicitly a bad thing, though; this game would be far less fun if it didn't have any hilarious bugs. Since there's no real goal of the game except to do something interesting or amusing before everything dies when your magma-pumping system suffers a mechanical failure and spews lava into the sleeping quarters, I don't really see any particular grounds to not take advantage of these holes in reality. As long as you don't go "hey, look, I built an entire fortress out of adamantine" without telling people that you turned your smelters into molecular forges that produce thousands of wafers from, say, sand, it's fine. Some people want to challenge themselves and do it the "right" way, others want to challenge themselves and do it the "weird" way, and both are equally valid approaches. After all, there are plenty of people who make "anti-walkthroughs" for games which involve bending the game in question into strange ten-dimensional shapes whilst still getting to the end, and that's just as fun as doing it properly. Maybe it'll get fixed, but in the meantime feel free to dig out the bottom of the mountain and hold up a million tonnes of rock with a single glass pillar, or channel your magma with wooden walls.
_{The exploits mentioned in these paragraphs may or may not have been performed by the author. No responsibility is accepted for attempting to perform said exploits. Do not attempt to modify cats to produce temperatures exceeding 16939.81667 degrees Kelvin.}--Quil 15:37, 17 December 2008 (EST)

Productive underground farming is a violation of the laws of physics. Specifically conservation of energy. Farming generally works because plants turn sunlight into energy. You're right, fungi don't do this. However, fungi turn dead stuff into energy - a rather inefficient process. Growing fungi in solid rock, no matter how wet, shouldn't do anything, and fungal farms should require massive amounts of fertilizer. (Its not like people don't farm mushrooms today). I also don't think Quarry Bush, Sweet Pods, or Cave Wheat are fungi at all, and the only one I know that is would be Plump Helmet.

Regardless, underground farming in the game produces energy from nothing. I consider this a more severe physics violation than perpetual motion machines, made more egregious because it doesn't actually lead to fun like Rube Goldberg devices.

Finally, exploit technically means its not intended to occur. Violating the laws of physics does not imply game exploit if those violations are intended. Obviously underground farming is intended, so despite being a severe violation of conservation of energy its not actually an exploit. Similarly, arbitrary power seems perfectly intended by the way power works in the game. Exploits are not determined by vote, they are determined by the designer's intention - so the only vote that counts here would by ToadyOne's.

--Squirrelloid 16:02, 17 December 2008 (EST)

should require massive amounts of fertilizer

Where do you think your dwarves do their business? --juckto 16:06, 17 December 2008 (EST)

This should have diminishing returns. Eat food, body removes energy, expel remaining mass which contains some amount of energy to be used. If you feed your dwarves with nothing but farming (perfectly possible in game) you should be faced with diminishing yields as consumption pulls energy out of the system which then gets used for activities (so no, disposing of the dead as fertilizer does not solve the problem). Ie, a sealed fortress with no access to the surface should be faced with an ever-decreasing energy budget, and thus ever-decreasing food production. Instead, in-game you have exponentially increasing potential food production, which is crazy since there is no outside energy input. --Squirrelloid 16:44, 17 December 2008 (EST)

On the other hand, DF is semi-mythical, and the concept of dwarves maintaining underground farms that work as well for them as above-ground farms work for humans is a great game element, even if it does not match what exists in our world.--Maximus 17:21, 17 December 2008 (EST)

Why do the same arguments not also support arbitrary physical power if arbitrary energy is allowed otherwise? Its the same thing - both violate conservation of energy. --Squirrelloid 17:26, 17 December 2008 (EST)

If things didn't grow in dark, seemingly nutrientless places, preparing petri dishes would be far, far easier. As it is, since things become "muddy" when irrigated, presumably a suitable layer of fertile silt is being deposited on the surface of the rock to grow mythical subterranean plants that thrive well enough to be a suitable crop. There is, however, a subtle difference between magical crops and magical water, in that one is a somewhat hand-waved but ultimately convenient mechanism for growing crops, along the same lines as the massive time acceleration and strange Dwarven sleeping habits, while the other is a device that has no actual, functioning, real-world equivalent and is instead a quirk of the simulation, similar to, say, the deadly !!fire imp fat!! that is produced by strange object property inheritance. It's essentially the same thing as opening up the reaction_standard.txt file and removing the requirement for fuel and adamantine threads from the adamantine production reaction, which happens to give you as much adamantine as you like straight from your smelter. The developer left the raws in simple text format, so he must have intended for people to do that, surely?

Really, though, I don't see the need to argue about this. It's not like the Exploit Police are going to come and arrest people for building perpetual motion machines, nor are they going to arrest me for making a species that can rip people to pieces with their bare hands and wield +adamantine rocket launcher+s in both hands.--Quil 17:51, 17 December 2008 (EST)

If we can agree that Toady did not intend for perpetual motion machines to be possible, then we can safely classify this as an exploit. If we can't, I'm sure there is a thread with comments from him on the issue around the forums somewhere. VengefulDonut 22:17, 17 December 2008 (EST)

Why does any of this matter? Perpetual motion can be done, we document it. Make use of it if you like, don't if you don't.--Maximus 23:47, 17 December 2008 (EST)

Agreed with Maximus, we're arguing over a classification that simply isn't included in the scope of the wiki. Whether it's classified as an exploit or not, the ability to create power via perpetual motion exists and has been documented; therefor, it deserves a place in the wiki. Let's just leave it where it is and agree that if someone doesn't personally think it's an exploit, then it's not an exploit for them. --LucienSadi 05:28, 18 December 2008 (EST)

Not included in the scope of the wiki?? Guilty conscience much? Rest at ease, the exploit page isn't finger-wagging as much an instruction manual XD Of course it's relevant, there's things even Toady considers an exploit(and plans to remove). As for mushrooms, that's obviously as Toady intended it, not an unintended side-effect of something else gone wrong. That is what makes things an exploit or not, a game with dwarves and dragons is fairly fantastic in the first place. Sheesh. --Corona688 09:57, 18 December 2008 (EST)

Of course it's included in the scope of the wiki. Look at the title of the talk page. Talk:Exploit. If it's an exploit, we include it on the exploit page. If it's not, we include it somewhere else. In any case, it shows up somewhere. Don't get so excited over little things :) VengefulDonut 06:27, 18 December 2008 (EST)

Intricate artifacts

You seem to be certain that this exploit doesn't work, but I can't imagine that you've actually tried it correctly, since I have an example that confirms it:

. VengefulDonut 17:44, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed i tried to confirm it with my 2 last artifacts (today) and it didn't work. At what precise moment did you unforbid the items? Did they all show up as tasked with 't'? Have you yourself reproduced it? What version do you use? I know there is a bug that produces such artifacts but that one can't be reliably reproduced AFAIK. --Höhlenschreck 17:57, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah - I think i see how it would work - assuming he wants 3 stones, 1 is tasked. Now I unforbid 5 other present stones at once and they will all be tasked? If it should work like that, i probably haven't tried that. --Höhlenschreck 18:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

The retasking is done only when the moody dwarf picks up or delivers new materials. In your example the first three stones that he picked up would be retasked, but the fourth and fifth would not because he already has three stones that were before them. So he would use a total of 4 stones. If you wanted him to use all of them you need to unforbid the latest three, wait for them to get tasked, then unforbid the first two.

The example is one I generated in ^{v0.28.181.40d}. It shouldn't be any different in d# versions, though, since there aren't any logic updates. Mayday, on the other hand; I have no clue how far his changes have reached. VengefulDonut 18:08, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

So does this only work if the dwarf requires more than one item of a type? --Höhlenschreck 12:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

You can pull it off if they only want one, but it will be a lot more work on your part. VengefulDonut 13:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Sweet pods, winter, and underground

What exactly are the exploits involving those items? I couldn't find any information on how you can exploit the process of turning sweet pods into dwarven syrup instead of sugar, exploit what I'm assuming is referring to the thought to be bug where a farm plot does not check if a plant can be grown next season if it is late winter (not tested for current version), or how you can trick a subterranean farm plot into growing above ground plants.

I'm not saying there aren't exploits involving those, just curious as to what the exploits are. --Elvang 04:34, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Err, well, no; intentionally producing only syrup as such is an exploit since it gives 5 times the amount and thus value compared to sugar - and that can't be what Toady intends, right? right? Also it is obviously an oversight on Toady's part that you can grow any surface plants all year, especially in winter. So you shouldn't do it just because you can. And for underground, well seriously, we all know that anything except mushrooms needs sunlight so if you plant smth else than plumps you are, again, exploiting, cos obviously Toady is going to change that soon..as you may have figured, I don't consider any of those exploits, but people have argued for it. --Höhlenschreck 15:09, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I gotta disagree with the underground plants thing - for all we know dwarves just have a lot more names for "mushroom" than we do, like eskimos with snow (although that might be an urban legend?).Garrie 14:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Using ore in a mason/craft shop

Is it an exploit that building metal furniture takes 3 ore but building the same furniture from the ore takes only 1? Not so much where the ore is lesser value than the metal (eg, "iron") but say with "gold" and other metals where the ore is a "nugget".Garrie 14:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

The game is an alpha - in some places it's quirky as hell, especially in some of the math/values, but where the "quirks" stop and the "bugs" start is unclear. Is it an exploit to make a statue from gold ore rather than gold metal - the value is the same, so why process it? Meh. In the end, it's up to each player to determine, for themselves, their own challenges - if the game starts to get too easy, then self-handicap. "Which ones?" is up to you. --Albedo 20:11, 21 July 2009 (UTC)