v0.31 Talk:Adventurer mode

Bleeding, wounds, combat

Anyone know if bleeding can be stopped in adventurer mode? My adventurer got hit by an arrow and bled to death. I removed the arrow but couldn't do anything about THE BLOOD. Haruspex Pariah 02:13, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It looks like wounds can become infected (even after partial healing) in adventurer mode. My whole right leg is "swelling", and I keep vomiting everywhere. I wonder if it'll become worse. Timst 13:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It might be worth pointing out and further testing that the combat in adventure mode seems to be much more detailed in DF2010. There are now nerves and layers of fat and muscle involved and it will tell you if you have served motor nerves etc. or just cut into fat. Also I must agree that hammers and other blunt weapons seem to be useless as in arena mode I used an adamantine hammer and couldn't do anything but bruise the heck out of people :P Switch to an axe and suddenly the same monster died on one hit (A dragon) Could use further testing of course, also to see if that weakness carries over to Fortress Mode so people can make informed choices when attempting to defend their fortress : --205.145.64.64 17:02, 7 May 2010 (UTC)Railick Stonemane

• Adamantine blunt weapons are poor because they are very lightweight; use heavier metals for blunt weapons. --TomiTapio 18:29, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm relatively certain it's relevant to my infection - after killing a dragon (all dragonfire blocked), I reported the victory thrice, and upon entering another town and thus leaving the travel, my feet spontaneously began melting. None of my equipment was on fire, so I'm assuming my infected finger (smashed apart of course) spread to my feet and the message was interpreted as melting, a half dozen times per movement. Very disconcerting. (Another possible explanation is that the stairs of mead halls in a select few human capitals have faulty magma traps.)

That sounds more like a bug than how infection or burning work. You could keep a perpetual infection with no effect other than occasional puss drainage, and it doesn't spread unless you also have a syndrome. Another explanation for the melting is that you might have walked across items burning in the wake of the dragonfire and set your feet aflame; you don't get any message that your equipment is on fire until you feel the pain of the flames. DokEnkephalin 17:20, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't know where he lives

Have been tasked, as my first quest, to kill an armadillo fiend that is the god of one of the two of the only civilization left's religions. He's in my town, but I've no clue where he is

The 'Q'uest Log should be useful for finding things. I think it can also help pinpoint quest targets. If you're in the same world map tile (e.g. you're in the same town), zooming in on something will show you the region map instead of the world map. I was able to see a 3x3 town on the map this way (or maybe it was a cave; I forget). Region tiles represent a 48x48 space IIRC, so that should help you find the rascal. -128.211.250.173 06:11, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I've encountered this as well; it's my (untested) assumption that the creature in question is somewhere in a cavern underneath the town. Also, the few times I've used the quest log to zoom in on a quest target, the most precise it gets is showing the 3x3 grid on the "local area" map where the Site in question is. Anacrucis 21:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

If he's a demon, he's probably in one of the various houses and he's probably the town's Law-giver. If you actually attack him, the entire town will go hostile and try to kill you, including the guy who gave you the quest in the first place. --Quietust 22:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Mainspace redirect

Why does the mainspace Adventurer mode (and thereby the link on the main page) point to the 40d adventure mode? --StrongAxe 15:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

No attribute increase in adventure mode?

On the page it said that the attributes don't increase, but I started a dwarven adventurer and looked at his stats and it said I had a very good focus. But later that changed to a great ability to focus. So not only attributes INCREASE but also soul attributes can increase with no apparent reason.--Niggy 13:54, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The article can't be accurate; attributes can increase with ranks in any skills. So far it appears to be random whether you get an increase and which attribute increases with each skill, but if you get enough to Legendary, you will notice some attributes climbing to Superhuman. DokEnkephalin 08:08, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Dwarven Fortresses

I've seen a couple dwarven fortresses in adventure mode and in each case there's a large outer wall with a ring of stairs down to a "first" floor, in which there is a centered column of ramps down to the next level (all typical from ver. 40d). The ramp leads to a "ramp room" which has another ramp (column) opposite the first, then this repeats down several more levels, until you reach a level where there is no 'next' ramp down. Importantly, each ramp room is completely enclosed. There appears to be no actual body to the fortress, no rooms, hallways, certainly no workshops, etc. Piwowk 22:54, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It's been reported in the bug tracker. I actually once discovered a fortress just like this in 40d, but it seems that something has broken and is causing all worldgen dwarf fortresses to turn out like this. --Quietust 23:36, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I have discovered exactly one dwarf settlement in 31.04 that actually had halls and rooms in the underground layer. Just one. Anacrucis 21:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

There is a workaround... well, kind of. By replacing DEFAULT_SITE_TYPE and LIKES_SITE (latter could be an overkill) from CAVE_DETAILED to CITY in raw's "default_entity.txt" you can supply every dorf's civilization with human architector, who can design functioning shops and whistles (having bad habit of building things above the ground though)

Thoughts on Elf Adventurers

The current version of this page doesn't talk about the playable races so I thought this might be the best place to put my thoughts on elves:

• Wood equipment makes them initially a poor choice as discussed on 40d page; however they can use the same size equipment as dwarfs (and goblins) which makes looting better gear a little easier than for a Human.
• Elves seem to be friendly to most animals and non-evil creatures. They seem to lose this ability if they retire and then restart, though the loss might be caused by some other action (like killing Bambi) and the retire/restart correlation purely coincidental. Needs more testing.
• If you lack the patience to reroll countless elf adventurers and send them to their deaths in search of a metal weapon, you could roll a dwarf character, put all it's starting steel and bronze gear in it's backpack, and drop the backpack somewhere like a human town, then retire the character. Revisiting that town with your elf, you should be able to find the backpack; this is more efficient than dropping the items individually as they all seem to stay in the backpack and only the backpack is "scattered." Whether or not this method requires more or less patience than the endless stream of dead elf adventurers method requires further testing.
• Based on reviews of the Legends logs, attacking (or being attacked by?) members of a given Entity seems to make that Entity an Enemy of any Entities your adventurer belongs to. While I haven't tested this, it would seem possible that this could cause your civilization in Fortress mode to be at War with someone on embark, if you made some enemies with a dwarf adventurer of the same civilization. Playing an elf would avoid this presumed problem as long as you don't retire in a dwarven town or anything. (After all, every dwarf knows that elves are no fun.) I propose more testing for this.

Anacrucis 21:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

The lack of random encounters from savage creatures does shelter a starting elf, from unprepared attacks that can end a novice dwarf or human quickly, but also from developing skill that other races have to. You can pick your targets at leisure, but the interface gets tedious as you have to confirm each and every attack. Since you can pretty much ignore wildlife, in later stages you don't have to waste time on the zerg rushes from outleagued critters. If evil lands exist in your world, they're a decent place to farm weapon experience in low-to-mid levels, until you're ready for local questing.

The early equipment problem is solved with hand-picked recruitment of dwarves eager for glorious death. Goblin civilizations populated with dwarves tend to have more dwarves with better overall gear, so they make good targets, and they're fitting enemies for your dwarven companions to die in battle with. Money is pretty much pointless for elves, so you can travel light with only the weapons you like, or are currently training. You can have full steel in short order with this method; better gear than human coin can buy.

DokEnkephalin 08:27, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Starting wars?

Can an adventurer cause wars by traveling around and attacking peaceful civilizations? --TomiTapio 18:27, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Sort of. If the civilizations aren't already at war, they won't call it war. But if you're allied with one and cause trouble in another, they will name anyone you attack or who attacks you as an enemy, who will become a quest target. You could very easily make this snowball into a chain of aggressions from your allied nation on the ones that you're attacking. Even better, if you bring companions from your allies into settlement that has declared you enemy, they will run completely amok. This could be any nations at any range, whether they have any good reason for war or not. DokEnkephalin 17:09, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Pools and swimming

Is the "climb out of pool" bugged in 31.08? Alt-move (and shift & ctrl) doesn't climb out. --TomiTapio 19:02, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Once you issue the command, press Enter (or click the mouse) and you should actually be on the surface - there's some bugs with delayed input that have yet to be resolved. If Alt+Move isn't actually giving you a movement menu, then you're probably drowning and aren't physically capable of climbing out of the pool. --Quietust 19:32, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

So an adventurer should invest in the swimming skill, because of charging attacks and dodging jumps. --TomiTapio 23:30, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Now DF .31.13, (alt-move, a, enter) lets you jump into river for a swim, and similarly climb out. --TomiTapio 14:20, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Bandages

After getting cut up way more than is socially acceptable, I've concluded that you cannot use cloth to bandage a wound. If anyone can prove that they can, please, by all means revert my edit.

Adventure Mode Combat

or how to kill everything.

The Weapons There are many types of weapons; not all can kill and maim at the same level.

Swords are your jack of all trades weapon, doing reasonable slashing damage. The size of the blade helps in making bigger wound and dismembering foes.

subtypes

• large dagger*

Short sword long sword scimitar two-handed sword

large dagger small weak shallow cuts and stabs, at best a fall back blade, at worst throw it at someone. NOTE uses dagger skill, not sword skill.

Short swords are the weakest true sword, but are still good for use fighting wolfs and the like, just don't take it to fight a dragon.

Long sword it's longer and so it cuts deeper and dismembers more.

Scimitar, ok this is just as good as the short sword.

Two-handed sword 5 times the cutting power of the short sword,it stabs go in 2 time as far, truly this is the king swords

Axes

ok a lot like swords but bigger and better when fighting armor.

subtypes battle axe great axe halberd

battle axe on par with the long sword a good weapon over all.

great axe bigger and better.

halberd the oddball it has a smaller edge but can stab as well as chop, think of the offspring of a Short sword and a spear.

Spears ok the spear ot as good or as bad as it was,yes no endless Stick-ins but no more stabbing every internal organs in one blow.

subtypes spear

• pike*

spear a poor anti-group weapon for the love of Armok use a different weapon.

pike ok it stabs a little deeper and uses pike skill, still use a different weapon.

Blunts good at smashing stuff and fighting armor. for blunt weapons there weight is the main factor.

subtypes war hammer mace maul flail morningstar

war hammer with skill to can put nice holes in heads.

mace has more weight than the warhammer, in skilled hands Goblins shatter like glass. In less skilled hands it's bruising.

maul a bigger mace,now hit stuff harder.

flail mace on a chain,hit them not you.

morningstar spiked ball on a chain cuts as it smashes.

other weapons the odd one.

whip pick scourge

whip shatters the bone,bruise the flesh.

pick goes in deep,rips organs ,shatters bones.fear the miners.

scourge tears muscle,brakes bones. --Funk

Worldgen for Adventurers

It might be a good idea to have a section on worldgen parameters and settings that are useful to adventurers.

For ex: I always set CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MIN and CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MIN to 15 instead of 0, this gives a much less maze-like feel to the underground, allowing you to travel with only occasional side-trips to get around an impassible region. It's not so hot for fortress mode, since it's harder to wall out the nasties, but still doable.

I also set CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MAX to 80 -- it costs a bit in framerate when you enter a region and the underground water begins to flow, but a 100% flooded region once prevented me from using the 'T'ravel trick to escape the underworld. It told me I couldn't fast travel because I was swimming, and the region square I was on had not a single tile of dry land. (A fairly common thing with this set to 100%) Wound up having to backtrack for hours. (This was before I tried the openness and passage density params, though.) This also seems to me to give slightly more natural-shaped underground pools.

Maybe a mention of MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN and NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN, which will get you more interesting stuff to kill, or ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE, which keeps you from having to talk to people to find caves.

BEAST_END_YEAR is handy, too -- an adventurer probably doesn't care if the world still has a ton of megabeasts. Hey, they're not invading his house, right? It defaults to not ending worldgen until 80% of all megabeasts are dead, but I usually reduce that to 50 or less.

You don't want to have worldgen end too early, though. I find ending the worldgen early (like pre-500) leaves tons of megabeasts, but also gives you nearly empty cavern layers.

Finally, I find boosting the SAVAGERY minimum to about 10 is a good idea for adventurers, since it means less time spent trudging through empty forest when you're hunting, while not going to the insane step-WOLFAMBUSH-step-WOLFAMBUSH-step extreme.

--Anonymous July 30, 2010

The Basics

I think it would be worth adding a paragraph or two describing the basics of Adventurer mode. What it is, and most importantly, how to start it. (Can it be started if a Fortress game is in progress?) -- Anonymous 2010-08-02

I definitely agree. I've spent around half an hour trying to 'g'et prickleberries etc, starving to death while my human (who only started with copper spear and dagger, apparently due to hitting 'play now') merrily ignites everything. Getting a waterskin is nearly impossible, as there are no towns for miles in every direction from my starting place. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but none of this really basic stuff is covered here.

• drink/lick the blood spatters off your clothes, for survival. --TomiTapio 10:01, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Small Bugs - Conversations, Other little niggles

What's the wiki's policy on minor bugs? I found that in adventurer mode, asking peasants their profession makes them reply "I am a .", presumably because they have no job. Should I post that here, or is that too small? I can imagine the list getting full quick otherwise.

Ah - and apparently you can hold two things in one hand - although you need to juggle your inventory round to do it. Weird.

priesthood

There's more to say on the subject, but most of it is better suited to a separate article on religion. It could be pared down to the basics dealing with quest finding, even though they don't currently give quests, the info could lay a foundation for it in future releases.DokEnkephalin 17:04, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Companions limited to 2?

While in adventure mode I was playing as a human. I was able to convince a swordsman and a hammerman to join me. When trying to convince another hammerman to join me, he told me "With a band so large, what share of the glory would I have?"

Does this mean that the companion limit has been decreased?

--98.144.80.228 16:43, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

• This happened for me, too. I've tried it using dwarves and elves, and I was only ever able to get 2 followers. Gasheegooger 23:12, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
• Deon managed to get seven followers. --TomiTapio 09:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
• The number of followers you can get is determined by your notoriety; when you first start out you'll only be able to get two warriors to join your band, but once you get some tasks under your belt and slay a dragon or two you can have upward of fifteen. More may be possible but I sort of figured 15 was enough and stopped there. 72.230.201.43 20:41, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

"<Adventurer> was guided by forces unknown"

That says if you check out your dead adventurer in legends.

• Yep, one of Armok's little helpers guided the person. --TomiTapio 10:01, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

tips and tricks in.31.17

Some vanilla .17 adventuring... this might be helpful to you.

1. start a demigod adventurer. Buy agility and dodging. Surrounded == dead.
2. run away from bogeymen, leave the low-agility ones far behind.
3. no adventurer can ever start with armor, it seems.

4. try aimed ("A") easy attacks, stab torso with sword. Or slash at foot/hand. Miss because bogeymen have very good dodging skills.
5. use trees to force enemies into single file.
6. "C" change combat mode to strike instead of charge. Charging makes you trip and fall often.

8. one bogeyman is about as difficult as .16 's elephant/ogre/giant/marshtitan. Because of dodging skill.
9. fighting skill may give you lots of nice counterstrikes. You might want to practice fighting with slow-moving wildlife (not camels!)
10. "mortal wound" means internal organ bruising, not dangerous, unlike "CANT STAND".
11. haul bogeyman body parts to town to show off.

12. inside a crowded building, would need a "swap places with friendly" key so can move around.
Quote from: Miko19: You can press "s" to lay on the ground, and then you can move on the same tile as an other person is
Oookay... crawl under the moronic humans who cower inside their houses, check.

13. goblins and dwarven bandits are nothing compared to bogeymen. (Or my skills got really high already.)
14. cross the rivers and streams in travel mode, not with swimming.
15. go thank Toady for adding bandits and "The quest for armor".

16. some humans are morons and block doorways for hours on end.
17. wear shirt, dress, dress, dress, robe for "protection".
18. ask the cyan-coloured humans (who have no profession) to join you.
19. your human companions will have a longer sight range than you, at least at night when the felines attack.
20. wear one more dress. And two togas.
21. the red-cross-blinking cyan @ draws you eye away from the brown, dirt-coloured @. And the companion will crawl miles and miles, matching your speed, faithfully following you.

Q for quest log, z to see where the quest target is. Esc to exit quest log.
Z, d, enter to sleep the night.

ps. some of these notes are more like bug reports to Toady. --TomiTapio 09:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

.31.17 peasant/hero/demigod, thoughts

About the adventurer... think of "peasant" as "joe average who was the worst learner in the whole county". Novice in seven skills after many years of trying.
A "hero" could be a circus strongman, strong and tough, or a tumbler (acrobat) with superior agility and above average patience and focus, adequate in eight skills due to 1-2 years of training as a teenager.
A "demigod" is one in a thousand, competent in nine skills, perhaps a former soldier with five years of experience. Or proficient in 4.5 skills (not even a legendary in fortress mode, that soldier.)--TomiTapio 11:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Info on diff. between Adv Mode & Dwarf Mode

In adding some minor information to the Quick Start guide, I fell upon a conundrum. In that article I wanted to add a fair bit more information, but I wasn't sure that it belonged there (likely not as part of a quick start guide). Indeed, I'm not sure where to put them at all, whether they deserved their own page. I am thinking about: attributes and skills, which deserves more depth than what is necessary for dwarf mode (such as suggested skills to invest in, and the function of such skills and attributes in adventure mode); the benefits of the various races (which is not even covered in this article); probably known "quirks", such as the virtual non-existance of "small" equipment for use by dwarves and that goblins are a source; among other things. Should they simply get their own page so they can belong specifically to an Adventure Mode category, or perhaps add an "In Adventure Mode" section to the relevant pages in order to detail those differences?
I ask this question here since this seem to be a bit of catch all discussion area for adventure mode. Seemed better suited to it than the Quick Start discussion page, anyway.

Niveras 02:21, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

This is weird. I thought demigods were not allowed starting companions like heroes -- I tested it with two different demigods and the townspeople consistently gave me "I would....rather not" when asked about joining before I had completed any quest, and edited the page to reflect that. Yet, someone changed the edit back saying they *always* take two companions when playing demigod. Can anyone else test? Is that right? Am I subject to a bug?

Anonymous, Nov 15

I'm the one who made that edit, I think your problem is you were trying to recruit regular townspeople; look around towns/hamets for some actual fighters, or head to a fortress and try to recruit them there. It takes a while before you can get non-fighters to come with you, because whether they join you or not doesn't depend on how much stronger you are than them like in previous versions, but by how famous you are for being a hero, and they know they're weak and probably just cannonfodder unless you're a legend. Or at least that's my theory. I do admit that I haven't played any Peasant-class or Hero-class adventurers yet, so I can't say there is no difference between their abilities to recruit, but I can say for sure that I can get two swordsmen before I do a quest with my demigods. 72.230.201.43 19:55, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Ghost towns?

Is it a bug that I found ghost towns? Towns where there were no surviving inhabitants, but the stores are still stocked (and the items owned so I couldn't purchase anything without theft.) Was everyone just out in the fields or something?

(Also, I found a phantom hamlet, which I'm pretty sure *is* a bug. It showed up on the world map, but not the travel map. The local map had a pointer to the town, and as I walked there I hit the center but there were no buildings or people. It was safe to sleep, though, thankfully, 'cause I'd just lost all my companions to a troll attack and the sun had gone down.)

-- Anonymous, November 14, 7:08 pm pacific time

Difficulty settings

What exactly are the differences between Peasant, Hero, and Demigod difficulties?

I am fairly sure the only difference between them are the number of points you begin with to divide among your attributes and skills. 72.230.201.43 02:17, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Further testing may be needed. I've gone through a spate of demigods who died suddenly, while my current character, a peasant, has developed very well through skill training and has lived long enough to get a nearly full set of steel armor in dwarf size. I don't know if he's been plain lucky, or I'm getting better, or if there's some mitigating factor in the code that takes it easier on peasants than demigods. -Anonymous, 20 November 2010

Starting Armor

From 31.17 and continuing in 31.18, is it correct that adventurers only start with leather clothes and never any metal armor except for a shield? - Anonymous, 18 November 2010, 3:14 UTC

Having played about a dozen characters, this appears to be true. Currently you've got to find armor in shops, lairs, caves, and bandit camps. - Anonymous, 20 November 2010