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23a:Stupid dwarf trick
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A stupid dwarf trick is any project that requires a large amount time and effort - often for little or no practical benefit. They exist only as a challenge for experienced players.
Adventurer Mode Fortress[edit]
Build a fortress specifically for exploring in adventurer mode. You can either make a nasty monster-filled challenge, or a Smörgåsbord of masterpiece steel weapons and armor. Possibly both. Dig out enough raw adamantine and "too deep" the fortress to ensure it is sufficiently occupied.
Difficulty: The sky's the limit.
Usefulness: Not applicable.
Alphabet Cages[edit]
Use captured monsters in cages to spell messages.
Difficulty: Medium. Vowels are hard to come by, and without modding you will not have access to the letters P, Q, V, X, Y, or Z.
Usefulness: Convenient for marking important levers, since notes are not available in this version.
Ballista Battery[edit]
Overlap a few ballistas to completely cover a narrow corridor. There is an unavoidable risk of your operators wandering into the line of fire.
Difficulty: Low. If you insist on highly-trained operators with high-quality ballistas, it gets harder.
Usefulness: A complicated and dangerous way to defend a single corridor. Ultimately extremely effective. Sometimes.
Bridge-a-pult[edit]
A bridge that opens outwards, to fling enemies away. Ideally, they land in a very nasty place.
Difficulty: The hard part is the nasty place they get flung to.
Usefulness: There are a far more effective ways to defend a fortress, but few are as entertaining.
DoubleBonus: Make a basket for the enemies to land in.
ArmokBonus Fill the basket with lava.
TripleArmokBonus Fill the basket with hippies.
Doberman Launcher[edit]
Whenever a dog or cat gives birth, stuff all the kittens and puppies in one cage in your entryway. Link this cage to a pressure plate beside it. Should your last lines of defense be breached, goblins will step on it and in the next instant be torn apart by dozens of goblin-seeking hostiles and distracted by dozens of surplus targets. The trap actually going off will probably be very bad for your framerate.
Bonus: Train all dogs inside as wardogs when they mature.
Super bonus: Make it a Bear Trap.
MEGADWARF bonus: Combine with a drowning chamber.
Difficulty: Low.
Usefulness: Medium, potentially fortress-saving
Drowning Chamber[edit]
Dig a room next to the cave river and use levers, floodgates, and channels to fill it with water on demand. If you don't use Nile-style irrigation, you can use your farm plot rooms as drowning chambers.
Difficulty: Moderate.
Usefulness: You can kill prisoners, useless peasants, irate nobles, hammerers, untrainable animals, or anything else.
Gladiator Arena[edit]
Build the cages of your captives inside a locked room and link them to a lever, station some soldiers in the room, lock the door, and pull the lever. You can also use dangerous animals instead of soldiers.
Difficulty: Moderate, but time consuming. Some danger depending on the relative skill of your soldiers and the danger of the captive.
Usefulness: The most difficult way to dispose of prisoners. It does give your soldiers a little bit of experience.
Labyrinth[edit]
A maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Traps and dangerous animals are essential. Use it as an alternate entrance, and lock the main ones during sieges.
Difficulty: It's a lot of mining.
Usefulness: It makes a nice element of fortress defense, and you can dump your prisoners inside it. Also makes a great place to explore in adventurer mode.
Magma Chamber[edit]
Simple enough, a room near the magma flow with levers, floodgates, and channels to allow it to be flooded with magma on demand.
Difficulty: Dangerous as any magma project. Depending on magma flow inhabitants, you may be at risk from building destroyers.
Usefulness: It's like a drowning chamber, but any items carried by the victim will probably be destroyed. Depending on your style of play, this may be a good thing.
Rehabilitation Centre[edit]
Had any problems with dwarves charging brainlessly towards the enemy, getting slaughtered, and then starting a tantrum spiral that will destroy your fortress? Turn your prison into a luxurious room full of things that make dwarves happy. Add artifact furniture, beds, a booze stockpile, chains made of gold (or anything valuable,) creatures in cages, etc. Hopefully they will return to society as a happy, productive dwarf (consider it a progressive system).
Difficulty: Low-Medium. Acquiring valuable items can be annoying sometimes. Also you need guards to actually put them in jail. And it can be a real pain when those ungrateful sobs destroy the nice furniture you give them.
Usefulness: High. A tantrum spiral can quickly turn a productive fort of 200+ dwarves into a rioting fortress inhabited by a bunch of insane, miserable dwarves who spend their time punching people and breaking furniture. Don't let it happen to you.
Scorch the World[edit]
Otherwise known as "pulling a Boatmurdered". Build channels, floodgates, and bridges/aqueducts to deliver magma to the outside world. Open the floodgates whenever trouble shows up.
Difficulty: High danger. Will kill any caravans, diplomats, or migrants who happen to get in the way. Be sure to protect the inner floodgates, or a fire man might sneak in and destroy it, flooding your fortress with magma.
Usefulness: Eliminates sieges safely, though all non-metal items will be destroyed (which may be a good thing).
Self Destruct Lever[edit]
A mechanism that, for example, could flood your fort with magma, or release a trapped megabeast. Bonus points if all of your rooms are protected from cave-ins by supports linked to said lever.
Difficulty: Low, but extremely dangerous.
Usefulness: Could serve as kind of a "last revenge" on this damn goblin siege, also highly amusing.
Tower-cap Farm[edit]
Either dig out a sufficiently wide area around the cave river or dig out a large chamber and flood it occasionally.
Difficulty: Low.
Usefulness: Depends on size - bigger is better, but there is a limit (361) on how many tower-caps can grow at once.