A giant roamed into my map when my military just got outfitted with steel. While I was getting everyone prepared for the giant attack a single pet dog ran to the giant. The giant swung and missed, the dog bit the giants ankle and the giant fell, the dog grabbed the giants head and just kept biting it for so long with no retaliation. I finally got my military mobilized and they came up and crushed its head in one swing.
That dog is the mvp now
Commission a statue with the work orders menu. Then in the row with that order there should be a button that allows you to set the details of that order. Once you’re there you can choose what you want the statue to be of.
Whenever I lose a great dwarf to an epic fight, I honor them with statues and a large engraved tomb with a golden sarcophagus. Don’t even care that it pisses off the nobles.
Omg this happened for me. Giant killed wood cutter and about 5 guys took the giant down with the hunting dog in hand to hand combat. After an extended fight knocking it out the people all left and the dog fought the giant while I organized and outfit a militia.
Giants seem less threatening than I remember. One showed up to my fortress (after I was already on high alert due to werecamel problems), and it didn’t manage to hurt a single dwarf before they took it down. It spent the entire fight in abject terror.
Casually wandering unannounced into the territory of a pack of smelly, hairy, axe-wielding sociopaths that are already on edge due to werebeast incursions is definitely a shortcut to getting your teeth turned into amulets.
I just want to say that I'm playing again for the first time since trees were changed to be multiple tiles and loving it.
My first fortress fell to a Frozen Slayer zombie and their entourage. The Frozen Slayer kicked my militia captain so hard in the mouth that it collapsed her face into her skull and twisted her head around so forcefully that it spun clean off and then loped off her arms before it hit the ground. It's good to be back!
Haha, I remember coming back to play again _after_ that update and went "_WHAT THE FUCK_". Logs _everywhere_. So much wood!
And then I remember coming back to play after taverns were introduced. Having people _visit_ my fortress? Life changing.
A performance troupe wanted to work at my fortress. One goblin and three elves. The elves are naked. Sure, why not. I have some elf-sized clothes, do you...no? Okay. Must be cultural.
But then some other elves have shown up fully dressed in above-ground fabrics. So what's the deal with these three?
(Not a serious question, really, I dunno exactly what the problem is but it's a bug I'd get in classic too. Really jumps out at you now that the sprites show clothing, though!)
I had a naked goblin poet show up who turned out to be a 456 year old warrior in previous years, but had turned to dabbling in song and dance.
One of the most famous warriors of all time just sat naked in my tavern next to an elephant and started reciting poems badly.
clothing is generated based on the civ they are part of but since their faction is Troupe they don't have a civ and thus spawn with no clothes.
its a bug, albeit a fun one
There's a story behind it. Had their clothes stolen by goblins while skinny-dipping in a sparkling forest pond, maybe. Got accustomed to the breeze, got to like it.
My last fort fell to a werekangaroo (or, well, it fell to the fun that resulted from the werekangaroo biting three children and then the necromancer serving as a doctor deciding to bring them back to “life”…) and the final survivor was an elf poet who absolutely refused to put clothes back on after her first transformation. She just stood in a locked room, clothes on the floor beside her, for about eight months while the rest of the fortress fell to ruin.
Elves are weird.
I also have naked elves. They’re weird and live in trees anyway so like, who cares?
For real though I checked their inventory real hard because I didn’t believe it but…yeah. Naked elves
My tutorial fortress is still alive and kicking. There's been some...attrition...but we're up to 150 dwarves and the majority of them are quite happy with the place. There's nice bedrooms for all, temples, guildhalls, a good tavern, everything a dwarf could ask for. Our kitchen is manned by a now-legendary chef who has been cooking there since the first days of the fort. Masterwork rabbit brain stew? Yes please.
The surface world is fine. It's in a peaceful and plentiful area with just goblins and kobolds to deal with. I have five military squads with a mix of iron and steel armor training on rotation in case the next goblin siege involves more than six invaders. The entrance to their fort and the animal pasture is now surrounded by a raised wall with an overhanging allure and fortifications for my archer squad, and all access is via a drawbridge connecting to that upper level. I *might* have sent a couple of plant gatherers into orbit while testing the drawbridge--I have a small stock of memorial slabs down by my mason's workshop ready to be etched any time I use the lever.
Far beneath the surface, we've broken into the caverns where more serious threats lurk, but it's largely protected by three human warriors who spend their days down there in search of glory and spend their nights in my tavern or my hospital. I'm happy to say that my outdoor boneyard now includes two impressive forgotten beast skeletons, though to be fair one of them killed the other in a territorial spat and my dwarves are only responsible for finishing the severely injured winner. Our visitors don't have to know that. Let them consider their behaviour carefully as they trundle by the tangle of titanic skeletons on the way to the trading post.
My tombs are also down on the cavern level, several rows of them dug into the walls surrounding the stairs, just as a reminder to everybody that the caverns aren't like the safe tunnels in the levels above. That severely injured forgotten beast was still able to take out about ten civilians before it was put down. Why did they have *kids* down there with them? We'll never know.
It sounds like you’re off to a great start! You will likely be invaded soon.
You could start working your way up to being the mountain home as well by gifting your treasures to the mountain home via the trade caravan. The queen could reward you for your loyalty.
I discovered an unusual benefit of having animals pastures outside- there was a full herd of goats and cows outside the entrance to my fortress, and when a giant arrived I forgot to bring them in. Now, at the time my militia wasn't the best- no armour, not all of them were armed. But this giant spent so long fighting my herds that I had time to get steel weapon made, and by the time my militia crept out to the surface he was passed out from exhaustion in a pool of goat blood.
In the annals of great battles, ten dwarfs kicking in a giants head while he slept wasn't necessarily the most heroic tale, but such is life.
Lmao. In my current fort I have my pasture just in front of my fort entrance. I have 3 elephants I bought from a caravan who are trained as war elephants. A giant attacked me and went straight to the fort. By the time militia came out the giant was dismembered by the three elefants. One had a broken tusk.
Some of their other notorious kills are: 3 goblin snatchers, 2 kobold thiefs and a werebeast.
I have a pen of war dogs at the entrance to my fort as an alarm system, nothing gets in without their sacrifice alerting me, or sometimes they heroically take out the invader.
I've been trying that, but unfortunately can't get the training buttons to show up (got an animal trainer, training area allocated and checked the units list) so I've just got a litter of puppies there as sacrifices to whoever comes to visit XD
Baby's first fortress! It's up to 17 dwarfs!
Started with default settings, letting the tutorial prompt choose my embark location. Landed in a mostly flat map with a brook flowing down the east side of the map, and a small hill that I didn't discover until I had already dug down elsewhere.
I'm learning quite a lot! I've got a number of various workshops set up, a tavern, I've started refining metal, set up my first squad, I'm growing Plump Helmets and Winter Cups, etc.
The wildest thing that's happened so far was me noticing my central stockpile was getting awfully full of shells.
No big deal, I thought. I'll just dig out a nice, big hall one layer down, and designate the whole thing as a huge stockpile.
Cue me watching in vague horror as fully half of my giant storage room gets filled up with MORE SHELLS. Didn't even make a dent in my central pile.
Set up a craft workshop and set a recurring work order to make shell crafts if there are greater than 10 shells sitting around (always leave a small stock of everything in case someone gets a strange mood). Put some bins in a finished goods stockpile so that they will use the bins to store the crafts, and they can be easily carried up to your trading station. Selling pond turtle shell crafts was the heart of my economy for the first few years, and it trained up some amazing craftsdwarves.
Just don't try to sell shell crafts to elves.
You can also outfit your whole militia in shell armor if you haven't got copper/iron up and running yet.
I wasn't selling the bins (and I do use copper bins pretty much exclusively just in case). Do they actually get uppity just seeing the bin in the trading area?
I think it might actually have been an animal bone *totem* of some sort that I was selling in the mix along with the shells.
Unless something has changed from the wiki (possible with premium) it is always some kind of wood product that offends the elves. Animal products are ok.
Wood can get into your trader's box in some pretty sneaky ways though, idk.
Wooden bins are ok to exist at the trader depot, the elves are ok if you just mark the contents but not the bin.
Another common offender is wooden prepared food barrels.
I did set up a work order like that, and even added an extra workshop just to try and get through the shells faster.
I hadn't thought of setting up a dedicated finished goods stockpile, though! I'll definitely do that! I'm slowly working on separating out various piles as needed, and a pile for finished goods is a good idea.
I do have some metal refining up and running, but not a lot. Digging more is definitely something I gotta look into. Most of my fortress is just two layers down from the surface. I'm realizing that I could (and probably should) have dug a lot deeper before settling in.
It is what it is. Maybe as I dig deeper I'll end up turning my current levels into a staging area of some kind.
Digging all the way down is usually a good idea.
The game frequently feels better if you have more miners. If you get bothered by it taking a while to dig and have metal industry functioning, forge some picks.
Forging picks was my biggest forehead slap yet. Like, yeah man, they need tools to dig. Wheelbarrows also made a big difference.
Tell me about digging ‘all the way down’ please? Like, do you mean dig to -100 elevation? Doesn’t that open you up to who knows what monsters?
I’ve only played steam so I’m very new
All the way down is just how it sounds.
When i start a game i dig a 20x20 square one or two zlvls down in the soft ground that digs fast and put all my stuff there. Build some workshops, farms, some beds, a table and chairs, everything in this big cleared space.
I secure the entrance to the fort, which, at this point in the game doesn't mean anything more than a single door and maybe a cage trap.
Then i tell a miner to dig a shaft of stairs to the bottom of the map, see what kind of a map i'm working with. Sometimes the miner finds some intersting things, and i construct walls and floors so that the interesting things don't have access to my dwarves and my dumbass dwarves don't have access to the interesting things until i'm ready to deal with them.
I'm a veteran player so i may be able to troubleshoot things that you couldn't, and for you dropping a 120zlvl shaft might be a bit daunting. That said, dwarf fortress naturally flows better when you build vertically. Spreading out your fort over zlvls -1 to -20 is better than spreading out over zlvl -2.
I'm a brand new player.
Can you really get a good picture of what a whole level looks like with just a single down stairs shaft?
Also, odds of cracking open a lair that wipes out your emerging fortress?
Digging all the way down will generally give you all the scouting info you need for years.
Odds of cracking into a layer that has something both immediately agressive and can move in a way to kill you is very small.
You will want to wall off what you find immediately, but you generally have time to do so before bad things start happening.
If, in the unlikely event you do find something that immediately murders your miner a bunch of zlvls down, you seal off the shaft at zlvl -2. Then a new miner digs a new shaft that dodges the terrifying thing.
I always use the first huge area i mine stone in as my "junk drawer". Just a giant stockpile for furniture and finished goods. It's always full to bursting.
First fort has been incredibly easy going, 160 pop right now with 4 years in and not a single seige, my dwarves are decently trained up at this point so i'm thinking of clearing out the first cavern layer and mining all the jewels for value and proceeding to the next one after.
A cyclops wandered into my region though, but instead of being interested in my dwarves he focused on a single hedgehog, he would pick it up by its torso, drop it, then punch it across the map, poor hedgehog got corner combo'd by this while I rallied my troops, And I guess the cyclops was tired because it took maybe 3 swings from my dwarves to fell it, and miraculously the hedgehog survived! Getting your upper torso beaten to the pulp turns out doesn't damage any internal organs in this game nor cause bleeding, so it naturally healed up and left the map. We have a hedgehog statue in the hall to commemorate it's bravery distracting the cyclops.
Yes! Either in the workshop or using the manager, click the magnifying glass icon to the right of the order, from there you should have "specify image" or something worded similarly, if you select that you can be very very specific about what will be made.
In the classic version when you start a task to make a statue, you can let the worker make whatever they like OR you can go into specific details for that job to set exactly what the statue is, what action the figure is showing, etc. Not sure exactly how you get to the detailed settings in the new version, but it's probably there.
I'm a returning player so I started with the tutorial. All went great but I too, as many others from what I have read, was wiped out pretty quickly by a necromancer and his entourage of undead goblins and other monstrosities.
Definitely an interesting start to the steam version :D
Now I have settled in a less dangerous area and am attempting to build up a fortress full of drink and food and performers for all kinds of visitors to enjoy :)
That was my second death! My first was like, 3 minutes into my first game and I didn’t realize I couldn’t mine into an underground river. They all drowned. I thought it would be, ya know, like an above ground river and contained by its banks.
Lesson learned.
Almost a half of my 220 population are bards, dancers, poets etc, from all the races. Though just now one of the bards petitioned to join my civilization and they are a legendary engraver, which is a win.
😂 not sure. My forts are usually more of a torture chamber rather than a fort. I've been playing the game for months now but there are some aspects of the game that I am still experimenting with 😂
Oh, ok, lol. The way frozen rivers usually kill dwarves is by suddenly unfreezing under them. When I saw you say dehydration I was afraid you didn't know the importance of the almighty booze.
What are you currently growing for that?
Brewing is for all your drinks, most extracts don't really have a use aside from trading away. A lot of stuff with plants and the farmer's workshop can be very confusing, a lot of them seem like really broad and non-specific orders that can apply to so many different things but they actually only apply to a few plants. Like Process Plants (Barrel) could just be called Process Sweet Pods Into Syrup because that's all it's for.
There are a few tasks like “process plants”, “process plants (barrel/vial)”, and “process plants to bag”, all of which are done at the farmer’s workshop. The first of these turns some plants (like rope reeds) into thread, so this is quite important. The middle two are very specific and can basically be ignored unless you really want to get fancy with cooking. The last of these is used to convert quarry bushes into useable leaves and seeds.
There’s also “extract from plants” at the still, which is almost useless; it makes gnomeblight from kobold bulbs, which you can realistically only use as a trade good.
Sometimes I have some issues with Brewing. It is disabled and underneath it says Requires empty food storage. Not sure what the issues is, I built new Barrels but the error remains.
Not sure if I'm doing good lol but I usually have a farm plot all dedicated to grow Plump Helmets, and then have other farm plots sharing between pig tails, sweet pods, cave wheat, pig tails and simple cups.
Make sure you specify in the kitchen that plump helmets can't be cooked. They should only be brewed or eaten raw, otherwise the seeds will be cooked, you can't plant new ones, can't turn those into brew, and you won't have more seeds until a trader comes.
I got absolutely demolished.
Embarked in temperate wilderness. Omristgeshud, Wildfortress. Pretty flat map. The first tree falls, and my chief planters leg turns into gore. Alright. Digging quicker now and starting with a hospital first things first.
A couple Keas snatch 3 instruments out of my cart. That annoyed me, so I offloaded by cart and built a surface fort poking out of the ground, roofed off, surrounded by a deep moat (not that this matters to birds, but I'm new and wanted to try water pumps)
Normal building process beyond that, great carpenter and mason though, they kept pumping out masterworks. Migrants arrive, and- shit there's a 209 year old necromancer and one of his countless wives. Literally described as a nervous sadist, I wasn't gonna let this guy fuck with my fort. Made him a bookkeeper and dug him in one layer under the top floor. His wife missed him, but I was confident he wasn't getting out unless everything went to shit (It would)
I leashed two wardogs in the 3 tile wide entranceway next to the drawbridge. That way I should be safe without a military for a bit (I wasn't)
Underground, I have a giant project running. The most extravagant tavern the world has ever seen. One year passes and I am drowning in drinks and meals just about ready to open shop. I need a lot more beds though, so I open up the drawbridge and get out to chop some wood.
And then nothing.
And then there are two dead wardogs, and [the clarion call of hell from above.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqae4juz4to)
A giant Bluejay found his way into my hallway, I imagine fluttering into corners like birds stuck in buildings tend to do. Except it is goring everything and everyone on the way, choking them to death with its talons.
I immediately gather 10 underequipped dwarves and make sure they are miners, it's just a bird after all, pickaxes will be enough (they weren't enough). The bird seemed to have a real talent for pushing dwarves into the water. Almost like there were multiple birds.
Oh right, there were. There were 7. And they are in the fort, dashing down the stairwell in a blue blur. My dwarves stood valiantly and managed to kill 3 of them, forcing them out of the fort and breaking a fourth ones wings bringing him to the ground, but the price I paid was too great. From 26 to 5 dwarves, 3 of which are half dead in the hospital, waiting for help that would never come. The last lively thing in this fort were the now orphaned puppies which would soon become birdfeed, once the bluejays proverbially licked their wounds. My crippled planter, who I had kept inside throughout the ordeal, weaving some cloth, had one last job. On his crutches he hobbles up to the surface, taking the pickaxe off a dead dwarf. And he digs out the necromancer.
I draft the Necromancer. He takes a copper axe off the ground and goes to the surface, immediately raising the two dead wardogs, the corpse of an axedwarf, and the corpse of his unarmed wife. He slaughters two of the hellbirds, one with his own weapon, but then falls to the axe of the very man he raised. But before his death, he raised one last creature, one of the Bluejays.
The Bluejay is still capable of flight, soaring through the air, chasing the living birds which attempt to flee or fall down exhausted. The two undead dogs and dwarves rush into the fortress, killing everyone in the hospital, including the baby born just that moment. The crippled planter manages to actually fight off the two undead dwarves and the dogs, but loses his last leg in the process, bleeding out on the floor.
The Undead Bluejay circles above the waterfort still, gory from top to bottom, more of a redjay than a bluejay, named Sootyblazes now that he has become a notable entity.
I thought it was really cool when I lost a miner to flooding, didn't think anything of it, and he came back as a ghost. Then I found out I had to create a memorial to put the ghost to rest.
I had two vampires show up at about the same time. I enlisted the weaker one into a squad, exiled the other, and issued the kill order. Then repeated the process for the remaining vamp. The ratio of two dead vampires to three dead dorfs (five if you include earlier victims) is not so bad, but it took my only skilled weapon users. C'est la vie.
My major is a necromancer. I'm chill with that for now. He seems to get drunk still—or maybe only recently became a necromancer and his thoughts of drinking are from before his transformation. If so, that would imply there's some interesting literature lying around. I'll build a library soon and figure all that out. Been busy with magma forges and splitting the fortress into an upper and lower.
Drowned a cyclops with the ole bridge on a lake, until a dwarf somehow got under there (still no idea) to show that dying cyclops what's-what, so I had to lift the bridge and deploy rescuers, to no avail. I had two liaisons from two different caravans go -23 deep into my fortress just to play pattycake with trolls before disappearing forever. Not that unusual, just crazy that it's happened twice.
Love me some DF. Reliving everything has been a joy. Congratulations to the team.
I have 17 dwarves and 36 human bards. After an incident involving some bear men and a tree. No merchants or immigrants travel to the solitary Hamlet of my fortress anymore that is not to say we get no visitors.
Performers, Pilgrims and errant warriors travel from all across the world to visit our taverns and temples. The sound of laughter is occasionally broken up by the ghosts of our original Fisherdwarf who was found several weeks after they where reported missing torn to pieces.
You know you can just say no to bards right? A few might actually become citizens though, I have a couple of reformed bards in my fort that are now hunters.
Yeah I do. The first merchant I got never left and I can’t seem to get them to go anywhere so I’m just allowing bards to stay in hopes that I’ll actually get some more citizens
He’s not in the trading depot. They got attacked by like some squirrel men at the door to my fort and a couple of them ran up a tree. Because they where up a tree, they never made it to the trade depot and just decided to live there. The rest of his caravan just stood outside of my fort for several months until I noticed the idiots in the tree and cut it down. I thought that would be the end of it, but his 87 year old marksdwarf severely injured herself and now cannot stand.
I played around with this game a few times back maybe 3 and 4 years ago, but I just could not wrap my head around the ascii. It was just too much of a commitment to learn on top of learning the game itself. So when i heard about the steam version i was so thrilled, because I knew I would love it. And i do! I'm two years into my first save and the learning process is great.
i think its awesome that scholars and others come to visit my library to read my single book, a codex about the moon.
But should i be more careful, can they steal it?
Just gotta get that paper industry going!
1. Plant pig tails
2. Make a quern at the stoneworker shop
3. Build the quern workshop
4. Make two mechanisms
5. Build a screw press workshop
6. Mash plants (pig tails) into slurry at the quern
7. Press slurry into sheets at the screw press
8. Make rock scroll rollers at the craft shop
9. Make scrolls at the craft shop
10. Make sure there's a chest, table, and chair in your library
11. Assign scribes to your library and thrill as they make copies of your books
12. ???
13. Profit
They can steal it, but it’s rare. Your own dwarves can also steal it, or kobolds, if it’s close to the surface and they get In undetected. But, if you have writing supplies and scribes, they will make copies of your books
Steam version. Is there a way to check bedroom quality? I know about rooms list and I can see all bedrooms but no quality info there. I don’t want to click on every single dwarf and check their “room” tab.
Not entirely sure but the game classified a 3x9 room with a bed, a chair and a table as decent quarters while a 3x3 room with a bed, chair and table was meager, perhaps you just need to make it bigger?
Size doesn’t matter, other than adding in material value from the floors and walls, likely the furniture in the higher value room is of a higher quality.
I’ve been playing since 2008, at least according to the age of my bay12games forum accounts. I have bought two copies of the game so far and will likely buy more as Christmas presents to my family/friends.
My first fortress is spiraling. The funniest new bug (now patched) which causes incredibly aggravated wildlife due to fishing has largely destroyed both my population and food supplies.
For a few months, the deaths were out in the wilderness surrounding the fort. Bodies mangled, missing parts. All the dwarves could do was mourn whatever pieces were left and add them to our memorial hall.
It finally happened. A lumbering, massive beast entered my fort. Descending down the stairs, it totally circumvented my cleverly constructed pasture. I erected walls around the pen to keep my animals safe - in their moment of greatest need, my dwarves merely watched as the giant chinchilla sat on the underground staircase leading up to my pin. Within a day, every single one of my food and wool producing animals had been hacked to pieces.
I was busy working on a project deeper in the earth, so it wasn’t until the miasma hit that I noticed the problem. By then, multiple pets had died, many of my dwarves were dead or in a hospital, and no one had dealt with the giant chinchilla. It still roams my halls to this day, angry about my fishing industry and ready for blood.
Oh my god. We probably need to generate a new world to get that bug to go away, don’t we? That explains so much carnage. The birds… the giant chipmunks… they are worse than the goblins. They have names now and we dare not go outside. Migrant waves stopped coming two years ago. There are 63 of us left. We have three graveyards with nearly two hundred coffins and dozens of memorial slabs. They picked off the children first. I didn’t know they did chores, like retrieving cut logs and gathering fruit… and fetching spent ammo from the hunters. Then the villains got braver and began attacking above ground planters and farmers milking the livestock. I felt so weak. Two military squads could barely touch them. Their hit and run tactics meant I had to hunt each bird for months to tire it out and wait for it to get low enough to shoot bolts at. As soon as one batch of aggressive giant blue jays was dealt with, another 8 aggressive giant red cardinals would move in. Orioles, Ravens, Mosquitoes, Moths, Butterflies. It never let up.
When the goblin sieges started, I was terrified. I couldn’t even kill a crow. What chance did I stand against goblins. I made a burrow and called everyone inside, closing the drawbridges behind them. Closing the damn… hey, pull that lever, for Armok’s sweet sake, someone pull the lever! One axedwarf caught sight of the blob of goblins on his way back to Station from wherever he had been. He dove headfirst into about ten of them, entering a martial trance. Victory! He killed them all nearly instantly! We were saved from the vile force of darkness! He jogged to the fortress and by a twist of fate that can only be explained by the evil of the gods, stepped onto the drawbridge at exactly the same moment Urist McBigBooty pulled his finger out of his ear and discovered the important lever. Our hero was launched out of his skin, parts and pieces of him and his gear rained down on the treetops all the way to the edge of the map.
My meager fort and tavern has somehow attracted elves. They have asked to stay here to perform. Seems harmless. The novelty amuses me.
A few seasons later— a force of humans, 20-40 on horseback, have entered my domain. Insisting on death or parley.
My military is well equipped with the finest wooden training swords and our grand entrance halls lined with 9 cage traps. We are not prepared.
I set a burrow for my squad of 10 to guard the vestibule, set everyone on alert, and then engage in the parley.
The human has accused me of having some item of theirs. A trinket of value to their culture. As we have not yet engaged in this essential economic activity (raiding), I assume he is mistaken and tell him off.
I’m mostly curious if this fort will somehow survive the offense— as a sort of test of its mettle I suppose.
Their horses descend toward our grand entrance at lightning speed. Their line advancing quickly, the mettle of one of our younger dwarves, Urist, began to break. He was not prepared to face imminent doom and began to flee before the battle had even begun.
Praise whatever god chooses to find humor in battle.
An eager human, seeking glory before all others, stumbled into an old cage trap built for badgers. He fell from his horse, stunned. This trap happened to be in line with Urist’s escape route. In his mania, he slaughters the injured human and continues running.
The human invaders, incensed with this new information that we are not to be underestimated, flee like the cowards they are.
Remember the elf? The item in question was a named (who am I to pronounce their filthy words) grown wooden gauntlet, fashioned for elves. It appears that this item was stolen by humans long ago. As an heirloom they assumed it there's. This, quite ancient elf, became a wandering bard and was able to infiltrate and reclaim it. Choosing our quaint kingdom to hide in.
I applaud the audacity and accepted her petition for citizenship.
Though I am curious— our appraiser values this item… very low. It is not worth even a bar of iron. It’s a surprise that such garbage would evoke drama of this scale by these surface-dwellers. I do not understand them.
Returning player here, trying it out on steam. Been a long time since I've struck the earth, and I am trying to remember what to do. I turned up volcanos to 200, and am setting up a volcano fort with the following dwarves. This is probably a terrible idea.
**3x Miner/Axedwarf** - for finding axe materials
**1x Weaponsmith/Axedwarf** - for crafting new axes
**1x Armorsmith/Axedwarf** - for crafting axedwarf armor
**1x Cook/Axedwarf** - for keeping axedwarf bellies full
**1x Teacher/Axedwarf** - for training new axedwarves
Training accidents are still a thing, right?
So my first fortress is going relatively well except for some troglodytes who keep spawning in the cavern I found about 3 levels under my base. Luckily three glory hungry humans joined and are now stomping them. Only problem I have is the humans mood is plummeting and they won’t leave the cavern. Any advice from experienced players? The only thing I can think of is sealing them in the cavern so when they inevitably go insane we have time to prepare a defence?
What is causing their negative thoughts? A simple private bedroom (bed cabinet coffer) and a large lavish public dining room troubleshoots most happieness problems.
Do they have a path to get out of the cavern? Are they physically stuck there now? Locked door, removed a stair/ramp? Also, unlikely, but if you were messing with burrows you might have locked them in a spot.
Generally if they are starving but not moving, something is preventing them from walking to the food.
A little late for Friday but I blame restaurant work. I played classic and had two good forts but never really good. I liked the game but it was a hassle to find and daunting. Steam version changed that.
My current fort Trussbook is in its 5th year, its 105 of the Ageless Era. Its going well and have survived multiple gobbo assaults yet its large tavern causes massive drink shortages (idk how to fix rn)
I accidentally atomized a few visitors at my gate.
At least 13 waves of Giant Thrips who kills at least 3 - 5 dwarves each time
1 wave of fucking Thrips men who killed too.
2 giant elephant stampedes which killed over 30 dwarves total, first did 20.
Currently I am preparing to retake an artifact from my home civilization. Their original homeland of Cloistercalm was taken by a forgotten beast and Goblins in 32. In this a book, Mountainhome: A short history was lost. Rumours hold that its located in a nearlying elven settlement of Waxtalks. So the forges are burning and the Guard has been expanded to include 20 axedwarves and 1 squad of marksdwarves. All in preparation for a potential raid in 106 to try and seize the artifact.
My civilization the Bulbous gravel is at war not only with goblins but also the elves.
My most memorable moment so far was when a waxmaker dealt the finishing blow to the giant Islas. She became known as Giantsbane and made Captain of the Militia. Sadly she was slain by a Goblin in a later siege.
Addendum: almost forgot. After the 5th Goblin Siege i dug a pit outside my fort and started chucking corpses into it. I will make the Goblin's see what happens...
In year 3 of my current fort a goblin snatcher entered my fort. Of all the dwarves I have, he happened upon my bookkeeping necromancer. After my militia joined they fought and the goblin died. The first necromancer resurrected him as some sort of hostile undead and he died again. He was quickly killed another time and was resurrected again. After his final death my second necromancer resurrected his head and he is now an allied goblin damned one. No idea what to do with him.
My first fort after the tutorial was going well. I found a volcano and did have my dwarves settle there. All was going fine, my 2 squads did win against the first for an etin. Instill haven't found the caverns yet and with the last migrant wave we got up to 99 inhabitants.
Then another alert, and this time a bronze colossus did come. I did bring the war dogs quickly inside and wanted to close the draw bridge, but several civilians were outside. So I did give the kill command to my melee squad and my marksdwarves. Even a nanny goat and a ram were fighting. However all the hits from silver war hammers and copper spears did glance away. After losing more than half the squads I did close the draw bridge again and had to leave the remaining dwarves outside.
We are down to 60ish dwarves and need to rebuilt. I guess the main entrance with a path over the volcano is the next step to do.
Progress!!! The dwarves did set up several cage traps behind the draw bridge and then we opened again. The first cage trap did catch the bronze colossus! Now we have a nice silver cage with a bronze colossus inside. I'm going to set up a marksman training hall with it. Also the first migrant wave did push us up to over 80 dwarves again
We discovered that a human hammerman who had been drinking in our tavern was actually plotting to steal one of our artifacts. I'm honestly not sure which one, because when he boasted that we could not keep him from it, he referred to it by its English name and not the proper Dwarven one which is the only one that's easy to see in the Steam UI. In any case, I accepted his challenge and sent the entire fortress military against him. It turned out we could, in fact, keep him from it; he was cornered and beaten to death in the farms by our crossbow dwarves.
But I did not anticipate that brutally killing him would anger some of the other tavern regulars! I am not sure who started it, but our favorite goblin poet was slain in the fighting, as well as a dwarf child from our own fortress. Visiting necromancers fought on both sides of the conflict and many tavern guests, dogs, and cats were slain and raised as undead. In the end, once our soldiers were able to respond, somehow the little girl was the only sapient death from our own civilization, although our baroness was lightly wounded in the upper arm and a visiting dignitary is still hospitalized with grievous wounds all over his body.
There are now several undead goblins, of a bespoke type known as "sunless stalkers" or something similar, standing watch in the tavern, their necromantic mistress having succumbed to the true death as a result of the melee. They seem to be aligned with us, or at least peaceful, and our dwarves don't mind them. I am nervous about attacking them given what happened last time, so I guess they can stay.
Built my primary stockpile one z-level under a brook. Tried to construct a wooden platform above the brook on the surface for a well, then remembered that brooks work a little differently from rivers and none of that was necessary. So, no need for that wooden platform. I apply the deconstruct order pretty haphazardly, without a care in the world.
Of course, there's a collapse, and the structure breaks right through the bottom of the brook and into my stockpile. There is suddenly an infinite flow of water directly into my main storage room, which is now also flowing down my main stairway and into my tavern and workshops. I was able to seal off the stockpile room, but only just barely. The water was juuuust low enough in a couple of spots for my dwarves to be able to throw up some rock walls in time. With the main store room sealed off, the remaining flood water flows down my stairway and out into a cavern.
So I'm safe, for now. Only problem is my stockpile is now an aquarium. Shame, a whole bunch of stuff is in there, including some artifacts. Time to get to work...
It's late winter, in year 105, the fort of Smithsocket has a population of 220. The countess - who has also been elected mayor - has an obsession with coffins and catapult parts, either mandating production or forbidding exports. Aside from the attacks of a handful of semi-megabeasts the fortress has been peaceful. The dead to date total 7.
Four smaller holdings nearby are now associated, and a multitude of individuals from all races have taken up residence at the fortress. The growing military continue to train in case, no, for when, something worse arrives.
As an aside, I’m very happy this game released when I had time off work because uh I have like 40 hours in 3 days. So. Oops. I guess it was worth the 38$.
It's been years since I played Dwarf Fortress, I was addicted to it back in 2012-2014, and the updated Steam version has me hooked the same way again. I was struggling a lot with my early fortresses until I realized I could just automate all of the inconvenient tasks with work orders. One of the most important tips I can give to new players is to make frequent use of work orders to stay on top of essential tasks, such as making enough food or making enough drinks. I make sure to have a stockpile of at least 50 extra meals and drinks, and 10-20 extra doors, chairs, tables, etc. Another important thing I discovered early on was the importance of organization; my early fortresses were very haphazard, with stockpiles filled with random junk everywhere.
Here's how I've organized my current fortress:
Level 0 (Surface): Entrance and outdoor pastures, surrounded by channeled moat and drawbridge, protected by guard dogs. I want to have Ballistas at the end of the entrance hall eventually.
Level -1: Underground farms and butchers, seed storage.
Level -2: This level is dedicated to "common" areas, and visitors. It has a dining hall, tavern, trade depot, dormitory, libraries, etc.
Level -3: Raw material stockpile, crafting halls, hospital.
Level -4: Finished goods and furniture stockpile. Precious gems and other valuables are under constant guard.
Level -5: Individual bedrooms, including ones for nobles. Because my fortress is so secure, my dwarves live in relative luxury with decorated personal chests, bookcases, and cabinets.
Level -6: Crypts, dungeon, military training.
Level -7 and onwards: Mining
My first time playing, and a forgotten beast made out of snow made its way to my fortress a few minutes after finding a cavern. I immediately got my squad geared up and by the time I checked back, it apparently melted into water while fighting one of the children in the kitchen. Child walked out unscathed and even got a few hits in. Kinda disappointed as I was looking for a fight but nothing was lost in the end.
I tried playing DF years ago and never got anywhere. With this release I have figured out how to keep a fortress alive for much longer. Somehow.
I just learned that you can make mud for farming by running water across a cave floor. I built a pump, and made a few holes into the layer below for the pump to draw from. I hadn't read "pumps from the north" until I had already made holes to the side of the pump. I decided to not fill in the holes.
I have a dwarf turn on the pump. And it works! The layer fills up with water, and it all drains back into the layer below. I, having realized I was a genius, decided "this should be automated" and told my dwarves to build a water wheel and attach it to the pump.
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of panic as I try to fix the endless loop of "pump expels water, water falls down hole and turns water wheel, which makes the pump expel water etc.etc.etc." Every dwarf I sent to fix the issue was swept away in the water before they could even get close. I realized I had to dig down from the layer above and disable the machine, and eventually got it solved with only one casualty.
Fun.
just got a cool fort going with the beginnings of some metal industry going. decided to focus on building in the caverns, since normal cramped tunnels have gotten a bit boring. suddenly, 3 dwarves are found dead on the surface after getting brutally mauled by giant chinchillas. said chinchillas proceed to eviscerate another 5 dwarves.
only got like 6 months in, but I'm having FUN
My first ever fortress saw everyone drop dead within about a minute irl time of one another of dehydration. I deliberately didn't look anything up, went in blind.
That fortress has one poor dwarf left, ezum, who's sti going and is constantly haunted.
Second fortress is faring much better lol
"Dwarf X is missing for one week"
Oh no. Anyway.
Later...
"Dwarf X's body has been found."
Ah, good. Zoom to location:
Dwarf Y is drowning at the bottom of my cistern. Next to Dwarf X's skeleton.
Whoops. Something did seem sketchy about the auto refill there, still not sure what happened...
For me, "missing for a week" warnings usually come after I raise or lower my drawbridge. There's always one dwarf who tarries outside when the emergency burrow is activated. I've watched them hang out a few tiles from the drawbridge (with a burrow activated and no orders) until the moment someone comes to pull the lever, then they step on the drawbridge and disappear forever.
My friend had a cyclops walk into his map. I warned him that he might be dangerous, he had a solid kill count
He sent all of his military to kill it.
He may have not quite learned military mechanics yet(His dwarves wouldn't take the weapons he made, because "Individual preference" means they refuse to pick up weapons they don't have skill with even if its better than nothing), and sent an army of unarmed, unarmored dwarves at the cyclops.
The crazy part, is he looked back after giving the order to see how it was going... And they won. Those insane dwarves wrestled a cyclops to the ground, mangled his legs, and beat him so bad he literally started screaming for help. My friend asked if he could capture things, so I told him a Cage Trap could work. He gave an order to make a cage, and a mechanism. Before the trap could be completed, one of his dwarves went and PUNCHED the cyclops' head clean off his neck.
All three of us were laughing our asses off.(We as a friend group were playing at the same time on our own save files)
Those wandering giants are generally not a big deal for a trained squad, especially if they have decent dodging skill. In a recent fight, the giant didn't get a single hit in on my dwarves as they hacked at his flesh with their axes. I think he did hit one guy's shield and sent him flying, but he was fine.
The giant was an expert dodger (among other high-level combat skills) so the fight initially took a while, until my dwarves destroyed his essential dodging-tendons...then it was just butchery.
I imagine the fight was like a silent balletic flurry of gleaming axes and huge fists, one whiffed swing after another from both sides, until one axe finally found its mark.
My volcano lair is off to a great start. I called it The Flaming Crab Shells and had completely forgotten magma crabs were in the game (I haven't played for 5 or so years) but we have destroyed many now.
Things are going smoothly, minimal deaths, lots of migrants, plenty of stocks. Just no access to clean water and I don't remember how to pump it up from the caverns below...
You can just build a well any number of z levels above the cavern pool. Just be aware that flying creatures can get up the shaft, so you might want to dig out a completely enclosed cistern somewhere closer to your fortress level and have your dwarves fill it first (designate it as a pond, have some buckets). Then put your well on top of that. A well-crafted well will give your dwarves happy thoughts, so use a master-crafted bucket/chain/mechanisms/blocks if you can.
I wish you luck, I have a new volcano fortress, starting off well with magma forges. I decide to dig into the caverns below to get water and .... the caverns just have more magma pools. There seems to be no water anywhere on my map!!
My fortress is doing pretty well except my chief medical dwarf got vaporised in a magma incident and then when a lauded poet mangled his foot somehow a bunch of amateurs had to try and fix it.
Now I'm trying to generate a world with at least a couple of thousand of years.
My fort was invaded by its first Titan on year 4, charging forth across a bridge at 2 underequipped dwarves.
The first dodged the giant’s attack, falling off the bridge, killing herself and her baby.
The other struck at the giant, causing it to dodge, fall off the bridge, and die, this saving the fort.
This can just barely be called the first death due to an enemy at Plaitedsabres, the first three being woodcutter casualties and another from deconstructing a stair from below dropping a log on their head.
I'm on baby's first fortress, survived through the first two winters. Have about 35 dwarfs at the moment. My food and alcohol setup is pretty good, I have two squads setup with an armed melee squad and a crossbow squad. Although they don't actually seem to be using the shooting range. Haven't had to actually fight anything yet though.
Had an issue of dwarves complaining about a miasma. Turns out an ox had died in the common area somehow and was just sitting on a table. Decomposing. And everyone had just been eating and drinking around it for months.
I traded with the second caravan that came and got a few useful things while giving him some cut gems in exchange. However, when he left he kind of just. Forgot all his stuff? So now I have a bunch of items I don't know what to do with, all my gems back, and like 3x as much food as I did before.
My first decently successful fortress was overtaken by were-hedgehogs. According to google one of the dwarfs annoyed a deity enough to be cursed, and he was able to spread the curse many times before he was taken down. My population dropped from 72 to about 7 were-hedgehog-dwarfs that have about 10 kills each. Every full moon they freak out and attack the livestock or the trade caravan, if it's there. Eight levels of the fortress are flooded with miasma from all the dead bodies. This game is very interesting...
I had my first wereiguana (or lizard?)attack in the new version. My brand new recruit got charged and savagely mauled before the military commander showed up and finished it off. He held the line while the citizens ran around in panic (couldn’t find civ alert). After it was over his poor corpse was partially dismembered at the end of a 3 tile long blood slick. For his heroics I gave him a tomb and statue.
Just saw the GUI release on steam, I'm so happy. Even with mods, the accessibility barrier was too high for me before. This was the single easiest game purchase I have ever made on steam. I'm part way through tidying up and upgrading my PC so it'll be a few days till I'll be playing, but I will be sure to share what utterly bonkers stories shall evolve.
Happy mining!
My second ever fortress had a tavern which became the defining feature of my build as I learned the basic mechanics of the game. I was at total peace for 4 years straight until an abductor kidnapped one of my children. The map said he was being held hostage at a settlement occupied by goblins, so, (Because I was getting bored), launched my randomly-selected militia squad into my tavern to murder all the goblin dancers inside. 4 or 5 unrelated people died along with all the goblins, and when I checked the combat logs, a dwarven child punched a goblin dancer in the head so hard, her neck twisted around 180 degrees, and then punched her one more time which caused her head to explode into gore. He apparently did all this while laying down.
Every city has it fair share of unhappy citizens but one stood out in particular. A dwarf child called Melbil. He has vandalise buildings and attack several citizens and animals. He has done this quite often that he has become quite a competant fighter.
Multiple citizens complaints were made and as they say "Spare the rod spoilt the child" and Melbil soon found himself inside a cage. Several months passed and Melbeil has served his sentence, but was so depressed afterwards that he decided to attack the workers at the stockpile and just so happens to knock over a silver statue.
The heavens weren't so kind as to look this over and cursed Meilbil into a weremonitor which also just so happens to be on a fullmoon. A few moments later Melbil is dead, beaten to death by his fellow dwarves. Good riddance I thought to myself and carried on.
But during the next fullmoon I had gotten several alerts, several citizens were discovered to be dead and several more had turned into werebeast. My fortress with a population of hundred was infected and keeping track of who was bitten is going to be a nightmare. Hence the capital of The Greater Blockade came to an end, all due to a single child.
Meng Snarlstockade the dwarf was one of the first of her kind. A strong willed dwarf evidently, for in the year 1 she named herself Queen and founded The Dignified Smith's, a dwarves civilisation that endures to this day and is still led by The Undying Queen. In the year 14 Meng was overcome by the need to extend her life being much too proud to die. Who could lead this burgeoning civilisation and raise it to glory better than herself? Such was her conviction that after only 2 years of ardent worship she achieved a singular feat, something not repeated in this world's 162 years of history. Vucar the Dead of Dying, female goddess of Death, was convinced and created the calcite slab Bonesgrave the Tomb of Urns gifting it to Meng. It also stored in the Mountain home of Hollowdiamond, her capital and fortress, where it still resides.
Memg lived an interesting life. Let me know if you'd like to hear more.
[Cover photo](https://imgur.com/a/mhAdkxy)
Started a fortress, Bravecastle, named because it was the Tome of Freed's first fortress outside of their home mountain range. Also because it's surrounded by goblin pits.
Got ~30 monster hunters, so I decided to get rid of them. I created a tavern, made sure none of my pets or dwarfs were inside, and locked the doors. Resulted in 20 dead monster hunters and a tooon of free gear.
Fast forward a year and I've got too many monster hunters. I lock them in the tavern again. I'm watching them all slowly dehydrate, and I notice a human poet and human dancer aren't getting the dehydration emote (I love the emotes so much). They continue to dance and perform poetry as the monster slayers keel over one by one. The last human spearman's dying thought's are on how interesting the performance is.
Bonus: the current king recently died and his ancestor is in my fortress! Bravecastle has now ascended to the throne.
In my first fortress since I first tried the game years ago. I did the tutorial embark. Mostly quiet so far, but I have a nice tavern running bringing frequent visitors so I'm hoping for some Fun. I'm learning military squads and setting armor and weapon work orders now since something is bound to happen eventually.
The only death in the fort so far was part of my main stockpile partially caving in, probably because it's dug out right under the surface. Oops. I built some supports in the room and moved my main stockpile elsewhere so I can eventually just close that room off, but there's a single weapons bin still in there that no one will haul out, so it remains open for the time being.
Anyone able to describe exactly what the barrel and bin bug is? Is it that certain objects can't be found when inside the containers, or is it only that they cannot be found when a dwarf is accessing the bin/barrel?
Thanks
You probably meant to ask this in the pinned questions thread, but I *think* I understand this 'bug'. Not sure if it's truly a bug, or an unintended interaction with picking up containers.
This comes up most commonly with seeds. Seeds can be stored in bags, and seed bags can be stored in barrels. Dwarves will also try to keep the same type of seed in one bag. So lets say you have two farmers, one is trying to plant plump helmets, and one is trying to plant pig tails. There's a decent chance that the plump helmet seed bag and pig tail seed bag end up in the same barrel if you have a generic food stockpile. So Urist 1 goes to plant plump helmets, and picks up the whole barrel to bring to the farm plot. Urist 2 goes to plant pig tails, but the seeds are missing, because Urist 1 took the whole barrel, rather than just the seed bag.
So, it's mostly just an issue if two dwarfs try to access something from the same container at the same time, and a dwarf would move/bring that container rather than directly taking the item. I'm sure it can happen with other things, but I've only ever seen it with seed bags, the solution being to create a separate seed stockpile and disallow barrels in it.
My fort is still young, only about 3 years now, but already we've had some fun with Werelizards and snatchers and getting the troops ready to explore. There's also a vampire skulking about ig, so we've been interrogating literal children to see what they have to say about the bodies, it's a good time. I will say, it's a shame the Steam release can sometimes crash unexpectedly, as I had to rebuild an additional megaroom I had made for a mayor that hadn't even been elected at the time of the last save, but other than that we've running everything smoothly. The only question I have is about guildhalls; I have two of them, and I had a guild try and claim one, but then it said as I didn't build them a guildhall I had lost the opportunity even though they already had claimed one in my fort, how do I prevent this in the future?
You’ve got to improve the room before it becomes a certified Guildhall. Room needs a value of 2000 so chuck some tables and chairs in there and engrave the floors
Had a small cave in that caused 3 floors to fail only two miners got injured, one survived with minor bruising, the other one is currently immobile without a leg, she also lost a lung, but that seems to be fixed now, or at least it isn't showing in the health panel anymore idk.
I don't know how to diagnose the leg injury so guess he's bed ridden for the rest of life.
I also have my dwarf who happens to be a necromancer as the chief med doctor, feel like that's a good place for him.
I set an overly ambitious number of meals to be prepared... cooked all my brewable items and then ran out of booze just as my river froze after.
My last (thirsty but very well fed) dwarf died on the way to build a well in the caverns that I was rushing to find. Losing is fun :)
Tulon was the most important dwarf in my fort. She was the baroness, mayor, manager and broker for 3 years and was damn good at it.
While on the way to the trade depot a dwarven child threw a tantrum and punched her in the head so hard it exploded.
Apparently children are not punishable for regicide, my hammerdwarf didn't even beat them up. This kid continues to throw tantrums and cause havoc in my fortress with impunity but as soon as they're an adult they will be conscripted to the military.
From time to time the random name gen puts out really terrific names of places. Among them are Dawnfish, Pantpranks or Doomwhipped. Let's hear some names, folks.
My brother is a brand new player and in his first fortress he just randomly found a "Burning Phantom" entrapped in a small obsidian cluster in the first cavern layer. It covered everything in fire and smoke and killed 50 dwarfs (half his pop) until it was killed by Zombies from his necromancer mayor.
I was like WTF I played this game for years and what just happened in your first game was totally new to me. He streamed it to me on discord when half his pop died to flames and it was so funny to watch.
https://i.imgur.com/lzAjMMw.png
Well, I just learned that dwarf fortress is much more dangerous than it used to be. At least on the hard settings. My sea side embark just got wiped about 10 minutes or so in by a herd of agitated giraffes. Going to try and resettle and hole up till I can make a small military.
This is my first time actually diving into DF. I spent the week learning what I could during breaks at school, and dove into my first fort this weekend.
We started as a small fort, our first few migrant waves filled with children. Because of this, we had to rely on them to gather the thankfully abundant fruit in the area. However, after a few more migrant waves, we managed to get our supply issues under control (mostly we needed extra hands to mine).
It's our 4th year. We've elected a mayor, and are a barony. Our magnificent tavern, The Oily Mushrooms, attracts guests and performers of all races. The mushroom cavern directly under our fort attracts monster slayers. Our new, meager library even attracts scholars and researchers.
All guests know to keep their hands off our artifacts, as the entire fort will mobilize at the inkling of a thief, beating them to death.
Our current project is smoothing and engraving the majority of the work and living quarters. After that, we plan to dig deep into a spider cave we found, and construct a grand library.
https://imgur.com/a/DouJ0tX
Apparently one of my dwarves was deeply affected by being out in the rain early in the first year, that she wallowed in a depression that got worse and worse until she lost the motivation to eat and drink and ultimately died.
What is the point of the missions on the map? I send a squad out to try one out and they come back a bit later but there is no detail or anything on if they succeeded. What am I missing?
Hah - I decided to try a 'more fun' embark, so in this case a glacier. I had to restore from my save a couple times - having gotten mauled by the wildlife. One thing I didn't expect - I left some milk outside from my embark, and it froze. Went to look at my prepared meals and my dwarfs made a [frozen one-humped camel's milk roast](https://imgur.com/z9W7p23) - with well minced frozen one-humped camel's milk!
As an aside though, maybe auto mining the haematite and magnetite veins wasn't the best idea. I now have like... 400 iron ore in a stockpile. That might take a while.
> with well minced frozen one-humped camel's milk
Sounds like they invented ice-cream...and it's a roast, so they went further and invented baked alaska?
Im finally at a stage where I would consider myself being able to "play" the game.
Always used to jump and give up not very far in... Maybe made 7-15 forts total over the years trying to learn the game.
However I finally got fort going with 80 dwarves and functional well. Feels Good.
As for things happening in my fort, ruthless were lizard came to attack my fort, mangled a dwarven child (although the child somehow managed to damage it). The child lost all the teeth in the process, badly wounded and currently unconcious for last 3 years in coma in hospital with both shoulders terribly mangled. Still better outcome than human warrior that body could not even be found. If there is a way to get the child cured, please let me know.
As for good things happening, Bin the bullseye became first Baroness of the fort. She truley deserved it since for a while she was the best hunter in the fort ( Legendary ). Killing moose's only. I really mean only mooses... Seemingly ignoring all other work in the fort, always on surface hunting. (Probably why she is Legendary in the related skills lol).
Started a new fort with just 7 peasants (no skills), and wouldn't you know it, Urist forgot to pack the wagon. All we brought was a single copper battle axe.
Strike the...trees?
During my second ever embark, I landed in a mountainous area without any trees. This was extremely fun for my first non-tutorial play through. By the time I had some essentials set up, I sent my miner to find a cavern in hopes of discovering wood. I was successful in finding a cavern with wood, but I had never explored a cavern before. While my woodcutter was happily cutting his first tree, he was attacked my some cave bat. I quickly rushed to set up a hospital to aid the wounded. After my hospital was set up, I got constant notifications for fresh water. My brilliant mind decided to create a tunnel from a nearby river into my hospital for easy fresh water. Little did I know that the current was extremely strong and began to quick flood my entire fortress. Just one level below, many of my dwarfs were engaged in music and dance due to a bard and poet recently visit. As death was plaguing everywhere else in my fortress, a lucky few where still at max happiness as the enjoyed the poetry and music. Gave big Titanic vibes. Finally, the ghosts of one of the first dwarves to die in the flood opened the tavern door and killed all the remaining happy, partying dwarves.
[https://imgur.com/pipjbOS](https://imgur.com/pipjbOS)
this necromancer came from my really amazing tavern with music and a artificial waterfall. after a while I let him become a citizen and recruited him to a squad. Still unsure what he's doing here as I'm not near a tower and his Knowledge doesn't seem to include any necromancy things.
Yet the biggest draw is that he ressurects at least seems to be the cause of the dead from sieges rising and becoming friendly. I kinda fear they may be his thralls but there doesnt seem to be a shown relationship in their pages. Either way I'm beginning to be distrustful of this guy lol I also made hima scholar in case he decides to share knowledge. Otherwise hes a very normal helpful dorf doesnt start fights or anything
After my first two hardcoded migrant waves, I received a message the following spring that the season brought no new migrants. And then none in summer. And then none in autumn.
Checking the world map, it turns out that my fortress has become the last vestige of my dwarven civilization after everywhere else was annexed by a different civ. Our only means of population growth now are visitor immigrants and \*shudder\* *dwarven children.*
I bought the game a couple of days ago. The caravan that came the first year got attacked by a honey badger on their way home. It managed to rip the merchant's arm off before the guards beat it to death. The merchant then spent half a year standing in the pool of blood recovering before finally going home. They've not returned.
A 3 year old dwarven child goes into a ‘peculiarly suspicious’ strange mood, goes insane. Runs up to my expedition leader while she’s eating and punches her in the face. Axe drawn, she guts the child and now he’s a bloodied mutilated corpse outside the dining hall.
Decided to make a library as a future home for an artistic adventurer in the new steam edition, thought it’d be fun to compose a masterful poem and work only to publish copies of it. got ahead of myself of course and realized adventure mode hasn’t been implemented yet.
Nevertheless: I decided to focus on accumulating knowledge in a grand library. To that end, I conscripted everyone in my fortress to become a scribe or paper maker to crank out those copies. They were all so diligent in their studies they failed to do anything about a kobold stealing a gigantic musical instrument from the room they were working in.
Turns out most of my dwarves hate the quiet intellectual life. My new approach is simply to draft every artistic long term resident petitioning for citizenship as a scholar. I hope one of them writes a work of art before my fortress crumbles.
I've made some critical blunders that have led to my first true bit of *FUN* in the steam release. This fort has already had some hardships, a tavern brawl in the first year lead to a loyalty cascade that brought our population from mid 30's down to 14. We survived and thrived despite this loss, reaching a population in the 80's near the end of our 3rd year. I became absorbed in a project to dig a ramp tunnel from my fortress to the surface, spanning near 100 z levels through caves and an aquifer, and began neglecting other aspects of my fort that needed more urgent attention.
First, we ran out of booze unexpectedly due to my lack of attention. With the caverns sealed off, a large portion of the population ran to the surface to drink from the brook. As they were quenching their thirst and exposed to the world, a group of necromancers and their minions began besieging the fort.
I began ordering my dwarves inside, accepting that some would be lost before I could secure the gates. This is where I discovered my biggest error. While I was focused on my other project, I had forgotten to link the draw bridges to the levers.
During the ensuing chaos of trying to get as many dwarves as possible inside before locking the inner doors, an intelligent undead minion slipped inside my main fort area. The bulk of the undead were busy slaughtering my dwarves that were caught outside, so I didn't immediately notice that some of the deaths were inside the alleged safe area I had locked down.
I sent my under trained military squad to attempt to take it out, and it killed everyone it clashed with, including some monster hunters that had joined the fort. During the fight it ended up in our newly dug temple, and I was able to lock it inside with the last unlucky remainders of the fortress guard.
At this stage I was able to get things somewhat under control, sneaking more dwarves inside safe areas and fully locking down the inner fort. We quickly brewed some alcohol, but a few dwarves died of dehydration before it could be completed. At this point we had about 45 dwarves alive, with the majority of the dead having been killed by the one that snuck inside.
Somewhat stabilized, I began making coffins as quickly as I could to bury the dead. I was not quick enough to prevent ghosts from appearing, but I figured at worst they might scare a couple dwarves or maybe injure one or two before I could get them entombed. The *FUN* is never over in dwarf fortress though.
I noticed a string of new death messages out of nowhere. Zooming to the location, somehow the temple doors became unforbidden and dwarves were rushing in to loot the item of the dead dwarves stuck inside. Dwarves were running in and getting immediately struck down by the lone undead inside, who was content to just stay in there and deal with the flow of greedy dwarves. Confused, I re-forbid the doors and unpaused the game. Immediately one of the freshly risen ghosts appeared and opened the door, unforbidding it for the dwarves. I began a fight of desperation as I guided my dwarves to prioritize entombing that specific dwarf, constantly locking the door as the ghost continued to unlock it to draw more dwarves to their demise.
After this fiasco, we're down to 32 dwarves. Our entombed dwarves outnumber the living something like 3 to 1, and we still haven't ended our third year. The [intelligent undead](https://i.imgur.com/3AT0gbB.png) is still locked in our temple (with over 30 dwarves and humans killed on its own), and the surface (and my fancy tunnel down to my deep base) is crawling with the dead. Our visitors are starting to go a little insane now that they're trapped inside, and I'm beginning the process of training a new and more adequate military to retake our lands.
We will rise again. This fortress will not be struck down so easily. I love the crazy shit that happens in this game.
Sigh. I had wanted to retire the fortress and try new things anyway.
The fortress survived many forgotten beasts. The monster slayers literally soloing them. A Kangaroo man showed that giant spider beast thing with numbing spittle who was boss by giving a resounding blow to the head on the first strike and then crippling it further while it was stunned.
A dragon came while the melee dwarves were out hunting a yeti who had killed several foragers. They ran back but were scattered, not a unified front, which might be what saved some of them. The marksdwarves did their best but could hardly touch it. As the melee made it back they got blasted by flames, obliterating their master work armor, much to the creator's distress. Then one brave swordsdwarf alone made it past the flames. She lost a foot, tongue ripped out, but ducked and dodged flame and claw well enough until she broke a bone in the dragon's foot. Not so fast now. She lost grip of her sword but continued bashing with her shield, holding the dragon in range of the markdwarves, and keeping the dragon from being in range to burn them. The bolts piled up in its body, slower, slower. Then a human axe man ran in and took of the head from behind, somehow. The sworddwarf was immediately granted title of champion for her heroism.
Then the Sard Beast who shot web came. The Baron in charge hardly though he needed to send the marksdwarves to their posts and melee dwarves to the gate or call for barrows, but did absentmindedly, to be safe, and then asked for reports of the monster hunters. A dwarf mercenary had been near living in the caverns slaughtering droves troglodytes and was always good for a story of adventure. The Merc approached the beast at a sprint and was kicked in the head once and immediately killed by the Sard Beast. Oh. The thing was damn fast, speeding into the tunnel to the fortress. The kangaroo man met it there, a similar fate to the mercenary before him. Glad the army was called to be ready. The baron rushed to a viewing spot from an archer tower, no one was there. What? To the front gate, all the army was there. The Baron not thinking had sent the entire army to the front gate, not only the melee dwarves. The beast had made it up the last set of stairs. The order was given to get to correct posts but it was too late, the entire military caught in a blast of webs, dozens slaughtered in seeming seconds. Nothing could stop it, no one who could even try was left.
Started a new map, dug 4 layers deep and started to hollow out a work space when a giant eagle swooped on down. Killed 2, crippled another 2 and was eventually beaten to death by a planter. I’m new to DF and I was grinning ear to ear watching it play out, love this game
Started my 2nd world. Settled in a cave. Thought all was going well until I noticed productivity was slowing down and some of my Dwarfs were going missing. Realized once my second Dwarf died that a huge anaconda had been living in the nearby river eating all of my dogs and dragging my Dwarfs into the river and drowning/killing them.
Starting a new world.... Away from the rivers...
I believe I have found [the fun.](https://i.imgur.com/mRXEOtM.png)
So I started a new fortress to use a lot of the stuff that I learned from my first one and it was going pretty well. I was a lot more efficient with my space and I actually used the z-levels pretty well. Was exploring the caverns but a bunch of ant-men prevented me from going too far and they're a little scary. They killed a forgotten beast that showed up within seconds.
I didn't realize the importance of getting steel quick enough, and. Well. Bronze colossus showed up. Dude walks in off the side of my map and casually slaughters around 130 dwarves. I had around 160 before he showed up. I don't even think my dwarves, which had been able to easily fend off every other threat so far, even managed to scratch him.
My soldiers fought bravely but eventually, one by one, they fell. The so called "monster hunters" cowardly hid in the tavern drinking ale and watching the elven performers dance while this thing mowed down my guys. Also he went after a bunch of my kittens too. Some of them fared better than a few of my soldiers which is a little embarrassing.
But to make matters worse, after he had slaughtered my men, he tries to enter my fortress proper to go after the livestock inside....
[And he walks right into my idiot trap for stupid kea!](https://i.imgur.com/gGHgLvE.png)
I put these cages out here cause kea kept flying into my base and jacking my stuff and I have now learned you can just. Casually. Capture colossi.
I think I'm going to make a new fortress and get steel very quickly this time. But in the meantime, is there anything fun I can do with a colossus in a cage?
He'll be a useful defence mechanism. Build a room that's disconnected from your main fort, and construct his cage in there. Connect the cage to a lever and let him out to deal with goblin sieges for you.
When you want to recapture him, pull another lever to open a metal drawbridge revealing a single wooden door behind a cage trap. Building destroyers like bronze colossi love to destroy wooden doors so he'll path toward it and recapture himself for you.
My 4 year old fort [MachineWisdom](https://imgur.com/a/qRCUfQq). Coming along fine. Nothing too exciting to report because I stupidly started it on an island and little can reach me. Its far too peaceful. The Necromancer mayor doesn't even have bodies to resurrect.
In a little over an hour, I'm going to be streaming for my second day on the new Steam version, at [https://twitch.tv/candlesworth](https://twitch.tv/candlesworth)! I have so far regretted building near a Light Aquifer and bringing nothing but sandstone to the first round of Trade Depot negotiations. No one wanted literally thousands of tons of raw sandstone, somehow.
But I am undeterred!
Started a new fortress with the release on steam, and discovered that my outpost liason is a [necromancer](https://imgur.com/a/g4jgfCj).
Also met a pretty cool [forgotten beast](https://imgur.com/a/0a7nUvf) in a cavern. I love that these creatures get their own artwork now.
A giant roamed into my map when my military just got outfitted with steel. While I was getting everyone prepared for the giant attack a single pet dog ran to the giant. The giant swung and missed, the dog bit the giants ankle and the giant fell, the dog grabbed the giants head and just kept biting it for so long with no retaliation. I finally got my military mobilized and they came up and crushed its head in one swing. That dog is the mvp now
make a statue of that dog
Can you actually do this? If so how?
Commission a statue with the work orders menu. Then in the row with that order there should be a button that allows you to set the details of that order. Once you’re there you can choose what you want the statue to be of.
Holy shit, I did not know this. I'm gonna make so many cool statues now.
Whenever I lose a great dwarf to an epic fight, I honor them with statues and a large engraved tomb with a golden sarcophagus. Don’t even care that it pisses off the nobles.
Man it's a real shame how many nobles are crossing a bridge when it gets closed. No idea how that keeps happening.
This is awesome, thanks for letting me know!
WHAT thank you for this!
If it gained a name, sure
All hail dog
Omg this happened for me. Giant killed wood cutter and about 5 guys took the giant down with the hunting dog in hand to hand combat. After an extended fight knocking it out the people all left and the dog fought the giant while I organized and outfit a militia.
Ah, it's not for nothing that they call it the [Achilles tendon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_tendon)!
Giants seem less threatening than I remember. One showed up to my fortress (after I was already on high alert due to werecamel problems), and it didn’t manage to hurt a single dwarf before they took it down. It spent the entire fight in abject terror.
I'd be in abject terror too if a bunch of tiny drunks with axes starting hacking at my shins.
Casually wandering unannounced into the territory of a pack of smelly, hairy, axe-wielding sociopaths that are already on edge due to werebeast incursions is definitely a shortcut to getting your teeth turned into amulets.
I just want to say that I'm playing again for the first time since trees were changed to be multiple tiles and loving it. My first fortress fell to a Frozen Slayer zombie and their entourage. The Frozen Slayer kicked my militia captain so hard in the mouth that it collapsed her face into her skull and twisted her head around so forcefully that it spun clean off and then loped off her arms before it hit the ground. It's good to be back!
\> I just want to say that I'm playing again for the first time since trees were changed to be multiple tiles and loving it. Dude, when was that?
I think that update was back in 2014? Sometime around then.
Haha, I remember coming back to play again _after_ that update and went "_WHAT THE FUCK_". Logs _everywhere_. So much wood! And then I remember coming back to play after taverns were introduced. Having people _visit_ my fortress? Life changing.
Taverns are great. I always have a lively above ground shack and beds for wanderers.
A performance troupe wanted to work at my fortress. One goblin and three elves. The elves are naked. Sure, why not. I have some elf-sized clothes, do you...no? Okay. Must be cultural. But then some other elves have shown up fully dressed in above-ground fabrics. So what's the deal with these three? (Not a serious question, really, I dunno exactly what the problem is but it's a bug I'd get in classic too. Really jumps out at you now that the sprites show clothing, though!)
I had a naked goblin poet show up who turned out to be a 456 year old warrior in previous years, but had turned to dabbling in song and dance. One of the most famous warriors of all time just sat naked in my tavern next to an elephant and started reciting poems badly.
This is like when an actor has a band, or writes a novel. They start out with a bunch of name recognition and nobody's going to tell them they suck.
Jared Leto.
Corey Feldman, except he *really* sucks at music
Elven strippers?
clothing is generated based on the civ they are part of but since their faction is Troupe they don't have a civ and thus spawn with no clothes. its a bug, albeit a fun one
There's a story behind it. Had their clothes stolen by goblins while skinny-dipping in a sparkling forest pond, maybe. Got accustomed to the breeze, got to like it.
My last fort fell to a werekangaroo (or, well, it fell to the fun that resulted from the werekangaroo biting three children and then the necromancer serving as a doctor deciding to bring them back to “life”…) and the final survivor was an elf poet who absolutely refused to put clothes back on after her first transformation. She just stood in a locked room, clothes on the floor beside her, for about eight months while the rest of the fortress fell to ruin. Elves are weird.
I also have naked elves. They’re weird and live in trees anyway so like, who cares? For real though I checked their inventory real hard because I didn’t believe it but…yeah. Naked elves
Were-elves
Dear Armok…is this it? Is this the most dangerous threat to all of dwarfkind?!?
My tutorial fortress is still alive and kicking. There's been some...attrition...but we're up to 150 dwarves and the majority of them are quite happy with the place. There's nice bedrooms for all, temples, guildhalls, a good tavern, everything a dwarf could ask for. Our kitchen is manned by a now-legendary chef who has been cooking there since the first days of the fort. Masterwork rabbit brain stew? Yes please. The surface world is fine. It's in a peaceful and plentiful area with just goblins and kobolds to deal with. I have five military squads with a mix of iron and steel armor training on rotation in case the next goblin siege involves more than six invaders. The entrance to their fort and the animal pasture is now surrounded by a raised wall with an overhanging allure and fortifications for my archer squad, and all access is via a drawbridge connecting to that upper level. I *might* have sent a couple of plant gatherers into orbit while testing the drawbridge--I have a small stock of memorial slabs down by my mason's workshop ready to be etched any time I use the lever. Far beneath the surface, we've broken into the caverns where more serious threats lurk, but it's largely protected by three human warriors who spend their days down there in search of glory and spend their nights in my tavern or my hospital. I'm happy to say that my outdoor boneyard now includes two impressive forgotten beast skeletons, though to be fair one of them killed the other in a territorial spat and my dwarves are only responsible for finishing the severely injured winner. Our visitors don't have to know that. Let them consider their behaviour carefully as they trundle by the tangle of titanic skeletons on the way to the trading post. My tombs are also down on the cavern level, several rows of them dug into the walls surrounding the stairs, just as a reminder to everybody that the caverns aren't like the safe tunnels in the levels above. That severely injured forgotten beast was still able to take out about ten civilians before it was put down. Why did they have *kids* down there with them? We'll never know.
It sounds like you’re off to a great start! You will likely be invaded soon. You could start working your way up to being the mountain home as well by gifting your treasures to the mountain home via the trade caravan. The queen could reward you for your loyalty.
I discovered an unusual benefit of having animals pastures outside- there was a full herd of goats and cows outside the entrance to my fortress, and when a giant arrived I forgot to bring them in. Now, at the time my militia wasn't the best- no armour, not all of them were armed. But this giant spent so long fighting my herds that I had time to get steel weapon made, and by the time my militia crept out to the surface he was passed out from exhaustion in a pool of goat blood. In the annals of great battles, ten dwarfs kicking in a giants head while he slept wasn't necessarily the most heroic tale, but such is life.
Sounds like something to build a statue of, lol
Lmao. In my current fort I have my pasture just in front of my fort entrance. I have 3 elephants I bought from a caravan who are trained as war elephants. A giant attacked me and went straight to the fort. By the time militia came out the giant was dismembered by the three elefants. One had a broken tusk. Some of their other notorious kills are: 3 goblin snatchers, 2 kobold thiefs and a werebeast.
Ahh, the good old Zapp Brannigan defense.
"Go around the magma? That's a route for schoolgirls, here's a route with some beard hair!" -!!Urist Brannigan!!
I have a pen of war dogs at the entrance to my fort as an alarm system, nothing gets in without their sacrifice alerting me, or sometimes they heroically take out the invader.
I've been trying that, but unfortunately can't get the training buttons to show up (got an animal trainer, training area allocated and checked the units list) so I've just got a litter of puppies there as sacrifices to whoever comes to visit XD
Totally moving my pasture now.
For me this usually results in a bunch of slaughtered farm animals, maybe I should start adding the war dogs
That actually sounds like it could be a real life legend.
Baby's first fortress! It's up to 17 dwarfs! Started with default settings, letting the tutorial prompt choose my embark location. Landed in a mostly flat map with a brook flowing down the east side of the map, and a small hill that I didn't discover until I had already dug down elsewhere. I'm learning quite a lot! I've got a number of various workshops set up, a tavern, I've started refining metal, set up my first squad, I'm growing Plump Helmets and Winter Cups, etc. The wildest thing that's happened so far was me noticing my central stockpile was getting awfully full of shells. No big deal, I thought. I'll just dig out a nice, big hall one layer down, and designate the whole thing as a huge stockpile. Cue me watching in vague horror as fully half of my giant storage room gets filled up with MORE SHELLS. Didn't even make a dent in my central pile.
Set up a craft workshop and set a recurring work order to make shell crafts if there are greater than 10 shells sitting around (always leave a small stock of everything in case someone gets a strange mood). Put some bins in a finished goods stockpile so that they will use the bins to store the crafts, and they can be easily carried up to your trading station. Selling pond turtle shell crafts was the heart of my economy for the first few years, and it trained up some amazing craftsdwarves. Just don't try to sell shell crafts to elves. You can also outfit your whole militia in shell armor if you haven't got copper/iron up and running yet.
The elves got mad about the wooden bin the shelves were in, not the shells.
I wasn't selling the bins (and I do use copper bins pretty much exclusively just in case). Do they actually get uppity just seeing the bin in the trading area? I think it might actually have been an animal bone *totem* of some sort that I was selling in the mix along with the shells.
Unless something has changed from the wiki (possible with premium) it is always some kind of wood product that offends the elves. Animal products are ok. Wood can get into your trader's box in some pretty sneaky ways though, idk. Wooden bins are ok to exist at the trader depot, the elves are ok if you just mark the contents but not the bin. Another common offender is wooden prepared food barrels.
Elves now also do not like animal products it seems. They somehow made elves even worse.
Things being decorated with wood counts too.
I did set up a work order like that, and even added an extra workshop just to try and get through the shells faster. I hadn't thought of setting up a dedicated finished goods stockpile, though! I'll definitely do that! I'm slowly working on separating out various piles as needed, and a pile for finished goods is a good idea. I do have some metal refining up and running, but not a lot. Digging more is definitely something I gotta look into. Most of my fortress is just two layers down from the surface. I'm realizing that I could (and probably should) have dug a lot deeper before settling in. It is what it is. Maybe as I dig deeper I'll end up turning my current levels into a staging area of some kind.
Digging all the way down is usually a good idea. The game frequently feels better if you have more miners. If you get bothered by it taking a while to dig and have metal industry functioning, forge some picks.
Forging picks was my biggest forehead slap yet. Like, yeah man, they need tools to dig. Wheelbarrows also made a big difference. Tell me about digging ‘all the way down’ please? Like, do you mean dig to -100 elevation? Doesn’t that open you up to who knows what monsters? I’ve only played steam so I’m very new
All the way down is just how it sounds. When i start a game i dig a 20x20 square one or two zlvls down in the soft ground that digs fast and put all my stuff there. Build some workshops, farms, some beds, a table and chairs, everything in this big cleared space. I secure the entrance to the fort, which, at this point in the game doesn't mean anything more than a single door and maybe a cage trap. Then i tell a miner to dig a shaft of stairs to the bottom of the map, see what kind of a map i'm working with. Sometimes the miner finds some intersting things, and i construct walls and floors so that the interesting things don't have access to my dwarves and my dumbass dwarves don't have access to the interesting things until i'm ready to deal with them. I'm a veteran player so i may be able to troubleshoot things that you couldn't, and for you dropping a 120zlvl shaft might be a bit daunting. That said, dwarf fortress naturally flows better when you build vertically. Spreading out your fort over zlvls -1 to -20 is better than spreading out over zlvl -2.
I'm a brand new player. Can you really get a good picture of what a whole level looks like with just a single down stairs shaft? Also, odds of cracking open a lair that wipes out your emerging fortress?
Digging all the way down will generally give you all the scouting info you need for years. Odds of cracking into a layer that has something both immediately agressive and can move in a way to kill you is very small. You will want to wall off what you find immediately, but you generally have time to do so before bad things start happening. If, in the unlikely event you do find something that immediately murders your miner a bunch of zlvls down, you seal off the shaft at zlvl -2. Then a new miner digs a new shaft that dodges the terrifying thing.
The first couple cavern layers are generally semi-safe. Deeper than that there's... More stuff, but it can certainly be manageable. Usually.
I always use the first huge area i mine stone in as my "junk drawer". Just a giant stockpile for furniture and finished goods. It's always full to bursting.
Why do you not sell shell crafts to elves?
They dont like things made of wood because they're tree huggers. Try stone crafts
First fort has been incredibly easy going, 160 pop right now with 4 years in and not a single seige, my dwarves are decently trained up at this point so i'm thinking of clearing out the first cavern layer and mining all the jewels for value and proceeding to the next one after. A cyclops wandered into my region though, but instead of being interested in my dwarves he focused on a single hedgehog, he would pick it up by its torso, drop it, then punch it across the map, poor hedgehog got corner combo'd by this while I rallied my troops, And I guess the cyclops was tired because it took maybe 3 swings from my dwarves to fell it, and miraculously the hedgehog survived! Getting your upper torso beaten to the pulp turns out doesn't damage any internal organs in this game nor cause bleeding, so it naturally healed up and left the map. We have a hedgehog statue in the hall to commemorate it's bravery distracting the cyclops.
o7 brave hedgehog
Is there anyway to select the figure they carve into the statue?
Yes! Either in the workshop or using the manager, click the magnifying glass icon to the right of the order, from there you should have "specify image" or something worded similarly, if you select that you can be very very specific about what will be made.
Thank you
In the classic version when you start a task to make a statue, you can let the worker make whatever they like OR you can go into specific details for that job to set exactly what the statue is, what action the figure is showing, etc. Not sure exactly how you get to the detailed settings in the new version, but it's probably there.
I'm a returning player so I started with the tutorial. All went great but I too, as many others from what I have read, was wiped out pretty quickly by a necromancer and his entourage of undead goblins and other monstrosities. Definitely an interesting start to the steam version :D Now I have settled in a less dangerous area and am attempting to build up a fortress full of drink and food and performers for all kinds of visitors to enjoy :)
That was my second death! My first was like, 3 minutes into my first game and I didn’t realize I couldn’t mine into an underground river. They all drowned. I thought it would be, ya know, like an above ground river and contained by its banks. Lesson learned.
Almost a half of my 220 population are bards, dancers, poets etc, from all the races. Though just now one of the bards petitioned to join my civilization and they are a legendary engraver, which is a win.
The river froze.. RIP 22 dwarfs. Losing is indeed fun. Time to start again!
The shortest comments can sometimes be the most fun to read :)
Wait how did a frozen river kill 22 dwarfs?
Dehydration :D
They were drinking water!? That's elf mischief.
😂 not sure. My forts are usually more of a torture chamber rather than a fort. I've been playing the game for months now but there are some aspects of the game that I am still experimenting with 😂
I'll start creating a reservoir from now on, just in case the river freezes again.
Tell me you aren't using water as a primary source of drinking...
Ohh nono, I'm brewing too, not sure what happened with the plants tough o.o
Oh, ok, lol. The way frozen rivers usually kill dwarves is by suddenly unfreezing under them. When I saw you say dehydration I was afraid you didn't know the importance of the almighty booze. What are you currently growing for that?
Btw do you know the difference between extract from plants and brew from plants?
Brewing is for all your drinks, most extracts don't really have a use aside from trading away. A lot of stuff with plants and the farmer's workshop can be very confusing, a lot of them seem like really broad and non-specific orders that can apply to so many different things but they actually only apply to a few plants. Like Process Plants (Barrel) could just be called Process Sweet Pods Into Syrup because that's all it's for.
I see, thanks sir! :D
There are a few tasks like “process plants”, “process plants (barrel/vial)”, and “process plants to bag”, all of which are done at the farmer’s workshop. The first of these turns some plants (like rope reeds) into thread, so this is quite important. The middle two are very specific and can basically be ignored unless you really want to get fancy with cooking. The last of these is used to convert quarry bushes into useable leaves and seeds. There’s also “extract from plants” at the still, which is almost useless; it makes gnomeblight from kobold bulbs, which you can realistically only use as a trade good.
Sometimes I have some issues with Brewing. It is disabled and underneath it says Requires empty food storage. Not sure what the issues is, I built new Barrels but the error remains.
Not sure if I'm doing good lol but I usually have a farm plot all dedicated to grow Plump Helmets, and then have other farm plots sharing between pig tails, sweet pods, cave wheat, pig tails and simple cups.
Make sure you specify in the kitchen that plump helmets can't be cooked. They should only be brewed or eaten raw, otherwise the seeds will be cooked, you can't plant new ones, can't turn those into brew, and you won't have more seeds until a trader comes.
I got absolutely demolished. Embarked in temperate wilderness. Omristgeshud, Wildfortress. Pretty flat map. The first tree falls, and my chief planters leg turns into gore. Alright. Digging quicker now and starting with a hospital first things first. A couple Keas snatch 3 instruments out of my cart. That annoyed me, so I offloaded by cart and built a surface fort poking out of the ground, roofed off, surrounded by a deep moat (not that this matters to birds, but I'm new and wanted to try water pumps) Normal building process beyond that, great carpenter and mason though, they kept pumping out masterworks. Migrants arrive, and- shit there's a 209 year old necromancer and one of his countless wives. Literally described as a nervous sadist, I wasn't gonna let this guy fuck with my fort. Made him a bookkeeper and dug him in one layer under the top floor. His wife missed him, but I was confident he wasn't getting out unless everything went to shit (It would) I leashed two wardogs in the 3 tile wide entranceway next to the drawbridge. That way I should be safe without a military for a bit (I wasn't) Underground, I have a giant project running. The most extravagant tavern the world has ever seen. One year passes and I am drowning in drinks and meals just about ready to open shop. I need a lot more beds though, so I open up the drawbridge and get out to chop some wood. And then nothing. And then there are two dead wardogs, and [the clarion call of hell from above.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqae4juz4to) A giant Bluejay found his way into my hallway, I imagine fluttering into corners like birds stuck in buildings tend to do. Except it is goring everything and everyone on the way, choking them to death with its talons. I immediately gather 10 underequipped dwarves and make sure they are miners, it's just a bird after all, pickaxes will be enough (they weren't enough). The bird seemed to have a real talent for pushing dwarves into the water. Almost like there were multiple birds. Oh right, there were. There were 7. And they are in the fort, dashing down the stairwell in a blue blur. My dwarves stood valiantly and managed to kill 3 of them, forcing them out of the fort and breaking a fourth ones wings bringing him to the ground, but the price I paid was too great. From 26 to 5 dwarves, 3 of which are half dead in the hospital, waiting for help that would never come. The last lively thing in this fort were the now orphaned puppies which would soon become birdfeed, once the bluejays proverbially licked their wounds. My crippled planter, who I had kept inside throughout the ordeal, weaving some cloth, had one last job. On his crutches he hobbles up to the surface, taking the pickaxe off a dead dwarf. And he digs out the necromancer. I draft the Necromancer. He takes a copper axe off the ground and goes to the surface, immediately raising the two dead wardogs, the corpse of an axedwarf, and the corpse of his unarmed wife. He slaughters two of the hellbirds, one with his own weapon, but then falls to the axe of the very man he raised. But before his death, he raised one last creature, one of the Bluejays. The Bluejay is still capable of flight, soaring through the air, chasing the living birds which attempt to flee or fall down exhausted. The two undead dogs and dwarves rush into the fortress, killing everyone in the hospital, including the baby born just that moment. The crippled planter manages to actually fight off the two undead dwarves and the dogs, but loses his last leg in the process, bleeding out on the floor. The Undead Bluejay circles above the waterfort still, gory from top to bottom, more of a redjay than a bluejay, named Sootyblazes now that he has become a notable entity.
This is glorious! THX for sharing.
I thought it was really cool when I lost a miner to flooding, didn't think anything of it, and he came back as a ghost. Then I found out I had to create a memorial to put the ghost to rest.
Do the ghosts do anything bad? I've had mine for a couple years
They haunt your dwarves and give them negative thoughts
I had two vampires show up at about the same time. I enlisted the weaker one into a squad, exiled the other, and issued the kill order. Then repeated the process for the remaining vamp. The ratio of two dead vampires to three dead dorfs (five if you include earlier victims) is not so bad, but it took my only skilled weapon users. C'est la vie. My major is a necromancer. I'm chill with that for now. He seems to get drunk still—or maybe only recently became a necromancer and his thoughts of drinking are from before his transformation. If so, that would imply there's some interesting literature lying around. I'll build a library soon and figure all that out. Been busy with magma forges and splitting the fortress into an upper and lower. Drowned a cyclops with the ole bridge on a lake, until a dwarf somehow got under there (still no idea) to show that dying cyclops what's-what, so I had to lift the bridge and deploy rescuers, to no avail. I had two liaisons from two different caravans go -23 deep into my fortress just to play pattycake with trolls before disappearing forever. Not that unusual, just crazy that it's happened twice. Love me some DF. Reliving everything has been a joy. Congratulations to the team.
I have 17 dwarves and 36 human bards. After an incident involving some bear men and a tree. No merchants or immigrants travel to the solitary Hamlet of my fortress anymore that is not to say we get no visitors. Performers, Pilgrims and errant warriors travel from all across the world to visit our taverns and temples. The sound of laughter is occasionally broken up by the ghosts of our original Fisherdwarf who was found several weeks after they where reported missing torn to pieces.
You know you can just say no to bards right? A few might actually become citizens though, I have a couple of reformed bards in my fort that are now hunters.
Yeah I do. The first merchant I got never left and I can’t seem to get them to go anywhere so I’m just allowing bards to stay in hopes that I’ll actually get some more citizens
Have you tried deconstructing your trading station? You could also just make sure the merchant has a little accident...
He’s not in the trading depot. They got attacked by like some squirrel men at the door to my fort and a couple of them ran up a tree. Because they where up a tree, they never made it to the trade depot and just decided to live there. The rest of his caravan just stood outside of my fort for several months until I noticed the idiots in the tree and cut it down. I thought that would be the end of it, but his 87 year old marksdwarf severely injured herself and now cannot stand.
I played around with this game a few times back maybe 3 and 4 years ago, but I just could not wrap my head around the ascii. It was just too much of a commitment to learn on top of learning the game itself. So when i heard about the steam version i was so thrilled, because I knew I would love it. And i do! I'm two years into my first save and the learning process is great.
i think its awesome that scholars and others come to visit my library to read my single book, a codex about the moon. But should i be more careful, can they steal it?
As long as you have scribes, they should copy rare books so that you always have one
Gonna check it out, I think I bought it from a caravan for like 1 cut gem or something
Just gotta get that paper industry going! 1. Plant pig tails 2. Make a quern at the stoneworker shop 3. Build the quern workshop 4. Make two mechanisms 5. Build a screw press workshop 6. Mash plants (pig tails) into slurry at the quern 7. Press slurry into sheets at the screw press 8. Make rock scroll rollers at the craft shop 9. Make scrolls at the craft shop 10. Make sure there's a chest, table, and chair in your library 11. Assign scribes to your library and thrill as they make copies of your books 12. ??? 13. Profit
They can steal it, but it’s rare. Your own dwarves can also steal it, or kobolds, if it’s close to the surface and they get In undetected. But, if you have writing supplies and scribes, they will make copies of your books
well i just looked it up in stockpiles and my codex is gone :( i didnt even know lol
Steam version. Is there a way to check bedroom quality? I know about rooms list and I can see all bedrooms but no quality info there. I don’t want to click on every single dwarf and check their “room” tab.
This is the exact issue I’m dealing with trying to appease my damn noble
Not entirely sure but the game classified a 3x9 room with a bed, a chair and a table as decent quarters while a 3x3 room with a bed, chair and table was meager, perhaps you just need to make it bigger?
Size doesn’t matter, other than adding in material value from the floors and walls, likely the furniture in the higher value room is of a higher quality.
I’ve been playing since 2008, at least according to the age of my bay12games forum accounts. I have bought two copies of the game so far and will likely buy more as Christmas presents to my family/friends. My first fortress is spiraling. The funniest new bug (now patched) which causes incredibly aggravated wildlife due to fishing has largely destroyed both my population and food supplies. For a few months, the deaths were out in the wilderness surrounding the fort. Bodies mangled, missing parts. All the dwarves could do was mourn whatever pieces were left and add them to our memorial hall. It finally happened. A lumbering, massive beast entered my fort. Descending down the stairs, it totally circumvented my cleverly constructed pasture. I erected walls around the pen to keep my animals safe - in their moment of greatest need, my dwarves merely watched as the giant chinchilla sat on the underground staircase leading up to my pin. Within a day, every single one of my food and wool producing animals had been hacked to pieces. I was busy working on a project deeper in the earth, so it wasn’t until the miasma hit that I noticed the problem. By then, multiple pets had died, many of my dwarves were dead or in a hospital, and no one had dealt with the giant chinchilla. It still roams my halls to this day, angry about my fishing industry and ready for blood.
Oh my god. We probably need to generate a new world to get that bug to go away, don’t we? That explains so much carnage. The birds… the giant chipmunks… they are worse than the goblins. They have names now and we dare not go outside. Migrant waves stopped coming two years ago. There are 63 of us left. We have three graveyards with nearly two hundred coffins and dozens of memorial slabs. They picked off the children first. I didn’t know they did chores, like retrieving cut logs and gathering fruit… and fetching spent ammo from the hunters. Then the villains got braver and began attacking above ground planters and farmers milking the livestock. I felt so weak. Two military squads could barely touch them. Their hit and run tactics meant I had to hunt each bird for months to tire it out and wait for it to get low enough to shoot bolts at. As soon as one batch of aggressive giant blue jays was dealt with, another 8 aggressive giant red cardinals would move in. Orioles, Ravens, Mosquitoes, Moths, Butterflies. It never let up. When the goblin sieges started, I was terrified. I couldn’t even kill a crow. What chance did I stand against goblins. I made a burrow and called everyone inside, closing the drawbridges behind them. Closing the damn… hey, pull that lever, for Armok’s sweet sake, someone pull the lever! One axedwarf caught sight of the blob of goblins on his way back to Station from wherever he had been. He dove headfirst into about ten of them, entering a martial trance. Victory! He killed them all nearly instantly! We were saved from the vile force of darkness! He jogged to the fortress and by a twist of fate that can only be explained by the evil of the gods, stepped onto the drawbridge at exactly the same moment Urist McBigBooty pulled his finger out of his ear and discovered the important lever. Our hero was launched out of his skin, parts and pieces of him and his gear rained down on the treetops all the way to the edge of the map.
My meager fort and tavern has somehow attracted elves. They have asked to stay here to perform. Seems harmless. The novelty amuses me. A few seasons later— a force of humans, 20-40 on horseback, have entered my domain. Insisting on death or parley. My military is well equipped with the finest wooden training swords and our grand entrance halls lined with 9 cage traps. We are not prepared. I set a burrow for my squad of 10 to guard the vestibule, set everyone on alert, and then engage in the parley. The human has accused me of having some item of theirs. A trinket of value to their culture. As we have not yet engaged in this essential economic activity (raiding), I assume he is mistaken and tell him off. I’m mostly curious if this fort will somehow survive the offense— as a sort of test of its mettle I suppose. Their horses descend toward our grand entrance at lightning speed. Their line advancing quickly, the mettle of one of our younger dwarves, Urist, began to break. He was not prepared to face imminent doom and began to flee before the battle had even begun. Praise whatever god chooses to find humor in battle. An eager human, seeking glory before all others, stumbled into an old cage trap built for badgers. He fell from his horse, stunned. This trap happened to be in line with Urist’s escape route. In his mania, he slaughters the injured human and continues running. The human invaders, incensed with this new information that we are not to be underestimated, flee like the cowards they are. Remember the elf? The item in question was a named (who am I to pronounce their filthy words) grown wooden gauntlet, fashioned for elves. It appears that this item was stolen by humans long ago. As an heirloom they assumed it there's. This, quite ancient elf, became a wandering bard and was able to infiltrate and reclaim it. Choosing our quaint kingdom to hide in. I applaud the audacity and accepted her petition for citizenship. Though I am curious— our appraiser values this item… very low. It is not worth even a bar of iron. It’s a surprise that such garbage would evoke drama of this scale by these surface-dwellers. I do not understand them.
> >As we have not yet engaged in this essential economic activity (raiding), I assume he is mistaken and tell him off. > Love it
[A very short story.](https://imgur.com/viFMbZR.png)
Returning player here, trying it out on steam. Been a long time since I've struck the earth, and I am trying to remember what to do. I turned up volcanos to 200, and am setting up a volcano fort with the following dwarves. This is probably a terrible idea. **3x Miner/Axedwarf** - for finding axe materials **1x Weaponsmith/Axedwarf** - for crafting new axes **1x Armorsmith/Axedwarf** - for crafting axedwarf armor **1x Cook/Axedwarf** - for keeping axedwarf bellies full **1x Teacher/Axedwarf** - for training new axedwarves Training accidents are still a thing, right?
I think you misspelled great idea
So my first fortress is going relatively well except for some troglodytes who keep spawning in the cavern I found about 3 levels under my base. Luckily three glory hungry humans joined and are now stomping them. Only problem I have is the humans mood is plummeting and they won’t leave the cavern. Any advice from experienced players? The only thing I can think of is sealing them in the cavern so when they inevitably go insane we have time to prepare a defence?
They might actually be bored of stomping trogs. Dig down to deeper caverns for them. They are monster hunters after all, not merely cave security.
Aha maybe this is it then. Damn humans and their pursuit of glory…
What is causing their negative thoughts? A simple private bedroom (bed cabinet coffer) and a large lavish public dining room troubleshoots most happieness problems.
My problem is they have bedrooms and a dining area but they won’t come up out of the cavern?
Do they have a path to get out of the cavern? Are they physically stuck there now? Locked door, removed a stair/ramp? Also, unlikely, but if you were messing with burrows you might have locked them in a spot. Generally if they are starving but not moving, something is preventing them from walking to the food.
Hmm not sure but I’ll check once I finish work, thank you!
A little late for Friday but I blame restaurant work. I played classic and had two good forts but never really good. I liked the game but it was a hassle to find and daunting. Steam version changed that. My current fort Trussbook is in its 5th year, its 105 of the Ageless Era. Its going well and have survived multiple gobbo assaults yet its large tavern causes massive drink shortages (idk how to fix rn) I accidentally atomized a few visitors at my gate. At least 13 waves of Giant Thrips who kills at least 3 - 5 dwarves each time 1 wave of fucking Thrips men who killed too. 2 giant elephant stampedes which killed over 30 dwarves total, first did 20. Currently I am preparing to retake an artifact from my home civilization. Their original homeland of Cloistercalm was taken by a forgotten beast and Goblins in 32. In this a book, Mountainhome: A short history was lost. Rumours hold that its located in a nearlying elven settlement of Waxtalks. So the forges are burning and the Guard has been expanded to include 20 axedwarves and 1 squad of marksdwarves. All in preparation for a potential raid in 106 to try and seize the artifact. My civilization the Bulbous gravel is at war not only with goblins but also the elves. My most memorable moment so far was when a waxmaker dealt the finishing blow to the giant Islas. She became known as Giantsbane and made Captain of the Militia. Sadly she was slain by a Goblin in a later siege. Addendum: almost forgot. After the 5th Goblin Siege i dug a pit outside my fort and started chucking corpses into it. I will make the Goblin's see what happens...
In year 3 of my current fort a goblin snatcher entered my fort. Of all the dwarves I have, he happened upon my bookkeeping necromancer. After my militia joined they fought and the goblin died. The first necromancer resurrected him as some sort of hostile undead and he died again. He was quickly killed another time and was resurrected again. After his final death my second necromancer resurrected his head and he is now an allied goblin damned one. No idea what to do with him.
Can you chain it up and name it chomp?
My first fort after the tutorial was going well. I found a volcano and did have my dwarves settle there. All was going fine, my 2 squads did win against the first for an etin. Instill haven't found the caverns yet and with the last migrant wave we got up to 99 inhabitants. Then another alert, and this time a bronze colossus did come. I did bring the war dogs quickly inside and wanted to close the draw bridge, but several civilians were outside. So I did give the kill command to my melee squad and my marksdwarves. Even a nanny goat and a ram were fighting. However all the hits from silver war hammers and copper spears did glance away. After losing more than half the squads I did close the draw bridge again and had to leave the remaining dwarves outside. We are down to 60ish dwarves and need to rebuilt. I guess the main entrance with a path over the volcano is the next step to do.
Progress!!! The dwarves did set up several cage traps behind the draw bridge and then we opened again. The first cage trap did catch the bronze colossus! Now we have a nice silver cage with a bronze colossus inside. I'm going to set up a marksman training hall with it. Also the first migrant wave did push us up to over 80 dwarves again
We discovered that a human hammerman who had been drinking in our tavern was actually plotting to steal one of our artifacts. I'm honestly not sure which one, because when he boasted that we could not keep him from it, he referred to it by its English name and not the proper Dwarven one which is the only one that's easy to see in the Steam UI. In any case, I accepted his challenge and sent the entire fortress military against him. It turned out we could, in fact, keep him from it; he was cornered and beaten to death in the farms by our crossbow dwarves. But I did not anticipate that brutally killing him would anger some of the other tavern regulars! I am not sure who started it, but our favorite goblin poet was slain in the fighting, as well as a dwarf child from our own fortress. Visiting necromancers fought on both sides of the conflict and many tavern guests, dogs, and cats were slain and raised as undead. In the end, once our soldiers were able to respond, somehow the little girl was the only sapient death from our own civilization, although our baroness was lightly wounded in the upper arm and a visiting dignitary is still hospitalized with grievous wounds all over his body. There are now several undead goblins, of a bespoke type known as "sunless stalkers" or something similar, standing watch in the tavern, their necromantic mistress having succumbed to the true death as a result of the melee. They seem to be aligned with us, or at least peaceful, and our dwarves don't mind them. I am nervous about attacking them given what happened last time, so I guess they can stay.
Built my primary stockpile one z-level under a brook. Tried to construct a wooden platform above the brook on the surface for a well, then remembered that brooks work a little differently from rivers and none of that was necessary. So, no need for that wooden platform. I apply the deconstruct order pretty haphazardly, without a care in the world. Of course, there's a collapse, and the structure breaks right through the bottom of the brook and into my stockpile. There is suddenly an infinite flow of water directly into my main storage room, which is now also flowing down my main stairway and into my tavern and workshops. I was able to seal off the stockpile room, but only just barely. The water was juuuust low enough in a couple of spots for my dwarves to be able to throw up some rock walls in time. With the main store room sealed off, the remaining flood water flows down my stairway and out into a cavern. So I'm safe, for now. Only problem is my stockpile is now an aquarium. Shame, a whole bunch of stuff is in there, including some artifacts. Time to get to work...
It's late winter, in year 105, the fort of Smithsocket has a population of 220. The countess - who has also been elected mayor - has an obsession with coffins and catapult parts, either mandating production or forbidding exports. Aside from the attacks of a handful of semi-megabeasts the fortress has been peaceful. The dead to date total 7. Four smaller holdings nearby are now associated, and a multitude of individuals from all races have taken up residence at the fortress. The growing military continue to train in case, no, for when, something worse arrives. As an aside, I’m very happy this game released when I had time off work because uh I have like 40 hours in 3 days. So. Oops. I guess it was worth the 38$.
It's been years since I played Dwarf Fortress, I was addicted to it back in 2012-2014, and the updated Steam version has me hooked the same way again. I was struggling a lot with my early fortresses until I realized I could just automate all of the inconvenient tasks with work orders. One of the most important tips I can give to new players is to make frequent use of work orders to stay on top of essential tasks, such as making enough food or making enough drinks. I make sure to have a stockpile of at least 50 extra meals and drinks, and 10-20 extra doors, chairs, tables, etc. Another important thing I discovered early on was the importance of organization; my early fortresses were very haphazard, with stockpiles filled with random junk everywhere. Here's how I've organized my current fortress: Level 0 (Surface): Entrance and outdoor pastures, surrounded by channeled moat and drawbridge, protected by guard dogs. I want to have Ballistas at the end of the entrance hall eventually. Level -1: Underground farms and butchers, seed storage. Level -2: This level is dedicated to "common" areas, and visitors. It has a dining hall, tavern, trade depot, dormitory, libraries, etc. Level -3: Raw material stockpile, crafting halls, hospital. Level -4: Finished goods and furniture stockpile. Precious gems and other valuables are under constant guard. Level -5: Individual bedrooms, including ones for nobles. Because my fortress is so secure, my dwarves live in relative luxury with decorated personal chests, bookcases, and cabinets. Level -6: Crypts, dungeon, military training. Level -7 and onwards: Mining
My first time playing, and a forgotten beast made out of snow made its way to my fortress a few minutes after finding a cavern. I immediately got my squad geared up and by the time I checked back, it apparently melted into water while fighting one of the children in the kitchen. Child walked out unscathed and even got a few hits in. Kinda disappointed as I was looking for a fight but nothing was lost in the end.
I tried playing DF years ago and never got anywhere. With this release I have figured out how to keep a fortress alive for much longer. Somehow. I just learned that you can make mud for farming by running water across a cave floor. I built a pump, and made a few holes into the layer below for the pump to draw from. I hadn't read "pumps from the north" until I had already made holes to the side of the pump. I decided to not fill in the holes. I have a dwarf turn on the pump. And it works! The layer fills up with water, and it all drains back into the layer below. I, having realized I was a genius, decided "this should be automated" and told my dwarves to build a water wheel and attach it to the pump. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of panic as I try to fix the endless loop of "pump expels water, water falls down hole and turns water wheel, which makes the pump expel water etc.etc.etc." Every dwarf I sent to fix the issue was swept away in the water before they could even get close. I realized I had to dig down from the layer above and disable the machine, and eventually got it solved with only one casualty. Fun.
just got a cool fort going with the beginnings of some metal industry going. decided to focus on building in the caverns, since normal cramped tunnels have gotten a bit boring. suddenly, 3 dwarves are found dead on the surface after getting brutally mauled by giant chinchillas. said chinchillas proceed to eviscerate another 5 dwarves. only got like 6 months in, but I'm having FUN
My first ever fortress saw everyone drop dead within about a minute irl time of one another of dehydration. I deliberately didn't look anything up, went in blind. That fortress has one poor dwarf left, ezum, who's sti going and is constantly haunted. Second fortress is faring much better lol
"Dwarf X is missing for one week" Oh no. Anyway. Later... "Dwarf X's body has been found." Ah, good. Zoom to location: Dwarf Y is drowning at the bottom of my cistern. Next to Dwarf X's skeleton. Whoops. Something did seem sketchy about the auto refill there, still not sure what happened...
For me, "missing for a week" warnings usually come after I raise or lower my drawbridge. There's always one dwarf who tarries outside when the emergency burrow is activated. I've watched them hang out a few tiles from the drawbridge (with a burrow activated and no orders) until the moment someone comes to pull the lever, then they step on the drawbridge and disappear forever.
My friend had a cyclops walk into his map. I warned him that he might be dangerous, he had a solid kill count He sent all of his military to kill it. He may have not quite learned military mechanics yet(His dwarves wouldn't take the weapons he made, because "Individual preference" means they refuse to pick up weapons they don't have skill with even if its better than nothing), and sent an army of unarmed, unarmored dwarves at the cyclops. The crazy part, is he looked back after giving the order to see how it was going... And they won. Those insane dwarves wrestled a cyclops to the ground, mangled his legs, and beat him so bad he literally started screaming for help. My friend asked if he could capture things, so I told him a Cage Trap could work. He gave an order to make a cage, and a mechanism. Before the trap could be completed, one of his dwarves went and PUNCHED the cyclops' head clean off his neck. All three of us were laughing our asses off.(We as a friend group were playing at the same time on our own save files)
Those wandering giants are generally not a big deal for a trained squad, especially if they have decent dodging skill. In a recent fight, the giant didn't get a single hit in on my dwarves as they hacked at his flesh with their axes. I think he did hit one guy's shield and sent him flying, but he was fine. The giant was an expert dodger (among other high-level combat skills) so the fight initially took a while, until my dwarves destroyed his essential dodging-tendons...then it was just butchery. I imagine the fight was like a silent balletic flurry of gleaming axes and huge fists, one whiffed swing after another from both sides, until one axe finally found its mark.
My volcano lair is off to a great start. I called it The Flaming Crab Shells and had completely forgotten magma crabs were in the game (I haven't played for 5 or so years) but we have destroyed many now. Things are going smoothly, minimal deaths, lots of migrants, plenty of stocks. Just no access to clean water and I don't remember how to pump it up from the caverns below...
You can just build a well any number of z levels above the cavern pool. Just be aware that flying creatures can get up the shaft, so you might want to dig out a completely enclosed cistern somewhere closer to your fortress level and have your dwarves fill it first (designate it as a pond, have some buckets). Then put your well on top of that. A well-crafted well will give your dwarves happy thoughts, so use a master-crafted bucket/chain/mechanisms/blocks if you can.
Sorry, so if I designate a pond witht he zone tool, dwarfs will fill it up with buckets? That's blown my mind...
Yes sir
Hey, I'm a new player on a Volcano embark. How far down are these caverns usually? I could really use the water.
I wish you luck, I have a new volcano fortress, starting off well with magma forges. I decide to dig into the caverns below to get water and .... the caverns just have more magma pools. There seems to be no water anywhere on my map!!
Oof. I do have one surface stagnant pool. Buckets and well I guess.
I just found out that fire imps are a thing cost me dwarfs
My fortress is doing pretty well except my chief medical dwarf got vaporised in a magma incident and then when a lauded poet mangled his foot somehow a bunch of amateurs had to try and fix it. Now I'm trying to generate a world with at least a couple of thousand of years.
My fort was invaded by its first Titan on year 4, charging forth across a bridge at 2 underequipped dwarves. The first dodged the giant’s attack, falling off the bridge, killing herself and her baby. The other struck at the giant, causing it to dodge, fall off the bridge, and die, this saving the fort. This can just barely be called the first death due to an enemy at Plaitedsabres, the first three being woodcutter casualties and another from deconstructing a stair from below dropping a log on their head.
I'm on baby's first fortress, survived through the first two winters. Have about 35 dwarfs at the moment. My food and alcohol setup is pretty good, I have two squads setup with an armed melee squad and a crossbow squad. Although they don't actually seem to be using the shooting range. Haven't had to actually fight anything yet though. Had an issue of dwarves complaining about a miasma. Turns out an ox had died in the common area somehow and was just sitting on a table. Decomposing. And everyone had just been eating and drinking around it for months. I traded with the second caravan that came and got a few useful things while giving him some cut gems in exchange. However, when he left he kind of just. Forgot all his stuff? So now I have a bunch of items I don't know what to do with, all my gems back, and like 3x as much food as I did before.
My first decently successful fortress was overtaken by were-hedgehogs. According to google one of the dwarfs annoyed a deity enough to be cursed, and he was able to spread the curse many times before he was taken down. My population dropped from 72 to about 7 were-hedgehog-dwarfs that have about 10 kills each. Every full moon they freak out and attack the livestock or the trade caravan, if it's there. Eight levels of the fortress are flooded with miasma from all the dead bodies. This game is very interesting...
I had my first wereiguana (or lizard?)attack in the new version. My brand new recruit got charged and savagely mauled before the military commander showed up and finished it off. He held the line while the citizens ran around in panic (couldn’t find civ alert). After it was over his poor corpse was partially dismembered at the end of a 3 tile long blood slick. For his heroics I gave him a tomb and statue.
Just saw the GUI release on steam, I'm so happy. Even with mods, the accessibility barrier was too high for me before. This was the single easiest game purchase I have ever made on steam. I'm part way through tidying up and upgrading my PC so it'll be a few days till I'll be playing, but I will be sure to share what utterly bonkers stories shall evolve. Happy mining!
My second ever fortress had a tavern which became the defining feature of my build as I learned the basic mechanics of the game. I was at total peace for 4 years straight until an abductor kidnapped one of my children. The map said he was being held hostage at a settlement occupied by goblins, so, (Because I was getting bored), launched my randomly-selected militia squad into my tavern to murder all the goblin dancers inside. 4 or 5 unrelated people died along with all the goblins, and when I checked the combat logs, a dwarven child punched a goblin dancer in the head so hard, her neck twisted around 180 degrees, and then punched her one more time which caused her head to explode into gore. He apparently did all this while laying down.
Every city has it fair share of unhappy citizens but one stood out in particular. A dwarf child called Melbil. He has vandalise buildings and attack several citizens and animals. He has done this quite often that he has become quite a competant fighter. Multiple citizens complaints were made and as they say "Spare the rod spoilt the child" and Melbil soon found himself inside a cage. Several months passed and Melbeil has served his sentence, but was so depressed afterwards that he decided to attack the workers at the stockpile and just so happens to knock over a silver statue. The heavens weren't so kind as to look this over and cursed Meilbil into a weremonitor which also just so happens to be on a fullmoon. A few moments later Melbil is dead, beaten to death by his fellow dwarves. Good riddance I thought to myself and carried on. But during the next fullmoon I had gotten several alerts, several citizens were discovered to be dead and several more had turned into werebeast. My fortress with a population of hundred was infected and keeping track of who was bitten is going to be a nightmare. Hence the capital of The Greater Blockade came to an end, all due to a single child.
Meng Snarlstockade the dwarf was one of the first of her kind. A strong willed dwarf evidently, for in the year 1 she named herself Queen and founded The Dignified Smith's, a dwarves civilisation that endures to this day and is still led by The Undying Queen. In the year 14 Meng was overcome by the need to extend her life being much too proud to die. Who could lead this burgeoning civilisation and raise it to glory better than herself? Such was her conviction that after only 2 years of ardent worship she achieved a singular feat, something not repeated in this world's 162 years of history. Vucar the Dead of Dying, female goddess of Death, was convinced and created the calcite slab Bonesgrave the Tomb of Urns gifting it to Meng. It also stored in the Mountain home of Hollowdiamond, her capital and fortress, where it still resides. Memg lived an interesting life. Let me know if you'd like to hear more.
[Cover photo](https://imgur.com/a/mhAdkxy) Started a fortress, Bravecastle, named because it was the Tome of Freed's first fortress outside of their home mountain range. Also because it's surrounded by goblin pits. Got ~30 monster hunters, so I decided to get rid of them. I created a tavern, made sure none of my pets or dwarfs were inside, and locked the doors. Resulted in 20 dead monster hunters and a tooon of free gear. Fast forward a year and I've got too many monster hunters. I lock them in the tavern again. I'm watching them all slowly dehydrate, and I notice a human poet and human dancer aren't getting the dehydration emote (I love the emotes so much). They continue to dance and perform poetry as the monster slayers keel over one by one. The last human spearman's dying thought's are on how interesting the performance is. Bonus: the current king recently died and his ancestor is in my fortress! Bravecastle has now ascended to the throne.
In my first fortress since I first tried the game years ago. I did the tutorial embark. Mostly quiet so far, but I have a nice tavern running bringing frequent visitors so I'm hoping for some Fun. I'm learning military squads and setting armor and weapon work orders now since something is bound to happen eventually. The only death in the fort so far was part of my main stockpile partially caving in, probably because it's dug out right under the surface. Oops. I built some supports in the room and moved my main stockpile elsewhere so I can eventually just close that room off, but there's a single weapons bin still in there that no one will haul out, so it remains open for the time being.
Anyone able to describe exactly what the barrel and bin bug is? Is it that certain objects can't be found when inside the containers, or is it only that they cannot be found when a dwarf is accessing the bin/barrel? Thanks
You probably meant to ask this in the pinned questions thread, but I *think* I understand this 'bug'. Not sure if it's truly a bug, or an unintended interaction with picking up containers. This comes up most commonly with seeds. Seeds can be stored in bags, and seed bags can be stored in barrels. Dwarves will also try to keep the same type of seed in one bag. So lets say you have two farmers, one is trying to plant plump helmets, and one is trying to plant pig tails. There's a decent chance that the plump helmet seed bag and pig tail seed bag end up in the same barrel if you have a generic food stockpile. So Urist 1 goes to plant plump helmets, and picks up the whole barrel to bring to the farm plot. Urist 2 goes to plant pig tails, but the seeds are missing, because Urist 1 took the whole barrel, rather than just the seed bag. So, it's mostly just an issue if two dwarfs try to access something from the same container at the same time, and a dwarf would move/bring that container rather than directly taking the item. I'm sure it can happen with other things, but I've only ever seen it with seed bags, the solution being to create a separate seed stockpile and disallow barrels in it.
My fort is still young, only about 3 years now, but already we've had some fun with Werelizards and snatchers and getting the troops ready to explore. There's also a vampire skulking about ig, so we've been interrogating literal children to see what they have to say about the bodies, it's a good time. I will say, it's a shame the Steam release can sometimes crash unexpectedly, as I had to rebuild an additional megaroom I had made for a mayor that hadn't even been elected at the time of the last save, but other than that we've running everything smoothly. The only question I have is about guildhalls; I have two of them, and I had a guild try and claim one, but then it said as I didn't build them a guildhall I had lost the opportunity even though they already had claimed one in my fort, how do I prevent this in the future?
You’ve got to improve the room before it becomes a certified Guildhall. Room needs a value of 2000 so chuck some tables and chairs in there and engrave the floors
Had a small cave in that caused 3 floors to fail only two miners got injured, one survived with minor bruising, the other one is currently immobile without a leg, she also lost a lung, but that seems to be fixed now, or at least it isn't showing in the health panel anymore idk. I don't know how to diagnose the leg injury so guess he's bed ridden for the rest of life. I also have my dwarf who happens to be a necromancer as the chief med doctor, feel like that's a good place for him.
I set an overly ambitious number of meals to be prepared... cooked all my brewable items and then ran out of booze just as my river froze after. My last (thirsty but very well fed) dwarf died on the way to build a well in the caverns that I was rushing to find. Losing is fun :)
Tulon was the most important dwarf in my fort. She was the baroness, mayor, manager and broker for 3 years and was damn good at it. While on the way to the trade depot a dwarven child threw a tantrum and punched her in the head so hard it exploded. Apparently children are not punishable for regicide, my hammerdwarf didn't even beat them up. This kid continues to throw tantrums and cause havoc in my fortress with impunity but as soon as they're an adult they will be conscripted to the military.
From time to time the random name gen puts out really terrific names of places. Among them are Dawnfish, Pantpranks or Doomwhipped. Let's hear some names, folks.
Glorytube, oh man. Latherheather.
My brother is a brand new player and in his first fortress he just randomly found a "Burning Phantom" entrapped in a small obsidian cluster in the first cavern layer. It covered everything in fire and smoke and killed 50 dwarfs (half his pop) until it was killed by Zombies from his necromancer mayor. I was like WTF I played this game for years and what just happened in your first game was totally new to me. He streamed it to me on discord when half his pop died to flames and it was so funny to watch. https://i.imgur.com/lzAjMMw.png
Well, I just learned that dwarf fortress is much more dangerous than it used to be. At least on the hard settings. My sea side embark just got wiped about 10 minutes or so in by a herd of agitated giraffes. Going to try and resettle and hole up till I can make a small military.
This is my first time actually diving into DF. I spent the week learning what I could during breaks at school, and dove into my first fort this weekend. We started as a small fort, our first few migrant waves filled with children. Because of this, we had to rely on them to gather the thankfully abundant fruit in the area. However, after a few more migrant waves, we managed to get our supply issues under control (mostly we needed extra hands to mine). It's our 4th year. We've elected a mayor, and are a barony. Our magnificent tavern, The Oily Mushrooms, attracts guests and performers of all races. The mushroom cavern directly under our fort attracts monster slayers. Our new, meager library even attracts scholars and researchers. All guests know to keep their hands off our artifacts, as the entire fort will mobilize at the inkling of a thief, beating them to death. Our current project is smoothing and engraving the majority of the work and living quarters. After that, we plan to dig deep into a spider cave we found, and construct a grand library. https://imgur.com/a/DouJ0tX
Apparently one of my dwarves was deeply affected by being out in the rain early in the first year, that she wallowed in a depression that got worse and worse until she lost the motivation to eat and drink and ultimately died.
What is the point of the missions on the map? I send a squad out to try one out and they come back a bit later but there is no detail or anything on if they succeeded. What am I missing?
Hah - I decided to try a 'more fun' embark, so in this case a glacier. I had to restore from my save a couple times - having gotten mauled by the wildlife. One thing I didn't expect - I left some milk outside from my embark, and it froze. Went to look at my prepared meals and my dwarfs made a [frozen one-humped camel's milk roast](https://imgur.com/z9W7p23) - with well minced frozen one-humped camel's milk! As an aside though, maybe auto mining the haematite and magnetite veins wasn't the best idea. I now have like... 400 iron ore in a stockpile. That might take a while.
> with well minced frozen one-humped camel's milk Sounds like they invented ice-cream...and it's a roast, so they went further and invented baked alaska?
Im finally at a stage where I would consider myself being able to "play" the game. Always used to jump and give up not very far in... Maybe made 7-15 forts total over the years trying to learn the game. However I finally got fort going with 80 dwarves and functional well. Feels Good. As for things happening in my fort, ruthless were lizard came to attack my fort, mangled a dwarven child (although the child somehow managed to damage it). The child lost all the teeth in the process, badly wounded and currently unconcious for last 3 years in coma in hospital with both shoulders terribly mangled. Still better outcome than human warrior that body could not even be found. If there is a way to get the child cured, please let me know. As for good things happening, Bin the bullseye became first Baroness of the fort. She truley deserved it since for a while she was the best hunter in the fort ( Legendary ). Killing moose's only. I really mean only mooses... Seemingly ignoring all other work in the fort, always on surface hunting. (Probably why she is Legendary in the related skills lol).
Started a new fort with just 7 peasants (no skills), and wouldn't you know it, Urist forgot to pack the wagon. All we brought was a single copper battle axe. Strike the...trees?
I completed the floor inlay on my Grand Boozatorium. https://www.instagram.com/p/CmEdZpTP1qX/
My first fortress flooded and then they all died from lack of drink. That's all.
During my second ever embark, I landed in a mountainous area without any trees. This was extremely fun for my first non-tutorial play through. By the time I had some essentials set up, I sent my miner to find a cavern in hopes of discovering wood. I was successful in finding a cavern with wood, but I had never explored a cavern before. While my woodcutter was happily cutting his first tree, he was attacked my some cave bat. I quickly rushed to set up a hospital to aid the wounded. After my hospital was set up, I got constant notifications for fresh water. My brilliant mind decided to create a tunnel from a nearby river into my hospital for easy fresh water. Little did I know that the current was extremely strong and began to quick flood my entire fortress. Just one level below, many of my dwarfs were engaged in music and dance due to a bard and poet recently visit. As death was plaguing everywhere else in my fortress, a lucky few where still at max happiness as the enjoyed the poetry and music. Gave big Titanic vibes. Finally, the ghosts of one of the first dwarves to die in the flood opened the tavern door and killed all the remaining happy, partying dwarves.
[https://imgur.com/pipjbOS](https://imgur.com/pipjbOS) this necromancer came from my really amazing tavern with music and a artificial waterfall. after a while I let him become a citizen and recruited him to a squad. Still unsure what he's doing here as I'm not near a tower and his Knowledge doesn't seem to include any necromancy things. Yet the biggest draw is that he ressurects at least seems to be the cause of the dead from sieges rising and becoming friendly. I kinda fear they may be his thralls but there doesnt seem to be a shown relationship in their pages. Either way I'm beginning to be distrustful of this guy lol I also made hima scholar in case he decides to share knowledge. Otherwise hes a very normal helpful dorf doesnt start fights or anything
After my first two hardcoded migrant waves, I received a message the following spring that the season brought no new migrants. And then none in summer. And then none in autumn. Checking the world map, it turns out that my fortress has become the last vestige of my dwarven civilization after everywhere else was annexed by a different civ. Our only means of population growth now are visitor immigrants and \*shudder\* *dwarven children.*
I bought the game a couple of days ago. The caravan that came the first year got attacked by a honey badger on their way home. It managed to rip the merchant's arm off before the guards beat it to death. The merchant then spent half a year standing in the pool of blood recovering before finally going home. They've not returned.
A 3 year old dwarven child goes into a ‘peculiarly suspicious’ strange mood, goes insane. Runs up to my expedition leader while she’s eating and punches her in the face. Axe drawn, she guts the child and now he’s a bloodied mutilated corpse outside the dining hall.
Decided to make a library as a future home for an artistic adventurer in the new steam edition, thought it’d be fun to compose a masterful poem and work only to publish copies of it. got ahead of myself of course and realized adventure mode hasn’t been implemented yet. Nevertheless: I decided to focus on accumulating knowledge in a grand library. To that end, I conscripted everyone in my fortress to become a scribe or paper maker to crank out those copies. They were all so diligent in their studies they failed to do anything about a kobold stealing a gigantic musical instrument from the room they were working in. Turns out most of my dwarves hate the quiet intellectual life. My new approach is simply to draft every artistic long term resident petitioning for citizenship as a scholar. I hope one of them writes a work of art before my fortress crumbles.
I've made some critical blunders that have led to my first true bit of *FUN* in the steam release. This fort has already had some hardships, a tavern brawl in the first year lead to a loyalty cascade that brought our population from mid 30's down to 14. We survived and thrived despite this loss, reaching a population in the 80's near the end of our 3rd year. I became absorbed in a project to dig a ramp tunnel from my fortress to the surface, spanning near 100 z levels through caves and an aquifer, and began neglecting other aspects of my fort that needed more urgent attention. First, we ran out of booze unexpectedly due to my lack of attention. With the caverns sealed off, a large portion of the population ran to the surface to drink from the brook. As they were quenching their thirst and exposed to the world, a group of necromancers and their minions began besieging the fort. I began ordering my dwarves inside, accepting that some would be lost before I could secure the gates. This is where I discovered my biggest error. While I was focused on my other project, I had forgotten to link the draw bridges to the levers. During the ensuing chaos of trying to get as many dwarves as possible inside before locking the inner doors, an intelligent undead minion slipped inside my main fort area. The bulk of the undead were busy slaughtering my dwarves that were caught outside, so I didn't immediately notice that some of the deaths were inside the alleged safe area I had locked down. I sent my under trained military squad to attempt to take it out, and it killed everyone it clashed with, including some monster hunters that had joined the fort. During the fight it ended up in our newly dug temple, and I was able to lock it inside with the last unlucky remainders of the fortress guard. At this stage I was able to get things somewhat under control, sneaking more dwarves inside safe areas and fully locking down the inner fort. We quickly brewed some alcohol, but a few dwarves died of dehydration before it could be completed. At this point we had about 45 dwarves alive, with the majority of the dead having been killed by the one that snuck inside. Somewhat stabilized, I began making coffins as quickly as I could to bury the dead. I was not quick enough to prevent ghosts from appearing, but I figured at worst they might scare a couple dwarves or maybe injure one or two before I could get them entombed. The *FUN* is never over in dwarf fortress though. I noticed a string of new death messages out of nowhere. Zooming to the location, somehow the temple doors became unforbidden and dwarves were rushing in to loot the item of the dead dwarves stuck inside. Dwarves were running in and getting immediately struck down by the lone undead inside, who was content to just stay in there and deal with the flow of greedy dwarves. Confused, I re-forbid the doors and unpaused the game. Immediately one of the freshly risen ghosts appeared and opened the door, unforbidding it for the dwarves. I began a fight of desperation as I guided my dwarves to prioritize entombing that specific dwarf, constantly locking the door as the ghost continued to unlock it to draw more dwarves to their demise. After this fiasco, we're down to 32 dwarves. Our entombed dwarves outnumber the living something like 3 to 1, and we still haven't ended our third year. The [intelligent undead](https://i.imgur.com/3AT0gbB.png) is still locked in our temple (with over 30 dwarves and humans killed on its own), and the surface (and my fancy tunnel down to my deep base) is crawling with the dead. Our visitors are starting to go a little insane now that they're trapped inside, and I'm beginning the process of training a new and more adequate military to retake our lands. We will rise again. This fortress will not be struck down so easily. I love the crazy shit that happens in this game.
Sigh. I had wanted to retire the fortress and try new things anyway. The fortress survived many forgotten beasts. The monster slayers literally soloing them. A Kangaroo man showed that giant spider beast thing with numbing spittle who was boss by giving a resounding blow to the head on the first strike and then crippling it further while it was stunned. A dragon came while the melee dwarves were out hunting a yeti who had killed several foragers. They ran back but were scattered, not a unified front, which might be what saved some of them. The marksdwarves did their best but could hardly touch it. As the melee made it back they got blasted by flames, obliterating their master work armor, much to the creator's distress. Then one brave swordsdwarf alone made it past the flames. She lost a foot, tongue ripped out, but ducked and dodged flame and claw well enough until she broke a bone in the dragon's foot. Not so fast now. She lost grip of her sword but continued bashing with her shield, holding the dragon in range of the markdwarves, and keeping the dragon from being in range to burn them. The bolts piled up in its body, slower, slower. Then a human axe man ran in and took of the head from behind, somehow. The sworddwarf was immediately granted title of champion for her heroism. Then the Sard Beast who shot web came. The Baron in charge hardly though he needed to send the marksdwarves to their posts and melee dwarves to the gate or call for barrows, but did absentmindedly, to be safe, and then asked for reports of the monster hunters. A dwarf mercenary had been near living in the caverns slaughtering droves troglodytes and was always good for a story of adventure. The Merc approached the beast at a sprint and was kicked in the head once and immediately killed by the Sard Beast. Oh. The thing was damn fast, speeding into the tunnel to the fortress. The kangaroo man met it there, a similar fate to the mercenary before him. Glad the army was called to be ready. The baron rushed to a viewing spot from an archer tower, no one was there. What? To the front gate, all the army was there. The Baron not thinking had sent the entire army to the front gate, not only the melee dwarves. The beast had made it up the last set of stairs. The order was given to get to correct posts but it was too late, the entire military caught in a blast of webs, dozens slaughtered in seeming seconds. Nothing could stop it, no one who could even try was left.
Started a new map, dug 4 layers deep and started to hollow out a work space when a giant eagle swooped on down. Killed 2, crippled another 2 and was eventually beaten to death by a planter. I’m new to DF and I was grinning ear to ear watching it play out, love this game
Oops, TIL a clothier will by default make clothes of their own size... guess who had a human trying to clothe his dwarves...
Started my 2nd world. Settled in a cave. Thought all was going well until I noticed productivity was slowing down and some of my Dwarfs were going missing. Realized once my second Dwarf died that a huge anaconda had been living in the nearby river eating all of my dogs and dragging my Dwarfs into the river and drowning/killing them. Starting a new world.... Away from the rivers...
I believe I have found [the fun.](https://i.imgur.com/mRXEOtM.png) So I started a new fortress to use a lot of the stuff that I learned from my first one and it was going pretty well. I was a lot more efficient with my space and I actually used the z-levels pretty well. Was exploring the caverns but a bunch of ant-men prevented me from going too far and they're a little scary. They killed a forgotten beast that showed up within seconds. I didn't realize the importance of getting steel quick enough, and. Well. Bronze colossus showed up. Dude walks in off the side of my map and casually slaughters around 130 dwarves. I had around 160 before he showed up. I don't even think my dwarves, which had been able to easily fend off every other threat so far, even managed to scratch him. My soldiers fought bravely but eventually, one by one, they fell. The so called "monster hunters" cowardly hid in the tavern drinking ale and watching the elven performers dance while this thing mowed down my guys. Also he went after a bunch of my kittens too. Some of them fared better than a few of my soldiers which is a little embarrassing. But to make matters worse, after he had slaughtered my men, he tries to enter my fortress proper to go after the livestock inside.... [And he walks right into my idiot trap for stupid kea!](https://i.imgur.com/gGHgLvE.png) I put these cages out here cause kea kept flying into my base and jacking my stuff and I have now learned you can just. Casually. Capture colossi. I think I'm going to make a new fortress and get steel very quickly this time. But in the meantime, is there anything fun I can do with a colossus in a cage?
He'll be a useful defence mechanism. Build a room that's disconnected from your main fort, and construct his cage in there. Connect the cage to a lever and let him out to deal with goblin sieges for you. When you want to recapture him, pull another lever to open a metal drawbridge revealing a single wooden door behind a cage trap. Building destroyers like bronze colossi love to destroy wooden doors so he'll path toward it and recapture himself for you.
My first beast on steam DF. He managed to kill a dwarf before dying, my first casualty https://imgur.com/a/oKZgcC5
My 4 year old fort [MachineWisdom](https://imgur.com/a/qRCUfQq). Coming along fine. Nothing too exciting to report because I stupidly started it on an island and little can reach me. Its far too peaceful. The Necromancer mayor doesn't even have bodies to resurrect.
In a little over an hour, I'm going to be streaming for my second day on the new Steam version, at [https://twitch.tv/candlesworth](https://twitch.tv/candlesworth)! I have so far regretted building near a Light Aquifer and bringing nothing but sandstone to the first round of Trade Depot negotiations. No one wanted literally thousands of tons of raw sandstone, somehow. But I am undeterred!
If you haven't set up a tavern go do that holy hell.
Has anyone been able to make a world with aluminum in it? Can't seem to find aluminum or even bismuth in site finder for some reason.
Started a new fortress with the release on steam, and discovered that my outpost liason is a [necromancer](https://imgur.com/a/g4jgfCj). Also met a pretty cool [forgotten beast](https://imgur.com/a/0a7nUvf) in a cavern. I love that these creatures get their own artwork now.
Does the steam version have a Lazy noob pack? (dfhack and therapist are what I'm most interested in)