Update four
Second Year, Early Summer to Winter
Welcome back to Let's Play Dwarf Fortress! In the coming updates, the dwarfs of Declinebitch will undertake their first large project: building a well...! A fresh supply of water is needed for wounded dwarfs, who will only drink water, and in case the supply of alcohol runs out. Building a well is not trivial, since one needs to supply a pool of water of suitable depth underneath the well. This is done by tunnelling into the river, and letting some water into a carved out reservoir by the means of floodgates.
But first things first!
The first animal trained by the animal trainer is ready! I won't assign this dog to any particular dwarf, letting it just run freely around the fortress... Dogs are good in discovering hidden goblin thieves :evil:
And here is the product of the smelter... The first pile of IRON BARS! Those can be used by the blacksmith to forge items (most notably weapons)... Once we get an anvil, which we need to do as fast as possible.
The excavation project has revealed a nice batch of sapphires!
Enlarging the finished goods storage room, which is filled to the brim... Here you can also see the glorious treasury, filled with recently smelted GOLD BARS! (and some cut and uncut gems)
Ordering the jeweler to work on some rough gems... Holy crap, no migrants this season...! I guess this means we haven't been producing much wealth.... But it's ok actually, overpopulation is a real problem in DF...
I've enlarged the workshop area and built a
farmer's workshop. This workshop extracts essences from plants, milking creatures (which sadly isn't implemented yet... remember, this is a game in alpha), and making cheese. Yup, pretty useless stuff, but cool to have
Whoah! That red trail through the grass -- that is because a lot of dwarfs have been walking there a lot and have stomped out the grass...! Designating that spot near the river as a water source is the cause of this (yes, I'm again showing off the technical prowess (critics would say: feature bloat) of this game; it keeps track how much a given tile has been walked upon, and removes the grass it it's been too much).
So I'm peacefully admiring some randomly generated mountain cliffs and underground lakes, when suddenly this announcement hits me: a herbalist is taken by a fey mood! Too much of them "herbs" apparently... A fey mood is actually good, since a dwarf who plunges into one has a change of creating a LEGENDARY item!
The dwarf claims a mason's workshop and begins a mysterious construction!
Here is the first little drainage project I will do. I've dug out a small area, and some tunnels. I will drain the lake, so that it overflows the small cavern; thus creating very fertile mud, on which the dwarfs can farm.
The control of water is done via levers. You can build levers with mechanisms, and then link up those levers with doors, floodgates, grates and other things (also with mechanisms).
I've given the order to pull the lever, so the door I've linked up to it has opened. Now I simply ordered the miners to dig away at the lake.... And here we go! After having breached into the lake, the miner quickly runs out of there, and the water comes flowing in!
Dwarf Fortress handles a realistic simulation of water flow and pressure. Water from high points will flow to lower ones, up until it has equalized. For a very interesting interview regarding how this is handled in the game, go here:
The Making of DF (gamasutra)
Uhhhh....
The water is flowing all right, but not very fast... And it doesnt cover the whole farm plot... I guess the lake was much too small, and there was too little water in it to be used to flood this cavern.... And clearing out those stones in it prolly would also be a good idea... Oh well...
Anyway, it is autumn... Let's check the stats of the fortress....
We're doing fine with regard to food, even though 'drink' is a bit low (which may explain why the dwarfs have been drinking so much at the river)... The "other" category consists of cooked meals, so we have a lot of those... It is time however to do some serious trading, since we haven't exported anything yet...!
Leaving the failed effort to flood the cavern, I do some other stuff:
New excavation project.
This will be.... A chamber in which I will place something that will defend the entrance.... a
BALLISTA! :shock:
Overview of the fort. You can see Andhaira enjoying a meal of Plump Helmets in the cozy confines of his office, and Skyway organizing a party in the statue garden social area.
Here I will build ... the siege workshop! It creates siege engines, and their ammo! Massive damage guaranteed... The two siege machinae available in DF are the catapult, and the uber-awesome ballista... The catapult lobs rocks in an arc over a great distance, and the ballista fires arrows in a straight line - and they kill everything they touch. This makes the ballista excellent to defend the main entrance hallway...
This is where we will put the ballista... Facing the main entrance door, precisely aimed at the opening :evil:
A caravan! Let's hope we can do some serious trading... Let's hope they bring a much-needed ANVIL!
I quickly order all our crafts, toys, instruments, mugs, a few barrels of prepared food, dwarven wine, and some cut gems, to be brought to the trading depot. Look at that stream of dwarfs, scuttling to and fro the depot...
Hmm... Let's see what the dwarven traders have brought with them...
HOLY #%$@ !
THEY HAVE AN ANVIL!!! We have GOT to get it, it is the next step in the development of our fortress. It goes for 3000 * ... Damn, we need to find a way to pay for it! The problem is not that we don't have enough valuable items, but that the traders only can take a limited weight with them.... As you can see, the gold bars, which I have brought to the depot, are very valuable, but far too heavy to for the traders. Aventurines, are worth shit and are very heavy... Stone idols have a little value, and weigh 13 "gamma"... etc. We have to try to meet the requirement of 3000* and stay inside the weight restriction...!
DARN IT! Too little value and the weight limit is already used up.... I wait for some more items to arrive...
GAH! ALMOST THERE!
DAMN... only 37 gamma left and still 251* short..! Those gold and iron bars are way too heavy to be useful...
WHA...! OH SHIT, the merchants already want to leave!! We need more valuables in the depot RIGHT NOW! That ANVIL is VITAL!
$#%!! FIGURES! Just at this moment, the dwarfs decide they have had enough of hauling precious goods to the depot in order to secure their own safety and the prosperity of the fortress... and they go to PARTY. We will see this behaviour a lot. Even during sieges. &^$#&*.
y..ye..YES!!!! YES! THERE WE GO! The last few trinkets, crafts have been brought ot the depot and I was JUST able to cough up the needed 3000*.... WOW! We have an anvil!
This is a major turning point in the development of the fortress. We will now be able to produce our own weapons and armour, and make highly valuable goods from metal, iron, silver, gold, and other ores. We will be able to plate items; to cast a gold plating around a wooden table, for example... The uses of the anvil are legion and it truly is the centerpiece of any fortress.
There... I bought it...
The merchants are leaving, and the trusty dwarfs haul the stuff we didn't sell back to the fortress, as well as the newly bought anvil.
Let's build a suitably epic blacksmith's workshop to place this anvil in!
The room on the left will house the smithy... To the north of the siege workshop - a small room for siege components...
And the dwarf with the fey mood created a masterpiece!
The area for the ballista has been created. I'm broadening the upper corridor to station a military squad there... Once our smith has made some weapons.
Meanwhile, the whole project of draining this little pond is a big failure. There simply wasn't enough water. I have dug out the dry bed of that pool into a rectangle shape, to create an open-air farm plot. Of course, this creates a rather easy entry to the fortress (if someone would be willing to jump down there), so we'll need some traps and doors...
Here you can also see a dwarf diligently working on the farm plots, and some plump helmets.
Gah, more immigrants... The fortress population is steadily growing! It is very tedious to manage them properly (set their job permissions), which results in a lot of idlers...
Uh, no, I'm not drawing a parallel to real life here :D... Our dwarfs are hard-working and very integrated, they just have only the job enabled in which they are skilled.
These are the stats of the fortress at this point... population 45, and check out that 3008* worth of exported wealth
Quite meager, compared to more skilled fortress-builders (I have had a somewhat slow beginning), but we should be able to mass-produce valuable goods more quickly now.
Ballista room ready... Ballista parts have been constructed (from wood) by the siege workshop, we're ready to build the ballista itself!
There... The magnificent SMITHY has been built!
A large room, on all four corners EPIC statues; dwarfs diligently working on smoothing the stone of the workshop, to later engrave it... And in the middle, the metalsmith's workshop, with the anvil he have bought...!
Sine we already have smelted iron ore, and made useful iron bars (and gold bars), we can forge some shit! An ballista arrow head is necessary for the ballista ammunition! We also need some weapons, to create the first military squads...
All right, what you see here are the beginnings of the first major project. See those small dots? Those indicate a gap; ground which has been dug out on this level. This is possible with the "channel" command. What you see there is a large dry pool.
The small circle in the corner is a WELL. I have built it using some rock, a bucket and the rope (remember, the one we brought with us at the beginning).
As you can see, the well is dry. There needs to be water underneath the well in order for it to work. So we will have to create a water reservoir from which the well can get its water. We will need to tunnel into the river, and control the water-flow with floodgates.
A functioning well is extremely useful to have. When there is no alcohol, thirsty dwarfs will no longer need to venture outside. Also, wounded dwarfs will only drink water. Having a supply of fresh water inside, underground, is an amazing advantage, and a major step towards having a completely, secluded, sealed-off from the outside, powerful and prosperous dwarven underground fortress.
The chamber on the left will be a pit, several Z-levels deep, through which the water will flow. The well is a lot deeper (this is the second Z-level from the surface, the river is only this deep), so we will need to create a vertical tunnel. That pit will be connected to the river. The chamber on the right will be the control-room, with the lever to open or close the floodgate, which bars our tunnel system from the river.
Winter has come again...
The construction of the amazing water system continues in the next update!
