Another Dwarf Fortress Thread: Help me - and other dudes...

[Virtz]

How the hell do I clean rubble? I can dig out, dig down, plant farms, and assign jobs now; can order tables, place them, these things.

But when I dig out a room, it leaves little boulders of, say, Bauxite. How do I order these to be taken away? They really annoy me, and they prevent me from making a carved-out room into a stockpile because they linger.

Designate a (preferably one-tile) garbage dump zone somewhere and then designate things for dumping using d -> b -> d. In case of multiple objects in one tile, you can be more specific using the dump option in examine mode (k). You can later reclaim the dumped rocks if you wish.

What do you do with an iron anvil? That stuff is very expensive so i always choose to customize my party and trade the anvil for more skilled miners and expensive tools.

It's required for a metalsmith's forge. You won't really need it for a while, so it's best to use the points for other things and later buy an anvil from traders.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Mechanisms use rock and fit in bins too, and are actually useful for making traps. Bauxite mechanisms are required for making floodgates that survive magma flows.

Also, something I just found out recently: If your dwarves keep being douchebags and suspending construction of a building because 'an item is in the way', unsuspended it and forbid the item, then, just before they get there, unforbid it. The problem seems to be caused by the item being tasked to move by some other dwarf thats too busy jerking off to actually move it in the next 4 months.

 

[Kaiserin]

I had an extremely frustrating problem with the game that caused my dwarves to insist that they didn't have a job, regardless of how I fiddled with their labor priorities. I'm pretty much entirely pissed off with the game at the moment, the damned dwarves just keep sitting on their asses no matter what I tell them to do.

I mean give me a break, what the hell could be preventing them from mining? It's an indoor job, and requires no materials other than a pick to execute.

 

[TheLostOne]

Dwarves traditionally rebel against female leaders.

 

[Damned Registrations]

A lot of possiblities: No pick, forbidden area, pick is IN a forbidden/inaccessable area, another dwarf is supposedly doing the job but hasn't gotten there yet, dwarf is resting an injury, attending a party... there are probably more.

What exactly are you trying to dig? If you haven't forbbiden them to go anywhere and you have picks available, t's likely a matter of you telling them to dig in some way they can't, such as an upward staircase without a downward first, or digging into the ceiling, etc.

 

[Athiska]

I have a question: what do you do with the trade depot? As in, where do you place it, how you defend it, at what point do you move it underground (if ever), etc.
...'Spose if I kept one of my fortresses for more than one year I'd know what to do with them, but improvement through repetition seems to work.*

*Except for the case where I had a volcano with a river surrounded by an ocean. Why didn't I keep that map?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Do what you want. Move them underground if you'd prefer them underground and have time to do it. Use ramps rather than stairs though, so the wagons can fit. Alternately, surround them with walls and build a roof over them. Or surround your whole freaking map with walls, guard the gate, and place the depot wherever the hell you want. Unless you have giant eagles. If you have _undead_ giant eagles, then build it near your catacombs, which should cover approximately your entire fortress.

 

[Virtz]

I have a question: what do you do with the trade depot? As in, where do you place it, how you defend it, at what point do you move it underground (if ever), etc.
...'Spose if I kept one of my fortresses for more than one year I'd know what to do with them, but improvement through repetition seems to work.

Personally, I always put the trade depot above ground and create a wall around the area surrounding my fortress entrance and use bridges (set to lift towards the entrance) linked to levers as doors.

Since war parties are pretty daft at the moment, this proves to be the perfect, cowardly defence and after a year or so of besieging, the enemy just buggers off without a fight. Even better, I usually set up a load of weapon traps all over the area surrounding the wall like a mine field so that the siege party buggers off faster and I get some free iron. And even if you don't feel like waiting a year, this defence is good if you wish to prepare your defence party well (make sure they don't just go to sleep when the fight comes).

 

[Balor]

Devlog:
(*)stopped people from giving quests to kill themselves

DF - where even bug reports are awesome!

 

[Kaiserin]

What exactly are you trying to dig? If you haven't forbbiden them to go anywhere and you have picks available, t's likely a matter of you telling them to dig in some way they can't, such as an upward staircase without a downward first, or digging into the ceiling, etc.

I figured out what I was doing wrong, I wasn't telling them to pick at the walls.

But, now I've got to figure out how to get them water before winter. I just lost about an hour and a half because it turned winter and all of my water went away. The wiki mentions something about a 'water pit,' but it doesn't have an entry for that and I can't find a way to build one through the UI.

Personally, I think it's stupid that the dwarves aren't just melting the ice. Hell, if I was dying of thirst, you can bet I would be digging that shit out and taking it inside to heat up.

How do I build this water pit thing? I really want to make this work...

 

[Zomg]

Dwarves prefer to drink booze, anyway. Grow stuff and use a still to turn it into booze. You only need a water source if you have wounded dwarves (because other dwarves bring them water in a bucket when they get thirsty). When the weather turns warm enough you can make an indoor water pit by channelling out a few tiles and then designating the area as a pond, and then dwarves will slowly fill it with buckets of water from outdoors. If the indoor pond is a couple of levels down it won't get cold enough to freeze next winter.

 

[Trash]

Frankly this game sounds more like a spreadsheet combined with the sims. What is the attraction for people that don't have a month to learn all the ins and outs?

 

[Zomg]

Failing is the pleasure of DF. You fuck up, half the map floods with magma and dwarf babies crawl around their mother's burning corpse. Once you know how a given version works you stop playing it.

 

[Athiska]

And you get stories like Boatmurdered.

 

[Ashery]

And you get stories like Boatmurdered.

Oh god...I was dying of laughter while reading most of that. Those poor dwarves, hahaha...

 

[kazgar]

And you get stories like Boatmurdered.

Oh god...I was dying of laughter while reading most of that. Those poor dwarves, hahaha...

Agreed, read the tale last night, was amazing.

Is there more lets plays like that around, or should I just knuckle down and try the game?

Has the codex stolen err borrowed the idea of a succession game for a lets play thread?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Only about 1000 http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?board=14.0.

Most aren't as good as Boatmurdered of course. I'm currently running one called Skyseal- we're trying to build a glass roof over the entire sky in our region, while killing any non dwarves who can see it. Currently a dog murdering criminal is creating an artifact adamantine axe that should be able to kill dragons with a single blow. It's fairly tame though, we tend to squash any nobility types that cause problems, and theres no undead to fight.

 

[Helton]

Damn things have changed a lot since the last time I played. The Z-level almost make it harder, for some reason. And not knowing that there's always a river and magma takes away a nice safety net.

I started my first serious game today, but I think I goofed and didn't bring enough food. It's still spring and I've started farming but I'm worried. I hope channeling rivers hasn't changed too much, as that's what I'm using for my defense.

I started on a 3 z-level high cliff. Dug a stairwell down to the first underground level. Once underground, a long(?) hallway leads to the bulk of the base. The river runs under a 3-tile piece of this hallway, and then is routed around back into itself. Running along the routed river I've placed a hallway which will have doors to let swept up Dwarves out, hopefully. These doors will be tied to the same lever as the draw-bridge, so if we're in defensive mode there are no easy exits from the river. I'm a turtler, though, and will likely raise the bridge after my first wave of immigrants (hopefully I'm ready by winter, and hopefully my river doesn't freeze).

 

[Ashery]

Any advice for channel building?

As the map I'm using is obscenely flat (I'm built into the side of the one elevation change that occurs on the map, heh) I'm undertaking a large outside moat. When I was digging a single elevation out, everything was fine...The pattern they dug didnt especially matter so long as a middle tile wasn't left after the outter tiles were dug out (3 tiles wide). Once I started doing the channels of depth two, however, problems started to arrise...

Instead of digging in a single direction (Even when one tile wide strips were being used), they'd do the following: The one tile wide strip is horizontal, the miner would arrive and mine the left most piece, then immediately turn and mine out the piece on the right, leaving himself disconnected from the rest of the strip and only the option of channeling directly under himself, dropping him down into the soon to be moat.

So I try to just account for this and build a temporary stairwell on the rightmost part of the last strip...Hah! Fucker then immediately dug the rightmost part of the strip out leaving 15odd tiles left to be dug out and a useless staircase...

Getting tired of trying to finish the fucking moat...Only one miner is active to avoid any undermining and all other mining projects are on hold until it's finished...Living and working space isn't an issue, but I need to expand to the magma and start hunting for ores...

Really wish you could do something as basic as defining a direction to mine in...

 

[MisterStone]

Any advice for channel building?

As the map I'm using is obscenely flat (I'm built into the side of the one elevation change that occurs on the map, heh) I'm undertaking a large outside moat. When I was digging a single elevation out, everything was fine...The pattern they dug didnt especially matter so long as a middle tile wasn't left after the outter tiles were dug out (3 tiles wide). Once I started doing the channels of depth two, however, problems started to arrise...

Instead of digging in a single direction (Even when one tile wide strips were being used), they'd do the following: The one tile wide strip is horizontal, the miner would arrive and mine the left most piece, then immediately turn and mine out the piece on the right, leaving himself disconnected from the rest of the strip and only the option of channeling directly under himself, dropping him down into the soon to be moat.

So I try to just account for this and build a temporary stairwell on the rightmost part of the last strip...Hah! Fucker then immediately dug the rightmost part of the strip out leaving 15odd tiles left to be dug out and a useless staircase...

Getting tired of trying to finish the fucking moat...Only one miner is active to avoid any undermining and all other mining projects are on hold until it's finished...Living and working space isn't an issue, but I need to expand to the magma and start hunting for ores...

Really wish you could do something as basic as defining a direction to mine in...

It is indeed a pain in the arse. I think that one way to do this is to dig up/down stairways instead of channels, and then do a remove on the stairway, which I believe should happen from the z-level above. This will leave an empty space once the stairway is gone. That way, they always have a route out of the trench. Give it a try.

 

[Ashery]

Yup, that's the same advice I got on the DF boards...Pity I got the advice after I finished 95% of the moat and most of the painful work had already been done :p

I might try using that tactic when I decide to do some strip mining outside my main area...Stairs down about seven or eight levels, remove one floor at a time starting from the top...Everything settles on the bottom floor. Even easier if it terminates on the same level as your main stockpile. Just add a corridor connecting the two and voila, massive stone/etc stockpile that required minimal dwarf usage.

Now I just need to build my obscenely long...We're talking 250tiles long...magma channel that'll power my oreless forges :p

 

[Destroid]

TBH I would recommend playing the last build before Z-axis was introduced - it is much closer to being an actual game, and guarantees a reasonable variety of experience. If you find you enjoy it you can move onto the newer versions. Personally I find engineering challenges to be one of the highlights - such as building my fort in the centre of a volcano.

 

[DoppelG]

One dwarf against the world is a really good story too.
If you wonder why every DF fan uses the name "Urist" (as in Urist McUristUrist) when explaining what happened to a certain random dwarf or something, well its from that story. (long read though)

 

[kazgar]

TBH I would recommend playing the last build before Z-axis was introduced - it is much closer to being an actual game, and guarantees a reasonable variety of experience. If you find you enjoy it you can move onto the newer versions. Personally I find engineering challenges to be one of the highlights - such as building my fort in the centre of a volcano.

which versions that, sounds like a safer starting point.

 

[Zomg]

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

The January 18th 2007 version is the last 2D one, I think.