The Statecorum > Dwarf Fortress

One of my best forts to date finally blew up. Six (!) goblin squads, including two of crossbowmen -- each with an elite heading it up -- launched an attack. The bulk of the goblin army acted as meat shields for their archers, who took a huge chunk out of the defending army. They were finally repulsed (killing the last two of the local goblin rulers... all they have left is a demon and four drunks), but it cost twelve marksdwarfs and one infant. The entire military was all buddy-buddy by that time, so those deaths set off a wave of tantrums, fistfights, and the accidental death of a few pets. The Hammerer decided to start handing out fifty hammerstrike beatings like fucking candy, killing another five marksdwarfs, which sent a few more in turn over the edge into deep depression, fits of madness, and berserk rages.

In the middle of all this, two goblin kidnappers somehow manage to get into the fortress and kidnap the only two children of my elite, fully-kitted-out-in-adamantine hammerdwarf. Already on edge from seeing all of the marksdwarf squads go nuts, she flips out, goes berserk in the statue garden in the middle of a party, and annihiliates some fifty or sixty dwarves single-handedly, including most of the fortress and royal guard, her husband, AND the entire family of the other adamantine-clad death machine in my army. SHE goes berserk as well, in the barracks at the other end of the fort, butchering all the cripples in the army and setting more or less everyone else off into various forms of crazy.

By the time the carnage slowed down, there were 22 dwarves alive (down from 200 before the goblins), the interior channel was packed with bodies, and the statue garden was more or less a solid block of miasma.

Can't disagree there. I've been playing for ages, and I still find it clunky as all hell, and regularly go scampering to the Wiki.

Still. The Wiki is your friend. If you can jam your foot in the door and pick up the basics, the rest should fall into place relatively easily. It's just that first attempt which is often impenetrable.

That's the one advantage ZAngband has over ToME. Explosively-breeding stuff in the latter never seem quite explosive enough.

Heh. I had a friend in school who got so addicted to Angband that he failed most of his A levels. Ok it wasn't that simple, but Angband featured heavily.

Well I started playing this a few weeks ago after spending ages reading tutorials and still understanding nothing I decided to just give it a go losing is fun right?

first fortress - I didnt really understand how the starting place thing worked and as such ended up on a map with no water result dwarfs all die of thirst before the years out.

second fortress - Things go better I have a river however I build my base too close to it and theres just sandy gound everywhere not v usefull give up

thrid fortress - I find a nice cave wall even build some tables beds etc setup a farm unfortunaty i didnt realse you have to plant crops in it - result my dwarfs start eating rats come winter and starving to death they generaly dont take this very well and mope about alot.

The one im currently runnign seems to be doing a bit better but the fort is turning into some multi level maze and is a bit hard to control. I also dug some channels to drain some lakes leading to ammusing consquences.

From: roBurky [#12]
8 Mar 2008
To: Tapin Tegellan (TAPIN) [#11] 8 Mar 2008

You need a butcher's workshop and tanner's workshop and dwarfs with the relevant jobs to make use of stuff the hunter kills. I think the bodies go in the refuse pile if there's no butcher available.

From: Tapin Tegellan (TAPIN) [#13]
8 Mar 2008
To: roBurky [#12] 8 Mar 2008

From: Amirae Tessin (CP) [#17]
12 Mar 2008
To: roBurky [#15] 12 Mar 2008

I've been trying to train up an army of crossbow dwarves. For that, I need lots of wood to make crossbow bolts for practicing. For that, I need lots of axes. For that, I need metal. For that, I need magma.

I got my magma channels dug. I got my metal smelted. I got my axes built. I got my woodcutters woodcutting. I got some peasants collecting the wood. I got my woodcrafters making bolts. I got some happy marksdwarves training on the archery ranges.

But my woodcutters and wood haulers kept getting attacked by harpies and elephants and dying. I tried putting the army on duty and sending them out on rescue operations, but it didn't really work. It's far too fiddly with the interface, and the soldiers are too slow. So I tried turning all of my marskdwarves into hunters, to kill off all the dangerous animals so my woodcutters can work in peace.

Within a very short while, my ten or so talented crossbow-wielders were bringing in dead elephants with alarming regularity. I assigned an army of butchers and tanners to work on them, but it was just not quick enough. I've got rotting animal flesh littering my fortress, clouds of stinking miasma hanging over everything like a smog. My soldiers turned hunters are all miserable at being turned into civilians, having to go outside, get rained on, sleep in the mud, walk through the stink to the butchers' shops, etc.

They're beginning to tantrum, and I get the impression it's not a good idea to anger all the dwarves wearing armour and wielding masterfully crafted crossbows. I've drafted them back into the military and sent them back to the archery range. But it's still going to take ages to clear all of the dead animal backlog scattered over the fortress.

From: Janek [#20]
13 Mar 2008
To: Tapin Tegellan (TAPIN) [#19] 14 Mar 2008

Rob - dude, use bone bolts. Particularly if you have a plentiful supply of local wildlife. Kill animal with bone bolt. Harvest bones. Build bone bolts. Repeat.

(Also, deadly elephants? Whenever I've come across them post z-axis they've been pretty tame)

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