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Because only elves live in cities -- Let's Play Dwarf Fortress!

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  #1  
Old 01-14-2014, 01:42 AM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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Default Because only elves live in cities -- Let's Play Dwarf Fortress! (Profanity warning)

The fort is dead, long live the fort!

In a spectacular fit of computer crashing, the save file for Cursenegated got itself swallowed up by the void. However, being the tenacious basterd I am who doesn't know when to quit, I'm starting another fortress, with the new version, found here for your viewing pleasure, and I won't let something stupid like save corruption take us down this time! In the meantime, this thread shall sit here as a memorial to what once was, and what will be.

Quote:
Originally Posted by aturtledoesbite View Post
Everything is going according to plan.

...My plan, anyway. All of yours are falling apart.
Welcome to what will no doubt be an absolute trainwreck. (Dwarf Fortress is bad enough, but letting you crazies in can't be good for poor Urist.)

Dwarf Fortress: A Primer

Dwarf Fortress is a game created by Tarn Adams, aka the Toady One, aka Our Great Leader. It's still in near-constant development, and for anyone who cares about how far it's come, there's a page for it on the official Dwarf Fortress Wiki (Warning: Spoilers abound on that page. You have been warned!) The core concept is simple: you start with seven dwarves and a wagon full of crap, Oregon Trail style, and your goal is to survive as long as possible in the wilderness, digging out your own fortress to live in. The game is famous for its openness and lack of restriction: there's no plot, the only goal to the game is "survive", and there's currently no way to actually "win," meaning all fortresses will eventually crumble, either by actual death or by retirement. This inevitability gives rise to the game's slogan: Losing is Fun. Indeed, when you see a Dwarf Fortress player talk about something as being Fun, especially if it's capitalized, they're really talking about something that will kill you and your family and your ancestors.

However the game is also infamous for its complexity. Before turning his full attention to his life's work, Tarn claimed a doctorate in mathematics from Stanford and was working on a post-doctorate. His background shows in the level of detail put into the game: before you can even start playing, the game generates an entire world, procedurally randomizing the shape of continents, mountains, forests, lakes and rivers, and even the composition of the soil and the type of rock beneath, which all use real-life data. Then, after placing any number of monstrous creatures that can be likened to boss battles, some of which are also procedurally generated, the game picks places for the various civilized races to start, and then plays through decades (and even centuries, if you let it run that long) of history, which is all documented for later viewing. Dragons raze towns, people are cursed by the gods to become vampires, races war with each other, kings rise and fall...

But the complexity doesn't stop there. The infamy comes from the game's interface. Graphics are rendered in naught but code page 437 (a form of extended ASCII), and true to its spiritual ancestor Hack (of which NetHack derives from), nearly every letter on the keyboard is used for something. Furthermore, instead of simply entering a command, a large majority of the buttons will simply enter you into a sub-menu, which may have further sub-menus. The interface is widely considered the most heinous part of the game, but since it is so deeply coupled with the rest of the game, in both the code and in the way it works, it is unlikely to receive a major overhaul anytime soon. Fortunately, you guys won't have to deal with that, so as long as you can tolerate pseudo-ASCII, you can just sit back and watch the suffering unfold.

Table of Contents

Issunushul: The Everlasting Realms
Mothramkez: Cursenegated
Attack of the Goddamn Batman
Killer Croc strikes while the iron's hot
The one and only tame update
The Calm Between The Storms
Messages from Beyond the Grave
Operation: Fuck the Weather
Histories of Commerce and Bloodshed
I've fallen and I can't get up!
Dwarf Fortress: Histories of Interior Decorating
Baby's First Ambush
Rot In Pieces
Spoiler warning!
The Goblin Grinder
Goblin Christmas
Boring Post-Christmas Cleanup
Fan Appreciation and The Joker Comes To Town
The Barony of Mothramkez
The Blood of the Earth
Gears and Pumps and Traps, oh my!
Ustru's Revenge
A Brief Lesson in Hydrodynamics
The Silent Lament of the Downtrodden
That One Boring Update Where Nothing Of Note Happened
Dwarven Imperialism I: First Blood
Dwarven Imperialism II: Less Interruptions, Less Gameplay
Dwarven Imperialism III: A Nation Conquered (Well, Almost)
Dark Days Fall on Cursenegated
The Long and Short of it
Dwarf Fortress: A Medieval Soap Opera
Having Ourselves a dingle-dang party up in here


Last edited by LaularuKyrumo; 07-27-2014 at 06:03 PM. Reason: Table of Contents update
  #2  
Old 01-14-2014, 01:50 AM
Adam Adam is offline
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This is the most unique variant of "self-explanatory" I've seen in some time.
  #3  
Old 01-14-2014, 02:32 AM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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We're playing Dwarf Fortress, and more information is coming when I get confirmation that I went about doing this the right way, and am not in danger of a 2-hour post getting sucked into the aether by the illuminati our friendly neighborhood moderators.

what more is there to explain?
  #4  
Old 01-14-2014, 02:47 AM
Adam Adam is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
vanilla 0.34.11
Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
DFhack enabled
Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
growth bug
Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
Aquifers enabled,
Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
weather/temp enabled
Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
invaders on
Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
no pussing out
just ribbing you, though.

for now.
  #5  
Old 01-14-2014, 02:36 PM
boot101 boot101 is offline
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I'm kinda in agony waiting for the next release. It was supposed to be released in December, and now supposedly this month, and I'm so ready for it! As awesome as 34.11 has been, I'm excited for the new hotness!
  #6  
Old 01-15-2014, 12:57 AM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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Well that went swimmingly! The Almighty Arbiter has deemed me worthy to lead a troop of seven dwarves into the unforgiving wilderness to eke out a living in the pursuit of glory and riches, and so that's just what we're going to do.

Here's a quick summary of the pertinent data from the INIT files for those of you who know and care about what that is:

Population cap: 200
Child cap: NONE (fuck those little blighters. Don't worry they'll still show up as migrants.)
Temperature: YES
Weather: YES
Invaders: YES
Cave-ins: YES
Aquifers: YES

Alright. Now to take a look at just what kind of wilderness we're going to be embarking upon...



Interesting things that I've done to up the Fun quotient. We're playing a medium sized world, but with some minor worldgen settings tweaked. Besides just the general mucking about to create interesting landscapes, I opted to turn the number of titans, megabeasts, and demons WAY the crap up. Like, 1000 titans, and 20K megabeasts. (Demons are different because spoilers.) I also jacked up the types of evil weather, so we're semi likely (I THINK) to get some kind of awful death syndrome instead of "lol it's raining blood" or "lol your dwarves are mildly dizzy from being caught in the rain." Oh, and titans and their ilk show up at 30 dwarves and 30K created wealth, instead of their usual (much higher) settings.

Since I'm totally batshit insane (and totally not stalling for time or anything), I'll let you guys vote on which general area of the map you'd like to see (when I get that actually in the world of existing), or if there are any specific features you'd like me to include (aquifers, no metal, etc). I'll also open up the starting seven and embark supplies to some customization on your part, though if someone decides it would be a brilliant idea to send me into the frozen tundra with seven cheese makers and nothing but the 3 logs you get upon deconstructing your wagon, I retain veto power.

HAVE AT IT, YOU SCURVY DOGS!

Last edited by LaularuKyrumo; 11-22-2017 at 05:30 PM. Reason: got a world genned
  #7  
Old 01-15-2014, 01:03 AM
Torzelbaum Torzelbaum is offline
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I don't know enough about DF to make good suggestions but I would like to see the fortress make at least some progress before the inevitable downward spiral (which I assume will happen because of every other LP I've read about this game).
  #8  
Old 01-15-2014, 02:32 AM
boot101 boot101 is offline
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Someplace evil and re-animating, preferably near a necromancer tower! And cold! Not necessarily frozen, but cold!
  #9  
Old 01-15-2014, 07:53 AM
aturtledoesbite aturtledoesbite is offline
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There's a vaguely Australia-shaped landmass near the top.

Anyway, settle down on the purple stuff in the east.
  #10  
Old 01-15-2014, 08:04 AM
Olli T Olli T is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aturtledoesbite View Post
There's a vaguely Australia-shaped landmass near the top.

Anyway, settle down on the purple stuff in the east.
Seconding the purple stuff.
  #11  
Old 01-15-2014, 04:30 PM
LancerECNM LancerECNM is offline
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You may want to explain some core concepts about Dwarf Fortress to those that aren't in the know.

Concepts such as Fun.
  #12  
Old 01-15-2014, 05:32 PM
aturtledoesbite aturtledoesbite is offline
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That's easy.

Losing is Fun.
  #13  
Old 01-15-2014, 07:51 PM
Teaspoon Teaspoon is offline
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Near a forest would be good. There's lots of useful things you can make out of wood.

Also it'll start a war with the elves, which I am guessing from the thread title is a goal you deeply yearn after.
  #14  
Old 01-15-2014, 08:12 PM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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OP is updated and will continue to be every time I make an update to the let's play, and if anyone can think of more non-spoilery information to add.

In more relevant news... Without actually embarking yet, I can see that this is going to be interesting. The "purple stuff in the east" is a mountain range, with a river running down the middle of it. This has the effect of creating monstrous cliffs, which I've never actually played on--I personally prefer to embark on flat areas just so I can better see all the fort at once. (Although I'm aware my opinion is sacrilegious and also anti-dwarven, so....) The dwarves call these mountains The Acrid Finger, and surrounding it is the Swamps of Scorching. I feel like these names are meant to be ironic, since both the mountains and the surrounding swamplands are FRIGID. (No necromancers, sorry to say Boot.)

However. What will make this game interesting, is the following information. Though the tiles that make up the swamp are green on purpose, the feature that clues me in to know that the mountains are mountains is not their purple color, but their triangle shape. The purple color is entirely unrelated: those mountains are cursed, haunted. (They're not Terrifying, but the difference is minor: the main difference is that we'll see zombie elephants instead of various giant bugs and all manner of furries. No seriously.) This means several things for gameplay, which I'm going to keep quiet for those of you who don't know, and for those who do... you're probably snickering to yourself. Fortunately, popular vote sent me up here instead of the purple island way to the south. The land is almost entirely colonized by goblins, and also happens to be a Terrifying Tundra. But we're not going to the Glum Blizzards. No, we get to hang out in mountain town. (Which also happens to be flanked on 3 sides by goblin fortresses.... but, details for another day.)

As far as material resources go, no aquifers (which is a source of water within the soil itself, useful for fresh water unending but making it difficult to get below to the stone without some finagling)... both good and bad news, I guess. I've almost never played without an aquifer, although I suppose I've also never had a fort live long enough to truly exploit their power. There's rich deposits of clay in the swamp, which we can use for pottery and as a basic building material that won't run dry (useful in the early game and incredibly valuable for going through an aquifer), as well as rich vegetation. Both the swamp and the mountain have a bounty of metals, which we'll need to arm ourselves against the dangers we'll be braving.



I will admit to a minor doctoring of that photo, but that's just so I don't have to make two separate screenshots to show both biomes. (A biome is a distinct geographical area with its own climate.) Normally you'd only see one set of data at a time, either the part about the Swamps of Scorching, or the Acrid Finger, and you'd use F1/F2 to swap them. But I feel like linking both screengrabs with all that superfluous information is just bad for the internet.

The next thing we have to do before we embark is decide two things: what are we bringing in our wagon, and who's going to be in it. Since the embark preparations are one of the most important things you do in the game (along with choosing a location, but I let you guys handle most of that already), and also doesn't translate very well to letting a forum of people decide (especially if they don't have the game open in front of them), I'm going to handle this myself. Long story short, our embark supplies include:

Picks and an axe (to mine and chop wood)
An anvil (for smithing in the future)
Lots of meat and booze, and some seeds we can farm later
Bags of sand (to make glass out of, also for some weird reason bringing sand on embark is cheaper than bringing empty bags, so you get like, 20 for the price of one)
Assorted splints, crutches, buckets, some Lye for soap making, and some plaster powder for casts (medical supplies)
Lots of ores for smelting later--specifically cassiterite (tin ore, for bronze), limestone (for making steel), and lots and lots of bituminous coal (can be turned into coke for fuel)
A wagon to hold all this crap in (can be disassembled for three wood logs)
A pair of cats (to catch bugs)
A pair of pigs (for meat and bones, and milk if I feel like it)
And the clothes on our backs.

Below are the seven stout laborers who intend to colonize this frozen hellhole--which I've decided should be called Cursenegated, because that's what we intend to do, is to negate some curses. (Yes, everything's frozen over, snow all over the ground, and even the lye is frozen inside the bucket it comes in.)









You may have noticed the, ahem... odd naming scheme these dwarves have. Needless to say, those names in quotes, not their "real" names. You can nickname any and all of your dwarves, and it is also possible to give them custom job titles. It is tradition to allow anyone to choose a dwarf to name after themselves... but as you see, I prefer to name my dwarves after their professions, so that I can see at a glance who's doing what and if I need more people doing that job. I do, however, give out custom titles to any dwarf who earns their keep, and if anyone wants a dwarf "named" after them, I'm more than happy to use the custom titles for it. The reason I do it this way instead of using the nicknames for what they're "intended" for is simply because the names show up in far more areas than the titles. With the exception of combat reports, I'm pretty sure the titles only show up if you explicitly examine a dwarf in particular, which defeats the purpose of doing what I'm doing with names!

Anyway. I'll start playing later, but for now, here's a, um... a section of the foreboding wastes we've decided to call home.



You can see a wagon, dwarves, a couple cats and pigs, some snow, and the rock walls, which have some gem deposits visible. The rock of choice is claystone, which is functionally a rock, and NOT usable for ceramics. However, we have rich deposits of fire clay, which does count as ceramics-usable material. (It also counts as arable soil, for whatever reason. Dwarves, man.) Fire clay in particular is unique in that it does not absorb water, so you can make watertight jugs and the like without having to glaze them. Which is good, because glazes are limited in supply and tend to be metal ores that I'd rather use in smelting...

What you're seeing is a "z-level". It is a cross section of the earth, a two-dimensional plane on the xy axes. In game, you would move the camera up and down with the > and < keys to view multiple levels... however, it is not possible to view a head-on view. This makes showing the mountains difficult. There IS a third-party 3D visualizer, but it is fairly old and archaic, and I'm not sure if I can get it to work. I might, and in which case I'll show off the peaks in a later update, but for now, imagine that there's a lot more mountain in the upward direction. The right-most panel shows a zoomed out view of the entire map, but still only the one z-level.

If there's anything you'd like to know that I haven't covered, feel free to let me know. Otherwise, we'll see you again in summertime!

Last edited by LaularuKyrumo; 11-22-2017 at 05:31 PM. Reason: derp, forgot to add name of the fort
  #15  
Old 01-16-2014, 05:31 AM
boot101 boot101 is offline
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DFHack should have Stonesense built into it, it's a great little visualiser to help those who aren't familiar with the interface to understand what you're doing.
  #16  
Old 01-16-2014, 11:52 AM
Mogri Mogri is online now
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Can you use higher-definition screenshots in the future? Those bios are really hard to read. Either post them at their native resolution or use a clean multiple of the original size (e.g. 2x, 3x).

If that is the native resolution, then something is seriously wrong with your font rendering

e: I notice your crew is largely lacking in willpower, which I'm sure won't cause problems down the line
  #17  
Old 01-16-2014, 01:42 PM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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My concern with putting them out at native resolution was that I didn't want to stretch the screen and get yelled at for that.
  #18  
Old 01-16-2014, 01:52 PM
Mogri Mogri is online now
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What resolution are you playing at??
  #19  
Old 01-16-2014, 08:22 PM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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I'm lazy, and so I get all my screengrabs via Ctrl + C + Printscreen and then pasting them into Paint. They come in at 1366 x 728, after I trim 40 or so pixels off the bottom to get rid of my start menu.
  #20  
Old 01-16-2014, 08:34 PM
aturtledoesbite aturtledoesbite is offline
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Try 0.5x scaling, then. Images that are 683x362.

Though, shrinking might not have the same scaling rules as making things bigger.
  #21  
Old 01-16-2014, 08:59 PM
Gerad Gerad is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aturtledoesbite View Post
Try 0.5x scaling, then. Images that are 683x362.

Though, shrinking might not have the same scaling rules as making things bigger.
It doesn't. Every individual box of four pixels, two on a side, would need to be compressed to one. The other way around you're just turning each pixel into a box of four identical pixels.

You'd have to combine them somehow, and with as many intricate graphics as Dwarf Fortress has, that won't work well.
  #22  
Old 01-16-2014, 09:55 PM
aturtledoesbite aturtledoesbite is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerad View Post
It doesn't. Every individual box of four pixels, two on a side, would need to be compressed to one. The other way around you're just turning each pixel into a box of four identical pixels.

You'd have to combine them somehow, and with as many intricate graphics as Dwarf Fortress has, that won't work well.
Yeah, that's why I was thinking that wouldn't work.
  #23  
Old 01-21-2014, 12:49 AM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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Okay... so I figured out how to get Stonesense to not only work, but do what I wanted. However, the screenshot it gave me is ENORMOUS--6K by 3K--and there's no way to shrink it down to a resolution that's manageable and still lets you tell what's going on. So I'll link to this one off-site.

Bigass Stonesense Picture of the Outside

Anyway, now for the fun part: Unpacking.

So the first thing you do when you embark is you start digging. You have a limited amount of time before animals start spawning--if they're not already on the map when you start. (There's a story of someone embarking on a Roc's nest with 90 rocs--and keep in mind that a single Roc is like a boss battle. Someone else had a valley with literally hundreds of cyclops in them, and even unleashing THE CIRCUS on them didn't help.) In an Evil climate, that's even more important, because if the wildlife (or wildDEATH) doesn't get you, the weather will. If you're lucky, you'll just get rain that causes mild sickness. If you're unlucky, you'll get billowing smoke clouds that can instantly kill you. Or worse, turn your dwarves into superbuff zombie thralls of death and destruction. So the first thing we do is pick the nearest point on the mountain and go dig. At least we're on a mountain, and no aquifer, so I can get some stone right away for a little plan I have, called OPERATION GET THE FUCK INSIDE.

Haha. LITERALLY, on the 2nd of Granite (aka the 2nd of the year--the Dwarven Calendar consists of 12 months, 28 days in length, and the 1st of the year and the 1st of spring are the same date), no sooner had we started to dig our way inside when....





I don't know what "bitter filth" does yet, but I can tell you I wouldn't want to be wearing it. We need to get a source of water ASAP so that we can get this crud washed off... I might also consider building an Oberdach (lit. over-roof) later, to guarantee that we never have to suffer this grime ever again. Knowing my luck, it'll be a syndrome that causes periodic fainting spells and has no cure or expiration.

HAHA FUCKING CALLED IT. I FUCKING GODDAMN CALLED IT. By the next day, anyone who hadn't gotten inside yet (meaning everyone except the miners) was not only puking their guts out, but was passed out in the snow. Mother fucker. And it's rain, so if it ever starts raining, it instantaneously covers the entire outdoor section of the map, affecting anyone outside. Also I'm pretty sure it contaminates the snow and won't go away, especially if this is a fun map that never thaws.

"Hey let's go live in the purple stuff it'll be FUN!" Remind me, WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT? Because I want them flogged.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Olli T
Quote:
Originally Posted by aturtledoesbite
Anyway, settle down on the purple stuff in the east.
Seconding the purple stuff.
You guys suck.

4th Granite, I got a scouting report MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE FROM THE AETHER combat log that let me know an Eagle was getting knocked around (by the rain, I presume, cause sometimes that stuff is generated so hard that it can damage you by falling), and that it started throwing up. This let me know that we have eagles on the map. Oh goodie. The wildlife is coming. At least it was just an eagle, not a zombie. THIS TIME.

Oh, and there's also a wombat running around. Like I give a fuck.

Oh boy. The archer and our leader are in "extreme pain", probably from being rained on. That is not good. Not good at all. Seriously, everybody get your ass inside. We'll worry about getting the stuff from the wagon later. I have a plan for that.

Fuck it. I'm doing something I don't usually do, because this is desperate times. I was gonna keep this information secret, for those of you who aren't well-versed into the spoilers of this game, but, now you get to know one of the great secrets of Dwarf Fortress.

We're going straight for the Caverns.

On the way down, we hit various techicolor rocks, as well as some Tetrahedrite, which is a metal ore of both copper and silver. It will likely form the backbone of our military, at least early on--silver is one of the best military-grade materials for both crossbow bolts and blunt weaponry, and copper, while not explicitly amazing on its own, is vastly superior to nonmetal equipment and can be used to smelt bronze, which is fantastic. However, the current primary objective is still get everybody the fuck inside, which most people are ignoring.

I've forbidden everything still in the wagon, so that nobody goes outside to get the stuff when they get hungry and then pass out again. It seems the syndrome goes away when the gunk is cleaned off the dwarf, which has happened for all but one guy. A miner, predictably. Now, since I've forbidden everything, the dwarves have no food. So I'm going to butcher the water buffalo and horse that came with us. It won't help the alcohol problem, but if anyone gets hungry, they'll have that. Hopefully we'll get access to water in the caverns, although I've dug down 30 z-levels so far and, although we've hit igneous rock, no caverns yet. Which is unusual, I tend to hit the caves around 8-12 z-levels in.

Crap. No more than a single second passed after the first animal was butchered, when I remembered something I forgot. I haven't confirmed it yet, but 99% of all evil areas are cursed, and the remains of dead creatures will rise to stalk the living. However, this includes weird things like the skin, and even the hair of animals. The skin can be tanned into leather and prevented from reanimation, which I was prepared for... but I forgot to build a workshop to spin the hair into thread. Hopefully it won't get up before I'm ready...

Damn. Hit two veins of cassiterite, but still no caverns. Weird... I usually don't have to go this deep. Maybe it's the elevation, being on a mountain? At least we have tin AND copper on site, so we won't have to worry about being underequipped. That, however, is a bounty we cannot exploit until we have more pressing material requirements solved. Like water.

No more than two seconds after I typed that out, we got this wonderful message:



And if we go down a little further...



Yes! Yes, yes yes yes! We are officially self-sufficient. I'll need to do a bit of work down here, but we have ourselves a water source for now. It's not booze, but it'll do until we get some. Furthermore, I should be able to gather some plants down in the depths, which we can farm and then brew into delicious, delicious alcohol. No sooner after I connected the tunnel to the main fort did every single dwarf swarm around the lake. Everyone started to crave their first drink of the year around the time I was breaching the caves.

Ugh. It's painfully easy to see where the dividing line in-game is between the swamp and the mountain.



Can YOU spot the dividing line? Spoilered hint for those of you who need it: It's the yellow crap. That 'bitter filth' stuff doesn't rain outside the edge of the evil zone. There's no wind physics or air resistance yet, so it's pretty obvious where the line is.

Shit fuck ass bitch tits cock god dammit mother Chrysler I forgot to store the meat from the butchery in a stockpile and so it rotted and is FILLING the fort with miasma. It doesn't make anyone sick like the bitter filth, but it does impact the mood of those caught in it--which is just as deadly as the filth, just more volatile. Upset dwarves are ticking time bombs.

oh SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT



That. That is the web of a GIANT CAVE SPIDER. Without parallel, those are THE most fucking frightening creatures ever to encounter in the caverns, and the number of scarier creatures elsewhere I can count on one hand. They're huge, they spit webs that can entangle and immobilize any creature, and their venomous bite inflicts instantaneous total body paralysis--which in addition to immobilizing the victim, will kill them outright through suffocation. Their silk is a valuable resource, as it can be used to make silken crafts and clothes, but using it requires either picking up the webs lying around (which you should do anyways, because they can entangle dwarves that just blindly stumble into it) or capturing the spider and setting up a farm. While this isn't difficult, it still requires you to catch the spider. We ran into the webs while the dwarves were gathering plants for food (because I fucked up the meat thing, whoops~)

I haven't seen any spiders yet, but I'm keeping an eye on the units list, and if I see so much as a web out of place, I'm ordering everybody to get the fuck under cover. Once I get some more resources (like FOOD), I'll be setting up some spider-traps.

It's now the 5th of Felsite (late Spring) and we're coming along nicely. We've got barely any plants, but I know a few ways to make them last longer; distill them down into syrup and thicken it up with the tallow made from animal fat (the only parts that didn't rot) and make a soup out of it we can eat. With that, and the water down in the cave, we can survive long enough to get access to some wood. I have exactly zero logs, but if I can get access to a single one, I have the ability to make an axe, which I can use to chop down some giant mushrooms in the caves and make more. And with all the stone, I have enough resources to get that first log...

Still chugging along... it's the 1st of Hemanite (first month of Summer), and we've got some crude crossbows hewn from bone, and I've got a guy working on some rudimentary crafts from the rest that we can trade for some goods when and if the caravans show up. (Which reminds me, if I ever want to get some trading underway, I'll probably have to either ensure they show up from the south, where it doesn't rain knockout gas, or I'll have to force them to show up at a designated checkpoint that is roofed over. Otherwise, they'll pass out, because it doesn't EVER seem to stop raining. It hasn't done that yet.

One of the dwarves ran into a web and got tangled up. It was one of the webs just lying around, because there aren't any spiders on the map yet, but it's a reminder of the ever-present danger. Once I have enough plants to start a stockpile of seeds, I'm going to start walling off the caverns so that we don't run into anything bad. (At least, I'd like to, but we also need to build up a booze stockpile before we can do that....) I'm going to start up a loom so that we can safely retrieve the webs and spin them into silk threads to be used later.

FUCK MY LIFE.

While I was in the other tab, I made the fatal mistake of leaving the game unpaused. This is why we don't leave the game unpaused and look away, people:




Looking over the logs, there's more than 11 pages worth of information... looks like they fought for quite a while, but it was mostly the poor guy getting beaten to death with his own sock, after the bat RIPPED SEVERAL OF HIS LIMBS OFF. And the fucker is chilling out on the top floor of the fort. Not okay. Not even remotely okay. We brought an archer for this reason, exactly....

Except that he got murdered by the Goddamn Batman before I could set him to active military and order him to kill the bat. This is not good. Not good at all. We're down to five, and the miner is incredibly close to death. I've ordered everyone into the military to try and shut it down but... this isn't looking good. I was not prepared for battle, and while I saw the bat on the units list, I didn't think they were super aggressive, and thought I'd be mostly safe. I was wrong.

Fortunately, the bat is passing out repeatedly from over-exertion (beating on someone with a sock for ages will tire you out for sure), so we very well might just have a chance if we can take it while it's down.

HECK YES! Our glorious expedition leader, Herr Doctor, just punched the bat in its lungs, giving it breathing trouble. If we're lucky, he'll suffocate and we can tend to the wounded miner. Furthermore, the bat, having gotten a sock in its inventory, insists on using it to attack instead of its more dangerous bite attack. If we can get someone to get their hands on a mining pick, and get up here before the battle changes, we should start hacking limbs off soon.

DOUBLE HECK YES! I was hoping Herr Doctor would go for a bite himself, since there's a chance to latch, and this lets you use a "shake" attack, to shake the creature around by your teeth. This can cause slashing wounds and even rip limbs off, which can cause the creature to be weakened and eventually bleed out. Well, he bit, and latched, on the head! This could end this right now if we're lucky...

Aaaand the bat broke his wrestling grip immediately. Goddammit. He turned around and bit him on the ear again, Mike Tyson style, but still to no avail. After punching and kicking nearly ten times, though, we finally got something--one of the bat's fingers (yes they have those) got broken, the bone shattering like glass. This causes extreme pain, which can cause the victim to pass out (yes, even from a broken finger. Creatures in dwarf fortress are pansies.)

Good. fucking. God. The bat finally bled to death. Well, this is good because we needed some quick food, but... three casualties, as the miner bled out at last. Not good. Herr Doctor is throwing a tantrum, upset at having three of her friends (well, two friends and an "annoying acquaintance") murdered by the Goddamn Batman. Cleanup and the locking down of the site is going to be the next order of business.... next time, on Let's Play Dwarf Fortress.

Last edited by LaularuKyrumo; 11-22-2017 at 05:33 PM.
  #24  
Old 01-21-2014, 01:01 AM
aturtledoesbite aturtledoesbite is offline
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See? You're having Fun. And for some reason you didn't want the purple stuff?

I literally don't think I could've picked a better spot unless Mordor was an option.
  #25  
Old 01-21-2014, 02:52 AM
Olli T Olli T is offline
concentrate
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
I'm lazy, and so I get all my screengrabs via Ctrl + C + Printscreen and then pasting them into Paint. They come in at 1366 x 728, after I trim 40 or so pixels off the bottom to get rid of my start menu.
Did you know you can alt+printscreen to capture just the active window? That way you won't need to trim off the start menu.
  #26  
Old 01-21-2014, 03:36 AM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
Fuckin' Crystals, maaaaan
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aturtledoesbite View Post
See? You're having Fun. And for some reason you didn't want the purple stuff?

I literally don't think I could've picked a better spot unless Mordor was an option.
Except what destroyed me wasn't even Evil. Giant Bats can show up in any subterranean biome, even if you embark on a blessed Good land, which comes with satyrs and pixies and unicorns. No, seriously, that's a thing.

I took all the necessary precautions for an evil region, but in my mad dash for food and water, I didn't think that the Goddamned Batman would show up and kill half the guys.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Olli T View Post
Did you know you can alt+printscreen to capture just the active window? That way you won't need to trim off the start menu.
No. No I did not know that. Thank you sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar. That will save precious, precious seconds while writing up those replies.
  #27  
Old 01-21-2014, 09:29 AM
Teaspoon Teaspoon is offline
This way up
 
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So, you've just started and you're basically already doomed?

This is par for the course, right?
  #28  
Old 01-21-2014, 12:04 PM
LaularuKyrumo LaularuKyrumo is offline
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Honestly? The forums would have you believe that, as it's definitely how all the best stories start, but most of the time I don't generally cock things up right out of the gate. Takes a couple years--but then again, I don't usually have to make a beeline for the caverns on outset, because usually I have access to the contents of my wagon. I don't have a single seed to my name right now, and unless we get the morale back under control soon, we might have a full-on mutiny.
  #29  
Old 01-21-2014, 01:00 PM
Mogri Mogri is online now
used Detect!
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LaularuKyrumo View Post
Herr Doctor is throwing a tantrum, upset at having three of her friends
Which one is it
  #30  
Old 01-21-2014, 02:42 PM
Sky Render Sky Render is offline
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I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the curse is not negated for this particular embark. May want to take votes now on reclaim vs. starting somewhere slightly less horrible... (Who am I kidding? Of course they'd all vote to reclaim...)
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