F@#K you, save corruption -- Let's Play Dwarf Fortress (again) (Profanity warning)

TL;DR, for those of you who somehow missed out on the first one: computer crashed, corrupting the save file, and somehow I was stupid enough not to have backups (HRRRRRRRNG), so now we're doing this again... with new features, since the game done got updated!


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.

Hard luck with that crash. I wish you better with this one.

And by better I mean large quantities of fun.

If there's any purple stuff on this planet, then you already know what the vote's outcome will be.

Ah, found it.
Please put the save up on something like dropbox every now and then, so that interested souls can take a look and perhaps run the game for a year or two if you start feeling DF burnout.

That's actually a good idea, regardless. I'm definitely going to be turning on the autosave for the first time (I never use it because you have to go into the init.txt file to toggle it, UGH LIFE IS PAIN) and also be making manual backups of the save before each update starts, as a "just in case" feature. And the aforementioned saves will probably go to dropbox, though I'll likely be only keeping the most recent backup on there.

In other news, as of 4:00 PM PST (the timezone in which both Tarn and myself reside), no devlogs and no update yet, but we were promised Dwarf Fortress and by golly, we're going to have some!

EDIT: HAHA DISREGARD THAT I SUCK ELFCOCKS. Somehow, it didn't dawn on me to clear cache and refresh. Lo and behold, the release of bugfixing has been bestowed upon us. TIME TO GENERATE THE WORLD, MOTHER FUCKERS!

Big fixes from the previous version include: that annoying problem we didn't see TOO much where dwarves try to stand in the same tile they're constructing something, causing it to be suspended; another bug we didn't see much of causing dwarves to overstock hospitals and also raid caravans for hospital supplies; the problems with military duty causing unreasonable and permanent unhappiness; allowing all egg-laying creatures to properly lay eggs (this includes stuff like Giant Cave Spiders and Dragons, who previously required a tiny bit of modding to reproduce like they were intended); rebalancing of the animal people populations (more on that later); and myriad other minor tweaks and feature overhauls.

Regarding the animal people: A large point of contention among the DF community is the "animal-men" that were added fairly recently into the game. They're furries, for all intents and purposes, but that's not the real issue. The real issue is that, through sheer number and population, they crowd out the other, more interesting animals who compete for them in savage biomes. People would embark on savage, evil oceans hoping to fight the dreaded undead giant sperm whale, or undead giant sponge (Which until this version, were immortal, save for the instakills, and even immune to a couple of the combat-based ones), but instead find themselves beset by scores and scores and scores of thrips men and the like. It sounds like this will no longer be a problem, thank the Toad.

ANYWAY. Repurposing this post now, because it's time for a crash course on world generation!





These are the images you are presented with, in order, when you fire up Dwarf Fortress for the first time. You can't play yet, you can only create a world. (Or fuck around in the object testing arena, but, details.) The "Create new world" option is highlighted, so let's see what's to be seen.



Ooh, loading bars. Snazzy! Those weren't there before



That little splash screen will pop up and then we see the meat and potatoes!



Huh. That's... Not very much to work with. Yeah, okay, this option is great for people who don't care and also aren't ready to look under the hood, but, I think I can do a good job of walking you through the more powerful, and more advanced world designer. So let's go pick that second option from the main menu, shall we?

Loading bars once again, and it would pop up the splash screen again if we hadn't already seen it, and then...



Now here we go! In this menu, you can pick a pre-defined set of instructions that can get passed to the generator, and more finely control just what you'll be ending up with (though to be fairly honest, it's still pretty up in the air just what you'll get even with all this control.) But we're not interested in just the presets... We'll make a new parameter set, and poke around inside to see what kinds of options we can play with.



Because this is Dwarf Fortress, there are many, many pages, but other than the options, they're all pretty similar looking. At the very top, you can decide to use a specific seed for the RNG or to leave it to chance (which you should always do unless bugtesting or copying a specific world), and there are different seeds for history, names, creatures, and geology itself. After that, it lets you pick exactly how many points you get to bring with you on embark if you want to challenge yourself further (or just cheese everything), and I'll leave it on default. You get to choose how long the calendar runs for (150 years is plenty), how many megabeasts and titans get to exist, at what point we should stop history early if too many megabeasts get killed off, the list really goes on. I don't have the patience to show off everything, and you probably don't care, but there are a few settings in particular I'm going to tweak, because those are the FUN settings:

Megabeast, semimegabeast, and titan populations -- 1K megabeasts, 3K semimegabeasts, and 1K titans. Maximum allowed are 1K for titans and 100K for the others, but I don't wanna be here ALL day Plus I guarantee we won't see them all. Not even close.

Titan attack requirements: population, exported wealth, and created wealth -- Titans won't show up until you hit a certain population, have produced a certain amount of goods, and/or exported a certain amount of goods. The defaults are fairly generous, to allow you to build up a bit before the fun comes. Of course, I will be turning these down to rather low thresholds to make sure the fun comes sooner. When we hit 30 dwarves, they will come, no matter how well off we are.

Types of randomly generated things: demons, night trolls, bogeymen, vampire curses, werebeast curses, secret types, regional interactions, disturbance interactions, evil cloud types, evil rain types -- Several of these were not here in prior versions, notably the distinction between types of evil weather (so you can crank up the clouds, which are usually more dangerous). Night trolls, bogeymen, and to a lesser extent vampires, werebeasts and secret types are not relevant outside of adventure mode, so I'll leave them off to speed things along in generation. Disturbance interactions are things that can happen during worldgen, and I believe it can refer to either when an adventurer disturbs a mummy tomb, or when a creature profanes a temple and is cursed by the gods (this is where werebeasts and vampires come from.) Demon types don't really affect the quantity of demons (because reasons) so I'll just increase them slightly, but you can bet we're going to have lots more fun in the evil part of town. I was real disappointed we didn't have a SINGLE zombie in Cursenegated.

Generate Divine Materials -- This is a boolean, and I'm not sure what it does. It mysteriously showed up in the settings when 40.01 dropped, and people started speculating and doing science. I've intentionally avoided looking it up, but it seems like it may have something to do with randomly generated metals and... gods? I guess? Not sure if it's more relevant to fort or adv mode, and maybe we'll find out together. Leaving it on because yolo!

Other than that, most of the settings just relate to size of the world, geography, civilizations and history, which for the most part I'll leave unchanged. And now, we push the button to see what hell we get!

.....

.....

.....

It froze. Mother fucker.

WELP, TIME TO DO IT AGAIN!

Hm, another crash. I have a theory as to why... Might have overwritten some files with older ones that I shouldn't have. Brb, fixing that.

Yup, I was correct. After nuking the folder which I monkeyed with, and manually editing the new init files, the world generated properly. God dammit. Oh well. Let's see what Angsturmon, the Mythical Plane, has in store for us... just waiting on history now. It's chugging along fairly rapidly, all things considered... actually faster than I'm used to on the old version, which is surprising!

Aah, after a quick look at the forums to see what people were up to regarding community forts (in which the save game is passed from person to person until the fortress twists nightmarishly into a horrible disaster), I checked in and worldgen was done! Behold, Angsturmon! The, uh, the name is fairly ominous.



Now we wait for the world to be offloaded from RAM onto the hard disk, and start this trainwreck! You may offer suggestions now, though I'll probably just pick the most interesting area that is both evil and (hopefully) savage.

So far, the options are:

The Sludge of Meanness, a tiny evil swamp surrounded on all sides by The Forest of Dimensions. It has areas that are both haunted and terrifying, and being a swamp, you can expect an aquifer. We have clay and flux stone, though, which will be useful in steel making operations. No iron, though...

The Sinful Prairies, a long temperate shrubland along the coast of The Ocean of Combinations. The prairie, too, has an aquifer, and is mostly haunted but there is a tiny corner down at the south that is terrifying.

The Dreadful Hill, a "temperate shrubland" that is apparently also classed as hills? I expect lots of elevation changes, similar to last map. However, it's also tiny, and has no terrifying segment, merely haunted. I also confirmed, out of curiosity, that "haunted" means Neutral Evil, instead of Benign Evil like I thought, so no zombie elephants. Just zombie cappybara, if we're lucky. Probably not though.

The Terrible Barb, a small Sinister (benign evil, so MAYBE undead elephants but probably not) mountain range with no aquifer, surrounded by a chilly forest called The Golden Forest. The place is rich in metals, but... We were on a mountain last time, and I kinda want some variety, and/or Terrifying surroundings, just because. If y'all send me to the Terrible Barb, though, I won't argue.

And The Waters of Spite, a tiny Haunted brackish lake that doesn't actually count because you have to have non-lake land on your embark and we would be living in the non-evil part because dwarves aren't aquatic.

Now I'm off to get a sandwich while you guys debate which hellscape to send me to.

Sinful Prairies

I like the sound of that Sludge, myself.

It seemed too similar to Cursenegated's filth from the skies so that's why I went with the Prairies for the Terrifying Corner.

The part I'm looking forward to is that Forest of Dimensions, though. I do hope that the name is actually indicative of something.

It's a forest with a width and a length.

But not height. That's TOO MANY dimensions.

I am obligated to mention that trees are now three-dimensional.

EDIT: As of 3:00 PM PST, the poll is closed because I'm impatient and it seems mostly level. The Sinful Prairies won out by one vote over The Sludge of Meanness, and so that's where we'll be going. Stay tuned for upcoming introposts!

Without even embarking, I can already see some major differences. The metal resources might be a tiny bit scarcer (though that's because I didn't make metal QUITE as frequent in the soils of Angsturmon), but that's a minor issue. I've split the embark evenly between two biomes, with the north-south equator serving as the dividing line. The major difference between the two is that the north biome has one type of "shallow" metal and one type of "deep" metal (which means we might have native iron, squeeee!) while the south biome has no shallow metal, but multiple deep metals. It also has clay, which the north biome does not have. The entire site is rich in soil and has some kind of flux stone (another ingredient required to make steel) and is 100% flat--something I personally prefer on my sites, even if it may be considered "undwarvenly." It also has an aquifer running through the entire biome. I will detail exactly what that means for our gameplay in the near future, but trust me when I say it might lead to some interesting challenges in the earlygame.

We have all the civilized neighbors--dwarves, elves, and humans--as well as those filthy greenskin goblins. We have several choices for the home civilization, and I almost went with The Outrageous Basement because seriously... However, after a quick look through, I went with The Hammers of Living--because that's what we're going to do. Live. We will NOT succumb. We will NOT perish. We will NOT falter.

The other options were The Shield of Pillars, The Torrid Gorge (which was randomly selected by default), The Coal of Ways, and The Pale Girder. Interestingly, I couldn't find any sites owned by The Coal of Ways, and The Hammers of Living claim a single mountainhomes, and an elf site they probably conquered in the past. The other civs were well-spread out, with The Outrageous Basement and The Pale Girder located in the south ranges, while the others (including The Hammers of Living) in the northern ranges.

Hrrm. Apparently, since we're on the coast, I got that pop-up that told me I'd picked a saltwater area. I don't buy it, since we're not quite on the coast, but if it turns out our aquifer is saltwater, there is a way to desalinate it. (Granted, it abuses a bug, but the fact that a drop of saltwater can contaminate an entire lake is itself a bug.)

And now, we look at our stout seven:



Already I'm feeling a little bit nervous. I saw several materials I didn't recognize in the material preferences, and the VERY FIRST dwarf has a Slade preference (Good to see THAT hasn't been fixed... come on, can we just have a tag you can slap on a material definition to exclude it from preferences?) Some of them, such as aventurine and melanite, turned out to be gemstones, so that's cool... But "bright metal" and "flowing metal" sound like those "divine materials" from the worldgen. This.... is going to be interesting.

You'll also notice the greatly expanded mental information. You can see after the mental attributes (like empathy, willpower, and creativity) that the personality values were developed. The white text has many new entries, and there's that grey block in between that talks about other traits. Grey text seems to refer to traits that are unchanged from the entity defaults, but as we all know, no two dwarves are alike. The yellow line describes their life goal, something that the dwarf aspires to above all else. Some of them can even be achieved in-game (though I've heard some dwarves dream to conquer the world, which you can't do YET.)

Oh boy. So I'm going through and picking out stuff to bring. Well, I noticed this...



New bodily fluids. Heck yeah?

I went with a fortress name of Zatthudnil--Judgehammer--because Hammer of Judgment didn't conjugate properly. My first choice was going to be Secondbirth, but for some reason, Second isn't a word that exists. So instead, I gave an equally fitting name to the "group," the subgovernment that is directly responsible for the fortress.

We are The Bane of Death.

Everyone's suited up and ready to go; I probably will regret not bringing any building material aside from a single lump of bauxite (to begin clay collection with), but I put all my points into bringing skilled dwarves in the vain hope that we can survive this time. Maybe I won't lose the starting seven right away. Maybe. Hopefully. Perhaps. Probably not.



Strike the earth, indeed!

OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS!?!



Jesus. The game was right: This map IS Terrifying. I also had a brief heart attack at the yellow squiggles, but rejoice: that is exposed sand, and not bitter filth. That means we have sand. THAT means we can have a working glass industry. This... This is already looking better.

I'm going to save it here and go eat some dinner and come back for the Great Unpausing.

EDIT: The Great Unpausing will be a ways off. I've mentioned Dwarf Therapist a few times in the old thread, but I don't know if I ever explained it. The interface for assigning which dwarves do what labors is VERY poorly designed. I can live with most of the crap, but that there is probably the worst. You can only look at a single dwarf at a time. You can't, say, pull up all the dwarves with Carpentry enabled, all the dwarves with any amount of skill in Carpentry whether or not they're allowed to do Carpentry, find out at a glance who's in the military or whatever. Dwarf Therapist is an external utility that allows you to toggle labors on or off, and also displays information about your dwarves by reading the game's current active memory. It's quite efficient, and many, many people swear they can't play DF without it.

Since it reads the memory, and since DF is closed-source code, the memory offsets need to be located and the program needs to be updated and swept for bugs, independently of DF. And each time Toady releases a bugfix update, it breaks compatibility with Therapist. So instead of waiting for it to work, I've decided I'm going to suffer through the awful in-game interface, but I'm going to put in some work beforehand. I started an Excel spreadsheet that I can manually enter the pertinent dwarf information, and so I can then sort them by a given criteria or just see at a glance if I need more workers for X job.

One of the features I'm trying to replicate allows me to ask the question, "What job is this dwarf most skilled in?" It was trivial to ask the number of the skill, but to find the actual skill itself was much less so. I have not solved the problem yet, and so I'm going to leave that alone and continue the other fields, but I probably won't be doing much for at least a day or two, because I can't live without my pretty pretty spreadsheets.

Admittedly, I can probably solve this problem by just not worrying about this. The disadvantage to running a spreadsheet over Therapist is that I have to manually update all the records. I already knew I'd have to manually enter each dwarf and all its pertinent data when it arrived onto the map, but I was prepared to do that as part of the migrant processing. I did not think, however, about updating the raw values for the skills. When a skill levels up, I would have to update the value, but there's no way for me to know what skills have changed unless I go through each and every dwarf to check their skills. Needless to say, there's no fucking way that's happening. There's an initialization file that handles how the game responds to the various announcement messages that can be generated, and I would love it if I could set the game to pause and center on a dwarf whenever that dwarf leveled up a skill, so I would have an easier time keeping records up to date, but since that can't happen, I can probably just get away with noting if a dwarf has any training in a given job, and independently if he's allowed to do that job. That's the important part.

How long does it generally take for tools like dwarf therapist, stonesense and dfhack to get updates?

Also: save file?

The turnaround has been pretty fast, but it's bad enough dealing with potentially unknown bugs from inside DF itself that I'm afraid of messing with a buggy Therapist. Two words: Phantom Dwarf.

Save file is up in the OP, I'll be editing this post shortly with the first update.

Understandable. I would probably still try it anyway, but then again I would probably have waited a bit longer for this version to stabilise, too.

Ah, nice. And lovely to see this game get going again
Also, minor nit: that YouTube link in post #5 is broken.

Oh are you KIDDING ME? It's just the goddamn intro movie. I couldn't find a gif and I don't have the badassery to make one myself... Fuck you Youtube, fuck you.

EDIT: The problem with the youtube link isn't a problem with the link, but a problem with my bbc syntax, because they don't ever tell you just to supply the video ID and not the full URL. THANKS TALKING TIME YOU'RE THE BEST jk lololol

..................

A couple hours of work, and the spreadsheet is ready to go. Now we save the game again because I had to apply some labors that were important enough to have a dedicated dwarf but not important enough to spend points on buying skill in the labor on embark.

Now, unfortunately we don't have access to stonesense, so get ready for a multi-Z-level snapshot of the new and improved trees!






Some of the taller trees go up another six z-levels beyond that, and the Z-level below has some trees anchored down with roots. It's pretty impressive, honestly, when you consider that trees used to be a single tile, 1x1x1. Of course, I'm a little worried about logging, because of potential cave-ins from the trees. So we'll be doing the most important task first: getting our asses underground. I haven't unpaused yet, so we've yet to see what the weather is going to be...

Jesus but the variety is impressive. We've got persimmon trees, cherry trees, almond trees, pecan trees, birch trees, hazel trees, cherry trees, willow trees, and peach trees.

Okay, the plan is to dig in near the south of the wagon landing site, concentrating our early embankments in the south biome so that clay collection can be undertaken. This will give me enough material to penetrate the aquifer without worrying about logging. I don't want to even touch that until I need to. We're gonna get the mandatory equipment underground and then assess this situation carefully.

Unpausing yields surprisingly mundane wildlife: an opossum and a kestrel (a tiny bird that dive-bombs rats to eat.) I'm a little bit disappointed.

Huh. I never got an announcement, but apparently we arrived in the middle of a rainstorm. Just rain, though. Sure enough, the dwarves are covered in plain, ordinary water.

Oh son of a bitch are you kidding--



I'm digging along, planning where I'm going to put myself--the dwarves are going to live in a little 7x7 square and move the important goods in there, and once they have more permanent lodgings it'll be the location of the trade depot. Well, I run straight into the roots. Fuck my life.

WELL, LET'S MAKE TERRIBLE DECISIONS ON THE FIRST OF GRANITE!

Okay so technically it's the 16th of Granite now but who gives a fuck.

Huh. The roots disappeared as quickly as they came. I'm not sure if this is intended behavior or not. No cave ins yet, at least...

Ahah, I figured it'd be two levels in...



So, time for Aquifers: a primer. A layer of soil (or very rarely, certain types of stone) can be flagged as aquifer. Aquifer tiles are interesting in that they are simultaneously solid walls and water source tiles. As sourced water, if you leave a mined-out tile orthogonally adjacent to an aquifer tile, it will generate water out of thin air and spray into the open space until it is filled. Simultaneously, however, if water flows into that tile from elsewhere, it will be absorbed into the source. This can be done even if the water flows into the filled empty space from above--it will drain off the excess water. This is the crux of how aquifers can be penetrated fairly swiftly--though it will require me to get access to some clay before we can begin.

Wait a minute....



Hah! "Clay loam" soil contains about twice as much clay as it does silt, meaning it can be used for ceramics. Or to build watertight walls. You see that it's listed as damp here, but that's due to a quirk: any aquifer tile will be labeled as "damp", but so will any tile next to it. If you mine those tiles, you will be flooded... But the clay can't be sourced water. Sand is a valid tile, but clay is too dry to support an aquifer. Of course, this has other applications--it's entirely possible that I can tunnel right through the clay and skip the aquifer entirely. Let's find out....



ugh. Took me several tries but I finally found the clay. Now we start excavating...

The first thing we need to do is find out how deep the aquifer is. If it's only one level, it makes the penetration process a lot faster. If it's not, we'll have a bit more work ahead of ourselves. Most aquifers I've seen are one or two levels, but I've seen a NINE level aquifer before. Without clay on the map. Needless to say, I did not play that fort through.

Bah. Found aquifer beneath the clay. It's fine, we can still go through. We've got access to clay.

Double crap. I was able to cheat the aquifer by going through the clay layer, but beneath the probe was a moist gem. While the gem itself can't be an aquifer, the tiles adjacent can be. This means we've got a multi-level aquifer... three layers minimum, though one of them has a patch of clay that I'm using to bypass the topmost layer. This'll be a project.



Here's the deepest "dry" level. It's technically not dry, but that patch of clay lets me get a head start. The level below looks like this:



As soon as I unpause, that staircase is going to flood. I can't do anything about that until I get some stuff dealt with.

Okay whew. I decided "fuck it I need wood for this shit anyways" so I cut down a tree... It took much longer than in the past, but the tree neatly disassembled itself into a pile of logs with no damage to the dwarf. Praise the Toady One!

Welp, it's beginning...



Honestly, that's kind of disappointing. Blood rain is objectively the single least harmful, interesting, or dangerous evil weather you can get. It's creepy, it gives dwarves a bad thought for being stuck in it, it stains the ground, and that's it. It does nothing. It has zero impact on the physical health of the dwarves, or the gameplay. However, I noticed that it doesn't rain blood in the northern biome... There's a possibility that more interesting weather happens up there, as it's still raining water, but I'm not holding my breath. No evil grass, no evil weather... No zombies yet... This is kind of sad. Honestly if I hadn't already put so much effort into just getting this game running, I'd abandon the fort and go scout for more interesting locations.

Ah well. Maybe I'll have to make my own challenges: taking on the circus shall be my goal.

Confirmed: the north biome also rains human blood. Boring weather #E3confirmed. FUCK YOU DWARF FORTRESS.

Hmm. Some of the trees are developing "pollen catkins." According to the internet: "Like Birch trees, oak trees pollinate through the use of catkins. Catkins are long, dense clusters of flowers without petals. Every year, catkins begin develop prior to the leaves, which allows for better pollination. Catkins can be spotted dangling at the tips of the branches, well exposed to the wind that shakes their pollen free and carries it for miles." I suppose the game now models actual pollination, which is legit kind of cool. Though now I'm afraid of dwarves having allergies....

Okay. I've got the parts for a screw pump constructed, so now we can get to work. First, we need to blaze through this first layer. Since there's an aquifer layer below, we can dig staircases down by draining the aquifer into the Z-level below.

Ooh... Now this is interesting.



That's the layer below the sand aquifer. Conglomerate is "a type of clastic sedimentary stone composed of large, well rounded grains, at least 2 millimeters in diameter. Conglomerate which is poorly sorted, that is, with grains of various sizes rather than mostly the same size, is called puddingstone." These stones are formed when the wearing of the elements causes small grains of other rocks to be dislodges, and then they sink beneath the loam and are condensed into stone by pressure. The important thing for us, however, is that the aquifer is present in the stone layer. Stone aquifers are much easier to eliminate than in soil, because simply having an engraver smooth the walls will stop the water flow.

Interestingly, puddingstone is the only stone that can support an aquifer, and is simultaneously generated as a large cluster within a layer, instead of as an entire layer. With other layer types, you can tunnel down an aquifer and skip the messy work by digging through, say, a large ugly cluster of microline, but if you run into puddingstone you still have to pump water out. (Granted, since you just have to smooth the wall instead of constructing it out of clay, it's not as big a deal, but it's interesting academic knowledge.)

So, here's what we're going to do. On the topmost "dry" level, I'm replacing the two staircases in the south with floors, since you can't build a pump on a staircase. Then we'll start pumping the water out of one of the slits I've dug, into the other one. This drains the water and diffuses it back into the aquifer, allowing dwarves access. Once there, I'll dig a staircase below, into the conglomerate, and then we can deconstruct the pump. On that side, the slit will be dry on Z=96, and moist on Z=95. We turn the pump around, do the same on the other side, and Z=96 will be dry. For now.

While I'm waiting on that, we're going to test and see if this place reanimates. That's a terrible decision but I'm feeling lucky. That reminds me, I didn't assign a bowyer... should get on that.

It occurs to me, while I'm getting my first set of crossbows and bolts (made of wood) that I need to start farming. We have just enough meat to satisfy the dwarves until I get my shit in order, and that should probably happen soon. I'll likely set up the permanent farms under the aquifer anyways, as I can use it to irrigate some stone for farming, and having everything underground means I have an emergency kill switch: if shit SERIOUSLY hits the fan, I can puncture the aquifer and flood the fortress. I'll have a safe room rigged up, sealed behind multiple airlocks, and have an emergency-only lever linked to many floodgates that'll open and drown the fort, flushing any intruders out. It won't work on the circus, sadly, but it'll stop goblins.



Let's make this happen... S.S. Poor Decisions is setting sail for high seas and plunder!

Ugh. I've had the archer on duty long enough that I'm pretty sure this place isn't even reanimating. That makes two evil biomes IN A ROW that have been devoid of undead. I took a single bit of one of the draft animals that was fit for reanimation and tossed it behind a wall... I'll check in on it occasionally, but I'm fairly certain we got the least interesting evil biome ever. Thanks, Talking Time. Thanks.

Ooh, this is new.



Formerly, only one kind of generic "shrub" appeared, and it was randomly determined at the time of harvest what kind of plant you got. It appears those have been overhauled too. I see raspberry, chicory, grape, and turnip, in addition to the traditional aboveground plants unique to DF lore, like prickle berries, whip vines, etc. The peach trees are flowering now, as are a few other types.

Bah. It's the 1st of Felsite (Late Spring, 150) and dwarves are starting to take their first naps. Among them is the carpenter... I guess I could just set someone else to handle the carpentry for now, since I really just need her to put the screw pump up, but it's still a bother. Le groan. PSEUDOEDIT: Never mind, once I got grumpy she woke up and put the pump in place. Thank you ma'am! Of course, the pump operator is still sleeping.... le groan.

We have Kaolinite beneath the conglomerate. This is one of those cluster-shaped material layer inclusions, so I don't know if this layer is an aquifer or not--the only way to find out is to drill down somewhere else. Fortunately, it'll be trivial to seal the conglomerate, as I just have to smooth the walls.



This is what the top 'dry' layer looks like, the clay layer. Beneath that...



The mist is caused by water falling down the stairs, to be absorbed by the aquifer below. However, this aquifer is still actively generating water. If I were to seal the layer below, then the layer above it would flood, as the water had nowhere to go. So we need to seal that off first. The way we'll do that is, carefully, step-by-step, digging out the adjacent aquifer tiles and building dry walls in their place. We start from the outside and move inward, to get the least amount of cancellations--if there's more than a small puddle of water in the tile, a dwarf will cancel their job. What this means is any amount of water other than 1/7 will suspend construction, and you must grab them by the wrist and drag them back to the site like an unruly puppy on a walk. Something, I'll add, that I have personal experience with. Grumble grumble grumble.

It's been two weeks... we now have eight giant crows instead of the opossum. I do hope that Percy keeps them busy.



Here is the sand layer about halfway through construction. I'm going to designate those interior tiles one at a time because they tend to generate water with such force that it pushes dwarves around, making construction difficult.

*Facepalm* I didn't realize until after it was too late, but I dug that backwards. The staircase should've been in the center, and I should've just mined the tile next to the wall. Oh well... this is salvageable.



Yeah. I'm going to get that message quite frequently... le groan. It'll be worth it gaiz! It'll be worth it!

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking about assigning a temporary brewer until the migrants come and we have more than seven beards. I'll also be looking forward to a permanent chef, so I can take the leader off of cooking duty (to consolidate ingredients and free up barrels) and put him on bookkeeping duty (so we have accurate stock counts.)

Ahh. The first layer is sealed!



Now the fun part. The interesting thing is that we dug right in between kaolinite and a cluster of gem, both of which are dry stone. It doesn't affect too much, though. The plan is going to be to smooth out all the stone on the left side, except for one tile, then leave and reverse the pump. After smoothing all the stone on the right, we'll channel the last tile left behind, and that will allow the water to evaporate.

Half done with the smoothing, I've gotten all my stuff underground already with no threats to dwarven life or limb, and the first migrants are here as of 24th Hemanite, 150 (4th month, Early Summer.) I've been at this nearly all day, so I'm going to call it here, update the savegame, and I'll update the skill levels on the spreadsheet next time. Until then, here's hoping this fort gets interesting... I really don't want to abandon due to boredom. I finally dodged that bullet with Cursenegated...

I demand you make tree forts.

Mayor aturtledoesbite has issued a new demand!

Demands: Persimmon treehouse in bedroom

EDIT: Treehouses either impossible or infeasible as of 40.05. Attempting to chop down a single tree tile, even a branch, disassembles the whole tree into a pile of logs, and even building constructions in a tree annihilates it. So there goes that dream... Damn you bugs!

Apparently height ISN'T too many dimensions for a forest now!

Okay guys. I'm sorry about the delay, had stuff to do IRL. Usually doesn't happen, hehehe.

But we have a major dilemma here. I've been gradually indulging my curiosity and poking about the forums... and as expected, there are a shitload of bugs in this version. The problem is the specific nature of lots of them.

Some of the most painful ones include: flying creatures getting stuck in mid-air and clogging up the "units on the map" slots, locking you out of any new wildlife or invaders, invader pathfinding being broken and preventing goblin armies from arriving, and other sorts of things that generally make the game way too easy. So as much as I love the new features, I think I might scrap this fort, roll up another 34.11 fort and tweak the world towards FUN, and maybe come back to version 40 when Tarn fixes enough bugs that FUN can be had.

Update on the bugs situation: 40.06 just came out, and Word of Tarn says that 40.07 is coming very soon. As far as the broken invaders, Tarn has now been made aware of the specific nature of the problem, so a fix is hopefully in the works... As such, I think what I'll do is, I'll put the fortress on hold for now, and wait until an update comes out that fixes the invaders. If it doesn't break save compatibility, sweet; otherwise I'll just gen up a new world and spin a flavorful story about how Armok hit the nuke button. (Or just dig straight for the SPOILERS and forcibly squash this fort.)

However, that doesn't mean I'm putting the LP On Hiatus. Instead, we're going to have ourselves a bit of an interlude.

WELCOME TO ADVENTURER MODE, MOTHER FUCKERS!

From the wiki: "In Adventurer Mode (also called "adventure mode") you create a single adventurer (dwarf, human, or elf) who starts out somewhere in one of your generated worlds. You can learn about what ails the world and go on quests to end those troubles, venture into the wilderness to find caves, shrines, lairs, abandoned towers, and other towns and settlements. You can even visit your abandoned and retired fortresses and take all the precious items you yourself once created.

Unlike Fortress mode, Adventurer Mode is a sort of advanced open world version of rogue or nethack taking place in the same procedurally generated worlds used for Fortress Mode. Whereas in fortress mode you are in charge of a large group of people in real-time, in adventurer mode you control a single character in a turn-based manner."

The way this is going to work, is I've created a copy of the save file, named Talking Time: The Interlude. On this copy, I've retired the fortress (so we can come visit in Adventurer Mode and see how the dwarves are doing without my influence) and will start an adventurer in the world of Angsturmon. While Fortress Mode has experienced an update with the release of v0.40, most of the major changes are in the way of bugfixes. (And of course, all the new bugs that a new version comes with.) The bulk of the new content is in adventurer mode, so this will be a good way to show off what's changed in the world itself while we wait for the Fun Train to finish refueling at the station.

Here's the first interesting bit that should be noted:



Traditionally, any new file would always, always, always start on the 1st of Granite, no matter what. End one game and start another, it'll jump to the 1st of Granite in the next year. I haven't tested to see if it uses the new behavior when starting a second fortress, but now, whenever you start an adventurer, the game runs the Calendar Update, which pushes the date forward two weeks and runs worldgen-style events, updating history in much the same way.



Next, we get treated to the character creation menus. The process is much like embarking for a new fortress. While you don't get to explicitly decide where you get to start out, you do get to choose which civilization you hail from, implicitly setting your race (dwarf, human or elf) and semi-randomly deciding on your hometown, which will be somewhere in lands controlled by that civ. You also get to choose whether you'll be a "peasant," "hero," or "demigod," which has no effect other than increasing or decreasing the number of points you get at the start. In previous versions, only the humans had any sort of substance to their civilizations, meaning if you wanted to play a dwarf (who couldn't wear human-sized armor) you either had to manufacture it yourself in fort mode and then go hunt it down, or you were shit out of luck. I THINK they've dealt with that, but I also think there might be a bug that's keeping non-human armor shops from being properly stocked, so I'm going to be playing a human just to keep it safe. Specifically, a human from Romomong, as that should hopefully place me somewhere near one of the evil sites.

Now for the important part: stat rolls! It works similarly to the embark preparations, in that you are given a number of points with which you purchase your "equipment." In fort mode, you get one pool of points you can use to buy either equipment or skills for your dwarves, while in adventure mode, you get two separate pools, one for your skills and one for your "attributes." These are usually generated randomly for dwarves (and any creature with a soul) but adventurers are special snowflakes. In hero mode (the default difficulty) you get 35 points at the start to spend on attributes, and 95 to spend on skills. Attributes have seven stages (well, technically eight, but you can't jump straight to the highest from here): very low, low, below average, average, above average, high, and superior. All stats start at average, and it costs five points to go from average to above average, ten to go from above average to high, and a whopping twenty to go from high to superior. Needless to say, with these costs cumulative, you should not raise any one stat to superior, as that will cost all 35 points. It is possible, however, to lower stats below average, and doing this will let you earn a single extra point for each step below average. Since there are several stats that, as of now, literally have zero function (although several of these once-useless skills have become more important now), it's a good idea to take penalties in those areas to edge out a bit more of an advantage. Skills are a bit simpler: they start at unskilled, and each level costs 5 points, plus another point for each level you already have.



You can't see it here, but I also put one level into the "reader" skill, because there's no way to increase it in-game yet, and one level is the difference between illiteracy and master academia. The other skills you couldn't see were just unarmed combat skills.



Ahah, more new stuff! In the old days, this screen just let you change gender and name. Now, though, you also get a little blurb about who you are right now, in the moment before you become a Glorious Adventurer! Of course, it's still fairly new and so there's not really a lot you can fiddle with, but hey, it's better than the old "you're a dude, here's your shit, go kill guys" that you were stuck with once upon a time.



Oh boy, trouble right out of the gate! This used to just be the aforementioned "you've got your sparse equipment together, it's time to adventure but you forgot everything, go talk to NPCs" message, but now it's customized to the specific situation at hand. Looks like once I've gotten my powerleveling out of the way, we've got some Fun to have right here in town!

Neat! I haven't seen Adventurer mode being LP'd before, so this will be nice to watch.

Are you KIDDING ME?

40.07 has Word of Toady confirming that the broken invaders is being fixed. While this is excellent, it couldn't have come before I started the adventure mode interlude? Now I feel like even more of an asshole.

Well, fuck the world I guess. I'll run this adventure mode thing until bad things happen and/or I get bored, and then we'll see how many updates have come out and how broken the save file gets. If I have to regen when we go back to fort mode, that's fine. I'll just hit the aforementioned supernuke.

I bet we're going to be amused regardless

This is where we start. All I've done is dismiss that first pop-up you get when you start, I haven't touched a thing since. Adventurer mode works like a traditional roguelike, so if you're familiar at all with such games as Nethack or Stone Soup, you should be right at home here. In classic roguelike style, the player character, our great hero Zurko Uthroskixi, is represented by the @. As far as I know, civilized races are shown with a color that represents their profession, instead of their species (so all uppercase U are humans), unlike in Nethack, where an uppercase R could be either a rust monster or a disenchanter based on its color, and the two are totally different entities with very different recommended approaches.

Speaking of. There are three humans in this room, aside from ourselves. To our left is Puc Radiemoth, the law-giver; the grey human on the right is Abuth Uthralitke, a whip-wielding soldier; and the leader of our local government is the purple one nearby, Lady Ebbak Omaegu, whom it is our profession to guard and to serve. (I looked it up, a 'hearthperson' is basically a guard, and that's us!)

So, we should probably see about paying the elven mafia a visit, and make Amane an offer he can't refuse. Or she. The popup didn't tell me Amane's gender. Not that we'd be able to tell anyways, because elves. But before we go, we should take a moment to hit 'k' real fast... and show off the new conversation engine!

Previously, talking with people was very, very basic, an official Toady One Placeholder Feature. While it's still got a lot of work to be done, the work is mostly smoothing out now, as you'll see in a moment here. So the first thing I go to do is talk to the law-giver and HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THIS--



Well. That is utterly unexpected, and very much uncalled for! I don't think I'll be trying that again. You piece of shit. Ebbak would be very disappointed with you.

Ugh, I tried to say goodbye to him, so I didn't have that convo considered open, and he spit at me again! What an awful person. I walked over to Lady Ebbak, and she commented that "it is terrifying." Yeah, I'll say!

I greeted people again, and got different responses from everyone. Abuth told me that I should go kill a nearby titan by the name of Oke the Fern of Bulbs, Lady Ebbak continues to shout about how terrified she is, and goddamn Puc just will not shut up about how much he hates me. From across the room. I'm leaving. See you suckers later, I've got a mafia to arrest.



All those exclamation points in the room I was just in, indicate that they're still chattering away to each other and while I can't hear what they're saying, I know there's sound coming from over there. Their last known locations are outlined for me. Having a higher memory stat gives me more consistent information for longer, and I forget if I bothered with it but I'm too lazy to go back and check. I know it's a BAD FUCKING IDEA to take memory penalties, though. In this room to the south, we've got a small armory cache. The rules for theft are even more lax than the rules for murder in Skyrim, which is to say that as long as I'm not robbing a shopkeeper in his own shop, I can take pretty much whatever I want and nobody gives a shit. Needless to say, I will be rooting through here for the best gear I can get my grubby mitts on.

Would've preferred a wooden shield but it was nowhere to be found. That's fine. I'm gonna be ridiculously slow in all this armor, so the first step is to find a crab or something and let it harmlessly punch me until I become ungodly at armor wearing. Right now, I've got the bronze pike I started with, an iron shield, an iron whip I picked up (because it was there and they're hilariously broken), an iron mail shirt, iron greaves, bronze gauntlets, bronze boots, and a copper helm (cause it was the only head protection I could find, le groan). I also grabbed a gemstone just sitting there, since they're convenient currency, and dropped any clothing that I couldn't wear under/over my armor. Now let's see what kind of trouble I can get into.

Well. I head to the right, and the first thing I see is a statue in sterling silver. Of "forgotten beasts." Doesn't name any, so I guess it's "artist's interpretation," but I'm still a little unnerved. More bags and chests with stuff, though, so more looting! I grab a couple more gems, but there's no armor worth grabbing.



I just noticed that I'm no longer green, but brown. I'm now wondering if, in this new version, unit color is derived from the color of the clothing, making dyed cloth now slightly more significant than it was in the past. (Which is to say, not significant at all in the slightest.) Anyway, we find another lasher, or whip-user, just kinda chilling over here. Let's try talking to him.

"You: Greetings Oxut. Long live the cause!"
"Oxut Kostduqueh, Lasher: Hello. It is good to see you. Long live the cause!"

That's refreshing. A polite greeting! This guy doesn't hate me and that makes me feel good about myself. I might be back later to recruit him for some mafia-hunting, but for now let's just shoot the breeze.



Holy funnuggets that's a lot of choices! Like I said, the convo engine got reworked significantly. There are a lot of things I can talk about now. Let's do what any diligent RPG player does when they start: ask the local NPCs what's going on nearby.

Haha. So I started by asking about the local rulers, and how secure we were and if anyone else had a beef with us. The political climate is fairly calm in this part of the world (minus the mafia moving in, but he didn't seem concerned), but when I asked about the strength of the patrols, he said I sound like a troublemaker. Well, I never! Hmph. Maybe I should go JOIN the mafia!

Most of the other small-talk options yielded nothing useful. He talked about nearby megabeasts harassing the populace, he said he had no family to speak of, that he was a hearthperson of Lady Ebbak (as am I, he also said), but we finally got something interesting when I asked about local troubles. "A bandit gang led by Amane Poetair has been harassing people on the street!" I do think it would be good to do something about them. Right after I learn how to move around in this damn armor.

I declare that the situation must be stopped by any means at our disposal, and ask about Amane's location. He points me to Flypeaks, in The Hills of Ringing. Pressing further, he tells me that it is "a day's travel to the southwest" and then marks it on my map for me. How convenient! (The quest marker system received an update in this version, too: questgivers used to be psychic and omniscient with regards to the location of the query, but now you actually have to go around and ask people about stuff, and they don't necessarily know, or might even lie to you sometimes!)

I bid Oxut goodbye, and head back the way I came, to the double doors in the north of the first room. Assuming this to be the way out, I am met with the open wilderness. I want none of this, as moving around is a little bit tedious due to my laptop not having a proper numpad, so it's time for fast travel! By hitting capital T, the following menu shows up:



Fast traveling in this game is not the instantaneous teleportation like it can be in other games (I'm looking at you, Bethesda), but merely an abstracted representation of... traveling. When the thing you want to do isn't here, you have to walk there. Fast traveling lets you walk faster in real-time, but you better be aware that as soon as something happens, it'll bring you right out of fast-travel. Ambushes are a thing you need to be aware of, which is why you are now able to sneak in fast-travel mode.

Looking at the map brings up some serious issues. We're surrounded on nearly all sides by dark fortresses and dark pits, which are goblin nests. Though I DID notice, to the south, is the Forest of Dimensions. Hmm, I may have to pay that place a visit soon. My plan, though, is to head to the southeast, towards the Ocean of Combinations, to level up some stats before I go and get myself horribly murdered. There are enough towns and hamlets nearby that I should have somewhere to stop for the night--not only is sleeping, eating and drinking required (come on guys, this is Dwarf Fortress), but if you're out alone at night.... well, now you will know why you fear the night.

WELL FUCK MY LIFE.



I dismissed the popup before I thought about screencapping, but I got a popup that said "You have discovered a Lair." Megabeasts or night creatures live in those. We'll be back later.

SHIT, I FOUND A SHRINE RIGHT BELOW IT. BRONZE COLOSSI LIVE THERE. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE FUUUUUCK THAT.

HEY, REMEMBER WHEN I SAID AMBUSHES WERE A THING?



I'm on a hill, so my field of vision is really shitty, but I saw an unarmed goblin recruit to the north. Let's hope there aren't too many others. I'm gonna try and stay out of sight here.



In the old version, sneaking was a binary toggle. You couldn't activate it if there was any creature within like, a quarter mile of you (whether or not you could be seen), since creatures had ridiculous line of sight, but if you were sneaking, you were utterly invisible to anything that wasn't within like, four tiles of you, and could just chuck rocks at them until they chipped a bone and passed out and you'd never get noticed. Now, creatures have vision arcs, gaits, and stealth is affected by the environment itself, so I might actually have problems here. I also just found out that lying down, while reducing your speed (which isn't a problem as the armor is already crippling my speed, plus I voluntarily reduced it through the gait menu), makes it harder to see you. A LOT harder. I crept south on my belly until I was far enough away that the goblins lost me, and buggered right off back into fast travel. Of course, the asswipes caught up to me immediately, and I think I might fight them now that I have a bit better lay of the land.



The goblins talk now. I approve. I also love that he comments on my stealth. Apparently I'm really, really bad at being sneaky. Or I tried to go sneaky while his vision was centered right on me. Though he IS facing the other way...

A couple steps later, I can't see him because he's behind a tree, but I assume he can't see me either. Ooh, and a couple more steps, and I can see his vision arcs.

Wait, those aren't goblins!



Emus. Not threatening, but distracting. Argh. I wish I was better at stealth, and could sneak up on this goblin. That'll be the next thing I level up after armor user.

Hoo boy. I think I've given the goblin the slip... but... I found a river. And there's a STURGEON in it! FIIIIIISH! FISH ARE TERRIFYING okay they're not quite as terrifying as they used to be but maaaan, history! These things used to be the deadliest things you could fight outside of the Hidden Fun Stuff--and I don't think there was even Hidden Fun Stuff in the traditional sense back then. The fish were, at least, far enough away that I decided to unstealth and set maximum swim speed, to get out of the water asap. I don't know if goblins are good swimmers, so the river should put distance between us.

Okay, so I got away from the river, and the goblins are still on the other side. The river runs right next to an elven forest retreat, so while not ideal, I can camp there and either ditch the goblins or fight them on my terms. It looks like their squads appear as grey asterisks on the fast travel map, though the fact that I can even see them at all may have something to do with dumping six levels into Observer at the start of the game. Checking the time, the sun is directly overhead, so I should have time to get to at least the next hamlet before sundown.

Hah! I found groundhogs. These should be perfect for my desires: I will grab one, and then sit down and let it pound on me, and this will reduce the speed penalty for wearing armor.

Shut up it makes perfect sense.

Bah. They run too fast for me to catch. Grumble grumble.

Haha, I was just gonna give up and cross the river and I stumbled right into another groundhog! And I was successful.



I'll have to put the shield away, as I want it to hit me, instead of blocking. Now, though, we wait. I've basically got the groundhog in some kind of weird full-body wrestling hold, as I've got it grabbed in the following ways: Right upper arm on lower body, right lower arm on head, left upper arm on lower body, left lower arm on upper body. And I grabbed one of its teeth with my hand, because I don't want it biting. The point of grabbing it so many times is so I guarantee it can't break free, because if it can escape, it will try to. Otherwise, it'll scratch me, my armor will deflect it, and I will become MANLY.

Another benefit of grabbing the tooth with the hand: You can execute wrestling holds with your arms, but if you use your hands, you can perform more delicate maneuvers, like "pinching." I repeatedly pinch the incisor, failing to do any damage but accomplishing two important tasks: raising my wrestling skill and wasting my turn. The more turns I waste, the more scratches I can block.

Herp. I finally pinched the tooth so hard, it dislodged. Time to grab another one! I also accidentally released a couple holds before I realized, thank goodness I had grabbed him five times!

Well son of a bitch. It managed to scratch me in the teeth, and I lost my lower front teeth. Piece of shit!

I started to get tired (different from sleepiness in that it is combat-related and you can pass out from overexertion) and so I just started manually skipping my turns instead of wrestling. Well, the groundhog overexerted itself and passed out. It's no longer a useful dummy, so I'll stomp its head into the ground and then go sleep at the elf place.

My speed rating jumped from about 0.333 to 0.453 as a result of my armor training. Sweet. And I've only gained two levels--there's a lot more grinding I can do.

SHIT THAT WAS A POOR DECISION



So, I had to cross the river. It's a river flowing through a valley, so it doesn't come up to the surface. I couldn't find a good way down, so I thought I'd jump across, grab a tree, and then climb across to the other side. Needless to say, I missed. Fortunately, I ended up in the water, and didn't take any severe damage. Now, in the old days, even if I'd survived the fall with no damage (like I have), this would be a death sentence, as you can't really get out of the river. (Of course, you wouldn't have been able to jump, either.) Luckily, after looking up the button, I was able to grab the tree roots above and scramble up the wall to safety. Hell yeah, dwarf fortress!



And here we show off the new pre-generated aboveground dwarven sites. Called "hillocks" in-game, these are dwarven hamlets, basically. I'm gonna crash here for the night, and save the game, too. Let's pick this up in a bit, shall we?

Well, of course not. They're forgotten.

I don't want anything to do with a guy called Kingknight the Prestigious Right. So I'm just gonna see if I can manage to ask this guy to sleep at his place. FAKEEDIT: Oh, that's the name of the PLACE, not the guy himself. He's called Nek Sabretarget. That's less frightening.

After hearing more about how Nek is really terrorizing these guys, I managed to get him onto the subject of my choice. His reply: "Certainly. It would be terrible to leave someone to fend for themselves after sunset." And he's right. It's NOT a good idea to be out at night, moreso when you're just starting, and infinitely moreso in this version, where blunt damage is hilariously lethal. Hilarious, except when it's directed your way.

After eating some dinner, I hit the hay until dawn, get some breakfast happening, and am on my way. I picked some apples from the dwarves, because their quarry bushes didn't seem too appealing and I doubt you can eat the leaves raw. It'll be good to have some food until I can start killing my own. You start with a waterskin with three servings of water, and five servings of randomly chosen meat (seahorses, in my case), but I still don't feel like taking chances.

While the ambusher (sneak) skill isn't nearly as important as it used to be, given that you can be "sneaking" and still run at full sprint, it's not a bad idea to turn on sneak and just kinda creep around the woods to get that skill upped. Especially because, while sneaking, you can see vision arcs, letting you know in no uncertain terms if there's someone nearby.

Like THIS fucker! "A small oceanic eel-like creature that latches onto the side of its victim and tears into them." Sea lampreys are not nice. They tend to attack on sight. I'm gonna see if I can get around him without much trouble. The river's only four tiles wide, so I'm gonna build up speed and see if I can clear the river with a running jump.

Nah. I only made it to halfway. But the stupid jerkwad got spooked and buggered off. Found another groundhog, though! Let's see if I can rush him down for some training.



Hah. Success! Laying on the ground, while cutting your speed, does WONDERS for your stealth. The groundhog didn't have a chance. Now for some more powerleveling!



I prefer to interpret this as simply laying down on the groundhog and pinning her. It breaks my immersion less. I'm already starting to get "tired" from the exertion of grabbing the groundhog in ten different locations, so I'm wasting turns, and when I'm not tired, performing a "take-down", which is a move that lays the creature prone, slowing it down. Not as useful in this version, as far as I know, since combat and movement actions got split, but it does gain wrestling EXP. Which is the point. Now, though, I'm gonna unstealth and let it bite my armor ineffectually.

Hah. It thought I was just brawling, so I scratched it to try and force it to attack. It's now in non-lethal combat with me. Annoying, but now it's throwing punches. To force lethal combat, I tried to stab it in the eye with my pike. This is listed as an "impossible" strike, meaning the accuracy rating says it just won't happen. Fine. I just want her to come at me. I thought animals were supposed to always be in lethal-no-quarter combat? Odd.

WAIT WHAT

Somehow it got through the armor, bruising my lung. That's not supposed to happen. I've got iron mail on! Despite flashing "MORTAL WOUND" I'm pretty sure bruising is nothing to worry about, it'll recover. As long as I don't get some other hilarious attack on me. I might just snap this fool's neck.

Yeah. She just bit me in the arm. No, I'm taking her teeth off.

Never mind this crap. It lists me as "winded" now. I'm gonna fast travel to heal up, but first I bit her in the neck, tore it open, then threw her. Fuck off, you stupid groundhog. Imma go find a crab.

Ruh-roh. Two grey asterisks, one to the north and one to the south. This looks like combat... I went into sneak mode (which you can now do in the fast travel menu) and they went around me, thankfully.

Haha, there's already a crab here for me to harass! Excellent. I'll get some lunch and then bug this fool.

Wow. I went to stab its eye for the impossible strike, to get it to attack me, and I actually hit it. From behind. While he was grasped six ways. Yeah, this makes all the sense in the world.



FUCK IT I'M BORED

I know in the old version, you could set trees on fire but they'd just burn forever, they'd never actually burn to ashes. In adventure mode at least. This was annoying because I fell down a ledge once, got stuck in a tree, and couldn't ever get out. FAKEEDIT: The fire doesn't spread. Sad days.

Okay that's the second impossible eye stab I've pulled off. Crabs are annoying, they don't like to attack. Le groan. I know that creatures in this version are incredibly unaggressive, but come the fuck on.

Huh, my nose got broken somehow. I'm not sure how that happened, to be honest. Um. Ow?

Hm. So, in this version, just attacking while wearing armor raises armor user. So I don't have to get hit anymore. This is good news.

OH THAT'S FUN!



I'm headed towards a nearby hillocks to rest for the night, when these assholes show up. Great. Time for some killing!

OH GOD I TRIED TO SNEAK AWAY AND THEY FUCKING RUSHED ME. THREE PAGES OF LOGS. Fortunately their attacks can't get through my armor, minus the teeth I lost, but goddamn. Nope. Nopenopenopenopenope. Time for butchering. There's three of them, and I should be able to stay mostly out of range. I have good dodge skill for this exact reason.

Well dang. There's more than three. At least five, maybe more. They can't damage me yet, but it's slow and I'm fighting defensively.

One down, a stab to the brain took it out of the fight.



Observe, the attack options menu. You can choose where to attack, see the odds of hitting, then decide how you'll attack and with what. Those options on the bottom are new to this version.



And here's why wrestling is useful to have. Chokeholds can knock a foe out very fast, and this leaves them open and unguarded to a big ass-pike to the cranium. And we know what that means.

Five dead wolves. Get bent sons.

Hahahahaha I forgot to sheathe my weapon, and people freaked out. One even jumped out of my way. Sorry guys! I got ambushed by wolves. Y'all are cool little beard people.

The hillocks here is home to a militia commander. Cool! Let's talk to him!



Yikes! These guys have troubles. What's this about the abduction? "A few years ago, Ablel Evenedrack was kidnapped from Wheelspirals by Atu Menacedlord." I offer my condolences, and he directs me to Risen Oiledtime. So then I ask him where I can find this miserable goblin babysnatcher. He's not sure, suggests the brigand is on the move or deep underground. Drat.

I chat for a bit, but all I hear about is the metric fuckton of megabeasts that inhabit Angsturnom. So I sleep for eight hours, instead of "until dawn," and HOLY SHIT WE GOT COMPANY.



Agh! Why doesn't the conversation menu have a "HOLY SHIT THE ASSHOLES ARE COMING TAKE UP YOUR ARMS" option? Get on that, Toady! In the meantime, time to defend the hillocks! Let's see what we've got coming our way... I'm gonna get up on top of the hillocks, and watch to see who's coming.

Huh. Whoever it was, they took their sweet time, so I waited for an hour. This was a mistake, as the hour was far more time than they needed, but they apparently weren't interested in the hillocks, whoever it was. Intriguing...

Oh that's cool, more wolves as I cross a river. At least it wasn't an ambush, but ugh. Now I gots to kill them. Or sneak around maybe. Let's try sneaking first. They're looking away...

With the wolves behind us, allowed to live another day, we take a tour of the town of Oilybrides!

OH SHIT KILL MAIM SLAUGHTER



He seems well behaved... I don't trust him.

Jesus this place has a lot of goblins. This house has a dwarf in it, and a goblin priest.... Let's go bug the priest, see what's up.

Well shit. The priest mentioned "armies on the move" and then promptly buggered off! What's going on here? You, beard-person, tell me more!

Lolor Thocitzon doesn't know anything about advancing armies... You, goblin person! The goblin was more knowledgable, and told me that "[t]he army of Bosa Gatecurse is marching on Firstplays!" I press further, but it seems that this "Rovod Wheelsdriven" fellow is the only guy who knows shit all about anything. Let's go find the asshole, then!

Bosa Emungust directs me to a tavern, The Dessert of Grilling. What, do they serve Baked Alaskas there? Hm. Could go for some, actually. Let's see about a stiff drink and some battle!

Well SHIT! There are two asterisks on the town itself, one of which was directly south of me before I offloaded. When I went back for a screenshot, it disappeared.... guess I failed my spot check? Let's investigate this shit! At least I found the tavern.

Looking around for signs of trouble doesn't show anything yet... WOAH WAIT I TAKE THAT BACK! I saw a marksdwarf run by, and he was in a trance--that only happens when fighting several foes.



He wasn't fighting anymore, but told me he was traveling because he was returning home (to this town) and told me where to find a bandit camp and a town owned by a local mafia. I'll keep those in mind for later, but I have slightly more pressing concerns at the moment. Thoughh there's not too much I can do to stop the armies marching... Currently, post-worldgen invaders are 100% successful, even if you wipe them out entirely before they get to the site. I can still go find where they're going, take them out and reclaim the place.

I ran into a lasher when looking around, and he bragged about how he was an adventurer for thirty years, so I asked him to come along. He volunteered that his son was kidnapped years ago by a goblin (who is now dead, so I cannot avenge this loss for him), and I offered condolences, but when I tried to get him to direct me to his son, he just kept harping about this hill titan. Hm.

I find my way to the keep, south of the tavern, and a goblin lasher shuffles out the door on my way in. That will never stop being unnerving.

JESUS HELL THIS GUY IS A BADASS



I'll point out he's also flashing. The way that legendary units flash in fortress mode. Yikes. This guy is someone you want on your side. He killed a roc!

OH FUCK YES, HE JOINED UP WITH US. AIGHT PEEPS, WE OUT, WE GONNA GO FUCK UP THE MAFIA NOW.

OH GOD. THE LORD OF THE TOWN IS A GOBLIN. THAT'S IT. WHEN I'M MORE BADASS WE'RE COMING BACK FOR AN INSURRECTION. INSERT WHITE SUPREMACY JOKES HERE BUT PLEASE DON'T ACTUALLY DO THAT BECAUSE FUCK RACISM. UNLESS IT'S ANTI-GOBLIN.

Sensemenace and Groovedmatch are both west, but it should only take a day to get to the bandits, which is fine with me, since I'd rather pick on bandits before going after the mafia. So I'll travel down there and it'll be where we call this for now.

I'm a little annoyed it's not letting me refill my waterskins anymore... I may have to just drink from the rivers until I find a well in a town. When I do, I've got a sack I can fill and that'll solve that problem for a while. But now, I've parked us just east of the camp, and it's just barely dawn, so next time we'll go rush these bastards.

It's been a while, folks. I've been putting this off for a while because lol, Skyrim, but now it's time to take down a bandit camp. Incidentally, with all the updates, it's looking like I should seriously consider waiting a bit to start up another fortress, and will have to regen the world--which is fine with me, because the old embark site was BORING. I'm making the executive decision that I'm going to embark and savescum until I get a site with some fun of some kind.

Until then, though, this is the current scenario:



Guy in yellow with the border is me, laying down for better stealth. The grey guy is the human I picked up, and the blue guy is the legendary roc-killing dwarf. Here's hoping she doesn't hilariously take a single arrow to the skull and die, because that can happen even if you're legendary +99 in everything. The camp is west of here...

HAH! THE FUCKER'S ASLEEP! THE GUARD IS SLEEPING ON THE JOB! LET'S TAKE HIM TO THE CLEANERS!



I told Nique, the Human Lasher, to sit down over there, and just bring Ast along. I hope she at least knows enough to sneak when I'm sneaking, or I risk waking them up. I mean, I probably still got this, but, I don't have nearly enough levels under my belt yet.

This is awkward.



Two sleeping goblins, and it looks like their vision arcs overlap. That red area is not sneak-able, not even a little. I think I have to strangle the axeman (upper left) and then go after the other guy.

WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE. While putting the text in on that image, I noticed that panel off to the right. On the Z-level above, there are two goblins sleeping in the tree on the level above. Shit. This just got more difficult. Hm. At least they're unarmed... I'm making the decision to have Nique come along, I don't care if he's shitty at sneaking. This is Dwarf Fortress, and I really need to stop treating this like a TAS and more like a roguelike. YOLO MODE: ENGAGED

Of course, the next step, the VERY next step, the wrestler woke up. Axeman is still out, though. AND there are more goblins above. I didn't know goblins liked to live in trees. FAKEEDIT: No, he didn't wake up, he just was hidden behind the tree. The goblins in the tree above are awake, though.

I SPRINTED to the goblin, and somehow he was still asleep. He got stabbed in the skull, and died. RIP your face. Kill count so far: 1 goblin, 2 groundhogs, 2 crabs, 5 wolves.



I would think at least Ast would be accustomed to death. Ah well. One more goblin down, the goblins are waking up and chittering about "oh shit, someone's attacking, what the hell is this nonsense?" I got him to go from lethal to no quarter combat, too. So looks like I can't back out of this if we get overwhelmed. Oh well! Also I have a title now: Zurko Honorlures the Plaited Fury. I also totally spit at a goblin and hit him in the neck. No damage, I don't think. So much for that.

On the other hand, haha, one of the goblins just fucking rocketed off in the other direction. This is a problem that I don't think is fixed yet, but does have an easy alteration: natural skill in discipline for all sentients. (Won't fix titans/FBs/demons though.) I sadly can't do this after worldgen, though. So now I enjoy goblins fleeing me.

Haha. I stole the axe out of the sleeping axeman's hands and chopped his head off with it. (Okay I didn't actually behead him but I did shatter his spine, so that's probably fatal. And he's still sleeping.) Time to take out the other goblins in the tree! FOR THE GLORY OF... um... what was the name of our home civ again? NO MATTER. FOR THE GLORY OF MYSELF!

Well. I've killed 7 goblins so far, and an eighth got stabbed in the heart, so it'll be dead soon. But I just saw a flashing goblin. It titled her "overlord." I'm now feeling some fear again. Granted, he buggered off, so let's see how frightened I should be!

She kept chanting "A battle! What's going on?!" before finally, "I must withdraw!" Yeah, you better! I will butcher you all, greenskinned menace!

I was worried I'd run out of goblins to kill, as Nique caught up to me at last. I haven't seen Ast yet, though. However, I just found the Overlord.... let's see if we can sneak up on her.

Lol nope, he scrambled up a tree. I will get you, foolish goblin!

LOL! NIQUE JUST FUCKING TRIED TO GREET THE OVERLORD. I... do hope that doesn't mean I'm attacking peaceful bandits. FAKEEDIT: Nope, still no quarter combat. And this asshole has masterwork clothes.

WOW that didn't take long. I started to try and climb up the tree to give this thug a piece of my mind.... and she jumps down and cuts apart Nique's leg before I can even react.

HAH. SHE ONLY SAW NIQUE. SHE DIDN'T SEE ME AT ALL. I WAS ABLE TO GRAB HER FROM BEHIND, "SILENTLY." I GOT THIS SHIT, YO!

Wait. She just asked for a cease-fire. She's in no-quarter combat. That's not supposed to happen. Apparently though, bugs mean that guys can possibly continue fighting after yielding, and that a successful yield actually increases the threat to no quarter, even if you respect the ceasefire. So no, imma choke a bitch.

No seriously. I'm choking her. At least I'm TRYING to!



Needless to say, once she passed out, the following happened: I stabbed her in the brain, took her masterworks, then butchered her corpse and took her skull as a trophy. And to intimidate other goblins.



Okay... this is creepy. I was just walking, and suddenly, that happened. The grey area is stuff you've seen before, and are recalling in memory. The whole world just went black for a moment, and I couldn't see myself. It's like I stepped into the twilight zone. I took one step and it went back to normal, but.... That was creepy as fuck. The game even lagged out when it went grey.

Hah, a goblin I haven't killed! Let's fix that!

He buggered off, but I proceeded to find another goblin in the tree where I first arrived at the camp. Finally, it gave me an option to claim the site for myself, which I did. The goblin responded with "this must be stopped by any means at our disposal." COME AT ME, BRO!

Ugh. These goblins are FAST. Or maybe I'm just still too slow in my armor. I need to fix that. Somehow. Not sure how. Other than a looooooot of training. Oh well. I've claimed this land for myself, and I am now lord. If he thinks he has a claim, he can talk to me about it. And by me, I mean my pike. And by talk to, I mean get stabbed in the face by.

Lol... found a master goblin lasher sleeping. Normally, these guys are terrifying, because whips go through any armor and deal massive damage. But he's asleep. When he's asleep, any attack is a guaranteed critical hit. Like a stab to the skull. GG, mofo. GG no re.



OH GOD HE HAS A MASTERWORK WHIP AND SHIELD. YES PLEASE.

Running around the camp, finishing off stray gobbos. One of them had a crossbow, eek! Fortunately, he was fleeing anyway, and he ran into Nique, who lashed him to death.

I killed a handful of gobbos, looted the crap out of the place (I have SO MANY COINS NOW), and buggered off for the lake to get water. If there are any more goblins, I can't find them. I also couldn't find Ast (guess she buggered off at the sign of combat--might end up back at town) and Nique has a leg wound, so he'll be crawling until I can find him a crutch, but we're good. Also...



I will never go thirsty again.



Oh THAT'S great. We got ambushed by wolves, and Nique thought it would be wise to stab him. With his crossbow bolts. What the fuck, man? THAT'S NOT HOW YOU USE THOSE! I mean, as soon as I hit enter he lashed the wolf in the brain and killed it, but still! Why would you do that?

*Sigh* I went back to town, and after consolidating a few stacks of coin (I should probably convert my money into some kind of low-weight resource that won't weigh me down so much) I went and told anyone and everyone that I took over the bandit camp. NOBODY gave a shit. Not a one person. That was real disappointing... I guess it just means I have more mafias to dismantle. I was given some pointers, and apparently the nearby elven civ is getting grumpy because of the mistreatment of trees.... that could turn into something fun, maybe. But I plan to carry out a goblin genocide anyways, so, we'll see how that goes. In the meantime, join me next time when I complain more about being unable to move around town at 10fps and at 1/5th typical speed due to encumbrance!

Huh. Sounds just like Skyrim.

Fuck this.

It's been... more than a month since the last post here. Honestly? I'm not enjoying this. It looks like the problems that plagued early v40 not only sucked literally all of the challenge out of fortress mode, but from adventure mode as well. I can't get anyone to recognize my achievements, I still can't reasonably affect the world, powerleveling is exactly as boring as it was in the old versions, and between my encumbrance and the severe lag the game is undergoing, I've literally been dreading this game.

I've been waiting patiently for the most severe of the bugs to be fixed, telling myself "That's when I can dump this albatross named Adventure Mode from around my neck." But it's becoming clear that I'm not only unable to enjoy fort mode in this time state, but adventure mode is, as mentioned, becoming more of a chore than a hobby.

I want to call it off here. But I can't do that.

The Toady One is in the process of (finally) rewriting the dwarven psyche, and that'll probably have some hilarious balancing issues, but nonetheless it seems like all the major issues that I had beef with are no more. If it comes down to it, I can honestly probably fire up 40.13 and have actual fun (and Fun) with it. But that leaves the question of what to do with this save. I went into the Interlude knowing full well that the world of Angsturmon would probably not survive. Nevertheless, something needs to be done about this adventure we've started. I can't let it end with a whimper. Not after what happened last time.

So we're going out with a bang.



And when I say "with a bang" I mean regicide is happening. Also genocide. Fuck every goblin with a rusty spork. IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME! YOLO LET'S GO VIDEO GAAAAAAAAAAAAAMES



ABOUT TIME SOMEBODY FUCKIN' NOTICES ME IN THIS DUMP! NOW YOU PERISH!



Holy shit that went way smoother than I expected. The king is dead! Well, lord, not king. Dunno where the capitol is. I should go there next. Also, interesting fact: 90% of the weight I was hauling came from my overfilled sack of water. Water is fuckin' heavy. Also loot. Loot isn't exactly light, either. And I don't even need the damn loot, it's Death Or Glory time and there's nothing I can even buy to improve my combat prowess.

After failing to wrestle with him for a couple rounds (goblins are stout, it seems), I took another shot at him with the pike, skewering his liver. He passed out, and with his heart stabbed, he's as good as dead. Now to go mop up everyone else here because as mentioned, FUCK GOBLINS.

Huh. This was unexpected.



So now I'm dicking around in the cellars under the keep while I wait to see if the militia has a beef with me now ruling the place.

Ugh. So imagine playing nethack, only every time you take one step in any direction, the game pauses for three seconds. THIS IS WHY I DIDN'T WANT TO PLAY THIS ANYMORE.

oooh. Found a goblin in the keep, named Snaug Kokuksos. Listed profession: leader. NOT FOR LONG, BITCH! He does have a bow though, so I should probably not engage him in melee until I'm behind him in stealth mode.

Snuck up, grabbed his throat, choked him, stabbed him in the brain and shattered his everything, butchered him and took his skull as a trophy. I probably shouldn't just leave the bow and arrows, but they're heavy, I don't use ranged attacks, and as far as I know, dudebros don't loot corpses yet.

I've been walking around here for what feels like an hour, is probably close to half, and I've covered maybe a minute's worth of distance. Le groan. However, I heard two tanners chatting; one dwarven, one goblin. They must die.

Hm. It seems like I'm hearing people several floors up. That's disappointing, it means I can't butcher them. I'm gonna go explore everywhere down here and then go above surface and tear apart the military.

Well, I butchered no less than five goblins, and exactly one of them was able to even take shots at me (all parried and blocked). I then decided to wait an hour because the others were getting suspicious, but when the site reloaded, the goblins all seemed to acknowledge me as their new ruler, as if it was totally fine that I just fucking murdered their lord. I was able to find that there are "no fewer than twelve other groups vying for control" of my new little town, so I may have to eradicate them. My little genocide here has already become uninteresting because I can just SLAUGHTER these dickweeds in cold blood and they forget about it, and it takes so damn long to hunt anyone down.

Nique, my wounded companion, finally caught up to me.

Sucks to be him. At least, I'd say that if I was able to successfully assassinate him. Little bastard ran off and I'm not fast enough to chase people who won't lie down and die when I say so.

I'm over this shit. Nique came back and I bested him handily, stole his whip and his pants, recruited a well-traveled dwarf for guiding purposes, and am leaving this dump for more interesting areas. Probably just gonna yolo shit until I explode.

I've decided my first intended conquest is beyond the sea, and that I don't care if our dwarven guide can't swim. Fuck him, he can sit on the beach. I wrote down stuff anyways, I know where there are lots of beasts. And Imma murder them all.

The best part about ocean crossing is that it moves relatively fast (since there's nothing to keep track of in the bloody ocean), and I'm constantly getting faster, because I'm leveling swimming as well as upping my strength to make that gear slightly less of a burden.

hahaha. It's "only" five full-map tiles of ocean, but swimming at 0.2 speed with mild lag takes a long time. I've literally been holding down the right key for like, at least fifteen minutes, and now I've fired up my DS just to kill time while I continue to hold said key. Not even halfway there yet. Here's hoping the ocean doesn't freeze in mid-transit, because that would be a super dumb way to end the run. Like, yeah, I'm looking for death, but I'm looking for a GLORIOUS death. Death by ice is not glorious. Not even a little bit.

I also JUST realized I can get a couple extra stealth levels by enabling sneaking and not altering my gait. No speed change, gradual EXP gain. Good thing to have.

Huh. I THOUGHT I was only halfway there... but I'm still on the 2nd of 5 maptiles, and I hit the coastline. I won't complain, cause lel, fast travel, but.... I'm confused. Also I totally wanted more swimming EXP. Not that I'm willing to just swim around the ocean, mind you. I don't have enough water for that. Food isn't an issue, since I just picked a bunch of raspberries, I can last for a couple weeks on the ocean.... if you could drink saltwater, which you can't.

Haha. Okay I see the problem... Can YOU see the problem?



Yeah. We going back to the ocean for the rest of the trip. Just because.



God dammit. I was hoping that wouldn't happen....

OH WELL SEE YOU GUYS NEXT TIME WHEN WE ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING INTERESTING also I guess I did kind of take over a town not that it mattered at all.

IT WAS INEVITABLE.