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

Blimey.

Good luck.

"Strasp Sagus, The Planet of Dawning, has been created."

And damn, there's a lot of evil areas to play with.

The Brash Frost and The Withered Tundras are two evil areas right next to each other at the northernmost edge of the world. The Frost is the western landmass and is a glacier, and the Tundras are... tundras. Terrifying ones, no less. A partially-frozen ocean, a mountain range, and a handful of other small biomes (including The Dune of Pregnancy) are the immediate surroundings up here. Both areas have multiple shallow metals and flux, but no deep metal. The tundra also has clay and aquifer. No deep metals though.

The Revolting Forest, a medium-sized area in the north sandwiched between an ocean and a desert, with tundra to the north. Lots and lots of goblin fortresses here. Aquifer and flux present, multiple shallow metals, but no deep metal to be found. The north part of the forest has no metal at all, but does have clay.

The Shriveled Wastes, badlands surrounded on all sides by The Finger of Tombs (a huge mountain range that, surprisingly, doesn't appear to be evil). Little soil, but no aquifer, and it's still frigid as we're in the north. There's only one type of deep metal in the entire region, and the only shallow metal is in the coldest part of the area.

A necromancer's tower--not somewhere we can embark on exactly, but if we park nearby, we won't be in an evil biome but we WILL get zombie sieges (assuming the pathfinding works, which it SHOULD but we never know.)

The Hill of Lepers, a coastal area rich in metals of all kinds, possessed of clay, aquifer, and flux. It's also warm, so we won't get to enjoy the "benefits" of a frozen map all year. (If you'll recall, Cursenegated was frozen from autumn 'till the end of spring.) It also has terrifying segments.

The Swamp of Suicide, a terrifying Temperate Freshwater Marsh that probably won't live up to its name and will be exactly as scary as the proverbial salad. Lotsa metal, aquifer (cause it's a gaddamn swamp), clay. No flux here, though. FAKEEDIT: No, I take that back, there are varying areas with different amounts of metal, flux presence, and even aquifer presence.

The Smeared Fields, a tropical grassland next to a tropical ocean. Very hot, as you'd expect. Not a lot of trees, and also probably not a lot of interesting geological features, being a grassland. I see aquifer, and a complete lack of metal....

The Gulf of Scorpions, a haunted tropical ocean. I wouldn't normally mention it, if it weren't both fairly sizable and directly adjacent to The Spiteful Dune. The coastal area is a Rocky Wasteland, which means no vegetation at all (trees included), poor soil quality, blistering heat, and a likely need to subsist on cavern water. And there don't even seem to be a wealth of metals. The other option is the sandy desert, which won't be coastal but is guaranteed to have sand for glass. It also has much more metal, flux, and... surprise, an aquifer in the desert?! Strangely, this particular dune doesn't seem too terrible. Though the temp is listed as Scorching...

The Mucous Jungles, a massive evil forest with widely varying geologies. In one area, EVERYTHING was present (clay, soil, aquifer, shallow&deep metal, and flux), and in another, nothing but soil and aquifer. Not even clay. Even the temperatures vary widely, as the jungle extends as far south as the tundra. It also looks like there are lots of goblin settlements in the south.

The Blind Blizzard, a glacier in the far southwest with nothing but ice and flux. And goblins. And supposedly some metals deep in the earth but I don't buy it. Not like anyone can get down there to get the metal. Glaciers are... interesting. We might play one, we might not. It all depends.

The Spine of Miseries, a mountain range at the south that borders a tundra. Gotta love those frozen mountains with no notable features!

And finally, The Plains of Deviance, a southern savanna that borders the tundra and yet manages to have nonfreezing temperatures in quite a few areas. More of the same, really: clay, aquifer, flux, yadda yadda. It's actually quite rare when I get a site that says anything other than "Very deep soil", and in practice it's still usually just like, 4 layers or so. You know, unless you get that random 9-level aquifer.

I will take some time over the next couple days to just embark in each of these areas as a science endeavor, to see which ones have the best kind of wildlife, zombies, and/or evil weather. In the meantime, until I come back with that data, please feel free to vote on areas that sound like fun, or Fun. Not gonna put a straw poll up this time as there are quite a few. Also if I can find a good image of the map (I THOUGHT I saved it, but I might not have) I'll throw that up and mark the various biomes.

EDIT: I'm a numbskull and you can export the map directly from legends mode. You can also export a more detailed, non-ascii map with various detailed informations on it. So, enjoy map:



YES. I WENT IN AND MSPAINTED THE BIOME NAMES. YOU'RE FUCKING WELCOME. Now excuse me while I sleep, and then tomorrow I go donate my body to science in the name of dwarves.

So...is anyone not wanting to go take over the necromancer's tower and use it as our fortress?

Yeah, that's pretty much the only option here, even if Swamp of Suicide and Spine of Miseries sound delightful.

I will go against the grain and vote for The Hill of Lepers. This vote is only 90% based on the name.

I wish we could do that, Turtle. I want to do that SO BADLY. You can do it in v34, but you cn only do it with DFHack, a memory hacking utility that lets you do all kinds of stuff the game didn't necessarily want you to do, like coat weapons with poisons, spawn water/magma at will, change certain addresses that create erroneous behavior, and removing the restrictions on where you can and can't embark. You're not allowed to embark overlapping a necro tower, or a city, tomb, or other such landmark, nor are you allowed to have "too much" of your embark overlap a body of water or a mountain. I'm not sure what constitutes too much, but basically you can't just drop into the middle of mountains (since they never have trees or soil) or the ocean (because lol).

We can park NEAR the tower and fight the zombie hordes, but we sadly can't take the tower for ourselves. That would be either an adventurer thing or a HAX thing.

I hear the Gulf of Scorpions is lovely this time of year.

What stops the dwarf army from conquering the tower entirely?

I change my vote to this in the interest of winning the vote.

Goodbye forever, lepers...

Well, no, I can totally see the strategic advantages of building a fortress on a hill, so Hill of Lepers works for me.

Technical limitations. You pick an area of land, and that's the entire map, and you can never extend beyond it. The tower can't be in that area. So you can never actually send a dwarf there. Eventually, you'll be able to send armies around the world under your command and do stuff like take over necro towers, but that's going to be years and years away.

EDIT: I was in the process of going to each of these biomes with a minimal embark and seeing what various evil challenges exist (like whether there's zombies, evil weather, or what have you) and I got through two before I remembered. This is fucking Dwarf Fortress. I don't want to know what I'm up against before I'm up against it, so, I'll just go where you send me (though keep in mind that if we go near the tower, the tower will be the ONLY interesting feature, zero percent chance of non-necromancer reanimation or evil weather of any kind, or the special animals that can show up in evil areas) and if we end up somewhere boring, I'll just say "whoops that never happened" and go to the next place suggested.

If DFHack is what it takes to conquer the tower, I fully support its use.

I learned my lesson from last time so this time I will vote for the area that can produce the most fun and Fun.

I think you misunderstand. There is no DFHack for version 40.13, as of right now. And even if there was, it would be too unstable to trust. That being said, I think it might be strawpoll time...

http://strawpoll.me/2695985

New plan: Take necromancer's zombie army, use psychological warfare to turn them into your slaves, then become invincible really strong by using your not-technically-dwarves to bolster your fortress census numbers and get stuff done sooner.

Sadly, zombies don't even count towards census. However, this reminds me of two things. One, anything that isn't a zombie or a vampire will be aggroed by zombies, and since they have ridiculous numbers and tend to keep getting up (though this behavior has been nerfed due to "pulping" mechanics), they tend to be a very useful, if double-edged, defense force.

And second, this.

Exactly! Which means the dwarven immigrants will still come up to 200 dwarves, plus however many hundreds of zombies you've got tamed!

Okay.... as of late night sunday, it looks like we're going to the Necromancer's tower, and if we go too long without any Fun, I'll pack up and head to the Mucous Jungles. I'll try a couple different embarks there before we go anywhere else, because there's such a wide variance within the territory, but if we keep striking out I'll just roll dice to see where we end up.

Embark preparations are underway: mainly just buying skills/equipment and filling in the initial state for the labor spreadsheet.

EDIT: We have embarked.

Okay. Right out of the gate things are getting interesting. Remember the calendar advancement from Adventure mode? Yeah. It does that in fortress mode now, too. We're not starting on the 1st of Granite, but rather the 10th of Hemanite. Which means we'll be starting right in the beginning of Summer, and with three months of time "lost" prior to the first caravan and first invasions.



The embark site is evenly split, roughly down the NE/SW diagonal, into two sub-biomes that are roughly identical, save for the fact that the biome that is not highlighted in this image has less soil, no clay, and is warmer. I'm also seemingly discovering something strange... I don't think raw clay can be used as a building material anymore, and that it needs to be processed into bricks (which costs fuel) before you can build anything out of it, be it a kiln or a wall. This is problematic and affects my drilling strategy, since, aquifers. We may have to implement the Dangerous Method.

Once again, we get to marvel at the sheer variety of plant life. I see pear trees, apple trees, gingko trees, bayberry trees, ash trees, alder trees, pecan trees, oak trees, hazel trees, willow trees, cherry trees, maple trees, walnut trees, and I'm almost positive there's more but I don't even care anymore. Wood is still wood, for the most part. It's just... really impressive.

Oh, and we've got a 4-pack of coyotes at the far northwest corner on spawnday. Joy of joys.

I just realized, not having access to DFHack means no Stonesense. So no isometric view. Hope you like ASCII representations of the XY plane!

As far as supplies go, we took pretty much staples. Lots and lots of wood (just in case), a single clay boulder (I forgot to change it to stone, the intent was to use it to make the first kiln and get clay for more kilns), anvil/picks/hammers, booze, food, sand (for bags), some leather (for quivers and shields, and maybe some early armor), silk thread (since it's harder to get reliably), and seeds (to start farming with).

So. Assuming clay doesn't do what I wanted it to do, I'm going to have to use the method I'm about to use. And even if it still works, this way is faster, technically. I think. It definitely doesn't have water-based cancellation to deal with.

Anyway. Think of the earth as a gigantic wedding cake. The really fancy kind with lots of layers. Well, you're looking down at it from above. The top layer of cheesecake isn't bad, but there's this really amazing, decadent german chocolate down below. However, to get there, you have to get through several layers of FRUITCAKE. And you can't just grab a slice from below since it's all locked up from the sides. The only way down is to eat your way through the layers, one at a time.

But fruitcake is GROSS. No way am I eating that, you say! Well, there's another way. Eat your way in a circle around the inside of the top layer... then go down a few feet (remember, this is a gigantic cake, like, skyscraper sized) and eat all the cake above where you dug down. You'll drop the free-floating cake down, and it'll SMASH the fruitcake below. Then you can just eat down through the cheesecake you dropped with, and voila, german chocolate.

Replace "eat", "cheesecake", "fruitcake", and "german chocolate cake" with "dig", "soil", "aquifer", and "stone" respectively, and that's basically what we're doing here. I'll be digging a staircase down until we hit aquifer, then mine out the dry layer directly above in a 15x15 area. You only "need" 5x5 but you'll want a wider area in case there are several layers. At least 2 more in each dimension per layer, and more if you want wider than a 1x1 staircase. If the aquifer is too deep to go through with 15x15, then we're probably boned. Remember, I HAVE seen a 9-layer aquifer before. Once, and only once, but that's enough to make me paranoid in the future.

WOW. JUST WOW. Found the aquifer at the minimum depth. There are always two "full" layers of soil before an aquifer, but you're not guaranteed to get any more. And we didn't. (You technically ALSO have the ground floor, but that doesn't really count for the purposes of cave-in penetration.)

Anyway, while the miner man is prepping the site, we'll be setting up temporary lodgings. We just need to crank out some workshops for some quick start-of-fort tasks, like beds, some quick food, butchering the draft animals, stuff like that. I'll also take the time to put our Glorious Leader to work managing the stocks, because you need at least the lowest nonzero precision category to be able to use the z-stocks menu to zoom to specific items. Also, once you do enough work to get to maximum precision, you NEVER HAVE TO DO BOOKKEEPING EVER AGAIN. Even if the bookkeeper dies and you don't appoint a replacement. Because lol, dwarven super-prediction algorithms.

We're up to 19 Malachite, 250 (4th month, mid-summer) and the Shower Plug is ready to be pulled. Er, I mean dropped. We can't do it yet, though, because we need some stone. Mechanisms, my friend. I don't trust the miner to take out the plug from the side and not get murderified by the cave-in dust, so we'll be waiting until autumn for the caravan, buying all their damn stone, making mechanisms out of it all, and then getting our asses underground. So I guess we should be farming in the meantime or something? I could dig out a farm that can be connected to the stairwell later.

You know what, fuck it. It's 12 Galena, 250 (5th month, late summer) and I say fuck it. WE DO THIS THE STUPID WAAAAAAY









FUCK

So right after I let the plug collapse, I realized I'd fucked it up. You're supposed to ALSO channel out the first aquifer layer, because otherwise, the plug will just crash down, make a hell of a lot of noise and dust, throw shit everywhere, and then just sit on top and not actually go anywhere or punch through aquifer.

FUCK. Okay we do this again in a different spot I guess? At least Mister The Miner Man's robe was badass enough to deflect the damage from falling on his ass.

AUTUMN HAS COME. FIRST AUTOSAVE IS ACTIVE.

Well this is already a trainwreck. The wagons bypassed our site (which probably means no stone) because I didn't bother putting up a depot. WHOOPS. Either way, though, they showed up right as the miner was taking a snooze, but if he wasn't, then we probably wouldn't even need the stone. Argh. Oh well, let's see what they have...

OH JEEZ, THAT'S NEW



The outpost liaison used to just come by, say "I am your liaison. Let's discuss your situation" and then just jump straight into the trade agreement (which was literally all he did ever). Now, this big ol' thing shows up and tells you what's going on outside in the world. We can't do much about it yet, but it's sort of an advance notice in case an army is coming our way. In this case, this one civ called The Menace of Slime is going and rampaging through the land and conquering so much territory. They even conquered some place just a day ago! Sounds like we may want to get our defenses up--and by that I mean get under the aquifer and then put walls up.

HEY GUYS REMEMBER THESE ASSHOLES? THEY'RE BACK!



argh... And just as we were in the middle of bringing the few crafts we made out of the draft animals' bones to the depot to see if we could get any mechanisms out of it. That is a horribly long and contrived sentence, and I have no desire to fix it. Fuck all of you pedants preemptively. (inb4 "preemptively is supposed to be at the front of the sentence you BOOR")

I brought hammerman, not archers, so they might get away with some shit, but I'm not gonna just kinda sit around and LET it happen! TO ARMS!

Well yikes, the miner took a swing at a bird without my input! Take him down, broski!



You are a gentleman and a scholar.

Hah! The caravan guards are also taking notice of the avian menace and are not having any of this shit. A macedwarf and one of my hammerdwarves jumped on a bird and beat the tar out of him until his head was crushed inward. Which is also new: blunt damage no longer necessarily kills by jamming skulls through brains. They're a bit tougher, but now there's a new level of damage beyond "broken", which flags the part as unfit for reanimation. Of course, it's currently hilariously easy to go straight to this new "pulping" damage, because lol, balance, but I'll take any advantage I can get. Also fuck keas. Fuck all those dirty thieving parrots in the pooper.

Miner 1: "I cannot just stand by. I will take revenge!" Yeah, you show them what for, buddy!

Now, one of the new mechanics is that creatures now experience the "flight" half of the fight-or-flight response. Seeing your buddies (or even complete strangers) get their shit wrecked basically forces you to make a will save or you lose your shit and bugger off. The keas are now Overcome by Terror, and the living ones are running away without any ill-gotten gains.

HOLY SHIT. I JUST SAW SOMETHING I'VE NEVER SEEN EVER IN MY LIFE.

THE GODDAMN BROKER SHOWED UP AT THE DEPOT TO TRADE IMMEDIATELY. WITH ZERO DELAY. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EXCITING THIS IS. THAT NEVER EVER FUCKING HAPPENS. Seriously. The Trade at Depot job has a hilariously low job priority, below even "no job", and this causes them to sometimes just not want to do their job for lol reasons.

Granted, they didn't have any stone because I cocked up, and all I ended up getting were three barrels of booze, but still. Moral victory.

I think I'll wait to drop the plug, though, because I don't want to blast them with cave dust. So I'll put up some temporary shielding walls and see if that keeps the dust from battering anyone too badly.

HEY GUYS I DID IT RIGHT THIS TIME I THINK



Crud. Well. Now, before I can figure out how much more crap there is to do with the aquifer, I have to process the migrants that just showed up. I think this is a good place to call it, so, next time, we see if we can finally move underground, we lament the loss of six meat roasts that were pilfered by a thieving bird, and we plot our revenge against the world and all its contents!

Nice to see this one get going again.

What kind of evil/dangerous place did you pick anyway? It's not raining blood .. but there's a necromancer's tower?

It's actually not evil at all. There's a necromancer who built himself a tower, and he's like, a couple blocks north of us, so we'll maybe get sieges from him and his zombies, but that's the extent of the evil we'll experience.

Of course, there's plenty of fun things underground if it comes to that.

I'm not gonna lie, I've kinda put this off. Again. But this time I have an excuse! I've been busy lately, running all over town for this, that and the other thing. Also maintaining the labor spreadsheet suuuuucks. But it seems my waiting has paid off; I checked the bay12 forums on a whim, and Dwarf Therapist is properly updated! (There's also a new version coming out over the weekend, but I don't feel like updating for reasons we should be well aware of. Especially since this one adds new features that could break lots of stuff.) This means no more labor spreadsheet, no more clunky ingame interface, and no more excuse for me being a lazy butt. So we're gonna destroy the rest of the world now.

Anyway, aside from some basic maintenance stuff, here's the next goal:



The water is misleading: what happened is that when the giant chunk of dirt fell down, the water underneath teleported on top of the plug. It's since mostly drained off and is nothing but puddles now, but it obscures the ground beneath and that's why I mention it. It's not even enough water to cancel jobs, and it'll evaporate in time. (The teleporting mechanic, by the way, is what makes 'magma pistons' possible, and I might explain what that means in the future when I start on one. If I start on one, that is.) We're leaving a 1-tile wall between the water and the interior, though, and then digging stairs down below.

......

GOD DAMMIT I'M AN IDIOT AND I COCKED IT UP A SECOND TIME!

So here's where I screwed up: You're not supposed to drop the entire plug. If you do, you can't dig any deeper, since in order to dig out the wet area, you'd have to be able to dig in 7/7 water. Which you can't do, and will also drown in. You have to use constructions to support the interior mass, and then drop one ring at a time, prepping the drop site in between rings. God. Dammit.

LET'S TRY THIS A THIRD TIME LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

Wait a minute, hold the horses. I lucked out; the aquifer was only one layer deep, and we were able to tunnel directly down into dry stone beneath.

Well THAT didn't take long!



Found the caverns already... and only at z=127! Remember, ground level is z=135, so that's not very far down at all. I had the caves sealed up right away, especially since we confirmed the presence of giant cave spider web, which means giant cave spiders might show up at some point. Looking forward to breeding up an army of them~

In any event, we can just go around the caves to build the dormitories deeper underground (out of noise level for the most part) and get everyone moved underground. We have stone now, as well as some tetrahedrite (copper, with a 25% chance of silver as well), and that opens nearly every door.

What the balls? I was excavating the dining area to move everything underground, and then.... this happened.

(Image lost because I'm a doofus, but the Armorer got promoted to Baron)

I'm just guessing here, but I think maybe it means he was the heir to the baron, and the baron kicked the bucket, thus elevating him to nobility. This is not great. He won't do any labor anymore, and he'll be real upset because we can't fulfill his lavish accomodation requirements, and we might garner unwanted goblin attention before we're ready. Arghabargh.

Winter is upon us. God save our souls.

OH MY GOD THE NEW BARON IS ALREADY MANDATING GOODS. MOTHER FUCKER THIS GUY IS ASKING FOR A FLOGGING.



This guy has the worst possible personality for a nobleman. Ugh.

Those damn parrots are making off with our food again. I'm storing all the food underground now that I've got an area dug out. Everything else is underground, save for some thread and stuff in the wagon.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!



This is untrue, as I have a stockpile with plenty of seeds sitting on the ground. Yet for whatever reason, the game insists they don't exist. I think I'm gonna call this one here, and see about what it'll take to fix this, since the meat is running out (and the thieving parrots haven't helped, either).

Laula out!

Okay. I THINK I have a plan for the farms. I was planning on eventually moving them underground anyways, but it looks like I'll just have to move them to another part of the world in the intermediary time. And then just keep constructing/reconstructing the farm plot until it decides on allowing for planting to happen. Wargarble.

It's fine, if all else fails we can gather plants from the surface. Maybe.

WELCOME TO BUGGY DWARF FORTRESS ALSO PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME:



That's a result of the cave-in leaving contaminants behind. This isn't unusual. What IS unusual is the fact that it's fucking suspended in midair. That's not natural.

Farms still aren't farming. I never thought I'd have to do this... but I'm going fishing. Note I have literally never fished in DF before. Ever. Not fucking once. THIS is what the noseeds bug has reduced me to. Argh. Fuck you Dwarf Fortress.

So fishing is two steps:

Activity zones: You need an activity zone set over water, and then you have to flag it as a fishing zone (instead of, say, a sand collection zone or a garbage dump zone or a prisoner relocation zone). If you have an idle dwarf with the fishing labor enabled, he might decide to go fish. This requires no tools because dwarves fish with their beards.

Fishery workshop: Fishing gets you a raw fish. You won't want to eat this. Instead, send it to the fishery to be gutted and cleaned. You can eat the fish from there, or send it to the kitchen for cooking (which I'll likely do to get rid of the apparently useless seeds that I can't farm with.)

Making booze will be trickier. We might have to subsist on aquifer water for a while if I can't get plant gathering to work on the surface. And this also means we have to have surface access, or start harvesting underground plants. Which runs the risk of trees being problematic... I'll have to isolate a zone and channel out like, 8 z-levels to guarantee that doesn't happen.

There is exactly one other non-plant source of alcohol that can be obtained, though. Mead. Mead is made from honey, which is a pain in the ASS to get. First of all, you have to go outside for this, too, so it's mostly moot. Second, you have to actually have honey bees on the map, which you may or may not have. Then, you need to make an artificial hive, from any valid material: stone, wood, metal, glass, or even ceramics will work. Then there's a shit-ton of micromanagement you have to do, and then wait nine months for the colony to even be harvestable. From the wiki: "Beekeeping as an industry currently doesn't produce as many products as it really should to be worthwhile. In addition, there is no way to tell beekeepers to prioritize fortress hives over wild ones for colony installation - they will often wander far out into the map without even the ambusher's crossbows for self-protection." So we won't be doing that. Fishing, however, IS viable, and so is plant gathering (if I can make it work, as it's been reported to be buggy in 40.x versions).

Argh. Hit the second cavern layer. It's RIGHT underneath the first one. Luckily I think we can go through a rock column and go underneath...

Spring's here... food supplies are still poop, though fishing has begun. I had one dwarf go and gather many many plants from the surface, and I plan on brewing them up. I need to get a permanent workspace dug out, though, and that'll have to be beneath the caves. Once that happens, I can put in more organized workshop areas and get production stabilized.

It's starting to look like we can spread out down here. We DID have a metric shitload of z-levels between here and ground zero, so to speak... though it's never really a good guarantee that the magma will be near zero. I've seen the true bottom anywhere from z=20 to z=-20, so who knows? Ah well, if we find the caverns while digging beds, I'll just build around.

MOTHER FUCKER, AS SOON AS I UNPAUSED AFTER WRITING THAT, WE HIT THE THIRD CAVERN.

WAIT WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT?!



This bag of dicks showed up and didn't even announce his presence! And I'm busy digging underground and also trying not to starve! What a cu..... cuneiform script. Yeah you thought I was gonna say something offensive. Well, more offensive than usual.



Oh. Oh no. Oh no, son, you did not just.... Bitch, I will wreck you. Go on. Come back when we're not starving, I'll tear you limb from limb!

AND HE JUST FUCKING RUNS OFF WITHOUT A WORD AFTER THAT! OH MY GOD HE IS GETTING PULVERIZED NEXT TIME I SEE HIM. MARK MY WORDS.

Oh hello there....



Usually, you'll dig through magma before you hit SMR, but that, my friends, means we hit the bottom. At z=102. That's quite unusual... at least in my experience. Remember that ground level is z=135, and in Cursenegated we had to go down about this far just to reach the FIRST cavern! Hm, I may just have to pick a level and say "don't care if it's within 8 z-levels of active mining, noise be damned." Of course, NOW I'm tempted to look around for magma. I won't, but I'm tempted.

Elves are here, and.... This is new.



I don't think tame animals are supposed to escape from cages. Granted, in older versions, you outright couldn't escape from a non-artifact cage (clearly it was supposed to be the opposite), so that's clearly fixed, but.... Hm. Yeah, now we have a vermin flying around the map that probably won't despawn. Ugh. Lamesauce. Here's hoping they don't release the giant badgers...

Hm. The farm plots that weren't producing? They're producing again. They just wouldn't produce in the winter for... some reason? But it said it was lack of seeds, and it correctly states that plump helmets are the only spring crop I have seeds for... I don't get this game. I just.

Hallelujah, more slave labor! Migrants arrived and I'm putting them to work on walls and floor-smoothing (to get the Baron out of his funk), then probably setting up some fishing and other auxiliary labors. Maybe when this is over I'll have enough idle hands to haul stone! (Haha yeah right)

Good lord it's the 14th of Felsite already. (3rd month, late spring. Year 251.) Still been doing some pretty routine maintenance tasks. Got all the unneeded pet animals that the migrants brought, and turned them into foodstuffs, so that's good. Picked up a bit of fruit from the elves with hastily made crafts and brewed them into alcohol. Got farms up and running again... MAYBE. Haven't tried growing stuff yet, the farmer just FINALLY stopped doing anything else and decided to till the soil at long last. Digging out space for bedrooms and workshops. (Which reminds me, need to pick a spot for nobility rooms.) The fishery has just barely been keeping us fed, and supplemented with all the gathered plants and the meat we got, I think we'll be okay until I get farming up and running. My next major task, though, is to get enough of these tasks out of the way that I can get a hauling force to move all the ore into one area, and then start smelting operations. We've gone too long with our door just wide open, I don't like it. It's very unsafe and very contrary to my play style--and we'd be fine if we had a damn militia, but we don't!

It is the 20th of Hemanite, 251 (4th month, Early Summer) and I've been doing pretty uninteresting things. Mining out metal veins, setting up some workshops (even if I don't have ALL the infrastructure in place to supply them efficiently yet), getting permanent, individual bedrooms set up... The food situation is mostly under control, as the farmers appear to be planting (for now), and we've got fishing going on nonstop along with all the surplus meat from butchering. I've got a legendary +5 miner who I took off-duty, and until I'm ready to put him in a military squad, I've got him cooking all the food into meals so we can consolidate the stacks a bit.

What brought me to mention stuff is that our first strange mood happened. A mason, which isn't super exciting (he'll probably make furniture, though, instead of a garbage craft), but he DID go fey, which means he'll be legendary. This pleases me greatly.

Hm. He grabbed a single chunk of tetrahedrite, and went to work immediately. I'm a little disappointed he grabbed a metal ore, but at least he didn't order ten yak hair cloths, five pounds of crystal glass and a shrubbery.

And by the 25th of Hemanite he was done with his masterwork table! As artifacts go, it's incredibly boring, just a generic image of "Desert titans". No named titans, no actions, just, hey, desert titans being titans! We're not even in the desert, you scrub! Nonetheless, it'll do well to please the baron until I deign to use it as artifact bait. Its name: Igathzithis, "The Scraped Mesh."

Man. The one thing I really miss DFHack for was the "digvein" command. If you'd already exposed a vein of metal, you could hover the cursor over the exposed tile, and it would designate all the metal tiles in that vein for digging--even the ones you hadn't revealed yet. Which prevents you from having to constantly redesignate tiles after each one is mined. It's a quality-of-life thing, because it just lets me fire and forget while I go micromanage some other aspect of the fort. Like right now, I dug stairs in a bad place over some soil and I'm building walls on the z-level below so I can plug it up, but I have to designate each wall one at a time or the dwarves will get stuck or miss spots. And I can't do that while I'm hovering over the miners and babysitting them. Man, I need a drink and I don't even drink alcohol! srsly kids dont drink itll ruin yer brain

A month later, on the 20th of Malachite (5th month, mid-summer), we had our first childbirth in the fort! Aaaaand it's the fuckin' baroness consort. Aka, the baron's wife. More fucking nobility is just what we needed. No it's not. At least I think he'll do work when he grows up--if we're alive that long, and if the baron doesn't give up the ghost and pass the title on.

Right after that, though, our mechanic (who's currently working as an engraver since I'm not making any mechanisms yet) gave birth as well. Both children were boys. Yay, dwarven heirs! At least the kids actually freaking get dwarf-sized when they grow up, instead of being baby-sized. That was problematic.

Yikes, another new baby boy, courtesy of a fisherdwarf. Gettin' freaky with it here at The Soul of Battles!

Oh hell. Mostly been industry for a while, but...



An "elk bird" is a cavern creature, nothing scary. That, however, is a Giant Cave Spider, which is. That's a very dead bird, and I'm very glad it's on the other side of the cave wall, because oh god is it ever close to the staircase. Little bit terrified right now. Just a bit.

SHIT, man, the caravan is early this year. It's only the 9th of Limestone! (7th month, early autumn) Also yeah, that gives you an idea of just how slow going things have been. Just shoring up the infrastructure and foundation really.

More migrants on the 4th Sandstone (8th month, mid-autumn) and I think I'm gonna save here. There's barely anything for an update though, so, I'll resume this here soon.

HEY GUYS, DIDJA HEAR? A FUCKIN' MONTH COUNTS AS "SOON" NOW. EVERYTHING IS FINE.

oh boy. So kids can also have moods. We didn't experience this because there weren't (thankfully) a lot of kids at the old fort, thank you childcap. Now that kids aren't QUITE as horribly bugged, though, I've allowed them to exist, and so now we get a moody kid. They can't have skills, so they always become crafters (which is near-universally useless), and even if they go legendary in the useless skill (which this one will), they can't take advantage of it until adulthood. Yaaaaaaay, uselessness! Useless useless useless I want to burninate things now.

Oh boy. He wants two things: cut gems and bones. The latter, we thankfully have a pile of (although I JUST started the process of converting them into crafts and armor), but we won't have cut gems until the lazyass jewelers get the shops up. It hasn't been a priority because lol, luxuries, but since we've gotten things mostly settled and are starting to move into the industrial phase of dwarfdom, I had a couple jewelers set up in the corner to just cut all the gems and get it out of the way. Might be worthwhile now!

Sure enough... kiddo is now a legendary bone carver (which, by the time he's old enough to carve bones, I'll already have one) and made a useless garbage trinket that does literally nothing since we can't trade artifacts. wargarble

And here I thought nothing of note was going to happen for a while, again. But then... this happened.



My guess is that yak got stuck up in the tree when the merchants left, somehow, and since they're flagged as entity members they have sanity. Or in this specific case, HAD sanity. It just so happened to go berserk, meaning it'll kill whatever it can, and I don't know if it'll intentionally jump out of the tree (I assume not, since otherwise it would've left by now). This might get interesting... angry yaks, no me gusta.

so I mined out all the metal veins that were exposed, and I've moved on to digging a new, closer dining area and I've also designated the bedrooms for major expansion. It should be big enough now to support maximum occupancy. Y'know, when it's done... It's 11 Timber, 251 (9th month, late autumn) and I think I'll just call it here, pick up after something changes that lets me do fun things. Like I said, still working on industry at this point, and it's not terribly interesting to write about or even to play. So far.... You better believe, though, that once mechanics are up and running, I'm gonna go get some military services running and go take over the caverns.

THE FORGOTTEN BEAST SLUPI OSTLERDI HAS COME! A TOWERING SCALY MITE. IT HAS A PAIR OF KNOBBY ANTENNAE AND IT APPEARS TO BE EMACIATED. ITS DARK OLIVE SCALES ARE LARGE AND SET FAR APART. BEWARE ITS DEADLY DUST!

Fortunately it's squatting 7 or so levels below the bedroom in the lake, and can't get in yet. But we'll be having some fun with that once I'm ready to go tackling the caves.

HEY. THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG!

(Lost the screenshot cause I'm a doofus. It was an image of an elf zombie siege, with the message "The dead walk. Hide while you still can!")

These mother fuckers showed up on the first of the new year. Like... come on. Just.... WOW. Time to get sealed up I guess.

How fortuitous. Our doctor just finished his artifact. Possession, so no exp, but it was a leather shield. Which is fabulous. We may have to put that to use pretty soon.

wait huh?

Looked up some combat logs... A squad of elf zombies picked a fight with the kidnapped wife of a werebeast. She got wrecked, but she went down fighting. Sorta. Kinda. Okay not really.

So here's the situation. Dining room is dug out and the beds are about half done--which will hold upwards of a hundred dwarves. However, in order to keep the zombies out, I had to wall off the exit, which rendered the farms inaccessible. The good news is that we have enough prepared meals to last a while, and we have that aquifer, so I can just prep an area, drill into it from below, and irrigate some new farmland. The best part is, if I do it this way, I can put the farms wherever the hell I want--like, right inside the food storage room.

26th Granite: The insane yak is noted to be dead of dehydration. Thanks for pointing that out, skeleton elfman. UGH SIX FPS IS NO FUN TO PLAY ON. I need to get a zombie killing floor ready so that FPS can be recovered.

1st Slate: Booze is running low because idiot fucktards won't brew. I've ordered them to do that, and also mechanisms to be expedited. Not sure how long that'll take. Pipes are ready to be connected to the tap as soon as the bridge gets linked, and I've designated a room on the dining hall floor to be the HALL OF LEVERS. No lever gets built outside of that hall unless necessary, and no lever gets built ANYWHERE without a note describing it clearly and being labeled and following the naming conventions and protocol and bureacracy for the sake of not being dead.



Well, cock.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THERE'S A DOUCHEBAG OUTSIDE AND ALSO A BUNCH OF OTHER DOUCHEBAGS HEEEEEELP MEEEEEE

So titans are no bueno. The brief experience we had in Cursenegated was kind of an underselling, especially considering how well (relatively) that fort was doing before THE UNIVERSE EXPLODED. Blob-shaped titans have only one body part, preventing death from bisection or beheading. Titans made of inorganic materials, such as amber, have neither organs nor blood, and cannot be killed by brain damage or blood loss. And all titans are too large to be crushed by a drawbridge, as well as being immune to "traps" (notably cage traps.) Fortunately, since this one is not a web-slinger, if I were to capture a giant cave spider and strategically web some cage traps, I could have it relocated safely.

The problem is that it requires me to find, capture, and then not be slain by a giant cave spider. None of those tasks are easy, and I don't have time for any of them with the FUCKING HORDE OF THE UNDEAD chilling out above my roof. That was going to be top priority, but now I'm thinking we'll have to set up a dodge-hall and deal with the zombies seperately.

I don't know if zombies can jump or climb, but I'm going to build the trap so that it shouldn't be a problem if they can. The basic idea is to have an overhang so that the sneaky little buggers can't shimmy up the walls.

There's one problem, though. Since the idea of the trap is "lots of attacks to make them dodge and fall", I need to make either a lot of weapon traps or a lot of ballistae. One of those options does NOT work, and the other requires more resources than I really have. We're down to 50 logs, burning through them rapidly. In fact, I'm putting a moratorium on new bed construction for now.

So it's time to use some of the ZILLION pounds of Galena I've got lying around, and start smelting. This is going to require magma.

I don't know if I was smart enough to bring nickel, lemmie check...

One. ONE ore of garnierite. Just one. I hope it'll be enough for a minecart. I only NEED one, but it'll be a longer, semi-riskier trip. So, first step. We need to forge the minecart by hand. We also need glass pump components... been a while since I've done this, lemmie go look at the mechanism I rigged up in Cursenegated.

WOW. I just looked at the unit list.... There are no more than 13 zombies. Well, and a titan that I don't wanna mess with, but.... I think we can just shut this initial problem down and worry about longer-term defenses when I'm not under the gun so much. ALSO EDIT: I have one ore of garnierite, but nine already-smelted bars. This'll be plenty. AND I ALREADY FORGED A MINECART. WHEN DID I DO THIS? WHEN DID I DEVELOP FORESIGHT? WHO AM I AND WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH MYSELF?

Okay. The quick solution is to set up enough cage traps to cage all the zombies. That leaves the titan, who is a bit more difficult to immediately destroy, but we can handle him with containment instead of destruction. Hell, if I leave him in jail for a few years, he might just head for the hills as soon as I give him a path.

(See that would've been funny if he was a hill titan, but alas, he's a plains titan. Actually no that wouldn't have been funny either way.)

Now, of course, that doesn't mean I won't still be digging out the site for the dodge-me trap. It just means I won't be installing it until I'm swimming in silver spiked balls. And maybe some stonefall traps because stone is dirt cheap. After all, we're not going for damage here. Even stonefall traps would require a flood of mechanisms, which I currently don't have. GET ON THAT, YOU SLACKER!

Oh baby. This is the other thing I was hoping would happen. The titan and the zombies are picking a fight with each other. The titan's basically immortal, so he'll probably clean the zombies out for me. Bonus on top of bonus!



(This was going to be a picture of his memorial, but he apparently just "went missing" and no listed cause of death is given.)

.... Well how was I supposed to know amber was brittle? Okay fine. This actually is just as fine, since zombies are susceptible to cages and titans, even fragile ones, aren't. It won't be long before I can go logging again.

Okay, I think I now have a handle on how to retrieve the magma. So I'm gonna go find some and then set up the recovery system. Unfortunately, I need iron mechanisms for the roller that gets the minecart up out of the magma. I can use nickel for the chains, but not the mechanism. Because REASONS. I could melt some other iron goods down for raw material, but we don't even have any of that. Not even a zombie weapon. It just means we have to wait a little on that front, but we can put the rest of the infrastructure in. And besides, we still have to FIND the magma before we can get it out.

Hell. The SMR is shallow enough in this fort that I might just build the forges right over the magma sea and be done with the problem entirely. We'll see.

Heh. Found some crundles in the cave. For reference, a crundle is a small, cavernous, two-legged, clawed lizard that travels in packs, whose name is derived from an archaic word for dirtmounds and that's totally 100% accurate and for the love of god don't type 'crundle' into google images I swear to doge. It's relevant because that forgotten beast from before found them and kicked the crap out of them. Also, his poison seems to be a contact venom that causes severe blistering, nausea, and causes massive swelling from excess internal bleeding, to the point of necrosis. Looks extra dangerous. Do not want.

Welp. Finished the first mining project, so I decided to look for magma while I wait for mechanisms. (I did some funky things with a boulder and it just so happened that the mechanic wanted THAT boulder in particular, and so when he couldn't have it, he canceled the job entirely without my notice.) It did not take long.



well, I guess we go up a level and try again!

next level up we only got 3 tiles deep before hitting warm stone. I guess we just got "lucky" and found the one spot I could tunnel to the SMR. Gonna try the next level!

Three again. Good sign but no guarantee. If I breach from the side or below, miner gets roasted which is no good.

Ahah, see! The level above THAT one was also 3 tiles in. If I'd dug in deeper, my legendary miner would've gotten a very warm bath. I'm starting to wonder if I found a pipe, instead of the magma sea, but that's unlikely given how shallow everything is. The dining hall is on Z minus 21, and we're at Z minus 30 so far. The caverns aren't too far above, either.

Nah. I'm pretty sure it's not a pipe, just the sea. If it were a pipe, it'd probably be surrounded by obsidian, not granite. Also Z minus 29 got us farther than 3 tiles in... I'll drop a channel to see what's what down there. FAKEEDIT: Ooh, spoke too soon! This time, the tiles on the SIDE were warm. I'm gonna dig up one more level and sniff around that area, just to be safe. Magma doesn't have pressure until you give it some, but I'm still worried about digging down and having magma come spurting out and go all Ol' Faithful on us with fatal results.

Huh. Okay... dug a channel down from the level above (Z minus 28, which had no warm tiles) and I didn't get the reveal message I expected. Though I shouldn't have; solid tiles ABOVE magma also register as warm, even though you can mine them out safely. I'm perfectly fine, though, because it prevents you from channeling all the way down into magma unexpectedly. Now, let's see that deliciously glorious molten rock that will fuel our forges for a thousand years...

OH BABY THIS WAS A DOUBLE SURPRISE



We will play with that in the future. But trust me. When we do, it's gonna be fun. Also FUN. And possibly !!fun!! as well. (Object/creature names surrounded in double exclamation points indicate that the entity in question is on fire.)

After a minor channeling accident in which thankfully no dwarves were immolated, the forges are set up down on z minus 29. (Beds are on -19, workshops -20, and dining area/levers -21.) I think I'll just leave the forges down there, maybe even do a drop-shaft for the ore that's already been consolidated. So that's a load off my shoulders. We'll come back to this once I've smelted a shitton of mechanisms and can kill off some zombies to reclaim FPS. Cause hot damn.

So let me tell you about Adamantine.

It's a light blue metal that only occurs deep, deep beneath the earth. Almost never will you find a spire that doesn't get submurged in magma at some point, although I have seen it. That's the other interesting thing about its geology; raw adamantine is the only metal (currently) to show up in vertical veins that span Z-levels. Many Z-levels, in the case of adamantine.

Before it can be worked, metallic strands must be extracted from the rock, a painstakingly slow process that requires a unique skillset. (Its own labor/skill.) From there, the strands can be woven into cloth (a bad idea), used to stitch up an injured dwarf (DON'T LET THEM DO THIS, THE BASTARDS WILL DO IT ON THEIR OWN SINCE THEY DON'T RECOGNIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS STUFF), or smelted into thin wafers that can then be worked at the forges. Worked adamantine is about as dense as cork or styrofoam, an order of magnitude harder and sharper than steel, and does not shear one micron. If the tools were available, Adamantine could be filed into a thinner-than-mononucleic edge and still remain 100% rigid. Needless to say, it is absurdly expensive as a result.

We'll be making masterwork gear out of that in the future. It's also a (last resort) option for certain goods that must be magma-safe and cannot be made out of nickel or stone. Right now, though, I want my goddamn FPS back, so we're gonna cage us some zombies. And maybe throw them in the magma sea. (Sadly, that doesn't quite work, as they'd still just be burning forever. I think. They MIGHT have changed that in the new version.

I dug a trench to drain out the farmland, because I cocked up and left the tap running too long. And a drain is gonna be useful regardless. I found all kinds of metal down there though (all Galena but damn it's a stockpile) and so I was mining that out while waiting on mechanisms and cage traps. Finally, we got enough to satisfy me, so I'm sending a miner to unseal the outside. This can only end in death or glory. PRAISE ARMOK.

First zombie found its way downstairs.... it's got a long corridor to wind around before it hits the traps.... and it's moving VERY SLOWLY, thanks FPS.





GET REKT, BITCHES! I do have to make sure to forbid the cages, or else someone will try to haul the cage out while zombies are still streaming down the path, and that could get ugly. Although, I just tested with the second zombie, and I can just mass-forbid all the cages while they're still in the traps, along with the traps themselves, and they'll still operate and nobody will get munched. Victory to the dwarven race!

I've spent some time working on a gigantic pit I'm going to use to drop zombies (and other offensive creatures) to their death. This involves dodging caverns (something I THINK I've accounted for but will need to wait on the probing to finish before I confirm it) and breaching the aquifer again to get extra height. I also finally uncorked the flooded farmland--we've got lots more metal to go but I just want to get the water evaporated and hopefully save some cycles. Also we need moar plants in the future.

Well, the humans sent a diplomat, so let's have a chat with him. Though this reminds me I need to dedicate a baron's quarters and a meeting office for him. I meant to dole out personal quarters for him once we got underground and established, but then THINGS happened and I keep putting it off for some reason.

Oh. Oh hell no. The elves sent another diplomat. At least it was announced this time, but... son of a bitch, if he takes any lip with me I WILL order him executed right then and there.

And no sooner did the outpost liasion and the dwarven caravan arrive. Sweet. Time for some much needed metal... dunno if I have anything I can sell, though. I don't think they fixed the bug where you can't trade animals... (If you try, they just take the animal out of the cage and to the depot. This is not a good idea if you have a caged zombie.)



You elves are partial in particular to the trees EVERYWHERE. Slimy little pricks. And they're only being polite and giving us even an option because we're a barony now. Well fuck these dicks. I'd like to smite them but they haven't offended me enough THIS time, so I'll say "sure" and murder him next time.

ASSHOLE CALLED ME "BUTCHER" WHEN WE TRIED TO BARGAIN. AND THE SHORT JOKES, TOO! NOPE, HE DOES NOT GET TO HAVE A THIRD MEETING. NEXT TIME HE WALKS IN OUR DOORS IT WILL BE HIS LAST.

Traded all the gems I'd cut up (cause that's all I had and I'll never decorate them) and got some iron, tin, flux, booze, and a bit of coal.

Farts. First casualty: a miner fell into his own channel, and it flooded. I'll be making sure it never happens again. Admittedly, part of the issue is that dwarves get sick from the sun if you don't regularly expose them, and because of ZOMBIES, that didn't happen.

Miiiiiigrants! Praise the migrants, as I am in need of more workforce right now. However, I can't be arsed to process them right now, so we call this here for now.

I was giggling pretty much all the way through this most recent update.

Did the amber titan actually die to the zombies? Or just take damage? The message is a little unclear.

It got OHKO'd.

Yeah.

I think it died. I've had the same thing happen to me - a titan showing up while a zombie invasion was going on. It killed quite a lot of zombies, too. Before it died, that is.

The dwarves didn't see him die so they can't know for sure but once the surface is clear and dwarves can go out again they will probably discover his corpse, at which point his status will become "dead" rather than "missing".

On hiatus