Okol Anam: There Will Be Blood [Let's Play Dwarf Fortress!]

Blood is scary, so I will continue to be a doctor.

Put me down for the next wave of sacrifices migrants. Anything in a craftsdwarf capacity would be fine.

I want to be a drunk stone crafter. Failing that, I'd like to drunkenly wield a war hammer while wearing my husband's pink, mighty armour.

VACATION UPDATE:

I've been hard at work engineering THE GAUNTLET (v 1.0) and am proud to present my initial, very detailed, plans.

I'm sure it's all very self explanatory. Enemies come from north, we come from south.



- Eddie

Attached Thumbnails

 

Thanks for including me in this! I'll take Cook or Animal Trainer.

(Repost from a couple days ago, got lost in the server move)

I have been informed that I have arrived at this fine fortress! It looks like my history wants me to be a Doctor, which is fine I guess. I don't know if that's a full-time job or only useful after battles, though, so if we multi-class it up I'd totally be up for doing some Brewing on the side. Or, hell, Animal Training.

I see that I'm married to Kishi, and the proud father of Mr.Bungle.

Also it's been ages since I've read a DF LP....
What.....
What's with all the blood here...?

It makes me uneasy.

My post got eaten too, so let me resay that if I ever show up at the fortress I'd like to be either a gem cutter and engraver or a miner and military picksdwarf.

I am okay with this.

Looks like a few posts were munched! All I remember is that I guess we're going to have a squad if pickdwarves?

- Eddie

Oh shit yeah posts totally got eaten. Server move? That's news to me. Shows how much I pay attention.

TL;DR I mentioned that making militia squads of ex-Miners is really good because the Mining skill is used for combat rolls with a pickaxe, and they happen to be cripplingly effective edged weapons in their own right.

1st Hematite, 154

Well good news, bad news. Good news: if things go wrong I will no long be blamed.

The bad news is that, following a vote, Awkward Grunt has been elected mayor. His platform was simple: we have no idea how much stuff we have. And he's the dwarf to appoint the dwarf to figure it out.






Awkward Grunt says that it's a problem that we don't know how many picks we have, let alone how many barrels of booze. Doesn't he know the drawven saying, "never count your drinks unless you're paying?"




He assigns Googleshng--one of our new dwarves--to run around tallying everything. He also assigns me as manager, which I'm confident is simply to get me out of the way. He immediately begins complaining that he needs an office, a private dining hall, and a nicer bedroom.

Googleshng meekly asks for his own office, and I tell the dwarves that if I'm going to be manager they should find a place for me to sit down as well.

Well, better get to managing. First things first is figuring out who is doing what in this damned place. I lost track after our population doubled the first time.



26th Hematite, 154

One of our craftsdwarves, Son of Sinistar, creates a masterpiece figure of Our first queen of the Relic of Equaling, Rith Wordoils.

As dwarven history states, Rith was a great wrestler, and the sad victim of the forgotten best Uker Holewaves. Uker of course, claimed many victims --49 in total--but hasn't been seen since it committed regicide.



6th Malachite, 154

Even more migrants have come! Thankfully, only about a dozen this time. Awkward Grunt chalks it up to his new "open door" policy but I continue fail to see why you would have a door if you're not going to use it from time to time.






Mr. Bean introduces himself as a doctor of some reknown, along with his wife Lucas, a bowyer, and three children. I tell Mr. Bean that we could use another doctor, and tell Lucas that we're dwarves, not elves, so unless she's willing to mine she can peddle her bowyer skills elsewhere.

She reluctantly shuffles away with a pick.






Another married couple shuffle in afterward, although with only one of their children in toe. The wife introduces herself as ExciteMike, and her husband SpoonyBardOL. I regretfully informed her that we don't need any farmers, and that if her husband is looking to catch any fish he is in the wrong thrice-cursed fortress.

I tell them that they're lucky enough to get some of the last few jobs, as there is an opening as a brewer and as a cook down in our kitchens.






Another couple, more damned kids. Nearly a third of our fortress is now rugrats or tots old enough to crimp our food and booze supplies, but too young to be put to work. I sigh and tell Red Hedgehog and Balrog to get hauling.






The final couple is thankfully childless. I'm about to assign sraymonds and her husband djSyndrome to hauling duty, when she mentions that she's pretty good with mechanics. We already have two dwarves who hve been handling that, but one of them (Blitzblast) drank the last of our rum this morning before I could get a cup.

One scratch in my ledger later, and sraymonds is off to build mechanisms and Blitzblast is off to haul refuse.

You know, being a manager may be alllllllright.





"Excuse me," says one of the remaining three dwarves, "We're looking for our son."

I tell them that if they've lost their kid that's their problem, but they say that their son arrived earlier in the year. His name is Octopus Prime, one of the two dwarves I've assigned to help engrave the fortress. I tell them they can probably find him on our soon-to-be-opened temple floor, smoothing out the stone in Awkward Grunt's dining room.




Our final migrant is a cocky, thick lipped dwarf who introduces herself as madhair60.

"I heard you were needing THE GREATEST cheesemaker in all the land!"

I stare at her with a cross look in my eyes for a solid minute before the smirk wipes of her face and tell her to dodge human blood rain while she brings in some of the chopped lumber outside.


I tally my final job list:

MINERS: Brickroad, Eddie, TheSL, Lucas
CARPENTER/WOOD CUTTERS: Galadrome, Destil, Solitayre, Taeryn
ENGRAVERS: Octopus Prime, Kishi
MASONS: Mightyblue, Paul le Fou, Sky Render, Red Hedgehog
DOCTORS: Dawnswalker, Kirin, Mr. Bean
BREWERS: Mogri, Adrenaline, ExciteMike
COOKS: Patrick, Zef, SpoonyBardOL
GROWERS: Alixsar, LancerECNM, Bongo Bill
ARMORSMITH: aturtledoesbite
WEAPONSMITH:McClain
GEM CUTTERS: Sven, shivam
CLOTHIER/WEAVERS: Sprite, Awkward Grunt
LEATHER WORKER/BUTCHER/TANNERS: Calorie Mate, MetManMas
STONECRAFTERS: Gerad, Kylie, Son of Sinistar, Sarcasmorator, Balrog
BONECRAFTER: BEAT (note in margin: he refused to do anything else)
MECHANICS: Torzelbaum, sraymonds
WOOD BURNERS: Dizzy, Pajaro Pete
FURNACE OPERATORS: MCBanjoMike, Wolfgang
SOAP DWARF: Ample Vigor


9th Malachite, 154




As I'm organizing rooms and furnishings for our new dwarves, TheSL comes up whooping and yelling, "Marble, marble!"




Flux stone! Our furnace operation has just begun, but we can use this marble to make pig iron with our iron reserves. I order the dwarves to start digging some out, but to keep diving. We still need water, and lava would be handy so we could rely less on wood as a fuel source.

I also ask their small breach into the cavern closed; we don't have the military yet to leave such a vulnerability open.



11th Malachite, 154




With a half-decent office, dining hall and bedroom all for himself, Awkward Grunt barges into my office and demands I make some shields.

No problem, we'll need some anyway.

"We're pretty busy, I'll see if I can squeeze some in," I snarkily tell our mayor. He leaves in a huff as I send orders for Taeryn to grab some wood and turn it into shields.



12th Malachite, 154




Another dwarf taken by a mood! this time, it's the late LaularuKryumo's son, onimaruxlr.




He claims a craftsdwarf workshop and starts muttering:

rough... color...
stone.. rock...
cloth... thread...
leather... skin...
bones... yes...

Then he just... stands there. According to Googleshng's account, we've got supplies of all of that, save for cloth. We only have pig tail cloth, not any yarn or silk. If he wants either of the other two, I'm afraid he'll need to wait until a caravan comes.


19th Malchite, 154




Another cavern has been discovered! The reports sy this one is literally *30* standard dwarf floors (SDF) deep. Thirty! And it contains an underground lake!

A well is not going to be an option here. We'll have to construct the equipment to pump water up, but at almost 100 floors below our hospital this will be quite the project. But a necessary one if we wish to have a working hospital.



26th Malachite, 154

Two new additions to our fotress to report.

Son of Sinistar has given birth to a baby boy, naming it "philliam." This is her and aturtledoesbite's third child!

Blitzblast and Solitayre meanwhile celebrate their first child. They name their new baby girl VorpalEdge.

This brings the Fort's child population up to 23. That's about 1/3rd of the fortress. Actually quite worrying!


4th Galena, 154




We've had a lot of dwarves moaning about the blood rain, so I've finally got around to christening new temples to all seven of our major gods, as well as an agnostic one. They will need musical instruments, but that will have to wait until we get some metal bars we're not going anything with.

My tally on who worships who is as follows:

Onget (Earth) - 12 worshippers
Stettad (Wealth, Jewels) - 13 worshippers
The Gravel of Flames (Mountains, Volcanos) - 2 worshippers
Rovol the Healing Keeper (Fortresses) - 15 worshippers
Noton the Goldenrod Nature (Food, Fertility, Agriculture, The Rain, Thunder) - 12 worshippers
Uker (Oceans) - 12 worshippers
Arceth the Focus of Paging (Writing) - 5 worshippers



26th Galena, 154






A swordsdwarf named Lorbam Shenkon has come to visit, our first. We unfortunately have no tavern yet to welcome her, but we do have something you won't find everywhere...

Aaah responsibility! Oh gosh oh jeeze.

I take it the caravan didn't show up in time.

err, I mean, OOOOOGIE BOOGIE BOOGIE

3rd Limestone, 154

Mad as an elf, onimaruxlr has begun tossing off all of his clothes and dashing about, "playing" with whatever voices have taken of his mind.




I am preparing for the inevitable.



17th Limetone, 154




A dwarven caravan! To late to save onimaruxlr's life, but we could certainly use the food.

I keep a close eye on the caravan to ensure it doesn't mysteriously disappear as I order dwarves to start hauling goods to our trading post.



19th Limestone, 154

Ingiz Tetothineth saunters up from the dining room where she's been for bout six months and meets with Awkward Grunt. He tells me later that apparently Tobul Channelsinge has become mayor of the Metal of Lights. Tobul is a real mean dwarf; I remember her regularly wrestling dwarves younger than her for kicks. I wonder how she wrangled that position?

I told Awkward Dwarf to make sure the Homelands brings us more food. Bless our farmers, but we need more variety.




Awkward Grunt comes back with a list of items to prioritize. Rings, earrings and figurines we can do. I put the order in with Gerad, Kylie, Son of Sinistar, Sarcasmorator and Balrog to focus their work.

The traders are taking too long to set up, so I go for a nap.



24th Limestone, 154




I make some trades for more food and some cloth, but I notice that there are a whole lot of bins sitting nearby that our dwarves haven't moved for trading.






It turns out to be because our mayor has banned the export of scepters. Any bin that contains one has not been moved. Which is most of them.

I curse our fickle "leader" and order dwarves to move the scepters elsewhere so maybe we can trade for more booze and cloth.



28th Limestone, 154

More dwarves join our happy outpost! And by "join" I mean "stumble into our unique weather" and "get completely freaked out by it."




Daikaiju is a relatively rare migrant: she has training as a miner. Most dwarven miners are content to dig for gems in the place they start their career at, living relatively life of luxury until they are inevitably caught in a cave-in or eaten by a troll/forgotten beast.

If Daikaiju is here, it probably means she made a noble very very angry.






Our newest batch of married couples are a pair of youngins named Tomm Guycot and Büge. I put them both down for hauling duty, noting that Tomm Guycot is another potential recruit for any future Marksdwarf squad.






Our next couple, Egarwaen and ArugulaZ, come with one of their two children, JCDenton. Egarwaen is a tough looking broad, another Ranger, while her husband claims to be a doctor of some fashion. They spend the brief time in front of me sniping at each other, but they both seem to really care for their young son.




I also record another fisherdwarf named blinkpen. I have no idea what drives young dwarves into the profession, given the high likelihood you will find yourself ambushed by a goblin or elf. While disappointed that there are no rivers to fish from nearby, she is happy to hear that we have a tavern under construction. She goes away mumbling about throwing candlelight dinners.






Parish and her husband mopinks are yet another couple disappointed that all our positions are currently filled, and that our military is currently non-existent. The husband, mopkins, shuffles slowly in moaning about what a terrible idea moving here was, but Parish seems surprisingly chipper about arriving here, despite being covered in a layer of blood rain. They also present their lone child dussssstin, who can join the other 20+ kids because our fortess is apparently being advertised as some sort of day care in the Homelands.






Our last couple is by far the oldest of the new migrants. While not the oldest dwarves in the fortress, their powers of memory place them in the upper percentile of dwarves I am not trusting important orders to.


4th Sandstone, 154




Enough scepters get moved out of their former bins that I can clear out most of the cloth and leather in the caravan. I also grab all of their food and booze, along with some seeds. With materials in hand, I can finally start working on clothes for our dwarves.

We also get an unusual visitor: a goblin bard.




The filthy goblin says she means no harm and is just here to visit our temples, but I tell every dwarf to keep an eye on her and report anything suspicious.



17th Sandstone, 154




Well, it was inevitable. The poor child, onimarulxr has passed away, too crazy to whet his own thirst with the sweet sweet booze.

His body and belongs will be properly buried in his tomb, a short distance away from his mother's.




For a dwarf that has lost both his wife and son less than a year apart, jovewolf is taking it all pretty well all things considered.



18th Sandstone, 154

The merchants leave on their journey. I cross my fingers that they make it back to their home safely. Igniz, the outpost liaison, parks her butt back in our dining hall.




Our new miner, Lucas, finishes digging out what will become our tavern. By vote, it will be called the Muffin of Truth. We're still a ways from furnishing it yet.



5th Timber, 154

Brickroad was in a mining accident!




One of our long-term projects is bringing some of the water found deep below Okol Anam closer to our tavern/hospital. While er, LUCAS, totally not me, was craving out a floor some of the resulting rock fell on top of Brickroad, breaking his leg.

Dawnswalker gets Mr. Bean to patch him up in a cast and hands him a pair of crutches, along with orders to rest in the hospital. He figures Brickroad will recover.

Lucas denies any wrongdoing. He would!



10th Timber, 154

One of our gem cutters, Sven, is taken by mood!

He claims a Jeweler's Workshop, and begins furiously working after grabbing only a single gem. While we have plenty of cloth (of various types) available, I'm relieved to know we won't lose two dwarves to this condition.



16th Timber




Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sven finishes his work quickly, creating a rose quartz scepter that menaces with spikes of rose quartz. I arrange for the scepter to be kept in good hands. I bet it would look really good on a dwarf also wearing a crown...



25th Timber, 154

I notice that the goblin has slipped out of our fortress. Apparently our dwarves got so used to her praying at our temples that they started to ignore her. Those fools.




We did a new Sworddwarf visiting however named Uvash. He unfortunately brings dire news: he is not the only one planning on visiting our fortess.



1st Moonstone, 154

The goblin bard leaves, and six days later a siege arrives?

COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!

also, re: scepters in bins, that's just ONE of the reasons I literally never use or make bins, ever. All my stockpiles are quantized, by way of minecart dumping stations. They're less glitchy and fiddly than bins, even if you do have to haul all the items individually when it comes time for trading. But even when I'm getting rid of excess Goblinite, I never find myself having too much problems with it taking too long to move stuff to the depot.

I'm just going to keep a separate stockpile for sceptres while Awkward Grunt is mayor. I'm too lazy to use minecarts.

- Eddie

So just how smart are dorfs? How capable of using resources available to them (like the forementioned minecarts) to solve problems? Do you need to tell them to utilize the minecarts, or given the need to Get Item A to Location B and a minecart and relevant tracks are present, will they figure it out on their own?

Booze, religion, and a nice bath can take the edge off any unexpected family deaths. If onimaruxlr had followed my example, he'd still be alive now!

You have to do all of the following:

• Tell a dwarf with the appropriate labors enabled to construct a minecart
• Tell a dwarf with the proper labors to construct a track stop in the proper locations
• Use the Designations menu to designate a minecart track to be engraved by a dwarf with the appropriate labor, OR tell a dwarf with the appropriate labor to construct minecart tracks with building materials
• Use the Vehicles/Hauling menu to create a hauling route
• Use the Vehicles/Hauling menu to create one or more Stops on this route
• Use the Vehicles/Hauling menu to assign a minecart to this route
• Use the Vehicles/Hauling menu to designate what types of items should be hauled on this route
• Use the Vehicles/Hauling menu to designate stockpiles that are permitted to transfer items into the minecart
• Use the Vehicles/Hauling menu to designate conditions under which the minecart should be pushed/guided/ridden (Capacity or time-based conditions are possible)
• Ensure that at least one dwarf has the Push/Haul Vehicle labor enabled

It's possible I missed a step somewhere. I don't THINK I did, but I made that list without the game open.

wow okay

dorfs are stupid

got it

Once you do all that, though, it looks like they'll use it if conditions meet the criteria you set, without you having to say "hey you, use that minecart".

Yes, No, Yes. Yes.



I talked about this some in a previous post but to really simplify things, dwarves will generally only do tasks that you have

a) allowed an individual dwarf to perform, and
b) asked a dwarf to do.

What this effectively means is that in most circumstances your dwarf will do no more (and no less) that you'll allowed them to do. A dwarf miner won't mine any square you've not designated for mining and a carpenter will choose to sleep on the floor next to a pile of lumber if you haven't told it to make a bed (and then "build" that bed somewhere), and a brewer will die of thirst if you don't tell it (and then set up a still) to make booze.

And is often seen in Okol Anam here, dwarves will happily run out into human blood rain that tanks their mood and sometimes causes them to become paralyzed with horror.

(There are certain exceptions; some tasks will happen automatically, such as looms turning thread into cloth. It's actually quite annoying if you want that thread around for other purposes!)

There are other factors that determine what a dwarf does. They will occasionally take breaks to eat, drink, sleep, and worship (if they have access to such things). Most dwarves are "smart" enough to try and run away from dangerous creatures, but will fight back automatically if they're caught.

And then there are "Strange Moods," which the LP has seen three of so far. Those moods will cause a dwarf to literally stop what they're doing, claim a workshop, and go hunting for specific items to create an artifact (forgoing food, booze, sleep, and eventually sanity if they can't get what they want). Strange Moods might require their own write-up, as artifacts can be pretty interesting.

Dwarves will do stupid things without direction however. As seen in the last update, they will happily cause small rockfalls while mining that can injure nearby dwarves. They'll nimbly leap to the side to dodge enemy attacks, even if the area they leap to has no solid ground beneath it. And as we may also see in this fortress, miners who are also soldiers (who use picks) won't use the same pick for mining as they do for killing.

When you have < 10 dwarves, you can do a bit of micromanaging to keep them out of danger and get the tasks you want done first to have priority. When you've got more than 10 (and fortresses can grow to 200 dwarves or more if you allow them to) that's impossible, so it becomes all about macromanagement. The game has plenty of tool to do so (it probably has TOO many tools to do so, contributing to the complexity of the game), which allows you to focus on the big-picture stuff.

- Eddie

I regularly use minecarts to transport stone, ore, wood and rough gems from mining areas to processing areas.
- i set all relevant stockpiles to accept from links only. this prevents dumb dorfs from hauling heavy rocks by hand which is very slow.
- mine out an area
- turn the new area into a big stockpile. Everything on the floor is now in a stockpile.
- link the temporary mine stockpile to a minecart depot stockpile with wheelbarrows to gather stones/ores/etc and then load them into the minecart
- dump the cart into a depot pile on the workshop floor
- distribute stone/ore/gems to the individual workshop piles for each trade
- ???
- Profit
So, its a lot of setup, but once you get it working, dwarfs use the minecart system to haul things quickly and efficiently.

My central stairs has a corkscrew minetrack that goes around it. Sometimes I push the cart down, but its risky. When you build tracks, they automatically get designated as a Low priority area (pathfinding calculates each square as 5x i think is default) and I bump it way up to Restricted, but if the restricted route is the only route to something, they will happily walk down the tracks and get creamed by a minecart that's going about 1 square per step and fully loaded. Then the fort rushes up the tracks to gather body parts and the former dwarf's socks... And Cats don't give a shit about restricted paths.

Guiding the cart means a dwarf won't run down another dwarf, but limits the cart speed to the dwarf speed. I haven't tried to tackle and automated upwards cart with rollers. I left space for access for axles and rollers, but its a lot of work for something I'm not even sure will work.

Don't use rollers if you don't have to. (Protip: you almost never have to use rollers.)

Impulse ramps. If a minecart is pushed, it'll be going fast enough to derail. If it derails onto a corner-ramp with forward and perpendicular egress (IE, if you're going east and the next tile is a N+E ramp) then the cart will actually GAIN speed. Somehow. It's magical. You can exploit this to easily get a cart to go up a spiral ramp with no mechanical power required.

impulse ramps are not physically possible and thus i consider them an exploit, but that's just me. I fully endorse their use in any LP where it increases the FUN

could you use impluse ramps as murder room traps somehow

because that would be amazing

I'm imagining secret doors opening and closing in walls as marksdwarves riding minecarts zoom across a room, firing a bolt in the couple seconds they have in the room.

You absolutely can, and I actually recommend simply loading a minecart full of stones. If it hits someone, they'll really feel it.

Sadly, I don't know that marksdwarves in carts would really work. You'd have to specifically send an on-duty marksdwarf to ride the vehicle in question, and I'm 99% sure that an on-duty militia won't take the "ride vehicle" job. Worth experimenting, I guess!

EDIT: I completely forgot. Water cannons.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119831.0

LK is correct. On duty dwarves won't take the "Ride Vehicle" job.

It is fairly common to use impulse ramps to create mine cart shotguns. When the cart full of (insert object, use your imagination) hits a fortification, it flings its contents through the fortification at great speed. I saw one that used metal bars and it really did look like a shotgun blast.

I've been fascinated by games like this recently (haven't gotten brave enough to actually play one yet) and I'd love to be a dorf when the next set of migrants arrives.

Prefs: (utility) tailoring, (art) ornate stonecutting and (war) hammer-dwarf whenever that should come into play.

That blood rain is the creepiest thing. Otherwise it doesn't seem like your dwarves are affected by weather?

The rain has a number of effects. The most immediate is that it has a negative effect on my dwarves' moods. Too much negativity can lead to dwarves flying into tempers (which can lead to "fun") but I have enough things that bring positive thoughts (nice bedrooms, temples, booze, a legendary dining hall) that will hopefully not happen.

The second effects are dwarves cancelling jobs due to terror, or outright becoming frozen in place. It also causes dwarves to spend more time bathing and the blood has a small effect on the frame rate (if you were to look at a dwarf's inventory they would be "carrying" two-dozen or more instances of human blood on their various body parts).

I *could* rig up what's known as a dwarven bathtub to remove the blood, but would that be fun? I don't know!

- Eddie

p.s. I'm not good enough at this game to start using complex minecarts contraptions but I appreciate the ideas!

p.p.s. Expect an update this weekend!