Tales from Dwarf Fortress
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Turns out the bit I was in was where you select where to start playing. I've started to get the hang of things slightly, but I've still no idea what I'm doing. So far I've started three settlements and abandoned them again;
1. Was on top of a rocky hill with nowhere to dig and no trees to cut down. FAIL
2. Was by a desert cliff. I could dig, but there was not many trees and no water for crops. FAIL
3. Was a cliff in a forest by a river. I made a little fort and started to farm mushrooms to eat. I didn't have any mushroom seeds to plant. FAIL
It would be nice if I could play the tutorial save, but it doesn't seem to want me to.
1. Was on top of a rocky hill with nowhere to dig and no trees to cut down. FAIL
2. Was by a desert cliff. I could dig, but there was not many trees and no water for crops. FAIL
3. Was a cliff in a forest by a river. I made a little fort and started to farm mushrooms to eat. I didn't have any mushroom seeds to plant. FAIL
It would be nice if I could play the tutorial save, but it doesn't seem to want me to.
4. Cliffs with loads of stone, high up. Water, trees, plants. Some racoons. Too much stone though, no underground soil to plant my mushrooms in. FAIL
5. Set off with the correctly skilled Dwarves after customising my loadout. Apparently this is essential. Started to make a nice tunnel system, set out areas for foord, wood and refuse to get everyone indoors. Realised I hadn't brought an axe, and still can't get farms to work despite having seeds. FAIL
5. Set off with the correctly skilled Dwarves after customising my loadout. Apparently this is essential. Started to make a nice tunnel system, set out areas for foord, wood and refuse to get everyone indoors. Realised I hadn't brought an axe, and still can't get farms to work despite having seeds. FAIL
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HereComesPete
- Throbbing Cupcake
- Posts: 10249
- Joined: February 17th, 2007, 23:05
- Location: The maleboge
Yeah, pretty much. Although I'm settling in the cliffs, being a dwarf colony. It's getting clearer though. Apparently it's a bug that causes my farms not to work - you need to irrigate them, which is supposed to only be needed for rock. So this game I found a small lake and used it to flood my complex before I moved in. Voila, mud!
I'm getting there now. I've a farm, a stone workshop, a wood workshop, a store room, a dorm, and a dining room. I made the furniture myself. I've also attracted a few immigrant dwarves. At the end of my first day my objective is to find out how to assign tasks to unskilled dwarves so they'll start learning the job. At the moment I have a few useless immigrants who do things I'm nowhere near needing, so I want to get them making souvenir mugs to sell to traders.
Fortress update: A couple of years in and my dwarves have a rudimentary fortress, such as it is. I've started to expand and mine now, digging out little bedrooms for my dwarves to keep them happy (presumably they can wank in peace now), while the big dorm will be used for military training. That'll be a nice surprise for anything which gets in and tries the first door. Ah yes, I have doors now. Far less draughty. I also have a double rank of rockfall traps in the entrance, but so far they've only succeeded in seeing off a goat. Finally, I've started trading with the dwarves from back home. However my bartering skills require some work, and I ended up giving away all my novelty mugs. Ah well, plenty more where they came from. Oh, and I made a refuse cave to put all the dead cockroaches in that the cat keeps dragging in.
So far, so good...
EDIT: Also, a couple of my dwarves have hijacked a workshop for their own nefarious secret project. One came out with a named trap mechanism, the other a statue. Weird.
So far, so good...
EDIT: Also, a couple of my dwarves have hijacked a workshop for their own nefarious secret project. One came out with a named trap mechanism, the other a statue. Weird.
This is the back end of my fortress at the moment. There's stone all over the place which needs cleaning up, but it's not a problem. Just on the left you can see the red-brown squares, which is the mud from where I flooded everything early on.
1. My workshops, creating junk to sell, wooden bins to hold all the stuff I mine, beds, doors, table and chairs, and traps. Sometimes a random dwarf will take over one and make something weird.
2. My store rooms. In the smaller one food on the left, wood on the right. Most of the food I brought with me, if not all, is gone now, so I'm living on the mushrooms I grow. The other one is still being dug out and will hold all the stone I have lying around. Above that you can see my gem room, which is also still full of piles of rock.
3. My dining hall. Any dwarves not busy hang out here, and they'll sit at a table and chow down when they're hungry. They like to eat sitting down. Recently my carpenter decided to have a party. You can also see a few animals I've picked up, and there's a few dwarf kids in there too running about.
4. The apartments. My dwarves only have simple little rooms, also still full of rocks, but they're private and have a bed and a door. A few lucky ones have veins of gems in their walls. Pretty.
1. My workshops, creating junk to sell, wooden bins to hold all the stuff I mine, beds, doors, table and chairs, and traps. Sometimes a random dwarf will take over one and make something weird.
2. My store rooms. In the smaller one food on the left, wood on the right. Most of the food I brought with me, if not all, is gone now, so I'm living on the mushrooms I grow. The other one is still being dug out and will hold all the stone I have lying around. Above that you can see my gem room, which is also still full of piles of rock.
3. My dining hall. Any dwarves not busy hang out here, and they'll sit at a table and chow down when they're hungry. They like to eat sitting down. Recently my carpenter decided to have a party. You can also see a few animals I've picked up, and there's a few dwarf kids in there too running about.
4. The apartments. My dwarves only have simple little rooms, also still full of rocks, but they're private and have a bed and a door. A few lucky ones have veins of gems in their walls. Pretty.
Another year or two has passed and my stronghold has increased in size massively. I've probably 50 or so dwarves, with all but a dozen or so in nice apartments taking up huge amounts of space. The farms are producing plenty of mushrooms, my food and wood stores have had to be enlarged.
However, my dwarves seem to be spending all their time partying rather than working. All this is despite a lack of anything to drink, leading to one of them dying of thirst. The body laid in the corridor for a while before I built a graveyard, but nobody wants to go in there to put the poor devil in a coffin. They're all still partying. I'm sure it's the kids starting it.
However, my dwarves seem to be spending all their time partying rather than working. All this is despite a lack of anything to drink, leading to one of them dying of thirst. The body laid in the corridor for a while before I built a graveyard, but nobody wants to go in there to put the poor devil in a coffin. They're all still partying. I'm sure it's the kids starting it.
I think I'd have more enjoyment reading Pants' Dwarf Diaries than playing this game..-
Dr. kitteny berk
- Morbo
- Posts: 19676
- Joined: December 10th, 2004, 21:53
- Contact:
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Joose
- Turret
- Posts: 8090
- Joined: October 13th, 2004, 14:13
- Location: The house of Un-Earthly horrors
After playing a few games myself (a few because I also fell foul of the learning curve for my first..ooh, dozen games), I can confirm that all dwarf fortress games are as mad as Pants says, and all in different ways. My Doorfs seem obsessed with eating frogs, I don't know why. Also, I have a river running through my fortress. It started as an accident, but has actually proved quite useful for fishing.
Then a dorf got angry that he didn't have anywhere to sleep, and smashed up some stuff. This started a chain of anger events, as other dorfs got angry that their stuff was all smashed. I'm now starting a new fortress.
Then a dorf got angry that he didn't have anywhere to sleep, and smashed up some stuff. This started a chain of anger events, as other dorfs got angry that their stuff was all smashed. I'm now starting a new fortress.
Riddlecrypts, as it turns out my fortress is called, is now home to 86 dwarves. Not bad. And by telling them individually to get back to work they've cut the partying back to a bare minimum and have started to be productive again. So now I'm back to frantically:
a) Getting rid of the piles of mined rock clogging up the whole fortress
b) Finding them things to do so they don't just get hammered and party all the time
and recently..
c) Trying to goad my unenthusiastic TA militia into stopping goblins stealing my children.
This is a worrying turn of events. My traps (remember, the ones which hurt goats and drove them off) seem to have no effect on keeping them out. I think they drop tennis-ball sized stones. Neither does a hall with around 60 partying dwarves. So twice now goblins have stolen one of my children. I can only assume they're getting arseholed off the newly produced booze I'm now managing to make, and not keeping an eye on the kids. I should train some guard dogs to keep them out, but for some reason I only seem to have cats. Oddly enough I planned on buying some dogs from the Elves whan their traders arrived, but my expedition leader spent their entire stay partying and was at no point in a fit state to meet them. So they left.
The militia on the other hand seem reluctant to leave their day jobs. I can't work out how to turn them into a lean, brutal fighting horse, so while the kids are dragged screaming through my front door they diligently gut fish and carve novelty mugs.
a) Getting rid of the piles of mined rock clogging up the whole fortress
b) Finding them things to do so they don't just get hammered and party all the time
and recently..
c) Trying to goad my unenthusiastic TA militia into stopping goblins stealing my children.
This is a worrying turn of events. My traps (remember, the ones which hurt goats and drove them off) seem to have no effect on keeping them out. I think they drop tennis-ball sized stones. Neither does a hall with around 60 partying dwarves. So twice now goblins have stolen one of my children. I can only assume they're getting arseholed off the newly produced booze I'm now managing to make, and not keeping an eye on the kids. I should train some guard dogs to keep them out, but for some reason I only seem to have cats. Oddly enough I planned on buying some dogs from the Elves whan their traders arrived, but my expedition leader spent their entire stay partying and was at no point in a fit state to meet them. So they left.
The militia on the other hand seem reluctant to leave their day jobs. I can't work out how to turn them into a lean, brutal fighting horse, so while the kids are dragged screaming through my front door they diligently gut fish and carve novelty mugs.
Somehow I've turned into a bad guy from Captain Planet. The ever expanding pile of dead critters has caused me to hollow out the nearby hills so I can get rid of them, and in order to get rid of the stone I'm mining I've taken to paving over the grass outside the entrance to my complex. I'm now struggling to build anything because of the loose stone clogging up the place.
The fortress expands still, opening a large, segmented workshop wing on the next level down. A few more goblin raiders have been harrying me, but one fell foul of my traps and left a 'pool' of him in the entrance, and up the wall. Another would-be child thief met my finally motivated militia and limped off, bleeding. Meanwhile the fact that my water supply comes from rain coming in through the pond I dug out means that occasionally I have a hydration problem. I've now lost two dwarves to thirst, but help is at hand. My mechanics are busy working on the mechanisms for a flood gate for another nearby pond, using which I will flood a section of corridor on the workshop level in order to build a well on my apartment level. I've built a kennel too in which to train some dogs I've acquired (and the puppies who are coming along too), but for some reason that's not working. So all is starting to look up again.
Apart from one of the kids. They've been possessed. I don't know what's going to happen, but she immediately took over one of my workshops and is now working away on something muttering about shiny stones and blood. It's a cause for concern. Still, at least the partying has subsided to only about 50% of the time rather than constantly now.
Apart from one of the kids. They've been possessed. I don't know what's going to happen, but she immediately took over one of my workshops and is now working away on something muttering about shiny stones and blood. It's a cause for concern. Still, at least the partying has subsided to only about 50% of the time rather than constantly now.
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Joose
- Turret
- Posts: 8090
- Joined: October 13th, 2004, 14:13
- Location: The house of Un-Earthly horrors
One of my doorfs got so bored with making floor that they went mad, and started chasing people throughout the fortress. Eventually, I got pissed off with them constantly interrupting other doorfs, and set the militia on them. The resultant doorf-kibble took 5 trips to put into a coffin. Ew.
I also managed to accidentally pave over the stairs to a lower level, trapping 4 unfortunate doorfs in an empty corridor. They almost died of thirst before I worked out how to un-pave the stairs, but seem remarkably chipper now they are out.
I've finally worked out where fuel comes from, so my vast stockpiles of gold is finally being made into stuff. Including a bedroom. Fancy shit.
Somebody make it stop. This game made me forget lunch, and ive just realised im on the verge of pissing myself, I need the toilet that bad. Im not sure exactly how long i have sat here jiggling in my chair whilst my stomach rumbles.
Its probably a good thing it has such an inaccessible interface. Slap a decent UI on this thing and it would spell the end of human civilization.
I also managed to accidentally pave over the stairs to a lower level, trapping 4 unfortunate doorfs in an empty corridor. They almost died of thirst before I worked out how to un-pave the stairs, but seem remarkably chipper now they are out.
I've finally worked out where fuel comes from, so my vast stockpiles of gold is finally being made into stuff. Including a bedroom. Fancy shit.
Somebody make it stop. This game made me forget lunch, and ive just realised im on the verge of pissing myself, I need the toilet that bad. Im not sure exactly how long i have sat here jiggling in my chair whilst my stomach rumbles.
Its probably a good thing it has such an inaccessible interface. Slap a decent UI on this thing and it would spell the end of human civilization.
The dwarves of Riddlecrypts finally worked out how to get bodies into coffins. Ironic. And just in time, because the possessed kid was either making a suicide bomber vest or something went badly wrong. Either way, she ended up splattered all over the workshop, making use of one of the newly installed coffins. In other news, the place has taken on a more dwarfey feel as the furnaces spring to life, making charcoal and coke ready for the smelting of iron. One of the mechanics almost met with a grizzly end when he installed a flood gate only to realise he was on the wrong side and was trapped. Luckily a colleague fitted the mechanism and opened it before he died of thirst or went insane.