NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

Haven't hit lava yet, and yeah, I know there's not really much need to trade at this point. The game seems broken in that way, though I hear that there used to be some kind of magic economy within the game that would give some purpose to cutting all these gems and embellishing all these things aside from trying to make dwarves happy in some way. Pretty much the only thing that I care about at this point is the possibility of the elven caravan showing up with bears or something (black bears for meat, since you can't train them?, grizzlies for war).

Were the depot in any way functional, I'd use it just to toss all the spent clothes or items I can't otherwise make any use of.

What I should do is send a scouting party down into the caverns in search of this thing...



But generally, I kind of feel bored after establishing my fortress and getting it to the point where I can defend without too many losses. It feels like there's less to actually do given that all you're going to encounter are possibly more enemies and maybe a few new resources (adamantine) or means of using those resources (magma smelters). The gameplay doesn't actually change all that much, you just find new ways of getting fucked over because hey your army was all the way down there and here are some more goblins. It feels empty in the same way late games of Civ feel empty. I suppose I could design some deathtrap or crap like that, my heart's not in it.

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

Slugs don't have feathers.

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

It could have slid over some feathers and picked them up. You don't know that!

I've also discovered that, once you become reasonably proficient at repelling sieges, they will come once per season. With about 100 goblins and trolls all aspiring to wreck your shit. Against whatever population you have, which might be less than the siege itself.

Dwarf Fortress: no one wins.

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

Pulling into loops of fantasy resulting in tragedy...

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

That stupid shit where the caravan can't get out of the depot started happening again.

I figured that maybe I wasn't giving them enough time to get out and had just gotten impatient and deconstructed things too soon. It turns out I was partially true. If I leave the caravan alone for long enough, the liaison will die. In this case, he died of thirst. And then he came back as a ghost. He didn't do anything as a ghost, but I built a memorial anyway and now there are no more ghosts. I don't know if things are supposed to work that way, but I imagine that other civilizations might later become mad at me if their liaisons continue to come back as ghosts.

On the plus side, I have a breeding pair of cougars. God I wish I could war train them.

molkman
Owner of George Washington's Prototype Mittens





2005 May 2 • 2066
404 ₧

This game looks like it takes very long to play.

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

Actually you usually lose in a few minutes.

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

It really doesn't take much. I'm up to eight years in the current fortress, but there was a time or two when I quit the game via task manager lest it save when I was in the midst of a pretty bloody siege. If you get attacked by lashers early on, you're dead. Any badly timed siege before you have an adequate military will kill you, but lashers especially. If you get attacked by a titan that can web you, you're dead (barring some amazing archery skills). If you get attacked by something that is especially toxic, you'll be cleaning that up for a long time if you aren't already dead. Open up the caverns too early with forgotten beasts or otherwise ornery wildlife, and you're dead. Hell, if you're in an area with giant eagles or other such wildlife they'll probably kill you before you have a chance to do a goddamned thing. I haven't even seen a colossus, a necromancer, an undead sponge, a dragon, or a demon and I know I'd be really dead if I saw any one of those.

The trouble with the game is that there isn't really a point to it. Because there's only so much you can do at any given time, you inevitably create more danger for yourself either by way of traps or sending your army to explore places that are likely to fuck their shit up or leave you not so well defended.

There is no endgame, just survival for a period of time until something attacks and destroys everything.

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

Necromancers are guaranteed death for any fortress. They are completely unstoppable, and building a fortress with access to the surface in range of a necromancer tower is the same thing as abandoning the fortress.

They're not so bad in adventure mode, though. You can usually throw enough bodies at the undead to keep them busy for long enough to assassinate the necromancers.

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

I hear that there are certain ways around it. For example, you don't embark with animals of any kind and never fish or hunt because to do either of those things would generate material for the necromancers (rumors persist of undead mussel shells). Basically, the dwarves have to be vegan in both their diet and their industry. This is probably impossible given that stupid dwarves are always dragging their stupid pets into things, but I suppose you could try to keep those under some form of lockdown. Also traps everywhere, don't expect to trade much, and you need ways of completely shutting the fortress down and praying that there's a means of adequately dispensing with everything that's at the walls once you do, which means you can't really have a military either I guess. Since individual parts can come back to life, it seems rather labor-intensive, so I've no intention of trying it.

I guess the whole thing also assumes that you aren't attacked by or are killing kobolds and goblins which, okay, good luck with that.

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

Trust me, it's hopeless. I tested it extensively. The only way to survive near a tower is to seal off the surface completely. If there was any way at all to kill or even find the necromancers it might be possible to survive... but alas... they are invisible.

sprinkles


2009 Sep 6 • 2547
10 ₧

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

I don't know, I mean, it might be feasible, it's just like, is it worth the effort? You could set up a thresher system of many, many rows of atom smashers hooked up, alternating, to two different switches. If the halls were sufficiently wide to encourage something other than straight movement and they were long enough to get some slip-ups, I could see it working if you could sync them right. Not that I've ever tooled around with the atom smashers much.

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

You still can't ever go outside, though. There will always be necromancers you haven't found, they lurk and do not approach the fortress. As soon as something dies the onslaught begins anew. They also get random reinforcements of undead sentient creatures every few months, so there's no way to make outdoors safe enough to embark into even with your military.

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

A Bronze Colossus attacked me! I sent all my legendary warriors against it.

Over the course of the fighting, it lost its right foot, its left upper arm, its right upper arm, its left foot, its right lower leg, and finally its head (the result of a speardwarf stabbing it). Then it was transformed into a statue of Irene Gloriesscaly. That's actually the name of an elf of some sort but I'd like to believe that it arbitrarily became a statue of an actual person.

The combat log goes to twenty-one pages. The first thing that happened was a swordsdwarf stabbing it in the foot hard enough to fracture it and make it tip over. The last thing was the spear militia captain knocking its head off. Twenty-one attempts at attacking my dwarves were made. None connected.

The full name of the bronze colossus was Mothdast Dentbit the Renowned Volcano.

Rockbomb
Dog fucker (but in a good way now)

2009 Nov 14 • 2045

I think I need to play this game.

Down Rodeo
Cap'n Moth of the Firehouse


2007 Oct 19 • 5486
57,583 ₧

The answer is essentially the same as always - more magma.

Seriously though, does magma sufficiently destroy bodyparts?

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

Mostly. Doesn't effect the body parts of fire imps or dragons and such, though.

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

Magma is one possible solution to the problem of bronze colossi, but really what I wanted to do, for no reason other than to see what happened, was to send a horde of legendary warriors after it just to see what the results would be. I didn't expect that they'd tear its shit apart; I heard that the best way of going after them was crossbows and lashers and I only had maybe three high-level crossbowdwarfs and two legendary lashers. Everything else was done with swords, spears, axes, maces, and hammers.

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

Fixed

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

We be a handful.

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

ATTN: A NEW FORTRESS HAS BEEN INITIATED

THE NAME OF THE FORTRESS IS "SKINTOMB"

FORTRESS IS EXPECTED TO LAST AS LONG AS MY ATTENTION SPAN DEEMS FIT

<3

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5046
1,227 ₧

I too have an attention span!

NatureJay
SJA: Commander of Ruthless Abuse


2005 Mar 23 • 1871
574 ₧

BALDERDASH