I’ve been finding that the safest (almost depressingly so) procedure is to sink a single, one-space wide exploratory shaft that a single miner can work through pretty quickly. That shaft is never, under any circumstances to connect to anything, and at the outset of excavation I mount a channel and a locked door at the mouth of the tunnel.
That’s boring, though. I’m thinking of letting safety policies slip, so I can be entertained by some industrial accidents.
Speaking of which- anyone else found the magma yet?
Crap couldn’t figure out what he need and/or how to get it to him, so he went crazy and then starved to death. No artifact for me, and I lost my best craftsman
Word for the wise: make sure that, at least at first, the corridor leading to the river is only one space wide and lined with at LEAST five to six deadfall traps.
Well this game is going much better than any I tried earlier, the tile set really helps.
Im in winter of 2003, with 40 dwarfs and a fairly well functioning society. My farming is finally near up to speed with the rest of the shortfall made by trading all the equipment from the dwarf or two who inevitably dies each year to the traders for meat.
I got a really tame map nothing except a rogue wolf or fox from the outside, and nothing from the river yet. But my soldiers all suck cause they get no experience. I have 4 guys and 4 war dogs who sit around and sleep and eat while some suicidal puppy attacks a wolf. I can’t make iron cause I havn’t found malachite yet, and I’m afraid to delve toward the chasm without better soldiers first.
Well remember, you don’t have to retain a standing military. If you have a corps of skilled mechanics and you plan ahead, you can usually solve 90% of your defensive problems with traps. Once you find the magma it’s a good deal easier: you can just create magma moats around your key areas, and cover them with retractable drawbridges. (It makes things significantly less fun, so I don’t bother, but if you REALLY want to feel safe, digging channels around the corners of the outdoor map, filling them with magma, and building a bridge for the traders, will pretty much eliminate any chance of an outside invasion.
OK guys, I have started a game and have documented everything so far with screen shots. I will start two new threads. One named “Let’s play Dwarf Fortress!” where we can talk about it and discuss the specifics, and another named after the location the game comes up with, I think the one I have is “treaty kisses” or some such, which is written in character. I will have that stuff up tomorrow. Strike the Earth!
A tip food-wise; stick with plump helmets, they’re much easier. On your food screen (press z, then right and enter) set “Plump Helmets” to only brewing, and then when you get Dwarven Wine from it, set those to cook. One plump helmet makes five units of dwarven wine and gets you plump helmet spawn back. Making the wine into food means you get five times your food supply. You need a lot of barrels ready for the wine, though.
This game is crack on toast, so thanks for that. At least it’s cured my addiction to Europa Universalis. But good golly it’s hard, and I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface…
Allegedly, the game causes PC crashes. I haven’t had that yet, but then, I’m not leaving it up for more than, say, 8 hours or so. At a time.
My fortress at work kicks all the ass of my home fortresses.
And in the numerous games I’ve played so far, i’ve not yet had a really serious enemy outside, and I have yet to have some badguys come out of the river. This is probably a good thing.
Yeah, I did that, but since I didn’t have a skilled brewer (I designated one of my miners to be a full time brewer after the first harvest) he can’t keep up and for some reason my dwarfs prefer plump helmet to wine biscuits, and only eat those. I have an idea, I need to designate a small food storage area of wine and wine biscuits only right inside the dining room. That should fix it.
I guess it doesn’t matter so much that my brewer can’t keep up with the growers as the carpenter can’t keep up with him.
I’ll tell you one thing though, no one at my Fortress is going to be the least bit hungry or thirsty.
By the way how long does it take you guys to build a floodgate/controlable farm system. Before my game bit it I had excavated a nice little farm room with kitchen and brewer over by my main housing, but the mechanic working on linking the switch to the floodgates took 3 years to link the far floodgate, and had been working on the near floodgate link for 2 more when it crashed. It wasn’t a construction suspended bit, it just took forever. Do you guys ever have that problem?
wolfman, I had my two proficient miners make an initial room to store my food and then tunnel straight to the river and dig a farm. While they were doing that my novice mason made a floodgate and door while my novice mechanic (all these skills were chosen before setting out) made three mechanisms.
When the farm was dug I had the miners dig a tunnel from it to the river and make a channel in the last section of tunnel adjacent to the river. Apparently there is a chance that this will drown your miner, but mine had no problem. They then attached the already built floodgate. While this was going on my two proficient farmers were clearing the farm of rocks (set your main hallway to be a mining storage area and they will clean out the rooms and dump stuff in the hallway, this has worked well for me) and installing the door. At the same time my mechanic was installing the lever just outside of the farm and then hooking up the floodgate. By the time he was done the room was ready to be flooded. I had my farmers setting up the field about half way through Spring of the the first year (yup, about a month and a half)
I think most dwarfs were forced to take one drink of water before the first of the booze had been made.
Hmm I wonder what was going on. The chanels, floodgates and lever, and farm room were all done easily. But the act of linking the lever to the gates too 4.5 years+
