I’m still in, but could you please give a few more people their turns first? I have sporadic computer access until Sept. 1st, and I really want to do this right. ^^
Excellent job so far tanstaafl. Word of warning, I have been playing that save file some more and have discovered that traders and immigrants have a habit of entering the map in the channels and promptly drowning. I fixed it by building two small bridges, each covering the last three channel squares, and then wrapping a bit of channel around the sides to compensate. Of course it could be fun to drown some of them, hopefully they will be nobles.
Count me out. I have desperately tried to like this game. The concept and depth give me the shivers that no game has in a long time.
However, the graphics are just incomprehensively bad. I installed the tile packs, and it didn’t help enough. I was expecting graphics like “Castle of the Winds”, not “Castle”.
If someone knows of a way to actually bring this up to at least NES 8-bit graphics, let me know. I want to love this game, but I just can’t!
Current list:
- flight done
- tanstaafl playing
- wolfman
- Omi no Kami
- Revenant Threshold
- garius
- MindWanderer
- Autolycus
Omi no Kami, I moved you down a space which will probably take us past the first. I will bump you down again if things go faster than expected.
Oh, by the way tanstaafl, who did you pick as your dwarf?
Thanks a lot, I appreciate it! I love what you guys’ve done so far 
OK, I (finally) finished (life got very busy all of a sudden; sorry). I’ve just uploaded the save file to here so whoever is next can get started. Let me know if you have problems with it.
We’ve survived the winter, have 26 more-or-less happy dwarfs and over 500 food in stockpile. And beer. Warthogs are becoming a nuisance and there is a giant leopard wandering around that seems to have developed a taste for dwarf. I started training a militia.
I’ll post the full story later this morning.
Great, I’ll let wolfman know.
I PM’d him, but he has blocked receiving email. For other players: if you don’t plan n checking up here regularly you might wish to enable email.
I’m here. And ready to go.
flight, I thought you might be amused by the fact that this keeps showing up in the game log:
I took over one of the farmers planning to run the kennel but none of the puppies matured enough to actually let me train them.
I also had the odd experience of having the dwarf I named after myself going into a fey mood. Fortunately it was one of the lucky ones who managed to actually create their item instead of going insane. I lost two dwarfs that way. (In one case I actually had the items the dwarf kept yelling for so I’m not sure what happened there.)
I was trying to build a lava flood channel but didn’t finish it. I messed up on the aqueduct I was building over the river and it flooded so I abandoned it and started a new one a bit further north. You should be able to finish it, just route the channel up to it (or just use two floodgates on each and and block the passages leading to it with floodgates or something.)
Right now we have a nice, large farm room dug out so it should be ready to go; just flood it and plant. We also have a legendary miner and a legendary craftsman so be careful of them. There are spare crossbows so the militia can expand if needed but we are probably running low on wooden bolts (they get used for archery practice). All of the dwarfs have a private bedroom even though the militia stays in the barracks. Everything else should be fairly obvious but let me know if anyone can’t figure out what I was trying to do with something.
Cool,
Three fey moods in one year, that is quite a lot, especially with a second year size population. I am glad to hear flight is doing better than in the parallel version I am playing. He became a legendary engraver pretty quick so I then gave him a crossbow and had him shoot the hell out of the local game to increase his skill. Unfortunately he tried to beat a jaguar to death with his bare hands and ended up with a mangled arm that will not heal.
How many dwarves died this year?
Total of five. One fell in the channel when he arrived and drowned, two died after entering fey moods and being unable to complete their projects and two were killed by the giant leopard.
If you set up archery targets and tell your squad to stand down then they will automatically use the targets to train and increase their marksdwarfship. Safer than letting them practice on the local wildlife. They do go through a lot of bolts that way though.
whew that was nerve racking. I’m into winter, so I should be done and posted tommorow.
I was making a magma forge and smelter. But the iron was so damn far away it took about three people to make a iron, pig iron or steel bar, because by the time the went and picked up an ore, and got back with it, it was time to eat or sleep. SO it was going really slow.
Then almost disaster, my character, an metalsmith went possessed. Oh shit I thought He is going to want the magma forge which isn’t built yet, so he sat in his room fuming. I slowly traced the progress of my steel bar and anvil. I knew the anvil wouldn’t be done in time do I dismanteld the existing forge to cannablize the anvilk there. The slow progree of the heavy anvil toward the magma forge drove me crazy. It took three people to get it all the way there. But finally the forge was built. My guy ran there took it over. Then started long long ass trek back to the main storage areas, carrying a heavy slow piece each time. Fortunately I had everything he wanted. Finally, what I can only guess was minutes before he went insane, he started construction.
He made a spiky bronze idol. Too bad it was possessed, not fey, so he didn’t get legendary skills, but at least he lives.
Okay my term is done. It’s went okay, but not particulalry smooth. I’m not sure if it is a different build than the one I’ve been playing, but these dwarfs drink a lot more often than I am used to, it really hindered production. I got nowhere near as much as I wanted accomplished.
I started switching everybody off rock carrying, and carrying in general, just to get something around the fortress done.
Got the road built, and the wagons came. I over traded for food, and not enough dwarfs were still carrying to get it all off the depot in time. We had some major miasma problems emminating from the depot. Some kind of door, or something wouldn’t be a horrible idea. I also traded for each type of shell and leather, just in case a strange mood dwarf want’s somthing in particular.
We started getting huge numbers of immigrants, 10 -15 a season. We now have 60+ dwarfs. A lot of my efforts were to build onto the housing area for all this new blood. We also got the first two nobles, I crammed them into a single room next to flight’s. I’d expect more nobles in spring so be ready.
My main focus was getting a magma smelter and forge done down by where the iron and gold are. But the distance made it take forever, with all the people stopping to drink halfway through the trip. But they are done. My next step was going to be cranking out iron, pig iron and steel, and building another magma set for gold on the magma river, then channeling magma back to the original area for a copper, tin, bronze, steel, smithing area. I couldn’t figure out the magma defense channel, and really didn’t have time to work on it anyway.
Tree’s are getting scarce. Carving a couple huge tree farm areas now would be a good idea. Fortunately we don’t need to waste them for charcoal anymore.
The military didn’t get a whole lot of work. I wanted to crank out some steel weapons and armourfirst , but didn’t get anything done with all the strange moods stealing my magma forge after I finally got it built.
The storage is a disaster. Making barrels for drink, and beds for newcommers was a full time job, no chance to make bins. If bins can be made of stone, I would suggest making another mason shop, and putting it on bin repeat, but I don’t remember if they can. We have vast caverns of storage of everything, not very well organized right now.
I didn’t get the rest of the craft shops done yet in case we need them.
Also When my character went possessed I started fooling with everybody to try to get a magma forge done as fast as possible to not die. Rather than a specializatrion based workforce, at the moment there is a lot of “Hey you over there, stop doing that and start doing this” going on.
No attack at all yet, a few thieves. I put a few stone traps in the pathways between the magma and the main fortress, but not enough. If stuff starts coming we might have a problem. I would consider making a few more soldiers with the next wave of imigrants, and assigning them barracks near the new forging area. The giant cat’s were always dead before I noticed them, and warthogs and monkey’s didn’t cause much of an issue.
I started a secondary cafeteria down in the new smithing area there, and hope food and drink will come to them so they don’t run all the way back when they are thirsty. Perhaps new sleeing quarters assigned for the smiths down there would be a good Idea too. But not for my character. He has a nice room at the northwest edge of the housing. The detailing should finish soon.
Finally there is a metalsmith in a fey mood right now. By my best guess he is getting the last peice he needs now, so he should be good. If he becomes a legendary smith that will make things much nicer.
Also I don’t have a good host to put the file right now. I emailed it to flight
I finally realized (playing on from where my year ended) where the stone carrying problem is coming from; it’s all those stones in the main tunnel to the magma stream. If you designate that entire tunnel (and any other tunnels) to stone storage piles then they leave all the stones there alone and only clear out rooms as you build them.
Also, it’s probably just as well that you locked off the magma flood tunnel I was building. The new aqueduct floods too and in my game it caught about a half-dozen dwarfs when it went. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong with these aqueducts.
After a few reverts to the saved game I was able to keep everyone alive but can’t stop the aqueduct from flooding.
Question for someone who knows the game: Is there any way to cancel construction of an aqueduct once you have started? There have been several times when I wanted to stop whatever it was I was building but there doesn’t seem to be a way to cancel some things. (I know aqueducts and floodgates were things I never found a way to stop so there are a few scattered around that I really don’t need anymore.
I also had a dwarf trap himself on the far side of a floodgate that I had set up to block an unused tunnel. Had to dig a new tunnel to get him out.
OK wolfman, I see you have the save file up. That is good because I didn’t quite understand what was up with the renaming of files in the stuff you sent me. Anyway, here is the current list:
- flight done
- tanstaafl done
- wolfman done
- Omi no Kami playing
- Revenant Threshold
- garius
- MindWanderer
- Autolycus
I will contact Omi no Kami.
Hey Flight! I sent you a PM earlier, but ignore it; I’m back in town, and now playing.
Cool. By the way, the email address you have listed doesn’t work.
It doesn’t? Ack, that’s my bad then
Oww, sorry to hear about your demise. How far into it were you? I shall alert Revenant Threshold.
Oh, and excellent job worlfman.
tanstaafl, I have never tried to build aqueducts, so I do not know, but I have had the same trouble with dwarves on the wrong side of floodgates. Little buggers can be morons sometimes.