User:GhostDwemer

Dwarf Fortress. It's not a game, it's a lifestyle. I've been playing video games since the early eighties, and this game beats them all.

I would rate my skill level at DF at, hmm "dabbling." After about 200 hours of play I think I'm starting to figure things out. I had the best fortress ever, a volcano with limestone! It lacked one crucial thing, though: enemies. No goblins at all. I had siege engines and full metal kit before the second spring, and no one to use them on but megabeasts. Boring. So I abandoned, little did I know how RARE a volcano with sedimentary stone is. Now, I'm trying to get a very dorfy fortress up and running. I know dorfs can make it anywhere, but I want METAL! and STONE! Dorfs are not made for leather and cloth. So I'm playing chalk/limestone/dolomite biomes for the HEAVY METAL (guitar licks and head banging ensue.)

My current strategy, 1 leader/speardorf, 1 mech/axedorf, 1 doctor/carpenter, 1 brewer/leather worker, 1 cook/gem cutter, 1 mason/architect, 1 brewer/metalsmith. No miners, I train 'em up in dirt right off the (giant) bat. First dig a huge farm room and flood it. Then build entry hall... OF DEATH! Then dig a big stairwell down seven levels. Near the top, arranged in a spiral around the stairs, four workshops: mechanic, jeweler, mason and carpenter. At the bottom, the initial living quarters. One floor above, the kitchen complex. One floor below, the engineering level with control room, plumbing, cisterns, and my pride and joy, the indoor waterfall which took me five tries to get right. Pro-tip: make a water reactor separate from your pump stack, don't try to build a reactor/pump stack all in one, couple them up with a gear. The reactor wants a full load of water in it to run right, the waterfall wants as little as possible to avoid overflows. Of note, I think if you have a convenient water source it is faster to run a pipe and put in a floodgate than to fill your water-tech by hand. All this built before the end of the first year, plus traps, 20 bedrooms fully kitted out, and enough gold gew-gaws to buy out the first caravan completely.

I haven't had time to delve to deep, I haven't even gotten to the first cavern level. I've been iron and coal hunting, keep those furnaces fed, dorfs! How else are you going to get the steel inside the Goblins where it belongs?

Can you smell them? They're close, dorfs. Very close. Closer than anybody else except our dwarven brethren. All that gold we just shipped out? Word gets around. Better get the stabby-stabby built quick, fellas. I hate not being able to do anything about raids, I hate cowering in my fort while they wreck caravans and I get blamed, grrrr. If the Gobs are close, it always feels like a race, can we get the defenses built and the militia equipped before the first ambush? Maybe. Can we get the defenses perfected and the militia trained? Not in my experience. Last time I got hit in the second spring, two full squads, one crossbows, the other swords, all with high quality steel weapons! We lost about five good dorfs and most of our livestock before driving them off. Not to mention all the dead elven traders.

But this time, we will do it right! This time we will not accidentally flood our fortress with magma and water at the same time. This time, we will not let half our dorfs get stranded across the river after the thaw. We won't park our WAGON down by the RIVER where there are CROCODILES. We won't attack elephants and gorillas with copper weapons. And, let the Gobs come to us, okay? No suicide charges, you little idiots, wait till the squad forms up. Finally, We absolutely will not channel down into empty space while standing on the tile we are digging, do you hear me, dorfs? Ooops, evidently we will still do that. Oh well, what's death but an excuse to DRINK? Anyway, according to Charles Dorfwin's theories, he was just making the clan stronger by offing his stupid self, right?

A free keg of dwarven ale for anyone who gets the reference in my username!

Okay, note to self: Do not waste time making cutesy indoor waterfalls before you get your militia set up. Do not set up your training grounds outdoors in the vain hope that your dorfs will be ready by the time the first ambush shows up. They won't be ready, most of them won't be there, and the ones that are, well, they will make nice pincushions. When the first elven caravan show up, get everybody inside and seal the effing gate until they are ready to depart. Either that, or admit you aren't ready to play on maps close to Goblins.

Okay, whoah. Just started a new game. I normally get 100 FPS up until I've got twenty dorfs or so. I'm getting about 3-20 now. Anyone know what this means? Here's another clue, I've got half limestone and half obsidian on my map. Any guesses? I know what it means, and I can't wait to get below to see it, because it truly is an impressive sight. I only hope things even out a bit so my FPS gets high enough to actually get down there in any reasonable time frame. I won't play a regular game on this map, of course, but I think I'll delve down right away to find what I think is going on down there. I'll save the map if that's the case so others can see it, I've only seen it once before. I'm just surprised I haven't gotten a string of cave in messages...

Okay, crud, this map is 140 levels deep. It probably isn't happening in the first cavern level, based on the fact that I didn't get any cave in messages. Probably way down deep.

Yup, it is down deep, and I've stepped in a situation, too. I hit the first cavern level. The magma pipe goes up through it, but it's empty up here. I can't even see the magma. But I am willing to bet that somewhere down below, it is flowing in great rivers through a cavern level. That is the only explanation I know of for my FPS drop.

My problem is Batman. Or more accurately, bat men. I just dug straight into a nest of them and I don't even have a mason's shop set up to make hatches.

Okay, hmm, they are hostile but seem content to stay where they are. Still, I think I'm going to save this map and move on. I'm trying to proof my QuickStart instruction, not find a natural wonder.

By the way, I bought Fallout: New Vegas yesterday. I haven't even opened the package. I've got Fortress Fever!

Okay, forget it, I'm going down. I got the hatch in place before the bat men attacked, and I bypassed the first cavern level.

Oh. My. God. No, no, no, nonononono! It wasn't what I thought. It wasn't what I thought at all. Well, this should be over quickly. And it should be instructive, I've never seen it first hand before.

Literally five minutes into this game, I've somehow hit an OPEN eerie cavern.

Oh HAH! HAH to the HAH-HAH power. No horrifying screams from the darkness below. It appears the magma has flooded Hell. How else would the cavern be open? I don't even know what to say here. I'm just saving this game in a very special place and moving on.

That was certainly exciting. I'm creating a stock new medium sized world, and recording the seeds. I'll find a good site therein. I think that will be better than having newbs download a 40MB map. Oh, the only change from stock params is 1800 embark points, we'll start the newbs out with decent dorfs and gear.

Oh HAH! This game, I swear to you it is haunted by the ghosts of tricky nobles slain by exasperated players. It does things. It lives. Do you know what I found on this first stock map I generated for educational purposes? Well, I didn't find sedimentary flux stone with a warm climate, a river, and some trees. Nope. What I found was a volcano with trees around it, and get this, sedimentary stone in the same 4x4 zone. Rock salt, but the volcanic biome has marble for flux. A river, too, if you are willing to expand to 5x5 and take less forest. Goblins are present, but far, far away. All dorf civs are pretty far, too, I don't know how that affects immigration. Obviously, this is not a normal start. Stock worlds have one volcano, the odds of finding one like this are next to nothing.

You want the seeds, don't you? 3507106834 480448902 3609199234 165037949

It is on the eastern side, near center north to south.

Oh, forget it. It's one of those lame volcanoes that sticks out weirdly above the ground. Those are just lame. And it's frozen at embark. I don't want to play a map like that, well, back to finding a 'normal' start for newbs. Okay, no, the top is frozen but the bottom isn't, that makes sense but I've never seen it before. There are murky pools. It is twenty four z-levels up to the lip of the magma pool, and it isn't entirely outside the ground, meaning it can be mined for magma. Not too bad, actually. Kinda chunky and artificial looking for my tastes in landscape, you can see the square boundaries clear as day, but then I've only really found one volcano that wasn't that way. Plenty of sand. I haven't seen the rock salt anywhere yet, nor the coal it should contain, and I'm afraid things are going to be a bit spread out. Still, it looks promising. The only question is, should we start the newbs out on such a 'perfect' map?

Oh, look, Hoary Marmots. They are such Hoars.