Dwarf Fortress

[Tairnyn]

Still can't brew -- I have empty wooden barrels but it says it needs them and cancels.. grr.

Are the empty barrels in a stockpile and unaccounted for?

[Raging Turtle]

errr... how do I designate a barracks? 

[Teleku]

Just a heads up, they added Aluminium in now.  They are being historically accurate with it, and its worth as much as platinum.  So if you see any, don't immediately think its worthless and not bother to smelt and make things with it.  ;)

I'm somewhat annoyed they added in all the shit ton of different alloys.  I mean, its cool for historical purposes and what not, but theres absolutely no god damn use to making shit like Billion, Rose Gold, pewter, etc.  If you've found silver, gold, or platinum, its just better to just make a bunch of pure metal crafts with it (with the exception of electrum, which actually works good for coinage now that theres alot of different ores you can combine with gold to make it).  All of the non-precious alloys for making weapons/armor/tools they added in are all worst than normal Iron, which is not hard at all to get.  There just isn't any real point to them that I can see.

[Tairnyn]

errr... how do I designate a barracks? 

Build an armor or weapon stand and hit 'r' to make a room out of it.

[bhodi]

Yeah. So, I need cloth, badly -- I can't seem to mill anything, since it needs a bag, and I can't seem to find thread anywhere -- Supposedly, I should be able to grow them with pig tails, but the thread never seems to end up available; my loom sits idle. I'm not sure how to remedy that. I traded for some spider silk, but I must have screwed something up since it's not listed as available even though it said the trade went through.

I have way way more stone than i know what to do with. Next time, I'm building all my workshops on loam so I don't have to lug them around. According to the wiki, the dwarves don't care what workshop rooms look like, so I don't have to worry about the fact I can't smooth the floor.

I don't know why I trained one guy in anything more than carpentry, and another in cooking -- it seems like I need to have one full time dwarf making barrels for crap and another cooking meals/brewing. The barrel guy can barely keep up, I apparently use them for everything. I also have a permanent fisher and a more or less permanent miner. I don't think I needed to spread the skills out as much as HRose said, unless I'm missing something here. I never did figure out hunting/trapping, but my guys aren't starving since I brought about 50 seeds, farmed, and I made it through the winter so <shrug>.

I can't find any iron; getting to the 'next step' requires some metal for me to forge, and I simply don't have any. I reallllly need bags, too. Maybe I'll make some glassware. I made each of my dwarves a 3x5 room, but it's still considered 'meager' for some reason. I stuck a bed in there and a stone cabinet and each room has a stone door. I'm not sure what else would make them happy.

Where do you build the roads to your trade depot? Anywhere on the edge?

[Jade Falcon]

In the loom there should be an option to weave thread from plant fiber.

For hunting your guys aren't killing anything? or they're not processing the kills? If it's not hunting at all not sure I always just have them run off like little suicidal nuts shooting the first thing they see.If they're not processing it do you have a refuse pile?They need to haul the kill to the refuse pile where a dwarf with the butchering skill will grab it and haul it too the butcher shop.It could be the distance they are dragging the corpse it could be rotting before it gets to the fort.I don't usually hunt though since my hunters tend to have a habit of leading herds of elephants back into my forts.

Barrel management is one of those things that take some getting used too same with bins.Make sure you adjust all those stockpiles your making,they auto set themselves to use the max amount of barrels/bins respectively which in most cases is not needed.If you use [q] on a stockpile you can adjust the amount of barrels or bins it will use.I pretty well only let barrels be used in my booze stockpiles as that lets me see at a glance how much raw food i have and what types are are there instead of looking in barrels or the kitchen menu.

The stone issue everyones having at the moment I've been using the dump to clear out stockpile areas.Designate a one tile dump near the stock pile and set all the stone in the stockpile area as to be dumped.A pain but works until it gets fixed.

For the moment you don't need roads for the trade depot the humans will drag there wagons too you.If you have a ton of trees tho you might want to cut a path through them as they try to find a three tile wide path to your trade depot.

For most of your dwarves you only want them having meager quarters if you start the economy.Most of your dwarves wont have high paying jobs so if you have them all having top quality quarters they'll get evicted and sleep in the barracks.If you want to though just details the floors and walls and double details under things like doors and beds,cabinets.That should bring the quality up pretty fast.You can double detail the whole room I just don't like the way it looks.If you do double detail make sure to examine the second detailing it;s usually pretty good especially if you've had a lot of deaths.

[bhodi]

In the loom there should be an option to weave thread from plant fiber.

For hunting your guys aren't killing anything? or they're not processing the kills? If it's not hunting at all not sure I always just have them run off like little suicidal nuts shooting the first thing they see.If they're not processing it do you have a refuse pile?They need to haul the kill to the refuse pile where a dwarf with the butchering skill will grab it and haul it too the butcher shop.It could be the distance they are dragging the corpse it could be rotting before it gets to the fort.I don't usually hunt though since my hunters tend to have a habit of leading herds of elephants back into my forts.

Barrel management is one of those things that take some getting used too same with bins.Make sure you adjust all those stockpiles your making,they auto set themselves to use the max amount of barrels/bins respectively which in most cases is not needed.If you use [q] on a stockpile you can adjust the amount of barrels or bins it will use.I pretty well only let barrels be used in my booze stockpiles as that lets me see at a glance how much raw food i have and what types are are there instead of looking in barrels or the kitchen menu.

The stone issue everyones having at the moment I've been using the dump to clear out stockpile areas.Designate a one tile dump near the stock pile and set all the stone in the stockpile area as to be dumped.A pain but works until it gets fixed.

For the moment you don't need roads for the trade depot the humans will drag there wagons too you.If you have a ton of trees tho you might want to cut a path through them as they try to find a three tile wide path to your trade depot.

For most of your dwarves you only want them having meager quarters if you start the economy.Most of your dwarves wont have high paying jobs so if you have them all having top quality quarters they'll get evicted and sleep in the barracks.If you want to though just details the floors and walls and double details under things like doors and beds,cabinets.That should bring the quality up pretty fast.You can double detail the whole room I just don't like the way it looks.If you do double detail make sure to examine the second detailing it;s usually pretty good especially if you've had a lot of deaths.

I don't hunt at all; It never seemed to work out for me and I can grow all the food I need from farms. I do use the barrels on everything, I had just have one guy make barrels and one guy make simple meals which are stored in them -- I figured I needed a lot of food for the winter anyway.

I try to use the loom but it says there is never any plant fiber avaliable. Is there an additional refinement step beyond picking the plants that I'm unaware of?

[Jade Falcon]

I did forget a step sorry about that you have to process the pigtails or rope reed at a farmers workshop then it will be thread your loom can use.

As for storing food in barrels it doesn't really help any to waste barrels on food it won't rot if you just have it sitting in your stockpile without them and they don't hold all that much more then the one stockpile tile does anyway.But if you have lots of wood anyway guess it doesn't hurt.

[bhodi]

I did forget a step sorry about that you have to process the pigtails or rope reed at a farmers workshop then it will be thread your loom can use.

As for storing food in barrels it doesn't really help any to waste barrels on food it won't rot if you just have it sitting in your stockpile without them and they don't hold all that much more then the one stockpile tile does anyway.But if you have lots of wood anyway guess it doesn't hurt.

Well, it's not so much the wood as the time -- I have an entire dwarf dedicated to it.

I think that was a problem with the farmer's workshop -- It seems to want to store them in bags, and I don't ever have any... because I can't make them....

[Jade Falcon]

There should be three options I think on the farmers workshop,process plants-this does the pigtails and rope reeds,process plants to bags-this does the quarry bushes to leaves that you can cook,and process to barrel-this does sweet pods to dwarven syrup that you can cook.

[bhodi]

This game is horribly, horribly addicting.

Someone wrote a pretty good guide on the wiki:
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Your_first_fortress

I've suggested separating it out and will definitely be adding to the wiki with my own knowledge. I'm now on fortress #4! #3 was destroyed by CPU cycles once I got about 40 dwarves in.. I'm making my landing area '3x3' now.

[Raging Turtle]

My latest fortress is pretty damn cool.  I found a red sand area with no aquifier - thus, my sand dwarves of doom are born! 

The only things I have on the surface are the trade depot, stairs leading down, and two sets of stone walls encircling the first two items as well as a small lake that dried up the first summer (the second, inner set of walls encloses the stairs).  I've got a farm and stone storage set up two levels down, which is still sand, and below that I have everything else, which is all rock.  I originally planned on churning out glass goods for trade, but there's specks of aluminum all over, which sell for insane amounts even when crafted with low skill levels. 

The downside is that there's a bug that makes the dwarven trade liason unable to leave if he goes underground, and then down stairs.  So the first dwarven caravan came, we traded, the liason set up a deal, but he never left.  Eventually he went insane, took off all his clothes, and then wandered around the halls naked until he died of thirst.  I left his corpse there to rot as an example to the other dwarves: going insane is bad.

So I don't think the dwarven caravan will be coming back, which is a pain because I need wood.  There is a little on the surface, but it won't last me more than a few more years. 

Oh yeah, I just discovered bins.  Bins are wonderful.  Too bad I don't have enough wood anyway...

[Jade Falcon]

Make metal bins :)

[Raging Turtle]

Metal needs charcoal.  Charcoal needs wood 

The dwarven caravan came back, sans liason.  Oh well, they brought like 20 logs. 

[Teleku]

Making metal/glass just isn't barable unless I can set up magma smelters/forges/kilns.  You burn through an insane amount of wood trying to power your industry, and I'm already spending a shit ton of wood on making beds, barrels, and bins.  I can't make a fort anymore unless its near a volcano, so I know I'm have access to magma. 

I kind of want to try the desert strategy, and build myself a city of glass, but there is going to have to be some magma nearby....

[Raging Turtle]

I had a no-aquifier sand area with a magma chasm right in the middle.  So if you don't mind digging down 15 levels, you can do it. 

Of course, the people are saying on the official forums that they're finding all kinds of interesting things when you dig that deep.  Like chained up humans and elves, and the nasty things that chained them up. 

In unrelated news, I forgot to brew anything for my dwarves to drink, and due to the fact that ALL my barrels were in use, I was unable to brew anything more for a while.  In the ensuing chaos, my population went from 42 to 7 from dehydration and madness, and I'm worried about the sanity of my remaining dwarves.

What a game.

[Teleku]

Thats awesome about the chained up people in chambers.  I always wanted them to put in more things to discover in the depth of the earth.  This whole game is about channeling Moria, heh.  Problem is, with my current fortress, I've dug down as far as I can go, and am making swiss cheese out of the bottom level trying to discover adamantium, cool things, or fiery demonic death, but not a thing so far.  This is all at the base of a giant volcano filled with magma men and fire snakes no less.  I really hope they didn't make the cool stuff really rare, like finding underground magma chambers are right now.  Is there a certain environment I need to build near now to find that I wonder (probably in terrifying level woods, heh)?  I would like to find some damn adamantium.

My current fortress is pretty bad ass.  As I mentioned, its based alongside a volcano.  I actually started on a cliff several levels above the opening of the vent, and all my facilities are based in the area between the volcano vent level and the top of the cliff.  I even built a legendary level dinning hall with glass windows that look out directly over the top of the lava vent from several levels above it.  The level just under the top is all loam, so I can do all my farming there as well as carving out giant rooms for storage.  On the top, all I have is a stairway going down with a small castle thing I built (its really awesome they added in the ability to make outside rooms now) on top of it for protection, and a trading depot.  On the underground levels along side the volcano, I built several rooms for magma forges/smelters (currently running 6 smelters and 4 forges, and a couple of kilns).  Had to make sure I installed steel grates under the wall were I built the channel from the main volcano vent to my forge rooms so all the nasty shit living in the volcano cant get it.

Whats really cool though is the topography.  On the level with with actual opening to the volcano, is kind of a broad plain that extends out till it hits a deeply cut canyon.  Several sheer levels below that runs a raging river.  There are even tall pillars of stone in the middle of the canyon left from where the river cut in between them.  I built bridges out to these, and from there to the other side of the canyon, so I can access all the stuff over there if need be (or if a caravan happens to come in from that direction).  I'm just really impressed at how well the world generation makes realistic topography.  So anyways, I built a stairway down to the river level also in case dwarfs need water or to fish.  From there, I also built a couple of water wheels, and made an incredibly elaborate mechanical system of axles and gears that traverses several cliffs and digs deep into the mountain, providing my fortress with unlimited power.  I tried building windmills, but apparently there is no god damn wind here (the area I'm in is scorching, so I dont know if that has something to do with it.  On the bright side, the river never freezes up, though there is nothing but dried of pond beds with no actual water, heh).

[bhodi]

No volcano so far, I just started a-fresh and am still trying to make it to mid-game where you actually DO glassmaking... but check out my total abuse of the Z-azis. You guys might want to do something similar. The millstone's going beneath the sill, and all dwarves' quarters will be farther back into the mountain (notice all the loam walls). The empty plot just south is for another two farming plots, when I need them.

This was taking during the first sleep cycle; I play at 800x600 now so you have to remind yourself that everything is stretched vertically when trying to pace out distance:

[Jade Falcon]

Thats kinda funny the stone stockpile is the only one with no stone in it :)

I just restarted a new one myself this one is shaping up nicely no magma yet but a 19 level drop chasm on the side of it and at the bottom of it I found Ironman  so not sure if he's going to come smack my dwarves around.

I keep forgetting about the Z axis until I have all these stockpiles already set up.

I've been pretty impressed with the topography as well.Pretty cool setting up your fort in valleys with natural fortifications to stomp goblins.

[bhodi]

More screenies, I need to know how later fortresses look!

[Raging Turtle]

How do you take screenshots?  My layouts are completely different.

[Teleku]

I just restarted a new one myself this one is shaping up nicely no magma yet but a 19 level drop chasm on the side of it and at the bottom of it I found Ironman  so not sure if he's going to come smack my dwarves around.

Give him alcohol, its his biggest weakness!

But seriously, what exactly is this Ironman you found?

I wish I could find a chasm underground :(  I haven't found anything so far.  Just a ton of gold and silver!  How boring.

[Yegolev]

If you press your Print Screen button (or F13, if you will), you will have saved a shot of your screen to the clipboard.  Just paste that into some image editor, like Paint.NET in my case.

I don't have a good fortress to take a picture of at this time.  My band of dwarves that had no axe, I abandoned them when the caravan showed up and I realized I had a couple miles of trees blocking the caravan from my depot.  I started over and tried to use the same spot, but I couldn't embark in the same square.  I tried reclaiming, but that crashed the game, so I hunted around for a new place.  It's mostly white sand, with shale and platinum three levels down.  I think it's platinum, can't be sure since that's my "work laptop" fortress.   

The group on this rig, they embarked right smack in the center of a human town.  So far the humans don't seem concerned about my clear-cutting operations.

[WindupAtheist]

I've got it creating my first world now.  I have a feeling I won't last long at a game this complex and this primitive in presentation.  My only other experience in this sort of ultra-low-fi gaming was ZangbandTK, and that at least had sprites and a GUI.

EDIT:  Got to selecting a fortress site and fled screaming.  I don't do ascii graphics.

[Jade Falcon]

It took me a bit to get over the first impressions of the graphics but once the matrix vision kicked in I don't even see it as ascii any more.

Here's the early winter of latest fort It's just beginning so not much going on just started the one level down to start setting up mason shops other industry stuff.I think I'm going to try to set up a windmill farm a couple level above this as my mountain plateaus above this just have to experiment with piping the power from it down to a mill.If you scroll it all the way to the left you can see where the chasm pops through my level and gives me the finger 

It doesn't say much but here's Ironman

Also looking for him I found a second Ironman on another level with a bunch of trogs that seem to have a joy in slaughtering mountain goats that wander by.

[bhodi]

Yep. I also have matrix vision. You get it after playing it for 12 hours straight. I'm way past the graphics, now.

Your fortress is really really spread out; do you need 5-wide hallways? I'm trying to minimize distance moved in mine. All one level? You must not be used to the Z-axis. Your dwarves must spend all their time walking, walking, walking... Also, you don't need to create support beams. Cave-ins aren't implemented correctly/hardly at all.

Try creating one large (2x2 or bigger) up/down staircase and as you need more stuff, just go down a level. For example, on my previous fort, the 2nd level is all storage, the 3rd level is living quarters and offices, and the 4th level is my forge/smelter/jewler. Since they are all near the main staircase, however, it's simply 2 steps 'up' to the 2nd level storehouse for the stone to smelt and about 5 steps over to the storepile. Almost nothing in my fort is more than 20 steps away from anything else, except for the dwarf rooms which are spread out.

I piped my windmil to a millstone fine, although it was only one level for me.

[Jade Falcon]

Ya I'm still of the cave in mindset so it's automatic for me to leave supports.Same with hallways I like wide open spaces so my dwarves don't trample each other especially when the population gets up around 200.It's kind of a pain at the moment having them have to walk all over but later on when I get my population up I tend to specialize a bit more so it isn't so bad.Your fort gave me some ideas for having bedrooms above workspaces,just not sure if I could have the right dwarves in the right rooms when the economy starts up.

I just started the upper floor bedrooms and one floor down for smelting and construction going to move pretty much all construction down one floor but I still need to buy an anvil since I couldnt afford the 3000* steel one they brought with the first caravan :(

In the far top left corner a brook runs through so I think I'm going to try to divert that up the mountain for a moat and waterfall.

You can't really see it well but theres a four wide down stairwell by my kitchens  that leads to the mason  and mechanic shops as well as future smelters/forges.Going to take some doing to set that area up as it's loaded with flint and iron ore so stockpiles are taking some time.

[Raging Turtle]

My setup is a bit more like Jade's, I'll post it later.  If I have any complaints about my sand dwarves, it's that the map is just too easy.  I've seen one giant scorpion wander by, and other than that the only thing my hunter could hunt was a pack of camels that were breeding with the one I brought (I put an end to that.  What the hell do you do with camels, anyway?).  I might start my next map on Terrifying on a glacier or something. 

And WUA, it really is worth sticking with it until the vision kicks in. 

[bhodi]

My dwarves still do way, way too much walking. I definitely need to do something about isolating my dwarves with a small stockpile, their bedroom, and their craft area. Then, locking them in. My dwarves are spending way too much time going to and from their rooms. On my next design, I'm pretty sure I'm going to extend the small staircases down more; I'm going to keep level 1 as a crafting area, level 2 as 'storage', level 3 as a 'living level', but I'm going to start doing the stockpile manipulations -- I'm going to play around with that, and keep small stockpiles of raw materials next to the crafters and then link them with a larger pile somewhere else. Maybe that will cut down on some walking as well.

My master craftdwarves are far, far too valuable to waste time having them walk around. I need one creating nothing but barrels, one creating nothing but bins, one cooking, one brewing, and god damn do I ever have too much stone to even lug around. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way around it. I may start with a craftdwarf and sequester him in, making 'stone craft goods' just to get rid of all the fucking stone. I didn't do that last time, I just built endless doors and cabinets. When I carve out custom quarters, It's even too much to haul around to a gigantic stock pile -- I just need it gone. I wish there was a 'pulverize stone' option. I may just do-away with custom quarters and just barracks them... I haven't decided. It's frustrating, though.

I got sieged, unfortunately, so that's the end of #4. Damn it, it was calm wilds! Time to design #5.

I think I'm going to have a 'crafting quarters' area and manually assign the correct dwarves. I've taken to giving my dwarves nicknames of their desired job so that I know I've manually edited their labor tasks, taken off hauling and assigned them only to that specific task. The ones I really care about are my masons (make doors, cabinets) and woodcrafters (make more barrels, plz) and my planter/gatherer, and my brewer/cook. By time the first vagrants arrive, I can separate out and have one do brewing full time, one do cooking full time.

I'll probably do the 3 tier'd level crafting 'zone' and have them all identical, so that I can just add more as needed. I need to do something about the food so they don't wander too far for that either. Also, noise is a problem. I hope it doesn't go down 2 z-levels so as long as I have the materials storage buffer between the workshops and the rooms. Apparently, sound goes through both walls and doors, and workshops cause noise within 4 tiles.

[Jade Falcon]

I haven't tried it yet but in the old version I used to make dining rooms near each industry zone, the kitchens would pump food into two cooked food storage spots which would feed into the storage spot dining room I put near my forges and a third dining room I'd have near my front gates/military barracks.I'm assuming it will still work that way with this version but haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Goblin sieges come no matter what zone your in unless at the start you have no contact to any race.Once your net worth reaches a certain point they attack.

[bhodi]

That's a good idea; I never built dining rooms, whoops! I thought the dwarves just walked into the food area and stuck their head in a barrel.

Does it work for drinks as well? They seem to be thirsty a lot more than hungry. At any rate, you will be able to use the stockpile flow data to move from one stockpile to another; You should be able to create a small maybe 3x1 stockpile in the dining room for them to eat at. Bah, You basically need to plan out your complete fortress from scratch :) I need to find a fortress build tool! This is going to be tough to plan for heavy expansion.

It looks like I have a lot to learn about stockpile management. They recommend creating an outdoor refuse pile (since it gets magically emptied every season) and another smaller one indoors that is set only for bones. I need to pair down my general 'food' stockpiles as well.

I'll also make sure to set the 'reserved barrels/bins' to 5 so that there are always 5 avaliable for brewing. I'm constantly running out of them, and this should really help with that.

I'm not sure what the hell you do about wood. I guess trade for it, late game? I'm going to be in trouble needing sand as well. Hopefully you can trade for all that... It's going to be tough when I need one whole wood to make charcoal to smelt crap, as well as an endless supply of barrels and bins.

What's the minimum size of a custom crafter dwarf's abode? I was making 3x6 but that may be too large.

[Raging Turtle]

3x6 is huge.  I give my dwarves 2x2 with a bed and a cabinet or something, and that makes them estatic.  The official forum people seem to like 1x3 or 1x3 for efficiency.    The nobles get bigger rooms, of course, and that's pretty much the only place I do the second level of engraving. 

[bhodi]

1x3 or what for efficiency? What's the noble size? I'm looking around on the forums now, but all I've found is this gem... on how to completely flood the world.

They need to code faster!

Edit: Someone added a ton of stuff to the wiki, including rooms.

Other ways of getting rid of so much goddamned stone. Next time, my 'miner's not going to be proficient.. that way when he excavates, he gets hardly any stone from it. Yeah, it's slower. Oh well.

[Raging Turtle]

From the wiki: 

There is also a likelihood that the settlement will fall between two biomes, potentially hazardous if the player expects a peaceful oceanside meadow, without realizing the ocean is full of amphibious zombie whales.

 

[Jade Falcon]

Room size all depends really.If your not going to activate the economy you can make anything you like and let your dwarves live in luxury but if you start the economy then all those big rooms will cost a fortune in rent and only your nobles and legendary skilled dwarves will be able to afford them forcing all the rest to get evicted.I usually run some 1x2 for the haulers,2x2 for most general craft dwarves and fishers 2x3 for legendaries then just build noble rooms to fit what they require as needed.

Yup I keep a drink and food stockpile by each dining room it's a bit weird at first as it first gets filled up but once they're going saves a lot of time having dwarves run to your main dining room.

If you examine your dwarves you can go into there thoughts, without a dining room they complain about a lack of chairs.Also since they spend a lot of time eating,cleaning,or grabbing seeds from a dining room if you make one big legendary one it gives them lots of happy thoughts as they go about their chores within it.

Stockpile management can really make life easier once you get the hang of it.Almost all my stockpiles I try to specialize just to make things a bit more efficient.The one downside to pulling from one stockpile to another is that it only works for one at a time,so you can't have the two far food stockpiles pulling from one central one it has to be from two central ones.

Trying to plan it all at first is usually where I forget to do something or mess something up design wise.It's taking me a bit more time with this version and the odd shapes of the rock face to get it all sorta planned out ahead of time but once I get a bit more used to this Z axis should start working out better for me.

Can't wait for armies to be implemented raising a dwarf army outfitted with adamantium armour and weapons marching on the elven towns will be awesome :)

Haven't herd of zombie whales  but have read some horror stories about undead carp and other sea creatures causing chaos.