Dwarf Fortress: Let's play with fire.

[Rasix]

Prologue: It begins at the beginning.


Since the Great Fortress of Noob turned into the great fortress of engineering mistakes and goblin stomping, I sought out a potentially more challenging (and likely fatal) experience.  Behold the above local shot before embarking.  We've got two tastes of danger: a magma pipe and a glowing pit.  The magma pipe will add a more fatal consequence to my disastrous attempts at engineering and the glowing pit is a potential goldmine, while at the same time being a very real chance at fortress annihilation from the bottom floor up.


Here's the lovely, lightly guarded entrance. No ratmen or goblins yet.  Farming is also present on this floor, but only accessible through the floor below.  The fortress set up so far is pretty standard, so I didn't think it necessitated a tour.  Stocks, barracks (just for bunking at the moment), and meetings halls at the top.  Crafting in the middle.  Appartments far, far below.


Here's our world famous lava pit.  It contains all sorts of fire based nasties that have already claimed lives (not mine).  It's a few z levels down, which should make in convenient for pumping into the fortress.  I should probably find some bauxite. Anyone want to be a magma pump operator?  You get hazard pay.*


And.. a few seasons in and we have some migrants.  A few jobs are already reserved.  Strazos and Lantyssa will be joining the military (milker, brewer and one peasant are likely to be drafted) and Xurtan has requested a dwarf.  Genders are not guaranteed.  Ranger is a great job with hazard pay!* Spend time in the untamed wilderness.  Fight the local goat horde.  Run from bored fire imps!


We already had our first merchant visit and the merchant's guard was the first one to eat a death from the volcano.  This man had training. I'm a bit scared for our future outdoorsmen.

*Hazard pay only available for jobs with 90% mortality rates.

More to come.  Likely projects include: lava moat, lava smelting (and other crafts), some sort of ridiculous glass or obsidian based pyramid, digging into the constipated (with demons) bowels of the earth, and maybe a water park!

[Rasix]

Poor, poor Strazos.  

[Strazos]

At least I died a hearty dwarf's death...?

[lac]

Why do you create your apartments so many Z levels below and are cage traps still as OP as they used to be, trapping everything no matter how large with a 100% success rate?

[Rasix]

Why do you create your apartments so many Z levels below and are cage traps still as OP as they used to be, trapping everything no matter how large with a 100% success rate?

Artifact of learning to play the game through CaptnDuck's tutorials.  I don't want any noise from workshops and I tend to place  workshops near the top of the fortress. Of course, this could be easily corrected by just placing them farther away on the x, y axis.  Plus, it's nice to clear a large amount of space lower in the rock layer.   Future fortresses will likely make better use of x/y over z, but this was just habit/reflex. This layout gives me a lot of layers to work with for creating nobles apartments.

Yes, cage traps are horrendously overpowered.  He's fixing that for the next release I believe.

Strazos, your death was.. *cue yakkety sax*.

[lac]

Yes, cage traps are horrendously overpowered.  He's fixing that for the next release I believe.

Toady's been saying that forever but in a way it's great they are there, they are a buffer that allow you to build your fortress as you please until you're ready to put your troops to the test and they are a great way to fill your arena with whatever wildlife that stumbles into your entrances.
I used to build cage rooms at every entrance and release the contents to my troops in the arena for practise and gear until I could form a decent army.

[Rasix]

Episode 1: Yegolev, the mighty ranger.


Meet Yegolev, our intrepid ranger.  He keeps VDL supplied with fresh mountain goat and groundhog corpses, so our dwarfs can eat something that wasn't grown in cave shit. He's quite the goat killer, although he was chased off once by a rather surly groundhog.


Ut oh. Now oddly enough Yego keeps trying to pick up his loose quarrels and drag the goat home. I quickly had to give the order for all non military dwarfs to stay indoors.


RUUUUUUN. The imp continually belches fire as Yego books it to the fortress as fast as his stumpy legs can take him.  Some of the fire connects, but Yego is determined to make it back.


He finally makes it back and promptly crashes in the barracks.  He has what looks to be a minor head injury.


This almost got hilariously tragic.  No one could give Yego any water, and thus Yego started to get thirsty while recovering from his wounds.  Not surprisingly, the command for all to stay indoors was still on.    Yego managed to recover shortly after rectifying this mistake.

I suppose I could give him some real wrestling, hammering (crossbow counts as a hammer when you run out of bolts), and archery practice, but this sort of interaction is much more fun.

Strazos had significantly worse day.


It started well enough as Strazos becomes the fortress's first Champion.


During the Yegolev-imp incident, Strazos and Slayerik were dispatched.  Not pictured is Yego about 100' away.  I set their orders to pursue dangerous creatures.  That proved to be... unfortunate.


It all happened too fast to capture it.  I adjusted to their patrol closer to the volcano to make sure they taught the imp a lesson.  As soon as he got within range of the imp, Strazos launched himself at it.  The imp retreated to volcano but Strazos was still moving at full speed and didn't even pause before tumbling into the fiery pit of death. It was over in a split second.  The arrow there is pointing to some smoke, which is all that remains of Strazos, elite wrestler and champion.  

Life goes on in the fortress. There will be no funeral.  Strazos was as efficient in death as he was in life. Congratulations on your promotion, Slay.


And.. migrants!  We can now support a useless layabout (sheriff).  They started tearing through the booze in short order.  Barrel and booze production had to be significantly ratcheted up.  Notice the thievery.  What the hell is going on here?


Goddamned monkeys! They made off with a decent amount of armor, although I don't really remember any of my characters owning the gear they absconded with.  THERE WILL BE MONKEY DEATH.  (They got away.)

All sorts of positions available.  If you want to be in the fortress, just let me know what you want to be.  I can't guarantee your life will be interesting.

[Strazos]

Soooo....Reincarnation?

[Prospero]

Ooh, ooh, me, me. Something that will lead to a fiery death preferably.

[Ingmar]

Something Pit of Doom related. 

[Threash]

I want in! preferably a noble with a cushy job and a courtesan.

[Rasix]

I want in! preferably a noble with a cushy job and a courtesan.

That would be a baron/baroness.  Won't hit that until later as I'll need several more waves of migrants.  Sheriff is open; they don't do shit.   

[Threash]

I want in! preferably a noble with a cushy job and a courtesan.

That would be a baron/baroness.  Won't hit that until later as I'll need several more waves of migrants.  Sheriff is open; they don't do shit.   

Works for me.

[Lantyssa]

My dwarf moved into that position last time after sustaining a life threatening stubbed toe.  My dwarf might be the only Ranger to ever exceed their normal life expectancy.

Enjoy your slacking.

[Ironwood]

I seem to remember giving birth last time.

So, no name for me please.

 

[FatuousTwat]

I re-request Hammerdwarf/Blacksmith. Maybe I'll make a masterpiece lever, or something else completely useless!

[CmdrSlack]

If you need a spare brewer at any point, well, that'd be the life for me.

[Rasix]

Job updates:

FatuousTwat - metalsmith
CmdrSlack - brewer
Lantyssa - marksdwarf
Threash - sheriff
Ingmar - military (will make sure you're frontline v. demons)
Prospero - pump operator for the screwpump at the volcano
Ironwood - peasant
Straz I still have to reincarnate.

[Samwise]

Can I be a cat breeder?

[Lantyssa]

Feeling a little frisky? 

[Rasix]

Can I be a cat breeder?

They're quite good at that without any assistance.  I'll let you train the dogs.

[WindupAtheist]

Can I be someone who will surely die quickly and horribly?

[Furiously]

I think hunting sounds like a great challenge.

[Samwise]

Ras, can I humbly suggest that you put the images (or maybe each entire post with images) in spoiler tags?  FF keeps jumping me back to old posts as I'm trying to read the new ones and it makes me stabby.

[Rasix]

Sure. 

[FatuousTwat]

I'm dithering back and forth between "I really want to play this again!" and "I don't want to go through re-learning everything again because it's been so long since I last played.".

[Hoax]

I want in, you can pick the job.

[Rasix]

This next update is going to be epic.  4 people just burned to death and that's really not the worst of it.

[Xurtan]

Tease. 

[Prospero]

New Three Panel Soul on DF

[Rasix]

Episode 2:  Death and misery


Construction of the lava screw pump begins and is promptly disrupted by the local fire imps.  Once some time had passed and the imps had gone down below, I instructed Yoru to give it another shot.


It did not go well and the imp immolated him in short order.


Rest in peace, brave soul.  You gave your life for dwarven progress.


Here you can see the pump, channel and cistern system for the lava extraction.  The construction of this would prove to be problematic.  Folks, sink your shafts a few z levels down if you attempt this in the future.  


Good to know our sheriff still finds time for gem cutting.  The sheriff's lack of martial prowess doesn't help in the conflict to come.


I wanted to start the pumping operation but there was a pesky fire man in the area.  No problem, I'll dispatch some marksmen to deal with it.  Most,  so if he retreats they'll manage to not jump into the cauldron.  How tough could he be?


Uhh, use bolts guys.  

Ran out of bolts?

Somehow I don't think the butt end of a crossbow is going to phase this guy.


And squash goes the marksmen crew.  Beaten and burned to death by an angry fire man.  


Newly minted Yoru II is pummeled retrieving the corpse.  


Four sudden deaths have started to upset the balance of the fortress.  Way goes bonkers.   He does this for the rest of the update.  Tantrum and then calm.  Usually there's a beating or two in between.



So, the pumping. It did not go well.  There's a few things that possibly went wrong here.  

a) Part of the pump being over the lava caused something in the mechanism to burn and flood, thus spilling gallons of magma over poor Prospero.  

Screw pump going left to right should look somewhat like this:

s p p s
lLg g s

s = open space   p = pump   L = lava

my design was

s p p s
L L g s

b) What likely happened is that the channel for the pumped lava was only one z level deep.  Due to magma acting somewhat like a solid and a liquid, the channel filled up too fast and backfilled onto Prospero.  He realized this shortly before he became a puff of smoke.


This further upset Way.  Pictured you see the corpse of Threash, OUR SHERIFF, after Way beat him to death.  Shortly afterwards Xurtan was promoted to sheriff and promptly decided to take a nap.


Graveyard is becoming a popular place.


Way also managed to cripple Ironwood and leave him alive.


WUA is not happy.  In his distress, he ends up triggering a stonefall trap.  BONK.


Random unnamed peasent gets gang banged by a goblin ambush while all of this was going on.  Not the best time, goblins.  


Military spings to action and starts taking names.  Pictured is Merusk and I believe Hoax.


More dwarves hop about the tantrum train.  Xurtan is still SLEEPING.


Slayerik ends up getting trying to solo about 6 goblins with crossbows and succumbs to the onslaught of bolts.   Merusk and Hoax arrive too late to assist him but manage to maul some goblins.  


Under a flood of dwarven crankiness, FatuousTwat constructs an artifact copper warhammer.  That was quite cool.

Murgos, on the other hand, is the first dwarf to go insane due to extreme unhappiness. Yay.


Hey, sheriff, make some goddamn arrests.


Fabricated gets roasted picking up a corpse I think.  Can't be sure.


Viin gets cooked by an imp.


Now this is a rather funny situation.  During all of this chaos, we get a new set of migrants.  One is a hunter, so Furiously takes the job and sets off after the imps.

He casually walks up to one of the imps and drops it in a second.  WAAAAAAAGH. Here he is dragging an imp (i) carcass back in the same frame as now dead Viin (enjoying his viking funeral).  

So, lets recap the mayhem.

-3 dwarves killed by a fire man.  2 by fire, 1 by fists.
-3 dwarves killed by fire imps.  
-2 dwarves killed by goblins including our only remaining champion, Slayerik.
-1 dwarf (THE SHERIFF) beaten to death by our furnace operator, Way.
-1 dwarf driven completely insane from grief.  
-1 dwarf takes a lava bath due to faulty pump design.  

Time to rebuild the miltary and the overal happiness of the dwarven community.  Maybe when I'm feeling brave enough, I'll go back to some engineering.

[Ingmar]

/high5 Lan 

[Prospero]

 I died in the name of science.

[FatuousTwat]

I love how everyone is going insane from grief, and I just shrug my shoulders and make a fucking artifact weapon. 

[Murgos]

*Sniff*

I'll really miss those guys.

/pours 40oz