"You have been struck down." - Dwarf Fortress Adventure stories

[uberfish]

A brief visit to the [n]oble / admin screen:



Uberfish started with some social skills so he was elected expedition leader. For now he gets stuck with all the administrative duties as well as personal responsibility for booze production. With a larger population it's good to split these up. The broker trades with caravans, the manager allows production orders to be sent from a master screen rather than individual workshops ([j]obs [m]anager to access this), and the bookkeeper keeps the stock levels in the [z]tatus screen accurate. From the noble screen I adjust the bookkeeper [s]ettings to the highest precision.

The manager and bookkeeper jobs need an office so I dig out a 3x3 room behind the brewery. Offices are [q]-designated from chairs and assigned to whichever individual dwarf needs one.

Speaking of the [z]tatus screen it allows you to manage animals, stone permissions, check stocks of everything, and also the Kitchen screen:



I changed one thing here which was to disallow plump helmets from being cooked, because I want to brew them into alcohol instead. Dwarves can still eat raw plump helmets if they feel like - I don't think that can be altered.

Moving a little further on in time:



- Uberfish is now counting plump helmets and wine barrels in his 3x3 office.

- I'm clearing out the hill ramps that would lead to the level above with [d]esignate [z]. If I omitted this step, creatures would be able to just walk down the ramps after the palisade wall is complete.



- The palisade is now close to completion, and dwarves have built a trade depot (the 5x5 building near the fence) which will let us trade with caravans.

- A kitchen was added next to the dining table where Kylearan is preparing some easy meals. With the still and kitchen, you just [q] them and set a repeating job (for drinks that would be [a]dd new task, [b]rew drink, [r]epeat) every once in a while and they'll keep cooking and distilling until they run out of suitable ingredients or barrels to contain the booze.

- The down stairs have been widened as part of the aquifer breaching project, and Cyneheard is working on pump components in the carpenter's workshop. This workshop also produces the other functional wooden items such as like furniture, doors, blocks, bins and barrels.



- Our palisade wall is complete and I've finished it with a drawbridge ([b]uild brid[g]e). It's set to raise up to the north so that when we raise it blocks the gap in the wall. The green control lever for this bridge is in Uberfish's office; [b]uild [T]rap/lever, [l]ever to set it up, and then [q] it to [a]dd new task - link [b]ridge. We now have our first functional security system!

Summer has arrived and 9 new dwarves immigrate! Typically, most of them have professions that are currently useless, and these are no exception. They'll gradually be reassigned to more useful jobs. Since currently any industry that involves stone and metal is locked out to us a few of them will just sit around idle for a while. This isn't a big problem because we have a lot of food from our farming operation, two of the newcomers (Jkaen and Brian) have hunting skills and two others (Adkebunkus and Brackard) fishing skills.

The new arrivals brought two yaks with them. One starved to death and I built a butcher's shop to get meat from the other. An extra kitten also got eaten.



In the meantime the aquifer project is in full swing.



The "double slit" method was used to breach the first two levels of the aquifer. The way this technique works is to dig two holes into the aquifer and use a pump to extract water from one hole and dump it back into the other, allowing workers access to the aquifer level where they can replace the porous stone and sand with solid walls that block water flow. For those interested a fuller description is here:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/D...lit_method

In the screenshot dwarves are carrying out the slow process of replacing porous sand with wooden walls to stop water flowing out of the aquifer on this level. The dwarves will suspend the wall construction every time the water level goes above 1/7 (which is quite often) and it has to be manually restarted [q] [s].

A kobold thief shows up at the gate and bumps into Jkaen, but quickly runs away!

In the meantime, both the fortress' cats have adopted Ichabod and are following him around.



The aquifer is uneven and one of my two holes reaches the bottom before the other which means I had to improvise. I used pumps to clear water from one of the 2x2 shafts and wall it off. Below is a layer of solid rock, but the bottom of the shaft is still flooded with 7/7 water which I don't have pump access to. I have to build a well a couple of levels up in order to empty the shaft out. (Dwarves gather water from wells when available and I designated the other aquifer shaft as a pond in order to get them to fill buckets and dispose of the water there.)

Once most of the water is emptied out Ichabod can dig again. Due to the aquifer being uneven I dig down a couple of extra levels below the aquifer to be safe. We've hit the stone layer! Ichabod begins exploratory mining 7 levels below the surface.

[uberfish]

Ichabod quickly discovers metal! The 'c' to the right of his icon is one of his cats.



Back on the surface I order up a wood furnace (to produce charcoal fuel), smelter, and metalsmith's forge. Now that we've hit stone I want to expand the mining crew by forging a couple of bronze picks.

Mardoc has become the new head chef producing delicacies such as the following



Here's a snapshot of life back up on the surface with the new workshops up:



Tasunke is making charcoal, Harmless making a pick, two dogs are tied up with ropes near the bridge entrance and trade depot with their puppies accompanying. The generic stockpile in the main room is getting horribly cluttered. I've put up four nest boxes tucked away in the top outside corner for our birds to use and it seems the eggs are automatically collected without me needing to do anything. At the moment chickens, ducks and peacocks are randomly wandering around the main room.

A minor WTF moment:



"I can't fish because there's a fish!" Thanks DF.

Oh yeah, at some point the dwarf caravan arrived and I traded the crappy wooden crafts Helium built for some miscellaneous stuff - crystal glass, leather, random gems, more gypsum plaster, thread, rope, cages made of lead and zinc. Basically stuff that we can't produce ourselves yet. An extra anvil. And three beer barrels for the beer drinkers, since plump helmets only produce wine.



Before I hand over I want to do a bit of tidying up. First the gap in our wall (although somewhat secure since the ramps were removed) is ugly. I fill in the gap, square out the pit a bit and make it our new rubbish dump.



On the lower level (hotkeyed to F2) I place four green statues in the entry room (made from the olivine we started with) and expand the staircase to 1x2 - I want to make it 2x2 eventually but this will necessitate more fooling around with the aquifer. WARNING: do not mess with the aquifer until we have a way to drain the water from any undergrouind levels we have.

The mining crew digs out a circular dining room and Helium is reassigned from woodcrafting to stone detailing and ordered to smooth it. We will probably not be making more wooden crafts because this is an activity fit only for elves.

We also dug out a 15x15 square room which currently contains a mason, craftsdwarf and mechanic workshop which will be useful for consuming the stone the miners dig out.

back up top:



Our fort now looks like a proper fort. The added wall on the upper hill should prevent goblins standing up there and shooting into the courtyard.

I finished the new rubbish pit, dumped all the refuse in there and placed a new statue made from light blue microcline where the old rubbish dump was and turned it into a statue garden. Dwarves will now spend some time hanging out there and avoid becoming allergic to sunlight.



Kylearan clearly has issues, because he has made 3 statues of dragons eating people, and 2 statues of purring maggots...



Yes our temporary main room is still a complete mess.



Our current lower level, viewed in stonesense.

Ichabod also has issues:



Every cat or kitten (that I don't kill first) in the entire fort follows her around. She's also both a worshipper and dubious worshipper of the same god. She cackles and likes yellow-green. Is that even a real colour??



We have relatively little material wealth so far, but lots and lots of food and drink which should keep the dwarves happy. My population cap was set at 25 but we didn't hit it anyway.

[mostly_harmless]

Very nice progress. Excellent execution of the aquifer breaching!
Also, what you have done is very, very similar to my openings.

Brewing plump helmets (and other plants) also yields their seeds for replanting. Cooking those plants does not.

Grazing animals, like yaks, have to be assigned to pasture (zones). Larger animals need quite a lot of room to be able to feed themselves. Each yak for example needs a 16x16 zone. You can have more than one yak assigned to such a zone, but then they will graze faster than the grass can regrow.

There are probably many hundred different items you can choose from to take with you. The cheapest option is of course to only take the tools and raw materials with you that are essential and leave everything to your managing skills. For example, unless you embark on a region with no trees, I would not bring beds with me.

What's the benefit of bringing less?

Challenge!
You can easily save embark points by not bringing two pickaxes with you but only one. Those points can then be spend on a couple of additional dogs or adding skills.

- In the top half of the main room is a large generic stock[p]ile set to take everything but corpses, stone, refuse and wood, so we can move all our stuff inside.

Where did stone end up being stockpiled?

Probably not set up yet, as we did not have any stones until the aquifer breach.

mh

[uberfish]

Things we need to do

- Individual rooms for dwarves (if we're playing with a low population count for now, we can afford to make nice ones)
- Furnish the new dining room
- Reorganize our various industries and stockpiles in a more efficient way
- Start thinking about a military
- Explore the underground


Apart from this we can build stuff on the surface or underground and add new industries as we please!


Dwarf roster with major skills

(Pling became our first dwarf with a flashing name due to cutting down lots of trees and becoming Legendary Woodcutter. Some of the immigrants were more skilled than others - I randomly assigned names without checking.)


Adbekunkus: Competent Fisherdwarf, Competent Axedwarf
Brian: Master Bone Carver, Master Negotiator, Proficient Marksdwarf
Brackard: Competent Macedwarf, Adequate Fisherdwarf
Bigger: Adequate Miner
Cyneheard: Professional Carpenter, Proficient Armoursmith
Gustaran: Great Clothier, Professional Comedian (and a few other social skills), Competent Axedwarf, Adequate Miner
Harmless: Proficient Weaponsmith, Proficient Mechanic, Skilled Pump Operator
Helium: Skilled Wood Crafter, Competent Marksdwarf
HidingKneel: Great Tracker, Competent Axedwarf, Adequate Stone Crafter
Ichabod: Master Miner
Jkaen: Great Flatterer, Great Presser, Adept Negotiator, Adept Pacifier, Adept Judge of Intent, Proficient Marksdwarf
Kylearan: Proficient Mason, Skilled Cook
Mardoc: Accomplished Tracker, Skilled Cook, Competent Marksdwarf
Molach: Competent Macedwarf
Pling: Legendary Woodcutter, Proficient Siege Engineer
Sunrise: Accomplished Grower, Competent Animal Trainer, Adequate Herbalist
Tasunke: Competent Marksdwarf, Adequate Wood Burner, Adequate Gem Setter
Uberfish: Proficient Record Keeper, Proficient Appraiser, Competent Brewer, Competent Judge of Intent, Adequate Negotiator


And yeah, there's no stone stockpile because we weren't actually mining any stone until recently. We don't really need one yet because we are excavating space underground, and I just moved our workshops that use stone down underground where there's lots of stone lying around anyway.

We have lots of food and drink, so I think Ichabod or another new player would be able to take over comfortably.


Save

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19168036/d/region3.zip

[mostly_harmless]

Ichabod, have a go. I won't have much playing time over the weekend.
As far as I can see, Uberfish has made an awesome start for the first year!

You want to set your dwarf limit to 25 as well probably. Done in the init_d file in /data or such.

mh

[Lewwyn]

I've spent the last day reading this thread.

Going to play around with this myself I think.

[Jkaen]

It is a fun game

[Lewwyn]

It is a fun game

Yes I died on my first day.

[Jkaen]

It is a fun game

Yes I died on my first day.

[pling]

(Pling became our first dwarf with a flashing name due to cutting down lots of trees and becoming Legendary Woodcutter.

Now all I have to do is learn how to burn them and then I can take over the world. Muahahahaha!