edit: While I'm posting. I didn't know exactly what I could trade so I ended up hurriedly making buckets and a couple shields. I took all the meat off the caravan but couldn't get any more before they left, will I survive long enough? my first floodgate didn't flood my farm area so I'll need to make another but now it's fall and planting seems a bad idea so I don't know what it will take to survive. To get on this long, my fisherdwarf captured a lot of turtles, but they all dissappeared rather quickly (did the lizard eat them?) and now he's dead. In any case, I feel my fortress is in danger.
<!--quoteo(post=1586326:date=Dec 9 2006, 02:27 PM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 9 2006, 02:27 PM) [snapback]1586326[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Ah elves, the hippies of fantasy.
Cutting down trees is murder, man!!!
edit: While I'm posting. I didn't know exactly what I could trade so I ended up hurriedly making buckets and a couple shields. I took all the meat off the caravan but couldn't get any more before they left, will I survive long enough? my first floodgate didn't flood my farm area so I'll need to make another but now it's fall and planting seems a bad idea so I don't know what it will take to survive. To get on this long, my fisherdwarf captured a lot of turtles, but they all dissappeared rather quickly (did the lizard eat them?) and now he's dead. In any case, I feel my fortress is in danger. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I survived with a surprising little amount of food (although I did manage to get all the food from the caravan); my farming didn't get set up until the second season. I think I had about 18 plants and 5 meat or so...Fishing and some gathering can augment your food gathering; I suppose hunting could as well, but I've never tried it do to the bad news it gets.
I'd also like to know about clothes, but only because all of the articles that were on my dwarves when they died (killed by lizardmen/crocodiles/etc.) are still sitting right where they died and no one wants to touch the stuff...I mean, moving it out to refuse, stealing it, piling it in a cloth pile - is there a clothing stockpile?
PulseTo create, to create and escape.Join Date: 2002-08-29Member: 1248Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1586116:date=Dec 8 2006, 11:15 PM:name=PvtBones)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(PvtBones @ Dec 8 2006, 11:15 PM) [snapback]1586116[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I'd like to try this game but the graphics are way to retro and confusing for me. Any word on a graphics update sometime in the future? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No.
<!--quoteo(post=1586326:date=Dec 9 2006, 03:27 PM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 9 2006, 03:27 PM) [snapback]1586326[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Ah elves, the hippies of fantasy.
Cutting down trees is murder, man!!!
edit: While I'm posting. I didn't know exactly what I could trade so I ended up hurriedly making buckets and a couple shields. I took all the meat off the caravan but couldn't get any more before they left, will I survive long enough? my first floodgate didn't flood my farm area so I'll need to make another but now it's fall and planting seems a bad idea so I don't know what it will take to survive. To get on this long, my fisherdwarf captured a lot of turtles, but they all dissappeared rather quickly (did the lizard eat them?) and now he's dead. In any case, I feel my fortress is in danger. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Having about 3 food per dwarf is a nice, safe comfort range for a winter. You can make do with 2 per dwarf, but it might be bad. Also try and use your farmers to work on alcohol in the winter. About 6 units of alcohol per dwarf per season is another decent rule, but you brew it so quickly that it never really hits low levels.
If you find yourself starving, brew some alcohol, and use a kitchen to make a finished food out of it. While beer biscuits don't sound terribly good, at least your dwarfs won't die.
About turtles, I'm not a fisher myself, so I don't know if they require a fishery or a butchery, but in either case, lizards or lizardmen don't eat your food. : P
To the people asking about clothing, I can't get it to work either. No matter how much there might be around, dwarfs wander around in tatters. Once you get shops and an economy going, though, they start buying it abundance.
I have a muddy rock section near the river now, but I'm not permitted to place a farm plot. Is it because it's winter now or how do I proceed in getting a farm going once spring comes around?
Yeah, no placing plots in winter. Once spring comes, just go to [b]uild and [p]lot. You then expand the area you want for your plot using the hk/um controls within an area of 100 units. A farmer is the one who constructs it once placed.
Edit: Also, post a picture of your fort! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
Assign a refuse pile if you haven't, and someone with the cleaning skill will drag it there eventually. Be warned though, that cleaning seems to be an extremely low priority, so the corpse may hang around for a long, long time, even if your dwarfs are idle. Also, for cleaning up blood, you need a spare bucket for your cleaners to carry water.
As for a picture, press exit when your in your fort, and select the option that says save to BMP. Sadly, it saves the entire map in one 42 MB image when can be a pain to edit if you don't have much RAM (me).
I had saved and just came back, the moment I unpause it another lizardman shows up and kills my first and only metalsmith, he then breaks the upper body of a miner and wounds his head along with several other wounds before the lizardman dies. So I'm down to an effective 4 dwarfs (+1 healing in bed).
and apparently I'm out of food unless I can do something with these turtles. I have plenty of seed but nothing edible. so, am I dead?
another edit: Words I didn't expect to find in the game: Rotten dwarf chunk
Could someone explain to me how i can get coke or charcoal? What skills do my dwarves need to work the ashery/furnace?
Also, can I do anything with a mountain of frogmen corpses? I try to set tanning but apparently 'frogman leather' wouldn't be very popular, so they don't want to skin the frogmen (but somehow I'm still occasionally getting leather to come in, despite apparently not having any bodies available for tanning.
so my carpenter starved to death, and I had some processed turtle around for him... I think he was my main woodcutter *sniff*
So, here I am thinking: well, the farm has started, I might be able to make it, but now I have 3 dwarfs that are actually working... not good. I can't do much. Then about 20 migrants appear. Now I'm trying to dig like crazy for their rooms, make their beds, and hope I have enough food from my farm later on.
edit: ... a craftsdwarf went insane and is running around, babbling.
Gwahir: Hit [z] and go to your kitchen. If you have a kitchen you can cook meals with seeds alone. Just make sure you have enough for the spring. Dwarves make some very interesting meals... one of my cooks just made a roast using four different kinds of tallow. Ewwwwww. In any case, good luck with the winter.
Gecko: To make charcoal you need to build a wood furnace, then set tasks to Make Charcoal. You'll lose a log every time you do this, so try to keep it down until you can build magma furnaces. Also, I don't think you can get frogmen skins. To get a skin, you have to butcher an animal; every time a viable animal is placed in a refuse pile, the butchery will automatically set butcher task. This well net you some bones, fat, meat, a skull, and a skin, and once a skin exists, a task in the tanner's shop will automatically be set to tan a hide. Those corpses will eventually rot away and leave a mountain of bones for you.
What's the big deal with conserving wood? The stuff regrows. There're sapplings everywhere outside, and trees everywhere else. Do we just not want our poor defenseless (armed-with-crossbows) dwarves to go outside? Or is this supposed to be practice for when I plop down in smoldering wilderness with no trees, no shrubs and haunted beasts around?
Woot, just got silver ore (...which is galena, but geologically that's not really right. Galena is lead sulfide and should yield vast quantities of lead when melted, not necessarily silver (although silver is occasionally found in galena). Argentite or Chlorargyrite should yield silver (with Chlorargyrite granting the added advantage of possibly releasing a poisonous cloud of diatomic chlorine when smelted, poisoning your dwaves <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> ).
Galena should be added later for the eventual introduction of basic firearms...or Roman style plumbing <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /> .
This operation uses no fuel, but needs wood, which may be in short supply depending on your map.
To make Coke:
1. Build a smelter.
2. Burn one unit of bithomus coal and one unit of coke or charcoal into two units of coke.
This operation uses fuel, but you end up with more fuel then you used. However, when you find the magma river you no longer need fuel to make metal items since now all smelting and forging operations are "free" and use no fuel. At this point you should be saving your coal for making steel, which is the strongest ore for making weapons and armor.
And, think of it this way. The max immigrant population of a fort is 200. This does not include nobels. This means the maximum staffed population of a fort will be 225 or so, at least. This means you will need at least 225 beds, each made from one wood. You will also need numerous barrels in order to store all the food and drink that your dwarves need, and making barrels out of metal is a slow and rather wasteful process. You also need at least one charcoal in order to make your first two steel bars, so you can make magma smelters. This means that by the end of a game, you will need about 350 wood worth of wooden items, minimum. Do you have 350 wood on your map? Remeber that while on a heavly forested map you might have plenty of trees, eventually you will be looking for a challenge and start in a map with NO trees, which brings up many problems - the least of which being how the heck do I get enough beds? I suggest starting the economy very late, if at all.
small note about that craftsdwarf, looking through the notes, he fell under fey mood, but didn't seem to demand anything, nor did he take over the crafts workshop. He just went insane soon after the start, babbling, then he spent a couple days running around in the rain until he died of thirst... in the rain.
<!--quoteo(post=1586555:date=Dec 10 2006, 04:33 PM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 10 2006, 04:33 PM) [snapback]1586555[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> small note about that craftsdwarf, looking through the notes, he fell under fey mood, but didn't seem to demand anything, nor did he take over the crafts workshop. He just went insane soon after the start, babbling, then he spent a couple days running around in the rain until he died of thirst... in the rain. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Hmm are you sure that the craftsdwarf wanted the crafts workshop? He could have possibly wanted another workshop that you didn't have yet. I'm not too sure about which workshop craftsdwarfs normally need but if he doesn't take a workshop that means that you don't have the one he wants I believe.
New theory: scooter blues are a genus of forum troll.
If a dwarf in a strange mood just sits in some random place doing nothing, it's because he can't find the kind of workshop he needs. There's a chance that he will sieze one of your other workshops and convert it into the type he needs. Most likely he will just sit around doing nothing until he goes insane. If you have some inkling as to which kind of workshop he needs, try building one of those. Otherwise, assign war dogs to him and hope he merely goes melancholy. If he's sitting in a workshop doing nothing, it's because he lacks some of the materials he needs.
<!--quoteo(post=1586471:date=Dec 9 2006, 09:08 PM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 9 2006, 09:08 PM) [snapback]1586471[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> edit: here it is, the not so great fortress of meh <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A few suggestions:
1. Put doors on all your rooms that mean something, namely your dining room and bedrooms early on. You have nice rooms for the dwarfs carved out a a bed sitting in each, but without a door, it's as if all your beds were in one main room. Place a door at the entrance, go to the bed, and define the room as a bedroom using [q]. Do the same thing with your dining room.
2. For your irrigation system, it's possible to link both floodgates to one lever. Simply don't put both gates in at once, but first attatch one to the lever, and when that is done, place in the second and repeat.
3. Your wagons are useless, so break them down for wood. Press [t] and hover over them, and then I believe it is the [x] button, and a carpenter will dismantle them for 3 free wood.
4. Frog/Lizardmen seem to be a problem, so install some stone-fall traps beside the river. Build some mechanisms like you did for the irrigation system, and then go to [b]uild -> traps/levers -> stone fall trap. One trap will instantly kill one river creature, so it's a decent investment.
Finally, if you have plenty of seeds and no food, set up a brewery, make alcohol, and cook the alcohol at a kitchen into a meal. Though quite a bit of dwarfpower is needed, you don't starve.
@ UltimaGecko
You're sharing tables in your dining room! For a dining room that will make dwarfs happy, you need to have one chair to one table in an unambiguous fashion. If chairs are adjacent to any table, your dwarves won't like it.
Just a picture of my first fort. <a href="http://fileanchor.com/84193.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://fileanchor.com/84193-t.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" /></a> File is 1090kb, 1704x2504 pixels. Hosted on FileAnchor.
Mainly started just to learn the interface and such but I think I did suprisingly well. I didn't get my farm up the first winter but managed to survive suprising easily considering I thought I was screwed. I guess I did buy out the first caravan though which might have been what saved me <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />. After the first winter was over, I started farming right away but disaster struck and my starting farmer who was quite skilled(can't remember exactly how many points I put into him) got killed by frogmen <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> and after that I didn't really have any good farmers. I probably should have turned on more farmers I think as it probably would have stopped my eventual lose but at the time I had a lot of food so it didn't seem that important. The attack also injured 2 poor immigrant children. One of them recovered fast but the other is still in the bed closest to the entrance of my cave(I forgot to label) even after a year(evil bugged recovery <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />). Anyway I finally lost in spring of the third year when I suddenly realised I had absolutely no food left as people kept cancelling jobs to feed a wounded dwarf. I might have been able to survive but I decided to just abandon the fort and start over since I learnt a lot from the fort and wanted to try a new one.
Looking back at it when I decided to post it here I see there seems to be a dead elephant there which I have no idea how it died. Also the rest of the elephants kinda look like they are heading towards me so maybe it was a good thing that I abandoned it when I did lol. Although I guess they may just be passing by <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />.
Anyway I'll post my second fort sometime later which I think is a lot more successful although I still haven't really mastered making a good layout for my fort <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />.
Edit- Actually for some reason there's 2 corpse of dwarves in the burial and as far as I can remember I only lost one guy to the frogmen attack.. Odd there must have been some elephant fighting I didn't know about.
But it's still death, death everywhere...either because 6x6 doesn't apply to supports or my dwarves aren't installing the supports correctly or something. Plus I mined 3 emeralds and I have no idea where they went, I swear the miners just took them.
Hmm that's very odd.. Are you sure that your dwarfs have actually built the supports? If they aren't built they should be black with a gray background while built ones should be gray with black background if I remember correctly. Also to check buildings that can't be accessed with the q menu I think the t menu works (alteast i think it's t, it's the one that is something like check items contained within this building.) If you accidently mine too big a room I suggest you leave it alone and make sure none of your dwarfs go into it and just let it collapse first. This is because supports generally take a while to build as they need both architecture and whatever skill that is needed for the stuff they are made out of(like masonary for brick). Once they cave-in they should create some unmined squares again and then they should be able to safely build supports before mining away the stuff again. Also I think it's probably normally better to leave unmined stone in a room rather then make supports for it. Although i guess since they are made out of stone it really doesn't matter very much it just a bit time saving. You can still do this even after a cave-in since it creates some unmined stone although sometimes it isn't in the right spot so you might be forced to make a support. Although personally I normally just build supports if i mine a room too big.
Edit- Also as for the emeralds they may be kept in bins somewhere. Suprisingly uncut gem and such seem to be able to be kept in bins unlike wood and stone. I guess they are smaller and such. I suggest you check your bins.
I think I want to move my food and dining rooms closer to the farm. Currently, the planting is slow because they run all the way down the cooridor, pick up a seed, and run back then repeat. I have 3 or 4 dwarves doing this but it isn't enough and I sometimes have to slaughter one of my animals. I'm starting to get a good horse herd going though. (There's also a cow calf that follows a miner around) I've run out of fish in the rivers, though it could be seasonal, as a result of the food loss, another fisherdwarf died, this time of starvation.
Also, I'm trying to get my dwarves to put the armor and weapons on the racks I created, but it doesn't seem to happen.
I'm assuming you must save the game in order to leave the game (at least without a forceful termination)? Finally, if you abandon a fortress, do you move the whole population elsewhere or what?
As of last night: <img src="http://people.virginia.edu/~pdt2v/dwarffort12_10_06_2.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
Yes that's a bit of miasma coming from the butchery, how can I prevent that? put it in its own room? Off to the right is a small passage way going to the chasm, nothing more than that yet. To the left is the road that hasn't brought in a human caravan yet, I guess I finished it too late last summer.
I haven't put the doors in yet, but I am getting some detail work in and a some weapons and armor are being made. It just became spring, so with a little work, I should be able to survive.
I've got to wonder why you're digging towards the chasm. It'll just bring you a bunch of monsters that you don't seem equipped to deal with yet.
Although, I haven't reached the chasm yet, either (plus I'm contemplating restarting, since all my rooms are collapsing, but I know what to do in general now). I wonder if it's possible to divert magma into the chasm and then to block your path to the chasm with a statue or two until the chasm is dead.
And with all the talk of wood: yea, what do you do in the barren landscapes when you need ~250 beds and multiple barrels (and some charcoal)? How could any of your dwarves be content if they can't sleep. Similarily, why wont any of my carpenters (I have like 8 of them) ever work at my wood working shops. I'll have like 6 of them with 'No Job' but both of my carpenter places begging for someone to come by and make beds/barrels.
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Is there a way I can move furniture?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yes using q select the furniture and mark it for removal. A dwarf with furniture hauling enabled will come and dismantle it and carry the piece of furniture to the furniture stockpile(not sure what he'll do if there isn't any but it will probably get dismatled and then he will just leave it laying there) after that you can use the b build menu to build that piece of furniture again.
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think I want to move my food and dining rooms closer to the farm. Currently, the planting is slow because they run all the way down the cooridor, pick up a seed, and run back then repeat. I have 3 or 4 dwarves doing this but it isn't enough and I sometimes have to slaughter one of my animals. I'm starting to get a good horse herd going though. (There's also a cow calf that follows a miner around) I've run out of fish in the rivers, though it could be seasonal, as a result of the food loss, another fisherdwarf died, this time of starvation. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yes that will probably greatly slow farming but there's no need to move your entire food stockpile and dining room to fix it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />. Fortunately custom stockpiles have been added a while back so all you have to do is make a small stockpile near your farm and make it only accept seeds and turn off stockpiling seeds on your food stockpile. I am not completely sure about what keys to do this but to modify a stockpiles settings you first highlight it with the q menu and then press whatever key it is to modify it(i think the menu you want is change settings). Then you'll get a large list which you can hopefully firgure out yourself(sorry i don't have my game open right now ;P). Seeds should be somewhere under the Foods main category.
Note though that if you have designated a stockpile in pieces(ie you first designated a small bit of it and later expanded the room and then expanded it by just designating more bits) I think it is considered more than one stockpile. To fix that you just remove the whole stockpile and then designate it again so it will be 1 big stockpile not a lot of small ones. I'm not completely sure that they are considered different stockpiles if designated at different times since i normally just delete the stockpile and redesignate it but it makes sense that the game probably wont just automatically merge stockpiles for you if you desinate them seperately <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />.
Also about the fish any body of water will run out of fish eventually but will replenish itself with time so just wait and it will get fish again <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Also, I'm trying to get my dwarves to put the armor and weapons on the racks I created, but it doesn't seem to happen.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Not sure about this but looking at the wiki it looks like weapon racks and armor stands by default have all weapons and armor disabled so you have to use the q menu and then enable the types and materials of the armor/weapon you wish to store there. Also armor stands and weapons racks aren't really nessisary for just storing weapons and armor anymore as far as I know since you can make stockpile to store them now. Although might be wrong on that.
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm assuming you must save the game in order to leave the game (at least without a forceful termination)? Finally, if you abandon a fortress, do you move the whole population elsewhere or what?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yes as far as i know you can't save without leaving. I believe it's because the game is supposed to have permanent death and such so if you could save anytime that will kind of defeat that wont it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />.
As for abandoning fortress, I'm not completely sure about this so don't trust me too much on it. Hopefully someone can come and correct me if I'm wrong. As far as I know when you abandon fortress your guys all dissapear(or go somewhere knowing the complexity of this game) but you won't make a new fortress with them if that's what you mean. Your abandoned fortress will be saved however so you can reclaim the fortress or visit it in adventure mode. If you reclaim the fortress I believe you start there as like you are starting a new game but the parts you dug out will be there as will your items although they maybe scattered around. Also I believe there may be some kind of monsters inside your old fortress they you might have to fight as you go deeper in(Note: I haven't actually tried this before so only have a very vague idea of it so i could easily be wrong about a lot of these facts so don't trust me too much on this bit). Also of course you can just start a brand new fortress somewhere else like you did at the start of the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yes that's a bit of miasma coming from the butchery, how can I prevent that? put it in its own room?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Not too sure about this. I normally keep my butchery outside, never tried keeping it inside. Putting it in a seperate room will limit the harm miasma should do but your butcher will still be exposed to it as will anyone coming in to haul stuff from the butchery. How exactly did it get there anyway? Did your butcher take a corpse there and then go on break leaving it there? I guess you could keep it inside as long as you make sure everything is quickly butchered so that it doesnt have time to give miasma.
<!--quoteo(post=1586779:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:43 AM:name=UltimaGecko)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(UltimaGecko @ Dec 11 2006, 06:43 AM) [snapback]1586779[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I've got to wonder why you're digging towards the chasm. It'll just bring you a bunch of monsters that you don't seem equipped to deal with yet. Although, I haven't reached the chasm yet, either (plus I'm contemplating restarting, since all my rooms are collapsing, but I know what to do in general now). I wonder if it's possible to divert magma into the chasm and then to block your path to the chasm with a statue or two until the chasm is dead. And with all the talk of wood: yea, what do you do in the barren landscapes when you need ~250 beds and multiple barrels (and some charcoal)? How could any of your dwarves be content if they can't sleep. Similarily, why wont any of my carpenters (I have like 8 of them) ever work at my wood working shops. I'll have like 6 of them with 'No Job' but both of my carpenter places begging for someone to come by and make beds/barrels. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Your burning chasm approach should work as long as the chasm doesn't spawn any building destroyers(not sure if it does or not.) Although come to think of it, anything that spawns will probably just hang around till you unblock them and then come and kill you since as far as i know monsters don't starve or go away. Well dwarves will sleep without beds. They will just sleep wherever they are when they get tired. Which can be quite bad if they decide to sleep on the bridge and get drowned(I once had a dwarf sleep in a door he just placed and then the seasonal flood came and a kitten got drowned because of him <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />). They will just get unhappy thoughts from sleeping on the floor. As for the carpenters that very odd. Are you sure the workshop is accessable? If it is in a 3x3 room the entrance into the room could be blocked by one of the workshops unpassable squares. Although if that happening i guess you should be getting pathfinding errors.. Odd.. Well check that out anyway. If that's not it i have no idea what it could be.. Hmm..
<!--quoteo(post=1586781:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:47 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:47 AM) [snapback]1586781[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> The passage is closed off for now, I was hoping to reach magma. Is the chasm always before the magma? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yea the chasm is before the magma.
it happens after every butchering. I get the meat and a little later I get the miasma which soon dissipates. Just a minor inconvenience really.
reading the wiki, it might be possible that the thing is killed and my butcher doesn't come around in time, so I might've wasted a fair amount of meat <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1586792:date=Dec 11 2006, 07:24 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 07:24 AM) [snapback]1586792[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> it happens after every butchering. I get the meat and a little later I get the miasma which soon dissipates. Just a minor inconvenience really.
reading the wiki, it might be possible that the thing is killed and my butcher doesn't come around in time, so I might've wasted a fair amount of meat <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Hmm you can try checking out what's causing it by using the t menu to have a look at what's inside the shop. Whatever is causing it will probably be rotten something. If you can't see anything in there maybe try using k to look around and see if you can find anything. Yea you have to butcher things fast or they will rot. Maybe take note of when something gets killed and quickly go turn off other tasks for your butcher when he's needed? Not too sure if there any other way.
There is also sometimes some part of the animal that still qualifies as refuse after butchering; maybe that's being left behind? Or, this happens sometimes, a tantruming dwarf tosses something into an inaccessable square and nobody can clean it up. In the case it will eventually rot away, or you have to dismantle the butchery. Just take a look around with [t].
As for trees in barren landscapes, you would have to build an indoor tree farm. Any spot in the cave that gets flooded may sprout a plant or seedling; these saplings (over 3 years' time) will grow to become tower caps, which can be cut down like any other tree. Still, that's 3 years without any beds (or just a few if you dismantle your wagon).
Gecko: There is always a chance that miners will accidentally destroy any gems in a wall they are working on. The more experienced ones do it less often, but even legendary miners will destroy a gem now and again.
I've seen monsters do weird things sometimes. One time I managed to lock a bunch of snakemen into a mining stockpile and several of them were struck with melancholy. They didn't even fight back when I went to clean them up <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/asrifle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::asrifle::" border="0" alt="asrifle.gif" />
Comments
Cutting down trees is murder, man!!!
edit:
While I'm posting. I didn't know exactly what I could trade so I ended up hurriedly making buckets and a couple shields. I took all the meat off the caravan but couldn't get any more before they left, will I survive long enough? my first floodgate didn't flood my farm area so I'll need to make another but now it's fall and planting seems a bad idea so I don't know what it will take to survive. To get on this long, my fisherdwarf captured a lot of turtles, but they all dissappeared rather quickly (did the lizard eat them?) and now he's dead. In any case, I feel my fortress is in danger.
Ah elves, the hippies of fantasy.
Cutting down trees is murder, man!!!
edit:
While I'm posting. I didn't know exactly what I could trade so I ended up hurriedly making buckets and a couple shields. I took all the meat off the caravan but couldn't get any more before they left, will I survive long enough? my first floodgate didn't flood my farm area so I'll need to make another but now it's fall and planting seems a bad idea so I don't know what it will take to survive. To get on this long, my fisherdwarf captured a lot of turtles, but they all dissappeared rather quickly (did the lizard eat them?) and now he's dead. In any case, I feel my fortress is in danger.
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I survived with a surprising little amount of food (although I did manage to get all the food from the caravan); my farming didn't get set up until the second season. I think I had about 18 plants and 5 meat or so...Fishing and some gathering can augment your food gathering; I suppose hunting could as well, but I've never tried it do to the bad news it gets.
I'd also like to know about clothes, but only because all of the articles that were on my dwarves when they died (killed by lizardmen/crocodiles/etc.) are still sitting right where they died and no one wants to touch the stuff...I mean, moving it out to refuse, stealing it, piling it in a cloth pile - is there a clothing stockpile?
I'd like to try this game but the graphics are way to retro and confusing for me. Any word on a graphics update sometime in the future?
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No.
Ah elves, the hippies of fantasy.
Cutting down trees is murder, man!!!
edit:
While I'm posting. I didn't know exactly what I could trade so I ended up hurriedly making buckets and a couple shields. I took all the meat off the caravan but couldn't get any more before they left, will I survive long enough? my first floodgate didn't flood my farm area so I'll need to make another but now it's fall and planting seems a bad idea so I don't know what it will take to survive. To get on this long, my fisherdwarf captured a lot of turtles, but they all dissappeared rather quickly (did the lizard eat them?) and now he's dead. In any case, I feel my fortress is in danger.
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Having about 3 food per dwarf is a nice, safe comfort range for a winter. You can make do with 2 per dwarf, but it might be bad. Also try and use your farmers to work on alcohol in the winter. About 6 units of alcohol per dwarf per season is another decent rule, but you brew it so quickly that it never really hits low levels.
If you find yourself starving, brew some alcohol, and use a kitchen to make a finished food out of it. While beer biscuits don't sound terribly good, at least your dwarfs won't die.
About turtles, I'm not a fisher myself, so I don't know if they require a fishery or a butchery, but in either case, lizards or lizardmen don't eat your food. : P
To the people asking about clothing, I can't get it to work either. No matter how much there might be around, dwarfs wander around in tatters. Once you get shops and an economy going, though, they start buying it abundance.
Edit: Also, post a picture of your fort! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
btw, I just had a run in with a lizard man who decided to give minor wound to my miner, who promptly killed it. What do I do with the corpse?
As for a picture, press exit when your in your fort, and select the option that says save to BMP. Sadly, it saves the entire map in one 42 MB image when can be a pain to edit if you don't have much RAM (me).
edit: here it is, the not so great fortress of meh
<img src="http://people.virginia.edu/~pdt2v/dwarffort12_9_06_2.JPG" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
edit2: no comments?
edit3: I have the worst luck ever
I had saved and just came back, the moment I unpause it another lizardman shows up and kills my first and only metalsmith, he then breaks the upper body of a miner and wounds his head along with several other wounds before the lizardman dies. So I'm down to an effective 4 dwarfs (+1 healing in bed).
and apparently I'm out of food unless I can do something with these turtles. I have plenty of seed but nothing edible. so, am I dead?
another edit: Words I didn't expect to find in the game: Rotten dwarf chunk
Also, can I do anything with a mountain of frogmen corpses? I try to set tanning but apparently 'frogman leather' wouldn't be very popular, so they don't want to skin the frogmen (but somehow I'm still occasionally getting leather to come in, despite apparently not having any bodies available for tanning.
Hopefully this isn't too huge:
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/dwarffortress.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
So, here I am thinking: well, the farm has started, I might be able to make it, but now I have 3 dwarfs that are actually working... not good. I can't do much. Then about 20 migrants appear. Now I'm trying to dig like crazy for their rooms, make their beds, and hope I have enough food from my farm later on.
edit: ... a craftsdwarf went insane and is running around, babbling.
Gecko: To make charcoal you need to build a wood furnace, then set tasks to Make Charcoal. You'll lose a log every time you do this, so try to keep it down until you can build magma furnaces. Also, I don't think you can get frogmen skins. To get a skin, you have to butcher an animal; every time a viable animal is placed in a refuse pile, the butchery will automatically set butcher task. This well net you some bones, fat, meat, a skull, and a skin, and once a skin exists, a task in the tanner's shop will automatically be set to tan a hide. Those corpses will eventually rot away and leave a mountain of bones for you.
Woot, just got silver ore (...which is galena, but geologically that's not really right. Galena is lead sulfide and should yield vast quantities of lead when melted, not necessarily silver (although silver is occasionally found in galena). Argentite or Chlorargyrite should yield silver (with Chlorargyrite granting the added advantage of possibly releasing a poisonous cloud of diatomic chlorine when smelted, poisoning your dwaves <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> ).
Galena should be added later for the eventual introduction of basic firearms...or Roman style plumbing <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /> .
1. Build a Wood Furnace.
2. Burn one unit of wood into one charcoal.
This operation uses no fuel, but needs wood, which may be in short supply depending on your map.
To make Coke:
1. Build a smelter.
2. Burn one unit of bithomus coal and one unit of coke or charcoal into two units of coke.
This operation uses fuel, but you end up with more fuel then you used. However, when you find the magma river you no longer need fuel to make metal items since now all smelting and forging operations are "free" and use no fuel. At this point you should be saving your coal for making steel, which is the strongest ore for making weapons and armor.
And, think of it this way. The max immigrant population of a fort is 200. This does not include nobels. This means the maximum staffed population of a fort will be 225 or so, at least. This means you will need at least 225 beds, each made from one wood. You will also need numerous barrels in order to store all the food and drink that your dwarves need, and making barrels out of metal is a slow and rather wasteful process. You also need at least one charcoal in order to make your first two steel bars, so you can make magma smelters. This means that by the end of a game, you will need about 350 wood worth of wooden items, minimum. Do you have 350 wood on your map? Remeber that while on a heavly forested map you might have plenty of trees, eventually you will be looking for a challenge and start in a map with NO trees, which brings up many problems - the least of which being how the heck do I get enough beds? I suggest starting the economy very late, if at all.
small note about that craftsdwarf, looking through the notes, he fell under fey mood, but didn't seem to demand anything, nor did he take over the crafts workshop. He just went insane soon after the start, babbling, then he spent a couple days running around in the rain until he died of thirst... in the rain.
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Hmm are you sure that the craftsdwarf wanted the crafts workshop? He could have possibly wanted another workshop that you didn't have yet. I'm not too sure about which workshop craftsdwarfs normally need but if he doesn't take a workshop that means that you don't have the one he wants I believe.
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
If a dwarf in a strange mood just sits in some random place doing nothing, it's because he can't find the kind of workshop he needs. There's a chance that he will sieze one of your other workshops and convert it into the type he needs. Most likely he will just sit around doing nothing until he goes insane. If you have some inkling as to which kind of workshop he needs, try building one of those. Otherwise, assign war dogs to him and hope he merely goes melancholy.
If he's sitting in a workshop doing nothing, it's because he lacks some of the materials he needs.
edit: here it is, the not so great fortress of meh
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A few suggestions:
1. Put doors on all your rooms that mean something, namely your dining room and bedrooms early on. You have nice rooms for the dwarfs carved out a a bed sitting in each, but without a door, it's as if all your beds were in one main room. Place a door at the entrance, go to the bed, and define the room as a bedroom using [q]. Do the same thing with your dining room.
2. For your irrigation system, it's possible to link both floodgates to one lever. Simply don't put both gates in at once, but first attatch one to the lever, and when that is done, place in the second and repeat.
3. Your wagons are useless, so break them down for wood. Press [t] and hover over them, and then I believe it is the [x] button, and a carpenter will dismantle them for 3 free wood.
4. Frog/Lizardmen seem to be a problem, so install some stone-fall traps beside the river. Build some mechanisms like you did for the irrigation system, and then go to [b]uild -> traps/levers -> stone fall trap. One trap will instantly kill one river creature, so it's a decent investment.
Finally, if you have plenty of seeds and no food, set up a brewery, make alcohol, and cook the alcohol at a kitchen into a meal. Though quite a bit of dwarfpower is needed, you don't starve.
@ UltimaGecko
You're sharing tables in your dining room! For a dining room that will make dwarfs happy, you need to have one chair to one table in an unambiguous fashion. If chairs are adjacent to any table, your dwarves won't like it.
<a href="http://fileanchor.com/84193.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://fileanchor.com/84193-t.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" /></a>
File is 1090kb, 1704x2504 pixels. Hosted on FileAnchor.
Mainly started just to learn the interface and such but I think I did suprisingly well. I didn't get my farm up the first winter but managed to survive suprising easily considering I thought I was screwed. I guess I did buy out the first caravan though which might have been what saved me <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />.
After the first winter was over, I started farming right away but disaster struck and my starting farmer who was quite skilled(can't remember exactly how many points I put into him) got killed by frogmen <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> and after that I didn't really have any good farmers. I probably should have turned on more farmers I think as it probably would have stopped my eventual lose but at the time I had a lot of food so it didn't seem that important. The attack also injured 2 poor immigrant children. One of them recovered fast but the other is still in the bed closest to the entrance of my cave(I forgot to label) even after a year(evil bugged recovery <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />).
Anyway I finally lost in spring of the third year when I suddenly realised I had absolutely no food left as people kept cancelling jobs to feed a wounded dwarf. I might have been able to survive but I decided to just abandon the fort and start over since I learnt a lot from the fort and wanted to try a new one.
Looking back at it when I decided to post it here I see there seems to be a dead elephant there which I have no idea how it died. Also the rest of the elephants kinda look like they are heading towards me so maybe it was a good thing that I abandoned it when I did lol. Although I guess they may just be passing by <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />.
Anyway I'll post my second fort sometime later which I think is a lot more successful although I still haven't really mastered making a good layout for my fort <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />.
Edit- Actually for some reason there's 2 corpse of dwarves in the burial and as far as I can remember I only lost one guy to the frogmen attack.. Odd there must have been some elephant fighting I didn't know about.
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But it's still death, death everywhere...either because 6x6 doesn't apply to supports or my dwarves aren't installing the supports correctly or something. Plus I mined 3 emeralds and I have no idea where they went, I swear the miners just took them.
Edit- Also as for the emeralds they may be kept in bins somewhere. Suprisingly uncut gem and such seem to be able to be kept in bins unlike wood and stone. I guess they are smaller and such. I suggest you check your bins.
I think I want to move my food and dining rooms closer to the farm. Currently, the planting is slow because they run all the way down the cooridor, pick up a seed, and run back then repeat. I have 3 or 4 dwarves doing this but it isn't enough and I sometimes have to slaughter one of my animals. I'm starting to get a good horse herd going though. (There's also a cow calf that follows a miner around) I've run out of fish in the rivers, though it could be seasonal, as a result of the food loss, another fisherdwarf died, this time of starvation.
Also, I'm trying to get my dwarves to put the armor and weapons on the racks I created, but it doesn't seem to happen.
I'm assuming you must save the game in order to leave the game (at least without a forceful termination)?
Finally, if you abandon a fortress, do you move the whole population elsewhere or what?
As of last night:
<img src="http://people.virginia.edu/~pdt2v/dwarffort12_10_06_2.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
Yes that's a bit of miasma coming from the butchery, how can I prevent that? put it in its own room?
Off to the right is a small passage way going to the chasm, nothing more than that yet.
To the left is the road that hasn't brought in a human caravan yet, I guess I finished it too late last summer.
I haven't put the doors in yet, but I am getting some detail work in and a some weapons and armor are being made. It just became spring, so with a little work, I should be able to survive.
Although, I haven't reached the chasm yet, either (plus I'm contemplating restarting, since all my rooms are collapsing, but I know what to do in general now). I wonder if it's possible to divert magma into the chasm and then to block your path to the chasm with a statue or two until the chasm is dead.
And with all the talk of wood: yea, what do you do in the barren landscapes when you need ~250 beds and multiple barrels (and some charcoal)? How could any of your dwarves be content if they can't sleep. Similarily, why wont any of my carpenters (I have like 8 of them) ever work at my wood working shops. I'll have like 6 of them with 'No Job' but both of my carpenter places begging for someone to come by and make beds/barrels.
Is there a way I can move furniture?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes using q select the furniture and mark it for removal. A dwarf with furniture hauling enabled will come and dismantle it and carry the piece of furniture to the furniture stockpile(not sure what he'll do if there isn't any but it will probably get dismatled and then he will just leave it laying there) after that you can use the b build menu to build that piece of furniture again.
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think I want to move my food and dining rooms closer to the farm. Currently, the planting is slow because they run all the way down the cooridor, pick up a seed, and run back then repeat. I have 3 or 4 dwarves doing this but it
isn't enough and I sometimes have to slaughter one of my animals. I'm starting to get a good horse herd going though. (There's also a cow calf that follows a miner around) I've run out of fish in the rivers, though it could be seasonal, as a result of the food loss, another fisherdwarf died, this time of starvation. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes that will probably greatly slow farming but there's no need to move your entire food stockpile and dining room to fix it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />. Fortunately custom stockpiles have been added a while back so all you have to do is make a small stockpile near your farm and make it only accept seeds and turn off stockpiling seeds on your food stockpile. I am not completely sure about what keys to do this but to modify a stockpiles settings you first highlight it with the q menu and then press whatever key it is to modify it(i think the menu you want is change settings). Then you'll get a large list which you can hopefully firgure out yourself(sorry i don't have my game open right now ;P). Seeds should be somewhere under the Foods main category.
Note though that if you have designated a stockpile in pieces(ie you first designated a small bit of it and later expanded the room and then expanded it by just designating more bits) I think it is considered more than one stockpile. To fix that you just remove the whole stockpile and then designate it again so it will be 1 big stockpile not a lot of small ones. I'm not completely sure that they are considered different stockpiles if designated at different times since i normally just delete the stockpile and redesignate it but it makes sense that the game probably wont just automatically merge stockpiles for you if you desinate them seperately <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />.
Also about the fish any body of water will run out of fish eventually but will replenish itself with time so just wait and it will get fish again <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Also, I'm trying to get my dwarves to put the armor and weapons on the racks I created, but it doesn't seem to happen.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not sure about this but looking at the wiki it looks like weapon racks and armor stands by default have all weapons and armor disabled so you have to use the q menu and then enable the types and materials of the armor/weapon you wish to store there. Also armor stands and weapons racks aren't really nessisary for just storing weapons and armor anymore as far as I know since you can make stockpile to store them now. Although might be wrong on that.
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm assuming you must save the game in order to leave the game (at least without a forceful termination)?
Finally, if you abandon a fortress, do you move the whole population elsewhere or what?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes as far as i know you can't save without leaving. I believe it's because the game is supposed to have permanent death and such so if you could save anytime that will kind of defeat that wont it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />.
As for abandoning fortress, I'm not completely sure about this so don't trust me too much on it. Hopefully someone can come and correct me if I'm wrong. As far as I know when you abandon fortress your guys all dissapear(or go somewhere knowing the complexity of this game) but you won't make a new fortress with them if that's what you mean. Your abandoned fortress will be saved however so you can reclaim the fortress or visit it in adventure mode. If you reclaim the fortress I believe you start there as like you are starting a new game but the parts you dug out will be there as will your items although they maybe scattered around. Also I believe there may be some kind of monsters inside your old fortress they you might have to fight as you go deeper in(Note: I haven't actually tried this before so only have a very vague idea of it so i could easily be wrong about a lot of these facts so don't trust me too much on this bit). Also of course you can just start a brand new fortress somewhere else like you did at the start of the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1586773:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:33 AM) [snapback]1586773[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yes that's a bit of miasma coming from the butchery, how can I prevent that? put it in its own room?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not too sure about this. I normally keep my butchery outside, never tried keeping it inside. Putting it in a seperate room will limit the harm miasma should do but your butcher will still be exposed to it as will anyone coming in to haul stuff from the butchery. How exactly did it get there anyway? Did your butcher take a corpse there and then go on break leaving it there? I guess you could keep it inside as long as you make sure everything is quickly butchered so that it doesnt have time to give miasma.
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I've got to wonder why you're digging towards the chasm. It'll just bring you a bunch of monsters that you don't seem equipped to deal with yet.
Although, I haven't reached the chasm yet, either (plus I'm contemplating restarting, since all my rooms are collapsing, but I know what to do in general now). I wonder if it's possible to divert magma into the chasm and then to block your path to the chasm with a statue or two until the chasm is dead.
And with all the talk of wood: yea, what do you do in the barren landscapes when you need ~250 beds and multiple barrels (and some charcoal)? How could any of your dwarves be content if they can't sleep. Similarily, why wont any of my carpenters (I have like 8 of them) ever work at my wood working shops. I'll have like 6 of them with 'No Job' but both of my carpenter places begging for someone to come by and make beds/barrels.
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Your burning chasm approach should work as long as the chasm doesn't spawn any building destroyers(not sure if it does or not.) Although come to think of it, anything that spawns will probably just hang around till you unblock them and then come and kill you since as far as i know monsters don't starve or go away.
Well dwarves will sleep without beds. They will just sleep wherever they are when they get tired. Which can be quite bad if they decide to sleep on the bridge and get drowned(I once had a dwarf sleep in a door he just placed and then the seasonal flood came and a kitten got drowned because of him <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />). They will just get unhappy thoughts from sleeping on the floor. As for the carpenters that very odd. Are you sure the workshop is accessable? If it is in a 3x3 room the entrance into the room could be blocked by one of the workshops unpassable squares. Although if that happening i guess you should be getting pathfinding errors.. Odd.. Well check that out anyway. If that's not it i have no idea what it could be.. Hmm..
<!--quoteo(post=1586781:date=Dec 11 2006, 06:47 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Dec 11 2006, 06:47 AM) [snapback]1586781[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
The passage is closed off for now, I was hoping to reach magma. Is the chasm always before the magma?
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Yea the chasm is before the magma.
Edit- added more replies.
reading the wiki, it might be possible that the thing is killed and my butcher doesn't come around in time, so I might've wasted a fair amount of meat <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
it happens after every butchering. I get the meat and a little later I get the miasma which soon dissipates. Just a minor inconvenience really.
reading the wiki, it might be possible that the thing is killed and my butcher doesn't come around in time, so I might've wasted a fair amount of meat <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
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Hmm you can try checking out what's causing it by using the t menu to have a look at what's inside the shop. Whatever is causing it will probably be rotten something. If you can't see anything in there maybe try using k to look around and see if you can find anything. Yea you have to butcher things fast or they will rot. Maybe take note of when something gets killed and quickly go turn off other tasks for your butcher when he's needed? Not too sure if there any other way.
As for trees in barren landscapes, you would have to build an indoor tree farm. Any spot in the cave that gets flooded may sprout a plant or seedling; these saplings (over 3 years' time) will grow to become tower caps, which can be cut down like any other tree. Still, that's 3 years without any beds (or just a few if you dismantle your wagon).
Gecko: There is always a chance that miners will accidentally destroy any gems in a wall they are working on. The more experienced ones do it less often, but even legendary miners will destroy a gem now and again.
I've seen monsters do weird things sometimes. One time I managed to lock a bunch of snakemen into a mining stockpile and several of them were struck with melancholy. They didn't even fight back when I went to clean them up <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/asrifle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::asrifle::" border="0" alt="asrifle.gif" />