Dwarf Fortress

[Leeko]

so i think i have my first fortress up and running. Well, its not much of a fortress. Just have a carpenter shop, bedrooms, a sleeping barracks, and some stockpile rooms. Oddly enough, i havent encountered any monsters or anything yet. There was some goats but nothing else.

Early on your fortress will only see the occasional goblin snatcher or kobold thief, but by your second year you'll start seeing ambushes of ~8 goblins, sometimes multiple waves. Once your population reaches 50 you're eligible to be the target of a goblin siege, which is when you should start worrying. The first siege consists of, IIRC, around 30 gobbos. This number increases each time and they eventually bring door-breaking trolls. But for now, you have quite a bit of time to hole up.

[MerfMerf]

So what do you guys use for continuous food supply now when underground farms are not always that easily accessible (What with actually requiring water now, or so I've read)?
Started trying this out (running the old version recommended in that tutorial thing) and thought it somewhat easy to get into (Similar interface to angband/zangband) and is planning on running for real on the new version (which annoyingly enough had some differences in default key-bindings) but am seeing a potential problem with food pending on how the generated world looks.

You make outdoors farms? Always make sure to tunnel into water and get suitable farm ground under ground? Use some other way to get continuous supply of food?
What is the actual effect of tunnelling into water and flooding sections of your fortress? Will you run the risk of drowning the poor miner who does the job?

/Merf - Fun game!

[aTolyK]

you've got another addict 

oh and thanks mercmuffin, this is helping a lot, only you posted the link to the last page not the first.

here: http://afteractionreporter.com/dwarf-fortress-tutorials/

[Askis]

I've started playing it too

But apparently the spot I picked is the most boring place ever...
The only neighboring civilization are some other dwarves, the animals are all harmless, I haven't had any enemies pop up yet and my fortress is running quite smoothly so far.
Maybe I should just dig deeper and deeper, in the hopes of finding find some "fun" surprises in the dark depths of the mountain I've dug into :>

The second caravan should arrive soon (so I'm not that far into the game yet) and I'm at 50 pop.
Although if that is the magic number required for a massive goblin siege, I'm in trouble...
My only defense is a drawbridge that can block the entrance and some soldiers that I've just started to train up (they're not even novices yet), no traps so far, although I should be able to whip some up pretty fast.
But the biggest problem is my main food/booze-source, an underground farm that's outside of my fortress and requires my farmers to go out of the main entrance to reach it and would need a massive wall to block it if I were to connect it to my underground tunnels.

So a few questions:
Is it possible to construct a sort of pipe that channels water from a pool on the surface to some rooms underground by digging beneath the pool, without drowning the miner?
Like so (if seen from the side):

Code: [Select]

|+++| <-- water
--| |-----
--| |----- <--pipe
--| |-----
--|_;__ <--farm with floodgate

And with the new military system, the tips from the tutorial seem to be obsolete, I think I set my soldiers to train all year round, I set up a barracks with a small food store close to my entrance, but they don't spar there, they do "individual combat drills" and often run around not doing anything and their combat skills take ages to increase. I'm probably missing something but I haven't got a clue what... >_>

[Leeko]

So what do you guys use for continuous food supply now when underground farms are not always that easily accessible?

Water depth is measured on an arbitrary scale of 7. 1-2/7 is low enough to be walked in, 3+/7 will require swimming, and most dwarves don't know how to do this, and if the water stays at 1/7 for long enough it evaporates. Additionally, when water gets on things it makes them muddy. This is what you need to do to a floorspace to farm in. There are three ways I use to get underground farming going. The easiest is to punch through a murky pool, but there are a couple problems with this. First, if the pool is kinda big it's very easy to underestimate how large you need to make your farm to ensure the water doesn't flood the fortress. Second, unless you construct a floor to seal off the drained pool from the surface you might get an ambush or a thief coming in through there. It's happened to be a couple times. The next easiest way is to dig out the level above your farm and fill it by bucket brigade, by designating the area as a pond (zones [ i ] > [p]it/pond), though this takes a while. The hardest but arguably safest way is through an irrigation system from an unlimited water source, like a brook/river. I'll let you figure that one out, but the key is in levers and floodgates.

But apparently the spot I picked is the most boring place ever...
The only neighboring civilization are some other dwarves, the animals are all harmless, I haven't had any enemies pop up yet and my fortress is running quite smoothly so far.

In your first year only the dwarf caravan comes, and I don't think it lists other civs until you encounter them. If you embarked to an island or to a zone that's entirely mountain you won't get any visitors except dwarves though. And sieges don't usually arrive for 3 or 4 years, I think it has to do with your created wealth, so don't worry about sieges either. See the above for irrigation strategies, you should use one of those.

The new military interface is, well, obtuse. At the moment the only good way to get a skilled military is to luck out an get an immigrant who's skilled in a weapon, then set him as the head of a squad so he'll lead skill classes for the others. You can train their defensive skills by making their barracks into a "danger room," where the floor is covered in spike traps, each with a single wooden training spear in them, all connected to a lever which you set to be pulled repeatedly. This is kind of gamebreaking though IMO... your entire military gets legendary skill in shield/armor use and dodging in 4-6 months.

[~SJ~ Griffin]

quick question: I have all these little white rocks left behind once my miners dig out a room, how do i get rid of them? My wood stockpile room only has 5 empty spaces to stack wood because the rest is taken up by rocks.

[Leeko]

quick question: I have all these little white rocks left behind once my miners dig out a room, how do i get rid of them? My wood stockpile room only has 5 empty spaces to stack wood because the rest is taken up by rocks.

Either build something with them or dump them. To start dumping items, you first need a zone [ i ] designated as a Garbage dump, then looK at the items and mark them for [d]umping. Alternatively, go to the Designations menu and then set Building/item properties, then you can mark a bunch at once.

[Askis]

There are three ways I use to get underground farming going. The easiest is to punch through a murky pool, but there are a couple problems with this. First, if the pool is kinda big it's very easy to underestimate how large you need to make your farm to ensure the water doesn't flood the fortress. Second, unless you construct a floor to seal off the drained pool from the surface you might get an ambush or a thief coming in through there. It's happened to be a couple times. The next easiest way is to dig out the level above your farm and fill it by bucket brigade, by designating the area as a pond (zones > [p]it/pond), though this takes a while. The hardest but arguably safest way is through an irrigation system from an unlimited water source, like a brook/river. I'll let you figure that one out, but the key is in levers and floodgates.

I knew about all of these, that's why I asked about an irrigation system that goes through the floor of a pool...
I don't have any unlimited watersources, only a few of those murky pools and the bucket brigade only works for farms that are 2 tiles wide, since the dwarves need to be able to walk around the pit above, which isn't ideal for a long-term farm.

I might just designate a no-skill dwarf as a miner, pull my designated diggers off duty and sacrifice him for the greater good
If I can figure out how to dig through a floor from below that is...

My zone is a medium Island but my area is a mountain with forest around it so maybe there's still some other civ's around.

[Leeko]

I knew about all of these, that's why I asked about an irrigation system that goes through the floor of a pool...
I don't have any unlimited watersources, only a few of those murky pools and the bucket brigade only works for farms that are 2 tiles wide, since the dwarves need to be able to walk around the pit above, which isn't ideal for a long-term farm.

I might just designate a no-skill dwarf as a miner, pull my designated diggers off duty and sacrifice him for the greater good
If I can figure out how to dig through a floor from below that is...

My zone is a medium Island but my area is a mountain with forest around it so maybe there's still some other civ's around.

Just noticed that my attempt to show hotkeys was italicizing/bolding stuff... @_@ Going to just bold hotkey letters from now on.

Anyhow, if you want to pierce the pool from above dig a downward staircase from below. Your miner probably won't drown, but save first just in case.

[~SJ~ Griffin]

More Questions!!! Trying to build my trade depot, but it says its waiting for an architect. So where do I get one? Also i designated all those rocks to be dumped, and i have dump pile, but no one has touched them. Thanks for all the help.

[Leeko]

More Questions!!! Trying to build my trade depot, but it says its waiting for an architect. So where do I get one? Also i designated all those rocks to be dumped, and i have dump pile, but no one has touched them. Thanks for all the help.

Go to View units, put the cursor over one of your dwarves - I usually pick my masons -  then Preferences > Labor and scroll down to jther jobs using the + and - keys, then turn on architecture. As to the dumping, make sure the zone is designated as a dump and it's not just an empty zone, and that the dwarves aren't busy and can reach it.

[~SJ~ Griffin]

I tried PMing this question, but it seems PM is broken atm. Anyway, I want to train a war bear. I trapped one, moved it to my animal storage, built a kennel, got an animal caretaker with animal training enabled, and added the task of training a war animal. But it just announces there is no available creature =( Any help???

[Leeko]

Upon checking my PMs I got yours, I guess I just didn't notice. Sorry

Anyway, on to your problem. Grizzly bears and black bears are mundane creatures, and thus can be tamed by anyone, but only the former is useful. Polar bears are considered exotic and require a dungeon master noble present to be tamed - however I went into the game's raw files and changed all the [PET_EXOTIC] tags to just [PET] so that's not necessary, since DMs are bugged and no one knows how to get them. Failing that, I think you might need to construct the cage someplace to train the animal inside. Not sure on that though. Apart from those two circumstances, I can't think of any reason why you couldn't tame it. If neither of these work, upload your save somewhere and send it to me and I'll take a look.

[~SJ~ Griffin]

for some reason tho the pms werent listed in my "Sent" folder so i just thought they were going into some dark corner of cyberspace...anyway, it is a grizzly bear, and its in a cage. I'll continue to fool around. And i would upload my save, but you would appalled at my horribly newb fortress lol. Once it is something i can be proud of i'll upload it.

[Leeko]

I still have vivid images of my first fortress, so I really doubt that.

Everyone's first go at the game consists of a few really confused hours of fooling around, and then there's a point where you realize everything in your fortress is really dysfunctional and horribly organized and you can't bear it anymore so you start over and plan ahead a little and start developing systems you use for things.