oh, did he mean all the screens? I read all of it for the first 2-3 levels, then I started skimming.

...those were the crappy levels. What, you think a Dwarven fortress' coolest levels are like 20 feet below the ground?

In the meantime I've killed a glacier titan who wandered into my base, my legendary axedwarf cut his head clean off with his named axe. (yes they will give their weapon a specific name if they use it successfully for a long time). And I constructed an incredibly decadent throne room to receive any monarch or noble who happens to be sent from the mountainhomes. To witness, I made thrones out of solid platinum, engraved the entire hall with masterpiece wall carvings and filled the rest with items of solid gold - tables, chairs, coffers, cabinets, statues. And an artifact or two.

I should note that I was elevated to a barony before but that my baron went insane before the awesome room (meant for him) was finished. He was miserable for a while because he had no proper shiny quarters, then he wandered into my (purrdy) mayor's quarters and went instantly stark raving mad out of sheer jealousy of seeing a subordinate in such a pretty room. I locked him up and starved him...haven't seen another noble since then though (can't really blame them).

Currently I've started plans to venture into the deep to find platinum and adamantium. Since that will involve digging through dangerous caverns and potentially hell and demon fortresses (aka "hidden fun stuff") I'm going to draft a shitload of useless dwarves into the army. The blacksmiths are doing overtime producing steel armor and weapons (highest quality after adamantine for most weapons - warhammers are better in silver because it's got greater density) and I carved out the guard post for the mining shaft and the appropriate training rooms. Got plenty of dwarves, food, equipment and a well-kept hospital so barring major problems I can take a hit. If worst comes to worst I'll wall off the mines...and the soldiers/miners.

/me waits for the inevitable clusterfuck that wipes out the entire fortress

Oh no doubt. If I do dig into the lower reaches I doubt I'm gonna last much longer than the weekend.

Is-the-game-free-or-something?-(spacebar-is-not-working,-the-end-of-the-road-for-my-g15.)

lolz @ peltz. I don't know the answer, though. Looks like it is. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Yeah it is (told Peltz on steam last night as well). It's constantly being updated by the creators who live off donations as a sort of hobby/life project. Rather strange, but a very cool business model - getting by on donations I mean.

Satis talked to me about making a sort of beginner's tutorial for DF for CK. I don't mind doing it, but there are a few caveats:

a) I'm not a DF God quite yet. The game is so massive and detailed that that takes ages.
b) I don't have the same amounts of spare time as I used (ie back in college)

So it may take some time. Also, there are a good few youtube vids out with tutorials but just to prove what I said about vastness, they are like series of 15 parts of 10 minutes. But so, I'm guessing like a basic tutorial on how to do things would be welcome? I will refer you to the DF wiki a lot anyway, I was mostly planning to

In other news: I have stuck a huge underground cavern when digging deeper and deeper. Since my crack force (ie useless unskilled dwarves) to defend the depths isn't ready yet I decided to wall off the entrance, for now. But from what I could see there was a LOT of valuable stuff down there...gold, platinum, silver...and I may start an underground farm there soemwhere as well. Plenty of space.

I have also been constructing roads of massive gold. And other future plans include making a huge golden tower topside.

...yeah all this is totally the prelude to the downfall of my decadent fortress.

Oh and apparently I was just elevated to a county. Cool.

Roads made of gold? You should rename yourself to AMERICA!

How about I make some roads out of animal fat, that do it for you?

Deep fried dwarf! Sounds like the winner for the annual deep fried competition at the state fair.

lol. That looks...disturbing. And tasty.

It's late so I'll give some more explanation of what happened today tomorrow, but I'll post some screens first.

The first one is pretty awesome - remember how I killed two Titans who attack my base earlier? And how one of my dwarves dragged the huge body to the butcher's shop, providing loads of meat, bones and other goodies for my dwarves to feed on/craft with? Well...looks like the fucker ended up being used (partially) for SOAP. Hahahaha! How's that for an undignfied end, being processed into dwarf soap. (in case you wondered: a butchered 'animal' will, among other things, provide fat which is rendered by a cook. It's then stored in the food stockpile until it's used for cooking or, in this case, as basis for soap. Most soap is from more mundane animals like dogs, horses and donkeys naturally).



The following two pics are related: there was a Forgotten Beast (kind of like a Titan but underground, and tougher) wandering around in some caverns I had unearthed before. I had walled off the entrances so it couldn't get it, but it was wandering around in there. Seeing as I'd just provided my new and heavily drilled crack force of 10 young dwarves with shiny new all-steel plate uniforms and weapons, I decided to let them loose on it. So...I opened the wall. What followed was a titanic battle in which the FUCKER WOULD JUST NOT FUCKING DIE. What's worse, it had a sort of dust blowing attack that made my soldiers nauseous and stunned them. The hardened guys just fought on regardless (while vomiting all the time) though. Check this out...this was shortly before he actually died. After like days and days of in-game fighting.



He broke everything in his body, was bleeding from every fucking orifice and still killed two guys, injured a few others and kept out for DAYS. :O

So...update.

The fortress has been thriving. The King has arrived and was installed in his opulent throne room, and I created a new 10-man militia squad (apart from the original team of 5). The main idea was to have a force stationary who could defend any incoming attacks from below, as I was about to dig deeper for precious minerals and magma. The original 5-man legendary squad could then hold the top and, if necessary, run down the stairs while the new squad kept any intruders at bay.

As you dig deeper you typically will stumble upon huge underground caverns, full of plant growth, minerals, underground trees (yes, they exist), things like cave spider webs which can be used to make silk and, of course, dangerous beasts.

The cavern I had breached didn't seem too dangerous in terms of regular critters (animals, cave humanoids) but it wasn't long before a giant eyeles dinosaur Forgotten Beast showed up. I walled it out before it could reach my guys, and left it to roam around for ages while I trained some more. I was digging down along a shaft I created, ever deeper, hoping to find magma and other useful or precious stuff.

At around level -130 I strike semi-molten rock! I carve out a room and start making preparations, I cut open the wall and discover the huge underground Magma Sea. I then flooded the lower reaches of my stairwell TWICE with magma, once severely burning a miner and the other time almost trapping my chief medical dwarf in a slowly filling room of magma death. He got out in time tho, since magma moves relatively slow. Clearly I had to be more careful. I backtraced my steps to the 'highest' (ie not too deep) magma reaches so I could actually mine it from above and judge the danger/risks properly before diving in there and digging out walls. After some trial and error I managed to cut out a huge room around a uppermost layer of the magma sea. Now I need to make sure I don't a) fuck up some crazy magma experiment and b)keep watch for any magma creatures to pop out (if at all).

I immediately started building a few magma-fueld workshops and furnaces down there. Up until now I've had to work with coals of all kinds, which is a pain since they are rare to make and require a production process of their own (you can for example put a guy on wood-burning dutes, which will produce charcoal. But that burns through a lot of wood very fast, and it's not always easy to come by). Not so with the magma furnaces...they are infinitely powered by the magma below them.

As I was cutting out some debris, one of my miners strikes a strange blue mineral ore...ADAMANTINE!!! OH GOD YES! To be clear, adamantine is the most valuable, strongest, sharpest and most lightweight of all ores in DF. It's rare and is only found in veins near the magma sea, making it really hard to mine. Somehow I found a relatively upper later, since there is no magma near to it (yet). I've mined a 30-40 blocks but I stopped there - before I can make some 'magma safe' doors to block off a potential magma flood from flooding my new furnaces I shouldn't keep digging. (magma safe items are made from materials that have a higher melting point than the heat of magma, there are only a handful of stones and metals that qualify). I produced two adamantine battle axes already. More stuff to follow.

I also managed to build a magma-safe pump and install it above the magma sea. As it was finished, I called a pump operator in there to start it...hilarity ensued. It would appear that I had underestimated the speed with which the magma would be pumped up. I flooded like half the room with magma before barely being able to turn off the pump (brave pump operator!). It was only a single floor layer so it dried pretty quickly, but if he hadn't been able to go in and turn it off I'd have been in a really shitty position again. So we're not touching the pump until I figure out what I want to do. Let's hope some dwarf doesn't go insane and start pulling levers and activating machines.

In the meantime I'd let the Forgotten Beast in that was wandering around and told you about the epic fight (see above post), but I didn't say everything. I 'forgot' to mention that the reason the first squad couldn't hurt it for ages was because I'd equipped them with fucking empty crossbows. They were using them to bash the Beast over and over again, hahahah. Most of them became legendary hammer users after those days and days of melee figthing with an empty crossbow tho! So at least SOME good came of it. Mental note: manually pick militia weapons next time...and pay attention while doing so.


I'm also suffering from a population explosion of kids. Almost half of my fortress is kids and babies, my dwarves are breeding like SHIT. Since they're fairly useless until they grow up and have a tendency to get themselves hurt (and hence make their parents upset) they're kind of a pain. I may just gather them all up in a room and drown it with magma for laughs. But I think that might cause a fatal spiral of berserking and melancholy parents. Mm. Oh and if I DO manage to make a system to get that magma topside, I'm totally still building that golden tower. With magma shooting from it, down on Elven and Human carvans.

P.S. My hospital has one permanent resident: a dwarven child with a permanent spine injury. He's a paraplegic, basically. Adult dwarves can learn how to use crutches to get around ('crutch walking' is an actual skill), but it appears children don't. There were actually 2 paraplegic children -both danger room accidents - but one was brutally murdered in his bed by ANOTHER dwarven child who had gone into a berserk rage because he felt his wounds weren't tended to in time.

Unfortunately, reading your stories is much more interesting than actually playing the game.

Haha, no you just need to conquer the interface and learn some details and you'll get sucked right in.