and that in the middle is the Entrance into the Cave. Not the Sand Tunnel leading to the Refuse pile, the thing to the right of the Sand Tunnel going downwards.
I selected one of the possibly best Spots on the Map on a Calm Island far away from the Continents, with 2 Biomes (Jungle and Desert as far as i can tell) and a Brook in the 4x4 embark Area. Shallow and Deep Ores with Flux and Clay, aswell as light Aquifiers on the top left corner being available here.
The Controls of the Game are absolutely garbage from my PoV, Cursor Persistence doesn’t exist (always resets back to center of screen once I am done doing something) and Mouse Support only works in Dig Mode.
Now a nice logic question: If i say “This Plant shall be stored in this Stockpile” should people go and store said Plants in that stockpile? Yes ofcourse they should, however I need to apparently permit plants in GENERAL too… Now half my fields were rotting away thanks to that.
So remember that Werelizard? Yeah that one causes big Issues even though it is dead. It infected one person, which then later turned, then that person infected yet another person, then I decided “hey that one person got sick after being attacked, maybe i should banish them”, which did NOT work because someone ELSE was infected (poor person who was missing arms and a leg, and is now somewhere in the wilderness), then another case of infection, and right now my Mayor/Chief-Doctor is the last person who turned and caused a ruckus before eventually getting killed by the population. Cannot wait for the next random person to turn into a Werelizard and kill 2 or 3 people.
Everyone is either depressed, stressed or has PTSD from all of this. At least I also banished that one Asshole Hunter who constantly tantrumed around, so he is no longer an Issue.
If my Fortress goes down there is several things I learned:
I should use the Dwarf Therapist Mod, managing Jobs is such a hassle if you cant even know who is idle or has low workload.
Use a full 16x16 Embark Site, 4x4 is rather small
Seal myself the fuck in so nothing can attack me from the Outside, and make sure I have enough Wood in my Base to last me for a long time. Not like Trade or Migration is any useful for me. Maybe I will find a way to make Migration work at the very least, like deconstructing the entrance wall and then building it up again once everything is inside.
I now know how to properly make a “less tall” staircase, so that will help with the entrance Area. I mean less Room above your Head with the tallness.
I found out how to get Water properly in my Underground Area. I just need to choose a better location next time, so the Well is actually close to the rest of my settlement. And that Well is very important if I run out of Booze for whatever fucking reason such as poor Storage User Interface (see previous post), and Dwarves decide to drink their own Vomit rather than go outside to the fucking River!
This is what ends my fortress nine times out of ten. Everyone has friends and/or relatives so any bad thoughts spread like wildfire. You can use burrows to segregate groups of dwarves for certain tasks but it can be hard-going.
Water is fun, rivers more so, you will want grates and bars to stop dwarves falling in or things coming out, but it can be pleasing to have plumbing running through your fortress. If you build fortifications on the edge of the map it acts as a drain and you can get rid of water buildup. Best coupled with floodgates, doors can also hold back water, just make sure you class it as forbidden if anything fun happens.
It is technically a Brook and not a River but yeah. I did not try to reroute the Water into the Fortress yet. Need to get diagonal Leaks going to prevent Flooding though pressure.
Lets see if I survive this, or if I need to embark somewhere else soon. XD
I definitely will not come back for this Fortress, not gonna bother with the Werelizard Cave I created.
Edit: Oh and its 7 on the screenshot, some might not be visible due to cycling their Symbol (Ă‘), and 2 of them are in the main entrance area further up, happening to stand next to each other.
I ended up only having children left after three more of those Werelizard waves, and all of those are just standing still doing nothing, so abandon fortress to ruin it is.
Yeah it’s a fascinating tale of a fortress that was run by a different player for each year. I have a PDF of the events but it’s too large to upload (35MB) I’ll see about uploading it somewhere if you’re interested. The stuff that went on is both educational and downright inspirational when it comes to fortress construction.
You’re assuming I recently found it on the net. it’s been on my computer since 2011, according to creation date.
EDIT https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=4120
sweet I found it on the creators site.
Well that used up 5 hours of my life reading it. XD
I guess Dwarf Fortress did not have 3D Layers back in the days and was all 1 Layer instead. I cant believe that the last migrant wave was a whopping twenty 100% useless Nobles. The best Part was year five and bitching about how everything was sitting outside in the fucking Rain. XD
Yeah, I loved reading about the next players opinion as they were introduced to the hideous structure they then had to take care of and how half of them found a wild assortment of levers and didn’t know what any of them did.