Dwarf Fortress: Very Ambitious Roguelike

[rezaf]

This was always the case. In 40d I always just had a 5x5 plump helmet farm and that fed me right up to 100 dwarves.

Well, in the old versions such small farms were definately not sufficient, but I’m not entirely sure about the last of the z-axis versions, it’s been a while. But I’m not just surviving, I hardly ever see anyone in the dining room and I’m literally drowning in Plump Helmets - I got a 16x16 storage area filled with buckets of them and newly growns are rotting on the fields.
Better than starving I guess, but still a bit odd. For the time being I’m not too worried about it as I’m free to experiment with the 40 idle dwarves that hang around and do mostly nothing because I can be sure there’s enough food for them.

It will be picked up when they decide to go wood cutting. If they aren’t cutting wood check they don’t have other tasks as a higher priority and the axe isn’t owned by anyone. Training axes don’t cut trees.

Well, I have more than one dwarf with wood cutting abilities and wood cutting job enabled, all have different jobs enabled as well, but they are all hanging around flagged as “No job”, so I figure priorities aren’t the problem.
I also checked and they’re holding nothing else in their hands.
The battle axe has been freshly forged just for this job and thus isn’t owned by anyone.

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rezaf

[chequers]

And you have marked some trees to get chopped? Weird, might be a bug. Send the save game to Toady perhaps.

[Morberis]

Start using some of those plump helmets to make lavish meals

[JM1]

If you’ve run out of things to do, you’re not digging deep enough :D

[MrCoffee]

The ability to manually reject migrants usually involves a retractable bridge and a pool of lava.

It’s a long way down to hell!

[chequers]

I for one have a 80 level pit of doom, terminating in lava. It’s good for all those caged beasts I catch in the caves.

[Spam]

Dwarf Therapist update released

http://dwarftherapist.googlecode.com/files/DwarfTherapist-0.4.3.zip

[JM1]

This is the best story so far (from the SA thread)

I made a new adventurer to go and visit my axe-lord in the dark fort where he lives, but my civ was at war with his, so when I got there everyone attacked. I ran down into the temple, where it turns out the civ has been taken over by a PEACH DEMON! The demon attacked me, spraying boiling peach demon extract over me and the crowd of people trying to kill me. All my assailants started collapsing and vomiting, and my character fell over with them. The concious ones grabbed me and started wrestling me while the peach demon sprayed me over and over with boiling peach demon extract. Unfortunately we were fighting on the frozen pool of the temple, which got heated up so much by the boiling peach demon extract it melted, and everyone including me fell in and drowned. The demon survived.

[rezaf]

Heh, just ran into another issue.
You know that bug where the elven caravan packs a metric ton of all sorts of stuff onto a mule or two? Well, I just ran into it.
But it didn’t really matter that much to me, more stuff to trade for, huh?

Except something the elven trader didn’t like somehow got mixed into a offering I made, and he immediately refused to trade any further.
Was a little furious about that.

But he compensated me for loss of trade…

… by leaving all his stuff behind, with me free to grab it all.

Yeah, the entire metric ton of stuff. Gotta open up a few more stockpiles…

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rezaf

[zengonzo]

If you’ve run out of things to do, you’re not digging deep enough :D

Or embarking harsh enough, maybe?

[Eric_Majkut]

I wasn’t refering to building IN the caverns, just building more fancy stuff like luxury housing or a “factory” anywhere in the fortress.
I also have a more modest layout that’s not all that different from yours, but the default size felt really, really cramped as I could only put a couple of “blocks” next to each other. (I usually use a network of 3x3 5x5 sized rooms surrounded by tunnels and/or “utility” - like channels.)
I tried doubling the default size, which resulted in a really nice, large map (I hope optimizations will make those playable one day), but it was horribly laggy. I found just increasing the default dimensions by 1 tile in each direction was more than sufficiant for my tastes.

Yeah, there’s so many bugs now, even though so many things where changed, it’s a tad disappointing that much was obviously never tested to any degree before release. Sure, better a buggy release than none, but it’s still a bit disheartening.
I ran into a number of issues - rotting stuff no longer produces bones, turtles no longer produce shells, food production / consumption overall seems buggy (I have a gazillion dwarves in my new fortress and only three fields, but I’m drowning in food), manufacturing is buggy (gold flasks made from iron and stuff like that), construction is buggy - had workers getting stuck while trying or immediately after constucting something, also workers failing to begin a job they had the tasks for … the list goes on and on.
Then there’s other people stories of maps without fish and unkillable enemy types … but you gotta admit bugfixes are usually delivered in a somewhat timely manner by Toady, so it’s not all that bad.

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rezaf

It’s not disheartening. This is how Dwarf Fortress works. The big releases are always buggy for a week or two until Toady nails everything down. I expect that, and I don’t have a problem with it. It’s just that waiting that week or two kinda sucks ;)

It’s one guy making an insane game. Cut him some slack :)

[John_Many_Jars]

I would like to churn purring maggot milk into ice cream and then put hot peach demon extract on it.

[MrCoffee]

That reminds me that you can milk cows in this version!

[rezaf]

Yeah, I know that’s how DF works. Was just saying…

I found out how to make my woodcutter cut wood. I unassigned / reassinged the job to him several times and eventually it clicked with him and he grabbed himself an axe. Finally.

Then I was trying to get a squad up and running.
Darn, the new military interface is one horrible, horrible mess.
Even by DF interface standards.

I have NO IDEA how to get the dwarves to pick up the weapons I want them to, and at one point I had them assigned as soldiers, but they switched back to their [CIV] mode by themselves and now I cannot get them back up. It’s one big mess, really.

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rezaf

[zengonzo]

Then I was trying to get a squad up and running.
Darn, the new military interface is one horrible, horrible mess.
Even by DF interface standards.

I was having the same problem, but in that I was too hung up thinking about it in old DF terms. A tutorial and fresh eyes would shows this to be a clear improvement over the original.

Focus more on creating and applying loadout profiles than on managing the squads - until you get familiar/bored enough that you want to explicitly create your purple-scarved, pantless Blowgunners of Victory.

[zengonzo]

Also, for anyone else feeling some drag with the new version - this made a considerable improvement:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=51957.0

[Sneaky]

Will wooden bins cause the Elven Caravan to leave right away?

So far I’ve somehow managed to piss off every single one of them. The first time I asumed it was a wooden clutch that sneaked into a finished goods bin. But now … is it the bins themselfs? I could have sworn the Elves offer bins of e.g. cloth as well tough.

[zengonzo]

You can still carry the bin to the depot, and give them everything in the bin, so long as you don’t trade them anything made from wood - including the bin.

Their wood is OK because it was chopped with carbon offset credits.

[Marcin]

My main question is … are the dwarves still only willing to drink from killer carp infested rivers? If so I’m out until a version where they aren’t :P

[JM1]

Will wooden bins cause the Elven Caravan to leave right away?

So far I’ve somehow managed to piss off every single one of them. The first time I asumed it was a wooden clutch that sneaked into a finished goods bin. But now … is it the bins themselfs? I could have sworn the Elves offer bins of e.g. cloth as well tough.

Loads of people are reporting problems with the caravan.

The ones who AREN’T are revelling in the tame war elephants, giant war jaguars, and tigermen.