Wolff
2721
Alot of what turned a group of friends and myself (previous DFanatics) against the franchise was not the interface but the bugs. Its incredibly frustrating to jump through the hoops and then have to bug hunt through your dwarves to figure out why they are not doing ranged combat, or eating, or drinking or…
ZekeDMS
2722
I think mine has potential now, at least. For the first time I’m off to a good-ish start with a fort’s layout and position, though I may end up with water issues. Still, I’m getting the hangs of things, so it’s not gone bad yet. I even almost have enough rooms for everyone! I’ve got a good amount of shops set up, what may or may not pan out as a farm, and some liquor brewing.
Castlefist, you just might have what it takes. Assuming you manage to at least produce some weaponry and those three militia dwarves start training for the inevitable slaughter spree coming at us if we survive winter’s famine.
ZekeDMS
2723
I’ve reached a milestone! One of my dwarves, a stoneworker, just kicked the craftsdwarf out of the shop, ran outside, grabbed some materials, and is doing…SOMETHING. This is new to me, and I fear the results!
The “taken by mood” artifact construction rules are something that become somewhat routine after you’ve played the game for a while, though I can see how it would be mysterious the first time you encounter them. They do have a significant effect on play, not because the artifacts are useful (they’re often something like a really, really snazzy floodgate), but because you have to plan around them.
The consequences of failing artifact construction can be painful when you’ve only got a few dwarves. They go mad, and the best you can hope for is that they get sad and starve themselves to death. Worst case, they go berserk and go on a killing spree. Which is one reason I always enclose my workshops, so I can put a cage trap to capture mad dwarves who fail to get the materials they need.
ZekeDMS
2725
It’s a swanky bracelet! And now her name flashes on the dwarves list. I’ll trade it away for some sweet, sweet pickaxes, hopefully, because I still haven’t managed to get a damn forge up and running, despite having blacksmiths and an anvil in it. I’m sure I’m missing a step, here. But that’s not unusual, not for this game.
Oh, and someone keeps making masterpieces. Apparently the barrels this guy cranks out are so perfectly fitted as to not even appear to have seams.
That’s one thing that sucks about artifacts: you can’t trade them. They’re really just bling. On the positive side, if you put them somewhere the dwarves can see them regularly, bling makes dwarves happy. I don’t know of any way to do that with stuff like bracelets, but fancy doors and such you can place in high-traffic areas, to be admired.
Remember you need an architect to design the forge you are trying to build Zeke.
So make sure one of your dwarves has the architect labor enabled.
ZekeDMS
2728
Well beyond that, Popov. I’ve got three tasks set (iron pick, steel pick, iron sword) on repeat, but not a single one’s been made that I can find. I have blacksmiths too, several, maybe they’re too busy hauling. I suspect I need to just dedicate a blacksmith, or I’m lacking materials to start up.
Gus-The obvious answer is I have Uthir wear it now that she made it. She’ll be the prettiest girl in the barracks!
You’ve set up the smelter and you have charcoal to melt wood into charcoal and then to use with the smelter to melt iron ores into iron bars etc?
I sure wish you could explicitly place specific items.
You can. (B)uild gives you a list of items by material, but if you hit tab, you get a list of individual items. I’ve used this many, many times to place cages with specific goblins in them, rather than a generic wooden cage.
When you’re building something, yes. Is there such a thing if I want to, say, place a specific sword in a specific location?
The only way I’ve managed to do this is to refine stockpiles or kajigger dumps towards that end, but I’d like to be able to explicitly order that this given object to be moved to that specific location.
I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah, it’s nearly impossible to do anything explicit with non-building items, which is what I was saying earlier about bracelets and such.
salwon
2734
Your blacksmiths shouldn’t be hauling. Really anyone useful should have their hauling tasks turned off. That’s what peasants and Lye Makers are for.
Hey look everyone it’s me Sir Gaming Johnny Come Lately.
So anyway this game sucked a straight 6 hours out of day yesterday 8 PM to 2 AM. It has bee a long time since any game has done that.
Still having trouble getting stairs to built smoothly and I can’t seem to stockpile empty barrels by the still like the interent says I should be able to.
But then again, losing is fun.
Stockpile management is something of an advanced skill in DF.
With a still, I’ll designate an 6-9 tile Food stockpile adjacent that only accepts things that can be brewed. Actually, I’ll usually only allow things that can be brewed into decent drinks, so I won’t allow things like Rat Weed or Prickle Berry. I’ll also designate a 2-3 tile Furniture stockpile that only allows barrels. The furniture stockpile won’t pick up anything at first, but as the Still generates empty barrels from brewing things, they get put there, since it’s the nearest stockpile that will accept them.
You can also tell the stockpile to Take from a more distant furniture stockpile. I stopped doing that a while back because this function was bugged, and caused dwarves to endlessly shuffle stuff back and forth, but I think it’s been fixed since then.
Calistas
2737
And here I was thinking endless dwarf shuffling was just a realism feature ;)
When you can build an artifact into a room (if it’s a floodgate, a grate, a door, etc.) it’s the best way to dramatically increase the room’s value, which helps a lot with keeping nobles happy and with eventually attracting the king.
ZekeDMS
2739
Well, I’ve hit the point where I’ve had a dwarf or two go nuts, I’ve got a 10 member militia, I’ve got a screw pump system being devised to bring water up to the top levels of the fort from a river I dug into the bottom (there’s also a well down on the bottom levels, but hey, that’s a long trip!). I’m realizing how much I need, now, to reorganize my dwarf labor, as these projects are taking forever now.
Oh, and I’m working out how the hell to transfer power between z levels. I can use a vertical axle, but dropping a gear or axle beside it doesn’t seem to do much. Maybe a gear on top of that first gear, and another beside that one and another on top of it, etc.? Setting up a four level pump system is tricky. I’m sure I’m overcomplicating it, really, and once I get it it’ll be “Oh, duh.” Until then…
Vertical axles transfer power between levels. The source and destination must be directly above and below, and there must be an open shaft above and below it. Since they must be build over open shafts, you must always build the object below first. Vertical axles to not transfer power to items adjacent to it on the same level. For example, you might build a pump, dig a gap above the impassible section using Channel, and put a vertical axle above it. Above that you might have a windmill.
Gears transfer power both horizontally and vertically, provided the adjacent machinery can accept it. A gear on the same level will accept power, and so will a horizontal axle, provided it’s pointed at the gear, and not running parallel to it. Gears, vertical axles, pumps, and windmills directly above or below will transfer power to/from a gear.
The easiest way to build a pump stack is to alternate them directly above each other - this is covered in the wiki. Since both pump squares act like gears and transfer power to everything adjacent both vertically and horizontally, they don’t need any additional machinery to transfer power up the stack. The drawback is that the must be built in sequence, since if pump B is completed before pump A below it, it will immediately fall apart. You can get around this by constructing scaffolding, horizontal axles or gears adjacent to the pump stack. Those will hold the pumps in place until you’re done, and then you can deconstruct them so they don’t eat power.
It’s tempting to making something more complicated, like a pump helix with gears to transfer power. I’ve done it. The problem is it eats at least 50% more power (10 per pump, 5 per gear) and it can bog the game down. Liquid movement is very computation intensive in Dwarf Fortress, but the regulation pump stack avoids this because the individual liquid tiles aren’t adjacent to open spaces which cause liquid movement.
