3421

Images are able to display in greyscale on the Kindle, so that’s still a possibility. :)

3422

If I make any money I may have to get a kindle so I can keep on top of how the book looks. The O’Reilly team will be trying hard to make it great in all formats.

3423

Not to turn you off on getting a Kindle, but just grab the Kindle app on any device you please (PC, phone, whatever) to get an idea. It won’t be a perfect replica, but should give a good idea.

That said, I love my kindle :P

3424

Yeah the Science Team was the worst part. Why didn’t someone kick the guy out and give it to someone with an actual brain to restart from the save? The posts were terrible, the whole OMG SCIENCE thing was completely stupid, none of his projects were cool or interesting, and all he did was get everyone killed in the most stupid and futile ways. What an asshole.

3425

What Daagar said. While I love my Kindle (and frankly, the Nook, from what I’ve seen, is pretty much just as good), it’s not for everyone. It perfectly meets what I wanted in an e-reader, but if you just want to keep up with how your book is working out in that display format, the pc app will work fine for you to be able to get a pretty good idea of it. :)

If you ARE interested in an e-reader of some type, be sure to read up on the pros and cons of e-ink screens versus the new color models (like the Kindle Fire) versus a full tablet pc (like iPads and such). Depending on what you want to do with the device, one option should stand out beyond the others so you don’t waste your money on something you’ll end up not being entirely happy with!

3426

Ta for the tip!

3427

I think it’s about a year since I’ve last played this. Played for a few hours but I didn’t see anything better or improved.

  • The military thing is unwieldy and really hard to figure out.
  • The health/medical thing equally complicated.
  • It seems I can only access a few of the “skills”.
  • Hunters are broken? I gave a guy hunting skills, made bows, yet the guy does nothing at all.
  • Tried capturing live animals but only useless stuff is getting caught (dragonflies? really?).
  • The river runs out of fishes pretty soon. So fishing becomes obsolete.

Considering all that it’s obvious that in just more than a year I got a big problem with my dwarves starving. Fishing is broken, hunting is broken. What’s left was farming.

It seems I cannot farm outside anymore. There are wild strawberries EVERYWHERE growing on their own, but the game doesn’t let me plant the seeds. A mystery.

So the only option I had left was to go with underground farming. Fortunately I was able to find loam and start massive farming with ALL my dwarves. Any other thing and I just can’t keep up with the demand.

Is this what the game is now? Just running a massive farm with all my dwarves and doing pretty much nothing beside this? Eating barely one type of plant because most of other options are not as efficient?

I dug the whole time. Found big caverns with fungi in them. Not once I found metal that I could eventually use. What are my options?

At some point one of my farms got broken on its own (another mystery). I can’t rebuild it even, the job gets interrupted for some phantom reason. I also started having spam errors about them not being able to put things in store or something. I guess another bug.

The most annoying thing is that there still isn’t a system to deal with immigrants. I prefer to run my sandbox at my own rhythm and enjoy it, but already the count reached 60 dwarves and I just can’t be arsed to make rooms for everyone and keep up with the constant influx. This doesn’t seem to have any consequence either since my only necessity is keeping up with the demand of food and drink, both of which are sated by farming plump helmets.

So my question: is DF at the moment just about running this huge farm and nothing else? Every time I play it again and I have the feel that the game is moving backwards.

3428

I thought the same thing about the military the first few hours I spent with it, but now I think it’s an improvement. Fishing’s always been this bad, or at least going all the way back to 40d.

3429

Works great. Learn how to use it:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102911.0
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Military

Really? You don’t even have to do anything once it’s setup. Designate a hospital, stock it with beds, tables, containers, etc. designate a doctor or two, and done.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Hospital

Huh?

Works fine for me.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Ambusher

Have you given them access to ammo?
From the military screen:

For ranged soldiers, open the ammunition (f) tab and assign them something from there. If you don’t care what they use, you still need to give them ammo - just pick ‘bolts’ and it will default to any bolts they can find. Assigning at least TWO piles of ammunition with two separate use designations is recommended. Assign one pile for training and one for fighting, or they will use all of their bolts training and end up attempting to whack enemies with their crossbows. By default, both training and combat use is turned on. Use C and T to toggle these settings. If the letter is present next to the ammunition, the use is turned on.

Keep at it. You can get better stuff as well.

I really have no idea what you are talking about. A handful of dwarves can feed a full fortress pretty easily.

3430

Well, my attempt didn’t end so well. A “Draltha” came up from the cavern and killed all my 70 dwarves, even if with four of its limbs red and falling unconscious from time to time.

Only a baby survived, who then died to miasma. (this game is cruel)

I’m waiting if immigrants show up.

I guess I’ll try again. I think a lot that went wrong was due to dwarves stuck because of pathing problems. I couldn’t set up skills for medics. How you do that?

The real big problem is that I couldn’t find any metal, just useless rock. So pretty much all I could “make” was worthless. How can I even start making armor and weapons if I have no metal at all? That was quite a roadblock.

3431

Did you embark into some weird region with no metals?

3432

Buy my book!!!

Lol ;)

3433

Yes, it is.

  • The health/medical thing equally complicated.

It shouldn’t be. Make sure you set up an area with ‘i’ and designate it as a hospital with ‘h’ Pressing ‘H’ will show supplies in the hospital. Place coffers in there until there’s enough to hold all the thread, cloth etc. Also have a few dwarves have the medical skills enabled, they should do the rest.

  • It seems I can only access a few of the “skills”.

‘v’ over a dwarf then ‘p’>‘l’ to enable/disable labors. Or just download Dwarf Therapist.

  • Hunters are broken? I gave a guy hunting skills, made bows, yet the guy does nothing at all.
    Make sure you have bolts. Wooden or bone bolts made at the Craftdwarfs will be fine for hunting.
  • Tried capturing live animals but only useless stuff is getting caught (dragonflies? really?).
    You can tame them and have your dwarves claim them as pets. Dwarves will also eat them. If you want the larger animals, you’ll need cages and mechanisms to build cage traps.
  • The river runs out of fishes pretty soon. So fishing becomes obsolete.
    It varies by region.

I’m not sure whats going on with farming though. One 3x3 farm or two of plump helmets should be able to feed 60 dwarves. For metals, ask the next caravan to bring some bars and/or ores. Or just generate a new world and increase metal content at the parameters screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZg8E72xXFA

3434

You know what gets the most kills in my fortress? I pegged a lion and a tiger at the door and they eat about all the kobolds they can catch.

3435

In future builds they will have baby ligers or tigons.

3436

After not seriously playing for something strange for 2 years the embark screen frightens and confuses me now. So many more options and choices, I have kept up with the game so I am aware of all the new mechanics though.

What do you guys usually use for embark skills for your dwarves, and possibly must have embark items?

3437

Keep in mind immigrants are vastly superior to old immigrants

3438

I’m sure everyone has their own preferences, but I usually go with something like:
2 Miners
1 Grower/Brewer/Cook
1 Mason
1 Carpenter
1 Armor/Weapon Smith
1 Crafter/Leader

Must have items for me are:
Food & Drink (of course)
1 Axe
2 Picks
Anvil
Breeding pair of dogs
Breeding pair of chickens

My advice for looking for a embark point is to look for areas with shallow metals. The plural being key there. If there are multiple shallow metals there’s a good chance one of them will be iron.

Not always in the latest version. The types of dwarves in a Dwarven Kingdom are very random now. Some games I’ve had 1 in 2 immigrants be skilled with weapons, and even more skilled in a trade, but in my latest couple of games my immigrants have been complete trash with only a few out of scores having useful skills.

3439

I’m wondering if I can override the game by capping population to 10 in the config files, and then manually rise it in small increments so that I can grow the thing at my own pace and not seeing 20+ immigrants storming in at once.

I’m pissed that something like this didn’t make into the game yet.

3440

Top Stories at 11. Dwarf Fortress player outraged to find unwieldy interface! ;)