3441

When I last tried the game (around the last major update) I was under the impression that if you did not have a skilled sword/axe/mace/whateverdwarf to teach your militia, they would essentially sit around and teach each other “bullshido” i.e. give each other endless classes on how to dodge and wrestle with little to no actual skill gain. Can you start a militia out of a bunch of incompetents and have a bunch of hardcore fighters in a few seasons again? Or in your example embark above are you relying on immigrants to bring weapon skills to your fortress?

I really want to pick this up again but I could not get a handle on the whole scheduling and training thing.

3442

You can slowly up dwarf numbers via init editing

3443

Just use the lazy newb pack, there is a fort size limit option there.

And for max training create squads of two. Since they will be at the same skill they will spar far more than do demos and sparring is better.

3444

Everything is going surprisingly well on my second attempt. But I still can find only lead and copper metals. Should I start digging up or down? And by how much?

I’m also wondering if I can left the cap to 10 and just see the population grow naturally through children…

3445

I think you are perhaps making the common mistake of wanting to control too much on your first dozen fort attempts. In the long run imho its better to let the game play out, have your fortress go under, then wiki up the mechanic you screwed up so you can work on it for your next fort.

3446

Having a skilled dwarf around to teach your recruits can certainly speed things up, and in more dangerous starting areas that might be needed, but on your average start I generally don’t have any problems getting the military up to speed. As you mentioned, you’ll usually get a good assortment of partially trained dwarves via immigrants and keeping your squads off duty for a while and doing individual drill can also give them a good head start.

I also find as long as your soldiers have a little bit of skill the most important thing after that is good equipment. A partially trained dwarf in full steel plate is still going to be able to do a number on a better trained fighter with poor equipment.

3447

Is there a lazy newb pack for DF 34.04, will the newest LNP work with 34.04?

Or should I just stick with DF34.02 which was bundled with the LNP?

3448

No LNP yet. Go to DFFD and get this:

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2431

And google up Dwarf Therapist and you are good to go.

3449

So the new death mechanics combined with the vampire stuff is kinda messing with my head. It’s like a Columbo crime mystery going on in my fort with a hint of witch hunt thrown in. People finding corpses, witnesses accusing each other, careful scrutiny of suspects, etc. It’s kind of awesome. Also makes it more tense when someone wanders off and meets an awful end and you have to figure out where the corpse went and what happened.

3450

DF players! You are all welcome to join the parallel world embark over on broken forum. http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/the-dimension-of-omen-a-dwarf-fortress-parallel-play.1286/

Would be good to see folks join in, especially anyone who wishes to play adventure mode.

3451

My O’Reilly book on DF is in proofing! It goes into production proofing etc next week!

3452

Here is the cover and info page etc. it is incorrect in that it will come out as both a print and an ebook (and you can buy both at a discount through O’Reilly). Also, the ebook will see regular updates as the game changes.

3453

Awesome!

150 pages, eh, is this just the first volume? ;)

3454

Congrats and good luck!

I may pick it up just for reading material. I thought this book was mostly going to be about stories and fortresses gone bad. Does the book also explain concepts and help you learn about and play the game better?

I enjoyed my first couple tries at DF while using your tutorials, but there was still quite a bit that confused me especially with the armies. I may have to try again sometime soon.

3455

It’s a full ‘how to play DF’ book which has illustrations by Tim Denee every chapter or so showing off some cool anecdote from a player.

Not that I’m not thinking of some kind of coffee table DF book in the future :)

3456

So the entire hauling system is about to be redone. That kinda screws your book thing up, doesn’t it? :(

3457

You can always play a specific version but he already said earlier he will be updating it over time.

3458

The updates should be out in a couple of weeks (I asked). The book won’t be published by then so I will put in some updates before it goes to print.

3459

I’m glad Toady is finally tackling some of the backlog of bugs. Should hopefully satisfy some of the naysayers out there.

And mining carts sound pretty cool, but they also make me think I’m going to need to think about how I set up my mines a little more in the future.

3460

Minecarts you can launch on parabolic trajectories, eh? If you were to fill one with barrels of booze, then launch it through a column of magma, you’d have something approaching dwarven artillery, wouldn’t you?