I would be interested. Do any of the cptnduck youtube videos cover this ground?
Yep. Right at the beginning he says the book is awesome, and it was what finally allowed him to get into the game after trying several times over a couple of years.
Hurrah!
Yes, Capnduck does cover similar ground, I need to see if it matches my goals
Giant Bomb did a live play thing for subscribers using my book as a guide. Wish I could watch it!
Only $5 for a month of membership. He literally uses your recommended opening loadout and skill setup directly from the book.
Heck! $5? I should try it then!
I’m becoming a fan of a kind of inverted readability:
This has now became my default “tileset”, though I have to say that I changed the colors and made text more readable.
But I really do like the idea of replacing ASCII with abstract symbols. It creates an aesthetic that I love. I do think this looks great, and when you have to “learn” what thing or animal corresponds to a letter, then you can as well do with another kind of symbol.
It’s not actually any harder to read.
I wish someone would have told me yak skeletons could come alive and wipe out half your little 17 dwarf population.
And I still don’t get what I’m supposed to do after a trap captures a thief or whatever trying to sneak in. Am I missing something there that I need to actively tell my guys what to do?
Captured creatures are great fun! I personally like to keep them caged in the dining room as decoration, but they can be used to train your dwarves (disarm the creature and drop it into a room with your fully armed militia to poke at it).
Also they make good bait for luring monsters towards your traps, or just plain feeding them to Ancient Evils for entertainment :)
Magma. The answer to all questions in DF is “magma.”
“Build” that cage where you want it. I never did figure out how to disarm the occupants, though.
Thanks! I never would have figured that out on my own.
My next goal is to figure out how to build a well. This is like my fourth or fifth fortress since I restarted and they all go to hell before I ever get to that point. This one is going to be tricky since there is no water on the map (that I’ve found so far, anyway) but some ponds on one edge.
Picked up the book today and loving it so far. Looks like it was just what I needed to really get into DF.
The undead are starting to be a problem with my current fortress. Skeletons and heads keep coming alive and while my squad takes care of them I don’t want to have to do that all the time. What can you do to get rid of them permanently so the same ones don’t keep popping up every two minutes of game time?
Kill them with fire.
edit: actually i think that would make it worse!
You atom smash them.
Build a small bridge on flat ground. Raise it. Place a garbage stockpile and a corpse stockpile under it. When the piles get a bit of stuff in them, pull the lever and smash the stuff out of existence.
For extra goodness build one on each floor likely to produce bad, raisable stuff: eg, wherever there is a butchers, near all places dwarves like to eat.
Also, maybe put a wall around your atom smashers and maybe even double, airlock, doors to reach the piles.
Can’t you turn the bones into bolts and…totems, I think was always what you made with skulls?
In this specific case, I think the problem is that they’re raised from the dead BEFORE anyone had a chance to slaughter them (or after they were rotten).
Speaking of which, I wonder why so many creatures cannot be slaughtered and tanned. For example, why can’t I process the remnants of a Forgotten Beast in any way? I should be able to make a totem from it’s skull that’s worth a fortune. I should be able to make uber-leather-armor from it’s hide.
Stuff like that.
rezaf
Not all forgotten beasts have über hide though, like the forgotten soap beast of bethuzela. Armor made from his hide keeps the wearer clean and cleans any creature he wrestles with, however it has the protective qualities of soap…
Finally got my first fort off the ground using the new book. I haven’t played in almost 2 years or so and I am already noticing a few new changes from the last time I played. I never did get very far into a fort back then, but did get through most of the tutorials I think. It never really got too crazy yet, though.
The book is really well done, Calistas. I have already learned quite a bit that I never knew before, like what that list of dwarven civilizations means when you select a starting area. I had no idea that showed you on the main map where each civilization was settled and that you could pick to join one and that it influenced what immigrants/settlers you get.
I did make one bone-headed mistake on my first try at settling. I was going through selecting the 40 different meats as mentioned in the book and kept typing “meat” each time to filter and select each one… you can probably see where this is going. So, one time I forgot to hit n for new item and typed m e … oh Embark! Ugh! I embarked with no trained dwarves and only a few pets and meats, lol! I couldn’t really see a way to undo it either. Oh well! I am wondering if there is a way to select multiple items in the meat filtered listing and add them all at once (it appears you can only add one at a time).
Despite this major blunder, I am really looking forward to finding new ways to fail, heheh. I was discussing ideas with my son this week and he was telling me the stories of his failed fort from a couple days ago. Good stuff!