Dwarf Fortress: Very Ambitious Roguelike

I wonder if a legendary hunter would have any success with them, or if they would just tear a hunter apart as well. I had an ongoing issue with Great Horned Owl people, but nothing like these raptors of doom.

As always, nice read. I am invested.

Thanks!

I don’t know for sure, but in my experience the combat tends to come down to whoever can land a good (i.e. disabling) hit first. (This “feels realistic” to me, in a way that hitpoints don’t.) From reading the combat logs, the reason that legendary fighters do so well is that (a) they dodge incoming hits, especially bolts and (b) they immediately lop off a critical part of their target, disabling it. The exceptions to this are when there’s a weird biology involved–I had a forgotten beast made of crystal that suffered a lot of hits, and managed to kill a bunch of legendaries before going down.

That said, I’m not familiar with shooting, because in my last game my squad wouldn’t pick up any more bolts. I suspect that a legendary hunter would have a good chance, though, as the bluejays don’t seem to be especially tough to kill, just fast and deadly. So if they could land a bolt in a good place (i.e. the skull) I think they’d win. That said, the (first) visiting crossbowman did hit the bluejay in the “left false rib” and still died, and the second one used a whole lot of bolts before disabling, so…

Precisely! That’s basically exactly what I imagine the bluejays are doing to my poor dwarfs.

15th Galena, 101. Late summer.

The humans have come! Traders, I mean. We pick up some milk, buckets, bags, fish, meat, plants, and miscellaneous weapons and trap equipment. The total value is probably about a thousand, and we offer some crowns and amulets as gifts, too. Sadly, no booze, but we’re still ok on that front, for now.

A petition!


That’s an immediate approval. Any monster hunter is welcome here.

And, finally, some joy:


Zefon Woundbow, born to Udib the miner and Eral the militia commander (not that we have a militia right now) has represents the hope that Listenwound has for the future. She will need her patience and willpower:
image
…and of course, she needs alcohol to get through the working day.

Another monster hunter:

However, there is further tragedy. The bluejays have left, but four giant ravens have become agitated. They manage to kill our doctor, but otherwise are swiftly dealt with.

I’ve stopped reporting all the monster hunters flocking to Listenwound, but I’m amused by this name:


Welcome, Tod! We’re now at four. At this rate, we’ll have more monster hunters than citizens, soon.

Labor proceeds slowly. In an effort to bolster morale, we have a non-denominational temple:

…and individual (spacious!) bedrooms:

Our burial hall continues filling up:


The reddish bauxite coffins are for the children. :(

We’ve reworked the entrance with more traps, a secondary wood stockpile, indoor refuse and corpse locations, and an indoor trade depot. The room on the right will be the barracks, once we’re settled enough to begin training.

And finally, our memorial hall, deep below, is coming along:
image

Nice! Listenedwound seems to be coming along apace. 'Tis the fortress of the giant, murderous corvids, it seems.

Keep an eye on that monster hunter if you have any artifacts. :)

I really need to get a competent military. I’m having trouble keeping up with the hauling tasks, though…

All the monster hunters are just spending their time praying in the temple. They’re less useful there than wandering about on the surface. :-/

3rd Obsidian, 101. Late Winter

The second dwarven caravan arrives. We don’t know what to ask for… it’s not things we lack, so much as people. We request for wood, since our woodcutter was killed; giant axe blades, to stiffen the defenses; and rum, since we always need rum. They request backpacks, but it is unlikely we’ll be in a position to offer much.

We trade for some tin bars, a cage, toys, drink, leather, and a reindeer bone kednath. Perhaps it’s music will cheer our people. We also offer some finely cut gems to our leaders. Maybe they can be swayed to help.

And indeed, no sooner have the merchants made it inside than the bluejays return:


We activate the burrow, but our child is trapped outside.

Fortunately, he makes it, and there is something else, as well:


Well now, what have we here…

(I’m not thrilled with that door being propped open by a discarded leather glove. It’s been ordered to be dumped for more than a season now, and there’s a dump nearby.)

We also (finally) found our first squad, the Ochre Escorts:


We draft three miners and our chief medical dwarf. For now, they have no orders, but they begin gathering equipment.

(I’m a bit lost as to what the different colors on the equipment page mean. I have no idea what “Update Equipment” does, either. At least they seem to be mostly picking up their equipment, though I realize now I’ve forgotten to forge any shields.)

We also train two of our four dogs in the ways of war, for a few extra bodies.

Training begins:
image
The dog eagerly watches them demonstrate striking to each other.

We are now at eleven (!!) monster slayers, eight citizens, and one infant. The monster slayers resolutely claim that their contract only involves monsters underground, so they refuse to engage the bluejays. (They outnumber us, so what can we do?) Very well, we open up a pathway to the caverns:


(That ramp goes down to the cavern level.)

Alas, there are currently no monsters in the caverns, so they remain in the temple, drinking our wine.
image

A new kind of visitor arrives:


I have no idea what a Lord Consort does, or what one would think of our besieged fortress, but perhaps we’ll find out. His one mark of nobility is a crown:
image
…made of human hair. A wig, perhaps? Humans are strange, indeed, but we shall try to be welcoming.

The answer is, of course, slay monsters. That makes twelve.


As the year 101 comes to a close, we have stabilized:


Plenty of food and drink (it rots, trapped as we are underground). Plenty of monster slayers. Few workers and soldiers. Moods are… ok. We seem to have avoided any tantrums for now.

Just about all of our manufacturing skill is concentrated in Ustuth:


Sadly we lost our trained armor and weaponsmiths, but Ustuth’s labor to put our squad in steel has improved his abilities.


And now a question for the room:

  • Butcher and eat the captive giant bluejay. Consume its powers, and make amulets of its bones.
  • Train it, and release it on its former allies. Fight fire with fire.

0 voters

24th Slate, 102. Mid-Spring

Listenedwound has decided that we are going to make the giant bluejay our own. However, this is going to be a long process:


But we’ll make it there:

Meanwhile, we’re finally getting something out of these damn monster hunters:

We also receive our first elven visitors. We carefully gather up some “ethical” items for them–we cannot afford to anger yet another species. [Warning: moving items to the trade depot does not respect burrow assignments! Fortunately we managed to get some items from the surface without provoking the giant bluejays.] We trade for some fruit, instruments, and cages, and offer some gifts as well. Small stakes, but it is nice to get rid of some worn out clothes we no longer need.


For the first time in many seasons, migrants have arrived! And so many I can barely count them! (There were 24.) Three animal trainers, timely. A new broker and manager, to ease the work of our leader. We fill the squad up to ten, and consider upping their training time (currently at 50%).

Praise Armok!


A donkey starves to death in the temple. (After designating the temple, all our animals started spending their time there.) We order the rest of the animals, now starving, to be butchered.

To feed our expanded population, we begin farming:


Just plump helmets for now, on not-too-fertile soil, but it’s safe underground.


And we have another visitor, accompanied by a crash of thunder:
image

Perhaps we shall fear the night. Now it is the time for our monster hunters to earn their keep!

A Wererabbit representative? Is there a city of them somewhere?!

Were you not able to pasture the animals, or too dangerous with the killer bluejays? I ask, because I had the same issue in my first game, and then learned how you zone a pasture and assign the animals to it which I think solved it for me in my next game.

I had them pastured, then at some point the pasture was deleted and I was unable to re-pasture them due to the bluejays. They were more work than they were worth, and I don’t think I had any breeding pairs, anyway. At some point (if I get an underground pasture set up) I’ll import a pair of some animal that makes sense.


Also, my poor doorfs just can’t get a break. That last episode was quite an emotional rollercoaster for me, with the huge immigration wave (who somehow made it in without triggering the four agitated giant bluejays) followed up with a wererabbit.

Ugh, I’m really stressing about this wererabbit. I hadn’t yet burrowed my immigrants (except the children) because on their way in they picked up a bunch of junk lying around outside (including logs) and were generally being useful and not provoking the bluejays. Now I’m pretty sure this wererabbit (werehare?) is going to catch at least one of them, which isn’t so much a problem, but I’m worried that my military won’t be able to handle it and I’ll have to mob it and end up with a bunch of weredwarves. Well, !!fun!!

15th Hematite, 102. Early summer.

The wererabbit ravages the dwarves caught on the surface. We lose our new manager, a peasant, a miller; a brave swordsdwarf and a new recruit, who jump into the melee unarmed… and then it transforms into a dwarf. Being an adept (though naked) dodger, the now-representative leads our remaining military on quite a chase. They wave their wooden training axes at him, and he jumps away. Eventually, with the help of a war dog, he is caught and beaten to death.


We are fairly sure that everyone who contacted the wererabbit is dead, as he was in dwarf form for the chase.

Five of our newest fortress members (plus a goat kid) are dead. It seems a high price to pay, and we were only saved by the changing of the moon. At least we have tombs ready for them.

Lesson: figure out how to stop people from rushing outside! I don’t know why they didn’t respect the burrow. Also I couldn’t help but hear the Benny Hill soundtrack in my head while they were all running around in circles with their wooden axes.

We seem to have a bit of a respite from the bluejays (despite there being four of them somewhere on the map), so we build out some surface defenses:
image
A gatehouse, with a caged gorlak and troll to be unleashed upon attackers.
image
The second level has fortifications to shoot through, though we have no archers.
image
And the roof is sealed off with a copper hatch.

And we finish just in time:

Fortunately, the children have been permanently restricted to the indoors, and our squad was on training rotation, so we deploy them to guard the entrance.

Two of them are caught alive, caged, and the third leads us on a blissfully short chase before being bludgeoned to death with wooden training axes. We order the construction of ten more copper cages, as we are using them up!

Finally, we see a human caravan arriving in the distance.

What should we do with the two caged goblin thieves?

  • Sell them to the humans now
  • Sell them to the dwarves, when they next come
  • Toss them in the dungeon (which we need to build)

0 voters

Oh, and I’m also 100% open to other ideas for the caged goblins.

What would be the benefit of dungeoning them?

Yeah, no practical benefit, but it’s (arguably) what they deserve.

My reading of the poll is 3:3:2 for sell now / dungeon / sell later, so I’m going with dungeon, because that’s what I want to do. We can always sell them later.