|
My grandfather mayor is depressed (Lets Play Dwarf Fortress Again) (Source: https://venuspatrol.com/2012/09/ashmalices-last-stand-derek-yus-tribute-to-dwarf-fortress/) Hi LP readers, I’m new and don’t usually post too much, but I was really enjoying some of these LP threads recently, and thought it’d be a fun way to make me get into a game (I struggle with picking a game and sticking with it sometimes). I also noticed it’d been about 2 years I think since the last Dwarf Fortress Let’s Play posted here (as far as I saw) -- which is a travesty! Why should I be interested? Dwarf Fortress is an insanely complex game full of practically living, breathing A.I. life, and the stories that the complex and detailed characters within the game end up generating are unique and highly entertaining. Dwarves are capable but fickle creatures, and as such they need a perfectly optimized local economy with brewing, food stockpiles and cooking quality meals, rooms with nice furnishings and space, and so many, many more things that we’ll come to see in the upcoming game. The game engine is also very fun, allowing for events to play out with a lot of, for lack of a better word, realism. A dwarf might go insane and wander, throwing fits and messing with people. Perhaps we’ll accidentally offend the Elf trading caravan by offering them “sacred” wood in a trade exchange offer. We might mine too deep or into the wrong underground cavern, unleashing a horrible Eldritch monster. You never know! Doesn’t this game’s “graphics” make your eyes bleed? Yeah, for sure. By default at least. Dwarf Fortress normally looks like this:  That is, “normally” being if you don’t use tilesets, which you should because you love your eyes. With tilesets, the game looks a lot nicer, maybe something like this:  Aw yeah. Now we're cooking  I just use the default tileset in Lazy Newb Pack (a nice prebundled kit for Dwarf Fortress, comes with Dwarf Therapist, which is an invaluable tool we’ll use later). That appears to be the Phoebus 16x graphics option in the Lazy Newb Pack launcher, if anyone was curious. Can I participate? Absolutely my friends, as Dwarf Fortress is a very open ended fortress-management style simulator, we have a world of freedom to prioritize building whatever we want, to pursue weird architectural goals, to devise intricate trap and or punishment systems, to provide luxury goods and quality of life to our hapless dwarf citizens, et cetera, et cetera. I envision this playthrough taking input from the thread as much as possible. In the beginning, I might just do first-come-first-serve decision sourcing, so as not to make the thread and setup process go too slow, but if we pick up steam we can easily just start voting on decisions as a group. Can I backseat game? Yeah you’re welcome to do that too! I’ve been playing DF for years now, but its one of those games I get deep into for a week or so, then drop for a while and come back eventually, rinse and repeat. As such, I’m no master strategist or architectural engineer. If you have ideas for how to better do certain things, or want to recommend a change, just holler. Why did you do X or Y like that in this thread? I might mess up some typical LP thread format stuff -- this is my first time using Lpix, for example, and maybe I’ll do stuff unconventionally without realizing it. Again open to suggestions on how to change reporting of in-game events, and so on. I’m a goblin. No goblins allowed! Dwarves and friends to dwarf-kind only in this thread. I cannot stress this point enough.  (Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L8DWA)
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 17:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 7, 2024 08:13 |
|
|
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Game Setup, Pt. 1 2. Game Setup, Pt. 2 3. Chapter 1, Pt. 1 4. Chapter 1, Pt. 2 5. Chapter 1, Pt. 3 6. Chapter 1, Pt. 4 Snuff Melange fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jul 14, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 17:24
|
|
|
Reserved.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 17:25
|
|
|
GAME SETUP The *very* first thing we do is turn off aquifers in the Lazy Newb Pack (hereafter, "LNP") launcher, because they suck and we don't want 'em.  Then we're good to start the game. As the application loads we are assaulted with the always-too-loud synth music I always forget about when I get back into the Dwarf Fortress mood.  Everyone thank the Adams brothers for their hard work! I don't think they make really any money off this game, despite its legendary status on the internet. Props, brothers!  Here are the typical settings I would use in a game I was playing on my own. If anyone feels strongly about these choices, I can re-do world generation -- meaning I'll need to re-find sites I'm about to post, but that's no big deal. However, I think this is a good config for maximum *fun* without being too punishing.  The world is rendered:  As we wait for the game to create a new world (this part takes a while), now is probably a good time to point out that our starting party will need names (7 of them), a preference for where to settle (typically we want something with trees, with a river, in warm temp, with shallow metals at minimum, and surroundings that aren’t Evil or Savage), and optionally, a strategy for our skills. Surroundings are pretty important, so a brief word on that. They’re basically the “type” of your environment, Evil surroundings might have necromancers and villainous monsters, as well as “Evil” weather (think raining blood, despicable stuff like that). Savage surroundings might have especially dangerous monster and animal life, and generally more diverse ecosystems. Good biomes are like you’d expect, not too aggressive and everything doesn’t necessarily want to kill you. I’m not opposed to playing a Savage or even Evil biome game, but just be warned that if we go that route, especially Evil, our fortress life expectancy may be short. We see the history of the world begin to create, in which “real” historical events happen like civilizations beefing with one another, mythical creatures being slain, and cool stories like that. There’s another tool you can use to just explore the lore of a world you create -- pretty neat! … Okay, so at this point, we have a freshly generated world, some decades old, and we can explore possible sites to settle our soon-to-be fortress in. The world we inhabit is called Moyocamade. The tileset doesn’t really change world generation, but you can still see some decent visual detail in the screenshots.  ... Anyways, our first big task is to pick a site to settle our fortress at. Here are some possible sites I located by digging around: The Faint Murk Temperate climate and Woodland tree levels, this would leave us well poised to harvest lots of wood and be comfortable temperature-wise. Also should make growing crops perfectly doable (once I refresh myself on the mechanics). The surrounding type is Untamed Wilds, which is a Savage Neutral biome (so a little dangerous, but not Evil level dangerous).  The Contested Prairie Warm climate, and Woodland tree levels, again pretty hospitable. Furthermore, the surroundings here are “Wilderness”, which is basically Neutral Neutral biome type -- perfectly hospitable for a party of tough dwarves and nothing too overly complicated to worry about like weather or weird freak animals roaming.  The Intense Swamp Despite its name, this site is a perfectly hospitable temperature and tree level, with the added benefit of “Calm” surroundings -- Good Neutral in other words, so like the last site, but slightly friendlier and cozier. Both have about the same resources and local water sources, so both are pretty comparable otherwise.  The Blizzard of Starvation I looked around for the nearest Evil biome type just to offer the option for variety…and well, you can’t say the result isn’t sufficiently dire. No trees to speak of, freezing temperatures, this biome is basically Evil Neutral type, and is incredibly inhospitable. The prognosis for settlement of this area looks gloomy at best, but it is an option for these poor dwarves.  (I forgot to circle this one, but its in the very top right, the X is there if you look for it.) If none of those strike people’s fancy, I can always search out biomes of a specific nature. Just let me know what sounds interesting! … After that, we’re at the stage of finalizing the party. Now we have 7 extremely capable (hopefully) dwarves, who can start the game with default builds (which work pretty good), or can be given specifically tailored skills. The list of skills we can dole out are as follows:   For an easier view, you can consult this wiki page: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Skill#Professions The skills should be the same. For simplicity’s sake, I suggest we limit the starting dwarves to being capable at one thing only, so we can try to crowd source or first-come-first-serve suggestions as to what each dwarf should be good at. Don’t worry about their names for now either. Once we get into the proper game, we can look into their personalities, skills, hopes, dreams, and fears and get a better read on who these brave souls are before trying to give them fun nicknames. Alternatively, and let me know what you all think of this, we could name dwarves after thread posters -- could be fun, but I leave it up to any participants to decide. ... So, in summary, I need the following inputs from any participating readers: A vote on what kind of surroundings we want (Good, Neutral, Evil, Savage, etc.) A selection from the aforementioned sites OR a vote for new sites to be located and listed A vote on whether to depart with default dwarves or to specialize each dwarf in a particular skill And again, we’ll be naming the dwarves very shortly, so start thinking about cool or fun names  Once I get input on all of the above, I can configure the initial party of 7 appropriately, and depart to the site we agree on (unless we’re looking for more site options of course). At that point, we’re in the game, I can give you all a read on the personality, traits, and noteworthy details on each dwarf, and we can start thinking about how to build our first semblance of a shelter. As a reminder, for the game setup and first phase of base-building, probably, I'll just be using first-come-first-serve input as much as possible, so as not to take forever and make it a slow and boring start. Snuff Melange fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jul 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 17:38
|
|
|
My vote is for high savagery on world generation. bring out the giant animals. we don't need no namby pamby normal elephant. name a dwarf after me! if you are weird fishing person, make me a fisherdwarf edit: this post was made while you were editing your reserved posts. I still vote for a savage biome.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 17:40
|
|
|
oh hell yes You're insane for doing this as your first LP here, I salute you. I very firmly vote for naming dorfs after thread goons, if only because 90% of posters will automatically assume that's what you're doing anyway since it's how all the previous LPs worked. and I would like to claim one. Some sort of crafter would be nice. I do like a good fey mood. Let's settle in the Faint Murk.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 17:42
|
|
|
The blizzard of starvation sounds like a cosy ski resort. Let's go there!
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 18:38
|
|
|
I mean clearly if only friends of dwarves are allowed, then you should attempt to make friends with Goblins. And Intense Swamp sounds good.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 18:49
|
|
|
Dwarf Fortress rules. My vote's for the Faint Murk or any other savage biome. If you're naming dwarves after posters, feel free to make me a mason or something.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 20:07
|
|
|
Heck yeah, Dwarf Fortress, it's been a while since. I'm also voting for Faint Murk, seems like a fun locale to settle. Gotta be an engraver dwarf in there, slap my name on one if you're up to that, abbreviated ideally.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 20:37
|
|
|
Oh and yeah, feel free to make me whatever dwarf is left over.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2022 22:04
|
|
|
Dwarf me, please, if possible. Intense Swamp sounds intense an has my vote.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 00:57
|
|
|
Oh hey, fresh dwarf fortress LP! The Faint Murk sounds ominous enough for the start of a colony. I'd also like to toss my name into the hat for dwarves as some sort of woodworker, or any other type of craftsdwarf that fits the biome we settle in.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 01:08
|
|
|
Intense swamp has my vote, if only for the name.  Also I advocate for naming dorfs after posters as is forum tradition. I'm keen to be a murderdwarf of some kind if so, otherwise I'm not fussed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 02:13
|
|
|
Intense Swamp sounds Dorf enough for me! Also please dorf me! (don't care what profession I am!)
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 02:34
|
|
|
Dorf me in, couch!
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 06:31
|
|
|
Dorfman me, Cap'n
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 07:23
|
|
|
Dorf me! Ground floor on a SA Dwarf Fortress thread, I can't WAIT. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 07:25
|
|
|
Oh hell yes, haven't read a good Dwarf Fortress LP in ages. Good luck with your first LP! Intense Swamp sounds exciting enough, let's go there. Also, dorf me please!
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 11:27
|
|
|
A Dwarf cares little about the above when there is there is no depth deep enough under. So Faint Murk. It's been too long since I've played or read an LPs so I don't know about skills. But, when someone inevitably falls from a tree and their head explodes, dorf me as a replacement.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 12:53
|
|
|
Tossing in another vote for Intense swamp
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 18:45
|
|
|
Faint Murk sounds good to me. And if this thread is doing dorfing, I volunteer as well.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 18:48
|
|
|
I'm for the Blizzard and dorf me (if name long just go for BPD)
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 18:58
|
|
|
Oh and can we have a cat? Pretty please?
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 19:12
|
|
|
I’ve never seen such an Intense Swamp! Let’s beeline the caverns and get cave adapted.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 20:59
|
|
|
Faint Murk. Strike the earth! No respect for humans, dragons, trolls or pointy ears!  Mandatory dwarven music (Windrose cover of Diggy Diggy Hole) Or if you prefer something sung in Tolkien Dwarvish (Colm McGuiness cover of Misty Mountains, in a voice as deep as the roots of the mountains)
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 21:51
|
|
|
GAME SETUP, PART 2 First order of business, we have our first dwarf name lined up, “Lobster”, who we will make a fisherdwarf in the party setup menu. Whether or not this fishing will happen in actuality is questionable, but it’s possible! We also have a second dwarf named, “Black Robe” (“Blackrobe”, maybe?). This dwarf will be a crafter, I’m thinking maybe stone crafter, wood crafter or clothier -- I’m pretty basic when it comes to crafting in my games usually. A third dwarf named “Megane” has enlisted, and will serve as a mason, which we’ll definitely want as well. A fourth dwarf, “Brave” (or BLT? I wasn’t sure how this should ideally be abbreviated to be honest D:) will follow suit, serving as an engraver. Continuing with our merry list of volunteers, Cyflan was enlisted by their own volition but without a request for a duty position. This will likely result in them serving as a farmer, a cook, or a military member. With the roster full of five happy, well insured volunteers already becoming acquainted and exchanging ideas for cool statues, that leaves two more slots for our beginning party. Spelling will satisfy the sixth and penultimate slot on the roster, again having no specific requests for duty. This makes this dwarf another excellent candidate for farming, cooking, or military service. Finally, Dervival will round out our ramshackle band of adventurers, enlisted as a woodworker, whose services will surely come in handy. Apologies to anyone who didn’t get into the initial party, but fret not! I’m confident that with a thread’s worth of crowdsourcing decisions and priorities we will survive until a migration wave arrives. With that in mind, the queue for new dwarves is currently as follows: Mathwyn (military enlistment), Dervinosdoom (any role), Caldin (any role), Deki (any role), Viola the Mad (any role), Werevolvo (any role), Pocket Savior (any role), Cythereal (any role), and By popular demand (“Populardemand?” What’s immersive…hmm..) (any role). Thank you all volunteers! I hope we can all see you in this game. If this fortress dies quickly for some reason, I’m totally open to an immediate second game with fresh recruits so other people can play too. Otherwise we should see you in a few seasons! … One other logistical update, we have a request for a cat, which I believe can definitely be accommodated. Names for the cat welcomed! … Now that everyone’s all signed up, you probably want to know where we’re headed, huh? Well, it was neck and neck for a lot of the posting, but by my count, the final results are as such: Intense Swamp (10 votes) Faint Murk (8 votes) Blizzard of Starvation (3 votes) Redo world gen for higher savagery / anywhere with high savagery (2 votes) Congrats Intense Swamp voters! Your stake in this company has bent our mission to your will, and we shall depart into the relatively safe confines of The Intense Swamp in order to settle a new, glorious fortress to bring our order riches and prestige!  (Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KrqBeW) Now I have to do the fun work of retracing my steps from that screenshot and re-locating said swamp, but it won’t be too bad. In the next post, I will buy the cat, set the appropriate skills, note who has what skills so I can rename dwarves properly in Dwarf Therapist, and embark to our chosen site. I should have some screenshots of our new land and some options for first priorities. Unless anyone objects, I might just build a small to medium sized empty room as a generic structure to get us started, and then we can go from there. Last minute edit: Poil you just barely got your vote in under the wire, but that still makes Faint Murk 9 to Intense Swamp's 10 votes, sorry!
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 22:06
|
|
|
i would like to be dorf'd as "bios", in any non-noble role
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 22:11
|
|
|
Also, in between the OP and today, I was exploring Legends mode for our world a tiny bit, and thought you all might enjoy some brief excerpts of the recent world events:quote:In the late autumn of 72, the Hateful Spider The world is tumultuous and full of lively intellectual discourse on water vapors and droplets. Bios will be added to the queue (non-noble role).
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 22:13
|
|
|
If you need another dwarf dorf'd me?
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 22:35
|
|
|
"Chaos Dragon" added to the queue CHAPTER 1, PART 1 Okay so after giving everyone their skills, and buying a pair of cats and kittens (I figured doubles would be better so we can get more cats over time), we had 6 points left, not bad! Cyflan ended up being a miner and cook, Spelling a carpenter and animal trainer, and Dervival a woodcutter and woodcrafter. Also, I bought a duckling with our final 6 points, and we will *cherish* this precious little guy. Best 6 points we ever spent! ... I randomed a fort name for us with my eyes closed, and we got Nekolerith Skulllabors. So, there’s some interesting stuff going on there for sure. I did three randoms for our group name and came up with Dakost Thabum, The Floor of Gulfs. Shrug, not everyone can have a badass group name like NERV or Grey Wardens or whatever. And with that, we depart!  (Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/502829-dwarf-fortress) quote:You have arrived. After a journey from the Mountainhomes into the forbidding wilderness beyond, your harsh trek has finally ended. Your party of seven is to make an outpost for the glory of all Uzol Likot. There are almost no supplies left, but with stout labor comes sustenance. Whether by bolt, plow, or hook, provide for your dwarves. You are expecting a supply caravan just before winter entombs you, but it is Spring now. Enough time to delve secure lodgings, ere the cougars get hungry. A new chapter of dwarven history begins here at this place, Nekolerith, “Skulllabors”. Strike the earth! And there we have it, our brand new land to settle on! It’s actually a beauty, if I say so myself. Lots of land, lots of trees. Plenty of water, so we probably can actually thrive on fishing if we wanted to. Accessible river for water-physics based shenanigans down the road, and seems pretty chill in general.  As for our surroundings, we have plenty of water right where the game dumped us in the center. To our north is a rock wall, to our east and south a stream passes by, and to our west there are several ponds scattered around. North:  East:  South:  West:  ... So obviously (maybe not, if you haven’t played DF before), the first step here is to decide where and what to build for shelter. I’m a fan of “One Big Room” (™) style structures in the very beginning, and then slowly specializing them over time, making individual rooms later. I went ahead and took the liberty of queuing up a tree cutting order for the immediate small area around where we started. I figure this is a pretty universal initial step too, in order to build walls and whatnot, but we can cancel this order too as I won’t unpause quite yet. In order to try and facilitate decision-making, let me spitball a couple of basic options to get us rolling: Base Design: - One big room - Two or three medium sized rooms - Several rooms, enough for each dwarf to have their own room Base Location: - Right around the bend of the river - Mined into the rock wall - Right where we stand, in the center - Near the ponds Let me also start asking what we want to prioritize as far as *development* goes. Here are some possible priorities to start by working on: - Agriculture and fishing sites on the water (food) - Building traps and setting them around the wilderness (food) - Making a more solid, secure base (shelter / security) - Mining down to look for metals (wealth / industry) That’s far from an exhaustive list, so if you have your own suggestion, absolutely feel free to throw it into the ring, and for anybody not super familiar with Dwarf Fortress, try to throw in the benefit of pursuing that priority in parentheses, for clarity’s sake. … In summary, I need the following inputs in order to proceed: Base Design Base Location First Development Priority 1-4 Cat Names (or 2 Cat Names and 2 Kitten Names) (2 Masculine 2 Feminine) 1 Duckling Name (Feminine) Since there are a good amount of active users, it’s probably best to give a solid window of time before proceeding, so let’s say I’ll give it at least 12 hours for voting to happen (more realistically, I’ll come back tomorrow around the same time as today (8-9 UTC), and then carry out the thread’s wishes -- so you probably have plenty of time!). Between now and the end of voting, I’ll also provide some Dwarf Therapist details on each of your dwarves currently in play, so we can all get a sense for what these particular dwarves are like. This is where a lot of the fun comes in, in my opinion!
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 23:01
|
|
|
Haven't played for years, last time before the z-axis was added. Having said that, uh, be traditional dig straight into the cliff? Thanks for dorfing me. Can I train our duckling to do anything?
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 23:21
|
|
|
These are dorfs, dig straight into the mountain. Then reroute the river to make a moat with a gatehouse/drowning trap
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 23:29
|
|
|
Base location - near the bend in the river. The rock wall is too close to the edge of the map to make an effective fortress entrance. Several small rooms. A barracks, meeting hall, store room and first farm room one level down is a good start. And it should be into soft soil rather than hard stone, so very quick to carve out. And agriculture. Name the Duck Snake
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2022 23:30
|
|
|
So are we building a fort or dig the earth?
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2022 00:23
|
|
|
I'd also like to volunteer to be dorfed, and would happily take up a post to defend our fortress! I vote we dig straight into the mountain! And while we of course need to focus on Agriculture first, once that is secure we should immediately pivot to focusing on shelter and security.
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2022 00:42
|
|
|
I've read several Dwarf Fortress LPs and I'm still no closer to understanding how anything works, or being able to read the maps. I figure that makes me a perfect candidate for being dorf'd! Maybe as a stonecarver or something.
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2022 01:24
|
|
|
2-3 medium rooms a dorm, a meeting hall, and stockpile Mine into the wall we're dwarves dang it! Get a farm running start with food and drink production! For cat names: Mira for a female, Petronius the Arbitor for a male EDIT: What do we have for starting supplies? Lady Jaybird fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Jul 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2022 01:36
|
|
|
Of course mine into the hill and down so we may get that sweet, sweet rock... but I vote that we shouldn't limit ourselves to narrow tunnels choked with traps. Oh no. I say we Build up as much as we build down. The entrance to our fort should look it. Ramparts, thick walls, defenses, elaborate water or lava traps that make an angry dwarf face or whatever. This is a long term goal, of course. The first order of business should be to get ourselves secured stockpiles. Even a wooden pallisade outside is a decent 'baby's first wall' to protect our workshops. No dwarf should sleep anywhere but in the deep, of course. Farms and related workshops? Look, it's a long way underground. There's plenty of fertile soil and water RIGHT THERE on the surface. Also dorf my dumb rear end. I'll happily be one of the first to throw in the militia grinder.
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2022 01:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 7, 2024 08:13 |
|
|
Drakenel posted:Of course mine into the hill and down so we may get that sweet, sweet rock... Build Up And Down. A tower as high as the fortress is deep. The tower's purpose? To be tall. No other purpose required. Also, dorfing if possible.
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2022 01:44
|
|
