Dwarf Fortress General

The operator running away can be countered with a good setup. But it just isn't worth it. I tried and failed and failed and failed. I managed to grow plump helmets in hell after achieving a pure military victory over the demons, but I can't make siege weapons work.

Also I read somewhere on the forums that there have been significant changes made to armor somewhere in the past 2 years but I can't find a thread detailing this, anyone an idea as to what this armor change was?

(checked)

Well shit. At least all that siege engineer training ramped their fucking strength up to fucking Senator Armstrong levels now. Guess they're getting silver hammers.

Blunt weapons suck.

I'm getting sieged by necromancers a lot, so I'm training a hammer squad to take the undead out. Chopping off limbs just makes more enemies to kill. I already have an axe lord squad.

iron works better on maces

What about Lead?

you cant make lead weapons.

Great "simulation" Toady

why would you want lead weapons?

Because they're heavy which makes it great for non-piercing weapons.

I always use lead to make goblets and sell them to the elves, in hopes that generations of lead poisoning will genocide the knife-eared faggots.

in game terms yes, i think you could even mod the game yourself to do that, but not on real life since lead is too soft and it would just bend.

it worked whit the romans.

I think malleability is on the to-do list. Silver weapons will eventually be worthless.

I hope Toady rebalances blunt weapons by then, blunt weapons made out of anything but silver are beyond worthless.

QUICK. What's the absolutely worst active mod?

DF is 64 BIT NOW? HOLY SHIT?

it's fucking nothing because it's still not multi-threaded

How on earth is he going to get data for all the possible alloys?

...

Buy a reference book?

Impact weapons are best against armor. Use axes against foes with little armor.

So according to the wiki, when you unretire a fort
Does this mean that the stuff in the bins/barrels just disappears?

iirc they get scattered on any explored open tiles of the fort

What is your favorite tileset? I like CLA

lol

lol

wanderlust

I need help designing my walls. I want to make them climb-proof, but climbing is kinda fucky so I don't know which one of these will work.

As long as you have an overhang they cant climb over it

Does it have graphics yet? Mouse support?
Can normal human bean play it yet?

Do fortifications count as an overhang? They can't climb through them, right?

dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Climber

Just read that. The short version is to make a simple 1z level wall and build floors jutting out the sides to serve as an overhang.

Anybody here currently working on a mod for the game? I'm working on one that adds prehistoric creatures and I posted it on /vmshare/ and might end up putting it on the Bay12 forums too.

After I'm done with my current world I'll make a mod for more races/civs, to make the world more interesting. I'll add some mods for more creatures too, probably use yours too

I'm doing another human fort. The previous one fell to a wereass that got in through a temporary bridge I forgot to remove. Most of my military dodged into the river and drowned, and the civilians didn't stand a chance.

This time I learned from my mistakes and made sure the fort is impenetrable. So far the walls for the farmer district are mostly done. This is just a small portion of my future fort.

This is a pretty ambitious project, definitely focusing on design over utility. My plans are to build a huge castle in the middle for my Superhuman Legendary Immortal Vampire Adventurer King, surrounded by bottomless pits of death and a great, great wall. The rest of the fort is going to be divided into districts, where specific things will be.

North of the river, what you can see on the pictures is the farmer district. It will have huge farms, animal pastures, fishing chambers on the river, mills powered by windmills and water wheels, all the food and farming product processing workshops, a shallow mine for mining stone and ore, masons' workshops for pumping out tons of stone blocks, and kitchens and clothier workshops that will make food and clothes for the lower peasant classes. It will also contain individual houses for all of the above workers, a basic temple, a tavern and a shitty slum for haulers. This district will provide almost all the basic goods for the whole fortress. Some will be processed locally for use by the district's population, but a lot of it will be sent to the other districts.

Next will be the city district, just south of the river. All of the southern districts will be protected by thick stone walls and have paved stone roads. It will have market for the caravans, with trade goods stockpiled nearby. After that, a large town square with a statue garden, some other decorations, and from the town square roads going in different directions to different districts. This district will contain my best tavern, a town hall with offices for the mayor, bookkeeper and manager, a big library and a temple. Probably some other things.

There will be also a craftsmen's district for all the legendaries to make quality items, with all the required materials stockpiled nearby, regurarly refilled by dedicated haulers and also the main mine, where I will dig deep and settle the caverns. Also a military district but I don't know yet where to put these two.

Far to the north will be the grand castle of death, for the king (to be replaced with my adventurer), and around it the noble district.

All this will require a lot of time and autism but I have plenty of both. I want this to be my ☼Masterwork☼, my best fort ever made, so I'm very dedicated to it.

I've also been thinking about a goblin/elf concentration camp, complete with a forgotten beast gas chamber

buy a chemestry 101 tier textbook.

Why do all my animals have a flashing yellow arrow on them?

...

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thanks, I've been looking for that picture

you suck

The interface is bad and I'm a casual.

...

the interface is more obtuse than plain bad

how is it that I never get fucking metals, I strike the occasional vein of gold but there's no goddamn iron, copper, or alloying metals. I even have multiple deep and shallow metals at site.

thats true and anyone who says otherwise is in denial

>looks fun
>put everyone in military, assign squad to kill it
>5/7 dead
gets me every time.

these threads needs more screencap gifs

Ooh shit.
Looks like someone got their teeth knocked out. Was it the gator or a dorf?

Where are you embarking? Hills have different mineral profiles than mountains, for example.

Metal depth is more related to caverns than anything

On that note I have a gator related story to share from yesterday

We're gonna go places

...

Oh yeah, two things I really want are ladders/scaffolds for building, so you don't have to make floors and walls and stairs just to build multi Z-level buildings, and also something else that I can't remember

It looks like this is going to be a good fort.

Oh yeah, I remember, I wanted to place dirt tiles, so that I could make aboveground forts in arbitrary locations, eg sky gardens or raised terraces

all four teeth are one dwarf's
now a corpse in a murky pool of blood

i'd post the gif, but it went all green

That's when you retake an abandoned fort, not when you unretire a fort you retired, which stays active.

When you abandon, all fortress items get scattered across the map, including pools of valuable booze.

Bonus points: put fortifications on the overhang, or magma dumpers.

What sort of aboveground fortress would be the most fun? I need a theme

Jesus christ Toady, would it kill you to make a dll folder?

I like to do rice paddies with maybe chicken farms everywhere.

I've always wanted to do a fort where there are no migrants, only married dwarves producing children. The problem is that it takes many years for children to grow up, and with the recentish sexuality and breaktime additions, sometimes people don't even get married even with ample downtime. Shit sucks

thanks toady.
so, now that we've got literal gays along with the Jews (Kobolds), who are the goblins and elves?

i think i solved my gifcam's greenscreen problem.

bub user, you are playing as the jews

n-not at all!
dwarf are, are, are industrious, aryan race, much better than those knife-ear elves and smelly go-I mean humans.

Has anyone noticed that the original 2D has all the same features as the current version except without 3D

What has toady been doing for the last 10 years? The original took ~4 years to develop. All that's been added is ~sweat simulation~ and homosexual dwarfs

Just read his changelog. For example there was a personality and soul overhaul so that different temperaments exist which may be passed on genetically such as how they react to death etc.

Trees are completely different too. Now they're several layers tall and have huge branching sizes instead of an army of single tiles. They explode into wood too.

They added mine carts and a revamp to hauling so that linked piles are more effective and you have wheelbarrows and mine carts to move things easier. As a consequence you only get a 25% chance of getting stone now but crafting to blocks will yield 4 items.

Taverns and art and temples were added so that you have more control over transient visitor populations who will come and sign and tell stories and share culture. Makes the fort feel more lively and it also replaces breaktimes with more flexible activities.

Right now he's working on worldgen artifacts as a precursor to magic

what?

Yeah all that ~*simulation*~ bullshit hasn't made the gameplay any different and has made it a lot worse in some cases

right now the game is just sloppy and unbalanced because of the total open-endedness of 3D

Well, his vision of the game is to be a fantasy simulator. As a consequence his focus is more on "make things happen in response to other things" which may not be balanced or fun or good gameplay. It is what it is.

That said, 40d was the last major stable 3d release that everyone played before he overhauled military and social simulation and it might feel more "gamey" in that case

the focus is more on simulation than strictly gameplay, as such balancing might be on the backburner until a lot of these features, particularly the spare time and social overhaul stuff.
it's probably also to establish some more stuff for adventure mode as well.

I do think the UI is pretty bad. Ever try making a pump stack?

He really needs to add mouse support (but make it completely workable with just the keyboard) and like make it moddable via config files or something. Shit like which options are where etc so users can customize the game to their playstyle

I do agree that there should be a wider implemented array of mouse support, I use the LNP and stuff like DFhack extended options help a lot when you're doing things like large construction projects or taking inventory or using extended mouse controls, etc.

things like buildings using UMKH yet designations using box systems, millitary tab being an unmitigated disaster and shit like NO WORKFLOW CONSTRAINTS

Ice fortress is pretty dope.

I'm running a fort with the challenge of every month, I choose one dwarf and sacrifice it in front of everyone. I have a pit of upright steel spikes in the main dwarven meeting area. Once a month I burrow a dwarf in the area - which is cordoned off to all other dwarves, seal off the platform so none can interfere, and spike him to death in sacrifice to Armok.

Also every dwarf born in my fortress, upon reaching "child" status is thrown into a one square room with a giant tiger cub (we domesticated them a few years ago). The room is flooded to 4/7 and contains a small amount of booze and food, enough to see the child to adulthood and keep them from going insane. If a pastured animal is in too small a space, it lashes out at anything sharing it.

By the time the kid grows, it has maxed physical stats and a tiger buddy, and doesn't give a shit about anything. He gets a full set of armor and put in my military as a full Astartes.

Armok smile upon you and grant you his favour, o' Overseer.

fuggg

...

I have a pretty big problem. I saw that something destroyed my trade depot, but I haven't detected what it was yet. I knew it would go after my door afterwards, so I retracted the bridge separating it, and then put it back on to trap it in my pit. I let my dwarves out and they didn't detect anyone outside, so I assume whatever that was is now trapped in there.

What do you guys suggest I do? Should I leave it there to starve?

accidentally loaded my first fort.
what the fuck is happening

Those smiley face things appear to be having a party.

is it true elves get pissed at choppity chop chops?

outfuckingskilled.jpg

On the off topic of that letter.

I remember reading it years ago and being thrilled that a successful guy took the time out of his day to hopefully revert a drone.

little update on the fort
I had to go back to an older save, so I lost about 12 hours of progress, which means I was back at the starting 7 and no walls were built

but since then I've rebuilt, and I wasn't really mad because this time I could do things differently

I decided to dam and divert the river so that the entrance to my city can be in the middle of the map rather than off to the side

I drained several murky pools to irrigate land for my large farms. Both sides of my fort now have 4 10x10 farms. The right side will be used for producing food, so it also contains a pasture for meat industry animals (mostly water buffalos) and the related workshops, as well as a nearby stockpile for plants and seeds and meat. I've also built comfy little houses for the farmer families. The drained murky pools are now used as a living area for the haulers.

What are some beginner projects I should try? I can't do anything too complex yet since I'm still learning the game but I want to try something cool.

Found something for you.

The river diversion was a success. It's now in a nice, symmetrical shape. The downside is that it left big wooden 'scars' on the landscape. I've also built a lever-linked raising bridge on the river bed as a reusable dam for future use.

Other than that, the eastern section was expanded with an orchard and a 2 level nest for egglayers for massive egg production (32 nest boxes). Meanwhile, houses and a granary were built in the western section, mirroring the eastern. I'm currently moving more workshops north of the river so I can abandon the ugly temporary fort.

I'm gonna start a fresh new world after dinner. Ideas?

what the hell am I looking at?

Since you cannot see it, Its a werebeast and they cannot starve or drown. Make fortifications to check what it is in the pit
also
rookie mistake.

Why do people play those worlds again?

The biggest problem is that… the goblins have only ever sent 1 snatcher in the 25 years my fort has been running.

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How to pic related IRL.

How's this color/tile set look?

I should just pick a small mountain fort next time. I forgot that training axes were patched to be useless, and forgot all about a pick.
On the plus side, my dwarves punched undead birds to death so that's a plus

Well that was a fun fort, I guess

Okay so this time I made a better fort

This place has no fucking fuel or even plant life, so I had to butcher my shit immediately. Just got my second annual caravan. Big hole is a quarry, river is actually frozen because >no temperature

I've been working on making a bridge and a functional inn. It was supposed to be a little "granary" to take raw food from any source and output prepped meals and alcohol, but I fucked up the layout.

Sounds cozy fam. Would adventure to.

good night, sweet herbalist.
at least i heard your screams.

A blacksmith who decided to grow some squared watermelons.

...

I have never been able to set up a functioning military.

Okay so this is where my fort stands right now.

I have literally no fuel, wood is scarce from trading, and my home caravan has no bituminous coal, so my metal industry is a bust. I did set mineral rarity to be lower than normal, but I still found huge veins of hematite (red) buried in the dolomite (white), which are both economic stones. Instead of smelting it, I turned the hematite ore into blocks.

Why not wait to smelt the hematite into Iron ore? There should be plenty of underground trees once you hit the caverns.

But there's also going to be a ton of iron ore as I keep digging down. I have more than I know what to do with and I've only gone through half of two Z-levels

Okay elves, we get it your instruments are nice

How deep have you been? I'd just try to find the first cavern in order to get trees.

Something like 6 floors deep, it's pretty shallow. I'm only digging as deeply as my quarry allows me to right now.

The internet, a book, anywhere really, it's easy as fuck to find that stuff. He'd probably base the weapon damage system on the wound system, and just have the damage values calculated based on how the weapon is used, multiplied by such and such a property such as tensile strength.

A trader has cave crocodile eggs, should I try getting them? They aren't trainable for hunting or war but can they be sorta like watchdogs? Do I need a female cave crocodile to hatch it first?

If it was laid in a nest box and collected (eg in your case), then it becomes a food item. It should be grouped with the foods, in fact.

As far as I know, you need the live animals yourself to breed them.

This, eggs will only hatch if they've been laid in a nest box, a male also has to be present on the map. Rather dumb, but… ehhh.

Wow, cool

Did it break

I've seen that happen before, except with animals getting pissy. They should leave eventually and if they don't you get free armed guards.

So basically it's his emo journal that somehow became so important to the history of the world

That's good at least

It could be the first writing of a famous poet. Like a fingerpainting Van Gogh made when he was three. Can you find anything else he's written?

Do I have to go into Legends? I don't really know how to search for that kind of shit

I don't either, but from my poking around I'd say you'd go into legends, historical figures, and then filter on his name. Just copy your folder, retire the copy and look.

There may be other ways in the newest version involving engraving and statues but I don't know.

I've already gotten 2 strange moods in the 2 years my dwarfs have been here. Your book is probably only artifact quality because of the binding.

Another little update of my fort, started working on above ground dwellings for each dwarf.

I've got migrants disabled, so I've fortunately had 3 fort births, which means if things stay fairly stable then I can naturally keep growing my population. Shame it'll basically stem from 1 or 2 main families, but that would be interesting.

Human forts are comfy as fuck. Back in the 40d days, I made a human fortress mod and would set strict rules for myself about things like mining (strip mines or 3 in only). Only wood construction except for walls on important buildings, separate buildings for rooms.

Why are my legendary miners refusing to mine anything now? All three of them are sitting in their rooms doing nothing at all.

Are they distracted? In a burrow?

I don't have any burrows set up, and if I set them to do some other job they go to do it but mining is something they refuse to do.

This is awful

I cancelled everything I had designated and redesignated and it ended up working out.

Did you maybe hit "m" that changes the marking mode to only flag the tiles?

Just get your military to butcher the humans and their animals, after that dump everything you dont want in a spot and use a bridge to delete it from the game.

In any case, they fucked off after I deconstructed the depot. I dumped everything and crushed it.

You possibly could have gotten it done by smashing them with a bridge

where the fuck are all my plump helmet spawns

m(ilitary)
c(reate squad)
add everyone
esc
u(nits), >other, vpick animal, z(oom)
esc
s(quad)
a(ssign squad), enter
k(ill), pick animal

functional enough for me.

What? How? If I placed a new bridge, it would have overlapped the depot and wouldn't let me place it there

Goddamnit Elves

Oh yeah, I'm very certain my colors.txt is correct, but there's blue vomit on the ground? What gives?

I'm doing mostly the same. Everyone (except the haulers) gets their own house of varying quality, no living underground (except for haulers who live in drained murky pools) and no adamantine forging until I get a dwarven resident. I'm not doing strip mines though because they fuck up the landscape too much and I don't have enough space

7 days

Until what?

Yeah bro, don't leave us hanging.

nec19

Anyone know if the bug that restricts dwarves being able to wield 2handed weapons in fortress mode militaries is still in the game?

I believe so. Something about wield size being incorrect.

You mean a Jew, right?
Let's have a quick look at his arguments:

I've seen better arguments on fucking facebook.

Can't you deconstruct the depot?

That's what I ended up doing. I trash compacted all their shit afterwards

the real argument to be made is that wood is used to build homes businesses and is economically active. yes it is done to generate wealth it not only produces economic activity but provides homes businesses furniture paper to be provided for the masses. mabie if you got your head out of your ass you could read a book on where books come form.

Czeched

Logging in sustainable ways in old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest can sustain the needs for paper in the world. The only reason to go clear-cutting the most biologically diverse ecosystem known to man is pure greed; the idiot fucking Brazilians don't know the value of what's down there so they let you hold an all-you-can-cut buffet for pennies per acre, leaving swaths of emptiness you can see from orbit.

I know it's a meme to clear-cut in DF because "fuck da elves!" but please don't think that's not massively detrimental to do it in real life.

Polite bump

maybe an invitation for stupid questions would get things moving

I got my military to fuck up some badgers and wombats, but my butcher won't butcher. I thought it was because it was the corpses were far away, but I have a refuse pile nearby - and no one's hauling it, despite hauling all other stuff, like wood and forage spoils.
Is the solution in the refuse order, allow outside hauling? or can you not butcher a 'mutilated corpse'?

it seems to work like in age of empires were if you kill deers whit soldiers, you cant butcher them, when a hunter kills a prey, his next job will be "return kill", the hunter will haul the dead prey and drop it into the butcher's shop.

That can't be right, I'm sure I've assembled a shitty military and killed stuff to butcher it.

>If the "Auto butcher" order is enabled, then any valid corpse located either in a stockpile or within 43 squares of a butcher's shop will be automatically queued for butchering. During this job, the butcher will pick up the corpse, haul it to the workshop, and then slowly process it into individual parts at a speed based on skill level and clutter (which can take a long time for particularly large creatures such as forgotten beasts).

dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Butcher#Troubleshooting

Check your Refuse orders first, then check to see if the corpse has been forbidden for some retarded reason. Also make sure 'Dwarves Gather Bodies' and 'Dwarves gather Animals are on' I'm not actually sure if either of those have anything to do with them, but make sure nonetheless.

Actually, it might be the fact that it's considered a 'Corpse' and not 'Refuse'. Try making a corpse stockpile that only has Animal Corpses in it near your butcher's shop. He'll only actually butcher it if the item is within 43 tiles of the shop like said, but because your dwarves don't technically have an appropriate stockpile to haul it to, they just won't. Another stockpile that it could go into is Animals. I would suggest pressing Q on the stockpile that you want to haul the Corpse to, and allowing Animals and Corpses to be hauled there, and see what happens. I'll start my own game and see if I can tell what the fuck is going on, because I remember getting frustrated about this exact thing in the past, but I resolved it somehow.

Anyone try playing the original 2D game? I find it more fun and challenging

i think my butcher problem is solved
got dwarves crossing the map for some badger teeth

there isn't a limit on how big a stockpile is, is there? feels like the big one just won't take anything, and i gotta redo or make smaller ones

There is a stockpile size limit actually.
I base a lot of my stockpile rooms on that size, in fact. See pic related, it's the maximum size of a stockpile. That being said, there's literally nothing stopping you from creating multiple rooms at a time like I did, and sorting everything like that.
Even in my Stone industry I go out of my way to sort out the different kind of stones like the differences between Lava-safe stone, and meltable stone.

I got this petition for citizenship.

I've checked the units list and there aren't any visitors called "The Memories of Evil" (in any language). Part of the map is an evil biome.

Should I accept?

youtu.be/4OaOyxuNx0U

Also I've got a breeding pair of giant cave spiders. Any suggestions on what to do with them?

that seems to be a performance troupe

breed them, but always keep at least one that is untamed
use it for a silk farm and to web your cages so you can catch fbs

Ah, that would make sense. The singular "wishes" threw me off.

Good idea webbing cages. I'll definitely set that up. It would be more helpful if the current FB causing me problems wasn't a webber though.

Thanks!

welly well well

FUN

wat. you can butcher wild animal skeletons but not a starved pet?

Pets you can't butcher, no. Also I think some Nobles require you to make crypts for their pets or they get bad thoughts.
That being said, if it really was just a 'Stray Reindeer' it wasn't anyone's pet, it was just kinda around. Is your butcher busy? Because if he's not, that's some bullshit.

Mfw I'm about to jump into this game for the first time

Enjoy having your dwarves starve to death in your first year!

No but seriously for your first few forts expect them to go very wrong quickly; don't spend too much time picking out a spot. Maybe hills or near mountains, avoid aquifers.

I don't know what your problem is, outside the UI and it's daunting magnitude for most making a good fort and "winning" is actually really easy and simpler then it appears. Unless you go evil or wild or god help you full wild and evil in the biome you choose to embark.

Adventure mode was always something that came after Fortyress mode which is the main mode and there are people whom never touch fortress mode whom don't care about the simulation stuff at all.

Dwarf Fortress does have some mouse support.

dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Mouse_control

I know how to play but I always get bored as fuck after a few years. I never know what to build. There are so many red herrings, like minetracks.

I always have the most fun building in a cliff side and making all sorts of complex shit with waterfalls, but they end up lagging my game.

They're useful if you have a megaproject. Hauling is usually what kills most of the busywork in a fortress. You can also use them to make computers, somehow

yeah this. once you climb the interface and internalize how the game works it becomes easy to just farm & survive damn-near indefinitely, so the real game becomes "do crazy shit until one of your crazy ideas kills you".

Also, just crossposting to point out this thread also exists:

OP was supposed to make a community Holla Forums fortress, but has been MIA, so I've just been showing off my own fortress periodically.

It's easy to survive indefinitely if you seal your fortress off and just play it safe. It's not so easy to survive if you play on a haunted glacier and make an effort to defend every migrant and trader.

I've just recently started playing (like 2 hours of playtime and 1 for beginners tutorial) and though this would be a good place to ask my more abstract questions since all of my technical questions are answered by the wiki and tutorials.
first, what should my spare migrant dwarves be doing when i don't have the proper materials for their craft? like a bookbinder and glassblower i have no use for because they picked shitty professions and they just mope around being total moochers.
also, am i supposed to have as much spare stone as i do? seriously, i've seen pictures of peoples stockpiles and mine seems to have way more stone than everyone elses. Its all chert, all the time.

Basically you should just assign them to whatever tasks need doing but have too few dwarves to do in a timely manner. What those tasks are depends on what kind of industries you want to focus on. Don't feel constrained to only assign your dwarves to industries that they already have skills in. You can tell all those fish dissectors and cheese makers to pick up picks and dig or start making furniture for your dining room.

If you have sand or metal on your map you probably want to dig down to the magma sea ASAP (wall off any caverns you dig into until you're more prepared to deal with FBs) and set up some magma smelters+forges and/or glass furnaces. Then you can just assign a bunch of dwarves to smelt ore and/or make glass. In my experience those industries can never have enough skilled dwarves.

Alternatively you could always assign any excess dwarves to the military. Get them training early and you'll have a decent army within a few years.

Nobody makes large stone stockpiles. If you do, your dwarves will just waste all their time hauling stone around. If you want to clear all the loose stone out of an area just use the dump command (d-b-d) and a quantum "stockpile" (zone set as a dumping area). If you do that, don't forget to unforbid the stone once it has been moved (d-b-c) and remove the dump zone.
It is worth making small stone stockpiles next to workshops which frequently use stone - masons, craftsdwarves and mechanics.

thanks, that's helpful. But i don't have anyone with the "architect" skill so i can't make furnaces. Yet.

Just pick any dwarf, press v and move the cursor near them to select them, press p followed by l to bring up the labors menu, use +/- and enter to select and open the "other jobs" submenu, then select architecture and press enter to enable it. That dwarf will now be able to do architecture, although they won't be very good at it to start with.

This general method applies to all labors. You can make almost any dwarf do any task, but their skill level determines how quickly and how well they do it.

Note, you can also select the dwarf by going to [u]nits and pressing [z] on your desired dwarf.

Actually my first fort is doing pretty okay, probably because I stumbled upon a good biome because the only bad stuff that has happened are kobolds coming in and two dwarves going crazy and dying. I'm waiting for a beast to come soon though because I'm sure it's inevitable.

is that good or bad?

Beasts require a certain fortress wealth and population to be attracted

Is there any advantage whatsoever to not genociding all non-dwarven visitors?

All they seem to bring is vampirism and lycanthropy.

You can't butcher corpses made by military or if they died themselves. If a hunter leaves an animal full of bolts and it bleeds out its sometimes unbutcherable as well.

You can
You just need a butchery nearby.
Conversely you can also use bones from humanoids if they get chopped for crafting

unfortunately the Necromancers got away, which means I get to look forward to another Siege in another month or so.

i'd gifcam sieges if i had any

The only times you can't butcher corpses are if they're sentient (dwarves, goblins, trolls, gremlins, etc), dead pets/livestock (slaughtering is basically a combined kill+butcher, but it only works when they're alive), or made of inedible material (fire men, bronze colossi, various FBs, etc).

You do need a refuse stockpile set to accept corpses near to your butcher's workshop and the "collect corpses from outside" [o-r-o, I think] option enabled.

Does anyone have a list of recommended skills and supplies to take?
I'm noob and trying to learn, but my forts always seem to end prematurely from me missing something key.

I usually just grab 7 skill less peasants and maybe a pick or axe. All you need except in the most unhabitable places

How do I train them if I don't skill them? I tried taking skill less peasants and picked some items, but after I embarked I quickly found that they refused to do anything.

Things I'd always bring:
1 anvil
2 picks (you'll need the second one when your first miner dodges into a pool and drowns)
2 axes (use 1 for woodcutting and 1 for military)
a breeding pair of egg-layers (I like turkeys because they also give meat and leather) - Eggs are an extremely good food source.
a cat (for keeping vermin out of your food stockpiles)

Skills are more of a matter of preference. I'd suggest having at least one weapon-user (not your woodcutter or miner), a miner and a doctor. Also a skilled farmer can help increase crop yields early on.

See for instructions on how to assign labors to dwarves.

did you assign them labours? If they dont have any skills they wont do anything by default

fug
I listen to swerwer'sstuff all time while playing

I may have given one of them maxed leadership
or something now that I think about it.

Thanks I'll try to find the right balance between skills and gear I guess.

If you seal yourself in do you just never get invaded?

This is something I've been wondering too, will they just try to tunnel in if they have no path to get in?

Enemies can't dig, but I seal myself in and flat out never get invaded.I can move next to a necromancer tower or goblin fort during wartime, and still no invasions

invasions happen but they stay near the edge of the map for several weaks or instantly leave

They just stay outside. By far the biggest problem when trying to turtle is that you eventually run out wood, unless you build an isolated area where trees can grow, for example by walling off a section of the caverns. You'll also need a way to get water to a well if you seal your fort off from the outside.

I deal with wood by cutting down all the trees in the map at start, then hauling them all inside. Then I immediately dig underground and cut down a shitton of trees in the caverns then seal the cavern off Which saved me from a fire breathing forgotten beast. I exclusively use wood for beds.

Aquifers are secretly top-tier.

Yet. Apparently that will turn up in one update.

Honestly, the easiest way to deal with invaders is a corridor (that twists and meanders) with a cage trap on every tile.

Replace "corridor" with "narrow walkway suspended over glass spikes" and replace "cage trap" with "weapon trap full of glass axe blades" and you have my defense system. There are a few cage traps afterwards, but if anything gets through that many weapon traps the fort is probably doomed anyway.

Cages are OP as fuck. Doesn't really matter though when the only thing I ever get invaded by are forgotten beasts.

It would be better if the creature triggering the trap got a chance to dodge the cage snapping shut, like they do for other traps.

Two migrants to my fortress just now ascended to baronies of the places the migrated from, and immediately demanded baron tier rooms in my fort.

I think I'll keep them around as a minor challenge, on top of the barony my fort will become soon.

For the love of Armok someone give a challenge that isn't fucking boring to do
All i need to win is a 5x5 plump helmet farm and a few months of dwarf training to make an impregnable fort. FPS death is not fun.

Surface fort in a forest. Aquifer optional no digging allowed.

If you want to build a construction then you have to make it out of soap (you'll need a ton of charcoal and animal fat)

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Not everyone has a shit computer fam. :^)

Creatures escaping from full-size cages like animal traps when?

One of the reasons I am keeping this aging toaster around is that it plays DF extremely well, somehow. It's wonderful.

Do you even play dwarf fortress? It doesn't matter what kind of computer you have it'll get dwarfed after a few years.

Kind of already here. I tried to make an arena several times and drop them from above but trying to move enemies from cages just makes them escape.

By construction do you mean anything like houses or just mega projects? Because that sounds pretty impossible to build workshops from soap or even any kind of house from soap.

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Soap isn't a valid workshop material? It's a constructable bar like iron or coal

Imagine how shitty your dwarven civilization must be if you get barons immigrating to your little shithole.

My dwarves will go insane outside first

The problem is getting the first bars of soap. You can't buy it and i can't make it without a workshop. Basically it's like embarking without an anvil except the traders don't stock them.

Well, to be fair, it was dwarves next in line for baronies that migrated. They both became barons in the same season though, but well after they'd both migrated two years prior.

I don't mind having two extra barons. It'll keep things interesting and when the queen gets off her ass and arrives, it'll make it feel even more like the seat of our kingdom.

I'm running at a fairly constant 20-30fps on a 15 year fort. It's not SPEEDSPEED EVERYWHERE but it's tolerable.

You could fudge it a little by allowing one initial wooden soapers shop and ashery. You'd be fudging it later anyway because iirc soap is not a valid material for furnaces either.

My 15 year fort of less than 20 pop gets about 150~200 FPS. I get cranky if it drops lower

Where did I say I wasn't digging? I sealed myself underground and this actually happened already.

You can increase performance by editing out all redundant clothing and body parts

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You see, that's the kind of shit which calls for flooding the trade depot with magma.

I don't like lowpop forts, but to each their own. I don't mind the slowdown until it hits about 10 or so, which I can delay through careful micromanagement.

Genocide all elves.

Anyone noticed how relationships between dwarves are stuck at friendly terms?

Only ones with friendships and grudges are part of my starting 7.

Do they have time to attend parties and socialize?

Yes. 3 year old fort and they're more autistic than me.

I thought you were telling me about how my soap fortress would go. Misunderstood
Also why would the caravan stay up top? They'd leave before going insane wouldn't they?