WuphonsReach Blog

1st Granite - Spring has arrived.  A quick look at the happiness meter reveals mostly content/happy/ecstatic dwarves.  The two were-dwarves are never happy, but I don't care about them.I now have about 150 bedrooms for the dwarves, each is 2x2, engraved, with a bed and cabinet along with doors in...

16th Slate - Migrants arrive.  Just ten dwarves.  They can go on hauling duty.(My plan for 610 is fort clean-up... all the socks scattered everywhere, getting all the stone hauled.  This should be an uneventful year - unless Armok has other plans for us.)19th Hematite - 'Doc' Muthkat Ekirsazir has...

Spring was uneventful, except for the artifact gold anvil... (worth 103k)Well, it's pretty... useless.  Much like 3/4 of the other artifacts.  It can, however be used to build a regular (not magma) forge.  So I will build that in the underground dining room down towards the magma workshops.27th Hematite -...

1st Granite - Start of a new year.  Forty-nine deaths so far in the fort since the founding in year 600 (I drowned five of the seven were-dwarves last year).  There are sixty-eight citizens (four children, two babies) plus the two were-dwarves alive.The slaughterhouse (butcher's workshop) is going non-stop to...

1st Granite - Flooding is under control.  Population is 47 dwarves (7 were-dwarves, 3 children, 2 babies).  Starting to setup the deep underground depot at Z+60, will deconstruct the surface level (Z+103) depot soon.Plans proceed for flooding and killing the were-dwarves.  The aquifer is being dug into and a lever-controlled...

1st Granite - 26 dwarves (3 are children) plus the 7 were-dwarves.21st Malachite - First birth in the fortress.  Rovod Uzoltad gives birth to a baby girl.  The father is Minkot Kelziril.27th Malachite - Eight migrants arrive.23rd Galena - One of the miners broke through a barrier and unleashed the...

1st Granite - 9 adult dwarves, 1 child, 7 were-cursed dwarves (locked away) and thirty-three dead dwarves since year 600.  And I'm just now getting around to forming a militia using eight of the 9 adult dwarves (the miner is excluded from duty).I have around 1000 drinks and 2000 prepared...

9th Slate, 604 - 18 Dwarves alive (plus 4 werepanda/dwarves).  'Were" Alath Tusestushat is still babbling away in her cell, apparently the transformation into a werewolf every moon cycle keeps her from starving / dehydrating.The hospital is fully stocked again.  Armok forbid that we need it again, but it's likely.War...

1st Granite - Twelve dwarves and four werepandas alive, and twenty-eight deaths over the last two years.  Our fortress has quite the reputation now as a dangerous place.The werepandas are currently isolated in 1x1 cells.The 2x2 bedrooms are coming along nicely, eight of them have been fully engraved and filled...

20th Granite - 'Crafter Nish' Erushdakon is now haunting the fort.  Some part of his mangled body must have ended up in a refuse pile instead of a coffin.  He seems to like pestering our walled in werepanda, Lokum Kalankol.  Hopefully that keeps him busy while I engrave and place a slab.Well...

1st Granite, Spring 601 - The year started peacefully and new dwarves found their way to our fort.  The outer walls and bridges are nearing completion.23rd Felsite - The werepanda Snodub Mugubdang attacks the fort. The raised drawbridges were in place, but not yet hooked up to levers for retraction....

Orders Menu (o)(m) Change to "No Mix".  Ensures that food is not mixed inside of barrels, which makes it easier to stockpile the right thing in the right place.(h) Change to "Only Farmers Harvest".  Only farmers will harvest plants from the farm plots.  Has no effect on yield as that...

The goal of Sarveshuvar is to rebuild the fortunes of Girders of Waning after over 500 years of being slaves of goblins and elves or refugees.Embark location:Embark biomes:Embark warning:Embark message:Initial embark (Z102):  As can be seen we are on a bit of a high ground with the grasslands sloping away...

Abandoned the old fortress due to FPS issues.  Switched to a smaller world size of just 33x33 (vs 65x65).  The worldgen settings for this create about 525 regions (+/- 25) and the possibility of finding an isolated island is very high.This is DF 0.40.13[WORLD_GEN] [TITLE:SMALLER PATCHWORK] [DIM:33:33] [EMBARK_POINTS:1324] [END_YEAR:600] [BEAST_END_YEAR:200:100]...

Tail end of winter 405, a minotaur arrives and attacks the fortress.  Two of the dwarves did not make it inside and were killed (one by the raising drawbridge, the other by the beast).There was a third dwarf outside.  'Hunter' Onuzolak, armed with not much more then a wooden crossbow...

This should be a quiet year.  The goal is to finish digging out and smoothing the residences enough that every dwarf has their own bedroom.  Population cap is going to be raised to 80 now that bedrooms are being created quickly.As a result of the last visit by the liaison,...

18th Granite in the year 404 - The outer walls of the above ground fortifications are mostly complete.  Once the haulers finish clearing the junk off the roof, I can seal that up.If it looks like a box, that is because it is a box at this point.  Fortifications still...

Start of year 403.  Our civilization has a king, that exists in limbo somewhere (see year 402).The expedition leader, Atisadas has a lover now, the doctor Geshudbetan.  Then there's Meng Thocitadil who has three cats as pets, well on the way to being the resident cat dwarf.  Tosid Vucartastrod and...

1st Granite - Deconstruction of the existing wood log walls on the surface has started.  They will be swapped out for diorite block walls.  Once the first floor outer walls are finished, reconstruction of the second floor walls will start.The reason this is important in DF2014 is because invaders and...

(So after fighting with the aquifer for way too long, I resorted to a bit of DFHack liquid magma to get a caisson wall up that could be pumped out.)21st Granite - Minkot Ikthagmorul has been injured in a deconstruction accident.  The right hand and wrist were severely damaged.  A...

The year is 400 and we are the children of refugees from Ropes of Work, which fell about 230 years ago.  Our ancestors have hid in the wilds and the scouts have finally returned word of a deserted island in the middle of a saltwater lake to the far south....

It helps, when trying to save a dwarven civilization if you have a world that has areas of land which are islands, cutoff from the nasty goblins, humans and elves that are trying to wipe out your dwarves.  The older world didn't have that, so I spent some time mucking...

It is the 400th year since history began in Teyo Oroni, The World of Omen. We, the dwarves of Spear of Boards number only 424 and our king, Mistem Pagescorched, has decreed that a new settlement be established in a safe location, somewhere hopefully safe from the creatures from before time...

Rebooted the world after changing some generation parameters.Overall population from the sites_and_pops file: 8132 Dwarves 6540 Humans 13515 Elves 64922 Goblins 871 Kobolds Total: 93980Civilizations: 25Dwarves: 6 The Spear of Boards The Orb of Clutching The Willful Fortification (gone) The Letter of Prestige The Barricade of Bulwarks (gone) The Handle...

Latest version of my "small patchwork" world generation.  This produces small (65x65) maps with about 1800 +/- 100 different regions.  That will give high odds that you can fit 2-4 different biomes into the same embark area and will provide a lot of variety.[WORLD_GEN] [TITLE:SMALL PATCHWORK] [DIM:65:65] [EMBARK_POINTS:1324] [END_YEAR:400] [BEAST_END_YEAR:200:100]...

10th Granite - Elven diplomat, Dipane Derithele, has entered our borders.11th Granite - Elven caravan enters our borders.  I have given orders that all green glass serrated discs and stone earrings and stone rings be brought to the trade depot.  We have hidden away the wooden items as we wouldn't...

So, there's a pretty severe drawback in DF2014 right now for long-term play.  World history runs fine, but then as soon as you start playing a multiple year fortress, the world map goes to hell in a handbasket.Here is the year 500 diplomacy map, compared with the year 503 diplomacy...

3rd of Granite, 502 - Spring has arrived and along with it the expectation of elves.  The diplomat snuck onto the map and issued a warning to the barroness Eddudalath.  Probably because we have been cutting down all of the trees inside and outside of the courtyard to keep them...

The human caravan arrived approximately on-time, entering the map on the 13th of Hematite in early summer.  Three more migrants have arrived from the mountain homes.  Work has started on the cistern and we will pump water from the stream in order to fill it before sealing it back off.24th...

Spring has sprung.  The courtyard wall is complete.  And the surface refuse area has been walled in and a line of traps installed in the corridor leading to it.  I still need to put a roof over the refuse area to make it necromancer-proof, but it is now a bit...

The caravan left on the 16th Sandstone, about a month after they arrived (15th Limestone).  The broker estimates that the caravan left with about a 30-35% profit on the trade.  He hopes to do better with the next caravan.  More migrants have arrived, bringing us to 20 beards strong.Compare that...

It is the first of Limestone 500, the start of Autumn here in Oshurerith (Circlelabored).  We are thirteen beards in strength and the fortress construction proceeds apace.  None of the local wildlife has caused issues, nor have we had any invaders.  A dedicated bookkeeper has been assigned and he tells...

A season has passed since we settled by the stream in the Forest of Charity.  The first migrant wave brought 6 dwarves, bringing our total beard count up to 13.  They have all been put to work at various tasks.The mechanic shop has been running non-stop making gears for the...

Oshurerith is a fort that is being settled in the spring of year 500 by the dwarves from Tool of Waxes.  It is located in the northeastern parts of Smaksmo Suttu, on the border between The Forest of Charity and The Lean Swamps.This is a warm/hot area, so any surface...

Smaksmo Suttu, The Land of ProphecyThis a small region world (65x65) with patchwork settings (resulting in 1565 unique regions).  At year 500, it has entered the Age of Heroes which means that most or all of the megabeasts are dead.The worldgen settings are as follows.  Note that I have installed plantfixes_0.40.13.1.rar...

DF2014 introduces a few new features.  The biggest one from my point of view is the multi-tile trees and the amount of wood that they produce.  That means that a woodcutter is much more efficient because by chopping at a tree trunk, they produce 5-25 pieces of wood to be...

One of the big changes in DF2014 is that world history no longer freezes in time at the end of world generation.  As you play the game, there are background events occurring where armies continue to march, NPCs continue to interact, etc.  One side effect of this is that the...

A new release of Dwarf Fortress (40.13, a.k.a. 0.40.13, a.k.a. DF2014) is out and is stable enough that it is work mucking around with. I always suggest one of the Lazy Newbie Packs (LNPs) and PeridexisErrant has the best one currently for Windows. One of the first things I do...

DFHack - Common Commands1) autonestbox - Use this after defining a bunch of 1x1 pasture zones (n) over constructed nest boxes. It will automatically assign any not-yet-pastured, tame, non-grazer, female egg-layers to the empty pasture zones. It will also tell you whether you need more nestboxes / pasture zones.2) copystock...

Orders Menu (o)(m) Change to "No Mix".  Ensures that food is not mixed inside of barrels, which makes it easier to stockpile the right thing in the right place.(h) Change to "Only Farmers Harvest".  Only farmers will harvest plants from the farm plots.  Has no effect on yield as that...

Just a quick explanation of a design that I use in Dwarf Fortress for caravans.  It consists of a 5-tile wide paved road inside of a 7-tile wide walled area in the shape of a mushroom / mirrored u-bend.  Caravan wagons need at least a 3-tile wide entrance, but you...

One of the things that I'm constantly having to redo in each new fortress is setup uniforms for my dwarves.  Things have changed a bit over the years, so this is for 34.11.  You should define your uniforms before creating any squads (it's just easier that way).To get to the...

This is an early fortress (just into the first winter after embark) design that I tend to use in flat areas. It tends to be nothing more then a walled area with a "dodge-this" section of wall jutting out which keeps the riff-raff out. There's also a 3-tile wide bridge...

Dwarf Fortress is one of those very opaque games where you have to do a bit of reading, experimentation, and losing before you figure out how to properly embark and make a fort that lasts past the first year.Here's some of the things that I do at the start to...

The latest version of Dwarf Fortress is out and there's been a lot of work on the "fortress" mode in the past few months (after a long focus on the "adventure" mode).  There's also a new version of the "newbie" pack which includes everything except the Mayday tileset and the...

One of the key bits of knowledge that you gain after playing Angband for a while is learning when you are too deep compared to your equipment / character level / skill.  At least, if you don't want to suffer from "it breathes... you die" situations. From the old Angband...

One of the difficulties with Angband 3.3 is the dark blue color used for some of the monsters and getting your terminal configured properly.  The primary things to keep in mind are:You need to use 'xterm' as your terminal type.You need to tell the terminal to use 'xterm-256color'.In order to...

Installed Angband 3.3.2 on the server last night.  There's been a fair number of changes:Angband 3.3.0 release notes (gives a good summary of the 3.3 changes)Angband 3.2.0 release notes (summarizes the 3.2 changes)Angband 3.1 beta release notes (the 3.1 changes)At some point I need to write a new player's guide...

Thresher Maw combat on Edolus. Since I've never seen one before, it took me a few tries to get it killed. I even got double-XP for killing it for some reason.Note that if you can get away from the Thresher Maw, such as up on a hill, you can press...

Since I had never played the Mass Effect series at all, I chose to go all the way back to the beginning. Picked it up on Steam for $20.Mass Effect 1 - Introduction with a female Sheppard character. Includes the early briefing on the Normandy with Nihlus Kryik and the...