Let's Play (Dwarf Fortress)

[Blue-ninja]

Hello guys. We will be doing a LP of Dwarf Fortress. And I will be doing DF on the old 40d version, so anything that you may know about playing DF2010 will not be the same as 40d. Why are we doing a LP of Dwarf Fortress?

Well, I just wanted to share an interactive story of survival with you all. And by interactive, I mean you get to be whatever dwarf you wish to be with a specific job, and your name on them.

And if you don't know exactly what's going on, don't worry. I will try to explain them as best as I can, because, hell, it's a story.

Anyways, onwards
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I start off this portion of the journal poring over a map of the world, baffled by the sheer insanity of our mountain home overseers, who has chosen this spot as our place of settlement:


You see, they have chosen a spot on top of a glacier, which is ball-shrinkingly cold, and I should add, a little evil place to "settle" on.

Well, I gather up a team for the journey out to here. A list:
2 Miners, one of them a Mason
1 Carpenter
2 Farmers
1 Mechanic
1 Metalsmith

With a healthy supply of food, booze, seeds, and wood, we set out on a trip to Asteshthum, "Cudgelmuscles". In a few days, we arrive at the place, set down the wagon and take a look around...and....well...


There's nothing here. Literally. All that blue you see on the right is all glacier ice, covered in a layer of snow. No trees, no rocks, no dirt, no sand, no wildlife to speak of. But hey, water. Lots and lots of water. Only problem? All of the water I see here are fucking frozen. I take my pickaxe out of the wagon and stare out into the distance, seeing absolutely nothing moving for as far as I can see.

I am unsure what to do now, except to make some kind of shelter to get out of the cold.

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Download link attached - And just as a reminder, this save is for the 40d version, so DF2010 won't work on it.

[Espadon]

I call mason. Uh, yeah a shelter would be cool.

[Blue-ninja]

I decide to dig straight down right next to the wagon in order to make a shelter, and a fellow miner called 'Espadon' Chaosworks pitched in helping dig down through the ice. He seemed a very pleasant fellow, even with a last name that worries me slightly. He also claims to have done some masonry back in the Mountains, and I'm inclined to leave the job of making some stone doors to keep out the cold in the near future.


The usual quota for digging underground is to make a small staircase that drills all the way down to bedrock. In this small 2x2 staircase, Espadon and I have uncovered a layer of Magnetite and Bauxite, ore of iron and magma-proof rocks, respectively.

[Kagesha]

SHOTGUN FARMER

[Blue-ninja]

We dug out some shoddy rooms for the dwarves, 3x3 at best, unsmoothed, but with a bed and a door to keep out the cold. Kind of ugly looking for the moment, but when you're out in the middle of nothing, you really don't stick to aesthetics and just freaking. Survive.

Meanwhile, some farmer built a Still completely out of water.


I never found out who did it, but you know, building something out of water is a bit impressive in my book, albeit bizarre.


And then later on, I go to take another look at the Still and it's gone. Presumably it had evaporated into thin air when exposed to the relative warmth of the shelter.

Oh, and speaking of water, we have a problem. With getting water. While we're inside a fucking glacier. Of course, we could always find a underground river, but since that doesn't seem to be the case here, we could try magma. However, there isn't a single sign or sound of lava anywhere in this barren place. So I come up with the idea of melting some of the glacial ice with wood furnaces. I'm aware that wood is precious and trees are absolutely scarce here, but getting running and drinkable water is IMPERATIVE.
Without water, we can't muddy the ground up enough to set a farm plot up. And without a farm plot up, we can't grow any food and also turn some of the grown plants into more beer.

When I discussed my melting-water-with-wood-furnace idea to the rest of the dwarves, they inform me that wood furnaces are completely ineffective at melting ice. So we need magma, they say. The vein in my head starts throbbing and I'm having trouble focusing. "What?" I say. They repeat it. "There's no way to obtain running water unless you melt the ice with magma. Bullshit. The water is right there, all frozen up, and we don't have any way whatsoever to farm it? Imagine that, being trapped in the shelter literally dying of thirst surrounded by ice. Bullshit, I say.

So, no wildlife, no water, no magma, no farm plots, no trees...

This place is the most fuckktarded piece of shit landmass I've ever settled on. If I ever survive this fortress, I'm personally flipping the Mountainhome king off and hope he exiles me somewhere better than this.

Then, a farmer comes up to me. 'I have an idea,' he says. He's all excited and I can see that. 'Let's dig out a room underneath the layers of ice for a farm, and then go up to the ice layers and dig out around the solid walls of ice to make entire floors of ice drop into the room and hopefully smash them all up good and proper enough to obtain enough water to make the ground all muddy.'
I looked at him as if he was absolutely bats**t insane. Then set out to make the plan happen, because god knows I don't have a idea better than his.



That's the room for the farm...and now we dig out the ice...

When all was said and done, we freed up everything around the floor of ice to drop it into the room, except for a tile. I tell fellow miner to dig out that one tile...



Bingo. An entire floor of ice comes crashing down into the room. The noise from the collapsing ice ceiling was tremendous. As was the splashing.

Splashing?

YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, I GOT A GODDAMN TWO INCHES OF WATER IN THE ROOM THAT TIME.
Only now, I can see the extent of the destructive cave-in. The floor of the room we dug out has been destroyed, leaving open space that is still walkable, because there's still a floor underneath the dwarves, but it's not really there and you really can't put a farm on them. At least the walls underneath the room is saturated with water for now.

But what's this? There are still edges of the floor hugging the walls of the room that survived the cave-in, and what's more, the splashing made all of the floor muddy enough to put up farming plots. Yes, that completely batshit insane farmer's idea worked.



Guerilla gardening, ho! I slap the farmer, whose name is Kagesha, on the back and tell him what a great idea that was. He just gave a grunt and a nod, and then immediatedly set off to plant some Plump helmets. What a modest guy. I'm really glad we have the craziest farmer ever to be in 'Cudgelmuscles'

Oh, and I found who did the water Still a while back. It was 'Kagesha' Anvilbraved. Yeah, you guessed it.

[croat1gamer]

OH GOD NOT AGAIN.
I MUST REFRAIN FROM STARTING THIS ONCE MORE.
OH GOD NOOOOOOOOOOoOooooooo....



Where is the download link?

[Blue-ninja]

Where is the download link?

The download link for this save will show up in the first post once spring has arrived.

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There were several more details that happened as I was busy making a farm plot out of a cave-in.

Firstly, Autumn has come and there are no migrants. Unsurprising really, because who would want to come out here to settle in what is basically Oymyakon, without any hope of the temperature ever rising above 0 degrees.

Secondly, a Dwarven caravan arrived at 'Cudgelmuscles'. They didn't bring any wood, but I lifted a load of meat and booze off them and gave them a bunch of stone crafts in return. The diplomat and I negotiated for the bare essentials, mainly drinks, meat, wood, and more drinks. I'll get the anvil next time around...probably.

[PANZERCATWAGON]

mechanic please

also a giant hole for arena based shenanigans dubbed the bash pit

also dibs on the fourth year if it gets that far...

[Blue-ninja]

PANZERCATWAGON is now one of the founding members of Cudgelmuscles as the first mechanic.

Come mid-autumn, about 10 migrants has arrived at the site of the glacier fort.


While I was out trying out different sizes of rooms I could dig out, in order to make slightly bigger farm areas (and to test the splash area when floors of ice come crashing down), A peasant and I was in the process of cleaning water from the floor when Espadon dropped the entire floor of ice nearly on top of us.

The peasant and I weren't injured in any way, but the jet of mist blew us off our feets clean out of the room and on top of the virtually unwalkable open space. We were knocked unconscious temporarily, then awoke basically trapped together in the same tile.


Here you can see our hero Espadon, the only one who could save us by digging a trench towards us and right below our feet. We got out just fine, although the peasant who was with me fell asleep on the spot where he fell into the trench, presumably because I neglected to immediatedly dig out new bedrooms for the migrants.

It is still a tough job just finding out exactly how many food and drinks we have got, but I've been managing to keep the drinks up by having the new Brewer brew some plump helmets.

Here you can see the living quarters so far, and with a large lack of any furniture other than a bed, since wood is really, really scarce. You can also see the dining hall up there.


And just a floor above the living quarters and dining room is the workshop area, refuse and butchery area, and the general meeting hall area for now. Just to the south are the farms.



Spring has arrived! To commemorate our first year surviving in Cudgelmuscle, we have a Horse struck down for food. And, snow storm. We get so many of those out here.

I leave you with this list of dwarves. The four peasants down there really need some job assigned to them, but I've assigned one to be a butcher, and one to do some animal training later in the future.


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Oh yeah, Croat1gamer's next in line as ruler of Cudgelmuscle, I suppose. And yes, PANZERCATWAGON's position as the fourth year ruler is secure. If nobody wants to do the third year, I'll do another year myself.

[Fryer]

I've never played Dwarf Fortress, but "Metalsmith" seems like it would be fun.
Also, if possible, I would like one of those stray dogs as my pet.

[chutem]

Damn, tried to play dwarf fortress a while back, but didn't get the hang of it. It looks really fun, can you recommend any good tutorials to get the basic gist of it.

Also, dibs brewer.

[Blacksheepboy]

Glacier. Awesome.

[croat1gamer]

Damn, tried to play dwarf fortress a while back, but didn't get the hang of it. It looks really fun, can you recommend any good tutorials to get the basic gist of it.

Also, dibs brewer.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16071872/The-Complete-and-Utter-Newby-Tutorials
One of the best tutorials ive found till now.
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
Must have this open while playing.


@ blue ninja- Sorry, cant be the next ruler. Didnt play this for more than a year. Ill have to remember almost everything.
Oh, and is the glacier a normal one, or is it a sinister one? I loved starting on sinister glaciers.

[Blue-ninja]

@ blue ninja- Sorry, cant be the next ruler. Didnt play this for more than a year. Ill have to remember almost everything.
Oh, and is the glacier a normal one, or is it a sinister one? I loved starting on sinister glaciers.

You tell me.

@ Croat : Ah, I see..sorry if there was a misunderstanding here. I actually haven't played DF for more than six months (thank you, minecraft), and just picked it up again and see if I could do a LP.

At any rate, if you still don't want to do it, that's two years up for grabs by anyone who has played DF before.

[Blacksheepboy]

that's two years up for grabs by anyone who has played DF before.

talking the region file?

[Blue-ninja]

that's two years up for grabs by anyone who has played DF before.

talking the region file?

Yeah, that's a downloadable save file for DF. It goes in DF/data/save/

[croat1gamer]

No aquifiers?
I found it quite useful to have a smaller quadrant of aquifier soil on glaciers. Great access to water any time.

Oh, and do dwarven atom smasher bridges still work?
I had a great concept in mind. Its basically an approximately 100 tile long, minimum 5 tile wide corridor, with bridges on one side, with a 2 z-level deep chasm between the bridge holdpoint (the one where it retracts to) and the corridor, with the lower level being flooded (first water, later magmuh), so that no building destroyers can access it (unless flying).

I didnt manage to finish that one yet. Mostly because i experienced Fun(tm) related to booze and tantrum.

[Blue-ninja]

I'm pretty sure atom smashers still exist in 40d, or any version of DF for that matter

[croat1gamer]

Ok then.
One more thing, are we playing 40d or 2010?

[Blue-ninja]

We're playing on the 40d version. The first post mentions it a couple of times