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[ThatStupidKea]

So my first encounter in my first fortress happened to be a giant.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

From what I had seen, I expected a massacre. The first guy killed was actually the first guy to die in the fortress.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But out of the blue, before the military even had time to show up...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The little guy that did it was named Dastot, Sword, wich is ironic, considering he killed the giant with his pick.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He ended up living happily ever after, of course, until the attack of the fully armed undead elf army.

But aside from all that, the guy's closest thing to a military skill was Legendary+ mining, he was unarmored, and the giant went down without laying so much as another hit. I think it might have been a little too easy...

[Telgin]

Giants can be surprisingly weak, but the real thing to take away from this is that miners can be deadly.  The game treats mining skill as a weapon skill when wielding a pick, so he was as accurate as a legendary soldier. 

I've had legendary miners save my butt multiple times.  People sometimes train up miners specifically for this purpose since it's easier to mine than to train soldiers the hard way.  They can't use armor like soldiers though, so they're glass cannons.

[King Kitteh]

Unfortunately I cannot actually see the pictures do to most image sites being blocked on this network.

But from what I can deduce, it doesn't sound too far fetched. Mining skill directly influences proficiency with wielding a pick in battle. Miners can actually be very deadly in battle.

Also, Giants are pretty much just large people. They don't have any natural skill in fighting (AFAIK), their size is really their only formidable feature.


Trust me, you'll have fun when the real bad-guys arrive. Ones with armor and weaponry, or their own natural weapons and skills.

[Melting Sky]

Legendary miners are Gods of death. In combat mining skill is used to determine one's combat prowess with the pick. Additionally, mining gradually increases a load of the physical attributes that are important to combat, and the pick also happens to be the most powerful native weapon a Dwarf can wield. This is the reason that when a legendary miner goes berserk there will almost always be a horrible death toll. I've seen a legendary miner with a steel pick and regular clothes completely demolish an axe lord suited in high end full bronze armor and wielding a masterwork steel battle axe.

Never underestimate a miner with a decent quality pick. If you have a legendary miner go berserk while your military is still in it's fledgling stages you can loose your entire military to it. The best bet is crossbow dwarves since miners don't tend to wear armor and generally don't have any sort of defensive skills.

A legendary miner that has gone on to train in the military afterwards is perhaps the most powerful dwarven soldier you can field.

[Urist McShire]

Legendary miners are Gods of death. In combat mining skill is used to determine one's combat prowess with the pick. Additionally, mining gradually increases a load of the physical attributes that are important to combat, and the pick also happens to be the most powerful native weapon a Dwarf can wield. This is the reason that when a legendary miner goes berserk there will almost always be a horrible death toll. I've seen a legendary miner with a steel pick and regular clothes completely demolish an axe lord suited in high end full bronze armor and wielding a masterwork steel battle axe.

Never underestimate a miner with a decent quality pick. If you have a legendary miner go berserk while your military is still in it's fledgling stages you can loose your entire military to it. The best bet is crossbow dwarves since miners don't tend to wear armor and generally don't have any sort of defensive skills.

A legendary miner that has gone on to train in the military afterwards is perhaps the most powerful dwarven soldier you can field.

I will keep that in mind for future royal guard squads. Make all of them legendary miners and arm them with picks.

[decev]

Good thing no one goes berserk anymore since the stress system changed.

[mirrizin]

DF giants and minotaurs are rather underwhelming.

[King Kitteh]

Also, him having the last name sword isn't ironic. It's a coincidence.

[cottontailcake]

Also, him having the last name sword isn't ironic. It's a coincidence.

To further derail:
I read that as expectation: Dwarf has a miner-y name. Reality: Dwarf has a swordsman-y name. Expectation and Reality are okay-not-quite-maybe-if-you-tilt-your-head-sideways-and-squint but-this-is-the-interpretation-we're-going-with opposite/opposed. With the scope of 'pick vs sword/individual weapon' this looks like irony to me.

Of course, if you read it as 'This dwarf just killed something and it's name is a thing which kills' then you have scope 'weapon' and it's a coincidence.

Refund on the giant!

[Linkxsc]

They can't use armor like soldiers though, so they're glass cannons.

I wonder if you could pop into the raws and add leather armor or any armor in general to their uniform. Theyll mine fine without the armor. But if available theyd grab some?

[Telgin]

It's not that simple, unfortunately.  I'm pretty sure the miner and woodcutter uniforms are hard coded, which means you'd have to make a binary patch of some kind.  The DFHack people may have experimented with this some, but if they have I don't know any details.

[King Kitteh]

Also, him having the last name sword isn't ironic. It's a coincidence.

To further derail:
I read that as expectation: Dwarf has a miner-y name. Reality: Dwarf has a swordsman-y name. Expectation and Reality are okay-not-quite-maybe-if-you-tilt-your-head-sideways-and-squint but-this-is-the-interpretation-we're-going-with opposite/opposed. With the scope of 'pick vs sword/individual weapon' this looks like irony to me.

Of course, if you read it as 'This dwarf just killed something and it's name is a thing which kills' then you have scope 'weapon' and it's a coincidence.

Refund on the giant!

You are right. I saw pickaxe and sword as similarities instead of opposites.

So in my eyes it would have been ironic if he was called Dasdot Kindness or something benevolent, not Dasdot <various tools of delivering death>.

[Telgin]

Oh, sure, but you have to make sure to disable the mining labor first.  If you don't you'll get all kinds of problems if the miners switch to and from civilian labors.  I haven't tried this in a very long time so I can't tell you exactly what happens, but supposedly if the miners go off of patrol / training duties and back to civilian work, they'll drop all of their gear and go grab a different pick.

Nothing is stopping you from training up miners through mining and later drafting them into exclusive military service, and it's a valid strategy.  They'll just start from square one on every skill except weapon skill.

[Spinning Fly]

DF giants and minotaurs are rather underwhelming.

Yeah, semi-megabeasts seem to be pretty easily overcome these days.

I had an ettin in a fort a while back that had basically no military at that point. He appeared just as a performance troupe was making their way in 1 by 1. He chased 1 of the poets all around the walls of the fort, then eventually got tired and started walking over to the entrance.

At this point the ettin ran into the next member of the troupe, who got enraged and started beating the shit out of the ettin. The ettin was tired from all the running earlier, and promptly collapsed from overexertion.

Then I opened the fort gates, all the dwarves slowly came streaming out to collect some stuff, saw the ettin and proceeded to kick the shit out of him. Took a couple ingame weeks I think, but a bunch of unarmed dwarves managed to bring the ettin down without taking any injuries.

[ThatStupidKea]

Also, him having the last name sword isn't ironic. It's a coincidence.

To further derail:
I read that as expectation: Dwarf has a miner-y name. Reality: Dwarf has a swordsman-y name. Expectation and Reality are okay-not-quite-maybe-if-you-tilt-your-head-sideways-and-squint but-this-is-the-interpretation-we're-going-with opposite/opposed. With the scope of 'pick vs sword/individual weapon' this looks like irony to me.

Of course, if you read it as 'This dwarf just killed something and it's name is a thing which kills' then you have scope 'weapon' and it's a coincidence.

Refund on the giant!

You are right. I saw pickaxe and sword as similarities instead of opposites.

So in my eyes it would have been ironic if he was called Dasdot Kindness or something benevolent, not Dasdot <various tools of delivering death>.

Well his name wasn't Dastot Sword, Dastot is the dwarven word for sword. Maybe if I didn't capitalize "Sword" it would have been more clear.