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[Nospherat]

The troubles and amazements of a fresh Fortress-Master

Greetings to all hard working Dwarves and brave Adventurers.
My name is Nospherat, but friends may call me Nos. Lovers call me Nossy, and foes like to refer to me as "that bastard"

After years and years of exploring the dungeons of Moria, Helherron, ADOM, Nethack, SlashEM, ZAngband or Ragnarok, I felt it is time to retire. Even stuffy undead mages get bored of riding dragons, raiding castles and burning unlucky dungeon-dwellers to tasty crisps.

When some dwarves arrived, asking me for guidance, I saw in this a perfect oportunity. After all, the title of Fortress-Master, Architect Designer Extrordinaire and the like, sounded verrry enticing.
And no small wonder, one sunny early spring day, I gather my seven brave dwarves, and I lead them out of town, walking proudly, wrapped in my White Wizard robes (ignoring one town imbecile who was screaming "look, it's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Just making a mental note to call thunder upon
his head, and never wear white again. After all, the Necromancer drab looks more impressive.)

Behold and wonder at my first mighty imposing fortress.

While two miners tunnel straight into the rock, Nos is outside, frolicking in the sun, learning about how to tag stockpiles, cutting trees, and the like. Things look good, dwarves are happy, until at some point, the hard working miners discover an underground river ... which bursts out like a Water Elemental escaping from the Blazing Hell itself, with Satan behind him, riding a fiery E(lephant) and prodding his ass with the !!Trident!!.

The underground river joins the outside river in a beautiful sequence, while the dwarves pack up and return to town for some more supplies in a "whoops-try-again" ish manner.

Nospherat is more experienced: He learns about underground rivers, permafloods and the like.
In a few other attempts, not worthy of being mentioned, he also learns that dwarves starve, floods happen,hunters get killed by unicorns, floods happen, farming is hard if you don't RTFM first and most important, floods happen. Especially if some dwarf abandons a big rock, EXACTLY in a door that was supposed to be closed, and he goes out to have a break and 10 seconds later the miners find the underground river.

Some other time, the miners find obsidian, and LOTS of it, so two more workshops are built, dwarves focus on making obsidian swords, knowing that traders price them quite high (and kind of ignore food gathering), knowing that the traders will come soon.
And the traders DO come, one gets stomped by elephants, an the other runs away back to where he came from. Later, the hungry dwarves make suicidal runs, trying to recover the food, and they all turn into Elephant-made-Dwarven-Pancakes. Nice and flat.

Another glorious attempt...
Six dwarves have just woken up, and they are all at the river, drinking, washing (by the gods, I hope so) and the seventh one heads up north to cut a tree that was marked on the other side of the river by mistake. He manages to promptly get the attention of an E horde, and he runs back home for safety, and waddaya know, he makes it back to the fortress unscratched, just 'cose the E's stopped on the way to have a stomping party with the six dwarves that were all lined up so pretty at the river.

And since i have only started a week ago, i haven't been able to do wondrous things, like you guys...
Alas, I know well that DF will be a game that i will ALWAYS play, and always return to, no matter what else will hit the market. Pretty much like NetHack.

I am starting a new fortress, and this time i hope i will make it trough the winter.
Strike the earth!

[ March 13, 2007: Message edited by: Nospherat ]

[4bh0r53n]

Everyones first couple of fortresses fail horribly, its all part of the learning curve (or so im told)

[TotalPigeon]

Hi Nos, enjoy the game, its freakin brilliant and you won't regret the time you spend enjoying it.

Little advice - Farming and herbalism are the only ways to survive forever on food... Personal experience has taught that trading won't even come close to giving you enough to get through the first winter and to harvesting crops in the next year, and if you buy more from the dwarven caravan you get more immigrants the next time they show up... which means you need more food next spring, when all the immigrants arrive. Not good, unless you've got a real food economy going.

[ March 13, 2007: Message edited by: TotalPigeon ]

[Nospherat]

hooold on, lemme see if I got this straight.
The more you buy, the more immigrants you get?
Well, after 50% of the first caravan got plastered, I got like 8 or 10 immigrants... even tho, in theory I did not buy a thing from the caravan.
So, number of the immigrants is not linked to some kind of "buy" script flag, as far as i can tell, but to the number of goods that return, or something... ?

Question, approx how many immigrants would I get if i clean up both mules on the first caravan?

Oh, and another...

In one game i did not encounter obsidian, so I kind of panicked and started making bone and shell crafts (tons of it. like 3 or 4 bins filled). Big mistake, they turned out to be as cheap as dirt when the caravan arrived.

So... what should I craft if i don't run into  obsidian. Light stone crafts? Dark stone crafts? Toys, mugs and the kind?
Any way of "appraising" item price before caravan gets here?

[Eagleon]

The DF Wiki is extremely helpful for such things - there's so much to remember that I usually keep it up in another window while playing. Some articles for determining how valuable things are:
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Base_cost  http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Material_Values  http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Item_Quality

[Dwarmin]

I cant remember exactly-but one of the nobles that arrives allows you to see the exact price of any item . Maybe the bookkeeper? Dark stone and light have the same value except for obsidian its worth more, so use dark stone. Quality is what makes something good though, you have to wait until your Dwarves get more skilled. My first fortress actually survived quite well, but the spacing is all hellish and ugly and everything has a "Flying by the seat of my pants"feel to it...the only reason I survived was because I chose a temperate, heavily wooded area with no Goblins, Humans, or Elves! Perfect place for a fortress.

[ March 13, 2007: Message edited by: Dwarmin ]

[Slartibartfast]

Ha, yeah.
My first few fortresses also fell into ruins quickly, mostly due to starvation and snakemen attacks and less due to floods and the like.
I'm still not super-awesome, but that's mostly because I don't have enough time to get everything done, but I can definitely make a fortress the will survive indefinitely (theoretically), and already saw all of the major hallmarks of the fort.
So I can definitely tell you that things get much better the more you play and improve.

As for crafting, don't waste light or dark stone on crafting. Obsidian short swords are currently exactly like steel short swords, so you don't want to waste obsidian by turning it into some toy boat. You also need the limestone for making steel stuff. And while we're on the subject of weaponry, give your new recruits the crappiest weapons possible (copper weapons, mostly), since when they spar the can injure each other, and you don't want them to kill each other. This makes Obsidian short swords awesome as weapon trap components.

As for immigrants, don't be too surprised if you have more than 25 dwarves after the spring immigration wave.
The wiki states that immigration depends on the created wealth of the fortress, but I think that other things affect it as well (like the number of dug out squares).

Anyway, the best advice for running a fortress is "Check the wiki, constantly."

[Nephilim]

Starvation has rarely been a problem in my first few forts.

What actually killed my first few fortresses was my own perfectionism combined with a profound lack of planning. Almost every time, I encountered things like "and now I'll build this room here, and... wait, that doesn't fit." or "hm, it's getting a bit crowded, better widen that hallway... oops, that wall wasn't supposed to go away." or "better make this stockpile a bit bigger... wait, is that the ceiling coming down on my head?", and of course the occasional "let's dig out this river bank, so I can have some nice fa... SEASONAL FLOOD, bye-bye my only miner", "so, let's see if I got this right... this lever is connected to that floodgate, so if I pull that lever, it should... flood my entire fortress. oops." and "OH GOD WHAT ARE THOSE MANDRILLS DOING TO MY DWARVES? WHY ARE THERE LIMBS FLYING ALL OVER THE PLACE? THIS ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPENING, I HAVEN'T EVEN HAD TIME TO DIG A DECENT CAVE YET!"

Seriously, I fear Mandrills more than I fear Elephants. At least Elephants tend to leave you alone if you stay away from them. Mandrills only steal your food if you're lucky, but sometimes they just rush over at day one and maul everything in sight.

[Paul]

I've had the same experiences with mandrills. Early on they can be bad.

One of my recent forts had mandrills come by IMMEDIATELY after starting. They were the first creatures on the map, and they rushed straight at me. I had them attacking me before I even had 4 tiles dug into the mountain. My woodcutter and miners wound up fighting them off, but not before they horribly maimed my brewer (tore out his eye and mangled his lower body) and killed my mason.

Elephants are far more lethal, but at least they dont rush you from across the map without provocation. Even the "evil" creatures dont do that.

[TotalPigeon]

Immigration is linked to created wealth, the size of your fortress and how much you buy from the dwarf caravan. Cleaning out the first one while making lots of obsidian swords (lots of created wealth) and digging a lot in your first year is a sure fire way to get absolutlely swarmed by immigrants every season in the next year. I've ended the second year with almost 100 before.

Note - once you get farming sorted, that isn't necessarily a problem. You can support that many dwarves easily with a couple of proficient growers or herbalists.

[ March 14, 2007: Message edited by: TotalPigeon ]

[qwip]

Playing Dwarf Fortress reminds me of this "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" quote:

"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."