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[bloop_bleep]

I think you misunderstood me. I don't get killed by wildlife and recruits, I kill them, but get virtually no experience from it. Consequently, I get aced by an average goblin spearman although I have full set of iron armor, an iron shield, and the starting attributes recommended by the quick start guide.

The quickstart guide is out of date and short on helpful information. High strength is only an edge at the start, by giving more carrying capacity and higher early damage, but strength above agility will reduce your maximum speed, which is far more critical. You want higher agility, and good endurance so you can get the attack rate benefit of staying in jog mode with less stamina loss.

What specific starting attributes & skills do you recommend then?

[peasant cretin]

Wrestling advances rather quickly if you make it a part of your standard combat routine. IIRC, it's like 30xp per landed grab as it takes 17 to go from dabbling to novice's 500xp requirement. You'd probably want to double check that on a copy of DF2014 40.24 just to be sure.

Of course, everyone's mileage will vary on what/how they want to go about something. Largely, I agree with Uzu's read on training. Anytime you emerge fully grown and powerful (read:you've cheesed and powerleveled to freakish levels), you tend to lose a sense of measure in terms of game mechanics. How many powerlevelers have a cogent method of melee versus inorganic webbers? The answer to that is zero.

The worse advice that has always been around has been to start the game as a demigod just so you can start doing "the fun things" sooner. I had started like that since that was the conventional wisdom, and because you're already powerful, there's all sorts of things you'll overlook due to having the privilege of being powerful.

Being goal oriented is actually the problem. If you become more process oriented, how the system works reveals itself to you. Yeah, there are people in the world who'd have no problem waking up tomorrow with a triple bodyweight squat, yet no idea as to how or why they can do this. You'd never want to take any lifting advice from someone like that. I know that's not a conciliatory view, since to be agreeable means even lottery winners need to be taken seriously.

[Uzu Bash]

I think you misunderstood me. I don't get killed by wildlife and recruits, I kill them, but get virtually no experience from it. Consequently, I get aced by an average goblin spearman although I have full set of iron armor, an iron shield, and the starting attributes recommended by the quick start guide.

The quickstart guide is out of date and short on helpful information. High strength is only an edge at the start, by giving more carrying capacity and higher early damage, but strength above agility will reduce your maximum speed, which is far more critical. You want higher agility, and good endurance so you can get the attack rate benefit of staying in jog mode with less stamina loss.

What specific starting attributes & skills do you recommend then?

Points in Agility, Spatial and Kinesthetic Senses will give you a great starting edge in every skill requiring physical movement.

If you put points in Strength I'd recommend matching it with Agility; in the early game extra strength improves your speed by reducing encumbrance, but in the late game it adds more proportionate body mass, which brings your max speed down. I've maxed out at Superior Strength and Superhuman Agility and my Jog rate is 1.805. Elves naturally have better, but humans can reach close to 2.0.

Any points in Endurance will help you maintain Jog rate perpetually, and recover stamina quicker after doing more strenuous combat maneuvers. If you become Tired, the penalties make combat much more risky! If you keep dodging out of reach, you can safely wait 10 ticks at a time to permit yourself to recover.

Points in Toughness and Willpower improve pain resistance, Toughness additionally makes your tissue layers more resilient, while Willpower additionally helps resist the effects of Tiredness, Drowsiness, any other physical discomforting conditions.

Intuition isn't a dump stat, and if you don't put points in, at least don't take points away! This helps you anticipate your opponent's actions and judge their rate of attack sooner.


For starting Skills, points in the basics, Fighter/Archer/Throwing/Dodging/Armor/Shield, and something in all unarmed fighting skills will make you proficient enough with any weapon. Don't bother spending into a weapon skill because you can never tell which will be the best available weapon you can acquire earliest. I like to use a pick myself, and Mining can't be initially trained but Novice Fighter is enough to put it to good use. You should eventually cross train in all weapons, so you can switch to the weapon best suited to the opponent.

[Hesperid]

Points in Agility, Spatial and Kinesthetic Senses ... If you put points in Strength I'd recommend matching it with Agility; ... points in Endurance will help ... Points in Toughness and Willpower ... Intuition isn't a dump stat

So put points in agility, strength, spatial and kinesthetic senses, toughness, endurance, willpower and intuition.

Damn son, how many points you got.

[Uzu Bash]

I didn't actually put points into str or tough. I'm playing a Hero, and most of my attributes are at peak:

I meant to put points in Intuition but added to Focus instead, a good attribute for ranged attacks. I put points into Linguistic, but advancement is always crawlingly slow. My Creativity is more due to Cooking and Stone Detailing than playing music, which I do a lot but it also raises very slowly.

The knee isn't as bad as it looks; it's 37% dented from getting smashed by a massive hoof of mud, but 0% effected now.

[peasant cretin]

A useful distinction: the tier of an attribute (here strength) is modified by size. Uzu is using an average sized human, I believe. The average size human is equal to a large dwarf, elf, or goblin.

So for say an average size elf to equal an average size human's strength, they'd want to be more towards high strength when trying to wrangle an average size human with average strength. This matters when you decide to employ one of Kisat Dur's disarm techniques, as strength will determine if you'll maintain possession of the weapon once you grab + dodge, or grab + jump.

The above info is true, but what's somewhat more suppositional is that while larger size confers a benefit to strength, it likely confers a deficit to agility. Why is a night troll a bit more difficult to hit than say a titan or a roc at equivalent or lower stat levels? All three have talented (lvl 6) dodger, but size is not the same throughout.

[Uzu Bash]

In flat numbers, I only started Average (1000 for an average human) or Above Average (1100 points) in all stats. So everything at the upper limit of Superior is 2k points now, everything Superhuman is 2200 points.

Human's proportionate mass gives them a great advantage in wrestling, charging and jumping momentum, so charging dwarves, goblins and elves will just bounce off unless they have significantly higher skill or mass. But because the mass increase due to strength is by percentage of base, their speed is reduced by more. This reduction is somewhat offset by their stride multiplier due to height when Jogging/Running/Sprinting, not so much when crawling/swimming/climbing due to poorer base rates.

An average human can outrun an average dwarf or goblin on land.  Elves have faster base rates in everything in addition to smaller proportionate mass gains, so they get a whopping speed advantage in everything. If an elf can't outrun a human, they could easily elude them in water or trees.

[Ziusudra]

You can also train a weapon skill by parrying with that type of weapon. You get a bonus to chance of success if you manually choose to parry. As long as your opponent has equal or lower skill in their weapon, you should be fine. Decent Observer skill is highly suggested if you try this - gotta see the attack coming to parry it.

If you can find a wooden weapon you can give it to random civilians and then fight them. Hurt them enough that they fight back - parry their attacks until one of you tires. Assuming you're cool with playing a psycho, that is.

[Murdath]

Just grab some armor and a shield and go brawl with villagers and then soldiers. Once you get decent skills go pulp some undead at a nearby Necromancer Tower for weapon skill. I usually get legendary wrestling and fighting just from brawling with humans/dwarves/elves and then I train weapon skills with undead.

[BlackBronze]

For me, my adventurer would go to the plains and fight giant tortoises all day. Like, literally all day. You'd find one, start attacking it, and if you're lucky it would be dead in a few hours. Imagine, if you will, a man furiously punching a giant tortoise, perfectly safe in its shell all day until, through brute force and sheer luck, you  slowly crack it open with your fists. Granted, he falls asleep exhausted a few times per tortoise, but the end result adds up pretty well.

[Badargo]

Maybe its me but what I really deslike is investing the time to get a blond elf girl with pale blue eyes and pale pink skin, maybe even straight black hair if im really lucky and then have a random peasant put a scar on her face in a random brawl... I cant take this!!!

So Im rly one for power leveling. But, to tell u the truth, this free, risky way of playing u guys do looks rly fun!

[Uzu Bash]

It's really sad when they lose their whole nose. A scar can be sexy, but losing an entire facial feature is a deformity that would be difficult to get used to. The skin should heal back, but the cartilage won't.

I mentioned above how you can deflect any attack by striking what the opponent is striking with. I've also used this to defend companions from attacks very successfully, though it's just not viable in massive brawls.

[peasant cretin]

Off topic...

Maybe its me but what I really deslike is investing the time to get a blond elf girl with pale blue eyes and pale pink skin, maybe even straight black hair if im really lucky...

Even after character creation, you can swap colors in the creature_standard.txt to get the colors you want. Color changes however are universal changes.

Hair style,  facial features, body type, are based on the creature_standard.txt used at the time of character generation, similar to how the appearance of historicals is based on the creature_standard.txt available at world gen. In this way I roll the same stout, broad head, broad chin dwarf, while keeping full descriptive diversity for the other NPCs, historical and otherwise. If you learn how to mod this, there isn't any time spent. I'd suggest you ask in the mod forum. What you're currently doing is just not worth the time spent.

[clocktailime]

Changing the combat preference to close combat, toggle on sneaking and sneak behind a friendly horse/rhinoceros/any other animal that has a high weight and start sneak wrestling over and over. As a result, the animal will often not be injured as their heay weight guaranteed that they wont get thrown or taken down or any other injuries due to wrestling and will see this as a brawl and won't attack you. They will eventually fell over and stand up due to being exhausted though.