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[Urist mcOverusedJoke]

So, someone on Reddit (I know shhh) posted an unbelievably unlivable world. The short version of it is that a necromancer crime organization took over the entire planet with an army of zombies, and somehow managed to force all of the other civilizations into a sort of weird peace treaty. The necromancers have an army of over 20,000 strong, and of course as a (masochist) strong-spirited overseer I decided to do my best to liberate this world from the legions of undead.

I posted this on my phone at first, so if you see placeholder messages in place of images that should be normal unless it’s been like 2 days since I posted.

Anyway.

Spoiler: The The Terrible Beginning (click to show/hide)

The first thing I did was change the tile set to Bitlands, because it seemed fun and I wanted an excuse to try it out (don’t judge me), and then went to the Dwarf Fortress mode, and then finally the embark screen.

How absolutely screwed the world is was immediately apparent the second I saw the map. There literally is not a single biome/region on the map that’s more than 40-50 tiles from a necromancer-controlled city.

I did the best I could for choosing an embark site, selecting an area with a small patch of mountains between me and the nearest necromancer tower. I have no idea if that actually does anything, but whatever. Hopefully it slows the zombies down.

I set up a Dwarven team consisting of a militia leader, an engineer, a woodcrafter/woodcutter, a doctor/blacksmith, a miner, a farmer, and a mason. I can’t really go into too much detail about them, because sadly I’m writing this a decent portion into the fortresses’ development (the end of this post is the point I’m at right now, as of writing), but I can safely say they had no idea what they were getting into.

I immediately began carving out a small encampment out of the nearby hill for my dwarves. In between the fort and the outside world, I slapped down a retracting bridge sitting over a 4-tile-deep pit and connected it to a lever. I think it retracts the wrong direction, but either way it should stop any early unfathomably large hordes of undead from eating these innocent dwarves alive.



Of course, nothing goes as planned, and as I meander about and set up basic defenses and amenities, a group of migrants almost immediately appears. It felt nearly immediate, and I’m not sure if that was just my brain playing tricks on me or if all the sapient beings in this world are just that desperate for shelter.

On closer inspection, all of the new dwarves seemed to have really strange and/or niche laboring skills as well as worryingly high fighting ones. Is it actually possible for civilians in Dwarf Fortress to develop military skills in hostile environments where the other skills are less useful? Does Dwarf Fortress actually simulate that?



Well, moving on, I set them to work creating furniture, gardeni- wait a moment.

It’s at this precise moment I realize I don’t have any kind of farm. I’m honestly terrible at managing farm animals, so I mostly just ignored them (bad idea I know) and construct a regular plot to feed my populace. But, uh, I forgot to this time.

Acting desperately, I try and coat a small room with a bit of mud to make a farm, but it was way too slow. The dwarves actually started starving and becoming dehydrated before I could do it.

I gave up on the irrigation and just made a large farm in the soil layer separated from the outside world, with the only entrance to the farms being from inside the fort. As of now it’s not very secure, being right next to the exit of the drawbridge, but hopefully it stops the dwarves from dying.

But, well, plants take time to grow, and the dwarves are starving *right now*. Uh oh.

Spoiler: The The Radish Room (click to show/hide)

Well, it turns out Herbalism is way 29:8;ing better than I knew. After setting up a bunch of my military dwarves (who weren’t that useful at this point) to go collect some plants, I had WAY more food than I know what to do with.

Fast forward a few more days, and at this point the plump helmet farm was complete. I was panicking because I didn’t think I had anything to turn into alcohol, and all of my plump helmet spawn had mysteriously disappeared. But it turns out I had *so much* stuff to turn into alcohol that I had never brewed the plump helmets. I have so many random vegetables that the dwarves haven’t been begun to eat the plump helmets. I still do.

I appoint a manager and set up two new constant condition-based jobs to brew alcohol and make barrels, because honestly I couldn’t be bothered with boring stuff like actually feeding my population.

After that !fun! time, I finally begin to actually improve the security of the fort. I move everything deeper underground and put it behind a long hallway.

While my dwarves might get outside sickness because of this, it’s better than being eaten by a horde of ravenous zombies. It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve almost entirely neglected the dwarves’ happiness until now, which was pretty terrible on my part, but (hopefully?) I make up for it later.



It appears I’ve drawn the… positive attention of other civilizations? By the time of writing this, I have (I believe) 4 different “visitors”/permanent resident monster slayers from other civilizations. I think this is a normal mechanic, but I can’t shake the feeling that some of these people might be necromancer spies. Yikes.

They’re nice to have around though, because almost every single one of these visitors is a monster slayer and as far as I can tell all of the run ins we’ve had with giant animals have been resolved quickly, possibly because of them? I’m not sure.

Also no, it did not escape my attention that one of them is a goblin. Don’t worry, I’m scared of that one too.

But none of that matters- I need to push aside these distractions, and work on my real project.

Spoiler: Minecart Masher (click to show/hide)

The Minecart Grinder.

So, assuming zombies operate on the you-have-to-destroy-the-head-to-kill-them logic in this game, I’m not sure how effective it’s going to be, but I would assume reducing them to a pulp will help.

Only time will tell…

Spoiler: The Windmill Window (click to show/hide)

It’s been a few months(?) and the minecart project is going along… kinda okay ish. I’m not great at designing these rooms or structures, so I’m sure there’s some sort of giant flaw, but hopefully it should still run over zombies.

I set up some windmills outside, and walled them off. I have no idea if it’s safe, but no one *should* be able to access it from the outside.

More importantly, some more pious dwarves seem to like this place. Seems sort of like a questionable decision for a place to set up a church, but I can’t blame them given… The rest of the planet’s condition.

I start expanding. I can’t actually keep up with the number of dwarves migrating, so obviously something’s wrong with the mountainhomes. I try my best to create more bedrooms for the new arrivals anyway, and set up a macro that lets me make large rows of bedrooms faster and easier.

By this point the minecart project is nearly done when it comes to the actual rail. But, uh, I’m not exactly what’s happening exactly. It sort of just stops at this corner.



I assume I need a roller to power the cart’s movement up the slope in said corner, and begin work on tha-

Oh, corpses of started walking. That's nice, announcement log.

WAIT WHAT THE F@:& HIDE

I set all the dwarves to hide underground, and try to finish the minecart track faster. I fail… but the siege just, stops.

False alarm? What the hell?

Oh well, some other poor sod’s problem. I get back to work and try to expand the minecart grinder and the living conditions of my… civilians. I can’t even say dwarves anymore, there’s so many people here.

Speaking of which, I sort of just made a tavern randomly. Everyone seems to like it, so it seemed to be a good idea, but wow it’s crowded


(ignore the blood)

Let’s stop at a high point here. I can already this is going to be fun.