I read somewhere about the "Tower of Doom": put a barracks on top of a tower & give the dwarves hammers to train with. (If you don't know what the result of that combination is, take a moment to think about it - yes, what you'd think might happen, does happen). So I had the idea, why not place the tower of doom out over the middle of a river, so that when the dwarves knock each other off, they end up in the water, and have to learn swimming to get out!
It actually works, and it's funny as hell. Only thing is, the three remaining recruits are only dabbling swimmers still after nearly 3 seasons of this abuse. (Hammer skill is training nicely, at least.) Only one dwarf faired differently: she got trapped in the current and ended up stuck on a tile where the river drains, so she couldn't get out but also didn't drown because the drain tile kept cycling down to 4-5 so she could get air. She got to skilled swimmer before I got a miner to dig her a ramp to get out. I made her sheriff to celebrate her "achievement" and gave her a nice bedroom & office.
I say three "remaining" because out of 12 immigrants I killed about 8 before I realized dabbling swimmers can't actually make it the whole length of the river before drowning... I mean, I could have guessed after the first 2 but it's best to be sure, right? Besides, managing the immigrant horde could be considered a feature of this setup, not a bug.
Oh, update: both the sheriff and a hammerdwarf got trapped in the same edge of the river tile. The hammerdwarf leveled up some in swimming.
So how might I improve this idea so that I get more swimming skill developing out of it? I had to dig a tunnel just now to rescue the sheriff and hammerdwarf, and I just noticed that if I dig a tunnel as close as possible to the river drain tiles, angling backwards, it only fills up to 4-5, not 7. Presumably it also has a lot of water flow due to this (it would probably make a good place for a waterwheel!!). Maybe I should expand this to make a swimming pool and relocate the tower of doom over it? I could build walls to & a door to trap the dwarves inside for brief periods of time.
Here's what I've learned so far:
- You have to have the bridge/barracks suspended 1 Z level higher than the water, and no bridges nearby, else the better swimmers will hop back up onto it and not gain experience from swimming to a distant ramp.
- Unfortunately that height also means novice swimmers will be stunned when they hit the river floor, which sets them panicing & drowning. (Can dwarves climb directly out of 4-5 water onto a bridge, or only 7 water?)
- I can't get my soldiers to spar at Weapon Racks at all, only at Armor Stands. Or is it that I have to make the room 3x3? (For the Weapon Rack, I only made a 1x1 barracks.) (You can't build bed barracks outside unfortunately.)
- You have to work the new immigrants up to swimming slowly, starting with exit ramps nearer and gradually farther down the river. You can control access to the ramps with D-O-(r)estricted traffic areas, but if a dwarf practically lands on top of the near exit ramp by chance, you just can't fit enough restricted tiles to convince him not to proceed to it.
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Topic: Dwarven Most eXtreme Challenge: Training Hammers and Swimming at same time (Read 824 times)