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[Nightcaper]

For a while, I've neglected to try Fortress Mode because of my fear of micromanaging many, many things at once. I figure with the generous third party tools that help with that micromanagement, I don't really have that excuse at this point.


For an Adventure mode player moving to Fortress Mode, what handy immediate advice would you have that probably wouldn't be covered in a wiki, or O'Reilly's manual? Advice that may save me painstaking effort on certain tasks, etc.?



On a minor side note, despite genning a world with very low savagery and minerals everywhere, at a medium world size, EVERY TILE HAS AN AQUIFIER, and none of them -- NONE of them -- have Flux Stone. Is this a bug? Am I getting false negatives on Flux Stone?




Thank you for reading my thread, I cannot wait for the advice people will have. Feel free to add your own twist of humor to your advice, I'm used to it. 

[Gentlefish]

Cave-ins are your friends for aquifers. Or edit your raws to remove them - There's a handy button in the Lazy NNewb Pack. LNP also comes with handy third party programs like dwarf therapist. Really takes micromanagement away from the task assigning.

Also. Blocks. Use them to construct things like walls and floors. Turns one stone to four blocks and adds to the worth of your fort. Also saves stone for better things.

[misko27]

Minerals eveywhere is bad, Bugs the detecter somehthing fierce.

Uh, okay, you know how, in adventuer mode, you can prioritze an enemy or a enemies body part, or use a particular escape route or strategy? and even when your companions do stupid stuff like charging at wildlife, at the very minimium you could sorta keep them on track, or at least, be the one doing something right?

Dwarves don't do that, compadre. You're on their own. A third to a fourth of everything you do will be keeping dorfs from killing themselves as quickly and as efficiently as concievably possible. Trust me, everything you tell them to do, they will misinterpret to the highest possible degree. It will be this pervasive atmosphere of utter failures that make sucessful dwarfs so cherished.

At the same time, there is a united force of chaos, goblins, zombies, badgers, Clowns, you name it, But they are all united singularly in the cause of bringing you, and your troop of incompetent dwarves, to your knees, then cutting them off and beating you to death with them.

One of the last problems is you. In adventure mode, mistakes can be erased. Injuries heal, new companions can be recruited, you can turn into a werewolf. But here, a critical mistake becomes a living thing, seperate onto its own. You can't just walk away from the magma spilling out,or the badgers coming, you're stuck, and they know it. A single mistake could collapse something, like a accordian. Forgot to make clothes? Everyone everywhere beats each other with their fists. Aquifer piercing failed? Well, that section of the fort is now the swimming pool, inhabited by the corpses of your dwarves, reminding you of your failure, and of your impending doom. Gennerally, here, your mistake will live on like a scar, but worse, and deeper.

You find these things difficult seperately, but together, they are unstoppable. In adventure mode, at least you can always manuver into a corner, or run away. Your dwarves don't do that. They will stand in the corners of the map, just begging a ambush to claim their soul. A flood of magma will send dwarves fleeing, unless their napping in the hall, in which case their !!*dwarf roast*!!. That cavein of your walls will be timed at the same time of your biggest siege ever, with the demon leader in tow. You are at their mercy. But moreso, you're at the mercy of alcoholic midgets incapable of intelligence, fighting against the siege with whatever weapons and defenses you planned and they manage to put into action.

All you can hope for is that all your plans were't for naught.

And that the siege operater gets back from drinking in time.

Also, medium savagery is best, provides more food.

Oh, and watch out for your FPS.

[Nightcaper]

Hm, I'll gen a new world and try making most things medium then. I'll see if that fixes it.


Thanks for the advice, although I don't understand the blocks advice, I suppose I will after I get further than embark-and-pause.



One last question: Will my dwarves skills increase from usage, just as my skills increased in Adventurer mode? Will these increases improve their attributes, therefore slowly eliminating the weaknesses my starting dwarves come with? Can one dwarf learn multiple skills?



Thanks for your patience and interest in helping me. It's a lot for me to try to figure out with Fortress Mode.

[Gentlefish]

Hm, I'll gen a new world and try making most things medium then. I'll see if that fixes it.


Thanks for the advice, although I don't understand the blocks advice, I suppose I will after I get further than embark-and-pause.



One last question: Will my dwarves skills increase from usage, just as my skills increased in Adventurer mode? Will these increases improve their attributes, therefore slowly eliminating the weaknesses my starting dwarves come with? Can one dwarf learn multiple skills?



Thanks for your patience and interest in helping me. It's a lot for me to try to figure out with Fortress Mode.

When you mine, you get stone. At a mason's shop you can turn stone into furniture and blocks. Blocks are useless except in building things. They're also a lot lighter than stone so it's quicker to haul.

Menial tasks no longer improve attributes, sadly. But yes, skills will improve and you'll find that there's quite a few more and yes you can have multiple skills on dwarves - in fact, it's basically a neccessity in the beginning.

[omniclasm]

One last question: Will my dwarves skills increase from usage, just as my skills increased in Adventurer mode? Will these increases improve their attributes, therefore slowly eliminating the weaknesses my starting dwarves come with? Can one dwarf learn multiple skills?

Yes to everything.

Except the weakness part. Attributes level pretty slowly, so a weak clumsy dwarf will pretty much always be weak and clumsyish.

[Seraphim342]

I prefer high savagery because you can find very nice animals to capture and train to be part of your war machine, but that might be more advanced than you want to start out with.  High mineral density can give you false positives for aquifers and false negatives for flux.  I've found flux in EVERY embark in DF2012 with higher mineral density on.  As for aquifers, you might wanna disable them.  They can be extremely useful for advanced players, but they're a complete pain in the dick for someone just starting out. 

[Five chickens]

1/ Build a farm, early.
2/ Makes lots and lots of booze with the vegetables.

[Nightcaper]

I prefer high savagery because you can find very nice animals to capture and train to be part of your war machine, but that might be more advanced than you want to start out with.  High mineral density can give you false positives for aquifers and false negatives for flux.  I've found flux in EVERY embark in DF2012 with higher mineral density on.  As for aquifers, you might wanna disable them.  They can be extremely useful for advanced players, but they're a complete pain in the dick for someone just starting out.

I re-genned with high minerals, so they aren't everywhere, yet I still get false negatives, and can't find any Flux on the tiles I examine. A friend of mine has this issue as well. Is this a bug?



Thank you all for the quick answers, I guess at the speed the attributes will increase, those dwarves would end up dying in some funny way before the attributes balance out anyway.

[omniclasm]

Thank you all for the quick answers, I guess at the speed the attributes will increase, those dwarves would end up dying in some funny way before the attributes balance out anyway.

Probably from getting punched in the head from a naked child.

That seems to be my number one cause of death.

[Iosyn]

I'm sure you have them already, but dwarf therapist will help if you hate micromanaging. Personally I prefer the ingame menus, it seems more dorfy, but when you start getting 20+ waves of immigrants it's really a necessity.

Also DFhack if you don't have it. You can prospect an embark zone and get a rough idea of what layers, stone and ore there is, e.g 20k Hematite, 10k Bituminous coal and 5k Chalk.

Personally it's been a real pain for me to find sedimentary layers and flux recently-- and as stated having a lot of minerals on a given world will bug the site finder something fierce-- most usually if you search for flux it will only give you a site with a layer of marble 2 Z levels above the magma sea, while a sedimentary zone in the next tile with something like surface chalk or limestone isn't labelled as flux.
I find increasing the boosting the volcanism X/Y variance helps with a lot with that, but don't bother with that yet and just have fun.

[blue sam3]

With regards to the aquifer problem: try using advanced worldgen to make something that isn't an island.

With regards to the flux thing: Are you going by what the site finder or the list says? Because they both lie through their teeth.

[Sus]

1/ Build a farm, early.
2/ Makes lots and lots of booze with the vegetables.

This. So much.
One can never have too many Plump Helmets. (Plump helmets are the most diverse food plant, growing every season and possible to cook, brew or simply eat raw.) Also, check your status screen regularly to keep up to date on the food and drink situation. You can usually leave your still to (b)rew any brewable plants on (r)epeat, but if you start to run low on food, you may need to turn it off for a while.

If you're not embarking on an evil site where renimating body parts are a problem, sheep and turkeys is good eats too. Plus sheep give you milk (and, consequently, cheese) and wool (for making yarn thread for the textile industry) and turkeys are prolific egg-layers, so your dorfs can pretty much live on a steady diet of omelettes. Just remember to i(t)ems in building --> (f)orbid some of the eggs to keep your turkey population going.

[Urist McSpike]

As others have said:

Get Dwarf Therapist.  Just do it.  When you embark, you might take a couple of turkey hens & a rooster along - build a couple of nest boxes, and you'll have a steady supply of eggs for food usage.  When you embark, prioritize - security, food, drink.

Security:  Keep the game paused, and look around the map to see what resources you have.  Best is if there is some outcropping of stone you can dig into, or there might be a plateau you can remove ramps from; maybe a Y river branch you can set up in.  Get a temporary shelter set up, where you can funnel invaders through an area of your choice.

Food & drink:  Once you have a small spot dug out, set up a farm asap.  You can build a farm plot on any dirt, clay or sand type of tile - underground crops require an underground space (never exposed to the sun), or you can harvest surface plants for surface crops.  If you don't have any of those soil types, you need to flood rock, and build the farm on muddy stone.  Once you have crops going, you can start cooking & brewing stuff.

As for blocks...  Mining stone used to give one boulder per tile, and they didn't have any real weight.  Toady changed that - you get about 25% stone from mining, and they are now very heavy.  But a Mason can create Stone Blocks in a Mason's Workshop, 4 from each boulder.  So, use blocks for any construction, as you'll be able to build more, and faster, as your dwarves carry lighter blocks to the work site.

Another good tip is to start preparing for the caravan from the start.  Build a Craftdwarf's Workshop (build a few Nest Boxes for your fowl to lay eggs in), and crank out Stone Crafts in your leisure time, for trading.

After that, you can start planning out your real fortress in style - just remember, if you designate a massive area to be dug out, cut it into sections.  Otherwise your miners will be all over the place, when you really need that one room finished now.

Hope that helps!

[toomanysecrets]

If you are playing 34.xx you will unfortunately need workaround(s) for the various container issues.  First off, do NOT allow barrels in your seed stockpile.  Secondly, with heavy items that end up in bins (blocks, armor etc) you probably want to make a "receiving" pile that takes from anywhere and allows no bins.  Then, nearby make a pile that takes from your "receiving" pile and takes from links only and allows bins.  This prevents Urist McWeakAndFlimsy from picking up a bin, hauling it all the way outside for hours on end just to pick up one copper mail shirt a goblin dropped.  Similar workaround for plant stockpiles will cut down on spam and cancelled brew/cook jobs.