Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler: Story time! (click to show/hide)

I think the .34 update put much more emphasis on surviving. Many a hero walked into the wilderness to be brutally murdered by bandits, trampled by horses and beaten to death by night creatures.
Then there are those that treck mountains, only travel by rivers at night and never sleep in the open. Those tend to live longer.

Hell, one of my all time favourite adventurers had zero focus on looting tombs and towers or fighting megabeasts. The goal was simple : Acquire fame, acquire an army, and lead an expedition across a gauntlet made up of an evil forest, mountain and desert. All this with no fast travel.
And so with 12 military Dwarves in tow I entered the evil.
The desert was easy, there were two vultures that were killed quickly before we moved on. Once we reached the forest, it was supposed to be easier. More precipitous, easier to hide, shelter more available than the flat desert wastes and there was a river running through that we could hug to reach the mountains safely. I goaded everyone into the river to make sure we were soaked in water - to block out the syndrome blood rain which worked pretty well. The rolling clouds were easily avoided for the first day, and inconspicuous shelter was to be found in the valley. No one risked a camp fire however, so we ate the elephant meat raw and cold, and drank from the river (which was fortunately treated as neutral).
And then... The rain stopped, and the wings descended upon our group from everywhere.

*My adventurer swimming away from the slaughtering grounds of my entire adventuring party. Four unkindness of ravens divulged upon us - then others started joining in. There was one way out, and that was down a 15 z lvl drop into a river. First, a speardwarf and an axedwarf attacked a sturgeon, and ended up getting swept off the waterfall... With lethal results. The rest were ripped to pieces by the ravens (valiantly taking down many of course), whilst I decided to get the hell out of there.

Tldr, ravens. Again.

I spent the rest of the journey being chased by undead everywhere, never being able to find respite. Eventually I made it out of the river and through the mountains. From there the journey was once again easy.
Finally my Dwarf had completed his journey, and walked into the ocean.
You have drowned.

I like this quality about DF. No matter how much armour you wear, how skilled you are or how many things you've killed, something in return can kill you.
I'd even go so far as to say "the glorious arrow ridden death" is all too ingrained in the life of a hero. How many heroes lived swimming in wealth and an early retirement? A small minority compared to those who met brutal deaths.
DF is a fantasy world simulator after all, and no fantasy world would be complete without... Tragedy.
Try starting as a peasant outsider with negative attributes, no skills and survive in the wilderness. With an adventurer this fragile, how long they survive in the world depends entirely on your actions and no lucky dice rolls on your adventurer's part.
I look forward to the myriad of threads that will no doubt appear when adventurers are eventually assassinated by angry warlords... Or not.

[k9wazere]

I swear the RNG hates me. Me personally.

I just created a Demigod Dwarf adventurer. I have a steel shield (they're lethal weapons, actually).

I go out and find a grasshopper woman to, ahem, practice on. After breaking every appendage she has, I sit back and let her come at me, to train up my shield skill. I'm starting at Talented shield skill, and Competent dodger.

After a couple minutes of steadily increasing skills, I'm at Professional Shield User and Talented Dodger. Then she pushes in the ankle, shattering the bone and pushing the bone through the ankle. I give in to pain immediately.

She bites me in the head, and it's over.

[k9wazere]

New Demigod adventurer. Shield User=Proficient, Dodger=Expert. No offensive skills, because this is a test of adventurer fragility.

In combat with a human (werewolf in human form). About the weakest creature you can find easily.



What is it with fatal punches to the head?

By the way, my guy had High Toughness, Strength, Agility....

[Loud Whispers]

What is it with fatal punches to the head?

You just got punched in the head by a night creature, unarmoured. Why wouldn't it be fatal? It's fatal when you punch them ^_^

[k9wazere]

What is it with fatal punches to the head?

You just got punched in the head by a night creature, unarmoured. Why wouldn't it be fatal? It's fatal when you punch them ^_^

Werewolves in human form are just humans

Anyway I was just highlighting another *bug*, which most people acknowledge is a bug, and mods exist to tone it down a bit. Let's call it "paper skull syndrome". A chicken can just as easily scratch you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain, if you really **** it off

So on the one hand DF is very realistic, on the other hand, extremely biased towards quick and bloody death for all. It doesn't care who is getting murdered, but there seems to be a quota that the game has to meet If people aren't dying quick enough, it falls back on the old "skull through brain" chestnut!

[Loud Whispers]

What is it with fatal punches to the head?

You just got punched in the head by a night creature, unarmoured. Why wouldn't it be fatal? It's fatal when you punch them ^_^

Werewolves in human form are just humans

Not a bug. Everything in DF that punches something does so with all the strength they can muscle. They're trying to kill you, so don't be surprised when they kill you. Humans can punch good.

What is a problem, is there's no way of scaling it down, every punch is always an attempt to end the opponent's life.
Something that'll get changed in the update. Non lethal combat and all that loveliness.

So on the one hand DF is very realistic, on the other hand, extremely biased towards quick and bloody death for all. It doesn't care who is getting murdered, but there seems to be a quota that the game has to meet If people aren't dying quick enough, it falls back on the old "skull through brain" chestnut!

Eh, like I said Toady listens to the prayers of troubled adventurer's and the bloody deaths should soon just become bloody beatings.

Oh and a were-creature in human form is a deadly human, albeit unarmed. The attributes carry between transformations. A strong were-creature is a strong human, and all were-creatures happen to be very strong. And big.
One of my own Were-Dwarves has rather funnily shrugged off steel bolts to the skull ^_^
Slightly jealous.

[Monk321654]

The game still doesn't simulate force based knock back, right?
If so, that means it's still a curb stomp in the most literal way possible when you get punched, because you can't recoil from force.

[Hammerstar]

It also helps to stop viewing adventurers as "special snowflakes" and more as tools to be used up and thrown away.

That actually was the best lesson I learned from X-Com UFO Defense.

Now there's a game I played and loved years ago. Playing iron man is fun, too. But if you lose your entire squad you don't lose the game. You have to recruit more soldiers, buy a new Skyranger, and keep on truckin'.

Imagine how tough XCom would have been, should you have had an instant "Game Over" if a certain soldier was killed. For sure, he'd be the one in the back of the Skyranger who you never, ever, allowed to get into combat.

Well, that would effectively make him the squad leader in Fallout Tactics. The guy who goes down, game over, meanwhile the rest of the squad was easily replaceable. Hell, even Deathclaws and Super Mutants were available for that game, and anything short of a grenade or minigun to the face barely even slowed them down. And the game was much less forgiving on health and injuries than the Fallout 1 & 2 were. There was no "rest for three days to recover from one fight" option. You cleared the map, and limped back to base to see the doctor.

Best option for the squad leader, of course, was to make him a sneaky sniper who would never see direct combat.

As for the actual topic...

At some point, you have to know when to cut your losses and leave.

Pretty much the most important advice on survival there is.

My longest living adventurer could write a book about his life. "1000 acts of awe-inspiring heroism and 1001 acts of arse-saving cowardice."

[UltraValican]

The game still doesn't simulate force based knock back, right?

It does actually, its quite funny to pimp slap Kobold's and have them break their skullsfrom the recoil.

[Batmantis]

Op, adventure mode clearly Isnt for you.

Your adventurers should and will die on a regular basis, you cannot take on the world.

Although, if you play it right (no im not talking about "work arounds") you can quite easily get a kill list in the hundreds before (or after!) loosing limbs.

The day realism is sacrificed for "playability" (btw your idea of fun isn't universal, some people actually find "df fun" fun.) I'm out.

tl;dr man up

[Pawel1997PL]

I totally agree with Batmantis and Loud Whispers, In DF you are just a dude, you've got the same chances of survival as any other dude, no extra health, no easier skill rolls, no nothing. It all depends on the players experience, like good maneuvering in combat and knowing wich fights you can win, dont expect to take on a spearmaster when you barely know how to hold your sword.

I've personally never grinded skills, and still had epic peasant adventurers.

And besides, Toady wants to make a fantasy world simulator as realistic as possible, iirc.

EDIT: Oh and btw, realism IS fun for me and for many other people, I still play IL-2 Sturmovik and Silent Hunter 4 with maxed out difficulty.

[Xantalos]

I think the RNG just hates you; I tend to actually live long enough to get killed by a dragon or some such. I agree about the save function, as that's a real pain in the ass. Uhh... no clue what to do. Try fighting small bandit groups alone or something. Go for the legs!

[Rumrusher]

Have you tried throwing? Or riding minecarts and doing drivebys?

[k9wazere]

Op, adventure mode clearly Isnt for you.

Your adventurers should and will die on a regular basis, you cannot take on the world.

Although, if you play it right (no im not talking about "work arounds") you can quite easily get a kill list in the hundreds before (or after!) loosing limbs.

The day realism is sacrificed for "playability" (btw your idea of fun isn't universal, some people actually find "df fun" fun.) I'm out.

tl;dr man up

@Batmantis: go * yourself, pal. People like you make me sick.

There are only a few things I've actually outright asked for in this thread:

a) unrestricted save/load in adventure mode. this is equally great for avoiding bugs and for replaying bits where you made a mistake. Dwarf Mode has unrestricted save/load, so what's the problem? you don't have to use it.

b) insane arrow & bolt damage/bone destruction be toned down (fixed!). this works in the player's favour and also against him. throwing arrows can be stupid lethal against armoured NPCs too, which is just wrong. If I throw an arrow it should be a pretty feeble attack, no? So much for the "realism"...

c) ridiculous "chicken scratches you in the foot; you pass out from the pain" deaths removed. Remember in certain Civ games when Tanks could be destroyed by spearmen? People hated that, because a tank would *crush* a spearman unit every, single, time.

a chicken shouldn't be able to hit me with sufficient force to jam my skull through my brain, but it happens.

[Xantalos]

True, the chicken thing needs to be fixed, and the wooden arrow penetrating fucking ADDY armor is a bug, but the game IS in alpha.