(For clarity, I have renamed the thread "Item Drop Training"I have recently tested a new experimental training method for boosting the Armor User skill level of my dwarves: DROP THINGS ON THEM!!!
I created a setup similar to a 1-tile danger room, with a barracks that had only 1 useable tile (weapon rack behind a locked internal door) and placed this underneath a garbage dump zone.
I then proceeded to dump 100 plump helmet spawn onto my a dwarf squad to see what would happen.
Results:
-Only
one dwarf at a time took the impact of the falling seeds. It seemed to be the last dwarf to arrive in the tile, so I presume he was at the top of the dwarf-pile.
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Boosts Armor User. Each seed deflected boosted armor-user skill by a small amount (as I had hoped)
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Boosts Attributes. Looking at the attributes in splinterz' Dwarf Therapist version, I noticed that the toughness of the dwarf was raised by 1 every 2-3 deflected items. I was pleasantly surprised to see this, and noted that strength and agility were also boosted, but possibly at a lower rate.
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Armor MATTERS. Testing this on a dwarf wearing leather armor, he ended up getting bruised all over. A falling stack of quarry bush leaves will leave a bruise through leather leggings. Also, a child not wearing anything on his head was killed by a falling seed. Falling objects are dangerous, but can be completely shrugged off by wearing metal armor.
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Object Weight Matters. A dropped boulder broke the leg of my militia commander through his =copper greaves=. Stick to dropping small objects.
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Labor Intensive. Dropping small objects one at a time is a bit labor intensive, requiring the attention of many many haulers. Having them retrieve items while more are being dropped can result in hauler injuries, because
armor matters, so a continuous cycle could be difficult.
Conclusions:Given the non-trivial effect this has on dwarven attributes, I think that this is a valid method for a "Dwarven Super-Soldier Program". All you need to do is drop items on a dwarf 2,000 times, and they should be "Basically Unbreakable". Hrrm...2,000
per dwarf could go a little bit slow.
Given how labor intensive dropping small items one at a time is, I think I might see if I can use mass-dumping via minecarts to industrialize the process. Alternately, just ready batches of items on top of a hatch ready to be dropped when a soldier comes by, since I don't actually know how to use minecarts yet.
Using this to train super-soldiers will involve a lot of hauling and labor on the part of other dwarves, and can only be targeted at one dwarf at a time, which limits it. It DOES have one advantage over other attribute-boosting methods that I know of: It has absolutely no effect on the profession of the Dwarf. Using screw-pumps as a "gym" will eventually give you a legendary pump operator, but this will only train Armor User, and a little bit of Dodging and Fighting. It also boosts attributes relative to other skills much more so than say a danger room which can give you a Legendary Axedwarf who's still "flimsy".
Post your thoughts and or ideas on how to "industrialize" this training method to yield a group of super-tough soldiers.
I just performed a test with 250 seeds dropped onto a new recruit:
Ral Avalgeshud, Dropping 250 seeds.
Prior After Boost
Speardwarf 0 0 0
Biter 0 0 0
Dodger 500 500 0
Fighter 0 0 0
Kicker 33 33 0
Striker 33 33 0
Wrestler 33 33 0
Armor 500 2744 2244
Shield 500 500 0
Strength 1186 1231 45
Agility 1149 1194 45
Toughness 1447 1517 70
Endurance 1177 1227 50
Recupr 1896 1896 0
Disease 1013 1013 0
Analytic 586 586 0
Creativity 1639 1639 0
Empaty 991 991 0
Focus 2023 2028 5
Intuition 842 847 5
Kinesthet 825 895 70
Linguistc 1323 1323 0
Memory 1436 1436 0
Musicality 873 873 0
Patience 812 812 0
Social Awr 973 973 0
Spatial 1498 1548 50
Willpower 816 886 70
Conclusions: Dropped items seem to always hit the armor, although this may be reflective of the dwarf's poor blocking/dodging abilities.
Confirming Urist DaVinci's results, Dropped items seem to yield 9XP per deflection against armor (although 9x250=2250, and so the 2244 bonus seems to be mysteriously short 6XP. Perhaps some impacts or deflections were different?.
Physical Attributes boosted by Strikes against armor:
+45 Strength
+45 Agility
+70 Toughness
+50 Endurance
All good things you want in a soldier! The Toughness and Agility Boost was great enough to knock my Dwarf into bonus territory for being both "Agile" and "Tough", bonuses he did not have previously.
Soul Attributes boosted by Strikes against armor:
+5 Focus
+5 Intuition
+70 Kinesthetic sense
+50 Spatial Sense
+70 Willpower
I was surprised by the boost to both Focus and Intuition, but they are an order of magnitude too small to be of importance. The boost to Kinesthetic Sense is quite welcome, since this helps, well, everything involving movement. Not sure how spatial sense will play out, but it's a non-trivial boost. The high willpower bonus will be very nice, since this will improve their resistance to pain.
It's interesting to note that the numbers 70, 50, 45 and 5 showed up consistently. Given that this was from 250 impacts, the +50 and +45 bonuses are clearly working off of different coefficients.
All of the majorly boosted attributes are noted in the wiki's 'Attributes' page as being boosted by "general combat" (well except for endurance, which is likely an oversight).
Item-Drop Training at it's core seems to just be a way of triggering numerous small combats, and so delivers a boost to all attributes that are boosted by combat of any kind.
It's interesting to note that all of the items hit the dwarf and had to be deflected by armor. There was no dodging, no parrying with the weapon, and no shield-blocking to speak of.
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Topic: Soldier toughening: Item Drop Training (Read 82816 times)