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[armrha]

I just was working on a small fort in a 'Terrifying' biome and ran into a unique (to me, at least) problem. Everything was going pretty well, save for these massive noxious ash clouds that would blanket the surface and injure any dwarves that came into contact with it. The only real threat combat was was during sieges, because the goblin race would always bring tame war Cave Dragons and seriously mess some shit up.

So I'm about 4 years in, and after a particularly messy cleanup on the surface, I get a caravan. I notice I have almost no crafts made, so I set my craftsdwarf workshops to legendary only, and tell them to start pumping out the goods. Nothing happens.

Confused, I start investigating and remove the manager profile. A legendary stonecrafter runs up, and stats producing goods but they're all generic quality, just 'granite ring', 'granite amulet' and so on. Even more confusing.

The merchants finish unloading their stuff, and I have 'em haul up what I have, only to find my appraiser has no idea whatsoever about the value of goods. It's just blind guessing, and he's annoying the trader half the time, giving the fort away the other half. I start to suspect my game is bugged, and go back to look at that manager/broker, trying to figure out what's wrong.

Tabbing to health, I notice right away: He's blind! I quickly replace him with the next dwarf with appropriate skills, and try again.

No dice, same result. I take a peek at the new manager's health... oh, he's also blind... I try a few more replacement.

Blind. Blind. Blind. Vision lost. Vision lost. Vision lost. Every single dwarf.

Including my craftsdwarves. Every dwarf in my fortress except a couple of the military dwarves is blind.

It took a little backtracking, but I figured out what happened: Nearly everyone pathed through a noxious ash cloud, blinded themselves, rested up, then went back to pretending like they weren't blind in typical dwarven fashion. The thing that amuses me the most though is imagining them all trying to pretend to each other that they weren't blind, like the broker just being like, 'Uhhh... yeah, let's trade this for... how about... THIS?' *points at random item* and the just nods slowly. The manager stands at his desk looking over his paperwork pretending he's reading it. No dwarf wants to admit he has a problem like this, so they just keep pretending, legendary stonecrafters trying to put mugs and amulets together just based on feel. Anyway, I got a kick out of that, so thought I'd share.

It might be nice to get a little highlight on any character that has a disability that precludes them from performing in the task that well (or really at all in the case of manager), but I'm not sure how common the problem is.

[Seraphim342]

Sight is only a secondary sense for dwarves.  It is a well-established fact that things such as navigation are handled through the detection of air currents, etc. in the beard. 

As far as the clouds go, to prevent something like this from happening in the future, you should have airlocks and decon stations at all your entrances.  A mist generator should wash all the nastiness off of dwarves coming in and prevent it from spreading inside your fort.  Dunno what to tell you about all your dwarves being blind, though =/

[bombzero]

On the bright side, blind dwarves are great for scientific endeavors, some people would call this a gift.

[SharkForce]

On the bright side, blind dwarves are great for scientific endeavors, some people would call this a gift.

also for siege operation. clearly, your new methods of negotiation should involve ballistas

[Adventurer]

Oh god that is horrifying

[ClkWrkJester]

Oh god that is horrifying

You must be new here.

Also, I'm loving the image of the entire fort just too damn proud to admit it, and stumbling around.

[Telgin]

That's interesting, I thought back in .31.25 at least that being blind didn't affect skill rolls very much.  I thought it applied a small penalty to crafting checks, and made it so dwarves couldn't shoot at anything more than 1 tile away or something (with a crossbow anyway).

Has it always been this severe, or was it changed in .34.x?  In any case, good to know, although I've yet to have a dwarf outright blinded.

[Duuvian]

Give them all crossbows.

[Seraphim342]

Now I've got the image in my mind of that one scene from Robin Hood: Men in Tights, where the blind guy catches the crossbow bolt in midair.  "I heard that coming a mile away."

[armrha]

Well, my game is basically unmodified 34.11 (using the Phoebus pack), and the effects I noticed were:

1) Blind dwarves produces goods without any quality whatsoever, they all appear as generic goods.2
2) Blind dwarves don't run at the sight of a every damn monster flying around outside (they seem to need to be attacked to stop doing what they are doing)
3) Blind manager doesn't do anything.
4) Blind broker can't figure out prices, and doesn't seem to get skill raise from 'looking'.

The no-fear aspect does make useful siege engineers, yeah, though I rarely set those up. And yeah I do love the idea of Urist McPride and Company all just being too stubborn to admit it, hence the lack of any kind of notification about the whole thing.

One thing I did see is a lot more kobolds stealing stuff from the blind-fortress, so I guess (and would hope) it's tied into the observe check too, but didn't see anything conclusive there. I like to imagine though them talking with the kobold, thinking that it's another dwarf, and it's all HISSSSSSSSS *stab stab stab* 'Hey, cut it out, Lolor! It's your pal Urist! Stop kiddin' around!'

Oh, and some of them got better after like a year, which surprised me. I guess if the eyes aren't destroyed, there's some chance of recuperation.

[thegoatgod_pan]

You can actually make a ballista hallway of doom that does take up the whole map and break the moment a goblin is 20 tiles from a dwarf! So much weaponizing potential! I salute your honorable blind!

[Hans Lemurson]

I once read a story about a blind Marksdwarf named "Lightning".  Very appropriately named.

I encourage you to experiment with blindness and crossbows.  Dwarven military policies relating to the issue of "Can you see?" are of the "Don't ask, Don't tell" type.

[Scruffy]

That is an amazing biome! Blindness is one of the best things that can happen to a dwarf. Instead of being cowardly idiots they have now transformed into fearless idiots that nolonger start running away the first moment they notice a rather menacing zombie cavy sow or something. It increases their chances of getting killed but also makes managing a terrifying biome fort much easier. Even the dwarves outside might actually run back inside the fort instead of running away like scared cats.

It is not a disease, it is a buff!

[Tirion]

Wow. Since when does blindness have an effect on anything besides enemy detection? This is the first time I hear about this.

[Scruffy]

Wow. Since when does blindness have an effect on anything besides enemy detection? This is the first time I hear about this.

It doesn't but that is exactly what makes them fearless. For an example, the siege workers nolonger run when a monster comes too close to the fortifications.