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[FlavorCat]

Every now and again, I try and start a fortress in a fully evil embark - usually on a glacier, because I love the idea of a completely self-sufficient bastion amidst and against the zombie horde. However, every time I've tried, my fortress has always been completely overrun before I have a chance to do anything. I've done searches on the forum before and turned up some good stuff, but never had a chance to put it into practice, really. Cases in point, my last three evil embarks were slaughtered nearly immediately by 1) Evil rain and undead ravens 2) Evil rain and undead ravens 3) Evil rain making all my livestock and 5 of 7 settlers sick and die, before chasing and slaughtering the survivors... And undead osprey. But this thread isn't about those specific events, moreso a general discussion of evil embarks as they currently exist.

In particular:

When you embark in an evil region, do you always have a non-evil area on the map, or do you go full-on?

Do you only embark in areas of a certain savagery (no terrifying)?

What steps do you take to ensure survival during the initial exposure?

Do you make any special changes to world gen to give you a better chance of survival (no evil rain, no aquifers, maximizing certain biomes, etc)?

Any special gear / skills you take (or don't take)?

And what I'm most curious about: What is your general opinion on evil regions in this version? Too tough? Not tough enough? Juuuust right? Any tips or warnings you may have can be shared as well.


Off to try again, with no livestock and many more weapons. I won't rest until the dorfs settle the completely useless, entirely barren expanse of the Fervent Glacier!

[dermal_plating]

I've never figured out how to do a glacier embark. Couldn't figure out how to melt the ice into water to grow crops, so no alcohol, and since there's no water either the dorfs will die of dehydration very quickly. Anyone know if Toady is planning on adding fire making abilities to dwarf mode? A tinder box embark option would make life a lot easier for arctic explorer/gulag dorfs. Then again if he wants fire to be realistic there is the problem of fuel, can't imagine there's much dry, accessible wood in a glacier. I guess if you can find coke/charcoal/bit-coal that can be burnt.

[goblolo]

I tried terrifying region several times with the same result.
The basic idea is to wall-off asap. Then dig underground tunnels to the 4 corners and 4 sides of the map (to recover caravans and migrants. It is too cheaty and uninteresting for me.
I tried to make an aboveground part of my fort capable of receiving caravans and have some fortifications to protect surroundings. First attempt was doomed because of early undead ravens. Then I got that building hatch covers that cut the aboveground part off work well and I was able to lock my fort in case of flying enemies. But I failed again because of stupid accident with animals: cats was left above ground inside my fort so I can't recover them and cant set free (fort has no entrance at that point). It ended up with constantly raising cat corpse that managed to kill some other cats and dogs and they finally finished my fortress. Third attempt was pretty good: I got my bunker and bridge to the other world. Even without tunnels to the corners I got almost every migrant that came, but I got accident with trading: caravan was too slow entering my fort and undead donkey found his path to the trade square. My fault was to dispatch my military trying to help caravan guards: finally, everybody was slaughtered with stupid bodypart jamming the main entrance door. You know how it ended.

My point of view is that evil biomes are buggy and annoying and don't bother with playing in them. The bug is that having mix of evil and neutral region always gives you neutral animals. The annoying part is that in evil regions you have to waatch for butchering subproducts such as hair and skin.

[Grump]

I usually embark on a pure evil biome that has at least a little soil.  Animal handling is just too finnicky for me - I'd rather handle plants only.  A fully functioning farm industry covers all the necessities (food, cloth, drink) that livestock does anyways, and it's easier to automate.  No undead buddies.

Usually, I'll try to find a place close to embark that I can dig into and the first thing I try to do is uncover some stone with 1 dwarf while the other 6 all rush supplies into an inside stockpile.  Build a few mechanisms, construct a bridge, then close off the entrance to the outside.

I take some wood with me obviously,  The only other preparation I really make is make one future macedwarf pre-embark and keep him on constant alert.  Perhaps even get him a handy weapon, shield, and some light armor in exchange for other things.

[SRD]

1 ) Arrive at destination
2 ) Dig straight down from wagon
3 ) Designate a meeting hall in the underground space (30-45 seconds into starting)
4 ) Set up a small farm (if possible), make stone doors+hatches.
5 ) Seal off the above ground with hatches and doors.
6 ) Send one dorf out to get some wood, others growing crops, making pots, producing booze and mining the shit out of the place.
7 ) ? ? ?
8 ) Death.

[Xob Ludosmbax]

Basic idea is to get underground ASAP and wall yourself off.  Once your starting 7 are "safe", try to come up with a way to get migrants and caravans in.  A lot of people dig around the wagon and drop the whole wagon underground without unpacking it.  Also, at one point or another, your animals will turn into zombies, so consider embarking without animals.  Finally, atom smash any bio-hazardous waste, (or dump it into magma, but be careful that it doesn't splash up and kill your dwarves.) 

[Mishrak]

I generally try to only have maybe 1 or 2 tiles of a 4x4 embark on the terrifying/haunted/sinister biome.  This insures I'll still get evil stuff but not get totally overrun with it from the very beginning.  The odds seem too stacked against unskilled, unarmed (or lightly armed), outnumbered and otherwise generally hapless dwarves if you embark on a fully evil biome or one that's predominantly evil.

The one thing I've done specifically for refuse is make a hybrid shooting gallery + airlocked refuse pile with an atom smasher(s) for destroying corpses.  You have one z-level on top where the access area is, big enough around for two squads of archers to shoot stuff through fortifications.  Then you channel out a square for the refuse pile, a bridge, ramps(to get back up when the bridge is down) and anything else you want to put in there.  Secured properly, it should prevent a zombie outbreak if your corpse heap gets compromised by a necromancer.  Probably wouldn't work very well on a re-animating biome though.  Unless you were quick about it.

[Bigheaded]

1 ) Arrive at destination
2 ) Dig straight down from wagon
3 ) Designate a meeting hall in the underground space (30-45 seconds into starting)
4 ) Set up a small farm (if possible), make stone doors+hatches.
5 ) Seal off the above ground with hatches and doors.
6 ) Send one dorf out to get some wood, others growing crops, making pots, producing booze and mining the shit out of the place.
7 ) ? ? ?
8 ) Death.

probably the most accurate way of doing it.

Personally i'd get wood from the caverns, if that's unsafe for whatever reason, mine out a soily area and wait for the trees to grow after hitting caverns.

[Callista]

I've never figured out how to do a glacier embark. Couldn't figure out how to melt the ice into water to grow crops, so no alcohol, and since there's no water either the dorfs will die of dehydration very quickly. Anyone know if Toady is planning on adding fire making abilities to dwarf mode? A tinder box embark option would make life a lot easier for arctic explorer/gulag dorfs. Then again if he wants fire to be realistic there is the problem of fuel, can't imagine there's much dry, accessible wood in a glacier. I guess if you can find coke/charcoal/bit-coal that can be burnt.

That's actually easy; you just have to go to the caverns to get either water or soil on the cavern floor. Later on you can play around with using magma to melt stuff, but the caverns are really your best bet. You either wall off your farm or you defend it with your militia.

[Merendel]

for glacier you can either go to cavern for water or cave in some ice to make water.  dig through ice to stone, holow out on top of the stone as well as 1-2 z lvls around the block of ice you want to drop.  finis cuttin the hole and drop the ice just make sure you pick a spot with thick enough ice so you can keep at least one layer on top otherwise it will just refreeze if it ends up above ground.  Ice that caves in turns to water on impact.

As for evil bioms the best bet is get underground ASAP and seal yourself in.  IF you end up embarking and geting slauhtered in a reanimating just pick another location as you'll just have ever increasing zombies.  Sometimes I'll dig a trechmoat around the wagon to give me a bit more time to move supplies inside but dont dally on geting in.   After your sealed in and have your farming/booze going build an airlocked room with a meeting zone in it to attract migrants so you can get them inside without leting anything nasty in.  if something does follow them into the airlock your military cant handle just leave them.  better to loose a wave than to loose the fort.

even in non evil bioms I often use a garbage pit to deal with refuse I dont want to keep.   Dig a 1x1 shaft down a couple Zlvls and put a garbage zone adjacent to it and anything your dwarves throw out will go down the hole.  idealy cut the hole diaonaly so miasma cant get out if it comes up the shaft.  a couple Z lvls will prevent any non flyng corpses from geting out if they reanimate.  Dwarf will have to dig his way out after diging and just build a wall behind  to close it up after.  Even beter put lava at the botom so parts burn up before they can reanimate.

[SRD]

1 ) Arrive at destination
2 ) Dig straight down from wagon
3 ) Designate a meeting hall in the underground space (30-45 seconds into starting)
4 ) Set up a small farm (if possible), make stone doors+hatches.
5 ) Seal off the above ground with hatches and doors.
6 ) Send one dorf out to get some wood, others growing crops, making pots, producing booze and mining the shit out of the place.
7 ) ? ? ?
8 ) Death.

probably the most accurate way of doing it.

Personally i'd get wood from the caverns, if that's unsafe for whatever reason, mine out a soily area and wait for the trees to grow after hitting caverns.

The only thing about terrifying etc biomes is that it's just a normal biome, except you can't start on top.

[goblolo]

I generally try to only have maybe 1 or 2 tiles of a 4x4 embark on the terrifying/haunted/sinister biome.  This insures I'll still get evil stuff but not get totally overrun with it from the very beginning.

Will it give evil stuff? I embarked on half neutral - half evil biome and I got nothing evil for 1.5 years of playing!

[Sutremaine]

I have a site that's maybe 2/3 evil swamp and 1/3 non-evil mountain, and I've gotten enough evil stuff to now overwhelm any living creatures that dare pop up. I may have to keep refusing the liaison's offers to promote the hamlet, because most of the site's 1251 metal ore is inaccessible and if the DFHack-added human liaison gets toasted, I'll get a short caravan-blocking siege and even more undead roaming the surface. Between my embark loadout, the first dwarven caravan, and the first human caravan, I've had 80 bars of bronze, 9 bars of steel, 23 bars of iron, and one binful of leather. Luckily, I brought dogs. It's now the third year of the embark and I've secured the empty areas of the first cavern (zombies got in through the cave, so now that's full of zombies too) via natural stone caveins from floor to ceiling, and since both of the necromancers have gotten bored and wandered off I might get a human caravan this year.

On the plus side, only one dwarven death, and luck has given me a zombie GCS in a cage. I also saw my first skeleton. Usually you only get partial skeletons.

Your map may be of the sort that tends toward evil-biome creatures rather than undead ones. Ogres and beak dogs and harpies, as opposed to undead ravens and soon-to-be-undead giant chinchillas. Does it reanimate? Does it have freakish weather?

[Loud Whispers]

I generally try to only have maybe 1 or 2 tiles of a 4x4 embark on the terrifying/haunted/sinister biome.  This insures I'll still get evil stuff but not get totally overrun with it from the very beginning.

Will it give evil stuff? I embarked on half neutral - half evil biome and I got nothing evil for 1.5 years of playing!

It should do. There is the possibility that your evil biome was ironically relatively serene, or that there are too many creatures on your map for evil ones to appear.

[FlavorCat]

(...) and luck has given me a zombie GCS in a cage.

Interesting - they behave like normal GCSs, spewing webs all over?I wonder what part produces the actual web, or if it'll continue to spit if it's cut in half... Gives me images of Severed Giant Cave Spider Legs spitting webs at kittens...

It should do. There is the possibility that your evil biome was ironically relatively serene, or that there are too many creatures on your map for evil ones to appear.

My current fort is one that's unfortunately serene. I was hoping I had just gotten lucky and managed to get everyone inside before the ravens popped up, but all I get are giant insects and animal men since there are no evil-specific creatures in taigas. I did get lucky with the evil rain though, which doesn't cause any syndromes, but allows my dwarves happy thoughts from baths.