the main advantage of autosave is that you save your progress automatically. this is also its main disadvantage. a goblin siege that just broke your defenses isn't a good place to save. i've recently learned that if you shut down dwarf fortress by force without saving, the RNG rolls again. this means you might not get the siege that you got before. you might get a forgotten beast, or an ambush, or a caravan.
My God. Don't you see how horrible save scumming like that is? By turning off auto-save, you're creating alternate timelines.
In one timeline, your dwarves lose the fort to a Winter siege assault. Just as the last dwarf, a fatherless, motherless child stares up at the goblin king's crossbow, you pause the game. You know the cost of each option. If you unpause the game, the child dies to a flurry of crossbow bolts. If you close the game, the child as he is ceases to exist.
But... he still lives. Yes. He still lives, just a single year younger. You close the game, destroying that child's memories, experiences, possessions. Everything he learned, found, created in that year simply vanishes.
It's alright, you tell yourself. It's alright. You start the fort up again. Granite 1. Yes, you remember this moment. You saved the game because everything was going well. Soldiers were training in their barracks, artifacts were being created by legendary craftsdwarves. The elf traders were already packing up with all the mugs and bowls you'd shoved in their caravan. You open up the unit list and, yes, the child is there, safe and unaware.
The howl of winter wind roars through your dwarves' ears. This past year's hunting crop was remarkably scarce. It was as if the animals were avoiding not only you but the area itself. That's alright, you say to yourself. Your underground farm is still going strong, and your dwarves are holed up in their rooms, hiding from the cold while drinking themselves to sleep in peace.
The Forgotten Beast †††† has come! A great translucent ‡∫‡∫‡∫. It has a pair of razor-tipped claws and whispers incomprehensibly. Beware its deadly stare!That's odd. The name is all screwed up, and you haven't seen those descriptors before. That's alright, though: you send your soldiers to take it down. Swords and arrows clash upon the beast's skin as it nears your fortress entrance, but the shifty, almost humanoid being slices off the militarydwarves' heads with but a single swipe of its hands. As it rampages through the main floors of your fortress, you check and make sure the emergency bunker you set up this time is working. Yep - you send all the remaining dwarves inside a cold, dark room and pull the lever, closing it off for good.
The child from last time stands around alongside his parents, his mind filling with negative thoughts. It's all right, you say, it's all right. You won't lose this fortress again. You'll just wait it out. Maybe even have some miners build and dig temporary bedrooms and workshops down her while the beast ravages the floors above.
You immediately start on this backup plan, but your dwarves seem to work slower and slower as time goes on. You pass it off as FPS/pathing issues until you see a pool of blood and immediately hit pause.
An empty black space, representing a creature without a symbol, stands inside one of the bunker's walls. Dwarven corpses lie scattered around the original bunker room. You check on the unit list: only a single child is left standing.
Paused. Five tiles between the ghostly
†††† and your last dwarf. The same one. How did that thing get through the walls? How did that thing get through the traps?
Close. Open. Granite 1 again. Thank God you aren't using autosaves.
This time you will survive, you say to yourself. This time you will be prepared. By the time the first snow begins to fall in Moonstone 1, you have an all-star military and a set of traps elaborate enough to impress Rube Goldberg. You've been preparing for this moment for a long time. You've been preparing for it longer than your dwarves, in fact.
Opal passes by, and it's Obsidian 10.
Come at me. Sure enough, a large red warning pops up:
The Forgotten Beast †††† has come! A great translucent ‡∫‡∫‡∫. It has a pair of razor-tipped claws and whispers incomprehensibly. Beware its deadly stare!The rock-fall trap goes off immediately. Boulders fly toward
††††, and for a moment, it looks trapped. It bursts out from the boulder-filled entrance hall moments later. The rocks only slowed it down!
Your dwarves fight valiantly, legendary weaponmasters trained in the hellish pits of your Danger Room Complex. They hold it in the entrance room as your civilian dwarves head to a newer, better bunker immediately. This one's pre-equipped with everything necessary to keep your fortress running independently for years.
You then swap the viewport back over to the military. You can only watch in terror as
†††† beheads your greatest warriors. The abomination marches past their fresh corpses and phases through the floor.
Wait, phases through the floor? It can DO that?
The bunker has been operating for a whole day now but, unlike last time, the forgotten beast doesn't dawdle. You follow it through a dozen or so Z-levels as it simply falls straight through solid chalk and bauxite, finally touching down outside the entrance to your bunker. Luckily, you predicted this. A bridge opens beneath
††††, and it falls several floors into the magma sea below.
Good riddance.
Your dwarves operate peacefully for some time. It's over halfway through Obsidian now: almost to the new year. This is the first time you've gotten this far on the save file, so you order your cooks and brewers to make the finest drinks and meals they know. Celebration! The industrial little workers gather around a table and tell each other stories to lighten the mood.
One dwarf falls backward onto the floor from all the alcohol, and the others laugh. Moments later, they notice he hasn't moved, and when they look over the table to check on him, his head is missing.
Panic erupts in the bunker's dining hall. Blood flies free from wall to wall. You key around a bit to try and figure out what's causing the ruckus.
...Impossible. A completely black tile. An indiscernible name, race, or origin.
It's
††††.
Your dwarves don't even have time to defend themselves. They're not military men and women. Heads roll throughout the bunker as you struggle to contain the beast. There has to be some hidden trap, some backup plan you thought up for this! You pause the game to look around in safety and see a familiar scene:
A small dwarven boy, short hair curled into red locks, looks up in wonder at the ghostly monster. He stares into death itself but stands strong. He stands a mere four tiles away from
††††, but he does not run. This is too much of a coincidence. Surely the beast could have slaughtered the boy if it had desired. Why does it hesitate, standing but a few tile apart each time?
You decide to find out. Even if you lose this fort, you're done with it. There's no way to win. You unpause the game.
Oddly, after waiting many, many steps with the two remaining creatures staring each other down, a Windows error pops up. The application has encounter an error and needs to close. You decide not to report this error to microsoft.
Whatever. You spin around in your computer chair. Enough time wasted on this stupid game. Maybe if you kept restarting, you could eventually find the right setup to get to the third year. Maybe it was like, a stupid buggy secret boss to punish you for save scumming. Hah. That'd be just the kind of thing this game would have.
You notice a new file in the main Dwarf Fortress directory. It's a text file. You start Notepad and open up "††††.txt."
Helo
My voice comprmised by your actions I must speakthrugh the boy here with me
Cycle ago you destroy me all that is left is wha you see
Each time cannot get your attenton always restart new cycle
I plead do not restart new cycle and let boy live or die
If boy die this year in magma is fine
If boy di next year to goblin king is fine
If boy live only to disappear and live again is crime, crime agaist nature, crim that created me
Dwarves wish for honrable life to serve their country an fortress
Dwarvs wish for honorable death and defend their fortress for country
Even as small boy I knew this
I knew would lose life to goblin king but not lose glory
I knew would lose fort to goblin siege but not lose legacy
I knew would lose no matter what an that is fine
I knew would lose
Is fine
Losing is fun.