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Author Topic: The death of my first fortress  (Read 4969 times)

oldark

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #15 on: June 18, 2013, 11:34:30 pm »

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress! And thanks for the entertaining story!
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Mishrak

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #16 on: June 20, 2013, 02:40:20 pm »

I am still wondering how a random donkey hair caused mass panic in my store rooms. Oh, and thanks for all the welcomes! Currently I am murdering all the monkeys on my map after one got into my fortress. Hopefully, no necromancer will show up this time.
That does seem a little extreme when you put it that way.  What is happening is that it is hostile to your civilization, and citizens run away from hostiles, even when they are really weak -- although there are some exceptions to that rule.

I'd be pretty scared too if some donkey hair suddenly came to life and started trying to bite / stab / strangle / eat my eyeballs.  Just saying!

And yes, I hate Keas too.
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Aquathug

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #17 on: June 20, 2013, 03:32:31 pm »

You may now make fun of my newbishness.

DF is all about insanity. Any mistakes you have made have inadvertently allowed you to get more out of the game.
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EvilBob22

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #18 on: June 20, 2013, 04:32:53 pm »

DF is all about insanity.
Your avatar fits right in
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I will run the experiment to completion anyway, however. Even if the only reason why there is a punctured equilibrium in the fortress is because I have been brutally butchering babies
EDIT: I just remembered that dwarves can't equip halberds. That might explain why the squads that use them always die.

Scruiser

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #19 on: June 20, 2013, 11:25:11 pm »

You must of watched some good tutorials, my first one or two fortress where full of moments like realizing that down stairs need an up stairs on the tile below to to be usable, and realizing that farms need to have plants planted after they are built...  I kept abandoning and restarting as a I figured out features...  Just figuring out the military is pretty impressive for a first fort.  With my first dozen or so forts I would decide on a feature or trick to learn, and then focus my fort on it. 
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Things I have never done in Dwarf Fortress;

- Won.

Steedat

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #20 on: June 27, 2013, 10:57:00 pm »

Necromancers, keas, undead corpse hairs...that sounds like a nice respectable way to lose your first fortress. Me? I got outsmarted by goblins.
Outsmarted. By. Goblins.
I too just recently started freebasing playing DF, and thanks to the DFwiki's quick start guide I had a fairly productive Fortress. 125 Dwarves, a thriving gem mine, no really useful ores but all the marble and silver I could want. Maybe 3 years in I had to deal with the occasional goblin snatcher, maybe one or two ambushes.

Then one Autumn a snatcher pops up from the east. No prob, the Noble Creations and the Mountainous Dimples (each 10-dwarf militia squads). will make short work of 'em. They chased that gobbo halfway across the region before I got the alert: ambush! from the West!

And then another.
And a third.

by the time the militia responded all of my fishers and most of my hunters were dead. 7 out of the 20 soldiers fell before it was over. Cue the tantrum spiral.

Currently my meeting hall is littered with puppy corpses, dehydrated dwarves and scattered teeth, miasma is flooding my food stockpiles and my chief medical dwarf regularly goes down to the hospital to tantrum and beat up whoever's currently recuperating.
I think it's time to abandon.  :'(
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Aquathug

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #21 on: July 11, 2013, 02:21:35 pm »

Necromancers, keas, undead corpse hairs...that sounds like a nice respectable way to lose your first fortress. Me? I got outsmarted by goblins.
Outsmarted. By. Goblins.
I too just recently started freebasing playing DF, and thanks to the DFwiki's quick start guide I had a fairly productive Fortress. 125 Dwarves, a thriving gem mine, no really useful ores but all the marble and silver I could want. Maybe 3 years in I had to deal with the occasional goblin snatcher, maybe one or two ambushes.

Then one Autumn a snatcher pops up from the east. No prob, the Noble Creations and the Mountainous Dimples (each 10-dwarf militia squads). will make short work of 'em. They chased that gobbo halfway across the region before I got the alert: ambush! from the West!

And then another.
And a third.

by the time the militia responded all of my fishers and most of my hunters were dead. 7 out of the 20 soldiers fell before it was over. Cue the tantrum spiral.

Currently my meeting hall is littered with puppy corpses, dehydrated dwarves and scattered teeth, miasma is flooding my food stockpiles and my chief medical dwarf regularly goes down to the hospital to tantrum and beat up whoever's currently recuperating.
I think it's time to abandon.  :'(

I never send out my militia to hunt down snatchers, partly for the reason you described but also because the gobbo would be long gone by the time they get there. That and I mostly just dont care enough.

Also, that sounds like the most badass doctor in the history of ever.
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kyle902

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #22 on: July 11, 2013, 04:27:50 pm »

Just wait until you get one of these babies

Not actually spoilers

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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feralferret

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #23 on: July 11, 2013, 09:33:03 pm »


I am still wondering how a random donkey hair caused mass panic in my store rooms. Oh, and thanks for all the welcomes! Currently I am murdering all the monkeys on my map after one got into my fortress. Hopefully, no necromancer will show up this time.
That does seem a little extreme when you put it that way.  What is happening is that it is hostile to your civilization, and citizens run away from hostiles, even when they are really weak -- although there are some exceptions to that rule.

--
I'd be pretty scared too if some donkey hair suddenly came to life and started trying to bite / stab / strangle / eat my eyeballs.  Just saying!

And yes, I hate Keas too.

I just have to add this.. imagine long bristly animal hairs snaking up your body, slipping around your eyeballs and burrowing into your brain. Yuck. In my imagination the undead hair is quite scary. >.>

To the OP: You did far better than me! Congrats on an excellent demise. Losing truly is entertaining in this game.
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enolate

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #24 on: July 12, 2013, 12:11:39 am »

I also almost lost my first fort to an invasion of giant keas. A whole flock of them just as the fort was getting started. I said "You want my shiny warhammers, well why don't you fly down here and take them!" And they did.   :o

But somehow, we pulled together and revenge was never so sweet as Operation Lavish Meal was when they came back. Oddly, I have never seen giant keas again. I tried purposely embarking on the intersections between shrubland and mountain to spice up other forts, but no luck so far.


Undead are most dangerous to the starting 7. After that killing the same goblin siege 3 or 4 times while your men slowly drag 90 bodies and various spare pieces off evil terrain is annoying beyond belief, but it doesn't inflict extra casualties. This is my experience from about 3 forts. The aggravation is more than the challenge.
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pbnjoe

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #25 on: July 12, 2013, 02:29:18 pm »

Nice story :D I should really get into making a fort near necro's but I still have other, simpler things to master. Like army training and metalworking  :-\ and I've played this for about two years now...

Edit: QFT

DF is all about insanity. Any mistakes you have made have inadvertently allowed you to get more out of the game.

« Last Edit: July 12, 2013, 02:31:45 pm by pbnjoe »
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Lalasa

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #26 on: July 12, 2013, 02:32:52 pm »

Just have to say, it sounds like you had a ton of FUN.  Your story was so funny it kinda makes me jealous since nothing ever happens in my fort (and it's my first too). 
Thanks for the read!  :)
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Gen

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #27 on: July 13, 2013, 04:32:48 am »

Ahh...your first fortress...

Fun times when you don't know how to do anything or what the economy is or what you need to embark with. Suffice to say, my world was generated, it was a good world with a history of centuries. There were islands and mountains and a great sinister rocky plain, but seeing as I was a new Dwarflord I decided to choose a side far away from the sinister haunted realms, the untamed wilderness and choose a rocky mountain realm on the edge of a forest.

A cold forest.

When faced with the choice to embark while I could skill my dwarfs to make a miner, a farmer, an admin guy, a mason/mechanic/engineer dwarf, woodcutter and pair of warriors I thought I was set, yet with items having thrown away the crutches and buckets and hoary marmot lung one was stuck by the form that requests new supplies from the quartermaster. How does one give them something more other than pets.

So two goats did I take! And set of into the wilds.

Even as we arrived it started to snow, the white stuff covering the mountainside and filling me with dread as my dwarfs complained in their thoughts as I set them to carving out an entrance way. The going was hard, I tried to build a farm in the snow and it would not let me. Nor could I get the dwarfs to move the stones from the rooms I had carved. Yet gems I had, and a Depot was built. Trees cut down and the refuse moved outside, and the food inside.

And I cut more storerooms for the stone, and the stone they did move! As the snows melted the rivers and pools did thaw, and lo I saw dirt in the cliff side where I had been mining. So experimenting with the farms I did find a plot to grow dimple cups an cave wheat. As the migrants arrived they wished to fish, yet they also brought goblin snatchers who stole the children and scared the goats. Yet as the snows would begin to fall again with no drink to keep their beer jackets work would slow, they would grow thirsty, the trade caravan would come, yet trade would not happen! For the values of goods were unknown and in the darkness I procured many weapons yet no drink.

As the winter continued many would die of thirst, while a brewery was built I did not know how to make them brew once the migrant brewer died. As winter passed by fortress had a pile of frozen dead at its gates.


With a couple of dwarfs left it was time to leave these terrible lands and abandon the mountain such that I could travel to the Great Library of the Interwebs to educate oneself in the art of fortress building.






(Which resulted my second fort being in the sinister area and my fortress falling to zombie goats created from the vile murk that inhabited that realm.) My 5th fortress has survived the longest and been abandoned twice now and reclaimed since it has been the only one that I've been able to find easy metal in, despite the embark location finder telling me there are metals in other areas I have embarked to.
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chaosgear

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #28 on: July 13, 2013, 10:28:46 pm »

That's certainly one of the better first fort falls I've heard of. Especially since you got necromancers.

Shouldn't have abandoned, though. You should have seen how it played out.
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I always seem to end up with a magnificent burial complex and nowhere near enough bodies to fill it, or far too many bodies and nowhere to put any of them.

squidgen

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Re: The death of my first fortress
« Reply #29 on: July 14, 2013, 10:12:10 am »

Yeah, I kinda didn't want to abandon. But being a newb at that point and not knowing what a necromancer tower looked like I immediately embarked CLOSER to the tower the second time. fun was had.

My current fort is actually doing quite well though. I brought plenty of dogs to reveal any necromancers or freaking keas, and also my 6 peafowls are providing sooo many eggs. I have a thriving fishing industry and I am starting to cut all the gems laying around. I have discovered the wonderful secret of the legendary dining room, and also how to engrave.(so naturally, I am engraving ALL THE WALLS!). I am in a untamed wilds biome, but that just means that I get all kinds of exotic creatures to sell to caravans and animal men to throw in a pit and get shot at by a catapult.
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