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Warpstone

Coal Dust

Rock Wraiths

Balrogs & Shoggoths

The artificial difficulty of it, that it might kill and you can do nothing against it.

[Meph]

First of all: It still works. It does throw an error message at you, but it does still toggle the setting, so no worries.

But the real question is: Why do so many people turn it off?

Actually, I just make a poll. ^^

[zlurker]

Personally I hate the whole thing but mostly the fort-destroying parts. Besides, asides from a certain bit of !!fun!! being revealed I like to my mining announcements to make me happy.

[Doink9731]

I decided to turn it off when the area I embarked in had a lot of coal. I lost two miners in of as many minutes. My final miner died digging their graves.

[Arkenor]

I keep it on, but I understand why people turn it off.

Too much micromanagement of miners. You have to watch constantly for them finding dust or warpstone. And either kill non-mason miners dead. It might not be supposed to, but that's what it does.

Equally, on the micromanagement side of things, the relics the Archaeologist can find that destroy your fort mean you also have to watch him like a hawk in order to forbid them. Same with the corrupted Bloodsteel, but you removed that. 

[Meph]

Its odd... the coal-dust black lung peaks at 400000 ticks, which is 1 full ingame year. They shouldnt die so quickly...

[Arkenor]

Its odd... the coal-dust black lung peaks at 400000 ticks, which is 1 full ingame year. They shouldnt die so quickly...

I remember having this very discussion with you a year ago. Many miners have died from a whiff of coaldust between then and now.

[Parhelion]

I generally leave it on, but I have been VERY tempted to turn it off.

My BIGGEST and most significant problem with it is that it's an INSTANT fort-destroyer way too early in the game.  I can't even hollow out a little hovel in the ground without spawning anywhere from 3 to 10 rock wraiths (my dwarves are usually not even equipped to handle 1).  They are NOT rare, and even if you could see the stone they'd spawn from ahead of time, it makes it so you have to start and stop and mine out a tile or two at a time.  Far too tedious.

I am pretty much guaranteed to have all my miners die the second I get the bright idea of mining out a 10x10 or 15x15 space in stone.  I've tried to "prepare" for this by giving them expensive, quality battle picks and assigning them iron-clad war beasts as guards and the wraiths simply rip through them all like a knife through butter.  Within seconds, the wraiths are up and murdering everyone else.

I don't find this element 'fun' because it is very difficult to prep for and makes something that should be early game seem like a late-game feature. 

---

COAL DUST -   I'm okay with this feature.  I DO wish that the delay between encountering it and dying from it was significantly longer, gave off symptoms, and that it was at least treatable with special care.  That way, I could approach it like an engineering problem and rotate my dwarves without being resigned to making everyone a mason guild dwarf within my first two years.  As it stands, I'll get the message "You've struck **** dust!" and I know, "Welp!  There goes THAT dwarf."  *waits 10 seconds for the inevitable near-instant suffocation*   

[Meph]

Two things:

My BIGGEST and most significant problem with it is that it's an INSTANT fort-destroyer way too early in the game.  I can't even hollow out a little hovel in the ground without spawning anywhere from 3 to 10 rock wraiths (my dwarves are usually not even equipped to handle 1).  They are NOT rare, and even if you could see the stone they'd spawn from ahead of time, it makes it so you have to start and stop and mine out a tile or two at a time.  Far too tedious.

They only spawn from gold, cobalt and silver. you dont mine those metals, you are good. the idea behind it is this: Your dwarves can mine all the rock they want, no problem, but as soon as you try to steal the riches of the mountain, be prepared to fight for it.

As it stands, I'll get the message "You've struck **** dust!" and I know, "Welp!  There goes THAT dwarf."  *waits 10 seconds for the inevitable near-instant suffocation*   

If you see "you have struck coal dust", you can still stop it. It only means that your miners are seeing it, not that they have mined it already.

[Billy Jack]

Two things:

My BIGGEST and most significant problem with it is that it's an INSTANT fort-destroyer way too early in the game.  I can't even hollow out a little hovel in the ground without spawning anywhere from 3 to 10 rock wraiths (my dwarves are usually not even equipped to handle 1).  They are NOT rare, and even if you could see the stone they'd spawn from ahead of time, it makes it so you have to start and stop and mine out a tile or two at a time.  Far too tedious.

They only spawn from gold, cobalt and silver. you dont mine those metals, you are good. the idea behind it is this: Your dwarves can mine all the rock they want, no problem, but as soon as you try to steal the riches of the mountain, be prepared to fight for it.

That's all fine and dandy when you are looking for veins to mine.  It doesn't work out so good when we plan out a few rooms and they just happen to uncover the protected ore and continue on because it's part of the plan.

As it stands, I'll get the message "You've struck **** dust!" and I know, "Welp!  There goes THAT dwarf."  *waits 10 seconds for the inevitable near-instant suffocation*   

If you see "you have struck coal dust", you can still stop it. It only means that your miners are seeing it, not that they have mined it already.

Isn't there enough to micromanage.  And my announcements don't come up right away at the bottom of the screen and may be delayed by a few seconds. Long enough for my level 20 miner to continue mining several squares.

[urmane]

Same thing applies.  Those are veins - if I mark out a 10x10 to dig, you must still watch and one-step every dug tile to avoid.  Between soggoths and rockwraiths, leaving harder mining on means a lot of wall-clock-time pausing/unpausing your miners or good odds your fort falls before Summer.

[Meph]

So either a rebalance, or a split, or both, should be in order.

My idea atm:
 - Coal dust should kill very slowly. The Apothecarius can immunize against it.
 - Warpstone as is, but no longer immunity for Masons Guild miners. The Apothecarius can immunize against it.
 - Rubble causes dust-explosions when mined, doing minor injuries. Masons Guild miners are immune to this.
 - Delete Rock Wraiths
 - Shoggoths are fine, the temple has a "kill all shoggoths" reaction
 - Balrogs are ok, they are rare enough.

[Etherdrinker]

Coal dust and Metalwraiths, that is a early fort "destroyer" because you canīt put all your miners in a guild early, cause it need gold, coal dust just have no real sense to me for the normal underground nature of the dwarf.

They only spawn from gold, cobalt and silver. you dont mine those metals, you are good. the idea behind it is this: Your dwarves can mine all the rock they want, no problem, but as soon as you try to steal the riches of the mountain, be prepared to fight for it.

The problem with this is simple, you need gold, silver to put dwarves in guilds. Also, you already read about the micromanagement, you canīt dig your basic fort most of the times without struck a dangerous vein of anything related to harder mining.

Never seen a Balrog or shoggoth when I used to plays with harder mining on. Just Metal wraiths (alot of then) and black lungs.

[Etarip]

Usually process for me is to dig through the first couple layers of soil until I hit some rock and start digging out a bunch of 11x11 rooms planning out my fortress. This latest fortress I hit a gold vein in the first room and that had a rock wraith in it. Used dfhack to kill the wraiths.

[moseythepirate]

I've never struck coal that isn't anthracite, so I don't need to deal with coal dust, but I do find warpstone frustrating. Mostly because it seems like stable warpstone is so rare, but it's necessary for the warpstone lab, and by extension anything that needs changelings and sprites (I know I can start with them, but if they die early on, there isn't much you can do. I've never seen them in a trade caravan). These problems are solvable with using prospector or some such to find what the stone is ahead of time, but I like the luck of the draw about my mineral wealth, and the fun of finding new materials.

As for the rock wraiths, I've never had too much of a problem with them. They seem to die quickly before my militia. Balrogs are tougher, but at least I have time to get my dwarves on alert and wall the area off if I am that worried about it.

[Arkenor]

Of all the races, dwarves ought to be the ones that can handle a bit of mining without choking on dust or having rubble explode at them. Now, trees, those things are killers.