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[deoxy]

I'm an old 40d player, have it customized just about perfect... but of course, there is only so much that can be done with item and reaction customization, and new features would certainly be nice.

So, going from 40d to current, somebody want to give me a summary?  What would I be looking at?

[Necrisha]

Well, the major one would be minecarts. My recommendation is to look into minecarts and how they've been weaponized.

[deoxy]

Well, the major one would be minecarts. My recommendation is to look into minecarts and how they've been weaponized.

Is there ANYTHING that hasn't been weaponized?  :-)

But seriously, that's more of a "yay, more stuff" type of change.  Just the stuff I saw in the next version (diseases, requiring dwarf baths, and literally unkillable beasts in the underground, and major metals changes, and major combat changes...) and the log for the next version (which would be the current version by now - vampires, etc) sounded pretty serious.

But the good stuff sounded good, too - better trading, maybe... roads, etc?

Give me the problems/changes.  The new stuff is nice, of course, but the pitfalls are what I don't want to find the hard way.

[They Got Leader]

So, going from 40d to current, somebody want to give me a summary?  What would I be looking at?

We are looking at new world generations: there is magma on every single tile. There is also adamantine. There are no more chasms/crevices like there used to be. Every embark now has several levels of caves with new creatures and new flora to explore.

Ummm. Otherwise, there are lots of little tweaks, additions and changes. As an avid 40d player, this is the major difference.

[ImagoDeo]

I didn't ever play 40d, so this is not coming from the exact right perspective, but maybe it'll be helpful.

Bugs I hate in 34.11:

• Stockpiles cannot accept gem items (no place for that shiny pyrite chain your legendary jeweler made). Large gems have no stockpile acceptability either.
• There are no good ways to put adamantine thread in a stockpile by itself. It sometimes gets wasted in the hospital.
  
• Hospitals. Dwarves grossly overstock them because there is no limit to how many 'bring item to hospital' jobs can be queued at once until the hospital has sufficient stocks, and every available dwarf will immediately take a job of this sort.
• Migrants who come with some trade skill as their only developed skill may come as a neutral trader dwarf. I use DFHack's 'makeown' tweak to fix this for myself, but it pissed me off before I started using DFHack.
• Loads and loads of glitches with militaries, uniforms, ammunition, and equipment. (See here.) No way to break a fortress' dependence on clothing (at least not entirely/permanently).
  
• Entirely too high local populations of animal men.
• Vampires can be controlled, but they eventually suffer massive slowdown because they never drink alcohol. This can, apparently, be easily fixed (I have yet to do it for myself).
  
• Some negative/positive thoughts are ridiculously strong one way or another. Of note: waterfalls, released from capture, not wearing clothes, losing pets. See here.
  
• FPS death is probably the biggest threat to fortresses that go past 5 or 10 years, although this can be mitigated (see previous link) and stopped altogether if you're willing to restrict your dwarven population pretty drastically. I find that a population of 150 dwarves is manageable and can easily run at 80+ FPS. 200, 250, 300 dwarves plus items and stockpiles, and you're beginning to push the limits. 10 FPS is interminably slow; 15 makes a nice background for writing the next great work of fiction; and 20-40 is playable depending on your level of patience.
  
• Caravans with wagons (human, dwarven) have some unique pathing difficulties that are exploitable and/or extremely annoying.
• Any webspinning forgotten beast or titan is basically invincible in melee combat.
• Multitudes of exploits are possible to get anything from immediately legendary supersoldiers to infinite amounts of adamantine. Not critical bugs but these things do make the game a cake walk.
• Cage traps are overpowered.
• Bolts and arrows are incredibly overpowered.

I'll add more later if I think of them.

[Flarp]

In no particular order:

• Caverns, which make a huge difference in colonizing inhospitable areas. You can find wood, water, and grazing space down there, among other things.
• Forgotten beasts. Megabeast-level (or higher, really) threats that are procedurally generated and roam the caverns. Often (but not always) have attacks that spread a syndrome, the DF2010 generalized system for diseases and poisons. It can run the gamut from a dust that causes mild drowsiness to the dreaded kitten rot. Quarantine strategy is required in severe cases.
• Overhaul of undeath. Instead of zombie/skeletal versions of all creatures, corpses/body parts can be reanimated in whatever state of mutilation they were at time of death - including severed limbs and butchered skins. This can be done by necromancers, unique siegers that build towers on the world map, or evil biomes.
• Magma is less common on the surface, but there's a magma layer deep below the entire world.
• Titans are now the above-ground equivalent of Forgotten Beasts- randomly generated megabeasts that can incur syndromes.
• The military interface was totally overhauled. I honestly forget how it worked in 40d, but the new setup takes some getting used to.

[JoshBrickstien]

Alright, here's the basics:

Caverns are on every embark tile, barring bugs.
Tower caps and a bunch of other giant mushrooms are found on every tile, barring bugs.
Doctors and surgeons have been added.
Magma on every embark tile.
Adamantine on every tile. (Still ‼Fun‼ to mine though)
Minecarts, wheelbarrows and better hauling - dwarves will carry multiple items at once, if they have a bin, barrel or bag.
Military is totally different.
Evil biomes are more fun.
Werebeasts and vampires can come to your fort.
Randomly generated beasts.
Adventure mode is more fully featured.

[Lielac]

Quick correction:

There is not, in fact, addy on every embark tile. There's an adamantine tube in every 2x2 embark region of the larger 16x16 region tile, but it's entirely possible to embark on a 2x2 map and not have any addy at all. 3x3 is guaranteed to have at least one addy tube, though, and any 2x2 is as well if you embark aligned with the grid. The wiki has information on it.

... Hopefully that makes sense. I've never played anything before 0.31.xx, so I honestly have no idea if 40d embarks the same way.

[FritzPL]

Large serrated metal disks obilerate every creature in the game.

[Lielac]

Large serrated metal disks obliterate every creature in the game.

Ooh, yes, that's right!

... No, wait, not quite. Evil biomes can sometimes reanimate dead, and serrated discs chop things into tiny pieces, so serrated discs in a reanimating biome means LOTS MORE ENEMIES HAVE FUN WITH THAT.

Speaking of the undead, necromancers are a thing now.

[Merendel]

Large serrated metal disks obliterate every creature in the game.

Ooh, yes, that's right!

... No, wait, not quite. Evil biomes can sometimes reanimate dead, and serrated discs chop things into tiny pieces, so serrated discs in a reanimating biome means LOTS MORE ENEMIES HAVE FUN WITH THAT.

Speaking of the undead, necromancers are a thing now.

Even there it can be handy.  more live... well in a maner of speaking, target pratice for your marksdwarvs.  wouldnt recomend it for melee training though.  I ended up with a fortress killing tantrum spiral when I tried as the whole squad went nuts from attacked by undead bad thoughts and a few went on a rampage.

[Quietust]

• Migrants who come with some trade skill as their only developed skill may come as a neutral trader dwarf. I use DFHack's 'makeown' tweak to fix this for myself, but it pissed me off before I started using DFHack.

They're not "migrants who come with some trade skill as their only developed skill" - they're former caravan merchants whose "merchant" flag was never cleared by the game. But yes, it's still an annoying bug.

• Some negative/positive thoughts are ridiculously strong one way or another. Of note: waterfalls, released from capture, not wearing clothes, losing pets. See here.
  
• Cage traps are overpowered.
• Bolts and arrows are incredibly overpowered.

These "bugs" have been present in every released version of DF (well, aside from the "not wearing clothes" thoughts), so they shouldn't be anything new to a 40d player.

[deoxy]

Some nice things in there - the hauling upgrades sound GREAT, for instance.

I did remember something about burrows, read the wiki on that, and it sounds nice.

Clothes - has the issue with owned items being immobile and cluttering up the universe been fixed?  Because that's what breaks clothes (and owning items in general) for me now: somebody owns an item, so I can't get rid of it in any sane fashion, but they won't come and take it to their room.  Item management once dwarves own something is a pain in 40d.

Enemies: I like playing a fort that gets no migrants and raising children to populate the place... but somewhere along the way over the years, something breaks the siege/ambush mechanic and nobody ever comes again (well, traders still do).  Anybody know if that bug is still around?

Doctor stuff: the early releases with this stuff sounded nightmarish, with all kinds of bugs and kinks.  Is that working reasonably now?  And will dwarves bath themselves now, or do you still have to make dwarf baths at the entrances to deal with contaminants?

Unkillable forgotten beasts have sounded really annoying all along, but I supposed putting up with a rare one of those wouldn't be too bad...

[deoxy]

And apparently, animals have to eat now, too?

[Bumber]

Some nice things in there - the hauling upgrades sound GREAT, for instance.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the downside:

Urist McFarmerdorf, Farmer cancels Plant Seeds: Needs plump helmet spawns.
Urist McFarmdwarf, Farmer cancels Plant Seeds: Needs cave wheat spawns.
Urist McFarmer, Farmer cancels Plant Seeds: Needs plump helmet spawns.
Urist McFarmer, Farmer cancels Plant Seeds: Needs plump helmet spawns.
Urist McFarmer, Farmer cancels Plant Seeds: Needs strawberry seeds
Urist McFarmdwarf, Farmdwarf cancels Plant Seeds: Needs plump helmet spawns.

They like to drag important (and heavy, in the case of weapon bins,) stuff away from stockpiles in order to fetch a single item. You have to mess with stockpile links to work around it.