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[PanTheSatyr]

Hello Dwarves!

LINK: http://imgur.com/a/8VkLi#0
Download - LINK: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8410
Last Update: 23.02.214 (Armor, Uniforms, Armor layering, Armor stats .... )

The dwarven compendium is a collection of illustrated charts and texts with the purpose to make complex information easily available. It's meant as handbook that, once it's finished, will cover every core mechanic of dwarf fortress and be a good alternative for the magmawiki. It's not a tutorial that will guide you step by step (even though a small tutorial chapter will eventually be included) but a reference book that even the more experienced players should find useful.

I started this project in february 2014 and I'm constantly updating the compendium.

I try to give it a semi professional look, all pages are paginated and in a relative big resolution so I guess they will look nice if you print them. (All pages are in the din a4 landscape format with a resolution of 300dpi).


Don't withold with your feedback, suggestions and critique!

Note that I only spent a few hours daily on polishing existing graphics and working on the next one, so it will take some time till these are finished - this is meant as a longterm project. But i will upload each finished Page so you can see how this projects grows over time. I will aim at uploading at least one page per week.

PS: Feel free to upload, distribute and even edit the compendium for any non-commercial use.

[Lielac]

On the flux bug: I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually lower the quantity of flux, it's just that it confuses the embark thing when there's shallow/deep metal(s) in the same layer as flux. So if you have metal in your only, say, marble layers, then the embark readout will think there isn't any flux.

You should really note the whole "catsplosion" thing, especially if this is aimed at newbies and people who haven't been playing for enough years to memorize important details like that. Cats are immensely useful vermin hunters but you can't butcher pets when their population gets out of hand so they're kind of eeeeeeeeeh there.

[HavingPhun]

First of all your english is just fine and I did not see any grammatical errors on your flow chart. Also, just about every person (including you) who doesn't speak english as their native langauge seems to speak nearly perfect english. Most of the time they actually write and speak better than native english speakers. Anyways, your flow chart looks great and I cannot think of any improvements that could be made. I actually had a somewhat similar idea, but it would look similar to a comic book. Possibly following some character through their live and simultaneously learning the mechanics of dwarf fortress. Haven't really done any work on it though. Even though I have 2 years of experience with photoshop I don't know how well it would end up looking. Keep up with the good work, it looks great.

Edit: Maybe warn about bridge atom smashers, and how they might kill your own on accident. If you add channeling water to build wells make sure to mention water equalization so people don't flood their fortresses. Possibly warn about strange moods and what to do if you don't have the materials (Locking them in the room, sending some guards to see if he goes mad). Vampires, were-creatures.

[Lielac]

Oh, I'd like to note that I just specifically sought out your compendium to decide which birds to bring to a new fort. I really, really like the color-coding and instant comparison ability your format offers!

[Nico2167]

Now this is a great idea! Ive been torturing myself over which plants are edible, brewable and which arent.
The page I'm most interested on is the hospital one, I cant seem to build a correctly functioning one.
And as it has alrady been said above, you grammar is completely correct, havent seen a single error nor in this post nor in the compendium.

[smjjames]

On the flux bug: I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually lower the quantity of flux, it's just that it confuses the embark thing when there's shallow/deep metal(s) in the same layer as flux. So if you have metal in your only, say, marble layers, then the embark readout will think there isn't any flux.

You should really note the whole "catsplosion" thing, especially if this is aimed at newbies and people who haven't been playing for enough years to memorize important details like that. Cats are immensely useful vermin hunters but you can't butcher pets when their population gets out of hand so they're kind of eeeeeeeeeh there.

The cat population is pretty easy to manage once you only have one female active (or even just one female in the fort), and butcher, cage, or toss into magma the female kittens or any other kittens that you don't want.

Peregrine falcons are a better alternative, but without a bit of modding, you'd either have to wait until the elves bring you some or you capture wild ones. You can also slap the verminhunter tag (or whichever verminhunter tag doesn't make the animal adopt dwarves) onto any other animal without regenning a new world. If you want to use an animal that would realistically hunt vermin, there are many, from kestrels (small falcons), to stoats, to mongooses, to barn owls.

[Larix]

Verminhunting: you can set up a permanent "catch small live animal" job at a kennel, and as long as free animal traps are available, a trapper dwarf will take one and run around the fort trying to nab rats and hamsters. It's pretty inefficient since a single cat tends to do the work of two full-time trappers, but trapping can in a pinch handle an early vermin infestation. Captured animals will block the animal traps they're sitting in, you'd better install a cage somewhere and assign your captured vermin to it.

The Flux bug is, to the best of my knowledge, indeed a pure bug of the site finder: the site finder often fails to _display_ the presence of flux, and this display failure is more likely, the higher the mineral abundance. The flux is still very definitely there on the vast majority of sites, the site finder simply can't see it. And it's not unique to the "minerals everywhere" setting, you can have "invisible" flux in low-mineral sites if there are any other minerals within the flux clusters, like malachite veins in marble.

As to butchery returns: were you using the numbers from the wiki? The butchery returns fundamentally depend on the body size of the creature, which variates strongly within each species. You seem to use the maxima, which gives skewed results when for cats and dogs the entire range is displayed in the wiki, while for donkeys and reindeer it seems to be an average or even minimum. I suspect that dogs don't actually _always_ give more meat than reindeer and donkeys.

[Button]

On your stone diagram, in addition to the obvious things like magma-safety and where they're found, I think it would be helpful to have a color chart. So that if you run out of Dacite blocks when building a big wall, you know if the Gneiss blocks you have lying around will be a sufficient substitute.

Gems by value (and maybe color, for gem windows?) would be nice.

[PanTheSatyr]

You should really note the whole "catsplosion" thing, especially if this is aimed at newbies and people who haven't been playing for enough years to memorize important details like that. Cats are immensely useful vermin hunters but you can't butcher pets when their population gets out of hand so they're kind of eeeeeeeeeh there.

You're right, i will squeeze in a note about that.

First of all your english is just fine and I did not see any grammatical errors on your flow chart.

And as it has alrady been said above, you grammar is completely correct, havent seen a single error nor in this post nor in the compendium.

Good to hear!

The first versions of my graphics contained some typos, i know that because i posted them on reddit first.

I actually had a somewhat similar idea, but it would look similar to a comic book. Possibly following some character through their live and simultaneously learning the mechanics of dwarf fortress.

I guess that this could be a good idea for a complete tutorial that covers all the basics.

Edit: Maybe warn about bridge atom smashers, and how they might kill your own on accident. If you add channeling water to build wells make sure to mention water equalization so people don't flood their fortresses. Possibly warn about strange moods and what to do if you don't have the materials (Locking them in the room, sending some guards to see if he goes mad). Vampires, were-creatures.

Good suggestions! I edited my first post and added them to the pages I intend to do.

Peregrine falcons are a better alternative

Interesting, I never tried to replace cats with other animals so far.

As to butchery returns: were you using the numbers from the wiki? The butchery returns fundamentally depend on the body size of the creature, which variates strongly within each species. You seem to use the maxima, which gives skewed results when for cats and dogs the entire range is displayed in the wiki, while for donkeys and reindeer it seems to be an average or even minimum. I suspect that dogs don't actually _always_ give more meat than reindeer and donkeys.

I did. Thanks for the note, I will change that to average edible and bones by time.

Edit:

On your stone diagram, in addition to the obvious things like magma-safety and where they're found, I think it would be helpful to have a color chart.
[...]
Gems by value (and maybe color, for gem windows?) would be nice.

Good idea, i hadn't thought about the colors of stones.

I may do a list about gems too, but only once i finished the other pages.

[Urist McRas]

Great work, PanTheSatyr!

I'd suggest explanation about different types of weapon and armor.

Also, add a note "v0.34.11" somewhere in a corner.

[Larix]

I try to give them a semi professional look, they are paginated and in a relative big resolution so I guess they will look nice should you print them. (they are already in the din a4 landscape format, btw). I hope you like my drawings, they are a bit rough.

Looking very nice, i think. The somewhat simple but distinctive drawings work very well for the animals page, e.g.

Don't withhold to criticize or calling any grammatical errors! Grammatic isn't my strength and on top of that I'm not a native English speaker. I will constantly revamp existing Graphics.

I've long since stopped apologising for my non-native english, but i'm not producing material for widespread use. Not much of a judge, but it all seems alright to me.

• Diagram of Stone Layers and stones/ores - currently working on that one
• Capturing, Taming and Training Animals.
[...]

I'm definitely looking forward to those, see if i can contribute. DF geology is pretty interesting - from my extremely rudimentary knowledge, i think it emulates real-world geology reasonably well where mineral types and layers are concerned, but distribution and frequencies are very non-realistic, likely because it's supposed to work in a mining/mineral exploitation game (it'd be a bit of a drag if 90% of sites were all non-economic stone).

[ColdOneK]

the bridge atom smasher thing is something I use to dispose of corpses and single bolts - - that for absolutely no other reason then to leak memory - - survived firing
helps if you embark near towers

[neblime]

This is pretty cool, I would suggest more but you seem to have everything pinned down in the future list. great work
(I will say though, is the stone list going to tell us which are magma safe or not?)

[Mad Jackal]

good stuff !

[SixOfSpades]

Quite nice. You seem to be planning only 1 page (or a 2-page spread) on embarks--because the embark is the first part of the game where the player has to think, it can be quite frightening for a new player, especially when they have no idea what all those different little glyphs mean. So I would break it down more:
1) Choosing a useful embark location (Volcanoes good, aquifers almost always bad, will non-dwarves be able to access the site, etc)
2) Training your Starting Seven (and why you won't need a doctor)
3) What to Bring (possible discussion of embark exploits)

Even this most(?) basic part of the game has quirks that even experienced players might not know about--e.g., I'm not sure how the game determines if a metal is considered "Shallow" or "Deep," or if two types of ore for the same type of metal (like magnetite & hematite) will show up as "metal" or "metalS".

Two more important pages:
4) You Might Think That, But You're Wrong: A list of things that make sense in the real world, and would be logical assumptions to make in the game, but sadly are not true. Examples: Empty barrels in an outdoor stockpile do not gather rainwater. Nothing floats--even featherwood will sink like a stone. A handful of dry berries will create an entire barrel full of booze, without needing any water at all.
5) You Might Think That, But You're Wrong--Construction Edition! Quirks of dwarven building, such as: Routing water (or magma) flow through a diagonal gap will remove hydraulic pressure. It takes *exactly* as much stone to lay a tile floor over a spot as it does to completely fill that spot with a solid wall. Flying creatures can actually fit between a constructed wall and a floor tile directly supported by that wall on the z-level above.