Given the success of the Marksdwarf version of this, and realizing people have issues getting training to work *at all* with melee dwarves, I wanted to write a second guide that goes into much more detail and explains the skills much more in-depth:
If you just want to know how to get training to the point you get reliable badasses, skip down to part 2.
Large parts of this guide are based on research on this thread by Urist Da Vinchi (
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=printpage;topic=97090.0)
0. Understanding Military SkillsMelee is controlled by
17 different skills, plus an addition four which are used in training, these are as follows.
Weapon SkillThese control how lethal a dwarf is with a given weapon. There are five dwarves normally use, and an addition four that can sometimes rarely crop up in migrants, or modded games.
* Axedwarf
* Hammerdwarf
* Macedwarf
* Speardwarf
* Swordsdwarf
For clarity purposes: Morningstars use the mace skill. Crossbows in melee use Hammer, blowguns and bows use Sword.
In addition, if you use foreign weaponry, the following are also important
* Knife User - Controls knifes, daggers, and large daggers (large daggers are the only large weapon dwarves can use)
* Lasher - Controls whips, and flails
* Pikeman - Controls pikes.
* Misc Object. User - Controls basically everything else.
If a dwarf somehow gets a equipped with a non-weapon in the weapon slot, they'll use the Misc. Object User skill. There's no assoicated lord title with this, but it appears to work just like all the other ones above. Headshots was famous for having a dwarf that picked a backpack as a weapon, and thus maxed it out. Shields are use the Misc. Object Skill for cases when a dwarf bashes someone in the head with a shield. If you want to max this skill, give a dwarf two shields and let them train. As long as the criteria are met, dwarves will do demonstrations related to misc object user in addition to the above.
It is possible, though not confirmed, that a dwarf set to pick up "Individual Choice, Melee", and has points in this skill (due to tantruming or such) may choose a random object and pick it up. However, its not recommended to use either individual choice options, you sometimes get ranged dwarves using an axe, or a hammerdwarf who likes bows.
Furthermore, in theory, some dwarves should be large enough to actually wield a pike, but due to a bug, will never attempt to pick one up. The same applies to 2H swords, and several other weapons in fortress mode. Adventure mode seems to ignore size issues in this regard for the most part, and thus its practical to have a dwarf use a pike there. Once a dwarf hits level 12 (Great), they become a master of that weapon, and are collectively known as weaponlords. The key difference is lords do not get bad thoughts on being on patrol duty. The age old bug of training causing patrol duty thoughts has been fixed to my knowledge; I haven't seen it in any recent fort.
The bug about large dwarves not being able to use large weapons is here:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5812In older versions of DF, fighters who became legendary were known as champions. This no longer exists in the traditional sense, however, once you have a baron, you can appoint a champion but as best I can tell, it doesn't appear to actually do anything (I tend to make my most badass dwarf the title thought).
Fighting SkillsA weapon skill is not enough, they need additional skills to survive and use in combat. The next group I call fighting skills, with a "weapon" skill related to unarmed combat.
* Discipine - controls if a dwarf will breakdown in fear and retreat. Higher is usually better (marksdwarves with this at high levels probably will charge into melee)
* Biter - How strong of a bite a dwarf has (and they WILL train this, see below)
* Dodger - Controls how frequently a dwarf dodges and how successfully
* Striker - How strong a dwarf punches
* Kicker - How strong a dwarf kicks
There's also two special skills that go with this:
* Fighter - Superskill; exact usage is not clear, but if it works like archer, it controls if a target dodges, and response. No one has successfully scienced the specifics of fighter, but it will level up the fastest of all them since ANY combat action will boost it. Ranged equivalent is Archery
* Wrestler - "Weapon" skill of unarmed combat. Wrestler is the only dangerous skill in sparring, but all dwarves in melee may attempt to do wrestling moves in addition striking with a weapon, this will level up consistently through demostrations and sparring.
Defensive Item UsageThere are two skills that relate to armor and shields
* Shield User - controls how often a dwarf autoblocks with a shield. A dwarf with Legendary+5 Shield User basically prevent anything from connecting that can be blocked with a shield. Even with low levels, a dwarf will use shields *a lot*. Unfortunately levels up slowly.
* Armor User - controls armor movement penalities. At legendary, the weight of armor is negated. Also appears to control the chance of something glancing off (this is a relatively recent change). Levels up at a glacier speed, though dwarves DO give armor demostrations; four years of training which had everything at Legendary+5, and armor user was still at 6 ...
Demonstration SkillsDemonstrations can be drastically more effective than sparring *if* the associated skills are relatively high.
* Teacher - determines the amount of experience given to students during a demonstration.
* Student - determines the amount of experience actually applied to a skill from a demonstration.
* Observer - exact effects unknown; in adventure mode, increase chances of spotting an ambush. In fortress mode, this levels up during sparring, and will *drastically* level up if you get into the rare condition that dwarves are watching a sparring match. (as in, will go from zip to level 10 if the sparring match lasts awhile).
* Organizer - Controls the speed as which a demonstration "starts". Very little usage. With no skill, it takes an in-game day for a demonstration to start
Toady specifically commented on Teacher and Student in the release notes for one of the DF2010 releases
Release notes for 0.31.12 (July 25, 2010):
Aside from the major bug fixes listed below, I made skill increases a little faster during training. Part of the problem is with how classes work -- the teacher and student skills are important, and they can heavily amplify the effects, so the gains for people without those skills were small. Now it'll be even more extreme that the base rate has increased, so we'll have to see how that plays out in forts that get good teachers.
Other Military SkillsFor completion sake, the following are military skills, but are either unused, or related to ranged dwarves
* Marksdwarf/Bowman/Blowgunner - controls crossbows/bows/blowguns. Weapon skill with range controls how frequently a target hits
* Archer - Controls if a target dodges and such (was recently scienced
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=150323.0)
* Ambusher - Technically a military skill. Controls how effectively a dwarf sneaks. Normally only used by hunters in fortress mode.
* Military Tactics/Coordination/Balance - Military Tactics is used in worldgen, Coordination and Balance are unusued, but presumably relate to mounts.
* Tracker - Unused in fortress mode
* Thrower - Used when a object is physically thrown. Thrown opponents uses the wrestling skill. Never trained via demostrations or sparring.
* Miner - pick weapon skill. Shows up as foreign under the uniform screen for whatever reason. As mining is considered a civilian labor, you'll end up with an elite wrestler vs. Elite Pike User. If they do demonstrations with picks, its possible you could train a miner to legendary without a single mining designation.
Other Important Skills * Crutch-walker - If a dwarf looses or breaks a leg, they will get a crutch through the hospital, and level this skill up, it levels stupid fast. If a dwarf attacks with a crutch, it will use Misc Object Skill.
* Swimmer - Controls what happens if a dwarf dodges into water. If none at all, they'll be stunned upon landing, and almost certainly drown. At novice, if they land on a ramp, they can move back onto solid land if they don't drown while stunned. At Adequate and above, they will not be stunned and get back into the fight. A fall into water that's multiple Z level *can* prevent the fall from being lethal, a dwarf will immediately swim straight up, then to solid land. Dwarves will path through water that is 3/7, but no deeper. At 4/7 to 6/7, they can swim without drowning risk no matter what. If 7/7, if the tile above is "Open Space", they also will not drown if not stunned.
To summarize: if you want your moat to not claim your dwarves lives in case they dodge: make it two 2-level deep (more is better), with open space above and that they are level 2 or better in swimmers. Assuming they only fall one Z level, this will avoid them slamming down one Z level.
Unknown: if dwarves drink water while swimming, or will eat their provisions. It might be completely possible to get a dwarf to punch out a shark with the right setup though.
1. Understanding Demonstrations, Sparring, and Individual Ranged TrainingDwarves actively have (in general) four possible jobs they can be doing, in roughly this order of priority
- Group based training
- Individual Training (they also do this if there off-duty and don't have another job to do)
- Sparring
- Archery Training (if equipped with a bow, the squad has bolts, and has an archery range for the squad)
Group based training, individual training and sparring require a barrack to be defined for that squad with "Train" enabled. Archery ranges don't count as a barrack for this. Individual training and demostrations train ONE skill at a time. Demonstrations can only happen if the leader of a demonstration has some experience in that skill (Dabbling is enough to meet this). Dwarves will only attend a demonstration if its a fighting skill, *or* its the weapon they're currently equipped with (that is to say, if you have a squad of two dwarves, one with a spear, and one with an axe, you'll never get axe or spear demonstrations. Ranged dwarfs will attend demostrations for their weapons base skill; so marksdwarves will attend hammer demonstrations. They will however start and attend wrestling demonstrations as all dwarves can wrestle; this is also why wrestling levels up as fast as it does via demostrations; a dwarf can always wrestle.
For sparring, a dwarf must be at least novice in their weaponskill. Dwarves with unequal skill levels *will* spar, but not frequently. If two dwarves are very close in skill levels, they spar much more frequently, this can be maximized by using position assigning. This is actually a good thing as demonstrations tend to be more effective once teacher and student get high enough. Furthermore, three and four way spars are possible; I suppose you could get a ten way spar, but I've never seen it happen, and 3/4 dwarves sparring together are very rare.
If multiple dwarves are under a train order together, and some are sparring, they may choose to watch (I believe this shows up as Watch Combat or something similar in the u menu, its very rare). When this happens, those watching will have their observer skill skyrocket. I'm not sure if they get any other skill gains by watching; I can't reproduce it frequently enough to science it. If a marksdwarf spars (this is very rare, possibly a bug), they'll use their crossbow as a hammer and gain hammerdwarf skills. Sparring is always safe *unless* a dwarf has open hands. The problem is that wrestling skills are valid when sparring, and the dwarf choosing to suplex or throw a dwarf, which sends them flying. This won't happen as long as all dwarves have a weapon and shield. If you're training wrestlers, have a hospital handy; the injuries usually aren't bad unless they hit a wall.
It is unknown if the old issue that injuried dwarves (even grey) never spar is still true; I haven't noticed it either way, and most of my training happens by demostration vs sparring.
Demonstrations require that *all* the dwarves in the order are present, and others will wait until that happens. The practical upshot is that demonstrations take a very long time to go with the default settings because if one dwarf is sleeping, the others will wait for the sleeper or just do individual training. Due to a bug, the time increase is calculated exponentially (dfhack had a tweak to fix this). In other words, "Train, 10 minimum" will cause them to train so slowly that you'd be lucky to get a novice after a year.
The following skills *can* be taught via demonstration:
* All melee weapon skills
* All ranged skills (including Archery and Crossbow. Seems to happen very rarely since will compete with Hammer as a trainable skill, but it is possible to train an elite marksdwarf without them firing a single bolt)
* Dodger
* Biter
* Kicker
* Striker
* Misc. Object User (maybe, I don't remember if I've seen this recently)
* Armor User
* Shield User (maybe?)
Fighter doesn't appear to cause demonstrations to form. Armor and shield also do not appear to cause demonstrations to happen; these skills only level up during sparring as best I can tell.
As stated above, a weapon demonstration will not happen if two dwarves in the same order have different weapons. You can use that to reduce demonstrations and get dwarves to spar more frequently.
Experience GainsIn summary, here's what to know about the types of training:
- Individual Combat Drills raise one skill by a little bit, they're the slowest way to get anything to raise and appear to raise one skill at a time. You want to avoid these to the extent possible
- Demonstrations raise one skill factored by teacher and student. In addition to the skill demonstrated, dwarves gain some student/teacher experience, causing future demonstrations to become even more effective. Thus if you can get them to do and complete demonstrations quickly, this will outpace sparing for training. However, not all skills can be demonstrated. If you embark with a student/teacher at 5 and no other skills, they will become a weapon level at novice within a week. This allows for rapid replacement of losses once you have your initial set of badasses.
- Sparring simulates real combat. Its not clear if experience gains are the same, but this will train all skills a dwarf can learn a little bit.
- Archery training gives 8XP per bolt. If combined with my ulitimate marksdwarves guide, you'll get elite marksdwarves in about a year.
2. Equipping Your Badasses-To-BeProfessions To WatchWood cutters, miners, and hunters use weapons as civilians. Draftings these guys might give a massive equipment mismatch spam. To fix, disable their civilian labor, and if necessary forbid the item they're carrying.
On ArmorThere's a LOT of confusion about armor and dwarves. There's a great armor chart on the wiki (
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor) that shows what covers what, but its still slightly confusing on what you can equip your dwarves to be.
Here's the first thing I recommend.
DON'T USE METAL ARMOR FOR NEWBIES.I'm serious. With older versions of dwarf fortress, the weight would slow them down, but not enough to make training ineffective. The hauling update caused armor encumbrance to become much worse; an untrained dwarf in full metal will move so slowly that training will become a crawl. For raw recruits, use leather. My default embark these days is a proficient leatherworker, and a supply of dogs to train up an animal trainer, which become war dogs, then slaughter then. Leather counts as armor, so it will train armor user during sparring, but not have any additional weight penalties. Bone should also work as well, but I've never made armor out of it. Contributions welcome on weight penalties due to bone armor.
Strictly speaking, a metal shield and weapon will slow them down, but not nearly as much as a full set of armor.
A full set of leather armor is as follows:
- Leather armor (that's what its called)
- Leather helm
- Leather gauntlet
- Leather high boots (if your civilization can make these; I haven't seen one in a long time that can't, this may no longer be factor)
Failing high boots, you need leggings and low boats. Each piece costs one leather, so that's four for the set. For a 10 dwarf squad, that's 40 pieces. If you make leather shields, add another one to the cost.
Make sure you use exact matches when you specify it on the equipment screen, or some dwarves will consider clothes a proper replacement.
When To Switch To MetalAdmittedly, this is a matter of taste. By time they hit weapon lord status, a dwarf's physical attributes are pretty damn good, but my training methods leave armor user wanting. Regardless, I'd switch them roughly around then if I have metal production ramped up. While they'll still move slower than normal dwarves, the additional stat gains allow them to move fast enough to not bog under. Metal armor also seems to increase armor user training rate.
How To Equip With Metal ArmorEach piece of metal armor covers a specific slot of the dwarf. Unfortunately, with metal alone you can't get 100% coverage. Masterwork steel is the best material for most armor because you can mass produce and import it, and its superior at deflecting budging blows; I then use candy robes ontop for full coverage *and* increasing deflection of piercing and sharp weaponry. Unfortunately adamantine robes degrade; this IMHO, is a bug, and either a small raws tweak -or- a dfhack plugin can be used to fix it. However, it only takes one piece of adamantine thread to make a robe, so it is by far the most economical of it, and it still takes 5 years to degrade entirely.
Assuming your civilization can make high boots, this is the best coverage you can go for
- steel helm
- steel mail shirt
- steel gauntlets
- steel high boots
- steel breastplate
- steel greaves
- adaminite robes
This gives great protection at the lowest weight possible. Appartantly rigidness is now important in dealing with armor based on new science and breastplates and greaves are very important. It costs 10 bars of metal for the full set (3 for the breastplate, 2 for the mail shirt and greaves, and 1 each for the gauntlets, boots and helm), plus an additional two for a shield and weapon.
You can add breastplates if you wish, but they may bug up. See below for an explanation.
Robes can bug up due to the equipment mismatch problem listed below. See below for instructions.
On WeaponryThere's a lot of debate of what weapons to use. Here's roughly whats best at what, and note no weapon wins all around
- Axes: Most effective on organic enemies the same size or slightly larger than your dwarf. Does slashing damage
- Swords: Most effective on enemies that have to be beheaded to kill like bronze collisi.
- Spears: Gets bonused on kebashable enemies, and ones that dwarf your dwarves. Use on forgotten beasts, titan, megabeast and demons!
- Hammer: Does bludging damage, very effective on full body zombies, as well as armored foes the above can't get through.
- Mace: Does bludging damage, slightly worse than hammers, but much higher chance of mangled and finally putting down killable undead.
Dwarves will get attached to a weapon over time, but will *still* obey uniform requirements. If you get a dwarf that gets stuck welding something you don't want, as a last resort, set the squad down, tell them to use civ clothes. They'll either store the weapon in a stockpile, or in an weapon rack, at which point you can forbid it or mark it for dumping. It is unknown if named weapons get the bonuses normal artifact weaponry does.
ProvisionsDwarves can carry food and booze if they're in a squad and will use this instead of going to a stockroom to get something. I recommend doing so, though beware the bug below on this. To carry food, they need a backpack, which must be made from leather and costs one piece each.
Booze can be carried in a waterskin made from leather, or a vial or flask made out of metal, porcelain, or glass.
Equipping Troubles (and why mall shirts, breastplates, and robes bug up)Dwarves tend to be idiots on equipping things and do it in the wrong order. The full problem is described in the following bug:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1445In effective, instead of trying to put things on in the order they have to be worn, they'll put them in in the order the item was produced in your fortress. So if you make breastplates before mail shirts, they'll put the breastplate on first, then fail to put the mail shirt on, spamming equipment mismatches and getting stuck. This also happens if you try to assign socks or something to a dwarf. There is a workaround.
When you create the uniform, exclude the breastplate from the uniform, and then add your squad members to the squad. Then go to each dwarves individual equip screen, and add the breastplate. This prevents them from switching their equipment to different items. You have to do it 10 times each, but you only have to bother when doing equipment changes. For the same reason, if you want to switch a dwarves equipment fully, stand down the squad and make sure they have "Inactive - Civ Clothes" in their Inactive schedule, which will get them back in base clothes.
The same thing applies with robes. If you're trying to get to get mail shirt, breastplate, robe, have the mail plate in the uniform, wait for equipment to finish being picked up, add the breastplate, wait, then the robe.
Also, if you want to give them socks, assign the socks, then the shoes. Leggings might also have the same problem, not 100% sure; if so, its socks, then leggings, then boots.
Backpacks equip reliably for me, but may give others headaches. Quivers are known to bug up with metal armor due to this reason. To fix the above for backpacks: remove all food/water assignments, they won't claim a backpack if not ordered to carry supplies. Quivers are more annoying, you have to remove the bow, and then add it last. Waterskins go on the armor itself (strangely), and thus shouldn't bug up as long as everything else is equipped properly.
I always recommend using "Replace", and Exact Matches on equipment when using metal, it helps with the screwups. Leather armor doesn't overlap, and is fine to leave over clothing.
Dealing With The 'm' MenusWelcome to the worst part of this guide. The military menu will hurt, but I'll try and make it as quick and painless as possible. We'll take this screen by screen, and I am going to recycle part of my ulitmate ranged guide here.
We'll start with defining a uniform. Pull up the n screen. In this example, I'm giving leather equipment for spear dwarves. Create a new uniform with 'c', and call it something like Spear Training. Make it look like this, using 'M' to select the material.
Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. This is misleading; the game *only* applies the uniform to the first dwarf selected. We'll fix that in a moment. Select your recruits, like so, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, then press 'U' (that's captain U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.
This example shows it correctly for marksdwarves:
If done correctly, you have Weapondwarf 10/10 on the top. If incorrect, you'll get 1/1 Weapondwarf, 9/9 Wrestlers. Remember the equip bugs above if you're using this screen. You can mix and match dwarves in a squad. If you do so, you'll see the count on top as something like 5 axedwarves, 5 speardwarves.
Uniforms and equipment are tied to the actual position, not the dwarf. This is counter-intuitive, and may cause issues if a dwarf dies, a replacement is drafted, and his equipment is forbidden.Switch to the supplies screen and set this as you feel. I recommend three food, and carry booze. Note: they don't always seem to claim waterskins effectively. I'm as to unsure of the cause or a fix.
Switch to the schedule menu. This is where the magic happens. The default order of Train, 10 minimium, is *wrong*. Use x to delete out the orders, the game will show "No Scheduled Order" in its place. Repeat for all months.
The schedule should look like this:
Press o to give an order. Press o until Train comes up, then set the minimum to 2. 3 also works well if your dwarves have some skill in teacher and student. Generally, I don't bother. It should look like this:
Press Shift-Enter to give the order. Repeat 5 times so all positions are covered. This forces the max demonstration size to be two, working around the inverse square problem relating to training times. They'll finish demonstrations quickly, leveling up student and teacher at a decent click (as well as organizer), and cause them to hit lord status in about a year, legendary 1.5-2 years from start. If you want to encourage more sparring, see the footnote.
Give the order a custom name so you can spot it easier, and copy and paste to all months.
It should look like this when you're done.
Activate your squad, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
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Appendix: Attempt to encourage more sparringThe Train, minimum 2 order causes dwarves to pair off with each other, using whoevers available at the time. By assigning a position (by pressing right, then selecting positions when you GIVE the order (you can't edit them later)), you can pair off two specific dwarves. If you make a squad that's half axe, and half sword, they will not do demonstrations related to their weapon skill, just their fighting one. This should encourage more sparring, but it hasn't been fully tested. Furthermore, pairing off dwarves into sets should also encourage them to spar more in general because their skill gains should be consistent with each other at all times.
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Topic: Ulitmate Melee Dwarf Guide - Understand Sparring, Demonstration and More! (Read 40991 times)