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[fricy]

Our biggest challenge will be keeping the booze production ahead of demand, as the brook has salt water because we are near the ocean. And none of the caverns seem to have water available.

I read somewhere that you can desalinate water with pumps. Never tried it myself, but it's worth a shot.

[Gentlefish]

It needs to be pumped into a completely constructed structure.

[Julien Brightside]

If you channel out a hole that is not connected to the salt water, that hole can be used as a water source once you pump water into it.

[slothen]

It needs to be pumped into a completely constructed structure.

I think salinity behaves like stagnation.  Originally it was thought the water itself was the issue, but experimentation showed that the tiles themselves get flagged as stagnant/salty.  Stagnant/salty flags were spread by contaminated water, but even if the water was eliminated, any additional water in that tile would be similarly contaminated.  Therefore any tile that had bad water would be contaminated permanently.  Toady changed stagnant water by allowing fresh water to overwrite the stagnant tile flag.  This was not changed for desalination.  The wiki says you can pump out salty water and pump in clean water and everything will be fine, but I believe this is wrong.  The constructions vs natural walls thing was also debunked and isn't mentioned in the wiki either.

[Greiger]

A child went berzerk after failing a mood and decided to take out her frustrations by breaking both the legs of her pet goose.

A member of the military with a greatsword saw this and decided to disassemble the child so thoroughly the workshop and 2 other adjacent ones had to be deconstructed to retrieve all her bits.

Just another day in the fortress.

[Larix]

I found a nice embark place right next to a ridiculous cliff face - 160ish z-levels underground, and 120ish up. Of course i built some stairs and a platform to put a statue (of a cow) one z above the highest spur of natural rock. I also built a trench across the mouth of the valley, removed the upward ramps and raised the bridge. Let the merchants deal with the endless ambushes: first kobolds came with the very first elf visit, the second elf caravan was wiped out by an ambush; by that time the bridge was already up, so there was no other target . I think it was late autumn of the second year when a goblin snatcher was unmasked - while the bridge was up. He couldn't get away but my emergency wrestler squad couldn't catch up with him, either. Even more annoyingly, the goblin had already napped a child - a baby, so my militia commander kept spamming me with 'cancel seek infant: interrupted by goblin thief'. We even suffered serious losses - a war dog and a wrestler. Upon going through the combat records, i noticed that the wrestler was not (as expected) stabbed with a knife, but rather got her brain stoved in - with the grimeling leather bag the goblin was carrying. Probably wouldn't have been quite so damaging (although you never know with DF physics) if the bag hadn't been weighted down by a little girl. Fortunately, the sprog didn't take damage from being used as an impromptu bludgeon, and the militia commander got over suffering the death of a friend _and_ a miscarriage without too many worries.

In the long term, i suspect i'll suffer death from lack of seeds - the seeds brought and dropped by dead caravaners are definitely not safe to collect, and i'm quite certain they count against my seed limit. And the first mood was a total downer - i had neglected to train all my farmers in something moodable and promptly got a wood bracelet. Bleargh.

[Hamsmagoo]

A child went berzerk after failing a mood and decided to take out her frustrations by breaking both the legs of her pet goose.

A member of the military with a greatsword saw this and decided to disassemble the child so thoroughly the workshop and 2 other adjacent ones had to be deconstructed to retrieve all her bits.

Just another day in the fortress.

Sounds like PETA would love your swordsdwarf.

[PDF urist master]

most of my moods produce nothing of immense value (i don't really optimize this). i like it when they make buildings though. could get some nice happy thoughts.

i think i annihilated the local crundle population by sending a macedwarf down to cavern 3 to greet them. not really concerned about extinction seeing i have a pig farm, a rutherer farm, and a dingo farm (not sure why i have that).

[Drecon]

Darn it! I had my limit set on 35 dorfs to try and end up between it and 50.

Thought I nailed it and then another migrant wave arrived... 66 now... Not what I had in mind, but I guess I'll manage. Some may have to sleep on the floor for a few years though.

[Gentlefish]

Hey, at least they won't give you babies aside from what's already pregnant! Plus, that's a lot of militia fodder.

[itisnotlogical]

I completely dropped the ball with making crafts, so I had to trade a giant piece of chert for five plump helmet seeds. The entire rest of the time I stared at all the seeds that I needed to make something other than bloody plump helmets, but couldn't trade for because I barely had enough chert boulders to cover the cost of one seed pack.

[Gentlefish]

I picked up 23a for the hell of it. First animal to spawn on the map?

ELEPHANTS.

I'm now digging with three miners. Turns out skill only affects how much stone they drop, not their speed.

[Lich180]

Found a nice little section of evil sea again, after the last one succumbed to multiple unconsciousness induced deaths and lost forts.

This one has a flat little plateau, with a bit of path around the edge. Evened out the rough landmass and removed the ramps leading up, walled off the southern end of the plateau leaving a very small access point on the north end. The southern end recently saw a necro siege (end of the second spring, lasting until autumn) and I had my single marksdwarf practice a bit on the leftover zombies after I caged a necro and several other zombies to use as practice dummies. There WAS an aquifer, but I caved in a landmass to penetrate through it, leaving a 5x5 square to cut into the stone beneath.

Working on getting self-sufficient still, everyone has been living off of above ground plants and what meat we can scavenge from the random wildlife wandering around. Hopefully the next caravans bring the requested items the liaison left with almost 2 years ago, since the last one never showed up because of the siege.

Pansies. My tiny milita, clad only in bronze handled 3 goblin ambush squads easily, helped by 3 dwarves entering martial trances and leaving only 1 survivor to tell the tale. Zombies shouldn't pose much of a problem soon enough... most of the militia are already legendary in their respective weapon skills, and only require a little more experience with their armor and dodging skills.

This fort should eventually be very well defended, not only because of the limited access but the nearly unlimited resources I have at my disposal in my enclosure. Tons of trees, an aquifer, sand and clay.

[Oaktree]

Carnagegalley was abandoned once the river bridge was completed.  And a bushel of combat-trained dwarves goes back into the pool of the Boat of Trumpets.

For the new fort I randomly selected a sub-region in the world map.  And granted myself some leeway for the embark location within the sub-region space.  Ended up on the shore of a freshwater lake right where a small river flows into it.  The random fortress name of "Watermined" came up and was kept.

The embark is flat as a pancake, grassland with some trees with badlands starting to the north.  The lake lies to the west, and the river cuts across the embark from east to west. So the dwarves have started in a defendable corner with water to the south and west.  (Which doesn't freeze apparently in the winter.)

The expedition arrived with extra wood and stone since an aquifer was expected.  And it was found in the third soil layer down.  This was breached by a few dwarves while the rest set up shop in the first two soil layers (one of which is clay) and built a perimeter wall with blocks to protect the entrance and some pasture space.  The nearby trees are harvested and stockpiled while the herbalist collects local plants to supplement the limited supplies.

Migrants arrive and include a few previous fort veterans - including a spear master who is given bronze armor and immediately put in charge of the local defense militia.  He is chasing kobolds off within a month.

The aquifer is penetrated (only a single layer) in early autumn.  At this point the fortress can start moving down into stone and building permanent workshops and other chambers.  Two kinds of iron ore are immediately found, followed soon afterwards by zinc ore and tetrahedrite.  Some of the iron is smelted immediately to help with arming the troops and also fit out a few weapon traps. 

Exploratory shafts have found and then by-passed a cavern.   Hunting downwards to find magma and see if there is any other ores or flux stone available.

A few dwarves wounded so far by goblin snatchers or kobold thieves.  No deaths yet (luckily) other than a watch rooster getting knifed.  The spearmaster, in turn, has killed two goblins and a kobold.

An experimental trap is being set up as well.  A "coinstar" set-up connected to a repeater that will be loaded with some boulders and left running to see if it can deal with the stealthy intruders.  Main issue will be keeping the migrants and diplomats out of it since I presume they will ignore traffic restrictions.  Just need to lock the entrance doors when they turn up.

[Eric Blank]

Keep in mind that you won't be able to lock your exterior doors or hatches if intruders have used them since a dwarf last did. You could, though, have a door on the interior end of the tunnel, before which the thieves must also pass fortifications with dogs behind them. That should prevent anything from making it all the way to that door, which should allow you to lock it. However, diplomats and merchants might continue to wander down that pathway despite it being locked if they started pathing through before you locked it, so it could be useful to have a shut-off switch for your repeater when needed.