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[VerdantSF]

I look forward to hearing more of the Joyous Steel and the fortress of Armoredstalkers!

[Splint]

I look forward to hearing more of the Joyous Steel and the fortress of Armoredstalkers!

Well, at least I have at least one eager reader!

[smjjames]

Things I've learned:

-Stone armour = not substantial enough to block arrows.
-Bone armour, ditto.
-"Competent" is not "good" when it comes to weapon skills /dodging.
-Always link up your bridges.

Wait, 'stone armor'? Is that the Masterwork mod?

[Mimidormi]

Goldpraised, 201.

From the outside, barely an unassuming warehouse-like modest structure with a dinky bridge facing a trade depot made of ice, standing alone in a desolate glacier.
Inside,... an equally unassuming big communal space carved out of the ice, with jumbled workshops and beds in ridiculous places, and a staircase plunging vertiginously into the darkness.
This because I'm very much a theorizer more than a doer. But no worries, the seeds of greatness are there.

- The first year went well, but not without turmoil. Mainly, the settling was slowed down by having only one pick and no trained miners, and for the first time in a long time my dwarves ran out of alcohol and had to drink water from the well. No biggie, the construction of farm plots irrigated by the aquifer was already underway and food and booze production became stable shortly after.

- 21 strong population after the first two migrant waves. Many of them have some degree of military training, given that the parent civilization has been waging war almost effortlessly since year 11 against various civs, mostly elven since they seem very disapproving of their cannibalizing ways, according to the legends mode scholars. I have three veterans of the elven wars, and I'd make the 149 years old crafter and marksdwarf with 137 elf kills the militia commander, but old age may claim her soon.

- First two moods, legendary weaver and mason that made a nice native gold statue of the crowning of the first ruler, with a not ominous at all image of a flash specter in rubicelle on the side.

- Spotted a GCS in the first cavern, near the small enclosed pasture made for the sheep.
Just seeing that 'S' scuttling around and reading about his brown chitin and eyes and how he bears untold amounts of fat over a gigantic frame gives me a deep down soul shudder no picture could give.
It's going to be tricky to capture him.

- The evil dust so far has enthralled only a yeti that was milling outside, which was promptly captured by a cage trap and hauled indoors.
Apparently, cats can enter cages and interact with whatever is inside, because my only cat managed to get himself zombified off the evil dust coating on the caged yeti's right upper arm.
I have a save before it happened and can reproduce the contagion, I just didn't know it was a thing.

No special plans or long term goals at the moment. Magma forges and smelters are already set up and I'm going to have more picks soon; once I took care of better lodgings, and built a defense system for the trade depot not consisting of a single cage trap, I'm going to hollow out part of three z-levels of glacier to make space for the fort proper, to have it standing on a solid siltstone foundation, just because.

[Splint]

Armoredstalkers, Slate to Malachite of 151

Not even into the third month and the miners have found rich deposits of malachite and cassierite, meaning bronze will be a common alloy in this fortress and likely the military's bread and butter. A mere layer below the dirt topsoil, fire clay and dolomite are found as well! Not only is dolomite useful as flux, but its presence indicated a source of fuel somewhere in the upper rock layers. A large boulder of semi-pure aluminum was also found, so clearly we will be quite well off!



Also Kumil hit a strange stone that exploded in his face and made his movements a blur to his fellow miners! It was the fabled Breath of Armok, a boon to miners everywhere who are exposed to it. Sadly, they can't be harvested as they practically burst upon being struck with a pick. The dining hall is excavated as well and now they've been tasked with excavating a large food storage.

Summer came along without note or incident, and our first little farmed saplings sprouted, giving us our first home-grown wood stocks and a few spare acorns for more, once there's a spare sawblade and some mechanisms to get them processed anyway. Speaking of process, it was decided until more dwarves arrive, Kugik will have to start splitting and stripping logs on his own while Datan handles the currently small scale masonry work needing to be done.

[Eric Blank]

So far, the population dropped from ~135 to ~65, and there are plenty of wackjobs waiting to starve to death, and as many dwarves waiting to lose their own minds. I spotted a few dwarves that aren't currently unhappy, though, so I guess there's still hope.

There's definitely still hope.  Do you have enough non-berserk dwarves to keep up with booze, food, and coffin production?

Almost certainly plenty of coffins. Already built a surplus and installed/designated them. That's one upside, I suppose. Plenty of dog meat, too. As long as there's someone left to open the gates when migrants arrive, I should be good.

I'll end up having to build a tomb complex now. I've just been stuffing coffins in whatever empty storerooms I had available.

[edit]

I did forget to mention in the first post that when I was looking into the cause of the fire, I noticed that the courtyard the fire occurred in was covered in melted cheese. Not one pile of cheese suggesting a barrel of the stuff had burned up in the fire whilst being transported, but a dozen or more individual puddles of cheese. I have NO IDEA why the cheese was there or how it could possibly be related, but I found it highly amusing anyway. Still no idea what did start the fire, actually.

[PDF urist master]

operation dump all the fats was delayed for the inevitable goblin body clean up. I've stopped all farms as planned and will start farming once total edible plants reach 1000.

My fort now has a surplus of trolls which I'm really conflicted as to their new demise.

send them with their goblin brethren to brave the HFS
send them to the crocodile pits for my amusement
execute them with my marksdwarves for exp

I'm also not sure if goblins from different sieges will tear each other apart. I know they're all from the the same civ since I only have one goblin civ invading me, but i've heard stories.

[the1337doofus]

Urist made a cool helmet. Here's to hoping that it doesn't bring more invaders.

[doublestrafe]

So I learned a valuable lesson with this fort. As much as having too many migrants sucks, and as nice as it is having the FPS granted by a small, tightly knit community, DO NOT cross a low population with heavy livestock breeding!

Apparently nothing, with the sole exception of active military duty, is a higher priority job than "drag the stupid animal back to the pasture", and there is absolutely no way to prevent dwarves from taking the job.

Which means that if a scaaaary kobold thief tries to sneak through your packed alpaca pasture, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. And it stays loose, because if your dwarves are too busy collecting alapacas, they're not collecting the turkey eggs. And that means they start to hatch. In the end, I had to create a 10x10 eggs-only food stockpile to get a handle on it.

I now have over 350 individual 1x1 pasture zones. Many of the turkeys from the turkeysplosion have now grown up--keep in mind that they take two years to mature--and a hell of a lot of roast turkeys, and I still haven't gotten them all under control. Next time, I'll order takeout.

[VerdantSF]

I have three veterans of the elven wars, and I'd make the 149 years old crafter and marksdwarf with 137 elf kills the militia commander, but old age may claim her soon.

Historical migrants is one of my favorite additions to the game!

Apparently, cats can enter cages and interact with whatever is inside, because my only cat managed to get himself zombified off the evil dust coating on the caged yeti's right upper arm.

Yikes. 

Magma forges and smelters are already set up

How far down did you have to dig on your map?

Also Kumil hit a strange stone that exploded in his face and made his movements a blur to his fellow miners! It was the fabled Breath of Armok, a boon to miners everywhere who are exposed to it.

Masterwork always has such cool surprises like this.  I actually started up a MWDF fortress named Menacematched a while ago, but bouncing between two fortresses didn't work for me.  I'll just have to experience it vicariously through yours .

Summer came along without note or incident, and our first little farmed saplings sprouted, giving us our first home-grown wood stocks and a few spare acorns for more, once there's a spare sawblade and some mechanisms to get them processed anyway.

Is it worth it to grow the magic trees with metal-grade wood?  I was also pleasantly surprised at the bronze-grade leather from MWDF's non-duck drakes.

[Splint]

Also Kumil hit a strange stone that exploded in his face and made his movements a blur to his fellow miners! It was the fabled Breath of Armok, a boon to miners everywhere who are exposed to it.

Masterwork always has such cool surprises like this.  I actually started up a MWDF fortress named Menacematched a while ago, but bouncing between two fortresses didn't work for me.  I'll just have to experience it vicariously through yours .

Summer came along without note or incident, and our first little farmed saplings sprouted, giving us our first home-grown wood stocks and a few spare acorns for more, once there's a spare sawblade and some mechanisms to get them processed anyway.

Is it worth it to grow the magic trees with metal-grade wood?  I was also pleasantly surprised at the bronze-grade leather from MWDF's non-duck drakes.

And I shall eagerly regale the tales of Armoredstalkers!

I have no idea on the metalgrade trees, but they are extremely valuable as far as wood goes with ironbark worth 4 times as much as normal wood and steeloak ten times as much, making a good carpenter with access to these woods a valuable asset for nobility and such. Plus I bet they make handy renewable sources of lethal spikes and strong shields.

As far as magic tree, you need them for certain mages. featherwood can be acquired via the elves and I think a shop, while Glumprong if memory serves might be acquirable through other means both drow and other, though I personally don't have an interest in the dark mages who require that stuff.

I also didn't bring any drakes, not that it matters considering the several metric assloads of bronze ingredients I have on site.

[the1337doofus]

A hill titan came. It attacked the migrants that came about a week after it, spat at them, and then tried to charge at a peasant. It RAN INTO A WALL, AND KILLED ITSELF.

Just.... wow.
Wow.

[VerdantSF]

As far as magic tree, you need them for certain mages. featherwood can be acquired via the elves and I think a shop, while Glumprong if memory serves might be acquirable through other means both drow and other, though I personally don't have an interest in the dark mages who require that stuff.

What has your experience been with the magic system in MWDF?  Do you have a preference for one of the elemental types?

[PDF urist master]

A hill titan came. It attacked the migrants that came about a week after it, spat at them, and then tried to charge at a peasant. It RAN INTO A WALL, AND KILLED ITSELF.

Just.... wow.
Wow.

what was it made of, smoke?

[Splint]

As far as magic tree, you need them for certain mages. featherwood can be acquired via the elves and I think a shop, while Glumprong if memory serves might be acquirable through other means both drow and other, though I personally don't have an interest in the dark mages who require that stuff.

What has your experience been with the magic system in MWDF?  Do you have a preference for one of the elemental types?

I haven't gotten to use most of them sadly, but of those I did I found Air mages to be the most useful, especially against anything that uses webs once they get to the second level when they become web immune, making them excellent for facing down monsters that use such attacks. Water mages come in second because I've had them take down trolls and goblins with their ice spike attack without the whole "burning down both sides by accident" issue I ran into with fire mages. Never got to use the earth, white, or black mages.