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[NordicNooob]

MAJOR SPOILERS! SKIP THIS IF YOU DON'T KNOW THEM ALL!

OBLIGATORY PREFACE:
Angelcrux is a fort situated on both a terrifying glacier (complete with reanimation and thralling clouds) and on a vault, courtesy of DFhack's embark-anywhere. Also it's near three towers and dwarves are extinct outside of the fortress. In addition, there is light modding to replace goblins with bugbears (big hairy goblins), make humans a bit more norse-like, and give dwarves a few new weapons.


Previous Updates:
Update 1
Update 2
Update 3
Update 4
Update 5
Update 6
Update 7


Angelcrux has been busy lately. Long term goals are finally starting to bear fruit, and even more ambitious plans are taking their place. The fortress thrives, and I'm excited to see the outcome of the next several years and eventually, the next several decades.

First and foremost, the honeymoon suites have finally begun paying off. Within the next three years, the fortress will receive an influx of thirteen children growing to adulthood, and the first six honeymoon children are already adults.

These children are going straight into the military, and I have just (within a few in-game days) finished rounding out my melee squads. The fort has three melee squads and two planned ranged squads. Each squad has or will have four dwarves, which may sound a little small but is quite effective for the kinds of sporadic combat seen frequently in reanimating biomes. These squads armored in divine metal, and will eventually grow to use only artifact weapons. In the mean time, the hammer squad (our oldest squad by far) has iron hammers and our other two squads use simple divine weaponry, which may be upgraded to adamantine before the creation of full adamantine artifacts. 50% of the artifact weapons will be able to be made with this generation, but the other half will have to wait a long time unless tragedy befalls the fort and a large number of dwarves die, which I'm not keen on letting happen for obvious reasons.

The marksdwarves sound like a bad idea as well, but I have an important mission for them: soot zombie control. Melee dwarves cannot engage without also getting sooted (as the disaster in reclaiming the fortress proper showed, among a few other encounters that my dwarves were not combatants in), so ranged units are a must to take these monsters down. I've currently just been trapping them, but this won't be an option every time. Mostly though, I just want to be able to pelt things with bolts because why the heck not?

In other military matters, I have also drafted all civilians and armed them with divine metal swords and helmets. Swords may sound an odd choice, but they are a versatile weapon, and good at quickly dispatching undead even if the undead don't stay down. I don't expect civilians to do the real fighting, just to survive long enough for soldiers to get onto the scene, and also to not run away when some ram wool or cat skin or whatever reanimates.

Another project that has borne fruit is our incursion into the vault. Through some sneaking, the murder of a Starry Pawn (the lowest tier of angels, and not very dangerous), and the construction of two oddly placed staircases, I have been able to retrieve the remaining three slade bars from the vault, thus exhausting its usefulness to me, at least for now.

Something else that has been a long time in coming is the full reclamation of the original fortress. While the actual fort was reclaimed, the initial suture stairway that leads to the glacier was held by an abominable soot necromancer experiment for a very long time, until I was able to trap it these past few years. This has allowed two groups of merchants to make it into the fort unmolested (which were unremarkable spare the acquisition of steel and some other metal I didn't have), and also given me access to my old magma minecart filler and the adamantine mines, which means I'll actually be able to finish the second forge room.

Oh right, that reminds me. I took over part of the caverns. The Southeast portion of the caverns is finally free of undead, and cleaned up, with one casualty of a fresh adult due to an entirely preventable incident with a troll. Not much else to say on the matter.

Further plans: cavern and ultimate goal of making the surface safe via storming the vault. Also hell?

Ultimately, I'm now moving into my endgame of ridiculous megaprojects. The next goal is the total reclaim of all of the caverns, and a walling off and deep clean of them as well. Not too complicated, but it'll be a while before my armies are ready to defend such a vast area from undead incursions, and I'll require an actual staging area to hasten the cleaning and walling off process.

After that, I'll either look upwards or downwards, probably the former, but I might delve deeper as a side project, ridiculous as it sounds. Upwards is the vault, the key to the surface. Its spire rises high above the ground, and the roof is safe from all but the evil clouds that plague the surface. By taking over the vault, I'll save some FPS by killing its denizens as well as gain access to the roof, which I'll use as a staging point to roof over the entire embark and end the threat of evil clouds for good. This project is by far the most dangerous I'll ever undertake, and by almost anybody's standards would be a ridiculous project even with a mighty fortress of 200. But I will attempt it with 40. I'll spare the details for now, but I have more plans for the surface afterwards, which tie into the main project and are just as insane. Anyways, next!

Underground, the demons of hell await me. I won't meet them in honorable combat like I will the angels, obviously. Unlike angels, demons can be baited, so I'll make a spike corridor. Except I'll just use artifact bait so I don't have to make it long, and I'll use divine metal spikes and mechanisms, which cannot melt under the onslaught like iron can. Don't ask me how a magma safe metal is melting, I just know that it happens due to multiple previous experiences. But once that is done with, artifact bait will again assist me in the ultimate conquest of the underworld. An artifact surrounded by raising bridges and a roof will trap a group of demons, preventing any others from entering the map. Raise the bridge, and bam! Hell will be ours! Though, I might just let the actual conquest fester, I mostly just want the adamantine. Also I'll have a few semi-expendable fresh adults for this, which will be unfortunately likely to die between the soot cloud project above and this project in the deeps. It is a necessary sacrifice to let dwarvenkind prosper.

The fortress is currently 28 years old (year 318 of the world), stands at 40 population (the pop cap I have set), and has 70 million dorfbucks of wealth.

[Quarque]

So, just started a new fort, second year now.. The dead walk! Hide while you can!

Well, no problem. The entrance is guarded with lots of cage traps, just define a burrow, I got this..

Oh.. that's a lot of them.. let's have a look..
Oh.. undead kobold swordsman.. undead kobold axeman..

xD

[IncompetentFortressMaker]

I see you had !!FUN!!.

[Madde]

One of those pole-proportioned dendrophiles pranced into Ivoryhelms and planted his muddy feet in my baroness' dining quarters, threatening us due to our tree-cutting habits and whatnot. I promptly ordered my militia commander to have a friendly chat with him while the baroness was away, who then chopped off his entire right arm in a single step. I asked the commander to stop the bonding ceremony, thinking that he is going to succumb to his injury. Surprisingly, he didn't bleed out, and after running around in panic for a few hours, he calmed down and headed to our tavern to talk with the citizens. After he left, I put his right arm on a wooden pedestal, smack dab in the middle of our tavern for everyone to see.

Quite interestingly, none of my dwarves seem too bothered by this macabre display, so I've been thinking about making a brand out of it. Since battle wounds are featured among world-gen events, I think it is possible that making statues of the specific historical figure could randomly feature this event. I know it's just fluff, but I think it'll be funny to just freely offer the elves a few golden statues of their one-armed diplomat before conquering them the next season.

[knutor]

Miners in cavern 1 were getting lazy. I ordered most of top left corner smoothed, then I ordered they engrave KNUTOR, up and down the floor. Its not completely safe there, but that didnt stop me from making it the gh(architect). I guess that Ill need some dirt roads built in gh(architect), to inspire learning. Was thinking about the time someone did that to an American football field. Cept instead of smoothing/engraving, the juviniles used Roundup.

[NordicNooob]

OBLIGATORY PREFACE:
Angelcrux is a fort situated on both a terrifying glacier (complete with reanimation and thralling clouds) and on a vault, courtesy of DFhack's embark-anywhere. Also it's near three towers and dwarves are extinct outside of the fortress. In addition, there is light modding to replace goblins with bugbears (big hairy goblins), make humans a bit more norse-like, and give dwarves a few new weapons.


Previous Updates:
Update 1
Update 2
Update 3
Update 4
Update 5
Update 6
Update 7
Update 8


Angelcrux is busier than ever, and everything is going just dandy!

Population: All of the honeymoon generation is grown up, and the fort has an excess of laborers. Our second death of old age, Asmel (the fortress weaver) has occurred. She will be missed, not just as a dwarf, but as one of the fortress mothers. Lolor and Urvad (chiseler and mechanic) had a child to bring the fort back up to 40 dwarves, but it will likely be their last. Lolor was the same age as Asmel, so she's unfortunately likely to drop dead on the spot. Which brings up another something interesting.

The succession. Lolor is our queen, and has birthed many possible heirs. She even has grandchildren, most titled of which is Rakust, leader of the Atom Smashers, our hammer squad, and wielder of Aroth Ilon, a slade warhammer. But the point is, Lolor is related to over half of the fortress, and unlike with humans, the crown does not go to the eldest son. It will be incredibly interesting to see who her successor is, although Lolor's death will be saddening. Even artifacts have been turned into political statements. Many dwarves are claiming their finest creations in the name of the family ancestor Atir Peakmetals, one of the dwarves in the original ruling class of dwarvenkind, and thus claiming noble blood running back to the creation of the world.

Speaking of nobility, one of Rakust's bothers, Melbil, has claimed the title of outpost liaison. It's probably just a ploy for a nicer bedroom, but it'll be tolerated, as Melbil is the new smith in Angelcrux, and happens to be responsible for around 80 million of the fort's wealth alone. Not like we can't afford to pitch him a few thousand dorfbucks of his own work to give him some spiffy quarters, eh? Especially since he doesn't give mandates. Maybe he'll get to use the title in his lifetime, though. I won't stop at retaking the surface, I'll have you all know. The goblins and necromancers will pay for their evil, and the humans will pay for their complacence.

Which leads nicely into the next development: everything in the vault is dead, well and truly. Not zombified, not "technically isn't alive," just dead. Angelcrux's military made mincemeat of the divine warriors, using their superior equipment, better training, and clustered numbers to annihilate everything within. Cleanup has not yet begun, but all things that had the potential to reanimate have been re-killed and atom smashed.

The next takeover mission is still ongoing: the caverns. Everything in the caverns is dead as well spare a particularly annoying bat hand stuck in a tree, which is also keeping the tree from being cut down. The marksdwarves will be deployed to try to deal with it, and if that doesn't work, I'll make a staircase up to the top of the tree where the thing can have a word with the hammerdwarves. Oh right, yeah, we have marksdwarves. They're all legendary circa zombie live training, since wood bolts can't kill the things. Not much else to say on the matter. Marksdwarves!

These takeovers mean that, at last, the undeadsplosion is finally quelled and beaten. No more hiding from the caverns, no more spending all my time fighting FPS death, Angelcrux is free. Only the thralling clouds stand between us and victory over the harsh land of The Tainted Frost.

Another thing that helped this military campaign was the start of strange moods again. I turned them off for a while as to not get a bunch of wood earrings from children moods, and have recently turned them back on after giving the fortress peasantry some lessons in armor and weaponsmithing. We now have many artifacts, all made of precious adamantine: four helms, a pair of greaves, three gauntlets, a breastplate, a battle axe, and a longsword. A war hammer (which will be of slade, of course), longsword, battle axe, and breastplate are all guaranteed to happen, along with two toss-up weapons and five toss-up armor pieces.

The reoccupation of the deep fortress has been somewhat of a boon. Both because we have our minecart filler back (which we needed to finish our forges, half of them have sat unfinished for 27 years!) and because we have the adamantine mines back. The minecart filler is also necessary to plug the waterfront in the caverns. It obviously won't be fully plugged (that'd be foolish, we need water from somewhere!), but I will obsidianize most of the edge and use pumps to clear the remaining edge tiles so a raising bridge may be placed right next to the edge, that

In addition, usage of adamantine has actually been enough that I've been forced to mine a bit more. Before the adamantine mines were lost, I was only able to dig up one layer of the precious stuff, and so was down to four wafers before I reopened the mines. Two of the four veins on the map are currently being tapped into. It's hardly my main project yet, and I'd hate to break into the circus since I have like, no safety measures in place, but it's nice to have a bit more of the stuff. I probably won't ever need to use it outside of moods, though. There's not much adamantine is useful for outside value-increasing and OP equipment. Given that I'm getting supplied OP equipment by artifacts and divine metal and supplied value by divine metal (same worth as adamantine, but renewable!), well, yeah.

Angelcrux stands at 40 population and 98 million wealth, and is 37 years old.

[muldrake]

Suddenly, in winter of the second year, a complete nobody in my fort I hadn't even assigned a room is suddenly king of the civilization after the "polite discussion with local rivals" message.  I wonder what happened.

[Schmaven]

Another thing that helped this military campaign was the start of strange moods again. I turned them off for a while as to not get a bunch of wood earrings from children moods, and have recently turned them back on after giving the fortress peasantry some lessons in armor and weaponsmithing. We now have many artifacts, all made of precious adamantine: four helms, a pair of greaves, three gauntlets, a breastplate, a battle axe, and a longsword. A war hammer (which will be of slade, of course), longsword, battle axe, and breastplate are all guaranteed to happen, along with two toss-up weapons and five toss-up armor pieces.

How can you guarantee certain artifacts are created?  Do those smiths have a preference for longswords, battleaxes, etc.?

[scriver]

I believe if say a weaponsmith dwarf has a preference for a weapon then you are guaranteed or at least near guaranteed to get that weapon from his mood.

And similar for armour part preferences.

[NordicNooob]

Another thing that helped this military campaign was the start of strange moods again. I turned them off for a while as to not get a bunch of wood earrings from children moods, and have recently turned them back on after giving the fortress peasantry some lessons in armor and weaponsmithing. We now have many artifacts, all made of precious adamantine: four helms, a pair of greaves, three gauntlets, a breastplate, a battle axe, and a longsword. A war hammer (which will be of slade, of course), longsword, battle axe, and breastplate are all guaranteed to happen, along with two toss-up weapons and five toss-up armor pieces.

How can you guarantee certain artifacts are created?  Do those smiths have a preference for longswords, battleaxes, etc.?

Yeah, I've been using the preferences as a guide for what to train them in. Dwarves with nothing one way or the other get trained in armorsmithing (armor is liable to be at least somewhat usable most of the time, as opposed to adamantine hammers), and dwarves with some useless armor preferences (like bucklers) will be trained in weaponsmithing. All dwarves with useful armor or weapons get that kind of training, so I can be sure I'm getting x amount of helms and y amount of battle axes or what have you.

[knutor]

Have you ever heard of a grizzly bear called, "a devil in a fur coat?" Because they are more sneaky carnivores, than other bears? ie. The leave a kill to rot, just to kill whatever else shows up at the killsite, instead of burying it, for later.

How does this apply to Dwarf Fortress, you maybe thinking? Got a god of torture. dunno his name. But cult to it, torture god, is called, Coven of the Devils. I went about labeling all my cages and chains, used for justice, to be a part of this guild. Cross fingers hoping for some "unique" fun. I know these decksions cannot be reversed, hoping I do not bork things up.

Puting 2 male grizzly bears in 2 az(coven of the Devils) seemed to me to be the next step. Maybe the two bears will help inspire law abiding. Will they eat chained actors for me? Had a bear kill a kestrel chick, so I cannot have them wandering about.

[pisskop]

Finally sat down and played again.  Using an older world with clumped up mountains and a high pop cap, the world is an interesting one.

6 dwarven civs exist, all mostly intact.  The world's ranges, 4 of them, spread from east to west, bottlenecking the southern 1/6th or so of the map.  A small lone range lies in the center of the map north of that.

5 civs live on this main range.  I have chosen the south-western most civ.  They have had a few defensive wars.  They hold a single far-out holding they captured.  A modest civ, they are currently ruled by a human necromancer.  The story of how he came into power is interesting too!  He was converted by his long-term lover and former wife into vampirism.  She worrked for 150 years to bring he and a second human into power over 2 dwarven kingdoms.  She  married several times, was a former warlord in life, and in unlife actually traveled the world to convert former husbands, lovers, and friends.  They seem to worship the civ's god of fate and death, poisonkills.

The world has a single northern pole, and the world gots hotter the further south you get.  Interestingly enough, and unintentionally, the world also gets less savage the further south you get.  Not a single civ lives in the northern 5th of the map, its too savage for them.  Some can survive the cold, they just wont do it.  There is a modest amount of evil in the world, and several strong auras eminating from towers additionally.  Ive added a human-esque race of cavern dwelling merlocks, and upgrades satyrs into a reproducing civ.  The former is ill-tempered like gobbos, but much better organized for survival.  The later is designed to be compatible with elves, and is more of a . . . savage embrace of nature than a true force of good-will.

My chosen site is a good badlands halfway between the lone holding and the capital.  The idea, if it holds, is to make a series of forts in the world.  This is only the first, and a good chance to shake off the cobwebs.  So far I only have 19 citizens and only 2 migration waves, which Im unused to since I prefer struggling civs who send hordes of the buggers.  I have actual unfilled labor!

A goblin butcher and human butcher necromancer came by to see us.  Im not sure of any significance they may have wrt traps, sieges, scouting, w.e, but for the moment Ive accepted its a part of the charm.  Still no tavern, though a space has been allotted and dug.  This fort has found a massive pit in the Earth between caverns, and Ive opted for a built-floor instead of a bridge as my cavern entrance.  Ive trapped it with a mixture of traps, but will leave it open.

I guess my aim, insofar as in-context meta is concerned, is to make a successful forgery, establish a base that will last and can produce armor, and then find a more dangerous spot to build in.  Because its a badlands, the only good-plants I can access are those Ive dug out of the hillside via ramps.

[knutor]

@piss, whats your embark size? Sound like you've planned it out ahead of time. Watch out the booze in good zones is very lethal.

I'd recommend your 1st tavern, be "civ only" at or near surface z level. As you progress deeper to cavern 1, do a "civ+guest" tavern with guest rooms, and then stick your "all" tavern between cavern layers.

I am struggling in my fort a Joyous embark, broadleaf flat, with a bad tavern layout.  DF, this version, doesnt ever recover, visitors are still looking for those old misplaced activity zones to visit. I may have to scrap it on yr8. Longest fort so far with this latest patch, was really fun without stress, til the Joyous booze started killing the dwarfs.  Got a grip on that. Ive blocked off all caverns and punctured hell. My raiding party had 9 GCS and 2 war Cave Dragons. Have stolen lots of stuff. Library at 200ish books, 30 unique, have scribes making 10 copies.

Games been crashing, tonight. Captain of the Guard is bugged, keeps shouting at me, he cannot release prisoners who served their sentences months ago, because of a wrong justice state. 4 inmates had served their sentences, long over, so after he appeared to want to socialize/worship, instead of release them, I hooked cages up to a lever. Never got to use it, that's when it crashed to desktop.

My tree experiments, to build climb skill may be the crash cause, too. Ive built a very good trap /R and tame /R burrow setup, with 3 butcher shops, specialized for 3 trappers who reside in the "vermin" burrow which is painted over 5z's of trees. However just before last crash, the one vermin hunter Busli, went missing. They scored me 3 pages of vermin. Got a fairy! Then a kestrel got it, ugg.

Maybe try that again on next embark.  I did manage to build a whooper of a maze, down in between caverns. Depot says longest haul is 7492!

[scriver]

Do eggs no longer hatch in the current version? I'm keeping turky Turks.

[martinuzz]

Eggs hatch just fine. I have geese and saltwater crocs in two different pastures, both with a single nest box.
Both are producing hatchlings.

It even looks like they behave properly now in regards to their nest boxes, they only claim the one in their own pasture.
Have you used DFHack's gaydar to check if your Turks are homosexual?