Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jazzeraint]

Whether it's reanimated dwarves wiping out their breathing comrades or a flock of harpies plucking dwarves to their doom, I rarely survive past the first season or year. (It doesn't help that I use the Diplomacy challenge, either).

But that's half the fun.

I'm curious, though, given the seeming popularity of evil biomes - how do you survive to Year 3?

[Space Wizard]

just bring some seeds and livestock, dig underground, and seal the hole. make a huge grazing/gathering area by digging out massive 200x200 dirt rooms, tap into a cavern and seal it off and you have grasses and dwarfy shrubs. commerce and immigrants can wait until you can properly defend yourself.

[ImagoDeo]

just bring some seeds and livestock, dig underground, and seal the hole. make a huge grazing/gathering area by digging out massive 200x200 dirt rooms, tap into a cavern and seal it off and you have grasses and dwarfy shrubs. commerce and immigrants can wait until you can properly defend yourself.

Assuming you don't create a zombie apocalypse on the surface this way, sure. I always figured take your chances with getting migrants inside - build an instantly-sealable door with floor hatches on the surface instead of just walling it off. Also build a trade depot outside and pray for the best.

[Mlamlah]

Honestly i tend to park my fortress only partially inside of an evil biome. That way i can increase the amount of Fun and make the game more interesting while also ensuring that i don't end up with an undead apocalypse in the first year or two. I tend to like longer games.

[NeatHedgehog]

I try to find half-and-half biomes, usually, so I can have butcher shops and fisheries without worry.

In either case, half or full evil, I usually embark with four turkeys. I order digging at the embark site, tear down the wagon, create a catch-all stockpile, throw junk in there, seal up the entrance.

In a full evil biome, I'll take two fully equipped swordsdorfs with armor / shield user skills raised over swordsman. They either hold the line long enough to get the entrance to my turtle tunnel or die, come back, and kill everyone. But if they're killed everyone else most likely would have been killed anyway, so no loss.

From there it's just getting the plump helmet farm going, make a nest box from the wagon logs, and make some entrance as far away as possible from the main clusters of roving undead for migrants to dash for, sealed by a bridge, and somewhere in the tunnel a switch plate in front of a retracting bridge over a trap pit (you can bring a bunch of cheap weapons on embark to fill it with weapon traps, too, if you want).

[Sanctume]

It takes time to randomly generate a small world with a nice Terrifying Tundra embark bordering some non-evil woodland/forest.

My recent worldgen, I embarked on a 3x3 where the first column is sinister mountains, and the rest temperate cold woodlands, with the last bottom-right tile a sinister brook. 
It's mostly flat, with lots of ores from gold, silver, platinum, and metals from iron, bronze and even bismuth bronze.  No aquifer and has sand.
There's a tower, but not a neighbor, however, my civ is at war with the Goblin.
It only rains filth or slime, so that's kinda lame.  I have yet to test if it re-animates the dead.

This embark seems to be taking off well.  I have only 1 layer of soil, and the next layer has bauxite (magma-safe), dolomite (flux), bitiminous coal and lignite (fuel) and liminite (iron) already.

By autumn, I already have an 11x11 roofed 2-z structure, with hatch exits, and starting to enclosed an outdoor depot.  No Liaison, only caravan.
Winter is almost over, but sadly no goblin attacks yet, and only scared 2 kobolds thieves so far that ran away.

[Loud Whispers]

Lots of luck, early forging of weapons and a rush to reach the underground.

[Jazzeraint]

I try to find half-and-half biomes, usually, so I can have butcher shops and fisheries without worry.

In either case, half or full evil, I usually embark with four turkeys. I order digging at the embark site, tear down the wagon, create a catch-all stockpile, throw junk in there, seal up the entrance.

I usually do that, but sometimes it'll place the wagon in the middle of the evil biome, regardless of where I've centered the embark rectangle. And then flying corpses spawn.

In a full evil biome, I'll take two fully equipped swordsdorfs with armor / shield user skills raised over swordsman. They either hold the line long enough to get the entrance to my turtle tunnel or die, come back, and kill everyone. But if they're killed everyone else most likely would have been killed anyway, so no loss.

I should probably try that, then. War dogs just don't cut it against corpse creatures, in my experience.

From there it's just getting the plump helmet farm going, make a nest box from the wagon logs, and make some entrance as far away as possible from the main clusters of roving undead for migrants to dash for, sealed by a bridge, and somewhere in the tunnel a switch plate in front of a retracting bridge over a trap pit (you can bring a bunch of cheap weapons on embark to fill it with weapon traps, too, if you want).

But watching a single corpse-dwarf wipe out a wave of immigrants IS pretty fun.

[Jazzeraint]

just bring some seeds and livestock, dig underground, and seal the hole. make a huge grazing/gathering area by digging out massive 200x200 dirt rooms, tap into a cavern and seal it off and you have grasses and dwarfy shrubs. commerce and immigrants can wait until you can properly defend yourself.

That's great stuff - I've just had many an embark get slaughtered before I could seal the hole. But I suppose that was bad luck, whether it was lethal syndrome bad weather that started a minute into embarking on top of my wagon, or how quickly flying corpse-monsters usually spawn in my playthroughs.

Can one embark with a pre-made door? Ha~

[Iamblichos]

It's the luck of the draw.  I just started a fort in a Terrifying embark, and the only evidence of evil is that it constantly rains frozen goblin blood 

Well, the fact that the first FB that showed up was this thing may be related to the evil level as well:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's not even reanimating.  In other good news, though, I'm only in my second year and I had a fifteen-goblin siege, so yay!

[Broseph Stalin]

I love evil biomes. My favorite was the intersection of a good lake and an evil forest. It had rain that caused vomiting, unconsciousness, and eventually death that was occasionally washed away by regular rain. I built a fortress over the lake where the evil rain didn't fall and kept my dwarves locked inside. The rain killed siegers and animals and when the normal rain washed it away the drawbridge was lowered and all my dwarves scurried outside to forage before the evil rain fell again.

[Funkmaster Rick]

My most recent fort was an evil biome embarkation. Alas, the only true evil was the prevalence of blood gnats and blood worms, necessitating a bit more food management than normal, and nearly killing off my entire fortress quite early: I didn't expect them, and lost about half my food stocks before I noticed the problem. Also, the occasional cloud of gas that apparently does little more than annoy my Dwarves. It had plenty of iron and flux around, a nice four-level aquifer, and all that jazz.

But no goblins. Life's hardly worth living without goblinite to mine.

[Sanctume]

A relatively safe way to get turtled-up in a hole is to build a hatch and place it on that 1 tile surface down stairs. 

A quick room below for a mason/carpenter and meeting room, and burrow helps get everyone in, then toggle the hatch as forbid is enough to prevent the early roaming corpse from going in. 

Then it's a matter of time to dig room for what I embarked with, usually booze, seeds, stones and logs. 

I once brought along turkeys, dogs and cats and they can be a liability if I wipe fast which making reclaiming that are harder due to having corpses inside also the next time around. 

It was kinda fun to embark with 2 miner, 1 farmer, and 4 military with copper axe, mail shirt, helm, high boots and gauntlets to try and reclaim.

[Immortal-D]

Remember, Evil has 3 strengths just like the other biomes.  If you are struggling; start with Sinister or 1/2 Haunted - 1/2 Wilderness.  Also, pulping remains the best tactic against zombies, so consider making your first squad Mace or Hammer.  Lastly, for any Dwarf seeking a unique challenge, I feel inclined to mention that I have a nifty WorldGen which creates Evil and Good-aligned lands adjacent (zombie unicorns, lol).  Just drop me a line if you are interested.

[NeatHedgehog]

I should probably try that, then. War dogs just don't cut it against corpse creatures, in my experience.

Yeah, war dogs are better suited for normal biomes, or as a second line against thieves. Bringing them in against undead is just asking for them to come back and kill everyone. They're no match for undead mountain goats or falcon corpses.

Heck, you have to keep an eye on the turkeys, even. I had an embark where one of the turkeys got killed and rose up before I got everyone inside. Next summer he slaughtered the entire elven caravan while a falcon corpse killed my entire fort. The fort only survived because I locked some children inside the hospital with a dying hammerdorf. By luck some random migrant showed up and Falcon Punched the falcon through the head.

But watching a single corpse-dwarf wipe out a wave of immigrants IS pretty fun.

My favorite moment is still the time a dwarf corpse slapped my fort to death with a leather glove.