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[Teryn]

Hi,

I have been toying with my new Temple Fortress (my dwarves are now all about Religion as I mentioned in another thread, hence the name) and I was wondering is it safe to retire your ongoing fort, go read Legends Mode, and then come back and take the control again? Will plenty of things change while I'm not in control or are there things that I should do before retiring the fortress? I read from somewhere that there would be a 2 week time leap whenever you release&retake a fortress, can someone confirm that?

[Niddhoger]

Yes, there will be a time skip.  I don't think your dwarves will eat food, but creatures will have their positions scrambled.  This means any walled up werecreatures, vampires, forgotten beasts, and other nasties will be loose in your fort.  Cage or kill them before retiring.  I think pitting them into the caverns might work... but don't quote me on that. 

The main problem, is that world-gen wars ignore your traps and defensive fortifications.  So that narrow and heavily trapped hallway lined with fortifications for marksmen and ending in a ballista battery? That drowning chamber? Your minecart shotguns and anything else INCLUDING your drawbridges that make your fort impregnable? All useless if your retired fort is attacked.  The only thing it checks are your soldiers and their training.  I don't even think it properly simulates equipment.

Thus, if I am going to retire the fort near towers/goblins/warring civ, I overproduce food.  Then I draft EVERYONE into squads for full time training with at least basic equipment.  After a year of this I'll actually retire.  I don't want the game to think a 100 strong goblin siege can overpower my 20 dwarves and all the traps/other !FUN! I've prepared. 

[PatrikLundell]

Another question is why you'd want to do this at all. I'd rather copy the save, retire and read legends, and then restore the copy. It seems your purpose is just to find out what's going on, without any actual desire to retire.

[Bearskie]

Btw if you have DFhack, just use open-legends.

[Teryn]

Thank you for the information. It's good to know that any captured beasts won't stay put. I also have to admit that I am not skilled enough yet that I would know how to make a goblinite pit or a minecart shotgun but perhaps that's something that I could practice next. Need to learn how to build a well again after such a long break. Without flooding the whole place, that is.

Another question is why you'd want to do this at all. I'd rather copy the save, retire and read legends, and then restore the copy. It seems your purpose is just to find out what's going on, without any actual desire to retire.

It's true that the main reason why I would have wanted to retire my fort this time is to just marvel on the Legends Mode information, but I also genuinely wanted to know what happens if you retire a fort. Because last time when I played, you could just abandon it for good. As Bearskie suggested, installing DFhack seemed to be the fastest option. I have to admit that I had never used it before, so I was a bit wary whether it will screw up my game (I did save backups) but at least so far everything seems to work as planned.

[infrequentLurker]

I've heard of several incidents where using dfhack check legends can cause your map to semi collapse or somesuch, revealing every tile in the map up to and including !!Spoilers!!

[Teryn]

Oh ok. Well I didn't know about that. So I guess I might just restore the old installation and save file then after I've marveled enough on the Legends Mode. Thanks for the warning!

[Niddhoger]

To be perfectly honest... DFHack is still in its buggy alpha mode cycle while trying to keep pace with Toady's patches.  Never use it without backing up your saves unless you are prepared to lose everything due to save game corruption, buggy !FUN!, or just general crashes. 

[Libash_Thunderhead]

DFhack is safe as long as you don't save. Use "die" command to close the interface after you done with it, then use legend viewer.