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[Witty]

Spoilers below, be warned




In previous 3D version of DF, adamantine was an actual rare material found only in select mountain and volcanic biomes. Nowadays, literally every map tile has a bit of adamantine. It kinda takes away the magic and triumphant of the discovery when it's guaranteed no matter what. Not to mention we now have all those massive, far reaching dwarven sites that go pretty deep into the earth. And yet no one until your fort has ever bothered to utilize this super metal that's literally everywhere.

I say we make adamtine more a rarity again. Not necessarily as rare as it used to be, or as biome restricted - but still rarer than it currently stands. Just so it can get some of its wonder back. Discovering adamantine should be a great reward for only the most lucky and daring - not a routine thing. 

[kontako]

Spoilers below, be warned




In previous 3D version of DF, adamantine was an actual rare material found only in select mountain and volcanic biomes. Nowadays, literally every map tile has a bit of adamantine. It kinda takes away the magic and triumphant of the discovery when it's guaranteed no matter what. Not to mention we now have all those massive, far reaching dwarven sites that go pretty deep into the earth. And yet no one until your fort has ever bothered to utilize this super metal that's literally everywhere.

I say we make adamtine more a rarity again. Not necessarily as rare as it used to be, or as biome restricted - but still rarer than it currently stands. Just so it can get some of its wonder back. Discovering adamantine should be a great reward for only the most lucky and daring - not a routine thing. 

Yeah, I agree. It's always hard trying to justify going to lengths making bronze, iron or steel armour when I could just dig a little deeper.

[Elephant Parade]

I dunno, personally. Admantine serves as both a key part of progression and the gateway to the greatest challenge; it'd be kind of annoying to spend in-game years on a fort only to have both those things turn out to be unavailable.

At the same time, it being a real rarity sounds kind of cool.

I feel that the best (albeit most complicated) option would be to have an init option along the lines of [SPOILERS:NO] which, when set to "yes", would allow you to set it to "omnipresent" or "infrequent" during worldgen, or even set the rarity. Not sure which would be better as the default, though.

[Witty]

I dunno, personally. Admantine serves as both a key part of progression and the gateway to the greatest challenge; it'd be kind of annoying to spend in-game years on a fort only to have both those things turn out to be unavailable.

At the same time, it being a real rarity sounds kind of cool.

I feel that the best (albeit most complicated) option would be to have an init option along the lines of [SPOILERS:NO] which, when set to "yes", would allow you to set it to "omnipresent" or "infrequent" during worldgen, or even set the rarity. Not sure which would be better as the default, though.

While I partially agree, I feel that with the introduction of fort scenarios and such - digging to Hell isn't going to be the only ultimate endgame challenge. What if your fort is built as a highway reststop? Or a library to house ancient texts? These sorts of scenarios wouldn't need you to dig deeper (necessarily) to accomplish those established goals.

That said - digging to the deep would certainly remain as a scenario option as well. Hell, maybe we could go back to the 2D era of having set embarks for certain scenarios, so if you want guaranteed adamantine you'll get it.

An init option wouldn't be bad either. 40d had something sorta similar IIRC.

[Madman198237]

Well, I'd argue that any and all forts need good protection, what with goblins, dragons, megabeasts, semi-megabeasts, forgotten beasts, beastly beasts, and all manner of other horrific killing machines roaming around.

In short, there's a lot of killing, so even a library needs a good guard or 50 at the door.

[Elephant Parade]

While I partially agree, I feel that with the introduction of fort scenarios and such - digging to Hell isn't going to be the only ultimate endgame challenge. What if your fort is built as a highway reststop? Or a library to house ancient texts? These sorts of scenarios wouldn't need you to dig deeper (necessarily) to accomplish those established goals.

Even if it isn't the ultimate challenge, it's still an ultimate challenge—one that a lot of people expect and want. A fortress can obviously have goals other than "conquer hell", but I think it's still on most people's lists.

[vjmdhzgr]

Well, I'd argue that any and all forts need good protection, what with goblins, dragons, megabeasts, semi-megabeasts, forgotten beasts, beastly beasts, and all manner of other horrific killing machines roaming around.

In short, there's a lot of killing, so even a library needs a good guard or 50 at the door.

Part of the embark scenario thing is going to be changing that. So goblins won't send all their armies to your tiny little tavern in the wilderness.

[Neonivek]

The issue with making it a rarity is that EVERYONE just ensured that they had it all the time anyway. It became kind of pointless to keep it rare when it became the limiting factor on where you could put a fortress.

[NW_Kohaku]

Adamantine was never a rarity.  It wasn't in "select mountain biomes" back in 40d, it was simply in only one tile of the 16x16 region tile.  Now it's in alternating tiles.

And the problem was that DF games last a long time.  A player may easily play several games before digging all that deep in 40d.  Unless, of course, they had already found the spoilers, then they would go seeking it out.

And that "seeking it out" was the problem, as Neonivek points out. That's why we have a magma sea instead of having to search for volcanoes, now: So many players were going into worldgen parameters and cranking up vulcanism solely because they refused to play any game that didn't have magma in it... because what self-respecting dwarf would live without magma?  It just created giant swaths of land where nobody would play, so Toady made it so that every patch of land had access to magma.

The spoilers were never the metal, itself, but the results of mining it.  The original 2d version of the game quite simply made the whole Eastern edge of the map adamantine, as well, and I consider the 2d version of the game the more "pure gamey" version of the game.  (And talking about "making spoilers special" is gamey talk.) Each of the three preceding obstacles were ramp-ups in game difficulty that also provided new materials for equipment, while the final barrier, the edge of the map, would literally guarantee an eventual end to your game as you "dug too greedy and too deep".

And the reason why current dwarves don't find adamantine is because they're afraid of exploring the lowest layers of the caverns.  It's where the most fearsome monsters are, after all.  Each of the three layers of the caverns also can act as roughly corresponding to the three obstacles in the previous 2d version of the game, although they are clearly not quite so structured, and, realistically, much easier to bypass or wall off than the 2d version of the game made it. Worldgen dwarves just don't know how to turtle up their fortresses, so they only go down one or two layers in the caverns.

[helmacon]

As far as rare challenges go there are still plenty out there. You have your hell fortresses with zombie husk guards, you have your biome specific cloud effects and whatnot, you could get sieged by goblins with a demon general; Point being, there are still plenty of rare challenges out there and seeing as adamantium spires are one of the challenges you have the most control over (because you can always just choose not to mine it) there's no need to make that one rare too. We have to have some big challenges we always have access to.

[vjmdhzgr]

As far as rare challenges go there are still plenty out there. You have your hell fortresses with zombie husk guards, you have your biome specific cloud effects and whatnot, you could get sieged by goblins with a demon general; Point being, there are still plenty of rare challenges out there and seeing as adamantium spires are one of the challenges you have the most control over (because you can always just choose not to mine it) there's no need to make that one rare too. We have to have some big challenges we always have access to.

You don't actually have hell fortresses with zombie husk guards anymore. Not sure why, but Toady removed them. I agree though.

[pisskop]

i can agree adamantine is too common.  hard to justify digging so deep when vannila dwarves dont .


most times i ignore addy.  in communith forts I find it perhaps, but If i wanted the game to be easy Id play something else.  df is about the RP/simulation and those get boring when you know the outcome

[Toady One]

(I removed the first post with an insult and all posts after it where the fight continued)

[NW_Kohaku]

There already is a way to turn off all of the HFS, it's turning off the lower layers in worldgen.  Granted, that's not the topic of the whole thread, which is just limiting HFS access, but it's not like it doesn't exist.

I also generally choose not to mine the candy most of the time, at least, not until I'm "ready for it", as an instinctual habit from the 40d days when it brought the monarch early and could screw up your fortress progression.  Even now, what little "difficulty ramp up" exists in DF occurs based upon fortress value - the more value in materials in your fort, the more frequent FB attacks become and more powerful sieges are, to the limits of the game's ability to actually muster those kinds of attacks, which are, granted, declining more and more as the game's simulationism trumps its gameyness.

In Gnomoria, which is very much a more gamey version of DF, sieges are directly proportional to total created wealth, which means that it's a critical gameplay strategy to limit access to iron and steel until you have a powerful, elite military, because steel items are 25 times more valuable than mere bronze, and it means that you face sieges from enemy forces with a dozen elite goblins wearing steel with ettin backup rather than half a dozen goblins with maybe some copper armor on a few body parts and some wooden hammers.

To that end, I don't touch the bluemetal until I feel my fortress has matured enough to actually use it properly, which starts with having a reserve of elite fighters and legendary smiths who can actually use the limited quantities of the stuff to ensure as many masterworks as possible.

As for aquifers, there are ways to remove those, as well.  In fact, it's such a popular thing to do that the Lazy Newb Pack outright makes it as simple as a button press on the front page of its launcher.

People who "refuse to play with aquifers" don't find the settlable world cut in half, they just turn off aquifers, and can settle the whole world again.

[pisskop]

I dont think half the world would be unsettlable if addy wasnt on the map.

DF is a simulation, and offers a variety of conditions. Are you really going to argue that 'no adamantine' shouldnt be an option because some players are bent on finding 2 layers of shallow metal, deep metal, no aquifer, clay, and on a brook?

How many players refuse to play aquifers; probably as many who refuse to play without shallow metal, or safe water.

or, and not to trek into this, feel the need to trapspam?

I imagine that people (who can by the by turn off the magma sea) would be willing to play without adamantine everywhere.


pedit:  and you can turn off volcanoes.  and indirectly alter every other mineral but addy.

actually, im unsure if addy fluxes at all or not