To date, I still prefer Ye Olde ☼Masterwork☼ because
- The classic libraries were effective and simple: grow and press some tubers for glue, use ink, pen and something to write on to make simple books for each library, quickly bringing up skills in all the areas – including personality traits. No more scrambling to keep migrants from mooding into Legendary Tanners. The new scrolls and scholars system might well be fantastic someday but, not yet.
- Morul’s Tavern had the podium and the speeches raised awareness and trait levels; my child duchess was noble.
- Pipeweed calmed tantruming-prone dorfs.
- The Guildhall wasn’t sexist.
- The Embassy gave more options (although, did Emigrate ever actually work??). Declaring War on the Elves should be every dwarf’s dream come true.
- Ferric Elves: a great seed idea.
- Magic. Maybe not dwarfy but the White Wizard was best for battling wandering necros. Took flippin’ forever to train one, though.
- War Beasts. Cool. Combat texts of Raptors with those spinning, kung-fu, eviscerating back kicks.
- The Apothecary was primed for ‘someday’ syndromes and diseases.
- Better use of the Blood God; why meditate and pray to all these wimpy wannabee deities when you can do blood sacrifice to Armok?
- Leather: so it was a coding pain and most players didn’t bother with it but studded, lamellar leather armor was lightweight and certainly good enough until invaders come with steel weapons. A dozen leatherwing bats were good for a large fort’s requirement.
- Frost Giants. Maybe Titans are a drop-in match but, bifrost. And a good storyline.
- Blast Furnaces: wood (and apples and plums and walnuts …) are everywhere in the new release. Energy/coke/charcoal USED to be the constraint on a metals industry and that’s the way it should be: magma as a game-changer. Wood is for the tree huggers, period. Except for making charcoal, of course, and a second Blast Furnace on the surface close to the Depot fixed that early problem.
- Runes. Way dwarfy.
- Easy mithril was there as a stop-gap when the invaders came unexpectedly early.
- My chemists never got the hang of making grenades or landmines but it was fun to watch them try. Exploding landmines from a trebuchet – just how dwarfy can one get?
- The Colosseum. Gotta have one. Most of the beasts were a waste of time but is there anything better to train against than a Bronze Colossus?
- Warpstone: less silly than Rock Ghosts, made for great turrets on the battlements.
Yeah, some of the best parts will be incorporated someday in a new release. But the cafeteria approach to Masterwork worked for me as it was: steampunk was silly so, I ignored it. Gollums were an interesting idea but more trouble than they were worth so, standard military (w/ a few select, trained warbeasts) was good enough.
Reborn is now clearly the only way forward with the newest vanilla DF and ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ and all that seems to mean lots of changes for non-dwarf races, OK, but I wonder how many others focus on DWARF fortress? I dabble w/ Hermit now and again and am glad to see it upgraded but Ye Olde ☼Masterwork☼ still has many advantages for some of us. Or maybe just me.
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Topic: Future of the mod - Progress & Suggestions - race poll (Read 77463 times)