Print

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

[Corona688]

There are a lot -- a *LOT* -- of skills to choose from now, including some which are pretty hard to bullshit when you need them, like the medical ones.  There's also a heck of a lot more stuff to cart around like ladders and goblets, so enabling too many of them may mean there's nobody left to move things.  Plus I'm thinking of giving everyone adequate dodging and swimming skills so the expedition doesn't get insta-gibbed by the first cave crocodile.  I'm having to do some deep rethinking.  Some skills may have to be sacrificed.

This is a typical loadout of mine:

• "Battle Engineer" -- Axedwarf with part-time skills
• Architect, Mechanic, nothing which keeps him chronically busy
• Never hauls, except maybe wounded
• "Mudman" -- Planter and Bone Doctor
• Does no Hauling
• Will have time in the off season, Beekeeping or Animal Training perhaps?
• "Intern" -- Diagnoser, Surgeon, Suturer, Hauler
• Little part-time social jobs like Appraiser and Manager
• Which medical skills get priority?
• Hauling will need to be disabled when things get busy
• "Dirt Fish" -- combined Miner / Mason
• Disable masonry with first migrant wave
• May haul stone until first migrant wave
• "Whittler" -- Will spend his time making stonecrafted pots.
• Should he know weaponcrafting?  Hard-to-practice skill.
• Does no hauling
• "Hick" -- Woodcutter / Carpenter / Brewer
• Does no Hauling, except maybe wood
• Will waste time if not micromanaged, turn off either carpentry or brewing at first opportunity

This works when they turtle up, but has no "punch" if they settle anywhere dangerous and very little time left for hauling.  Yet as far as I can tell there aren't any skills I can safely dispense with to keep more axedwarves.  Any suggestions?

[Kogan Onulsodel]

Some of those don't necessarily need points in them... if your first round of beds and doors are low quality, made by dabblers, that's probably okay, and it would let you get in another axedwarf or two, if that's your concern. I've certainly never had food troubles because my planter at the start was dabbling.

[Corona688]

Hmmm, you're right -- it WOULD make sense to make the farmer an Axedwarf, especially when cavern-farming.  If I offload another medical skill somewhere, maybe I can arm the doctor too.

[feelotraveller]

To answer your specific question(s):

I find Diagnoser to be the most important medical skill.  It applies to all injuries and getting a speedy and accurate diagnosis helps with all treatment.

Animal Trainer is far more useful than Beekeeper and not only because it has a quality component.  My beekeeper -if needed- tends to be a dwarf who is otherwise useless for just about everything (and hauls most of the time).

I wouldn't bother wasting points in Woodcutter.  Either you have lots of trees and it levels of its own accord or you don't and it doesn't need to level.  [Early on I tend to cut 16 trees (=480 xp so still dabbling and no rust...) which gives loads of wood for the first season or two.]  Your Axedwarf could probably be the early temporary woodcutter...

And I definitely would not waste points in Brewer.  It levels quickly (more so with bigger stacks...) and is also speed only.

---

Other skills I like to embark with are Herbalist, for early food and building up an outdoor seedstock; Cook for ridiculous wealth generation and/or seed roasts; and Armoursmith since that and Weaponsmith are probably a lot more important for the early military than any starting skills.

There are many, many posts/threads on embark skills and many thoughts about how to go about it.  Personally I never take any medical skills nor do I spend points on mining which levels pretty quickly.  But these could be very useful for more extreme embarks.  Also worth considering is Teacher for a skilled up military dwarf - not that I take it.

[Bradders]

I typically put points in stuff thats difficult to train early, or that takes an inordinately large amount of time/resources, and stuff that is just too useful to pass up.  So, basically:

2 Miners

• 3-5 ranks in Mining, higher if little soil (stone takes a long time to mine with noob miners)
• one miner gets Apparaisal/Judge of Intent
• remaining points go into non-weapon combat skills, picks are weapons too

1 Carpenter

• Doesn't actually start with any points in carpentry, it levels SO FAST compared to masonry etc.
• Is often my doctor, 1 point in each medical skill
• remaining points go into combat skills

1 Mason

• 5 points in Masonry
• 5 points in Architechture
• This guy's too smart for fightin', and his skills take a long time to train, so they start leveled

1 Gardener

• 5 points in Growing, as it drastically increases food production
• If my carpenter isn't my doctor, this guy is
• If he has spare points, into combat skills they go

1 Smithy

• 5 points in Armorsmithing, ideally this dwarf is a steel-lover
• remaining points go into combat skills

1 Hunter

• This dwarf gets an interesting spread of skills, usually:
• 3-4 points in Ambusher
• 3 points in Wrestler
• 1 point in marksdwarfship
• 1 point each Dodger, Armor User, Observer

Honestly, nobody does much hauling in the first couple seasons, there's just not enough dwarfpower, and too much other stuff to do.  Among my embark supplies are sheep and turkeys, a couple units of leather, plump helmets, cave wheat, seeds for the other plants, 3 cassiterite and 3 malachite for bronze, and a bunch of near-empty barrels of single units of meat and milk.

• The miners get busy immediately, digging for a few stones before clearing a couple soil layers for immediate lodging, farming and workshops underground.
• The hunter has no tools to hunt initially, so he ends up doing a lot of bitchwork at the start: cutting timber, milking/cheesing/shearing, making nest boxes, making a quiver and crossbow and bolts, stone pots, small amounts of hauling since food/hunting isn't an issue in the first month.
• The carpenter starts churning out wooden goods: first wave is a few buckets, barrels, wheelbarrows, a stepladder, then 7 beds, and then a repeating bin/barrel/bin/barrel/bin/bucket/bin/wheelbarrow job until exhausted.  He will be a rank 10 carpenter before the mason hits 8, and the mason starts at 5 to the carpenter's 0.
• The mason makes a few blocks, sets up a wood furnace, a smelter, a few chairs and tables, and then starts cooking embark food supplies and turkey eggs once the basics are down. Turkeys produce PRODIGIOUS amounts of food.  Once the cooking is done, back to producing stone furniture, now including cabinets, coffers etc.
• The smithy starts processing the coal and makes a few units of bronze for initial equipment and armor.  He ends up doing some hauling between armament orders, does some light engineering, and occasionally takes over cooking duties.
• The gardener brews all of the plump helmets and cave wheat from embark immediately, and plants the seeds produced from his brewing as soon as there's space

 
Once migrants arrive, you can start dividing labor better and start hauling goods to stockpiles - before then, you've got to just minimize the distance dwarves travel for jobs by limiting your facilities to a central hub.  I hardly even use stockpiles until summer, except for food and seed stockpiles, to keep the stuff from rotting.

Combat skills among all dwarves is an interesting topic - do you give them all 1/1/1/1/1 in weapon/shield/armor/dodge/wrestling?  Or do you play the long con and have each dwarf specialize for future group training efforts?  I figure the latter, since only the Hunter is going to be out-and-about fighting junk, and he has a dog for backup anyway.

[vjmdhzgr]

There are a lot -- a *LOT* -- of skills to choose from now, including some which are pretty hard to bullshit when you need them, like the medical ones.

Except that medical skills only affect the speed at which things happen. They're very low priority. That's like saying threshing is a very important skill to get. Unless you're getting so many injuries that you're having whole hospitals full of dwarves, you're not going to need very high medical skills. Just make one dwarf a chief medical dwarf and enable all medical skills on them and you're good until they maybe get injured somehow.

[Corona688]

Except that medical skills only affect the speed at which things happen. They're very low priority. That's like saying threshing is a very important skill to get. Unless you're getting so many injuries that you're having whole hospitals full of dwarves, you're not going to need very high medical skills. Just make one dwarf a chief medical dwarf and enable all medical skills on them and you're good until they maybe get injured somehow.

Really!?

That makes things simpler.  Thanks.

[Corona688]

Thanks guys, this is very, very useful.  Now Bradders, you say "this guy's too smart for fightin'" -- I say he's too smart not to;  I'm not saying "put him on the front lines", just...  my forts often fail early due to crucial people bitten in half during the first month.  I'm sick of turtling up, I think its time to give them some teeth:

• Intern:  Novice Diagnostician, Novice Surgeon, Novice Suturer, Novice Appraiser, Adequate Axeman, Adequate Wrestler, Adequate Dodger.
• Hick:  Woodcutter (no skill), Carpenter (no skill), Brewer (no skill), Adequate Cook, Competent Axeman, Adequate Wrestler, Competent Dodger.
• Mudman:  Competent Grower, Adequate Axeman, Adequate Wrestler, Adequate Dodger, Novice Bone Doctor.
• Dirt Fish:  Adequate Miner, Novice Mason, Adequate Fighter, Novice Wrestler, Adequate Dodger, Adequate Swimmer.
• Axe Hauler:  Competent Animal Trainer, Competent Axeman, Adequate Wrestler, Competent Dodger.
• Whittler:  Skilled Weaponsmith, Competent Stone Crafter, Competent Dodger.
• Battle Engineer:  Adequate Building Designer, Adequate Mechanic, Adequate Axeman, Adequate Dodger.

_{That's right everyone gets dodging I'm sick of being devoured by crocodiles and batmen.}

[Bradders]

Werebeasts are for sure a problem, and the largest cause of abandoned forts for me, but Mr. Mason'tect is the one, singular dwarf I can count on to not be above ground or in harms way.  That falls to whichever poor sap is dealing with livestock, logging, hunting or planting/gathering. 

Architecture/Building Design is such a niche skill that hardly adds any value until very late anyway, and is almost useless until you have excellent refined materials to build your masterpieces out of (that platinum block + masterfully dyed masterwork GCS silk rope + masterwork aluminum bucket + masterwork golden mechanism well, doe) , that you can probably drop it for combat skills anyway. 

[Immortal-D]

I am just enjoying seeing other peep's founding Dorfs   Here's my default start;

Miner, Competent
Miner, Competent
Diagnosis, Competent; all other doctor skills Novice.
Grower, Adequate; Herbalist, varies (a glacier or desert won't need plant gathering), manually assign cook & brewer after embarking
Mason, Novice; Stonecrafter, Novice
Carpenter, Novice; Woodcrafter, Novice; manually assign wood cutting after embarking
Alt: Make the Carpenter Dwarf a Military leader or Smithy, depending on resources (Glacier, desert, etc. won't need a carpenter for quite some time)
Bookkeeper, Adequate; Manager, Adequate; (I hate waiting for a new Manager to spend like a week filling a single order)

[Bradders]

How are you getting 7's and 8's, mods?  My vanilla starting dorfs can't go over 5's, you hack!   

[Immortal-D]

How are you getting 7's and 8's, mods?  My vanilla starting dorfs can't go over 5's, you hack!   

Not at all.  I mean, I do use mods, but not for skills.  Just press Tab to switch between equipment and Dorfs.  When you see the Founder's names, you can use arrow keys to move over to the skills list and choose what to level up.  Just make sure you have enough Embark points; getting a Skill to 7+ is pretty expensive.

[vjmdhzgr]

How are you getting 7's and 8's, mods?  My vanilla starting dorfs can't go over 5's, you hack!   

I think they mean when it costs 7 or 8 to upgrade them. So, 3 and 4 by the actual skill standards.

[Bradders]

Aye, going from skill 0 -> 1 costs 5, 1 -> 2 costs 6, etc..  but you can't get the skill ranks to go above 5.  Gotta max the most time-consuming skills and the ones that produce goods of high quality, so, mining, masonry, armorsmithing, and growing are the main skills to max out in my eyes.  A dabbling grower/herbalist will produce ~1-2 units of food per plot, a proficient one will produce ~2-4, a master with fertilizer makes 9 per plot, and higher skill lets them plant more plots in the same amount of time.  Mining will skill up quickly if there's lots of soil tiles to train on, sure, but if you're just clearing tracts of soil for XP then you're not mining stone or ore, which noobs take quite a while to dig through, slowing down your whole fort in either case.  Armorsmithing is the better 'smithing to start leveled, since you'll probably end up churning out spiked balls and bolts by the bucketfull for export or defense anyway, and there's no such thing as 'too much ammunition'.

[Immortal-D]

For some reason (brandy), I thought they started at 5 and could go up to 10.  Upon closer inspection, turns out I'm right, but 5 = 'zero skill' in the embark menu, for some reason.  I'll edit my post to reflect the description instead of the numerical value, though in light of this exchange, the wiki could probably stand an update.

Edit: Armok curse you to magma Bradders, freaking 2 minutes