Another RL day, Save seems to work properly, came back to
19th Galena 209, late Summer
Taking stock of what’s happening:
7 dorfs, 1 ilder
1,923 fortress wealth
45 drinks in stock, mostly custard-apple cider from gathered fruits. (No strawberries, yet? Whyizzat?)
Fokorkubuk, Slippery Lancers dwarves, only civ known as yet. Kubuk? Was ist ein Kubuk?
3 turkeys sitting on [Forbidden] 37 eggs.
In that exploratory staircase, miners came across a couple of gems and a vein of bituminous coal on lvl 95 and digvx says it’s HUGE, spanning across seven levels (!). In this version of Masterwork, no chandler to make torches (Rendermax) and wood is flippin’ everywhere so fuel is no longer a limitation for a metals industry = no big deal. Still, that’s a lot of coal. [note: I don’t consider digv/digvx to be a cheat, just a timesaver; game is being played without cheats and maybe without exploits. Save this next one --]
Well, hell – there is no aquifer on this embark site. Say what?? Embark Prospect is “rough estimate,” yeah, right. First cavern opens on lvl 90 which ain’t deep; the surface is lvl 105; this old laptop has serious FPS issues when the caverns are breached so, marked it. OK, back to unreveal and marking DFHack for same. Alright then, back to civil planning: standard central staircase to optimize map for exploratory mining or Dolomite Mountain at the original shaft?
Prospect All is now … different from the embark screen shot. By a lot.
If it wasn’t for the world-wide aquifer, this would be a great embark, gold (coins) is a key for Masterwork mod.
Important Question: this is – for these seven – a new embark, a new game. But it’s Turn 10 on a community world so do we have a window before invasions start or has that switch been flipped already? Straight for leather armor/under-armor? Maybe some copper weapons and helms would be a good thing. Quick and early wooden walls? *Everything* is out in the open to start. Smelting now our remaining embarked hematite ore for a second anvil, we found dolomite so maybe a steel axe for Axe? Assigning him now to train a dog as meat shield. No, we’re not; brought an extra female dog for insurance but the male dog is ‘missing,’ damn. OK, female dog, Hunting it is. Checking combat report and that Giant Snail bit a dog in the head, exploding it. Damn. Wasn’t assigned yet, pet coffin? Our first casualty. Switching Axe from smelting to animal training, had forgotten just how much micromanagement there is in a new embark. Grumbling expedition leader Adil is a poet, maybe she’ll compose a few lines for a eulogy. Oh, right, in this version, need two iron cauldrons to have a metallurgist for steel. Well, we have dolomite and just enough hematite ore for one steel weapon. A Giant Snail is evidently tougher than it looks. Wish DFHack still had unit-info-viewer, think I’ll ask that on the proper Bay 12 thread. This current version is 0.43.43-r1 . Opening self for flaming response now – edit -- A: command is now gui/unit-info-viewer. If DFHack had a SpellChecker, wouldn’t have been necessary to ask that ...
That exploratory shaft also revealed cobaltite close to the surface. Doesn’t the old manual say something about cobalt as a Plan B for iron-poor sites? Checking Smake’s Metals page on the Masterwork Wiki: it’s not listed, of course the Cobalt page is empty, raws say it’s heavier even than bronze, decent shear but with low impact resistance … gems: does this version have a gemforge? Yes! That staircase revealed a few gems, now we need a millstone and a couple of mechanisms. Alrighty, then, I’ve never played with gem armor before but has to be good enough for a Giant Snail, right? Better than copper in any case, impact yield and fracture are even better than bronze. Who knew? Digging gems, building a temp Mechanic’s station up top, delaying more important matters because this is more interesting.
24th Galena
No anvil yet. Wake up, Overseer, turn on the proper skills in Therapist. Stocks comparison says a wooden ball is worth twice as much as a wooden spike. We have 3 weeks until the dwarven caravan and nothing yet to trade. Hauling some of that wood now over close to the Carpenter’s.
27th Galena
Won’t be any idlers for awhile; hauling dolomite as our only stone and it’s a ways away. That Giant Snail was maybe faster than expected, has left the screen to be replaced by Giant Grasshoppers. They’re really big, I recall, so leaving them alone. Will a gemforge need rough or cut jewels for armor and such? Maybe a glass forge? Sand we have.
28th Galena
An exceptional kumquat wood spiked ball is worth 632. Exceptional! 126 for basic, 256 for well-crafted. Edit: superior, 504. Wood we also have. Elves, maybe not. Another wheelbarrow would likely speed things along getting material for the mason.
1st Limestone 209, early Autumn
Dumat Fik is up to lvl 4 as a carpenter, Skilled. It’s not the best of moodable skills but one that we need for now. Making a couple of beds and miners are hollowing out part of the hillside for a temp dormitory. It’s really time for some planning around here but another two week’s worth of tasks are already assigned. Oh, right, need a Depot and a Liaison’s office, they’re next. Stone blocks, I guess.
Bookie, what’s taking so long with that millstone??
“I don’t feel like telling you about it.”
Well, alright then, be that way and have another drink. 115 booze now in stock, still no strawberry seeds.
13th Limestone
Depot, Liaison office up in time. Putting a couple more beds in the dorm dugout just in case everyone at once calls it a day. Grasshoppers still on the surface, our only visitors.
14th Limestone
Caravan is pulling in. The dwarven Wish List: asked for everything, basically, esp. hard metals and gold for coins. Liaison’s Office says there will be options for calling Elves, Humans and Gnomes, good to know. Of course, when it’s time to haul goods to the Depot is when everyone gets sleepy. Many wooden balls but worth only a couple of thousand, no chance for ecstatic response so we’ll need to be careful. A couple of gold bars would have been nice, these dwarves come with lead. Picked up a couple of cheap waterskins and backpacks to start, will save stocks and labor. No decent animals. An iron anvil, always useful. A mithril mailshirt! Expensive but we’re only 7, taking it. A breeding pair of pigs. Tempting to go for a better weapon but we now have the materials for a metallurgist and the means for steel. In limited quantities. And besides, that mithril halberd is way outside our reach. We might get a mithril anvil for melting, though.
19th Limestone
Picked up what we could, they came with a lot of useless and a lot of expensive, not so much in between. A cheap rope, some undyed thread and cloth, a couple of rings to remind us those can be made now, maybe train a craftsdwarf someday with all this discovered cobaltite, a couple of foodstuffs and an exotic barrel of booze. Traded away all our wooden balls and 13 unfertile turkey eggs. Dumat is now lvl 5 in carpentry, seeing if there’s time to turn out a few more trade goods before they leave. Seven sets of hands is just not many, what does it take to draw migrants to this place? Bedrooms? Guess we’ll have to do that planning after all.
26th Limestone
Decided on a central grand staircase for now, 2x3 and got lucky: no wet stone. [edit: did this part blind, missed the aquifer so re-wrote the part above w/ Reveal.exe, last time] Then got very lucky: another vein of bituminous coal 4z down and below that, magnetite and flux stone. Steel works and blast furnaces, here we come. No more wooden balls for trading, shame those dwarves did not bring one single thing of gold that could be melted down for coins. Smelting magnetite now, won’t have time to make anything steel for this trip before they leave but maybe an iron trap component? We should have spent points on a weaponsmith and brought one less turkey or dog. Oh, well. First things first, digging out more on lvl 100 for a metalworks, putting a smelter there next to the ore and coal. Hotkey F3.
5th Sandstone, mid-Autumn
Migrants. 7, including an infant. 2 grown males. Absolutely no standout anythings, one with lvl 2 tanning as highest mood. No fisherdwarves, at least. A weaponsmith would have been nice.
9th Sandstone
First warning the merchants are about to leave, ~ 2K in fresh wooden balls. New haulers at work. Axe is giving it his best at a metalsmith’s forge.
11th Sandstone
Got what we could including two mithril anvils to be melted down. Some of their offered foodstuffs have turned 1x just since arrival, need to remember ‘food rot’ means what it says. One rabbit, 23, will be leather and tallow soon if not adopted, no other animals offered. Tarantula silk is 68 each, undyed? Wow, glad we put a pair of those on the Wish List up front. Time for more planning, Axe will never have an iron trade good in time. 5 idlers. The bookbinder Rakust came to us as a lvl 1 Hunter and I didn’t notice, he’s out there spreading his black bronze broadhead bolts on the surface in a foolish attempt to bring down a Giant Owl. Metalsmith is making a couple of iron picks, the new metallurgist now working on pig iron. Shame those two iron discs were a day late, they’re worth 7K.
9th Timber, late Autumn
How do we have 7 idlers when there’s all that stone to be dumped? Ah, “G” is now gather fruit, not garbage dump. OK then, GARBAGE DUMP next to the Mason’s in the new Workstations room, hotkey F4. Everybody’s busy. That would-be tanner now has an iron battlepick, the others are gathering points in smooth/engrave should they be the first mood.
19th Timber
Good news from Bay 12 forums: unit-info-viewer still works, command line changed to gui/unit-info-viewer. The Giant Pangolin now on the surface is 834:576 in size, I’m guessing that colon was maybe supposed to be a comma? No, or our turkeys are as big as our elephants. Still, a big pangolin. No idlers and we don’t need the quick-to-rot meat so, ignoring. Of course, we thought that about the damn SNAIL and then lost a hunting dog. Digging bedrooms. Smelting. Still working on a plan. FPS just dropped from triple digits to <50, I think it’s all the hatching poults. Or more exactly, all the worms dancing around the poults; each baby bird seems to have at least one wiggle icon associated with it. We’re going to need more butcher and tanner shops.
1st Moonstone 209, early Winter
Axe is now ‘Weps,’ lvl 4 after making a dozen or so iron short swords, probably for trade someday. Still only 13 workers, lots to do and not many hands; switching off between smelting and making coke, for example. Our new troop, the farmer Rigoth Il replaced Axe/Weps in Squad A and chose the best iron short sword to go deal with that Giant Coati that was bothering everyone. Still had most O screen commands on default, we didn’t go butcher it ‘outside.’ Booze is becoming an on-going problem: the bunch drinks a lot more than I remember. I’ve been in a different mod version since July’s turn, have forgotten much of this one.
4th Opal, mid-Winter
A metallurgist now in Metalworks, alternating steel and pig iron. Lone smelter doubling for bituminous coal and smelting magnetite, both right there. We still have yet to set out a fortress design plan.
6th Obsidian, late Winter
Not expecting anyone to visit but have a few trade goods just in case. Complaints coming in about all kinds of things, addressing them if slowly. There’s a quick well now on the brook, for instance and somebody is making at least a few iron cups. Miners have been focused on more bedrooms – keeping morale up and hopefully drawing more migrants soon. Fortress wealth is now 53K and a lot of it is those smoothed rooms. At least everyone now has a bed, next wave of migrants has the immediate use of the old dorm. Booze is always a problem; this version, dwarves drink a lot more than I’m used to. I keep looking for the Brewery, isn’t one. Gathering fruit, trying to raise our own plump helmets. We should arrange to fertilize those fields. About that mood: this is a vanilla core change I’m still getting used to; to care or not to care? Still, the point of this multi-civ world was to check on variability of invasions and I’m good with that. Especially as the save loaded successfully into an updated release of Masterwork mod. We should focus on defense; Adil seems to have switched his melee preference from an iron short sword to a steel war hammer, still need a leatherworks for armor, working on that now.
26th Obsidian
Plump helmets are up and should get us past this booze problem; local fruits will be available soon. It’s been months since I played this mod, can’t seem to figure out how to get the extended options for brewing – is it a function of available stocks?
A new RL day. Everything is so SLOW, not just DF, a laptop issue. Ram? Doing a soft reboot. Checking the DF GUI, everything seems mostly OK, adjusting for Pet Coffins and standardized meat, that’s a ridiculously long list otherwise. Most everything is ON except werebeasts and night creatures. Invaders at default settings. WORD is back to normal, trying again – and the game loads instantly, that’s a good sign.
1st Granite 210, early Spring
The game came back right where I’d left it, constructing a leatherworks; was the hang up from a Save, w/o message? Either way, seems to be working again w/o loss of time. Odd, that.
8th Granite
FPS is back up where things just fly by quickly so, pausing to take stock. The (too many) poults are now assigned to a couple of cages, that likely helps FPS although graphics still seems low. Spot check on moods: most everybody’s satisfied, general bitching for lack of tables, etc. So much to do and only 14 dwarves! Squad A now has two members with steel weapons, an axe and a hammer. Weps is up to lvl 5 and has made two steel discs worth 30K so we’re certainly set for the next traders, he’s continuing to skill up w/ iron short swords. As long as the metalworks has flux, magnetite and coal right there on the same level, hey.
Overall, this is an amazingly lucky embark: flux, easy iron ore that did NOT show on Prospect, LOTS of coal, Untamed Wilds, a brook. warm. There’s some cotton and rope reeds growing wild so textiles someday will be easy. OK, have been putting off that general plan for too long and now there are 4 idlers, time to get to work.
9th Granite
Food is rotting away, making stone pots to delay that. Does booze go bad? That’d be terrible in this place, doesn’t seem to or at least we’ve never had any around long enough to be showing x’s in the stocks screen.
Status: several miners are skilled to lvl 4 and working much faster. Wealth is 100K:
Dug a couple of extra bedrooms as standby. No wildlife visitors, a Giant Anole came and was hassling a dog, miners took ‘im out with their iron battle picks. Note: no awakened stones yet, we’ve been lucky in that regard. Starting a Tombs for the inevitable funeral duties. Caverns start of lvl 90 (FPS issues, old laptop).
10th Granite
Elves are here? OK, surprising but, OK. 6 Anole People dragging along behind, we can deal with them. Glad we have those trap components, Weps is switching over to a couple discs of iron for trading options at lower value. Hope they’re bringing mithril, our two bars from those early anvils became helmets for Squad A which reminds me, there are now cloaks and leather armors to be assigned. Iron goblets in the meantime are worth 100 – 400 each, that’s something.
16th Granite
Shoot, the Elves have almost nothing of value: some wooden instruments, a few fruits. Nothing metal. A couple of tame giant animals I suppose we could butcher. Wooden amulets as if our guys would wear THOSE. Nothing written, nothing to drink, no cloth. Useless elves. Only Bookie has any trading skills, opened with a miner just for xp. A few iron cups and we have everything of worth they offer. Well, back to work. AAR: anole men are easily dispatched, gained no military xp except fighting, a bit.
18th Granite
Half-dozen leopard people now, Squad A dispatched. Second look at that Elven caravan: nah, they got nothin’. On the 20th, they left w/o any notice, something to remember. One week, tops. A friendly elephant with name is visiting? Friendly wild elephant? My, how things have changed, hope he breeds with our females. Speaking of which, our guys show many tasks of pen/pasturing those two, are they wandering? Large pastures, grass shouldn’t be a problem. I miss the stables of Ye Olde Masterwork, though, large grazers were easy to breed. And war train.
27th Granite
The original dorm room is now doubling as a MASH unit, Doren Meng got his leg torn open by a leopard woman. Bookie’s baby medical skills are coming in handy, dressing and sutures should do him up. Tombs is open, first coffins are ready for the inevitable.
15th Slate, mid-Spring
Calm at the moment, sending our Gatherer out for the whip vines and rope reeds showing up alongside the brook, will expand our farming options. Dug out an area for a Meeting Room which immediately filled up with more poults, now in a 3rd cage. Those things are getting out of hand, we’ll need more butchers and tanners soon but will be set for leather and hopefully have some rendered tallow to harden it; our Tanners are kind of stuck at the moment. Kitchen area and new farms will be next, finally decided where to put ‘em; Just South of the main staircase, will allow a secondary staircase from Kitchen stocks to what will be a legendary Dining Hall 3 lvls down in stone. Adjacent farms will minimize steps for food prep. A temp glassworks set up also, the surface is our only showing sand. One forge for some clear blocks: yeah, DF sunlight goes through anything but, doesn’t seem right to me. Channeled over the main staircase so it’s Light/Inside, should help with the adaptation issue. Guess we should start on surface walls for a courtyard, defenses here are all but non-existent and we’ve been lucky so far. One siege and it’s over.
[spoiler]
The beginnings of a Plan:
[spoiler]