Remembering Nosimdok, Bookie had her doubts but the others were all incredibly excited so with some lingering concern, she traded over a shiny, finely crafted, stolen sapphire mug for the map.
15th Granite 89, early Spring.
7 dwarfs, everything standard in the GUI. Invaders: 4 easy and 1 medium ON, all at lvl 2 to start. A couple of mis-clicks: meant to turn off Strike the Earth, missed one of the three (Secrets) and that’s evidently enough. Necros OFF but evidently didn’t notice the 1/3rd of this 3x3 embark that is
Terrifyingly Purple in color. Preparing for the journey, all of 28 points to spend; sold back almost everything to have any skill points at all – most seeds, wheelbarrow, food, booze, etc. Taking 3 blocks of granite stone, 2 picks, 1 copper axe, 4 bars of copper and one of iron, some sand for cheap bags, a bit of extra leather and thread. 4 Turkeys, 2 dogs (1 hunting), a breeding pair of craigstooth boars, 2 moleweasels for vermin, plump helmets for early food and booze, planning to forage off the land early in a temperate clime and process/brew for seeds. A horse and camel pair pulled the wagon.
2nd Granite
Everything had looked so good to start: a flowing brook, decent-enough looking mountain, woodlands with plenty of flora. The wagon was dissembled, animals were placed in zones as perimeter defense and lots were drawn to see which of these unskilled 7 would begin life in their new home as a miner. (Bookie held the straws for the draw; Bookie cheated and was never going near a pick herself.)
I’m going to condense the first two seasons to a couple of short paragraphs with bullet points (because, it wasn’t written up at the time
:
- The mountain was surprise #1: what looked like soil and easy miner training on the big map turned into rock almost everywhere with just a bit of soil covering. With dabbling miners and two picks, that makes for very slow going, starting out.
- Surprise #2: Evidently, I missed seeing the
Terrifyingly Purple color on a full third of this 3x3 embark (!). Can’t see how but, must have. Was very surprised to see purple tree trunks on the surface.
- Surprise #3: Masterwork mod comes with an easy-to-customize GUI. Also, an easy to miss something GUI. In this case, there are three clicks to remove Strike The Earth mod and evidently I hit only two of ‘em. This is my first time with sometimes living and pissed-off boulders. Very odd, that.
Hitting rock almost immediately and with no mining skills, digging stopped almost immediately. What happened next, very much immediately, was a seemingly never ending parade of monsters, Giant monsters, flyers and visitors in these Untamed Wilds that kept the dwarves from getting much of anything done. Very surprisingly, the 7 accounted themselves well and nobody died early. The one soldier-wannabee, Axe, used his copper weapon and one-point skills to dispatch some things as they came along and shoo off many others. And usually more than once, as those purple tiles kept reanimating parts. That was not expected in this supposed to be easy, supposed to be a learning experience embark. Nearly all the time first three seasons was spent just trying to stay alive and I have a newfound respect for those players skilled enough that they seek out Terrifying biomes and high skill level FUN to start w/o DFHack cheating or extra points. It was all I could do to hang in there. But these 7 did – living in a small dorm w/ 4 wooden beds, everything piled in one spot, FPS running at 148
, alternating mining shifts going up and down in that mountain trying to find metals. Any metals. Prospect said they were everywhere. I thought Prospect had lied. 12 levels down, the first metal discovered was native gold. That was kinda expected, one reason this site was chosen is that gold was the primary metal along with a bit of hard metals and deep flux. Easy, right? That gold wasn’t discovered until late in the Summer season, with the fortress mood getting pretty surly about all those undead about – especially the undead parts that kept reaching up and grabbing people and pets – but word must have spread quickly because at Summer’s end, migrants. Only 3 but, the best group of migrants I’ve ever seen. That’s when I started writing it up.
Maybe?