Print

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

[Nightcore Angel]

I was thinking...i want to have an epic leader in my fort, one that has slain many terrors throughout the land, or doing an RP of bandit camps-ofcourse these guys needs to be criminal. Ive not yet tried retiring my adventurer in my own for i have no idea where my "bandit king to be" is and the map in adv mode isnt the best help i can get. So yeah, have anyone tried this yet?

[DwarvenPitchforks]

You can retire adventurers in your fort, but if they're not a member of your fort's civ (chosen at embark time) then they'll be hostile. If they are a member, they'll just sit there - you can't give them orders or labours,  so they're useless pretty much. That said, a demigod axe-wielding psychopath in your entrance hall could be a good defence. !!SCIENCE!! will have to be done on whether you could retire a bunch of adventurers in a room in a fort, and open the door when a siege comes.

[Nightcore Angel]

You can retire adventurers in your fort, but if they're not a member of your fort's civ (chosen at embark time) then they'll be hostile...

wait, im sorry, im not quite getting you on this part...So what your saying is, say Urist mcMayor of my fort could be an adventurer? is that so?

[mikekchar]

There is a way to do this.  Start a fortress.  When it gets big enough (50 by default), appoint a captain of the guard.  Retire the fortress.  Start and adventurer of the right race/civ.  When it asks you if you want to be a peasant or locally important, keep pressing '+' to toggle the status.  Each time you do this, your starting location will change.  Keep doing it until it selects your fortress.  Then start your adventure.  They will be a member of the guard for your fortress.

As long as you don't change your allegiance (become a hearthsperson somewhere else...) you will remain a member of the guard for your fortress.  If you retire your adventurer in the fortress, and unretire the fortress, the adventurer will be there and fully usable.  You can even re-retire the fortress and unretire the adventurer to go on a second adventure in the future.

Take a look at the wiki for information on the consequences of retiring and unretiring your fortress.  It's a bit of a PITA, but not horrible.  There are only a couple of bugs I've found.  First, anybody who was a visitor before you retired your fortress will be randomly scattered around the map and they will be marked as hostile.  They aren't actually hostile (they do nothing pretty much), but it seems like they will never leave.  If you attack them, they will fight back.  If an invasion comes, they will fight on your side (it seems).

The other bug is that you might end up with more people in your fortress than you started with.  I ended up with a handful of goblins and a whole bunch of merchants.  They will haul goods, but otherwise are useless.  The merchants are actually just useless.  They hang around in the tavern and get drunk.

In one of my forts I think I've retired and unretired 4 or 5 times.  No serious problems to report other than the above.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You can also join a retired fortress by travelling to it in Adventurer, talking to the Captain of the Guard and asking to become a member. Or you can talk to the mayor and ask to become an entertainer. Both work fine. Becoming a member of the Guard requires some experience. Becoming an entertainer involves performing for the mayor. When you retire,your adventurer will be a regular member of the Fortress.

[Nightcore Angel]

Thanks everyone  i shall try these now.

You can also join a retired fortress by travelling to it in Adventurer, talking to the Captain of the Guard and asking to become a member. Or you can talk to the mayor and ask to become an entertainer. Both work fine. Becoming a member of the Guard requires some experience. Becoming an entertainer involves performing for the mayor. When you retire,your adventurer will be a regular member of the Fortress.

This gives me an idea, i never really played as a travelling bard since i was always too busy trying to become a necromancer, a fresh new perspective!

[Shonai_Dweller]

Thanks everyone  i shall try these now.

You can also join a retired fortress by travelling to it in Adventurer, talking to the Captain of the Guard and asking to become a member. Or you can talk to the mayor and ask to become an entertainer. Both work fine. Becoming a member of the Guard requires some experience. Becoming an entertainer involves performing for the mayor. When you retire,your adventurer will be a regular member of the Fortress.

This gives me an idea, i never really played as a travelling bard since i was always too busy trying to become a necromancer, a fresh new perspective!

Last time I tried this, not too many versions ago, the mayor accepted that my dance was awesome but kept asking me to perform when I wanted to join. Sleeping once snapped him out of it and he then let me join.

The mayor is generally not as easy to impress as everyone else. So you'll know when you've performed well enough.

[Nightcore Angel]

  ILL DANCE THE DWARVEN HARDBASS BLIN LIKE THE DWARVEN GOPNIK I AM!!! OPPA!!!  oh yeah!!! do the stalin squat, and the bear kicks, oh dont forget the !!Vodka-720 Airspin ChernUristobyl!! buaaahahahahaha *uglp gulp gulp Aaah...Zat iz gud flump helmyet vodka OOOOhohohoho!!!

[rhavviepoodle]

Joining a fort as an entertainer works like long-term guests at a tavern. If the mayor (or expedition leader) likes your performance, the adventurer gets added to the fort (ie it doesn't require a tavern) as an entertainer. After long enough back in fort mode, the adventurer -will- petition for permanent residency (and you'll be able to tweak labors and such). I'm not sure whether or not it works the same for joining as a guardsman (or whether they get immediate residency).

I do enjoy playing warrior-skalds in adventure mode, and I usually start with a high performance skill or two because it's much harder to raise those than combat skills. Plus, as people in the thread have pointed out, mayors tend to be incredibly picky and you'll need a very impressive melbourne shuffle in order to join up. On a side note, you -can- grind your performance skills in adventure mode by performing over and over again (usually with macros). It's awful, barely worth it, and I recommend you don't. On the other hand, sometimes being fabulous is worth paying awful prices.

On the topic of grinding performance skills, as I was grinding a bard's singing skill up, I noticed her focus attribute increase. I'm guessing that means focus factors into performance skills somehow, although I haven't seen as much mentioned on the wiki.

[mikekchar]

Lately I've been concentrating on story telling and poetry with my adventurers.  It takes an insane amount of time to level up in it.  However, I have found what seems to be a loose connection between reciting poetry that someone likes and reciting poetry that they don't like.  The people listening will queue you with clues ("Oh I love riddles", for example).  It seems that when your audience likes what you are doing, you can skill, but if they don't you gain nothing.  Normally, when I go to a tavern (or more often a mead hall) I will put on a show which consists of 10-15 pieces.  I will guage the interest of the spectators by talking with them.  It *seems* to make a difference, but I can't quite put my finger on what is important and what is not.  But if you want to level up in speaking ability, I think it will take months if not years.

One other thing I noticed is that my battle worn warriors are always exceptional dancers.  Probably something to do with kinesthetic sense or something...

Before you think this is hopelessly boring, if you treat it as a real gig and try to plan your show, it's actually kind of fun.  Chatting with people will reveal stories about them, then you can find stories that flatter them.  Similarly, you can figure out their enemies and find stories of their enemies falling in battle.  I don't think it does anything in game, but it's interesting from a player point of view.  The one thing you can't do (which is really frustrating) is tell stories about yourself.  The best you can do is tell stories about your companions.

Another idea (which I might do in a let's play) is to find interesting historic figures in the world, interview them and then try to spread stories about them.  Makes for a different game play than hack and slash.

[Nightcore Angel]

Lately I've been concentrating on story telling and poetry with my adventurers.  It takes an insane amount of time to level up in it.  However, I have found what seems to be a loose connection between reciting poetry that someone likes and reciting poetry that they don't like.  The people listening will queue you with clues ("Oh I love riddles", for example).  It seems that when your audience likes what you are doing, you can skill, but if they don't you gain nothing.  Normally, when I go to a tavern (or more often a mead hall) I will put on a show which consists of 10-15 pieces.  I will guage the interest of the spectators by talking with them.  It *seems* to make a difference, but I can't quite put my finger on what is important and what is not.  But if you want to level up in speaking ability, I think it will take months if not years.

One other thing I noticed is that my battle worn warriors are always exceptional dancers.  Probably something to do with kinesthetic sense or something...

Before you think this is hopelessly boring, if you treat it as a real gig and try to plan your show, it's actually kind of fun.  Chatting with people will reveal stories about them, then you can find stories that flatter them.  Similarly, you can figure out their enemies and find stories of their enemies falling in battle.  I don't think it does anything in game, but it's interesting from a player point of view.  The one thing you can't do (which is really frustrating) is tell stories about yourself.  The best you can do is tell stories about your companions.

Another idea (which I might do in a let's play) is to find interesting historic figures in the world, interview them and then try to spread stories about them.  Makes for a different game play than hack and slash.

Hmm...now i think im getting the philosophical arguments people are throwing around the internet, something along the lines of "Dwarf Fortress isnt about fancy graphic, intuitive and responsive controls, or the game giving you tutorial while holding your hands". Yes, i can see now that there is more to it than simple ol'skool style graphics hack n slash / micro management RTS, i do notice that the stories people post aren't...technically what happened in game? but rather how we perceived it to happen, welp, guess HFS, clowns and adamantine arent the bottom of the bucket, meta-game do literally expand the game experience to near infinity!
People should know about this! but too bad most cant bear the complexity and learning cliff (yes im new in this community and ive research the game before hand and found that DF dont have a curve but a cliff XD)

Joining a fort as an entertainer works like long-term guests at a tavern. If the mayor (or expedition leader) likes your performance, the adventurer gets added to the fort (ie it doesn't require a tavern) as an entertainer. After long enough back in fort mode, the adventurer -will- petition for permanent residency (and you'll be able to tweak labors and such). I'm not sure whether or not it works the same for joining as a guardsman (or whether they get immediate residency).

I do enjoy playing warrior-skalds in adventure mode, and I usually start with a high performance skill or two because it's much harder to raise those than combat skills. Plus, as people in the thread have pointed out, mayors tend to be incredibly picky and you'll need a very impressive melbourne shuffle in order to join up. On a side note, you -can- grind your performance skills in adventure mode by performing over and over again (usually with macros). It's awful, barely worth it, and I recommend you don't. On the other hand, sometimes being fabulous is worth paying awful prices.

On the topic of grinding performance skills, as I was grinding a bard's singing skill up, I noticed her focus attribute increase. I'm guessing that means focus factors into performance skills somehow, although I haven't seen as much mentioned on the wiki.

If i wasn't wrong, when you join as a mercenary, you get you own room in the inn and the barrack, but that needs to be managed in fort mode, so maybe switching between the 2 modes could help you in skipping the arduous training process as a bard? Sent it to continuously play and entertain guests.

[mikekchar]

Yep, Nightcore Angel, that is my feeling too.  However, learning how to play the game in the more open style is difficult, as you say.  I don't think it necessarily needs to be quite so difficult, though.  Most tutorials point people straight at the game mechanics, which are the hardest part of the game.  I think there might be a different approach that would appeal to other kinds of players.  To be honest I'm in the middle of editing the first few episodes of a tutorial/let's play that takes a completely backwards approach:  Create a world, review it in legends to find something interesting, create an adventurer to explore the interesting thing (without necessarily fighting), and then finally building a fortress to achieve some kind of in game goal.  Then rinse and repeat.  I'll give a shout out to Marcus Aurelius's World of Enthador Let's play for his series of fortresses linked to history.  Those are really awesome, but I think even more can be done.  I've been spending a while trying to tease out what works and doesn't work in the current version of the game ;-)

BTW, if you don't want to grind and adventurer, you can have them start in your fortress as a guard, retire immediately and then have them train for a year or two as you play fortress mode.  Then when they look buff enough, you can retire the fortress and unretire your adventurer.  I tried it just a little while ago and it worked extremely well (apart from dying almost instantly due to be a bit over confident against some goblins -- they were clad head to toe in steel!)

[Nightcore Angel]

Ah yes, thanks for making me aware of these , it does work and conveniently skips the grinding process, im going to restart my world now and try to make a hero factory fort, also with the YT channel too, he shows me some interesting things im not even aware of previously

[Vorox]

  The one thing you can't do (which is really frustrating) is tell stories about yourself.  The best you can do is tell stories about your companions.

How so? I remember being able to do it, don't exactly remember how but I think it involved choosing to tell a story about a place in the menu, and then about the thing you did in that place.

[mikekchar]

How so? I remember being able to do it, don't exactly remember how but I think it involved choosing to tell a story about a place in the menu, and then about the thing you did in that place.

Oh!  I think you are right.  Good one! :-)  I'll have to give that a try.