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[Lemunde]

Sedurtulon

'Emeraldroad'

I'm not sure how popular these kinds of log posts are anymore but I'm going to make one anyway. I just recently got back into Dwarf Fortress after about a year's hiatus. I'm liking allot of the new changes and I even updated my tileset so I could get the most out of it.

I already tried out a couple of other forts so I've gotten back into the groove. With my last one I left as many things set to default as possible, just so I could get a good feel for how it's supposed to be played. Well screw that! Having over 150 dwarves, dozens of dwarflings, and countless monster slayers wandering around my caverns gets pretty overwhelming pretty fast.

So for this fortress I'm going back to my normal play-style. I cranked population down to 50 with a strict cap of 60, so I should end up with a manageable number of useful dwarves with a few babbies and dwarflings wandering around playing make-believe. I also set a cap on visitors to 4, although this setting seems pretty meaningless in it's current implementation so I'll probably be spending a lot of time kicking these guys out of my fortress. I didn't mess with aquifers or anything as I sometimes actually use them, although I haven't successfully pierced one since several versions back. I usually just try to get a neighboring biome that doesn't have an aquifer to try to get around them. Not this time, though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So onto world generation. I cut down on the number of sites to make history run a little faster, plus I noticed when playing adventure mode these sites tend to saturate allot of the map so having a few less sounds ideal for my tastes. I also made minerals frequent, which is what I generally set it to.

Hit 'enter' and after a few minutes of history generation I end up with... Xesosurza, "The Everlasting Domain". We'll see just how everlasting it is. Looks cool, though.

World details image:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't usually bother with legends at this stage as I like to leave allot of that a mystery, so it's straight onto prepping my embark.

I found this nice forested area next to a stream. No aquifer so I won't have to worry about that. Besides, some of the areas I was looking over were giving me inconsistent aquifer information so I decided it would be best to just avoid them altogether.

I was considering this desert area on the south-eastern part of the world but I didn't like that it was in a freezing biome. It's not that I don't think I could handle it, but I just prefer warm climates. Purely psychological, I know.

Anyway, this place seems better. Deep metals, flux stone if I happen to run into iron (probably won't), access to all the major civs so goblin raids could be a thing. Plenty of trees so I might get some of those nice fruity beverages out of them. Time to prepare for my journey carefully!

I don't usually nickname my dwarves but I decided to make an exception this time. I picked their names based on the things they like. For instance Dark Sun likes obsidian and sunstone, Tigress likes tiger leather, and Dr. Pepper likes plum wine, you know, because Dr. Pepper is made from prune juice. Bet you didn't know that! Dagon and Cthulhu both have a thing for tentacly sea creatures. Heaven just really likes pretty things like flowers and clear crystals. Finally Snake Eater likes helmet snakes for their heads, but hates fire snakes. So kind of a love/hate relationship there.

I also gave them custom professions and marked them with asterisks so I know that they're founders. "Miner" and "Farmer" are pretty straight forward but "Woods Dwarf" includes woodcutting, carpentry, as well as some skill in using axes as weapons. So if I get in a scuffle early on at least I know a couple of dwarves will be able to defend themselves. "Stone Smith" includes masonry and engineering, because I always find myself needing some mechanicking early on.

Nothing too non-standard with the equipment. Got rid of the useless stuff and added some leather for those occasional moods that "MUST HAVE LEATHER!"

For the group name I chose "Silver Hammer" with a screaming war hammer as the symbol. And for the name I settled on "Emeraldroad" of course, in case you didn't see the thread title. Time to hit 'e'!

So this is about what I was expecting. Lots of trees. Looks like some sand so that's good. With all the trees I could easily start a clear glass industry. The trees are almost all fruit trees including apple, cherry, sandpear, and peach. I'm already getting thirsty just thinking about it.

Lots of bamboo too. I'm honestly not quite sure if I can do anything with that. I'll have to look into it. Paper maybe? Or am I thinking of Minecraft?

No random creatures wandering around as of yet. I did notice some signs of lignite in the sides of the nearby hill. Fuel for furnaces certainly won't be an issue. Well, time to unpause and see what I can make of this place. I'll post a new update once I get a little bit established, or of something !!fun!! happens.

[Lemunde]

Alright, looks like I got all the bare necessities taken care of. The entrance is little more than a hole in the ground at the moment, sloping down three z levels with enough room to allow wagons through. Later I'll build something around the hole to make it look a little more appealing as well as a retractable bridge to close everything off if things get out of hand.

The trade depot is already ready to go whenever a caravan decides to arrive. Not that I have anything to trade at the moment. None of my dwarves are very crafty in the crafts making sense. I probably won't have anything worth trading until spring or summer. A hallway leads off to the west into my fort proper and up into my farming area where all my staple brewables are being grown. I may disallow plump helmets from brewing this time. They got a little out of hand the last time and brewing and cooking everything with plump helmets gets really boring after a while. Plus my dwarves tend to get sick of it pretty quick.

Several z levels down we have the main area with all the essentials seven dwarves need to survive. I decided to go for a hub-type design this time. In the center is a general meeting area where everyone can hang out and stay out of the horrible sunlight. You got all the workshops to the east and a small living quarters and adjacent dining area to the north-west. Bulk storage is on the western side and to the north is a food storage area. There's one still up and running for now. I'll add another still and a kitchen later.

Also discovered that there are tetrahedrite veins here, which is nice considering I wasn't expecting metals this many layers up. A storage area for wood is currently being dug out one z level above. I may be using that z level and possibly the one above for spill-over storage. I expect the food storage area might fill up pretty quick.

[MottledPetrel]

Warm, untamed conifer forest? I'm hoping that you set up some cage traps outside so you can catch some giant snakes for Snake Eater  .

[Lemunde]

Got my first wave of migrants. One of them appears to be a "monster slayer". I can't say I've ever seen one of those before. Based on his labors and skills he looks to be just another hunter type. I nicknamed him "Tree Hater" since he was complaining about all the creatures and tangled greenery when he first arrived. I added him to the Dyes of Practicing, which was my squad made up of my two woods dwarves. Incidentally one of them, Snake Eater, is the expedition leader so I'll probably have to remove him from the squad.

I usually put off setting up an office and living quarters for my fortress leader so I decided to get it out of the way early. It's allot bigger than I usually make it. Not terribly well furnished at the moment; just a throne for an office. I did manage to get it setup before the dwarven caravan arrived.

Speaking of which, they arrived shortly after. I didn't have too much to trade but my food stockpile was getting a little heavy so I decided to trade some cherry wine and sandpear cider for a bin of leather. Also I was having some trouble with giant kias swooping in and stealing stuff so I set up some cage traps to keep them out.

Dagon is working hard churning out blocks for my exterior constructions. I want to surround my pasture/gathering zone in a wall so my livestock and fruit gathers can stay safe. I also need to look into starting some above-ground farms.

There's just something so incredibly pleasing about that.

[Lemunde]

Got allot to update on before I call it a day so let's get to it.

Got a new migrant wave. No one too exciting. Mostly farmer types and another wood cutter.

I did quite a bit of expanding on the main area. I made an office for my broker/book-keeper/manager; one dwarf with many jobs. I decided if he's going to be so important he needed a name so I looked through his thoughts and prefs for some inspiration. I didn't notice anything all that extraordinary but I did notice that he was only 16 years old. Yeah, maybe I should pay more attention to who I'm assigning high-profile positions. Well his given name was "Asmel" so I just named him "Ass Melon"; a juvenile name for a juvenile dwarf.

Added some more workshops including a jeweler's shop and a couple of crafts shops. Also so the hub doesn't get too crowded I went ahead and made a drinking and dining hall area to the south with lots of room to move around. In the center is a nice booze stockpile to take some of the load off my main food stockpile. Later I'm going to set up some small stockpiles around the corners for goblets.

Had to cut some more trees to clear out a perimeter for the grazing/fruit gathering area up top so I needed some extra room to put all the wood. Originally I was going to stick to a single stockpile but it just couldn't handle the load, so I made another one right above it.

Damn cat. Okay, so I had to dig a side stairway so I could properly build and link up the retractable bridge covering the entrance. Unfortunately after I finished and decided to wall up the stairway on both ends, this cat decided she wanted to hang out in the stairwell. Had to tear down the wall to get her out. Not really a big deal but these things always seem to happen when statistically they shouldn't.

So here's the grazing/fruit gathering area I was talking about. Got a nice little pond up there in case I decide to let my fisherdwarves do their thing. You can see in the second image where I had to cut all the trees around the outside. My thinking is I don't want something climbing up in those trees to try to get over the walls. Technically they could just climb the walls themselves but I've never personally seen this happen. I figure by the time something comes along that can climb the walls I'll have a good enough squad that can handle it. Besides, most of those things tend to take the path of least resistance, which would be through the main entrance and right into whatever traps I have waiting for them.

So, yeah! My first artifact! Isn't it amazing?  <_<  Well, I did get a legendary gem cutter out of it. I think she deserves a fitting name.

[Lemunde]

Spring arrived and along with it an elven caravan. To help get rid of some of the excess stone I had lying around I had Milk Maid cut some of them up into gems. Of course that involves allot of tedious hauling so despite the fact that she's super quick at cutting it still takes her quite a while. I had Ass Melon trade them all for some extra fruit and nuts.

Looking over the resources I have available and what skills some of my "lesser" dwarves have, I decided to try out an industry I've never gotten into before: making oils. Apparently there's quite a bit of work that goes into it but the net result is some pretty valuable foods for the materials put into it.

First thing I need is some jugs. Tree Hater isn't really doing anything in his downtime so I made him a general crafter and have him churning out stone jugs. He's not skilled at crafting at all but you gotta start somewhere.

Next thing I need is a mill and a quern and I just happen to have a miller and a presser hanging around. I had them build a mill and a quern right next to the kitchen. The mill will produce seed pastes and the quern will be used by the presser to turn those pastes into oils and seed cakes. Checking the kitchen I see that I have quite allot of almonds which is quite a valuable commodity going by Wal-Mart prices. Probably not nearly as valuable by dwarf standards but we'll see.

My dining hall is all nice and pretty now. I got my fisherdwarves helping out with smoothing the walls. Just to the west I added an additional sleeping area. I don't generally bother with bedrooms except for a few special dwarves. Probably anyone who currently has their own name will get a room. Everyone else will just have to deal with the snoring of about a dozen other dwarves.

You can also see plans for a downward staircase. When the time comes I'll start digging down into the caverns. There's nothing stopping me from doing that now. I'm pretty good about walling those off before anything tries to sneak in. But I feel like waiting on that for now. There's plenty of other things need be done.

Now that's interesting. Apparently a writing of some kind ended up getting destroyed during the first year. I'm guessing a giant kia snatched a book from one of the caravans and since it wasn't mine I didn't get notified. I'm not sure if theft counts as "destroyed" in this case though. I guess I'll never know for sure.

A new migrant wave included an armor smith and this lovely, half-balding wench. She showed up holding a baby. Looks like she made an artifact some time ago but forgot what it was. I'll call her Flake. Time to start work on a metal industry.

In other news I discovered that there's not much you can do with nuts except cook them. A shame really. Need something to do with all those jugs and that presser. Guess I'll look into starting a bee farm.

Edit:

I posted too soon. This wave looks to be much bigger than the others. In fact shortly after all of the newcomers arrived, one of them had a baby, putting the fortress population right at 50, which is the limit I have set.

Along with the legendary weaponsmith, I also got a legendary bone carver. She also has no idea what it was she made. I guess that's some kind of bug. She likes giant red-winged black birds for their coloration and coffins. I'll call her Blood Raven.

Aside from those individuals I also got a fairly skilled metal crafter, a diagnoser, and an exceptionally skilled doctor.

[Lemunde]

I think it's about that time to start looking into the caverns. This first layer seems rather windy. I doubt I'll want to do any exploring through there. There does appear to be quite a bit of native gold and further down native silver and cassiterite. So looks like I'm good to go on bronze. Once I have my forge and smelter up and running I'll start looking into getting some of this stuff.

My second artifact is quite a bit more interesting than the first. The materials are rather mundane but the artwork tells some interesting tales. I imagine a "crone husband of the night" looking something like Miracle Max.

The crafter's last name translates to "Shootraptors" so I'm going to nickname him Jurassicus.

Forge and smelters are up and running. I got stockpiles for each of the ores I know are on the map, plus one more for iron ores if I decide to import it. The smelter and stockpile on the far right are reserved for processing coal. The fuel is then transferred to a stockpile on a z level directly above.

Directly below the entrance zone I set up this training area for a squad of macedwarves. May The Barricaded Libraries defend Emeraldroad well!

[Lemunde]

So my first significant kill was a kobold thief. Four pages of combat text with all of my macedwarves and swords dwarves wailing on the thing before it's head was finally crushed in by a recruit near the new quarters for the captain of the guard. They're adequately equipped but none of them are skilled at all. I think I may actually send them out on a raid; something simple to help get their skills up. Of course I've never done that before so this should be fun.

Dr. Pepper decided he wanted to get in on the artifact action. It's okay as far as wooden artifacts go, but I'm more interested in the forgotten beast parchment scroll that's drawn on it. Could some dwarven author out there actually have a bit of modern scientific knowledge?

Not much to say about this one. Nice variety of mundane materials. I think the crafter knew it was kind of boring so he carved out an image of a better artifact and stuck it on there. He likes buckwheat beer so I'll name him Buckwheat.

 

The dwarven caravan showed up and I traded in some bone crafts and extra weapons for some more leather and a variety of ores, mostly iron. There's supposed to be flux stone somewhere on this map but I haven't seen it yet. I used most of the iron to make some boots and gauntlets, and just to streamline production I had another iron anvil made and built another forge.

I think it's time I tested the waters with a raid. This one seems ideal with a population of only ten. Probably just a bunch of goblin farmers. On the map it's the icon just south of the dark fortress, with Emeraldroad far to the east. Well let's see what happens.

Hmm... Looks like allot of running away for my guys. Disappointing, but at least everyone returned unharmed. The good news is it looks like some of their skills increased, which was kind of the point of the whole thing. I'll give it another shot later after they've trained a little.

[Lemunde]

I missed a mandate announcement somehow and Tree Hater took a beating for it. He's currently laying sprawled out on the floor of my hastily constructed hospital. His teeth are still laying in a nice pile in the hallway.

Another raid attempt. This time it was successful. A little too successful, honestly. They snuck in and grabbed a bunch of junk right out from under their turned-up, green noses. I guess if I want some real loot I'll need to raid some place a little more high profile.

I attempted another raid later, this time with the intent to pillage to see if I could actually do some damage. The results were pretty much the same as the first time. One dwarf had his eyelid torn off, but another dwarf actually managed to kill a dingo man. No loot to speak of. Their weapon skills are now all ranging between adequate and competent so at least they're still improving.

I finally made some rooms for some of my named dwarves. The hospital is all fleshed out and stocked and I even added a little pool so it would be easier to get water.

At this point I think I'm going to retire this fortress for a while. It's pretty well established and really the only thing left at this point is to see if it can hold up to a siege or titan attack which may or may not ever happen. I'll play around in adventure mode for a while then come back to it. Thanks for following along this far and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed playing.

[MottledPetrel]

If you're going to abandon it, could you at least throw every dwarf into the military and send them to go attack some goblin stronghold to see what happens?

[Lemunde]

If you're going to abandon it, could you at least throw every dwarf into the military and send them to go attack some goblin stronghold to see what happens?

I haven't abandoned it. I retired it for a little while so I can mess around a little bit in adventure mode. I'll probably come back to it in about a week once I have some free time.

[Lemunde]

Well I took some days to try out some adventurers. All of them met a terrible end, mostly due to my own carelessness. I won't bore you with the details of their exploits for they were few and far between.

 I decided to switch over to Phoebus's graphics set for a while. It's the one I typically use but lately I've been using my own whenever a new version of Dwarf Fortress comes out as Phoebus tends to make a lot of changes to the raws and needs to be updated to make sure none of the changes conflict. With the latest release of Peri's DF Starter Pack I feel comfortable enough to go back to using Phoebus for now.

Returning to Emeraldroad, I've of course found a great deal of the furniture scattered around the map and bards infesting my drinking hall. I'm not sure what to do about the bards but I managed to get just about everything else back in order. There's a random butcher hanging out outside. He doesn't appear to be one of mine but he hasn't moved from that spot in some time. No doubt something will come along and kill him sooner or later. Indeed, I just noticed a human bard get eviscerated by a giant red squirrel. I sent The Barricaded Libraries in after it and they made short work of it. At least Blood Raven has some bones to carve up now.

Now that I have people dieing I need some coffins so I went ahead and built this little crypt on the lower levels near the first cavern. I found some giant cave spider webbing down there. I'm hoping it's a glitch related to the reclaim and there isn't one actually skulking around my fortress.

I dug a little deeper and found a cavern almost completely covered in water. Maybe I'll find a use for it later.

I've been considering a few things I can do to spice things up. For one I think I seriously need to beef up my trade game. I think allot of the baddies out there are ignoring my fortress because I haven't exported very much. I'll have to change that.

Also there are still a few of the new features that I haven't delved into. I want to look into making a library and a temple and see what !!fun!! things that brings me.

[Lemunde]

I did some trading for a bunch of random cloth and leather. I have a moody dwarf who's demanding cloth but he's not being very specific on what kind he wants.

I'm also trading for a bunch of various metals and gems and I'm going to turn them all into encrusted crafts. I can easily get ten times back what I'm spending on it now. I'm basically doing this as an example of how you can have a good trade relationship even if you don't have access to any valuable resources on your map.

Rings on a ring. That paints an interesting image. I like the name, though. Very dwarfy. The crafter is the wife of Jurassicus so I'll name her Clever Girl. She's also a swordsdwarf of The Barricaded Libraries and slayer of a giant squirrel. Fitting!

[Lemunde]

Well, I guess I should be careful what I wish for. This is the first significant threat to my fortress and I'm honestly unsure whether or not I'm ready for it.

Just to be cautious I went ahead and closed off the entrance, and just in time too. I let the giant run around outside for a little bit and take out some of the bards standing around, because what have they done for me lately? This appears to be a rather annoying bug where visitors and merchants will stick around forever not doing anything but taking up space and being targets for whatever baddies decide to show up.

Watching some of the combat, the giant doesn't seem to be killing things off too quickly. I mean it's not like he punches them once an their heads go flying off. I think I'll go ahead and try to take it out.

I activated The Barricaded Libraries and gathered them near the entrance. Too often I've sent a kill order and one or two of them get there allot quicker than the others and immediately get their asses handed to them, so it's better to make sure they're all in one place before sending them out. Alright, let's see how this goes.

Fortunately the giant was distracting himself trying to pull the head off a human bard when my squad showed up. They seemed to all be consistently targeting the head which took about three pages worth of fractures before Clever Girl finally split it down the middle. But what the hell is up with that one dwarf punching it with an amulet? I'll have to look into that.

  Armok preserve us, that's allot of amulets! This guy is walking around wearing no fewer than 57 giant bushtit bone amulets. I was wondering what happened to those things. Looking through his description he greatly respects artisans and has a greedy streak so I guess that explains it. I think only one name suits him.

[Lemunde]

I tried making a cistern using the nearby stream and failed miserably. Fortunately I was quick enough to wall it off to keep it from flooding the rest of my fortress. Apparently pressure plates don't work with floodgates the way they used to. What people used to do was build a floodgate, raise it with a lever, then build a pressure plate that when triggered would close it. But now I think it's "fixed" to where pressure plates can only raise floodgates. Kind of cuts down on the usefulness in using pressure plates with water, but whatever. I think the popular way to do it now is using raised bridges instead of floodgates.

Ahhhhh! Yellshocked! ^{(Free words of encouragement to anyone who gets that reference.)}

Some kind of stone chimes instrument. Pretty average as far as artifacts go. He's 138 years old and flimsy. I'll call him Splinter, for reasons.

As predicted, giant keas are trying to break in and steal my stuffs. This one didn't make it past the first set of silver spear traps. Shortly after, about five or six others decided to throw themselves into the mess of spears. Oh well, more bones for Blood Raven.