I really like the idea of amber and it reminds me of styx:master of shadows. You can look up concept art or a letsplay from that game for inspiration. In that game it's a magical potion that takes a large industrialized/alchemical effort to be produced and both humans and elves want to produce it by exploiting the land with no regard for the natural world around them. It fuels your magical abilities and is addictive (I'm going off memory here it's been a while since I played).
Thinking of amber as a potion, and of the druid aesthetic in general also gives me vibes of asterix and obelix and their characteristic potions.
I already made some potions that uses amber powder, through there's the limitation of amber being only obtainable from Amber Trees (a good tree).
Maybe I could add something like an Amber Bush (with a better name, I hope), that gives a small amount of amber but can grow in any biome, so the amber isn't limited just for good areas.
In terms of amber making amberglass weapons, it sounds really fun. Though it would be nice to have alternate uses for this material other than making things. For example, amber could be used in the making of a beverage that when drunk gives a temporary syndrome of a slight +10% speed. I wouldn't make it give you amazing combat properties for a short while though (like asterix and obelix) because it would encourage hoarding the amber for a future siege that might never come and thus you end up never using it. Or perhaps the elves need amber-infused drinks to get through the working day (basically just relabelling alcohol to amber)
Dependency on a syndrome, like the dwarves needing inebriation to be happy, isn't moddable. Beyond that, I would like to give amber some more uses related with alchemy and magic.
One pitfall that I'd reccomend not falling into is making the amber industry a major source of easy high value traded goods. If you end up adding cool interesting things to do with amber, but instead I could also just turn it into cut gems and trade it, I'll just forego all the other options to turn it into cut gems. Elves should instead trade caged animals (like in vanilla). This also feeds into the theme of dis-incentivizing slaughtering of animals.
Elves dislike commerce. While their civ can send caravans to other races, their forests live in an autarky so no caravans will never come (and they can't even build a Trade Depot).
Lastly, make sure the main reason for slaughtering animals is lessened. In my case, I slaughter them for leather armor before I set up my metalworks, so being able to create 'amber hardened plant fiber' or something that can be turned into any item that leather can be used for, will be a boon.
Killing animals should low your druidic score, so your elves will be unable to use drudic magic (ergo, they will be unable to recruit animal people from the wilds or turning treant saplings into actual treants or train animals in a special way).
I'm concerned about wooden objects only being able to be made during the spring. Certain plants do grow during the winter, you know? Maybe this can be alleviated by adding in different types of wood? One of the fun things of DF is that you can make any object out of any metal, but certain metals (silver) are better for certain objects (hammers). So maybe in the fall you could plant a different type of wooden finished good seed that becomes a material with different properties? Like a different density? Different grow speed and base value?
I was thiking in something like this:
- If you grow items on Spring: Quality is affected by the Druid skill of the worker. Higher is better.
- If you grow items on Summer: Quality will always be the basic.
- If you grow items on Autumn: Basic quality, and even tattered items can be produced.
- If you grow items on Winter: The reaction will be canceled.
I could change the script to produce items with different properties every season (higher density in summer for good hammers/clubs, light and sharp items in spring for great swords and arrows, etc), but I prefered to use the wood from the local trees populations so it's more fitting with the worldgen elves that grows items from various different trees.
Lastly, is it possible to change the average personality traits for races? Like make them more likely to value Nature? This would make them receive unhappy thoughts when butchering which seems to be one of the goals.
see: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Personality_trait#Beliefs
What about increasing the chance that they like (multiple) random animal over a random metal?
see: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Preferences
First, yes. But the love for nature isn't a personality trait, it's a cultural value. Elves are the ones that most values nature (they hold nature to be of greater value than most aspects of civilization), but every individual elf has his/her own beliefs and some of them could even hate nature and feel happiness seeing an animal dying or a tree falling.
Second, no. Preferences aren't moddable.
Are elves carnivores? I find them making tea odd. I would assume they follow some kind of green pact (like from Elder Scrolls) since they get mad at any harm to plants. If they did eat/consume plants I would assume it to only be fruits and vegetables that naturally fall off, not things that have to be cut like leaves.
I would change the name of Stonecutter's Shop
I dont think elves should have different caste names and should all be "elves"
Elves are cannibals that would prefer to eat a living dwarven child rather than an apple. But they also use fruits and leaves from plants/trees, since you don't need to kill a plant to extract its growths. Their ethics are against the destruction of plants, not against the usage of their byproducts.
Yeah, I was thinking in naming it Stone Works (or Stoneworks). It's more graceful.
Since nobody answered my last Quick Question, I'll let the elves to use peat as fuel.
Poll
0 (0%)
Author
Topic: [WIP] Elven Forest - !!RESTARTED!! (Read 22920 times)