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[King Zultan]

I've never played the game with DFhack so I'm not sure what all it does, but is it bad that you no longer have it installed in this or are you better off without it now?

[StrikaAmaru]

For adventure mode, the presence and absence of DFHack makes no difference to me. The only thing I ever did was start Stonesense a few times. If there are commands for adventure mode, I never looked them up. So, at least the way I play, it's better without than with.

I won't go as far as saying DFHack is useless for adventure mode, because, as stated above, I never looked into it.

(edit:) For fort mode, it's a great frustration reducer: it adds a search function to most stock menus including the animals one, when constructing it keeps the most recently-used material as the first option, it includes the workflow plugin which supplements the in-game manager for automated tasks, and once per fort I use quickfort to dig out my favorite catacomb.

[StrikaAmaru]

Adventuring in 180, part 4
New Blood

After the save gets changed to one where I’m less dead, I head back to OpenBook. Not only is it on the path to the fabled goblin camp, but I forgot to ask about the human empty butcher Apup, who stole a silver artifact sword which rightly belongs to Necate. Apup is supposed to have retired to Openbook; somebody has got to know about him, and if that fails there’s a chance to run into him anyway.

(Yep, at the time I was playing the game I still had no idea Apup’s already dead; I could have changed the log, but I think it’s funnier this way).

Except he’s not on the list of people I can ask about. Neither are any of the corpses littering the place, or Zuglar and Ngom, the two empty butchers responsible for most of those corpses. Well whaddaya know. Manual searching it is, then.

The list of guests includes another ‘goblin master’. Seeing as I killed the last one, I’d like some words with this one.

Spoiler: Large picture from inside OpenBook (click to show/hide)

She turns out to be the master of a nomadic group of goblins named The Dungeons of Filth; they’re the former inhabitants of MenaceMold, conquered in 135 by HopeWork. They’re technically still part of the tossers; not acting hostile to me, though.

By the way: I finally figured out I can get all the dialogue from the [a] menu. It only took me, what, eight different adventurers? (it took me 11, plus the three from when I was learning the controls, but some were not memorable)

 
After leaving OpenBook once again, I try to find the goblin camp DungeonPointy. It’s supposed to be somewhere in here; and it’s not the two little dots, they’re way too mobile, and they run away from me, instead of following me like goblins usually do:


After spending far too much time in both fast-travel and normal-traveling, I still find nothing. This could be a problem, because that camp is currently propping up the entire Disgusting Dungeons civilizations; they have lost all holdings, except this stupid thing. I was looking forward to dropping on it with a demon at my back, and then soon at the front, but I guess it’s not going to be that easy. Ffffffff…

There are two places left to go: any human tomb, and the goblin camp to the north of WalkBuds, where this entire show started. Let’s see if it results in Necate going on a rampage.

The closest human tomb is dear old ButtonedAmazed, the place where dwarven civilization has stubbornly clung to survival for 25 years, between the fall of ClanWork and the founding of HopeWork.

===== Apocrypha: ButtonedAmazed. =====

I risk reinstalling DfHack, because I’d like better pictures; “reveal all” is a good way to get clear pictures, but also means I’ll ditch this particular run.


The first and north-most is a two-floored, sprawling structure. It’s the tomb of Tikbo BulbDimples, the first Law-giver of the Confederations of Swimming, reigning from 6 to 50, when he died of old age.

Spoiler: Tibko's Tomb (click to show/hide)

Breaching the tomb was as simple as banging down a door. With security like this, it’s a wonder goblins don’t take over tombs about one week after they’re sealed.

I received the answer to a question that I had ever since my first adventurer: humans really do keep loads of skeletons in side-rooms, ready to be raised by their former Law-Giver and current bandaged mummy.

This done, I’m moving for the two structures in the next row; they’re revealed to be twin towers, with a much smaller footprint but compensating in height: they have 3 levels each.

Spoiler: The Two Towers (click to show/hide)

The leftmost tower belongs to Dinrit HayCanyons, third Law-giver, who ruled between 78 and 81; he fought the world’s only minotaur, Od Deepscar, and lost.

Spoiler: Western Tower, Dinrit's (click to show/hide)

The next tower is of Bir ActedYarns, fourth law-giver, who ruled between 82 and 84; she was struck down by a cyclops, Anice (this too is a semi-megabeast that died in HopeWork; in 126, in the fort’s second year).

Spoiler: Eastern Tower, Bir's (click to show/hide)

The last tomb in the complex is not a tower, but a giant rock pyramid, the size of an embark square; I cranked multilevel to 15 for this picture:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I even risk running Stonesense, which crashes DF about half the time I want to start it; it’s nowhere near as impressive as I expected, given that the pyramid was constructed in a dug-out pit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It entombs Uzin CutPlanters, fifth Law-giver, ruling between 85 and 121; he died of old age.

Spoiler:  All interesting levels of the pyramid, from the top down. (click to show/hide)

===== End apocrypha ====

The Confederations had seven Law-givers in total. We’ve seen the first, third, fourth and fifth; for the sake of completeness, let's look at the other three.

The second one was Milo OldLizard, who ruled between 50 and 77; she was struck down by a necromantic experiment during the fall of LightCrazes; her remains were left in this hamlet until 98, when ye olde Morul HeatedDikes resurrected her as an empty butcher. She barely unlived two seasons; she was taken to attack the Dark Fortress of FountainTorments, and was perma-killed by a troll.

The sixth Law-giver was a dwarfette, the Legendary doctor Xetan CurlCooked; she ruled between 121 and 149, from the hamlet of LightCrazes, which was technically under the rule of the Tower for all that time. Then in 149, HopeWorks sent a conquest force upon it, and she found herself fighting a duel with a legendary swords-dwarf, to very predictable outcome.

The seventh and current Law-giver is the human necromancer Testri SnarlBaked, who has been gifted with Necrobone by the death goddess, Sath. He too rules from LightCrazes, despite the hamlet being owned by us now. On the other hand, our dwarves lived for a quarter of a century in a human tomb, so we’ll let it slide.

Moving onward. After leaving the tomb, I went to the west alongside BadDabbled’s edge. The old Dark Fortress of BadDabbled to be surrounded by at least a dozen incidents. I wish I’d have caught the map during dawn, which had the incidents but not the terrain. It would have been much clearer.

Screw it, I’m going to the south-eastern corner, all the way to the seashore, and visiting all of them in order. Once again, most of them are camps. I find my proud conquering mace dwarves, living in a cloth tent. Again. Perhaps it’s better than some crappy goblin hovel, but I’m still feeling sorry for them.


The next tent has no dwarves or goblins, but it does have a single human. She claims to be a prisoner (of whom?). This human doesn’t mind prattling at all, but she doesn’t tell me her name, or how she ended up this way.


Frankly, she’s acting quite suspiciously. But if she’s trying to deceive me, she’s bad at it, because she doesn’t hesitate to talk about her family:


Ngokang FullDevil has a single living sibling: Estrur DoomRasped, a woman who was kidnapped in 120 at the age of 4 and lived in BadDabbled all her life. How she ended up a prisoner, we don’t know. Ngokang himself was kidnapped from the dark fort of PresentDoomed in 122, when he was 8. He has lived in BadDabbled since then, and is listed as a citizen in Legends, both before and after dwarves conquered the place. Her cousin Stozu LakesJackals was a member of the Disgusting Dungeons; he's been dead since 149, when he was killed in combat by dwarves from HopeWork.

Funnily enough, all these guys are the great-great-great-grandchildren of Anu RiseFlier, who tried and failed to steal that cat bone artifact pickaxe from HopeWork.

Running around, I find two more prisoners: another human who claims to be a Law-giver, and a legendary ax-dwarf.



Oh, and we also find some goblins in a camp overlooking the dwarf prisoner’s. All five of us at that time are traipsing through their midst, as if one of our group didn’t just leg from their ‘tender care’ like 5 minutes ago.


I then finally figure out that if I talk to my companions again, they will in fact tell me their names:


Urvad GearCrux is the new Law-giver of the Empire of Notches… by dint of everybody else being dead. I did speculate she may have never been rescued, and it turns out I was right. Poor Urvad has been imprisoned in BadDabbled since early summer, 152. He’s still armed and armored, despite the time that passed:


Estrur DoomRasped we already knew about.

But the real problem is Madam Avuz “Axe Lord” CrestedPost; she’s the vampire who was cursed in HopeWork after she vandalized Ber’s temple. She was exiled via being sent to attack BadDabbled in 153. She was caught by the then-goblin administration, and has spent the last 27 years imprisoned. For some reason, the conquering dwarves have not released her; or any other prisoners, come to think of it.


She too still has all of her gear (and there was a screenshot of it at some point, but then it vanished).

It’s at this time I take a break from playing, and write most of Part 3 as well as most of what’s above. After that, my priorities change a bit; I intend to turn around and visit LightCrazes, where a certain necromancer Law-giver is supposed to rule from.

(edit: added spoilers around the larger pictures, and cleaned up Estrur's section --the game didn't tell me she was a woman, so at first the entire thing was written with male pronouns. I did return to change them after her identity was revealed, but missed a couple).

[King Zultan]

How are you gonna deal with the vampire, as they don't really seem like something you would want in your adventuring party.

[StrikaAmaru]

Ya, in hindsight I should have considered that before sleeping the night away multiple times, with a vamp in my party. However, miss Avuz was very considerate, and hasn't drained any of us; not even the two squishy humans. (No idea if vampire hunger is even implemented in adventure mode). So I guess they're safe to have around an adventurer?

As for long-term plans, I don't know. Among other things, the adventuring party has experienced a bit of Fun in the next installment. Not quite !!FUN!!, or even FUN; just a little Fun.

[King Zultan]

(No idea if vampire hunger is even implemented in adventure mode). So I guess they're safe to have around an adventurer?

I remember reading about people playing as vampires and drinking blood, but not sure if the NPCs can do it adventurer mode.

[StrikaAmaru]

Adventuring in 180, part 5

Our party of five heads straight to the hamlet of Lightcrazes; it’s supposedly owned by dwarves, but the human government also rules from it.


But it’s neither dwarves nor humans I run into while searching LightCrazes; it’s a squad of goblins. Supposedly, they’re undergoing an important mission.



Thob ChamberBridge is a male pike-goblin; that’s literally all that’s known about him (and it takes me Legends mode to find out he’s part of the Disgusting Dungeons, and more accurately part of mysterious DungeonPointy; I really should have started a fight then).


We also learn he’s quite possibly the best-informed individual I spoke with in this entire world.


The human administration is indeed working from LightCrazes, which remains owned by dwarves (the aforementioned Quiet Channel) ever since its conquest in 149. I’d give it back if they asked for it, it used to be theirs in the first place; and they only lost it to our civilization’s greatest shame, Morul HeatedDikes.

When I said about catching a screenshot at dawn, this is what I wanted to do:


Then I retrace my steps up towards the north; with all the new info acquired from Legends, I want to see if I can find Apup’s corpse, and retrieve the artifact he stole. Against all odds, I actually did: here’s the Random Princess, bestest silver sword around:



Into the backpack it goes. I then find another empty butcher; very briefly.


I make my way around the northern edge of Sil Kodor, around its central mountain. This takes me three days, and is met with no incidents whatsoever. Sil Kodor’s north-west is very peaceful, despite the large evil biome it harbors. By the way, have you noticed the evil biome that spawned around the Tower has reverted to normal? I’ve noticed it all the way back when I was making the map, but forgot to bring it up when writing these logs.

Eventually, I reached the Dark Fortress of PresentDoomed from the other direction. It’s surrounded by dwarves and goblins living in tents; that’s what all those little stars are. I’ve checked half the western side, the entire northern side, and made my way around the east. The south was explored nearly two months ago when I started adventuring.


The castle of StasisKeg is notably poorer; all the books, and far more importantly, the necro slab, are missing from it. Legends mode sheds no light on the matter; the Dead Burial was lost, and that’s that. Perhaps the intelligent undead we raised in the door is to blame? He’s gone too; and I can’t even trace him/her in Legends, because raising an intelligent undead isn't counted as abuse of a body, only zombification is.


Next, to poor old BearYells. The tent town off its northern edge has vanished, but a smaller one sprouted off to its west.


Most tents are empty, unlike the older version. One of them has a sleeping goblin guard (it’s still day outside, btw). I’d like to talk to him, but… well… he’s sleeping.


So I sleep as well, until dawn breaks. And then another hour, because our goblin dude isn’t exactly a morning person (he did move inside the tent overnight, at least). He turns out to be a member of the Disgusting Dungeons, and for once I decide to kill him unprovoked. He goes down in two axe strikes; he was completely unarmored, and his bow shots were blocked by my shield.


(by the way, this is the last picture featuring Estrur DoomRasped as a member of our party; she's sitting right outside the tent, the one with the green shirt).

To the south of BearYells, I find several camps filled with humans from the Confederacies of Swimming. Thing is, none of them are found in the older Legends export; they did appear in the newer export, made after this event, but have very rudimentary entries. I assume they weren’t historical figures until we ran into them.

To the north of BearYells, Iki’s tavern is no longer empty:


I have no idea how many goblins are in here, but they’ve collectively dropped FPS into the 30s; so I’m venturing a guess of ~100-150. Talking to some of them doesn’t yield any information; they’re part of the Dungeons, they’re having two separate brawls as we speak, and that’s about it.

Right after leaving the tavern, I finally notice that one of our companions bailed; the shady human raised by goblins, Estrur DoomRasped, has stopped being shown in the [c]ompanions menu. We did engage a couple of incidents, which turned out to be an eagle, some kea, and some buzzards. It’s not out of the question that the poor gal was killed; she had no armor, and one lucky shot is all that’s needed.


Legends mode closes this story with a happy ending: she has left the group in BearYells, after having found one of her few living relatives: a cousin once removed, from her mother’s side. The only bad news is that said cousin, bard Song LizardHex, is part of the Disgusting Dungeons, so we may yet come to kill her.


Then I investigate another incident, north of DawnSeared, and find one of the demons who escaped from ClanWorks; a white brute named SyrupMaster. I remember from HopeWork that white brutes are pretty tanky, so I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t the end of the adventure. But, no.

Avuz, the vampiress ax Lady, rushes in to confront the fiend. Her adamantine ax cuts the white brute in half; though I’m still baffled why she chose to bite it before that. Might be a vampire thing. The demon doesn’t leave behind a normal corpse, only a few chunks of ice, utterly useless for necromantic purposes.



(Legends mode also revealed that our Law-giver companion, Urvad GearCrux, was killed here by SyrupMaster, thus ending the Empire of Notches as an active civilization. SyrupMaster the Unremarkable my ass; that is the least accurate sobriquet in Sil Kodor’s history).

This whole thing happened just north of a human hamlet named DawnSeared; it should belong to our allies in The Confederations of Swimming (it's the rightmost one, the hamlet to the left of it is Walkbud, and the brown abandoned hamlet to its left is BearYells).


Two more incidents quickly make their way out of said hamlet, and try to follow us on our way east; they’re found to be a mix of goblins, beak dogs, and trolls (they don’t survive).

Spurred on by the above, we all enter the hamlet; there’s a big ol’ star symbol right in the middle of it, and I wonder if they’re goblins. But no, they’re a large squad of humans. We intend to pass them by, except we see them committing assault: three human macemen are beating on four human civilians, peacefully sleeping in their house. The rest of the squad is nearby to the north; they might not be in range, but that hardly excuses them.


Maceman Abba MunchMatch is nice enough to speak with us; he’s not in the older legends export either, but he claims to be part of the local ruling body, The Intense Band, led by Nako HateSullied. Nice name. The Intense Band and Nako do exist in legends, as a nomadic band of humans within the Confederations of Swimming. They used to hold DawnSeared, until it was destroyed by the bronze colossus Vesifa, all the way back in year 19.

So, they’re nomads, but they’re the legitimate government, but they’re beating up current residents. Alright then.

We’ll probably sit this fight out, they have quite a few buddies:


The three of us, necromancer, demon, and vampire, leave without issue.

By now, the calendar has reached Obsidian. And disaster struck.

To the east of DawnSeared, there lies a single immovable incident. Needless to say, I go poke at it.


And at first, it seems to be a simple gathering of goblins and their usual hangers-on, but then the combat log tells me exactly how much trouble I’m in: at least one white brute, and both shade brutes known to exist in Sil Kodor.

As expected, my slow-ass adventurer is left behind; Avuz hares off to the north-west chasing beak dogs, while Necate goes in the opposite direction after another batch of goblins. I try to follow him; if I’m going to get in trouble, I might as well get in trouble with Necate nearby.

I don’t find Necate, but I do find the ashen remains of both shade brutes, one tile away from one another; and that’s the end of BottomWitch and DemonSpiders. Oh, and some night creatures were involved in the mess as well. Nothing in this pile can be resurrected, by the way.


Avuz seemingly teleports by my side; in truth, she’s just moving about four times faster than I do. She’s finished slaughtering whichever poor creatures she has been chasing after, and now she’s back. Necate isn’t back; in fact, Necate has dropped from my companions’ list. His last appearance is in a combat log:


Probably these guys:


After this, I start raising every viable corpse I can find. I start out with two beak dogs and a troll, but the horde soon swells. I’ve spent the next real-life quarter of an hour combing through the area, looking for Necate’s corpse; I haven’t found his body. (If I had any brains, I’d have turned on all tracks and tried to follow that; unfortunately, that’s the kind of idea which only comes too late. By now, any tracks are way too muddied by my own bumbling about).

I did find isolated remnants of the goblin force, mostly trolls and beak dogs but also a couple of goblins. They’ve been brought down by my axe and the horde, and then they joined the horde. Behold: a necromancer, a vampire and a train of zombies:


What I wanted out of this stubborn search was Necate’s beloved artifact copper greaves, FoldedDisperse the Frill of Tufts. The majority of Necate’s kills were done with it, and if this adventurer lives long enough to retire off to a fortress, the greaves should be mounted on a pedestal in Necate’s memory.

But I haven’t found them, and I’ve already ventured way outside the original engagement area. It will be up to Legends mode to shed some light on what’s happened here. I did find another dead white brute demon‘s ice on the higher slopes; it’s GreatestStandards, which means ServantWeevils is the only one left.


Legends mode tells me Necate has never died; no wonder I couldn’t find him. He was indeed the killer of GreatestStandard, and then killed a goblin in DawnSeared. I am still close enough to the damn place; I’ll go look around. Necate is associated with lies, trickery and treachery, so shafting me after a month of travel is right about up his alley.

(The wiki tells me it’s not unheard of for companions to drop out from the group; but also, there should be some visible sign of it -- another little * appearing close by. No such thing for Necate; he just straight up vanished).

All five demons from ClanWork are now dead: SyrupMasters was killed yesterday (28th of Opal) by Avuz, DemonSpiders was killed by GreatestStandard, BottomWitch was killed by ServantWeevil. ServantWeevils is dead as well, killed off-screen by Avuz; and lastly, GreatestStandard was killed by Necate, also off-screen. Sil Kodor only has one demon left on its surface: our old buddy, old pal Necate. Who I hope to find and finally banish.
One more part after this, unless I get any bright ideas.

[King Zultan]

Dang that's a lot of dead demons.

[StrikaAmaru]

Adventuring in 180, part 6:
Closing Time

Before adventure time is done, I need to figure out what to do with the 20+ zombies following me. And by “figure out” I mean “figure out how to kill them”, because I’ve already decided to kill them; it’s hardly presentable to go into civilized society with them following me around like lost puppies.


Chasing a few more incidents results in only a few wild boars and trolls; these proceed to thicken the horde, not thin it.

In the absence of better ideas, I once again return to BearYells’ tavern; I’m sure the goblins within will enjoy a coupla dozen undead. Not.


Goblins pour out of the tavern, launching themselves at the horde; soon, my every step is slowed down by combat reports reaching 20 pages.

Vampiress Avuz, it should be noted, chooses to stick around me, and not join the goblins vs zombies free-for-all. On the other hand, none of the goblins have attacked either her or me.

A quick use of fast-travel shows the results better (the troll in the tavern’s door was just now raised; it’s promptly shot by a bow-goblin). The show begins again. I’ve noticed some immense lag spikes whenever I gesture, and “[corpse] shudders and begins to move”, but no crashes.


I walk around mostly to keep the game running; I eventually take shelter inside the tavern, which has the great advantage of reducing the combat log from 20 to 2 pages -- without line of sight, the game hides everything except goblin proclamations (“This is my fight too”, etc). Much easier to handle. I notice a familiar figure within the tavern: a green-clad human, hanging around some bards.


This is indeed Estrur DoomRasped, our old companion. Well now I’m conflicted: do I really want to kill off this entire tavern? I’m still leaning on yes; these are my enemies, Estrur joined them willingly, and frankly she wasn’t all that useful as a companion.

I speak with Estrur and Song; since the game lacks any option resembling “you might want to get out of here”, this is more of a final farewell.

Combat ends in favor of the goblins; that’s to be expected, with their ludicrous numerical superiority. Mangling strikes were heavily favored; among all that mess, I can barely locate 11 corpses or corpse parts that can be resurrected. In hindsight, I should have waited until nightfall and dropped the zombie conga line on sleeping goblins.



Well, better late than never. I switch to fast-travel, and sleep 4 hours. Then, in the dead of night, I return to The Full Guilds.


My intended victims are all sound asleep, except for that one mace-goblin in the door, who’s wide awake. Did the goblins set up a guard?


Right after I raise those 11 body parts, the entire tavern awakes and joins the battle. My zombies get splattered very quickly after that.


It finally dawns on me that the necromancer dwarf traveling in the post-demon world may be of interest to other people too; I’ll upload a save to DFFD after I reduce my encumbrance a bit. I’m carrying a lot of coins, and that artifact sword; it adds up.

Old Erush GlazeBalded will make a pass through ClanWorks; I intend to reclaim that fort after he retires, so Erush will make some donations. I should go through SwallowedShoot, to pick up the two books I dumped right after reading KotKodor and becoming a necromancer.


Except they’re gone, and so is the death slayer I’ve raised right after. KotKodor itself is still present, and so is the food and water I discarded, but the books vanished. Hmmm… all those corpses will definitely come in handy later. My initial plan was to fill my backpack with them, as I’ve read other people doing in their playthroughs; but the moving penalties are crippling, so I’ll just come back here when it’s time to go killing again.

ClanWorks is in one of its “1 is an FPS too” moods again; I take a few steps inside and drop everything I’m carrying (minus the backpack and the ax and shield I’m wielding); a quick check in fast-travel does confirm the spot is indeed in ClanWork’s territory. Done, I’m outta here.


The save is in Obsidian 3rd, around mid-day. Erush has just visited LightCrazes, and found the human government ‘governing’ from the tavern. I won’t even try to path into that mess.


I've also added two saves, for before and after adventure mode. they're linked in the original post.

(I'm then very surprised to still find all my coins in my inventory; I swear I’ve dropped them… it was hard not to. I’m not sure what happened here. I go back to ClanWork and ditch the coins, again; this time it seems to stick, and I’m moving at normal speed with only a slight bit of a penalty. In retrospect, I think I confused my saves; there've been a coupla real-life days between uploading and playing again).

Next, I travel around the world and plan who to kill.

Here in LightCrazes, Thob ChamberBridge and his goblin buddies are sitting on the same bridge where we first found them. Avuz and I confirm their presence, then slip away undetected (then we kill 3 trolls who were following us).


On the northern edge of BadDabbled there is a tent full of goblins that I intend to ‘visit’. These are the goblins that presided over Avuz’ imprisonment, and they should be rewarded appropriately.

I brave BadDabbled, with its myriad trenches (well not really; much like PresentDoomed, it was bisected by a river, which made reaching the Spire a simple process).


By the spire, we find Ago SprinkledDevil, beast master of the Ivory Monster; he knows nothing of his boss Necate. Legends then says he settled back in his home Dark Fortress of FountainTorment on the 6th, two days from now.

There is nothing in BadDabbled; not even random corpses. The place is utterly empty.


Next, I've gone back towards DawnSeared and tried to find Necate. The place where demons died is fairly empty of tracks (besides my own), but south of it we do locate a line of broken vegetation heading towards the hamlet; maybe it's Necate’s, maybe it’s a red herring; either way, we follow it.


In DawnSeared itself, I have found nothing, besides several trolls milling about. I’m beginning to think the trail of broken vegetation that I followed here was from some random troll, not from Necate. Apropos of nothing, the human squad and the locals now live in harmony:


Then, while fast-traveling towards southern BearYells, a miracle happens: Necate has rejoined the group!


I’ve been paying particular attention to any little * that may pop up in fast-travel, and I can guarantee there haven’t been any. Necate was not shown on the map while he was missing, despite what the wiki says.

Southern BearYells has two incidents; they’re both human camps. The horde won’t pass through here.


BearYells’ tavern, the ill-fated Full Guilds, is also on the list of fatal visitations. There is no longer any trace of Estrur DoomRasped, so I can come back later and annihilate the place without a care (the green-clad human is someone else). Later, I check Legends to make sure I haven’t accidentally killed her already, but no; she’s still alive.


The tent cities filled with goblins have vanished from around BearYells, so I move north towards the Dark Fortress of PresentDoomed. As expected, the tents around it are still filled with dwarves. But off to the East, around the spot where the cave is, we run into a tent of sleeping goblins, and Avuz immediately goes on the attack. No mercy, no quarter, no questions. Shrugging, I join in the melee.

Legends then tells me one of those humans was Zolak MonsterNamed, the new Master of the Disgusting Dungeons, who seized the job after we killed Damstot. Legends also claims that he settled in PresentDoomed, despite his tent being pretty far from the Fortress itself. This makes me wonder if that other tent of goblins loitering to the north of BadDabbled isn’t the ‘government’ of the tossers, and the place where I could kill their current Master, the traitor dwarf Ber LieDepresses. They too have ‘settled’ in BadDabbled after my adventurers started traveling (the 12th of Moonstone, specifically).

Now, my biggest decision is if I should go on my planned rampage with a zombie army, or with my friendly demon. I’m leaning towards the zombie army, if only because I haven’t done so before. This also means I need to stash Necate somewhere, because he won’t get along with zombies. I have a good mind to put him in ClanWork, and see what happens when I reclaim it. If that’s not possible, HopeWork is right next door. And if that’s not possible either, the abandoned fort of SwallowedShoot is mere hours away. And lastly, if none of these can be done, the weirdos in LightCrazes can entertain a demon for a few days.

It is night when we reach ClanWorks. I take a few moments to look around: the stuff I dropped last time seems to have been scattered; you can see two single coins laying on the ground, with nothing else in their tiles.


Necate is asked to remain, and agrees without complaint.



Once we leave, the mysteriously absent * appears in ClanWork to mark Necate’s position:


Then Avuz and I travel to SwallowedShoot, and I raise three dozen goblin skeletons as mindless undead; the place likely still has hundreds more.



The nearest target are the goblins near BadDabbled. Some 30 goblins and beak dogs are sleeping inside one tent. The two of us and the following horde somehow manage to sneak up on them without waking them up. Carnage begins without warning, and this time I’m not sitting aside; I’m right at the front, with ax in hand.


A goblin dies first; sleeping as he was, he died in one strike. Trolls require two hits each. Then I lose track of all the trolls, goblins, and beak dogs that I end here (A-a-a-d-a, pressed so, so many times… Attack, first enemy on the list, strike, on the head, with my ax).

Arguably funny, here’s my entire party of 38 crammed in a 3x3 tent on top of ~30 sleeping enemies.


My dwarf gained some names as a result of that slaughter: he is now Erush GlazeBalded the Wealthy Shock. I wish I could see what level of axedorf I am now. At least I get some measure of a hint from Legends: I was Talented before, aka level 6; by the time my trip ends I’m Adept (level 7). More interestingly, I’m a Legendary+5 Tracker, a High Master Observer, and a Professional Ambusher; watching for tracks really grinds these skills!

After this little spot of slaughter, the party’s size increased to 114.


All 114 of us reach LightCrazes at dawn. It is now the 7th of Obsidian, 180.


Goblins aren’t dumb; they scatter if they can.


We give chase, and skeleton goblins turn out to be a little faster than living ones. Soon, it’s over. The number of companions dropped to 108, and I choose to not raise any fresh goblin corpses as zombies. I already have a hard enough time walking in the horde, and besides that, it’s best to not tempt FPS death.

Only one large concentration of goblins is left in Sil Kodor: the tavern. So away we go.

No night raid this time; we reach the place at mid-day. Not that there would be any difference anyway,  with how goblins wake up at the first sign of a zombie.

At first, I engage goblins alongside my zombies; but unfortunately this makes DF get stuck. It doesn’t crash per se, it just stops responding to any commands, no matter how much I wait for it:


After having to restart twice, I just give up on axing any more goblins. The horde will have to handle it by itself. So, while zombies and goblins are fighting for their (un)life, I take a peaceful little walk around the tavern. One goblin, wounded and chased by a skeleton, is unfortunate enough to cross my return path; three hits later, he dies.


The horde did quite well during my little stroll. Companion numbers had barely dipped into the 80s, when I made my way back at the doors. But then something in the tide of battle turns, and the horde is rapidly thinning -- it dropped to 48 in barely a dozen turns. They might have had better success, if they didn’t cram themselves in about 10 tiles at the entrance.


My initial plan was to have both parties annihilate each other, in preparation for my own retirement, and now I may have to raise a new batch of undead.

Then my initial plan changes, because I finally figured out what I want to do with my adventurer: reclaim the Tower. ‘Bout time a dwarven necromancer inhabits SoothedPaints again. I work my magic, and 34 new zombies join the horde. Granted, a good 2/3rds of them are severed hands, severed heads, and other tiny bits that won’t last in combat, but hey.

Right after saving the above, I try to engage in combat again, and DF gets stuck again. After 20 minutes of unresponsive window, I finally crash it and vow to never press A in this tavern.

Then I break my own vow, after one more stroll around the building. With almost all zombies put down, and far fewer goblins left, I’m pretty sure I can manage a few kills of my own. I enter the tavern, then raise a few corpses by the doorway. And then run into Estrur DoomRasped:


Yep, the poor girl was actually still here. I won’t attack her myself, but when I’ll raise all the corpses, she’s doomed.

Estrur or no Estrur, I'm still going to kill goblins. I killed enough goblins that I lost track of them; most were military, and a few were dancers and poets. In Legends, this engagement occupies 5 pages of BearYell’s events; 453 total. Estrur had bolted for the door once the conflict started; given that most the horde was right there, it was not a decision good for long-term survival (on the other hand, she didn’t really have any good decisions).

After my murder spree is done, it’s time to raise the new batch of zombies. If you want to know how much zombie fights favor mangling corpses, only 72 new zombies were raised from inside that tavern, and a good half of them were body parts (hands, necks, and heads).

I find Estrur’s corpse outside, right next to the door; she had almost made it. Now, she joins the horde that will rise from the dead to serve as my meat-shields.



Her cousin Song LizardHex still lives, somehow.

I guess I’m finally playing like a necromancer, three+ weeks after actually reading the slabs. The irony is that it couldn’t have happened without Necate’s disappearance from the group; with him immediately killing any zombie in sight, there wasn’t any point.

Then, as I’m meandering north-wise towards the Tower, a small miracle happens:



I wait until night-time, and attack; once again, nobody’s really surprised by my surprise night attack:




These goblins aren’t any push-overs; they annihilate all my zombies, and even manage to get me bleeding badly, armor or not. I get myself outside the camp and fast-travel, both to heal myself and to reach OpenBook; there’s all sorts of corpses there.

Unfortunately, the game throws me another curve-ball: it spawns both of us, myself and Avuz, in a tree. I can’t even jump down, because the game spawned me prone, and as long as Avuz and I share the same tile, I’m stuck. And on top of that, going into fast-travel doesn’t help at all; I’m getting the same “leave area to fast-travel” that’s shown in mountains and sites.


Thankfully, I did get around to learning about how to cut trees: hit [g] next to a tree, while holding a good ax. From the position I’m in, all 4 tree trunks are options for cutting (I picked north):


One swing later, I’m on the ground with Avuz and a whole bunch of bayberry logs. And I’m face-to-face with a squad of goblins, who’d followed me all the way from their camp:


We all scramble to the south: I’m looking for corpses, and gobbos are chasing me. The pickings are very slim: of all the dead creatures around, only six can be raised. This makes sense once I remember that intelligent undead can’t be zombified, and most of OpenBook’s north was filled with empty butchers.

The six zombies engage my pursuers and die rather quickly. But they manage to scatter and terrify goblins; which makes much easier for me and my reinforcements (three other corpses, plus the skeletons of the yak cow & donkey that pulled the wagon for my first reclaim team) to chase each one of them and either kill them, or lose track of them. Most of them are then raised again, given that I killed them with an ax.

I wander aimlessly around Sil Kodor’s south for a few days;  I am, of course, looking for more corpses. And, either I’m hunting goblins, or they’re hunting me, but in the end the world is missing about a dozen greenskins, plus assorted beak dogs.

The place where the Random Princess was found is still marked as an active incident, for some reason; there is nothing there anymore. I did acquire a few fresh zombies, and I managed to raise the corpse of an experiment (a HeatedDikes’ fist), so the reason I couldn’t raise previous ones was that they were mangled, not that they were experiments.


The horde has grown to around 30-35, most of them goblins, but also including a HeatedDikes’ Fist and one yak bull whose herd was shown as an incident. (The FPS counter is hiding the Companions count, so I’m guesstimating based on list length).

(At this point Dwarf Fortress is resized, and crashes suddenly. Turns out DFHack isn’t the only one to blame. The last save was before entering the site of the Princess, so not much is lost; the only missing bit of gameplay is raising the extra zombies).

Back at the goblin camp, the same dance happens again. This time, the zombies win. I enter fast-travel a few times to make sure I get the stragglers, and I declare DungeonPointy reasonably annihilated. All viable corpses get raised, the horde grows back to 80, and all of us are heading towards the Tower of SoothedPaints.

Huh, the internal geometry of the Tower changed -- in 145 its entrance was to the North, and now it's to the South. This is absolutely gold for world building, and for interpreting each Tower as an Eldritich Location:
Year 145:

Year 180:


And once again my lack of knowledge comes back to bite me: I can claim the Tower, but I can’t settle in it as the initial plan was.



Later, Legends tells me claiming this site made me a Lord of the Confederations of Swimming. I’m genuinely baffled, because our adventurer has no connection with this particular civ. Even more oddly, the Tower itself isn’t part of the civilization, only the government is. The Tower has no registered events, the last one is from 143 when the Slab AshenBury was taken.

Back to HopeWork it is; they can deal with a necromancer and an extremely angry vampire, right?

But first, I have to ditch the zombie horde, again. Almost at random, I go through Sil Kodor’s southernmost site: the goblin pit of GhoulSpiraled. And I get lucky, because GhoulSpiral’s north is chock full of goblins. One more bout of annihilation later, it’s just me and Avuz again.

Back south we go.

We find an ‘incident’ consisting of a single tent, very large and completely empty, and placed on top of a river. I choose to believe this was a sort of bathing spot; not at all how the game does it, but whatever, I can worldbuild however I want.


While stopping by OpenBook’s north, I mess about with the {b}uild menu; it immediately plops down a new and giant camp, 3x3 embark squares big. Compare with the goblin camp, which only holds a single embark square.


And we have reached HopeWork, on the night of 13 to 14 Obsidian. This is where our brave adventurers will rest. Old Necate is waiting in ClanWorks, exactly where we left him; the embark party can deal with him (or be dealt with by him, given the Ivory Monsters are technically our enemies; I’ll see when I reclaim).



Legends

At long last! The number of goblins has dropped below the number of dwarves; Sil Kodor now has 772 dwarves, 702 goblins, and 495 humans. I’d expect the next year to begin with the Age of the Dwarf, thus meeting another secondary goal for this world.

Of these 702 goblins, 581 are members of other civilizations, 4 are ‘proper’ goblins part of a ‘proper’ goblin civ, and the remaining 127 are varying shades of outlaw, criminal, and bandit. And the 4 are not long for this world; I already know who and where they are even without checking: they’re the last living members of the tossers, and they’re located in the cave with the dumbest name, LoveCrack.

The Disgusting Dungeons have joined the Ivory Monsters in the list of Fallen Civilizations; my annihilation of DungeonPointy was even more thorough than I hoped. The tossers are the last goblin civilization still active, and have only the 4 members mentioned above.


The camp of DungeonPointy only has events for the year 180: in 16th of Opal 180, eight days after Erush has left the comfort of AdmireFortresses (and while he was busy with empty butchers in OpenBook), the goblins had a little murder spree. The cause is still unknown, because it doesn’t align with any other events in the world: their master at the time was Damsto YellCruel, whom we killed one day after in the forests, and his replacement Zolak MonsterNamed made himself Master on the 18th. Poor guy only ruled 16 days; on the 6th of Opal we found his tent, and Avuz charged them all; Zolak specifically was killed by Necate.

Avuz’s attack might make sense if we remember she was still part of the Fountain of Quickness, and all goblins are at war with them. Our adventurer was part of the Strapping Hame, so goblins considered him an ally. However, this is contradicted by Avuz meeting all sorts of other goblins (in the tavern, bridge, camp, more incidents than I can count), and not starting anything with any of them… I choose to believe she had a personal grudge.

Then the camp had no more murders until the 10th-12th of Obsidian when I arrived, and killed them all.

To my surprise, the Disgusting Dungeons still have a Master: a human named Stozu DunesDevil, who took the position on the 6th of Obsidian right as Zolak was dying, and supposedly rules from PresentDoomed.

Still on the subject of DungeonPointy, remember Thob ChamberBridge, the goblin we met on the bridge in LightCrazes? He didn’t die on the bridge; either he wasn’t there, or he fled without engaging anyone. His only activity is on the 12th in the camp itself, killing a few zombies, getting the name Thob ChamberBridge the Bronze, and lastly being murdered by Avuz. He wasn’t zombified, so he at least dodged that fate.

Next up: reclaiming ClanWork. Even if the original demons have left, Necate is still present, an I really should patch up that open path into Hell…


Edit: I knew I was forgetting something. The large and detailed map of Sil Kodor, obtained from adventurers' fast travel map. It ended up a 2,700x4,000x picture, that I won't even try to embed here. It can be seen in imgur: https://i.imgur.com/lfPBC11.png

[King Zultan]

Started your own zombie apocalypse and killed off most of the goblins, but how will the place you retired in deal with your vampire friend?

[StrikaAmaru]

Our vampire friend looks like a HopeWork problem; we're in ClanWork

ClanWork’s Post-Adventurer Reclaim

The game begins on the 28th of Obsidian 180; this lets me take a cursory look around and maybe order a coupla tasks, before the year turns and forever cements my decisions in the history of this world.

On the surface, there’s no trace of Necate, and no trace of the Random Princess in the L menu (which is, in fact, not even available). Even after revealing the entire map with “reveal hell”, there’s no trace of him. There are no other creatures in the units menu. So, just by reclaiming the place, I’ve made a demon loose within Sil Kodor. This was not what Erush was created to do; this is, in fact, the exact opposite of what Erush was created to do. Should have banished the mouse when I had the chance…

Two ‘hostile’ dwarves are found on the surface; both are former citizens of HopeWork, and there’s no record of them having left that fortress. They’re also not attacking anyone. That’s extremely good news, because one of them could easily turn my seven unarmored louts into fine cuts: she’s a Legendary+5 axe-lord armed with a masterwork adamantine axe, and in full kit.


For the artefacts, we now have a very different picture: the fort does have a lot of them, including long-missing AshenBury, the slab taken from the Tower of SoothedPaints, and MatchClutch the Random Princess, the silver sword left here by Erush. I also remember that lead toy axe, the Familial Glutton (fourth on the list); it was brought as a weapon by an ettin early in the history of HopeWork. I remember joking that he might have lived longer if he’d have brought a proper axe.


Between AshenBury and all the blue items named by dwarves, it’s pretty clear a lot of artefacts travelled from HopeWork to ClanWork. What isn’t so clear is how ClanWorks scatters all objects after retirement; some stuff is immobile, but some gets randomly moved. The working theory is that items which came to be as part of the fort’s original creation in worldgen/first embark are going to stay put, but anything brought in later is subject to the scattering mechanic.

Not only artefacts have migrated from HopeWork; large numbers of cats and their adorable little kittens have done so, too. My embark profile only had 4 cats, the rest were already here.

 
All of them have already become part of our fort; this has the side-effect of revealing a whole bunch of areas that would normally be hidden. Most importantly, it reveals the corridor dug out by the doomed embark, nearly 56 years ago. Thanks, kitty!


My first priority is to wall off the hole into Hell. Then, it’s really important to secure some cavern space, because the surface of ClanWork is completely denuded of trees:


I lay down a stockpile for perishable foodstuffs right next to ClanWork’s still-extant tavern, The Copper Tooth. When gameplay is allowed to run, the plan is to leave two dwarfs rushing for the wall as fast as possible, and the rest to save as much of the existing food as possible; not the food from the wagon, but the random bits of meat which were part of ClanWork’s original stocks.

With jobs tweaked, plans made, and one d-b-c executed over the entire map, I finally hit the spacebar and allowed time to flow again in Sil Kodor.

And the game immediately saves; must have been dark o’thirty when the caravan reached the fort.

When play resumes, the long-awaited “Age of Dwarves” fails to begin. Either it’s going to begin next year, or DF has spawned a bunch of goblins in the background, just like it once spawned a bunch of dwarves, 50-odd years ago. The civilizations menu is entirely empty, so I can’t tell yet.

My plans immediately crumble; the two miner dwarves cannot reach the breach yet. All those unrevealed areas along the way mean the two construction sites are still inaccessible. I’m getting a lot of cancellation messages, from both the construction jobs I ordered, and from a lot of random food bits that dwarves are trying to bring up to the stockpile.

Making matters a lot worse, all those cats are getting stuck behind doors, and have made FPS drop to 2-5 FPS.

Doors in a reclaimed fort are generated as impassable to pets, for some unknown reason; which used to be fine, until the rewrite of the pathing algorithm made animals to NOT include that flag in pathing calculations. Now, a single animal can make a fort descend to FPS hell, just by getting constantly routed through a door or hatch that won’t allow it to walk through. Then, the pathing algorithm gets called again, and it picks the same door again, and hello infinite loop…

We have about two dozen of them, possibly more. No wonder the FPS is in slideshow-mode.

Plans get adjusted; the miners will reveal the downward path, by being ordered to dig one tile as far down as I/they can see. Everyone else still gets to haul food, with the slight addition of also deconstructing doors as they go. It’s a long way down; the surface is at level 141, the old main fort is all the way down at level 20, and the hell-breach is at -21.

But, one miner perseveres. She reaches the corridor, and a door is locked behind her. Now, her only job becomes building two wall tiles.


Her keen dwarven eyes reveal a sizable bit of Hell; just about the eastern third of it, I'd say. We only get the first message, about “discovering an eerie cavern”. Thankfully, we don’t get any of the other two messages, and the cavern itself is completely empty, or this would indeed be a very short embark.


With this out of the way, I can focus on the fort itself. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it now, besides playing a reclaimed fortress. It’s very likely I’ll just play it to make it livable and safe, then move on to more interesting things.

[King Zultan]

Reclaiming forts always seems like a chaotic thing with all the stuff thrown around. I wonder what happened to Necate, did he just decide to go off and do something else?

[StrikaAmaru]

ClanWork 180-183: The End?

The ‘canon’ reclaim of ClanWork was concluded at the start of 184, when the ancient fort had settled in the rhythm of day-to-day life. This was, without a doubt, the single most boring fortress I have ever played.

Only one vaguely interesting event did occur in the depths of the third cavern: the fort’s exposed magma pipe decided it should have three more levels, and started flooding:


This is a well-documented possibility when it comes to reclaiming forts with volcanoes or magma pipes -- the top level gets recalculated at embark, for reasons unknown. Then the top level keeps producing more lava, by spawning columns of it in these little spurts:


You can see here more screenshots of it, including a full-screen pic taken some three years in, after the flood had reached its maximum spread.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are only two kinds of items in ClanWorks: worthless crap, and priceless artifacts. Our dwarves are sleeping in a dormitory built with seven artifact beds (until the mayor’s election, at least; then there were 6); our outdoor tavern was filled with pairs of artifact chairs and tables; our mayor’s quarters are likewise full of artifact chests, containers, armor stands, weapon racks, you name it. This fortress started out with a total wealth of nearly 8 million dorfbucks; despite this, it has attracted neither sieges nor forgotten beasts.


Most of the old furniture was sold to the caravans, and replaced by new masterworks created by the fort’s dwarves. Many of them have arrived from the Mountainhome of HopeWorks next door, and there was never any shortage of skilled dwarves. The only garbage items in use are the doors; I’m used to the fact that door quality doesn’t matter for rooms, so they stay.

Necate, the mouse demon, has vanished. It is definitely not present in ClanWorks, and it has no reported activities in Legends either. It’s simply gone. Our vampire companion shows the same way - no activity after the adventurer retired. But she still lives in HopeWorks, as shown by a brief reclaim of that fort.

The adventurer himself, Erush GlazeBalded the Wealthy Shocks, does have activity: he left HopeWorks and settled in the old abandoned tower of SoothedPaints:


Considering that while I was controlling him, I tried to claim settle in SoothedPaints for myself and was denied by the game’s interface, I am oddly annoyed by this. The tower in-game is still shown as having no civilized population… for now. Legends however has no problems seeing the one dwarf inhabitant. I then re-read the adventure mode logs, and remember that Erush did manage to claim the Tower, he was only unable to settle in it with his companions and train of 80+ zombies. This was also the time when he was made a noble by our long-term allies, the humans from The Confederations of Swimming.

Speaking of, it takes a full day to get from HopeWorks to SoothedPaints; he must have left HopeWorks as soon as I retired the save. Assuming the game really keeps track of travel time for NPCs, of course.

And while I’m on the subject, let’s take a look at my other living adventurer, the legendary goblin axe-lady Lokum WheeledPartner: she is still in HopeWorks, and still a valued member of the military. What times have we come to, that a goblin is loyal and a dwarf is traitorous?

To my eternal frustration, the long-awaited Age of the Dwarf has still not begun, despite Legends assuring me that yes, dwarves still outnumber goblins and humans (817 vs 721 and 485, respectively). Just as they outnumbered goblins and humans for the past 5 years. I’m not sure why; maybe starting a new fort will make it finally cross over?


If it doesn’t, I will claim victory anyway, and check it off my to do list. There’s no doubt I did in fact meet this goal; if the game refuses to acknowledge it, that looks to me like the game’s problem.

The only project I have left from my original list is going back in time to the pre-adventurer ClanWorks fort and trying to reclaim it with the original demons still in residence. But the recent playthrough has soured me on it; I really don’t want to put up with ClanWorks any more than absolutely necessary. If I get the urge to reclaim a demon-filled fort, DoomHollow seems like a much better candidate: treasures without number, halls engraved with masterworks, and only a slight chance of encountering certain death.

Sil Kodor will continue; a new fortress has been started on an isolated island in the freezing tundra.


It does not belong to the victorious Fountain of Quickness, but to The Strapping Hame, the other surviving dwarven civilization. Perhaps they were concerned by the rapid expansion and military might of the Fountain of Quickness? Did they feel the need to create this secretive, isolated outpost to preserve their civilization?

(Definitely not because I never checked what civ I’m embarking on; nope, I totally planned this narrative twist).

Either way, secretive little outposts do not broadcast their existence to the world, and don’t issue detailed reports. Quiet little MountainRaptors will exist in silence. And Sil Kodor, much like its twin fortresses, will now settle in the rhythm of day-to-day life.

[King Zultan]

It's strange that Necate disappeared, I wonder why that happened?

[StrikaAmaru]

It turns out it's just good ole gameplay and story segregation (aka, ludonarrative dissonance). Necate is still in ClanWork, but he it's only visible for adventure mode. I'm guessing the key aspect is that the fort was reclaimed AFTER Necate was left in here; if it would have been an active player fort he'd have joined the normal populace, like Avuz did in HopeWorks.

I figured this out by unretiring Erush from his cozy Tower, and visiting ClanWorks. Necate's little * was right there, waiting for me. And as a bonus, vampiress Avuz joined me after I walked a bit further north:



When she showed up, I was within one embark square of HopeWorks, though still within ClanWorks territory. It was also around the time FPS took a spectacular dive; my guess is that the game is loading both fortresses, and is understandably overwhelmed.

[edit] Interestingly, Necate can't be picked back up. If I interpret this list correctly, it's located right on the same tile, but 3 levels below me?


That would be really weird, because there is no empty space 3 levels below me; this is the lower-right corner of the map, and I know for sure there's no caverns or dug out spaces here.

Large image for reference:


I brought out the last save for ClanWorks in fort mode; Necate should be here:


... screw it, I'm bringing out the army, just in case, and excavating. My guess is that I'll find nothing (and I was right).