Print

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

[Fishbulb]

True story:

Back when I was a wee lad who'd just started playing the game (about a month ago) I learned from the wiki that an outdoor statue garden/meeting hall/whatever can cure and prevent cave adaptation. What luck! My then-current fort's dining room was on the first underground level, right below the surface. It would be a trivial matter to channel out the ground tiles above and open it to the sky! The days of my trade depot being coated in regurgitated plump helmet chunks were soon to be over!

Shortly thereafter, I learned about cave-ins.

Yes, that's right. I designated the whole roof area for channeling all at once. And the miners, bless 'em, decided to start at the perimeter and work their way in. I dropped nearly the whole ceiling of my dining room (and two surprised miners) onto nearly the whole population of my fort.

Of course I killed the game and went back to the previous season's auto-save. Didn't even un-pause after the cave-in; I just force-quit immediately and reloaded. But you know what? I regretted it deeply. Sure, my fort was whole again, but it was … boring. When you've got nothing to lose, there's nothing at stake.

[Djohaal]

Reading this thread suddenly make me want to save the game much more often...

EDIT: Now that's what I'd call good timing... It just prevented a disastrous siege that was uncalled for from murdering almost all my dwarves while they were cleaning the mess left by the siege before it...

[Carpman]

Let's just say that having a huge central staircase with a magma pit in the middle stops looking cool when orcs with hammers and crossbows take control of it.

...That sounds awesome.

[Overspeculated]

Personally, I think the game is more enjoyable if you play with the mindset that your actions cannot be undone. Knowing that you will Savescum if things start to go wrong takes the potency out of risks. Besides, I love trying to keep my fort together as it goes to hell. If the fort survives, the scars will give it a lot more character :p.

This ad infinity. Why bother to even play if you are going to savescum or cheat? (if you make a fort using super-dwarves its pretty much worthless. There is more challenge in using lego blocks to make something.)
I never savescum with my fortresses. When a dwarf dies, he gets a note on his grave detailing how he died (and what year). If he was dear to me, he gets another note detailing how he lived next to his coffin. As such my 15 year 230+ dwarf fortress has over 80 occupied graves. That is surprisingly little for 15 years of operation, especially considering I never cheat.

[bmaczero]

(if you make a fort using super-dwarves its pretty much worthless. There is more challenge in using lego blocks to make something.)

It's like beating Doom 1 with only God Mode, Berserker, and your fist.  Sure, it's cheating and there's no way for you to lose.  But occasionally you get bored of just shooting the same old guys over and over with the shotgun.

[DwarfOfDefeat]

i had just started out in a terrifying fortress (just to see what it was like) i had been attacked by zombie racoons just two of them they almost killed my carpenter by swarming him until (god bless those miners) my militarised miners killed them off i imeddiatly walled off a small section to start with. i saw every once and a while zome zombie and skeletal racoons walking around. eventually i had a nice fort going and was waiting for the first caravan to come i had two miners and two farmers the farmers were converted to recruits with cross bows and miners had there picks when they are recruits so i was all set. until... the caravan came! as soon as i unpaused waves of 10-20 racoons both skeletal and zombie started to swamp the guards as the wagons made a run for my fortress but then... zombie wolves appeared and got a wagon.... and most of the merchants i managed to get one cart in but a swarm of coons and wolves followed good thing i used an air lock system the other cart was lost and i noticed the liason wasw with the cart i immidiatly shut the outer gate for fear of more pooring in. my dwarven recruits picked off the rest with only one casulty! and the liason met with my other miner and he preped to leave. but one of my dwarves was mad for the loss of the other miner went beserk and opened the gate then proceeded to destroy the mechanisms. and well you should know the rest...

[KylonOrina]

i had just started out in a terrifying fortress (just to see what it was like) i had been attacked by zombie racoons just two of them they almost killed my carpenter by swarming him until (god bless those miners) my militarised miners killed them off i imeddiatly walled off a small section to start with. i saw every once and a while zome zombie and skeletal racoons walking around. eventually i had a nice fort going and was waiting for the first caravan to come i had two miners and two farmers the farmers were converted to recruits with cross bows and miners had there picks when they are recruits so i was all set. until... the caravan came! as soon as i unpaused waves of 10-20 racoons both skeletal and zombie started to swamp the guards as the wagons made a run for my fortress but then... zombie wolves appeared and got a wagon.... and most of the merchants i managed to get one cart in but a swarm of coons and wolves followed good thing i used an air lock system the other cart was lost and i noticed the liason wasw with the cart i immidiatly shut the outer gate for fear of more pooring in. my dwarven recruits picked off the rest with only one casulty! and the liason met with my other miner and he preped to leave. but one of my dwarves was mad for the loss of the other miner went beserk and opened the gate then proceeded to destroy the mechanisms. and well you should know the rest...

Good god. No offense, but learn punctuation, capitalization, and starting a new paragraph.

[Lord Dakoth]

UGLY-MASSIVE-BLOBOFTEXT

Good god. No offense, but learn punctuation, capitalization, and starting a new paragraph.

Lord Dakoth, Grammar Officer here. Keep in mind that the punishment for abuse of the English language is punishable by three hammer strikes.
...and a boot to the head.

I just recently had a fort that had a (deliberately induced) tantrum spiral... then a titan arrived. A modded Size 100 titan. Lost a good quarter of the population. Good times.

[Arrkhal]

Not everyone here is a native English speaker.  It's not much of an excuse, though.  That guy's post seriously gave me a headache to try and read.

[azazel]

Alright, this is during the third year of the fortress. Due to a string of bad luck I... let me go back couple of months.

It all began when one of my Original 7 (yes, I give them that profession name after I get my first immigrants) got possessed. Lacking silk cloth, but being just a few short weeks off from those dreaded elves I hoped I could make it.

I couldn't. Now, it was a gamble, and I knew what I was doing, or so I thought. Not walling the poor sod in was a mistake (I had more pressing matters to deal with). Bear in mind, this is one of the original miners, and he's been doing that stuff for quite a while by now so he's rather buff. In fact, he's so buff that the first person he runs into - the newly arrived siege operator - gets thrown down a hallway and explodes into small bits of dwarf when he is introduced to the wall.

Dwarfs scatter everywhere! My insane miner starts chasing them, running down an animal caretaker before even exiting the fort. The drawbridge is down, so everyone starts running everywhere to avoid this madman. He quickly sets upon my two hunters (who are the only ones brave enough to even attack him; to no avail). Ripping one hunter to pieces, picking up its crossbow and going after the other, clubbing him to death (and ripping its baby in two as well). Seeing no more targets in the vicinity, my now dual-armed (pickaxe and crossbow) miner heads back to the fort.

Seeing another of my Original 7's - the woodcutter - he rushes him. In front of the moat. Pushes my hapless woodcutter into said moat and heads back into the fort again. Two more dwarves fall victim to him in the entrance. His last victim is yet another recently arrived immigrant, who got his arms ripped off before getting his skull crushed.

My insane miner is brought down by one of my war dogs, which only suffer a small injury. Brave, brave war dog.

Now, you might ask yourselves... what was my military doing? Weeeeell, I'm lacking an anvil, and was hoping to buy that on the last dwarven caravan to come here. However, since a tree had grown in the path of the caravan, they decided to skip me. I figured I could hold out.

Now, the situation isn't so bad. My animal trainer just bled to death, so I'm dealing with a tantrum spiral of sorts. The newly elected mayor - another of the Original 7, is wounded in bed. I have no buckets because I'm out of logs, which I can't cut get because the axe is in the moat.

I'm having loads of fun.

But while I do have a save from before all this happened, I refuse to use it. Besides, I just got new immigrants (they probably didn't hear about the recent events), so it'll work out. Sucks to lose so many of your original dwarfs so soon though, but what can you do.

[KenboCalrissian]

You've drawn it out of me.  I've been keeping this movie a secret for some time now, but it's too funny to keep hidden forever!

You might know I've been narrating Severedcoils over in the Story board... well, it just so happens that I actually lost the fort once in the fifth year and was forced to savescum.  I really hated to do it, but for the sake of the story I had to.  Reclaim wasn't an option because I wasn't about to rewrite all of my characters.  I didn't lose it to the 72 goblin siege, or any sort of magma incident.

I lost it to the dragon.

My fort has what I thought was an impenetrable defense.  Two raising bridges, anchored on a small 3x3 platform surrounded by open space, with a single row of pressure plates between them.  An enemy walks across the pressure plate, the bridges flip open, and the enemies are dropped into the pit below.  There's nothing dangerous down there because I intended to station marksdwarves along the sides who can shoot at the enemies while they lay stunned on the ground, and I didn't want to hurt any of my dwarves should they accidentally fall in.  If there weren't marksdwarves available, I figured the enemy would just fall in the pit, walk out through the preconstructed path, try again, fall in again, and repeat until I was ready to fight it.

A dragon appears, and I'm in no way prepared to fight it.  I had just come off of two harsh sieges in a row - one with 50+ goblins followed immediately by a siege with 70+ goblins and human leaders.  I really thought I was going to lose the fort to that siege because I had suffered a lot of injuries from the one in the previous season, but somehow I survived.  After fighting back the second siege, I think I had two fighters left to protect the entire fort.  The rest were all injured, and I was in the process of training up more.  And in the very same season, in walks this high-and-mighty dragon.

"Well!"  I say to myself.  "I haven't had a chance to put this bridge trap into action yet.  Perhaps I'll use it here to stun the dragon and put it below me so I can shoot at it safely.  What could possibly go wrong?"

This movie shows exactly what could possibly go wrong.

Despite what you see in the stocks screen in that movie, there really were only two healthy soldiers available.  The dwarven caravan guards were successful in killing the dragon, but one of my !!dwarves!! made it to the booze stockpile and... yeeeeah, things got a little out of hand from there.  You can actually see the dwarf responsible at the very end, running south with a trail of smoke behind him.

/Scummed, tried fighting it three different ways and forced to scum each time... after the fourth try it became apparent that I simply didn't have the power to stop the dragon, and my only choice was to cage it so that I could continue with my story.  I do regret it, but having to restart would have ruined the story.

Now that this blooper reel has been revealed, I need to incorporate it into my next post in the narration!

[milaga]

It all began when one of my Original 7 (yes, I give them that profession name after I get my first immigrants) got possessed.

...

In fact, he's so buff that the first person he runs into - the newly arrived siege operator - gets thrown down a hallway and explodes into small bits of dwarf when he is introduced to the wall.

I've never had problems with insane mooded dwarves doing any damage, but I've always locked them in their rooms when it's clear they were going to become casualties of their own creativity. I suppose I've been missing a good source of fun, though. From now on I'll just station a military dwarf outside the room. If he runs amok my soldier should dispatch him ... but there's a (not at all small) chance that he will be on a break of some sort.

I always gave my starting seven the name "Founder." It implies some sort of respect or reverence and it also sounds quite dwarfy. There also was a time I named my dwarves Trademaster, Stonemaster, Craftmaster, Earthmaster, Blademaster, Shieldmaster and Woodmaster for the Trader, Mason, Stonecrafter, Farmer/Cook/Brewer, Weaponsmith, Armorer and Carpenter I would take on every build. Dwarves that worked under them (such as extra masons) would be workers instead of masters. The Stonemaster would lead a team of Stoneworkers in building walls. If one of the founders died I would usually promote the next qualified dwarf to be a master.

You've drawn it out of me.  I've been keeping this movie a secret for some time now, but it's too funny to keep hidden forever!

...

"Well!"  I say to myself.  "I haven't had a chance to put this bridge trap into action yet.  Perhaps I'll use it here to stun the dragon and put it below me so I can shoot at it safely.  What could possibly go wrong?"

...

/Scummed, tried fighting it three different ways and forced to scum each time... after the fourth try it became apparent that I simply didn't have the power to stop the dragon, and my only choice was to cage it so that I could continue with my story.  I do regret it, but having to restart would have ruined the story.

I have heard your confession. You are absolved of your sins. Do three hail Moruls and recite the litanies of Boatmurdered.

If the primary function of a fort is to provide inspiration to a story then I don't see any harm in savescumming. Of course if your interest is to have fun, savescumming is quite contrary to the goal. I savescummed once very early on in my DF career and I quickly lost interest in the fort. Besides, reading a story about everything running like clockwork is as exciting as watching a clock.

Also pit traps aren't very effective against flying creatures. Especially if those traps only half work.

[Lord Dakoth]

Litanies of Boatmurdered? More like the Lunacies of Boatmurdered.

Oh yes, and dragons don't actually fly yet...

[milaga]

Litanies of Boatmurdered? More like the Lunacies of Boatmurdered.

Oh yes, and dragons don't actually fly yet...

Oh yeah, I forgot that dragons don't fly. It's been so long since I've actually fought one. I assumed that since they also aren't fireproof that the dragon perished in the blaze of burning mushroom hooch.

Lunacies. That was the word I was looking for.

[KenboCalrissian]

Besides, reading a story about everything running like clockwork is as exciting as watching a clock.

This, certainly, would not describe Severedcoils.  The idea was to collect as many baron consorts as possible.  After 9 years, I'm still at 1!  Its story is full of failed experiments and realizations that came too late.