Print

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

[The Architect]

So, the new version is coming out momentarily. Toady is undoubtedly takin' a break for Christmas, and I hope he enjoys himself. Several succession games of which I am a participant or originator are dying for lack of interest, as everyone realizes they are much more interested in what will be in the new version than the fun things they can do with the old one. I'm personally too busy to seriously commit to my own major project, which was organizing and facilitating DF's multiplayer community. The "Multiplayer League" will happen, but family, social life, and study are just higher priorities. Anyway...

So, it's time to do something which requries minimal time (just forum reading) and discuss our "YAAD"s, or "Yet Another Annoying/Accidental Death"s, iow times we lost the game or a beloved dwarf, aka Fun. Hopefully interesting narration will make this enjoyable and keep us hanging out here until things get rolling again.

"YAAD" is a well-known acronymn in Roguelike games, which is what Dwarf Fortress is. Rather than go into an intense history lesson, anyone unfamiliar with the fact should consider themselves now informed that DF is rooted in a long history of a sort of "underground" or "niche" gaming community with a rich history of all kinds of things, but mostly Fun in the form of insensate deaths. (the game Rogue, on whose tradition DF is based, had astronomically low chances of survival, to the point that it has never been won without cheating) These are generally brought on by the "RNG", or Random Number Generator, aka Random Number God. When your dwarf champion with insane stats and legendary skill in all weapon types, shield and armor uses is struck by that instantly fatal blow, you would say (as a member of this long, rich tradition) "@#$@#$ed RNG got me again! It's YAAD!" The same goes for when you do something really, really stupid or senseless causing your dwarf(s) to undergo extreme torment ending in death.

Now you know what YAAD is, and why you should already know it if you didn't. Now, share your Fun!

Edit: Acronymn fixed.

[silhouette]

*prepares for lots of posts about children mauling people*

[DDR]

Given two constructed floor tiles sticking out of the side of a 25z cliff. Tell a dwarf to deconstruct one. I didn't notice where he stood until he finished his job. It took him 20 seconds or so to fall to his splattery death. Pointless, yet so funny. "Zounds! Looks like Urist mcPlansAhead has invented a rocket! How novel! Hm, can't say it seems to be going so well. Look at all that smoke. *thump* Ooh, hard landing."

Later, unrelated:
'Beefy mcCalf has bled to death.' I zoom to the site, and find a trail of blood leading from the base of a cliff to my fortress entrance. In the entrance, I find a dead calf lying in a pool of blood. Someone more experienced than I: Did my calf really trip, fall, then attempt to drag itself back to the only home it ever knew on four broken limbs while bleeding to death? To top the gruesome end of life, my butcher was busy at the time and let the corpse spoil.

I love dwarf fortress. It can be so inhumanely, pointlessly, bloody cruel sometimes.

[silhouette]

When i accidently continued to dig a staicase into a magmapit, not caring that my fortress was basically screwed.
Didnt know 'bout fireimps and that at this time...
the imps really had some fun that year...
They climbed up the stairs, starting throwing fireballs at the dwarves who were trying to stockpile crap that i just before decided to stockpile inside my fortress so theifs couldnt get them ( something i should emulate with my current fortress as  i have literally ALL my goods outside due to me having to reclaim my palce.

[darkflagrance]

Took 70 dwarves into the depths of one of my fortresses for death or glory...mostly death.

We met the resident pair of dragons in the once-great five-story dining hall. Rotting food and clothing were strewn all over the ground, mixed in with overturned furniture and melted equipment. Half the team caught fire and burned to death, but my marksmen got off lucky shots and felled both beasts. Nonetheless, the rest of my army succumbed to madness or injury, and I was forced to retreat with the last two sane soldiers into the deeper halls, which were right next to the chasm dividing the map into east and west.

No biggie, I thought. There was a well down here, where I could get water and probably even fish until reinforcements came.

Then, one of the soldiers went berserk. I was forced to flee down into the catacombs with the last marksdwarf, locking the door behind her. She proceeded to reveal an ambush of underground creatures that had taken up residence among the coffins lining the wall alcoves.

She fought bravely, but at last a swarm of seven troglodytes overwhelmed my exhausted marksdwarf. Atop a heap of severed ratman limbs and antmen ichor, they piled on top of her, breaking her limbs one by one, until she was finally killed by a passing naked moledog.

[darkrider2]

Given two constructed floor tiles sticking out of the side of a 25z cliff. Tell a dwarf to deconstruct one. I didn't notice where he stood until he finished his job. It took him 20 seconds or so to fall to his splattery death. Pointless, yet so funny. "Zounds! Looks like Urist mcPlansAhead has invented a rocket! How novel! Hm, can't say it seems to be going so well. Look at all that smoke. *thump* Ooh, hard landing."

someone did something similar in real life... ever read the darwin awards?

Back on topic. Sent my entire military on a banzai charge only to lose them all because the goblins had bows and arrows.

My crossbow division had already been wiped out by a giant bat since they wouldn't shoot up at him.

Lost the fortress to the same goblins but not without flooding it first. good times.

[Overspeculated]

When I wanted to kill my tax collector, I built a floor bridge held by a support over the magma pipe to an "island" only accessible through the bridge, had the tax collector pull the lever on the island that was connected to the bridge. He flew in the air and then landed on a plateau. Three other dwarves that were near-by got sucked in by the dust and got burnt to cinder. I was stunned. Then a fire imp climbed on the plateau and shot a fireball at the tax collector, who dodged into the magma. Then I was pleased.

[A-chana]

In the end of the tantrum chain that killed 40% of my fort, I had a prisoner stuck in jail, sentenced to a third of a year for beating the crap out of a bunch of people. I was running around on Dwarf Companion, though, and realized he was starving and close to being dehydrated. Apparently bunching a lot of cages together and designating middle ones as jails is a bad idea, since another dwarf in the same position also left her cell hungry and thirsty. I hooked up his cell to a lever, which took a while because my dwarves are slow and slackers, and after I broke him out, he immediately went to rest instead of eating or drinking, since his upper body was broken from either a beating or being attacked by a tantrumer.

A guard began to track him while he rested, wanting to beat and jail him again. How he was even jailed when wounded in the first place is beyond me -- aren't guards supposed to wait? Anyway, I got rid of all my guards and waited for someone to come with water. There were a lot of wounded dwarves, but eventually someone finally showed up with a bucket of water, ready to help the dying dwarf...

...and a recruit suddenly passed by the room entrance, breaking the helper's pathing and causing him to leave the hall.

The guard that had tried to re-jail the prisoner later showed up with water, but the dwarf died seconds before he could enter the room.

Moral of the story: Officers are corrupt jerks, and you really shouldn't be sloppy with jail-making.

On hindsight, maybe I could have also saved that dwarf by designating all extra beds as bedrooms so they couldn't be considered hospital beds, forcing him to not rest. I dunno if that could have helped or if he would have jumped into a bed anyway, but it wouldn't have hurt.

[stormyseasons]

Lost a fortress to an entirely preventable accident involving water for my cistern, a well to tap said cistern, floodgates to control water flow from brook, and control room placement. I'd forgotten to add another door to the corridor linking the well room after widening the passage. Also the control room was next to this room. Apparently, if a well taps the cistern, and you let water flow in unchecked to fill to 7/7, it will overflow via the well. The entire corridor was impassable due to water flow, and trapped my dwarves in their bedroom complex just off that corridor. Water rapidly leaked into the main stairwells, and no one would dig a emergency passage into the control room in time to close the gates. Abandoned that one in utter disgust for the level of work involved in stopping the water flow.

[G-Flex]

"YAAD"s, or "Yet Another Stupid Death"s

Am I the only person who noticed this? Or am I just tired and confused?

[Fleck]

"YAAD"s, or "Yet Another Stupid Death"s

Am I the only person who noticed this? Or am I just tired and confused?

Maybe it's really "Yet Another Annoying Death", who knows?

[The Architect]

"YAAD"s, or "Yet Another Stupid Death"s

Am I the only person who noticed this? Or am I just tired and confused?

Maybe it's really "Yet Another Annoying Death", who knows?

That's exactly what it is. Unfortunately this was "Yet Another 3AM Post". I'll fix it now, thanks for the heads-up.

[Omegastick]

I once trained a human up into a legendary wrestler, with full atributes (superhumanly tough etc.). He had killed countless elves, he once went into a human town, took the legendary crossbowman's crossbow of him (which was made of pure gold) and threw it across the room before gouging his eyes out and strangnlig him to death, then throwing the crossbow at a guard despite it being a much better option to shoot him. He was fighting a pack of wolves for the bazillionth time when he dodged right into a lake... and was knocked out (I think) making him drown.

[Moosey]

I had to deconstruct a wall I had built out of the wrong material, suspended over a pit.  Now, we all know dwarves know not to deconstruct a floor tile when someone's standing on it.  But apparently they don't know not to deconstruct a wall tile when someone's standing on the z-level above it.  This caused a few plummeting deaths before I realized what was going on...

[darkflagrance]

"YAAD"s, or "Yet Another Stupid Death"s

Am I the only person who noticed this? Or am I just tired and confused?

Maybe it's really "Yet Another Awesome Death", who knows?

Fixed it for you.