Print

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

[Acanthus117]

I have yet another query. Is it possible to give my worker dwarfs weapons, say an axe, and make them work while having an axe in their possesion? Or will they dump the axe in a weapon stockpile and leave themselves weaponless?

[gumball135]

No, miner and woodcutters will keep their tools (pickaxe and axe) while they have their respective job types enabled, but you can't give, say, a peasant with all labors disabled a weapon.
Maybe in the next version, I can't tell for certain.
Hope that helps

[Acanthus117]

thanks!

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

What you *can* do is draft all your peasants, train them in wrestling for a while, then undraft them and send them back to their jobs. They'll get some mild unhappy thoughts, BUT if you do it right, they'll have some decent self defense ability while they plant or harvest or whatever. I've had solo Harvesters knock out goblin ambush squads with just a season's worth of wrestling training.

[100killer9]

Couldn't you simply enable mining or woodcutting for every dwarf?

[Lord Urist]

You could, but then the untrained peasant might be the one which which digs out the vein of gold, while the legendary +5 digs out some useless rock. Another thing you can do is draft them into the military, give them the equipment you want, then enable hunting on them, then undraft them. They'll hold onto the equipment you gave them. Of course, this suffers from a similar problem: you get untrained peasants going out to hunt bears, and getting killed.

[Volatar]

Also, keep in mind that if a tantrum spiral starts, and you have ALL your dwarves armed to the teeth... things will go downhill even faster 

[loser]

Couldn't you simply enable mining or woodcutting for every dwarf?

No harm in enabling Woodcutting on every Dwarf.

A bit of wrestling sparing for Dodge skill.

A bit of Axe sparing for Axe skill.

Leave them all Woodcutters and the only downside is that when you designate some trees to be cut down, all other work just might come to a screeching halt.

[Volatar]

Couldn't you simply enable mining or woodcutting for every dwarf?

No harm in enabling Woodcutting on every Dwarf.

Yeah. And if there is no wood on your map anyways, your all good 

[Kidiri]

I can't believe nobody mentioned hunting yet. If your map is completely devoid of wildlife, you can safely assign all your dwarves to hunting. Not only will they grab a weapon of choice, but also will they grab armour. If you set them to have armour, that is.

[Beanchubbs]

I can't believe nobody mentioned hunting yet. If your map is completely devoid of wildlife, you can safely assign all your dwarves to hunting. Not only will they grab a weapon of choice, but also will they grab armour. If you set them to have armour, that is.

They will also sleep on the ground and drink water if you have waterskins.

[Acanthus117]

Cooool. I'll enable their woodcutting and/or hunting skills so they can at least defend themselves... after they train their wrestling and axe skill, of course.

[LordBucket]

train them in wrestling for a while

I usually find that it's sufficient to simply raise their stats. A legendary pump operator is usually tough enough that a stray goblin or two can't kill him faster than he can run back to my fort.

Of course, fortress design such that dwarves stay underground will make it less of an issue, too.

[Acanthus117]

I dunno. It's a habit to train all recruits in wrestling... But how would one train their Strength? Hauling things constantly?

[Rat Of Wisdom]

I dunno. It's a habit to train all recruits in wrestling... But how would one train their Strength? Hauling things constantly?

Strength isn't quite as important as Toughness, if you're just looking to keep your dwarves alive long enough to run to safety in case they get jumped- and I suggest that's what you aim to do, because killing the fuck out of the enemy is what your military and/or traps are for.

One way to gain Toughness reasonably efficiently is to build a bunch of screw pumps, don't connect them to anything, order them pumped manually, and give the dwarves in question the "Pump Operating" labor. You get about twenty "Urist McRocky cancels Operate Pump: Exhausted" messages a second, especially in the beginning when none of them have any attributes, but other than that it's fairly low-maintenance.

A backup plan is to do what I do: find every dwarf with a labor that makes it carry a weapon (hunters, miners and woodcutters spring to mind), group them into single squads by weapon type, and if they get jumped during work, activate them. Then again, I do this when my fortress has been running for a while, so anyone who's done any regular work usually has an attribute or two. YMMV.