Had a save corruption during the update to 43.03, so regenned a new 550 large world.
Made new peasant Imush Dirtclods with the same high recuperation/disease, above average strength/toughness set-up. I don't know any other way to replicate the idea of hardy dwarven constitution. Not optimal, but has the right RP feel as likely mentioned in some other post.
One skill in the last few runs that I've been setting to novice during character creation has been climber. Climber is tedious to train from dabbling upwards and it's part of the long game perspective to be able to melee inorganic web titans using
Uzu Bash's multiple z-lvl approach. Novice climber drastically increases your ability to catch on to something during your leaps. In this case from column to column 2-3 z-lvls up from ground level. Speed though, will still be under .200.
When fielding hunters, the narrative preference has been for sword or more often, spear, but mechanically neither of those two weapon types can reliably one/two/three shot an inorganic webber due to weight, contact area and penetration depth, so novice axe once again. For reference, an iron two-handed sword, which has the highest contact area (100k) with an 8k penetration depth, only weighs 7r. The iron great axe has a 60k contact area with an 8k penetration depth at 10r in weight. The iron battle axe has a 40k contact area with an 6k penetration depth at 6r in weigh. Does the 3-4r difference in weight really matter? Perhaps not as much as I think when swinging at superior strength with base legendary axe skill. Still I have had a few characters with copper great axes cleave through inorganic quadrupeds. This run Imush started with a copper battle axe weighing 7r which he exchanged for an iron great axe in the fortress market. Iron and steel battle axes are both 6r I believe. If Imush had started with steel, I'd feel obligated to keep it due to material. Two runs ago, Ud Claspedgrips used the steel battle axe against two inorganic webbers, at 2 swings apiece. So, well we'll go with weight has meaning since there's no steel.
As Imush is just starting off, he's wearing iron chain leggings, iron mail shirt, iron cap, gauntlets and low boots. More armor pieces worn increases possible armor skill gain and the attendant attribute gain. Will again go for the granular advancement to talented shield/armor/wrestling start up build via slow travel cavern crawl. Later perhaps Imush will abandon all armor once at legendary shield and a similar level dodge.
The great shame about losing the old world was that world had several caves situated along the mountain chain. Easy access to cavern level 3. Mostly for the wood, but in more than one instance close to ruined mountain halls. It's a shot in the dark looking for FBs that haven't settled. I wonder if any of you guys has had success ferreting out non-settled FBs on cavern level 3 using this method?