When will at least some of the world gen events happen after proper world gen is finished?
This is the main thing we are aiming for, pretty much, of all the features in the game. It has just been tricky to start without entity populations, and to a lesser extent site resources. We've got entity populations now as of the September releases. This time we wanted to get an adventure mode game to play, so that something is happening there, especially since it degenerated even more with the villages. Tentatively, we are thinking about November for site resources, caravan and town stuff, and December for other groups moving around, which'll finally mean something is happening. If we can get the economy up in November, then that should impact dwarf mode quite a bit as well, and it would be at that point perhaps that armies can also start coming from places, though we still have some depopulation concerns until things are ironed out.
Since you're adding night creatures and other adventure mode-focused stuff, do you think it would be possible to throw a bone to the adventurers exploring abandoned fortresses? It would be cool if some various night creatures automatically took up residence in abandoned fortresses and accosted any adventurers who dared to enter. Bands of kobolds or animal people living in the old dining room, etc. would also be really cool. The sky is the limit, really, but even something simple and hacky could be great!
There is one bone, but it might not be the kind you were looking for. There's always been a problem with finalizing the state of the fortress, especially with invasions, but more generally because the world gen stuff doesn't continue, so creatures rarely move in properly. In December we'll have a very good chance for it, since we should also have ruined castles by then and these kinds of places will be sought out.
Toady, are there any plans to have long term (as in, more than just seasonal) variations in temperature/climate? So you might have a year where the temperatures are on average 5 dorf units cooler (with thusly differing melting/freezing times), or a decade where rainfall is half what it normally is?
I don't have any explicit plans. Once there are world gen famines and better farming, I imagine that would be a good place to start, since variations are an important factor there.
So, the reference about 'cauldrons of blood.' Is that just a poetic way of saying that this release will involve great violence and terror? Or are there actual, real cauldrons now, that are filled/can be filled with blood?
Ah, yeah, I guess that's ambiguous, isn't it? I hadn't thought about that.
Will be nigh creatures be tied in into religions stuff. I mean stuff like the old european "Hexenhammer" or that the people start to ascribe certain forms of nightcreatures to certain Entitys like (staying at sowelus example) Catgirls being seen gifted by the "forrest-spirit" etc. ?
The dev page has a bit about religion vs. night creatures and also paranoia among the populace, but we didn't do any of that for this time. I think it'll be easier to consider adding friendlier creatures once we have a game established in adventure mode... which will unfortunately still be centered around violence and unfriendly creatures. The same thing has always been true of the megabeasts as well. The good region titans aren't really good despite their descriptions. We'll see what happens when the stuff from the first questions goes in. I expect it'll be a while yet.
About the burials, will dwarves visit the tombs of their loved ones?
There's nothing like that at this point. We were trying to get to a little bit a few days back when I finished off the dwarf stuff I had been working on, but I ran out of the time I had set aside for myself, so it's still a very simple system with the burial and the new memorials, without requiring any other dwarf input.
Do night creatures use the items in their lair - that is, if one got a hold on armor from a victim, would the creature wear it if it's the right size? Or will they act like dragons and only scatter it about?
If they use the things, are night creatures something of micro-entities, or could other creatures with a den (if the den creation is one of the new behaviors that'll be available as tags) get equipment this way?
There is a little bit of item use, but we didn't have armor in mind for the night creatures we have so far and they don't want to use new items. We're considering going back and revamping all the megabeast living arrangements, but it's a question of time as usual. In general, critters including people are still quite ignorant about items sitting around and so on.
Now that we'll be getting quests from villagers to go save the town from chaos trolls and werehippos and whatnot, are quest rewards going to be implemented?
We don't have bounties at this point. I haven't done bandits and other bad people like that yet but am hoping to for this time, so I'm not entirely ruling that out, but probably not. There is the reputation increase, which is beneficial, though not as much as it will be when there's more to do for your chosen affiliations. The questing spots do have good items to use sometimes, as well as other objects that can be brought back to the soon-to-be-readded-this-time stores to trade up.