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[Tokeli]

I'm a noob! As such, I'm on my second fortress (after having a "Wow, I suck at design." moment on the first one), and have a bunch of questions! Mostly because the wiki is far less than helpful about some things.  Probably too many questions. Oh god I'm sorry for all the questions.

0) Help, oh god!  I'm up to my BEARD in CATS and ASSES. And most of them are already pets! Is there any way to get rid of most of these animals, which are bogging my FPS something fierce? 

1) Which is more 'noob-friendly' in letting me learn the ropes and all the basics, DF2010 or 40d? The military in 2010 confuses the hell out of me, but I'm sorta irked about playing old versions of things.

2) Does anyone happen to have some tips for getting a new fortress up and running efficiently as quick as possible? Such as what should be built asap and what can wait, like hospitals or barracks or trade depot? And what should my workshops start churning out, other than booze, barrels/bins and furniture?

3) Can you force dwarves to drink from murky pools instead of a far-away brook that seriously jeopardizes half the population?  I had to stop everything else to dig a well to that brook to keep them from dwarfing off to their deaths to take a sip halfway down the mountainside. On a related note-- do dwarves run away from floods? 

4) World generation is confusing! Specifically the final embark location. A full third of my time has been spent trying to find a perfect spot-- and I find one. For example, half forest in the north and half mountains in the south, with a river in the east. I'll embark, and suddenly the world that loads looks nothing like that. It has a bit of forest and a lot of mountain, and not in the same general locations I thought. So is the embark screen just an extremely rough view of what you'll be getting, instead of something reliable? 

5) Military! The military in 40d seems straight-forward enough, but does anyone happen to have a little guide on getting setup in DF2010? I've got copper maces and leather armour, and I -think- they've been assigned to my 3 man squad. But not a damn thing about it I can be certain about.

6) Last question, I think! Good methods for exploratory mining? Right now I've got my best diggers mining in a very wide 1x grid pattern on the same level as my brook, with a hatch at the top of the stairs in case something nasty appears. Around what levels should I really expect to hit a cavern or magma pool-- or any other underground feature in DF2010.

Aaaaaah, I had even more questions but I've forgotten them!

9) How does everyone organize their dwarf labour? Even with Dwarf Therapist it gets difficult.

7) Oh, real last question. Is it even worth it making a stockpile for stones? I can't build floors to use up the stones if there are stones in the way, but those stockpiles get full almost instantly!

Okay that's actually all the questions. Thank you in advance if you don't just fistshake angrily at me for demanding so much! 

[Sphalerite]

0) Help, oh god!  I'm up to my BEARD in CATS and ASSES. And most of them are already pets! Is there any way to get rid of most of these animals, which are bogging my FPS something fierce? 

Animals which aren't pets can be designated for butchering, or just stuck in a cage.  To designate an animal for butchering, you first need a butcher's shop, and a dwarf with the butcher skill.  Then you can either go to the animal's screen and set it to be butchered, or go to your animals screen on the stocks window and select multiple animals to be butchered.  If merely preventing breeding is your goal it's faster to build a cage and then set all the non-pet animals to be stored in the cage.  Animals will not become pregnant in cages, but animals which were already pregnant will give birth in cages, so you might get births for a while after sticking them in there.

As far as pets go, prevention is the better solution.  Never import cats.  You don't need to worry about other pets so much, since cats are the only ones which become pets by themselves.  You'll get immigrants with pet donkeys or cows or whatever, but other than that cats are the only animals that become pets without your control.

2) Does anyone happen to have some tips for getting a new fortress up and running efficiently as quick as possible? Such as what should be built asap and what can wait, like hospitals or barracks or trade depot? And what should my workshops start churning out, other than booze, barrels/bins and furniture?

One important tip is barrel management.  I see a lot of new players who run out of barrels and can't brew any more booze because all their barrels are taken up storing plants and such.  To control this, make multiple food stockpiles.  Set some to take only liquids (booze, milk, syrup, etc).  Those can have barrels in them.  Set others to take food types that don't need to be stores in barrels (plants, meat, seeds, cheese, prepared meals...).  Set the maximum barrels on those stockpiles to zero.  This should keep enough barrels free so you can keep your dwarves drinking booze.

3) Can you force dwarves to drink from murky pools instead of a far-away brook that seriously jeopardizes half the population?  I had to stop everything else to dig a well to that brook to keep them from dwarfing off to their deaths to take a sip halfway down the mountainside. On a related note-- do dwarves run away from floods? 

Dwarves will always prefer drinking from brooks to drinking from murky pools.  They will also always prefer drinking from wells to drinking from brooks, so you can control where they drink by building a well over a water source.  They also always prefer drinking booze to drinking water, and if forced to drink only water will work more slowly, so the answer is to brew enough booze so they never have to drink water.

4) World generation is confusing! Specifically the final embark location. A full third of my time has been spent trying to find a perfect spot-- and I find one. For example, half forest in the north and half mountains in the south, with a river in the east. I'll embark, and suddenly the world that loads looks nothing like that. It has a bit of forest and a lot of mountain, and not in the same general locations I thought. So is the embark screen just an extremely rough view of what you'll be getting, instead of something reliable? 

The embark location shows you the rough pattern of the biomes that you'll see on your game map.  It is approximate, but should be accurate.  Are you sure you're looking at the right part of the screen on the embark page?

6) Last question, I think! Good methods for exploratory mining? Right now I've got my best diggers mining in a very wide 1x grid pattern on the same level as my brook, with a hatch at the top of the stairs in case something nasty appears. Around what levels should I really expect to hit a cavern or magma pool-- or any other underground feature in DF2010.

I usually dig a single staircase straight down until I hit the caverns.  They're somewhere around ten to twenty levels down from the surface.  Then I wall it off to keep anything from getting up.  Don't rely on hatches or doors to stop nasties, there are building-destroyers down there.  My longer-term exploration strategy is to dump a bunch of cats in the first cavern level.  They'll breed uncontrollably, wander the caverns, map them out, and give me advance warning of monsters approaching.  And the cavern inhabitants will keep the cat population under control for me.

7) Oh, real last question. Is it even worth it making a stockpile for stones? I can't build floors to use up the stones if there are stones in the way, but those stockpiles get full almost instantly!

The only reason to make stone stockpiles is if you want to stockpile a specific kind of stone.  For example, making a stockpile that takes only metal ore next to your smelter is useful, or if you want to make a lot of furniture out of a specific kind of stone you'd make a stockpile that only takes that kind of stone next to your mason's shop.  Usually it is better to leave the stone where it's mined until you specifically need it for something.

When you designate something to be built in an area that has stones or other obstructing objects, your dwarves will move the objects out of the way, unless those objects are tasked for a job already.  Reasons for being tasked for a job include being designated for dumping, being flagged for being moved to a stockpile, or having a wall or floor or other construction designated using those stones.  If a stone isn't set to be dumped, going to be moved to a stockpile, or picked to make something out of, your dwarves will just move it out of the way if you're building something there.  The exception is stockpiles - your dwarves won't move stones out of the way when you designate a stockpile in the area, so manually clearing stones is required if you want to use an area for a stockpile.  For that I recommend making a garbage dump and designating the stone for dumping when you need it cleared.

[Tokeli]

Oh wow, thank you! You guys are pretty helpful.

The embark location shows you the rough pattern of the biomes that you'll see on your game map.  It is approximate, but should be accurate.  Are you sure you're looking at the right part of the screen on the embark page?

Far left panel, in the highlighted area. And if it's a rough pattern, then I guess what I get is fairly accurate. It showed half forests and half mountains, and every time I got a nice forest-- just on a mountain taking up the entire map. Thanks!



I hate to ask more, but I just really like being sure of things..

I usually dig a single staircase straight down until I hit the caverns.  They're somewhere around ten to twenty levels down from the surface.  Then I wall it off to keep anything from getting up.  Don't rely on hatches or doors to stop nasties, there are building-destroyers down there.  My longer-term exploration strategy is to dump a bunch of cats in the first cavern level.  They'll breed uncontrollably, wander the caverns, map them out, and give me advance warning of monsters approaching.  And the cavern inhabitants will keep the cat population under control for me.

While that sounds like an awesome idea, how would I get the cats into the cavern and keep them there long enough to build a wall? I haven't messed around with cages enough to know, sorry.


And the final question, promise: Does walling off mined-out areas, or the area outside your fortress, help regain FPS lost to pathfinding?

[Sphalerite]

While that sounds like an awesome idea, how would I get the cats into the cavern and keep them there long enough to build a wall? I haven't messed around with cages enough to know, sorry.

Build a cage in a tunnel.  Put all your cats in the cage.  Build a mechanic's workshop and make three mechanisms.  Build a lever (takes one mechanism).  Link the lever to the cage (takes two more mechanisms).  Connect the tunnel with the cage in it to the caverns.  Wall off the tunnel so it's only connected to the caverns with no other exit to your fortress or the outside.  Pull the lever.  The cage will be opened and the cats will wander out into the caverns.  You won't be able to get the cage back.  I actually built a vastly more complex airlock device with lever-controlled bridges that lets me dump animals into the caverns without losing cages or mechanisms in the process.

Actually, I think you can simply dig a pit over the open caverns and designate animals to be dumped into it.  I prefer overly elaborate mechanical devices.

And the final question, promise: Does walling off mined-out areas, or the area outside your fortress, help regain FPS lost to pathfinding?

It might help a little in pruning consideration of side paths in the pathfinding algorithm, if the code is never having to even consider dead-end side branches.  Setting main corridors as high traffic zones may also help.

[anotherthing]

My longer-term exploration strategy is to dump a bunch of cats in the first cavern level.  They'll breed uncontrollably, wander the caverns, map them out, and give me advance warning of monsters approaching.  And the cavern inhabitants will keep the cat population under control for me.

That's insanely funny. Now, here's the question. How do you dump the cats down there? Cage them up, place the cages, link to lever, and then wall the area up seems rather slow considering what wanders around the caverns. I have a huge fortress up on the ground right now and just now breeched the caverns. Upon breeching them, I've had around 50 dwarves eaten by what comes from below.

The only reason to make stone stockpiles is if you want to stockpile a specific kind of stone.  For example, making a stockpile that takes only metal ore next to your smelter is useful, or if you want to make a lot of furniture out of a specific kind of stone you'd make a stockpile that only takes that kind of stone next to your mason's shop.  Usually it is better to leave the stone where it's mined until you specifically need it for something.

I have a whole floor devoted to storing stone. I mainly use that level to generate blocks, but also to make specific items out of specific rock. Of course, this floor takes up half the map size right now and I'm continually expanding it.


When you designate something to be built in an area that has stones or other obstructing objects, your dwarves will move the objects out of the way, unless those objects are tasked for a job already.  Reasons for being tasked for a job include being designated for dumping, being flagged for being moved to a stockpile, or having a wall or floor or other construction designated using those stones.  If a stone isn't set to be dumped, going to be moved to a stockpile, or picked to make something out of, your dwarves will just move it out of the way if you're building something there.  The exception is stockpiles - your dwarves won't move stones out of the way when you designate a stockpile in the area, so manually clearing stones is required if you want to use an area for a stockpile.  For that I recommend making a garbage dump and designating the stone for dumping when you need it cleared.
[/quote]

[Sphalerite]

My longer-term exploration strategy is to dump a bunch of cats in the first cavern level.  They'll breed uncontrollably, wander the caverns, map them out, and give me advance warning of monsters approaching.  And the cavern inhabitants will keep the cat population under control for me.

That's insanely funny. Now, here's the question. How do you dump the cats down there? Cage them up, place the cages, link to lever, and then wall the area up seems rather slow considering what wanders around the caverns. I have a huge fortress up on the ground right now and just now breeched the caverns. Upon breeching them, I've had around 50 dwarves eaten by what comes from below.

The safe way to do it is with a trap door (floor hatch or retracting bridge) over an opening to the caverns.  Place the trap door in a hallway and link it to a lever somewhere.  Have doors just before and after the trap door.  When you see an animal wandering down the corridor, set the door just after the trap door to not allow animals through.  The animal will step onto the trap door, then halt in place as it can't get through the door.  Lock both doors completely, then have a dwarf pull the lever.  The animal will fall into the caverns.  Pull the lever again to close the trap door, and then fully unlock both doors.

This still isn't completely safe, since flying building-destroyer forgotten beasts may be able to fly up and get through the trap door while it's open.  In theory building-destroyers can only destroy buildings on the same Z-level as them, so they shouldn't be able to destroy the trap door while it's closed.

[MaDeR Levap]

I'm up to my BEARD in CATS and ASSES.

I hope you mean donkeys. Anyway, this is catplosion. You can kill these pests in zilion ways. One of more sadistic involve ower of pet, cat itself, doors, repeatedly pulled lever and upright spikes.

Which is more 'noob-friendly' in letting me learn the ropes and all the basics, DF2010 or 40d?

40d, for very simple reason: much more tutorials, less bugs.

Does anyone happen to have some tips for getting a new fortress up and running efficiently as quick as possible? Such as what should be built asap and what can wait, like hospitals or barracks or trade depot? And what should my workshops start churning out, other than booze, barrels/bins and furniture?

I typically make some workshops (caprenter, mason, mechanic, craftdwarf) next to wagon and dig temporary mini-fortress in soil or shallow rock (in future full-fledged barracks) - 5x5 dormitory, 5x5 dining room, and space for food stockpile and other things - on side of main way from surface to deep bowels of earth. Depot a few z-levels lower, right under it stockpile of finished goods, again under it stonemaker quaters to sell worthless stone crap to tourists, and below is rest of fortress. It is very 3-d and use exclusively ramps (rumours says this help fps). I love to do inticate water tunnel system situated between surface and depot level (with some tunels making way to living quaters and in fact everywhere) with carpload of floodgates, sections etc. to make moats, waterfalls, and of course accidentally (really, honest!) flooding entire fortress. Its nice to be Armok.

3) Can you force dwarves to drink from murky pools instead of a far-away brook that seriously jeopardizes half the population?  I had to stop everything else to dig a well to that brook to keep them from dwarfing off to their deaths to take a sip halfway down the mountainside.

You can designate drinking zone and setup that you want zone-drinking only.

On a related note-- do dwarves run away from floods? 

Dorfs will try to run. Try is the operative word there. They die easily. If not, they are either munchinks (very experienced dwarves are crazily overpowered) or yet another semi-immortal dorf bug.

I find one. For example, half forest in the north and half mountains in the south, with a river in the east. I'll embark, and suddenly the world that loads looks nothing like that.

Maybe you are looking at most left window as whole? there is inside subwindow that you can change with your actual embark area.

6) Last question, I think! Good methods for exploratory mining? Right now I've got my best diggers mining in a very wide 1x grid pattern on the same level as my brook, with a hatch at the top of the stairs in case something nasty appears. Around what levels should I really expect to hit a cavern or magma pool-- or any other underground feature in DF2010.

I have yet to seriously explore caverns. No fort survive my wrath sufficiently long. Anyway I always set 15 z-levels between surface and highest cavern, just to have space for my fortress.

[Tcei]

One way to take care of adopted pets (especialy cats) is to build a 1 tile wide hallway (about 7-8 tiles long is good ime) with a door at either end, leading to a room wit ha lever in it.
The lever can be connected to some upright spikes or a raising draw bridge in the hallway (b>T>S).
'q' over the door leading to the lever room and set it to forbid pets. then 'q' over the lever and assign it to a dwarf with pets, then set the lever to repeat.
Note if you use spikes you'll want to be sure to either lock the door leading to the  rest of the fort after the pet is in there or or stop the puller from pulling the lever as soon as the animal is dead, to prevent other dwarves from coming in and getting impaled.

For a better example:
DHHHHSSSDL
D Leading out to rest of fort. Doesnot need to be locked initialy.
H Hallway
S Upright spikes (or raising drawbridge)
D Pet forbiden door
L Lever assigned to the dwarf

[Ricky]

this is for the cats


if your any bit familiar with the raws, or want to..

go to the raw file when you open it up

from there go to objects..

if you look around you will find creatures_domestic

in there you will find cats comewhere in there put the [AQUATIC] tag

all fish will die from lack of water

DISCLAIMER: if one of your dwarves has alot of cats, and they all die, he might go into a tantrum , and might cause a tantrum spiral, i almost got my fort into one of those killing the cats, be careful

[gtmattz]

RE: Embark area...

Sounds to me like you are thinking that the entire left window is going to be available to you when you embark, that is not the way it works.  Inside that far left window is a smaller square that you can move with umhk and resize with UMHK, that smaller square is the actual area you are embarking on, not the entire view.

[Lightman]

0. Don't import cats or keep them locked in cages

1. You might as well play 31.* ("2010")

2. I carefully choose my nobles at embark, based on personality and give them the necessary skills for each post (trader, manager, bookkeeper, leader). Build a depot and make crafts to trade so you can get things you don't have / can't find. Building a farm is a good idea. The military can usually wait a little

3. Dig an underground waterway to the brook and channel it back to your fortress, or drain a pool.

4. World generation? The embark screen is a separate thing. The local map matches what you will see. Have you been moving the "Local Area" box inside the local map? (gtmattz mentioned this in the post above)

[Tokeli]

Thank you for all the replies, everyone!

And to answer the one thing everyone seems to doubt me about: I -am- moving the local area box inside the final embark screen. Considering I've been spending 10-15 minutes scouting out the perfect spot every time, I'm very careful about the embark square. But it just doesn't seem -right-.

For example with my last embark, with a customized world: 3x4 embark square, at least 4 squares of heavily-forested woodlands, 4 squares of mountains, a volcano and a brook. I embark and check the map, and find the volcano and brook, but not many trees. I guess trees don't grow on mountains well, even if it's forested?  I'm a noob.

[Double A]

They don't cause there's 2 less tiles per slope, meaning less room to grow.

[Xenoc]

Are you sure you're interpreting the symbols correctly? 
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/40d:Map_legend

[Psieye]

I feel there's a mismatch between what you expect a mountain biome to be, and what it actually is. Or more precisely, you're not checking elevation when you embark are you? Press Tab on embark screen and see what the elevation change is like. If the slopes are of rank 4+ then in all likelihood there won't be many trees because there's so many slopes. What separates "Mountain" from "Forest" might be as little as the elevation between the two, they can be otherwise very similar (aside from trees not growing on non-soil tiles).

So then, you want wood and stone (preferably with magma and water) I take it. Right now there's no point embarking near a mountain for that - embark on a flat woodland with a sedimentary rock layer underneath it. Should be easy finding a brook with that arrangement, kill the [AQUIFER] tags and re-generate the world if they interrupt too many ideal sites and magma is guaranteed once you dig down enough. But you won't need magma early on, there's plenty of resources.

Military: switch off INVADERS in the init settings. Then you can start learning the military at a leisurely pace while you learn everything else. Trying to get used to everything at once won't get you anywhere. Learn how to manage the domestic affairs before the military affairs.

As for what to produce from workshops... well what do you want to achieve? Seriously, DF has no definitive objective to aim for right now, each fort is built with whatever goal the player wants. Do you want to build a factory of toys or be the empire's secret weapon cache? Do you want to be the wonder of the world with glass architecture? What does your creativity desire?