Before today, I had never used a pump in Dwarf fortress. I knew that they were useful in dealing with aquifers, among other things, but I didn't understand how they worked, and while I knew that I could probably figure it out on my own if I messed with them a bit, I didn't feel like doing that. However, yesterday, for the first time in my 4+ years of experience with Dwarf Fortress, I attempted to use pumps.
The plan was pretty simple. I would attempt to deal with an aquifer using a popular method involving pumping the water out of a staircase as the aquifer filled it up, keeping the water levels shallow enough for workers to smooth the walls or build their own, negating the generation of water completely. After a good 10 minutes of trying to figure out how to correctly place a screw pump, I figured out that they could pump water from spaces under the tile on the "receiving" end. I dug a channel out the side of the hill I was digging into through which the pumped water could escape, and braced myself.
As I pressed enter, the pump operating dwarf eagerly began to pump water out of the hill and into the woods. At that precise moment, time stood still, and I was euphoric. Not because of the phony blood god's blessing, but because I was enlightened by my own intelligence. As time resumed, my euphoria ceased to be as a roaring tsunami of fluid burst out of the hill. While I attempted to convince my dwarves to smooth the walls in the staircase or do something, anything at all, which would give me an opportunity to turn this death machine off, I figured out that I was doing it wrong. A tidal wave covered the entire forest, soon enveloping most of the poor dwarves and the wagon they rode in on.
Dwarf Fortress.
I'm kind of surprised that the FPS remained at its cap of 100 throughout the entire ordeal despite the tsunami which was probably enveloping a quarter of the map's surface, while when attempting to channel a tiny amount of water out of a river a long time ago dropped my framerate to near-unplayable levels. I'm not sure if it's the upgrade I've given my computer since then, DF's new 64-bitness, or both.
I was fighting Seltas, a big insect thing which apparently exists solely to show me how awful I am at Monster Hunter.
In the middle of our battle, he just fucked off and left, and I hadn't thought to bring any paintballs. Then I wasted a bunch of potions looking for him again, and then he killed me for real.
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.
Ahh, Seltas. His "sneeze" attack (where he swings his mandibles and it sounds kind of like a sneeze) still catches me off guard when I fight him.
If you're having trouble with the game in general, the real tricks are: #1, be patient, and #2, roll out of EVERY attack.
Seriously, though. Monster Hunter isn't like most action games where you jam the attack button until you're about to be hit and then hit the counter/dodge button. You need to pick your opportunities to strike, attack fast and hard, then get the heck out of there, or you WILL be punished.
Side-rolling out of attacks with B usually shortens the amount of time it takes to recover from the attack animations, and gets you out of the way, so you should be doing that often.
It's not an easy game to learn, but it is very rewarding. I hope you stick with it.
All of this, along with my usual advice of trying different weapons. Don't dismiss any weapon before you've tried it, they're all amazing in different ways. A few weeks ago I thought bowguns were shitty, now playing gunner is full-time job.
As a seperate word of encouragement (?) Monster Hunter is a game which you can really, really get good at with practice. There are so many techniques, items, skills, weapons and strategies available for anyone to use, and once you find ones you like and get better at using them you can seriously kick some ass. Pretty much any monster you can face will eventually become super easy because of how you can basically indefinitely improve as a player.
Also, since you're just now facing the Seltas, I'm assuming you probably are still using a basic armor. Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about the skills offered by the different armors and which ones will help you the most. Armor skills are a super important part of how you play the game.
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Topic: How did you last die? (Read 2412662 times)