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[NW_Kohaku]

I think most of the new stuff is fun and interesting.  It's worth at least doing a "non-serious" fort in.

That said, there's probably going to be another version coming out fairly soon to fix some of the new bugs.

The biggest problem is that now you have much less variety of resources, so what site you pick is very important in that regard, and there isn't very much information given to you on the embark screen - you pretty much have to make a duplicate save and make a test embark and dig straight down to really know what you're embarking on.

Plus I've had some crash-on-embark bugs that seem more common than previous versions.

[Immacolata]

Thanks everyone, I think Ill sit one version out, because my forts tend to be srs bsnz. Im gonna board troll a bit more and see about the 31.20 version. If that keeps the ore distribution as it is now, I think Ill go for it. Perhaps Toady One has a purpose of limiting metals somewhat. Im just not sure I am ready to lay off the EZ Steel just yet

[Girlinhat]

That's another thing.  Making a play-fort in .19 can help get you out of the serious rutt  Live a little and remember, Dwarves are a renewable resource!

[NW_Kohaku]

Perhaps Toady One has a purpose of limiting metals somewhat. Im just not sure I am ready to lay off the EZ Steel just yet

He's going to remake the way that metal veins work in the next release, and trade in the sixth and ninth releases according to the devpage, and this whole scarcity in different sites idea is to make trading more important for the caravan arc.

Of course, all the most basic items you use, like wood, stone, and stuff you farm like food and cloth are all functionally identical no matter where you go, it's only metal and gems that are different, so until we get some real reworking of the farm system so that climate has a real impact on what agriculture you can perform, then it's really only "do you have iron or not?", and all you have to do is search for a site that does have iron.

If your site has iron, and you have trees in abundance, then you still have "EZ steel".

[Immacolata]

Thanks again, I like the fact that where you pick your embark will affect what type of game you can expect to play. I wouldn't mind going for a more agricultural type of fortress where I would have to import my hard metals in order to make a sturdy army. Thanks for the link.

[sweitx]

Thanks again, I like the fact that where you pick your embark will affect what type of game you can expect to play. I wouldn't mind going for a more agricultural type of fortress where I would have to import my hard metals in order to make a sturdy army. Thanks for the link.

Or a reverse.
Having a pure industrial fort and rely mostly on trade for food.
Or an even greater challenge:  Embark on a complete wasteland, depending primarily on manufacturing (import raw material, export finished goods for food and more raw materials).

[Nekudotayim]

Don't you people enjoy the difficulty of this game? I only see you complaining about not having much metal. I expected you to enjoy this...

On my .18 noob embark location, I dont have flux nor sand. So what? I do not really need that. You still can buy it from the caravans to make your shiny things.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Personally, I'm waiting for  a few specific fixes:

1) combat-related bugs, balance issues, and gear issues; whips cutting through steel armor like butter, everything related to equipping of weapons and gear on the military, fortifications don't work, siege weapons don't work (ballista bolts bouncing off clothing, according to bug tracker), etc.

2) "Dwarves refuse to train, and other training weirdness"

3) there are a number of bugs related to surgery, medical care, etc., such as patients being untreatable -- "surgeon cancels surgery, patient not resting" etc.

4) the baron and associated nobles dont' work, which means the dungeon master doesn't work, which means training exotic animals doesn't work.


Once those are all fixed, I'll start playing again. Basically I want the military/sieging to work.

[ral]

Well, I'd say this one is more for the early adopter types but I still find it fun and like messing with it.

Though it's a little frustrating to be able to pave the whole floor of your fort in gold blocks but not trade the gold for any significant amount of something less pimpin flashy but useful like iron, steel, etc, it's still playable. Once caravans bring more stuff for trading then flexibility in item creation will be a bit more like the last version.

Hmm... is there any way to get the dwarves to make gold teeth for themselves? Might be worth modding that in if I can....

[NW_Kohaku]

Or a reverse.
Having a pure industrial fort and rely mostly on trade for food.
Or an even greater challenge:  Embark on a complete wasteland, depending primarily on manufacturing (import raw material, export finished goods for food and more raw materials).

That's purely a self-imposed challenge, however.  You can grow food anywhere right now.  So long as muddy floors and caverns provide limitless food no matter where you go in the world, you have access to food.

Don't you people enjoy the difficulty of this game? I only see you complaining about not having much metal. I expected you to enjoy this...

On my .18 noob embark location, I dont have flux nor sand. So what? I do not really need that. You still can buy it from the caravans to make your shiny things.

The problem with that is that some materials are so rare, your home civilization wont' have it, either, and you can have worlds where the only ore your home civilization has access to is galena or something similar.

That said, it's certainly not impossible to play without metal, so long as you use other exploits and largely wall yourself off from threats.

However, this rarity of resources is part of a move to make fortresses trade for their materials, but right now, the rarity of materials has come before the ability to trade for the materials that you lack.  It means that Toady has created the problem before he's allowed us access to the solution, so it's going to be a wierd handful of releases with many incomplete features until the caravan arc is complete.

Ultimately, though, it's questionable how "difficult" it really makes the game.  Like I said in one of the other threads, it's perfectly reasonable to have a "survival challenge" in a glacier.  Now, you can have a survival challenge in a glacier with no metal or coal at that, so go nuts if that's what you're into.  Still, it's a little disconcerting when you are only told you have "shallow metal", and no idea if you have hematite or cinnibar.  When you walk onto an evil glacier, you know what you are walking into.  When you embark on one of the new sites, you have no idea if it's going to be easy mode with coal and iron simply sitting exposed to the air or high difficulty (relatively) where you have nothing but a useless material like cinnibar, or even a completely barren map. 

The mineral distribution idea is just fine, but players need to know what to expect of a map before they commit, or else everyone will just be "prospecting" by save-scumming an embark or running Reveal before abandoning if they don't find what they were expecting.

That said, Toady has already reacted to this:

Regarding the fighting that has taken place upthread, people should relax and not fight with each other when we are the source of your grievances.  As I acknowledged in the release notes, this is a problem.  The release was split because it was delayed and needed to be aired out.  I cleaned up a lot of the loose (split?) ends, but I only thought of this one at the last moment, so I mentioned it in the notes and plan to sort it out during this bugfix period.  Once we have trade, some assurance that a reasonable amount of ore is being brought to the surface in world gen and better local mineral veins, I imagine it'll be less of a problem, but we don't have any of those things yet.  Even after that, I think we should end up with some world gen options for different play styles for next time.  As people have mentioned, an over-abundance of metals will essentially remove that element of the economy (and warfare etc etc), but not everybody is going to be playing for those reasons and it is very easy for me to fix.  Worlds with some variation in metal distribution will be the ones that receive the most attention over the long term, though.

I'm not sure I really like this solution, honestly, since I think the game is better served by just making the regular game capable of supporting multiple playstyles rather than just making init options for every single feature. 

I really think that if people just sit tight for a few versions, everything will get sorted out a month or two down the road.  People just react to unexpected news like this more emotionally than they otherwise would.

[AngelaChristine]

Of course, all the most basic items you use, like wood, stone, and stuff you farm like food and cloth are all functionally identical no matter where you go, it's only metal and gems that are different, so until we get some real reworking of the farm system so that climate has a real impact on what agriculture you can perform,

Climate does have an effect.  I was focused on finding a site with flux and shallow metals: multiple, and wasn't paying attention to biome, so I started in badlands with no plants at all.  No big deal, I'll just trade in my axes for logs.  After a while I noticed my horse had a hunger arrow.  Oh shit, there is nothing for the horse to eat! 
I quickly dug out an underground soil layer, and luckily grass would grow  underground despite the lack of surface vegetation.  By the time grass started to grow the horse was starving and it took months for it to get back to not hungry, because vegetation grows slowly underground.

It looks like if you have a biome with no vegetation and no soil layer, you won't be able to practice animal husbandry until you breach the caverns.

[Psieye]

I'm waiting on the "fence" construction type, that prevents movement but not sight, sorta like fortifications made weaker, so we can have for serious pastures.

What, like windows? Sure it's going to be weird to have a glass fence, but we don't blink at such weirdness anymore.

[slink]

I like the new features enough not to mind the lack of metals, although I am playing with invasions off.  I don't think I'd like to play with invasions on and have nothing to make into weapons.  There never was enough steel even before, on my embarks, and the caravans never brought more than a couple of bars even if I turned the requests all the way up.  The nice thing about DF in that regard is that if I don't like the scarcity of metals I can always mod in a reaction to turn mudstone into steel.   

[malroth]

I'm going to give it a try as soon as there's a downloadable pheobus version avalible, but I'm going to throw in a mod for bronze and stone anvils just incase my civs aren't lucky enough for me to embark with an iron one.

[Korva]

Phoebus and Ironhand are both updated. I'm running test forts in each while waiting for May's (which I normally use).