Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Darkstar]

Yep. Wood constructions burn. But I've rarely had a fire breather show up in all my games.

And with ceramics, you can make non burnable blocks using your kiln and some clay now. So less need for stone--- again.

[Girlinhat]

NO!  Constructions are immune to everything except cave-ins and dwarven fingernails.  A chalk wall will hold up to magma and a charcoal floor won't burn.  Now, a chalk cabinet will go up in a whiff of smoke, and anything else, but walls, fortifications, stairs, floors... anything built with b - C is immune to everything.

[Lord Darkstar]

I'm going to have to do some science on that. I recall seeing some wood stairs on fire once. Maybe it was just some items on the stairs though? Could be. Oh well, back to the !!science!!.

[Nekudotayim]

anything built with b - C is immune to everything.

Oh the logics...

[ral]

I'm not sure you even need meat to start with. You get draught animals anyway so you can just slaughter those immediately.

Starting with less, more carefully selected stuff sounds like a great idea for terrifying biomes where three of your seven dwarves tend to get killed immediately before they can do anything such as haul everything to shelter.

[Kian]

Thanks for the replies. The 'ash is fireproof' is exactly the kind of knowledge I was looking for. As said, anything you don't bring because you can buy it later counts as something you need.

Sucks that I need an anvil, as they can only be forged from another anvil.

To make matters worse, I just started an embark to test a fort bringing the barest minimum: 7 untrained peasants, 1 hematite ore, and 77 dogs to train into wardogs (not as food, just spent the embark points and need to keep the dwarves alive). I got stuck when I couldn't build a wood burner (you'd think a wooden woodburner would work even better!). Going to have to wait for the caravan anyway.

I'd restart, but I checked stocks and found there's an adamantine long sword hidden somewhere, which means there's fun lurking under the surface, and now I don't want to leave this embark. First time I find one.

[Berserkenstein]

Thanks for the replies. The 'ash is fireproof' is exactly the kind of knowledge I was looking for. As said, anything you don't bring because you can buy it later counts as something you need.

Sucks that I need an anvil, as they can only be forged from another anvil.

To make matters worse, I just started an embark to test a fort bringing the barest minimum: 7 untrained peasants, 1 hematite ore, and 77 dogs to train into wardogs (not as food, just spent the embark points and need to keep the dwarves alive). I got stuck when I couldn't build a wood burner (you'd think a wooden woodburner would work even better!). Going to have to wait for the caravan anyway.

I'd restart, but I checked stocks and found there's an adamantine long sword hidden somewhere, which means there's fun lurking under the surface, and now I don't want to leave this embark. First time I find one.

You don't need an anvil.  You could pray that the first dwarven caravan brings one, which I find they usually do.  If that doesn't work, the human caravan might bring one the next summer.  If they don't bring one, you can demand one from the first outpost liaison visit.  So the longest you'd wait would be a year and a half or so.

[Kian]

You need it, because you can't manufacture it on site. It is not a difficult concept. The question is, what is the minimum you absolutely must bring at embark to be able to make a self-sustaining fort?

Waiting because you can buy it later doesn't mean you don't need to bring it, it means you do without until someone else brings it. I am not taking few things due to embark points, the challenge is to bring the minimum and still have access to everything you might want to do. I could also wait for a pick, instead of bringing an unit of hematite to smelt and forge, but that defeats the purpose of the challenge.

So you start with a wagon. That gives you a few logs. You can turn one log into a carpenter's shop, another into a wooden axe, and that provides you with all the wood you'd need.

Since you can't make wooden picks, you have no access to stone or metal until you forge one. So you bring one unit of metal ore (iron, copper, whichever). You can use it to build the first wood burner (wood isn't fire-proof), make some ash, deconstruct the wood burner, build another wood burner, a smelter and a forge out of ash and the anvil you brought, burn wood into charcoal, smelt the ore, and make a pick. And you're done, you can know mine to your heart's content.

Making the absolute minimum you need to bring an anvil and a unit of ore. Anything more is easy-mode

[Hans Lemurson]

Thanks for the replies. The 'ash is fireproof' is exactly the kind of knowledge I was looking for. As said, anything you don't bring because you can buy it later counts as something you need.

Sucks that I need an anvil, as they can only be forged from another anvil.

To make matters worse, I just started an embark to test a fort bringing the barest minimum: 7 untrained peasants, 1 hematite ore, and 77 dogs to train into wardogs (not as food, just spent the embark points and need to keep the dwarves alive). I got stuck when I couldn't build a wood burner (you'd think a wooden woodburner would work even better!). Going to have to wait for the caravan anyway.

I'd restart, but I checked stocks and found there's an adamantine long sword hidden somewhere, which means there's fun lurking under the surface, and now I don't want to leave this embark. First time I find one.

I think you're supposed to build the wood-burner out of the hematite.  Hematite should be fire-safe.

[Kian]

Right, on the post above I've hammered down what all is necessary.

Wagon -> 3 logs
3 logs -> Carpenter Workshop, 2 wooden axes
wooden axes -> Chop trees for infinite wood

hematite -> wood burner
wood burner -> charcoal, 3 ash
2 ash -> wood burner, smelter
ash + anvil -> forge
deconstruct wood burner -> hematite

smelter + hematite -> iron
forge + iron -> pick
pick -> infinite everything

[Girlinhat]

Actually, that hematite can be a copper ore, for cheaper embark.  Just sayin'

[SuicideJunkie]

Would it be fair to rely on Goblinite ore as a natural resource?

[EveryZig]

About the mechanisms: Until next version when this bug will be fixed, if you have clay in the map you can just make your mechanisms out of clay like you would out of stones. You can also build workshops with it. (Personally, I love the clay mechas because their red color makes a nice color coded lever when every other stone on the map is grey). So your only real problems with the above ground fortress is the lack of armor metals (which many forts have trouble with anyways) and the fact that you are likely screwed when flying enemies arrive.

[Girlinhat]

I think you posted on the wrong thread.

Goblinite has always been a natural resource.  Sadly it's mostly unobtainable until you have some metal weapons of your own to fight with.

[Kian]

Regarding goblinite:

It might, in a different challenge. The challenge I proposed was to make a self-sustaining fort, taking with you at embark only what is needed. Not finding creative ways of importing it once you are there. Imagine you are at a spot with no trade, no sieges, no thiefs, no outside contact at all.

To EveryZig:

Haven't downloaded .19 yet, so I'm basing everything off .18. But my idea is not handicapping the fort by not having access to resources, but to carry the least you need to start off with. The clay mechanism thing is good, but if it's going to be fixed next version it kind of gives a limitted window of opportunity to try it.