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Total Members Voted: 249

[Sutremaine]

Ah, yeah, save often. You lose some time with the game kicking you back to the main screen (why does it do that?), but it doesn't take six hours. And keep your hard drive backed up to, a failure with that will cost you a lot more than six hours...

The Runesmith problem sounds very odd. Try redownloading the pack just in case it got corrupted, and try and get the BSOD message. Clean your computer up too, I keep mine in order and have never had random crashes.

Elves will not take your wooden goods because they're not kosher. No, even if you buy something off them and try and sell it back immediately without said object having left the depot. They won't take things decorated with wood either. Traders will always stay for a month, at which point they pack up and leave. If you sold them a million unbinned mugs it'll take them another month or so to load up, but your actual trading window is a month long. You can bring things to the depot as soon as the traders appear on the map, and if your broker is choosing this exact moment to do the eat-drink-sleep-break dance you can send some random dwarf in to do the job. If they have decent social skills they'll do a decent job of not getting ripped off.

Dwarf Therapist is pretty easy to use. You have a grid with rows of dwarves and columns of skills. The spiky lines inside the boxes say how high a dwarf is levelled in that skill, and the backgrounds say whether or not the job is active on that dwarf. Click or double click (I forget what the default is) on the box to activate or deactivate a particular skill on a particular dwarf. There's more functionality to DT than that, but the grid by itself is a massive improvement on DF's interface.

[AdeleneDawner]

The Runesmith problem sounds very odd. Try redownloading the pack just in case it got corrupted, and try and get the BSOD message. Clean your computer up too, I keep mine in order and have never had random crashes.

Or just don't run Runesmith. Most of what it does is pretty cheat-ey, the only non-cheat thing that you can do with it as far as I know is find out the exact numbers for your dwarves' stats.

Dwarf Therapist is pretty easy to use. You have a grid with rows of dwarves and columns of skills. The spiky lines inside the boxes say how high a dwarf is levelled in that skill, and the backgrounds say whether or not the job is active on that dwarf. Click or double click (I forget what the default is) on the box to activate or deactivate a particular skill on a particular dwarf. There's more functionality to DT than that, but the grid by itself is a massive improvement on DF's interface.

You also need to press the 'commit pending changes' at the top of the screen for your changes to take effect. That's important. 

[Starver]

Ah, yeah, save often. You lose some time with the game kicking you back to the main screen (why does it do that?), but it doesn't take six hours. And keep your hard drive backed up to, a failure with that will cost you a lot more than six hours...

Or, if you feel up to it, go into the d_init.txt file (I think, and I think you already know where to find it, as I seem to recall it having been mentioned) and one of the very first items at the top is about saves, which you can change to [<whateveritis>:SEASONAL] instead of the default, and there's another config item thereabouts which forces save on embark.

You get an overlong pause each time the season changes, but it at least doesn't force you to exit and re-enter the game.  It creates a new save folder (and entry) to mirrors the standard one, except with the year and season tagged onto it, as well as also resaving under the "region1"-style save item every time.  If you have any big problems with a save, try reloading the "region1".  If that doesn't help (or you think you want to play back a bit further), either load the "region1-aut-1053"-style item or (preferably) rename/move the existing "region1" to something/where different, copy the "aut-1053" version and rename this copy as just "region1".  Have a look in the "saves" folder once you've set this up and running, and you'll see what I mean.  (Also, I tend to do such editing only when DF is not running, just in-case it's got some silly idea of keeping old directory and file-handle information in memory.)

The big trouble with the autosave is that it tends to fill up the directory, so  always create a folder (e.g. "_region1") under the saves area and periodically move all archivable saves for that region into it, so I never have more than a year's worth hanging around.  Technically I could delete them, but I'm a bit of a pack-rat in data form.

[Lielac]

It only makes another folder if you have AUTOBACKUP set to YES. Otherwise it just overwrites.

[Sutremaine]

Oh yes, I know about autosave and have it set to backup yearly. It just doesn't help when three months pass in the game and three hours outside it because you were doing things that don't cause time to pass in-game.

[Starver]

It only makes another folder if you have AUTOBACKUP set to YES. Otherwise it just overwrites.

Indeed, I wasn't anywhere near my various copies of DF at the time.

To be precise, for anyone who doesn't yet know, under the "<your DF directory>/data/init" directory there's a file called "d_init.txt".

Right at the top of this file, I have personally set the following lines, inter-spaced with the provided explanation text:

Use these to control the automatic saving behavior in the dwarf fortress mode of game.  AUTOSAVE can be set to NONE, SEASONAL or YEARLY.  This updates your save at these intervals, so that some of your progress will be saved in case of system instability.  You can set AUTOBACKUP to YES if you want the updated save to be copied to another folder so that you'll have several copies of your world at different times.  Set AUTOSAVE_PAUSE to YES if you want the game to pause every time it autosaves.

[AUTOSAVE:SEASONAL]
[AUTOBACKUP:YES]
[AUTOSAVE_PAUSE:YES]

Set this to YES if you want it to save the game when you start a new fortress.  If AUTOBACKUP above is set to YES, it will also create a copy of this new save.

[INITIAL_SAVE:YES]

Set this to NO to make Dwarf Fortress remain in the saved pause state when you load an active game.

[PAUSE_ON_LOAD:YES]

I think the defaults are NOs, in all cases (at least outside of any changes the Lazy Newb Pack makes) except the last, but I don't have a pristine copy handy, anywhere, and I'd have to re-download a .zip to find one, and I'm a Lazy Non-Newb.

[Dave1004]

Oh, heh, sorry for the confusion Sutre. I lost six hours of work, as in...Six hours of work. I had been playing from about midnight to six-seven, without saving, when it crashed.

My computer is in pretty bad order, but it is a laptop, and I have had it for years. Poor thing is beaten up, but it works!

I just set that LNP to auto-save, so nothing else is really required. But, I have a question. If there ANY way to some immigrants? I set the max population to 7 in the Lazy Noob Pack, but I -still- got immigrants. I wanted a crack squad of elite dwarves, all with weapons and heavy fighting skills, surviving in a desolate wasteland. I had to go quite a few layers deep just to find ores, rock, and trees...But, those stupid migrants came, and ruined it all! Grrr.

Will never trade with elves again, pricks. And, I thought it auto-paused on the trade screen, guess I'm wrong? Meh

Appreciated thanks!

[3]

As stated previously, the first two migrant waves are hard-coded. You can't avoid them, no matter how low the pop cap is set. Also of note is that the cap doesn't respect migrant wave sizes - you can still get a wave of twenty or more migrants even if you're only one dwarf below the cap (once you're over the cap you won't get any more until you fall below it again).

[PCpaste]

I didn't need any of those newfangled tutorials or guides, let alone GRAPHICS to learn the game. Do it the right way, spend months flailing around in the several dozen failed fortresses before you figure out how to brew ale, and then go onto a whole new chapter learning how to produce food.

[Dave1004]

PC: That way's no fun. I prefer to learn how to play in a day or so...

BUT! Incredible freaking problem!

BUZZARDS.

Simply...
What
The
Fuck

Seriously. What the hell? Are these bastards INVINCIBLE? They fly over my walls, stop -ALL- work (My announcements page is FILLED TO THE BRIM with (Dorf) cancels (Certain task) Interrupted by buzzard.

How do I stop them? I have two skilled Marksdwarfs, and four other well equipped melee soldiers. The SECOND they get withing 15 blocks of a buzzard, it flies away. And, the worst part? They flash in and out of existence. One second they're there, next they're gone, then they reappear a few blocks away. Makes targeting them DIFFICULT.

My guys can't eat, drink, sleep, work, or even KILL the buggers. There's at least ten out there. I barely managed to kill two, let alone nearly a dozen.

I'm at my wits end, and I can't do anything about it! Why won't my soldiers just auto-target the ugly beasts? I target one, they rush over, it flies away, three more pop up where they were previously. Dorfs are dying, I need your help!

Hell, before my first month was over, I was attacked by three ice wolves, and my dorfs MURDERED them. Now, for -months-, I've been plagued by BIRDS.

AAAAAAAARRRGGGHH

[jaxy15]

Make pastures, train war dogs in kennels and toss them near the entrance.
They should fight off the buzzards.

[Dutchling]

They do not flash out of existence. They fly in the air to a higher z-level.
Vermin however (the stuff that your cats are killing) do flash out of excistence.

And you should really set your pop cap at least to 40 or so. Otherwise nothing will get done in yoir fortress. and you'll be unable to have a good military or a lot of different inudstries (bees, milk, clothes etc.)

[Sutremaine]

Buzzards are weak. Draft everybody (set their squads to 'no uniform' so they're ready for action immediately) and station them over the food pile or wherever the buzzards are buzzing around.

Auto-targeting can be done by setting up a kill order (see near the bottom of this page). Have a couple of your dwarves on that while the rest of them stand guard. Buzzards are evil cheese-stealing bastards and will take advantage of any gaps in your defence.

[Dave1004]

@Sutre: 'Kay, I did that. It seems it's working, for now at least. God, there's so many, my dwarves run up and down and left and left, but the buzzards are pretty smart >_>. Thanks for the tip, I'm holding them off. They keep trying to kill my peachicks! :<

Oh, and something weird happened. One of my dwarves up and died, but I can't figure out how! I saw it happen, he was farming, then he was lying down, his corpse blue (Ironhand's texture pack). I looked in announcements and even in the "r" place-thingy, but nothing. It's not much of a loss though, he was a "Novice herbalist" and a "dabbling plant-something", but still, how did he die...?

(My entire area is walled off, including said farm. Meh, maybe he dropped dead from exhaustion? I had 18 dwarves, and 12 beds (Dormitories), plus well over 100 stocks of booze and 200-300 of food. Easy access too...Hm. 17 dwarves left, and I am in a desolate wasteland, on "Untamed Wilds"...I'm doin' pretty good (Thanks to you guys XD!)

[jaxy15]

Did he get attacked by hordes of buzzards?