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Total Members Voted: 137

[Man of Paper]

The Emberlights and You is a legendary monkeysphere-bound post. The written portion consists of a 1 post plan entitled The Emberlights and You authored by Pan. It concerns the utilization of Emberlight Warriors. The writing is quite cheerful. In the early spring of 2012, The Emberlights and You was created in DF Modding by Bay Watcher Pan. In the early spring of 2012, The Emberlights and You was stored in DF Modding by Bay Watcher Pan.

I'm on the fringe of creating my first Emberlights, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to implement this and see how it works out.

If it doesn't go to well, I'll just revert to my "Iwo Jima" plan, which consists of digging a lot of my 1st level out(my embark is 80% flat and I always start my fortress a few z-levels down so it'll be no problem) and assigning them the whole z-level as a burrow. They'll have food and drink stockpiles, as well as a barracks. I'm going to make sure they get time off-duty so they can wander around (this is very important). "How is this Iwo Jima, you turd?" you probably aren't shouting. Well, I'm going to sprinkle stairways to the ground level all throughout the flatlands. With any luck, I'll activate all of my Emberlight squads when I get besieged, and they'll fire torrents of flame from downstairs. If it doesn't work like that, then the warriors jumping out from all over the place is more than good enough.

I just realized I name all of the plans I use after World War II things, like "Iwo Jima", "Stalingrad" (all dwarves cycle through military duty so I can beat all my foes with a wall of semi-efficient meat), and "Reverse Normandy" (set up on a beachline with bunker-like fortification set ups and hella siege engines pointed inland).

[Stirk]

Well I am going to look into the Empyrean Carbuncles now. My human legendary swordsman was just going about his business after slaughtering an outlaw camp, then something like "Empyrean Carbuncle uses Bladed wind!" twice and my character would slowly suffocate. Twice. One hit, and my legends ended.

So here are some arena tests on them:

Human swordsman with a steel katana and grand master skill vs carbuncle: Human dies in one hit. "Carbuncle 1 slashes the human in the lower body, tearing the fat! The human is struck down".

This itself is impressive. 

Fully armored in iron human swordsman with a katana vs carbuncle:

Test one the human cut off both of the carbuncle's legs and it bled to death.

Epic carbuncles?

I then tried building a new one to fight again, to see if their blades attack is only a once and a while thing.

And the carbuncle won this time. One attack to the head that bounced off his iron helm, then one to his arm and he fell dead. Apparently I didn't armor him well enough. But now I will use a carbuncle for each test.

Now I will go straight to dragon...

And it tied with a dragon. The dragon set the carbuncle on fire, but the carbuncle killed it after it was dead. It suffocated, kind of like my adventurers did.

Wow. Put some of these in a cage as a surprise to invaders and you would be invincible.

*EDIT*

I then put one against an "Unarmed" rift warden. The rift warden beat him in a spectacular way. If they are immune, don't breath, or are just that tough remains a mystery.

So I put four of them against one unarmed, unskilled warden. The warden beat them easily, even though it is suggested that all four used the special that killed dragons in one hit. Wow. Fear the carbuncle plenty, but the wardens more...

*EDIT 2*

And against ten carbuncles it was no different. Taking the form of the warden, it would seem that he just ignores them.

So basically everything except rift wardens seem to die in carbuncle wind. Rift wardens you will have to find another way to kill.

*EDIT 3*

Tried against a hydra, and it died easily.

Upon actually taking a carbuncle over, it would seem I was wrong in thinking that it was the bladed air doing the damage, it was just the stated thing that happened around the same time. The actually attack was "Telekinetic asphyxiation", which seems easily capable of killing anything that needs to breath. This attack also has a high reload rate, so basically in a one-on-one fight, the carbuncle will win with most creatures no matter how strong they are. This also means the carbuncle is either going to win or going to lose, since if it's special works, then the enemy would die, and if it doesn't, the carbuncle would die. The dragon attack earlier was an acceptation, do to the fact that dragons have a range attack as well.

[Meph]

Turn them into monsters, give them plagues, unleash a horrible fiery explosion, give them curses...

Done, Working on It, Done, Not-Done.

My magic system is pretty set up, for today it is balancing on the list. If you want a look, just leave me a PM, was glad for your example raws. You know my "turn them into monsters", diseases I made a seperate thread about and hope to start soon, but already know how to do it, and about the horribly fiery explosion: My magmamancer should never get injured enought to decide to flee, otherwise everything in a wide circle around him, including him, will evaporate ^^ Curses I havent done yet, except rheaynas drider curse. Flobulon had a dwarven queen that was cursed to transform into one half dwarf, half spider. ^^

So yeah, I love this new system, it really open clutchy, but unlimited possibilities to simulate most everything. Beware the spanish flu.

[Pan]

Well I am going to look into the Empyrean Carbuncles now. My human legendary swordsman was just going about his business after slaughtering an outlaw camp, then something like "Empyrean Carbuncle uses Bladed wind!" twice and my character would slowly suffocate. Twice. One hit, and my legends ended.

So here are some arena tests on them:

Human swordsman with a steel katana and grand master skill vs carbuncle: Human dies in one hit. "Carbuncle 1 slashes the human in the lower body, tearing the fat! The human is struck down".

This itself is impressive. 

Fully armored in iron human swordsman with a katana vs carbuncle:

Test one the human cut off both of the carbuncle's legs and it bled to death.

Epic carbuncles?

I then tried building a new one to fight again, to see if their blades attack is only a once and a while thing.

And the carbuncle won this time. One attack to the head that bounced off his iron helm, then one to his arm and he fell dead. Apparently I didn't armor him well enough. But now I will use a carbuncle for each test.

Now I will go straight to dragon...

And it tied with a dragon. The dragon set the carbuncle on fire, but the carbuncle killed it after it was dead. It suffocated, kind of like my adventurers did.

Wow. Put some of these in a cage as a surprise to invaders and you would be invincible.

*EDIT*

I then put one against an "Unarmed" rift warden. The rift warden beat him in a spectacular way. If they are immune, don't breath, or are just that tough remains a mystery.

So I put four of them against one unarmed, unskilled warden. The warden beat them easily, even though it is suggested that all four used the special that killed dragons in one hit. Wow. Fear the carbuncle plenty, but the wardens more...

*EDIT 2*

And against ten carbuncles it was no different. Taking the form of the warden, it would seem that he just ignores them.

So basically everything except rift wardens seem to die in carbuncle wind. Rift wardens you will have to find another way to kill.

At least they are rare, although you only really need one. I guess just to attempt to balance them, I'll give them trapavoid so it's hard to capture one in the wild.

[Imp]

Well I am going to look into the Empyrean Carbuncles now. My human legendary swordsman was just going about his business after slaughtering an outlaw camp, then something like "Empyrean Carbuncle uses Bladed wind!" twice and my character would slowly suffocate. Twice. One hit, and my legends ended.

So here are some arena tests on them:

Human swordsman with a steel katana and grand master skill vs carbuncle: Human dies in one hit. "Carbuncle 1 slashes the human in the lower body, tearing the fat! The human is struck down".

This itself is impressive. 

Fully armored in iron human swordsman with a katana vs carbuncle:

Test one the human cut off both of the carbuncle's legs and it bled to death.

Epic carbuncles?

I then tried building a new one to fight again, to see if their blades attack is only a once and a while thing.

And the carbuncle won this time. One attack to the head that bounced off his iron helm, then one to his arm and he fell dead. Apparently I didn't armor him well enough. But now I will use a carbuncle for each test.

Now I will go straight to dragon...

And it tied with a dragon. The dragon set the carbuncle on fire, but the carbuncle killed it after it was dead. It suffocated, kind of like my adventurers did.

Wow. Put some of these in a cage as a surprise to invaders and you would be invincible.

*EDIT*

I then put one against an "Unarmed" rift warden. The rift warden beat him in a spectacular way. If they are immune, don't breath, or are just that tough remains a mystery.

So I put four of them against one unarmed, unskilled warden. The warden beat them easily, even though it is suggested that all four used the special that killed dragons in one hit. Wow. Fear the carbuncle plenty, but the wardens more...

*EDIT 2*

And against ten carbuncles it was no different. Taking the form of the warden, it would seem that he just ignores them.

So basically everything except rift wardens seem to die in carbuncle wind. Rift wardens you will have to find another way to kill.

At least they are rare, although you only really need one. I guess just to attempt to balance them, I'll give them trapavoid so it's hard to capture one in the wild.

Personally, I don't think these wee wonders are... rare, depending on your playstyle and choices in game.  Ahh, uncommon, at worst.  It can take quite a few years to build up a large collection of them, even if you play towards gaining as many of them as possible - but trapavoid isn't the issue here.  Still, I'll try to not let the carbuncle to far out of the bag, so if you don't know any other way to catch them beasties then traps.... my mouth is sealed.   

[Meph]

Specific brew reactions don't work properly, kicking out generic "drinks."  I am working on a fix for this.

If this is still an issue: If you got them from the same thread as I did, then the pig tail reaction is missing the "grass_"tail_pig, and the whiskey is linking to a non-existant alcohol of muck root. You have to add it to the plant. I had the same problem and fixed those. See the reaction_masterwork.txt and search for "new still"

If you find any solution to the "stone is economic as soon as it is in a reaction" then please let me know. Someone suggested using reaction classes (for example microcline has the reaction class: destroy_microcline) and then instead of using actual microcline in the reaction to destroy it, just allow all stone with that reaction class. I did not test it as of yet, but I dont believe it to be working. Just wanted to let you know.

[Stirk]

Personally, I don't think these wee wonders are... rare, depending on your playstyle and choices in game.  Ahh, uncommon, at worst.  It can take quite a few years to build up a large collection of them, even if you play towards gaining as many of them as possible - but trapavoid isn't the issue here.  Still, I'll try to not let the carbuncle to far out of the bag, so if you don't know any other way to catch them beasties then traps.... my mouth is sealed.   

Personally, I am a little annoyed with their commonness in adventure mode myself. No matter what race you play, what weapon you have, or how strong you are, one of these ends your game and takes out your lungs. Unless you happen to not be able to breath in the first place, in which case you have a whole other set of issues.

[Pan]

Personally, I don't think these wee wonders are... rare, depending on your playstyle and choices in game.  Ahh, uncommon, at worst.  It can take quite a few years to build up a large collection of them, even if you play towards gaining as many of them as possible - but trapavoid isn't the issue here.  Still, I'll try to not let the carbuncle to far out of the bag, so if you don't know any other way to catch them beasties then traps.... my mouth is sealed.   

Personally, I am a little annoyed with their commonness in adventure mode myself. No matter what race you play, what weapon you have, or how strong you are, one of these ends your game and takes out your lungs. Unless you happen to not be able to breath in the first place, in which case you have a whole other set of issues.

I'd remove them. They aren't all that big part of LFR, anyway.

[Imp]

Neat stuff's happening in my embark.  Stuff I've never seen before, never imagined... squicky stuff too.   This stuff probably not solidly caused by LoFR material but by 2012DF; none the less, I spoilered the story for anyone wanting to see what I'm talking about.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's a 5x5 mix of three biomes, and one's got undead; that undead area covers roughly 1/3 of the surface.  There's hordes of primarily flying undead, groups of 1-10 or so at a time, but also groups of living things spawning too, and usually there's 2-3 different groups of spawns on the map, with only one being undead.

Fortress was build more or less dead center of the embark.  Warbeasts are placed (underground, beside stairs, no direct line of sight) so any dangers that get -really- close will get their attention, but otherwise will be ignored.

For the most part, these undeads are noticing living critter spawns, which are mostly flying as well.  Huge and delightful aerial battles are happening, with the losers falling to the ground.

I've got an area off the undead part to store corpses.  When corpses fall, dwarves rush to try and recover the bodies.  Sometimes these fall on undead land and rise before they can be recovered, other times they get saved.

Here's the really neat, and really icky part.

Rekilled undead do not seem to rot, nor are they still treated by the game as rotten.

A flock of giant thrips was fighting a flock of undead buzzard corpses, high above the ground and over the undead area.  Mostly buzzards were dying, but then a snatchy buzzard managed to break a thrip's wing.

The thrips fell to ground, and splatted (nice high aerial fight).  A swarm of dwarves started for the dismembered corpse and bits.  It had landed on undead land, but I wanted that juicy corpse if was possible to get it, especially for food (I -never- have had food issues before, but I'm playing a rather different strat and the area's risky enough that it's still edge-of-survival for me even come early autumn, quite nice!) so I directed several butchery shops and tanners to be made and allowed those running for the corpse bits to try and reach them.

It was necessary to kill a few more undead and such, but the parts got back before they rose, somehow.

Then I realized dwarves were taking buzzard corpse corpses to the butchery shop.

Then I realized they were successfully butchering buzzard coprse corpses into meat (and skulls of course).  They dragged off a giant louse corpse corpse that had been sitting on my corpse pile for at least a season (would have rotted past usefulness for sure if it had not been a corpse corpse) and started turning that into food too.  Now, some of the buzzard corpse corpses are being ignored.... but not all.

Eww.  My dwarves are eating undead meat.  Part of me is thrilled, as this is practical and useful, not to mention neat.  The rest of me is appalled. So deeply horribly appalled that.... gah.

Anyway, the bit of me that's not grossed out wants to ask if LoFR is going to eventually treat chitin as a raw material for anything, cause I'd like that option.

[vorpal+5]

dumb question, sorry, how do I make steel from iron and coal?
I told you, it is dumb, but I searched the menus...

[Mobotium]

dumb question, sorry, how do I make steel from iron and coal?
I told you, it is dumb, but I searched the menus...

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Steel

All hail the wiki!

[vorpal+5]

thanks! Quite involved indeed

[Jilladilla]

remember, with this mod, you can upgrade your steel to damascus steel if you have vanadium (found in patronite and ferrovanadium)

no flux required to do that

[narhiril]

Personally, I don't think these wee wonders are... rare, depending on your playstyle and choices in game.  Ahh, uncommon, at worst.  It can take quite a few years to build up a large collection of them, even if you play towards gaining as many of them as possible - but trapavoid isn't the issue here.  Still, I'll try to not let the carbuncle to far out of the bag, so if you don't know any other way to catch them beasties then traps.... my mouth is sealed.   

Personally, I am a little annoyed with their commonness in adventure mode myself. No matter what race you play, what weapon you have, or how strong you are, one of these ends your game and takes out your lungs. Unless you happen to not be able to breath in the first place, in which case you have a whole other set of issues.

This is a legitimate concern.  I'll be toning them down significantly in the next version.  They will still be dangerous, but not spectacularly lethal against the first thing that crosses their path.  I'll most likely turn telekinetic asphyxiation into a very low percentage chance and lower the cooldown a bit - that way they have a chance to instant-kill things, but they're more likely to just get pummeled.  I will be giving them a better defensive ability to partially compensate for this in fortress mode.

If this is still an issue: If you got them from the same thread as I did, then the pig tail reaction is missing the "grass_"tail_pig, and the whiskey is linking to a non-existant alcohol of muck root. You have to add it to the plant. I had the same problem and fixed those.

Yeah, that's what I get for incorporating other people's raws without testing them thoroughly.  It's fixed now.

Turn them into monsters, give them plagues, unleash a horrible fiery explosion, give them curses...  I'm really just hitting the tip of the iceberg here.

I sure hope there's also going to be an alternate way to make it really, really safe, though probably rediculously more expensive attempt at transformation.  Some of us like our transformed dwarves quick and dirty, others prize every one of the buggers, wrap each one in cotton wool, and really prefer that each stays among the living , regardless of cost!

I can do this fairly easily, in the same way that palladium functions to make advanced alchemical experiments safer. 

Turn them into monsters, give them plagues, unleash a horrible fiery explosion, give them curses...  I'm really just hitting the tip of the iceberg here.

Uh... heh, good to know! Oh golly gosh, the poll is sure uh.. favoring the other tech tree at the moment. Heh. Who would have guessed people preferred the safer technol- *cue alchemy lab exploding* Well.. fuck.

But hey, what are your next ideas for the mechanical tech tree? Golems and?

Also, how powerful are corrosive zingers?

Golems, throwing weapons, and armor upgrades.  Possibly more, depending on how those work out.

Corrosive zingers are quite weak, and I'll be giving them some much-needed attention in the next update.  Maybe contact rot or something devilish like that.

Also, the smoke is fricking annoying because you cannot see shit through it

Hardcoded, unfortunately.  Sorry about that.

[Meph]

Just got an idea while reading this. Upgrade zingers. Take zinger to workshop, transform into a zinger with a buffed up syndrome. Targets only the specific zinger caste.