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[stonedwarrior]

hi

so i started yesterday with dwarf fortress and i have a few questions:

-i found out how to recruit some military and make them train, but they dont progress. they stay at recruit level or wrestler... im sure i gave them some weapons and they picked them up. whats wrong here?

-one of my military dwarfs lost a hand to an alligator   what can do with him?  (now i know why he was unhappy all the time )

-is there a way to build gates? 

-my bookkeeper seems to be very lazy because i dont see him work or doing some bookkeeping stuff in his office. sould i find another dwarf for this job?

thats it for the moment.  thx 

[i2amroy]

I have a few answers!

1)Military takes a long time to train, especially if none of them have any experience in what they are training in. This can be greatly sped up by embarking with someone with a few points in shield user, armor user, and the weapon you are planning on using as they can train the others.

2)Your military dwarf should still be able to fight, he just might have some problems with uniforms. Alternatively you can retire him out of the military and he should live a normal productive life in the civilian world.

3)Short raisable bridges can be used as gates for spaces up to 10 wide. An alternative that is more vulnerable to building destroyers is to just build floodgates across the gate area.

4)Have you changed his (n)oble-(s)ettings? If not you should go in there and change that to as high as it can go and he should go work. Also once a bookkeeper has attained the highest level of precision then he won't really work at bookkeeping any more. You can think of it sort of like with a place that has no file system set up, it takes tons of work to establish the system in the first place, but once it is in place it takes virtually no work to use it.

[Mickey Blue]

Curses.. Beaten to the punch..

1) There are some tricks to training you can pick up on the Wiki or on the forum but ultimately dwarves just train slowly.  If you want to take advantage of an exploit to help you along you can use a danger room (again, see the wiki or forum to learn how to create one). 

2) Well, IMO that makes for an awesomely developed character   However if he can still use his one hand then he can still wield a weapon or do most tasks and be useful.

3) Yes, you can either build a one tile wide drawbridge (which is still technically a bridge I guess but effectively a gate), or you can build floodgates and link them to a trigger (a warning that second option is vulnerable to building destroyers).

4) Make sure you set the bookkeeper to maximum accuracy, then you should see him working more often then not (aside from of course when he is sleeping, eating, on break, etc). If he is doing other things you can try to remove other job preferences from him (hauling, etc). 

[knutor]

Backwards answers.

He have a table?  Also increase his accuracy to make him work more often.

Gates are Bridges.  Unless ya want Wall Grates, but they allow water thru, like a portolis.  When you design the bridge, do not make it retract.  There is the Gate.

Make a hauler out of the injured guy.  He's no good for military service, anymore.  Nickname him Gimp, so ya don't mistake him.  That's what I do.

Normal progression is very slow.  Make sure you have the correct number or less, for training, defaults to 10, and early militia are sometimes only 3 soldiers, not 10. 

Also they gain more xps for hitting stuff, so on their off months send them out to kill geese or something weak.  Don't get too fussy with the weapons they use.  Of course make certain, they are not trying to equip ranged, when all ya have available is melee.  Also, provide correct ammo to your sniper squad, bone.

Sincerely,
Knutor

[stonedwarrior]

thx all, this helped a lot, i just killd a horde of goblins and only some broken fingers on my side^^

[Garath]

for advanced practice, set a lot of cage traps at the entrance to capture goblins, animals actually even better

put them in a pit like this:

D: drop pit
X: Wall
C: Cage (with critter)
B: bridge, in this case goes up north, or south or anything, as long as it blocks the passage
L: lever

XXXXX
DDDDD
XCXCX
XBXBX
L  L

one lever to raise the gates, the other to release the cages. The mechanics from the cages and the cages itself can be retrieved, they are expended always, but you spend 1 mech on the lever that you dont get back
the level below could have another drawbridge blocking a passage so you can retrieve corpses and items

[i2amroy]

Be careful placing cage traps at the very beginning however, as if a goblin leader is trapped in a cage then the rest of the goblins will just mill around his cage instead of moving further on and getting caught themselves. As a result you can end up with 40 some goblins standing just outside of your entrance, but not walking in and getting caught by all of the cage traps you placed there.

[Garath]

since in my case the area BEFORE the cage trap is trapped with serrated discs, they certainly get milled arround if they stay near the leader

if they dont want to come in, i order the marksdwarfs/dwarves to the top of the wall for target practice, since their archers need to be VERY good to be able to hit you behind fortifications

[stonedwarrior]

ok i made a new fortress and i embarked on a saltwater region with a river (near the ocan but no ocan on the map). Is that river saltwater too and how can i see if the water is salty? for me it seems like normal water.

[rhesusmacabre]

Use i to define, or at least begin to define, a zone over the river. If it is a valid water source then the number next to this will be greater than zero.