February 2019

Masterwork Dwarf Fortress

stargrace February 7, 2019 No Comments

One of the things I enjoy the most about RimWorld is that you can expand and customize gameplay with mods. The steam workshop is filled with hundreds of them, and I can spend hours picking and choosing which mods to incorporate in my game.

Dwarf fortress plays a lot alike. There are extensive mods that can customize the game for you.One of those mods is Masterwork Dwarf Fortress (MDF). The wiki explains that it makes DF 4 times as big, but still keeps true to the original atmosphere of the game. It adds buildings, restrictions, creatures, races, utilities, and other quality of life changes. One of my favourite changes is the ‘generic materials’ system. Instead of having leather from 40 different creatures, you just have leather. Instead of having milk from 5 different animals, it’s just milk. This helps my Dwarves organize by not requiring a different container for each and every type of item.

I had my husband set up a world for me and choose the embark location. I like to be surprised and I figured why not. Almost immediately shit started going downhill. First, I live in a weird hole in the ground made of rock (I mean the surface is rock) with vegetation above me. There is a tiny little lake for water (supposedly there’s an ocean nearby but I haven’t seen signs of one) and I have no idea who my neighbours are but I was under siege from undead almost as soon as I landed.

I received a warning that the undead walk and all my Dwarves should run away and hide, so instead of finding the undead on the map I frantically made 6 floor hatch, designated a burrow, and stuffed everyone downstairs.

Then the siege passed, the undead were off the map. My animals untouched. Can they not reach me in my little cavern in the ground? Maybe the sun frightened them away? I have no idea.

At least we’re safe.. for now.

Dwarf Fortress – Fortress II

stargrace February 4, 2019 No Comments

I started a second fortress with far more knowledge of what I was doing. I used the macro tool to create uniform bedrooms quickly, and stayed ahead of the population (for once). I figured out how to interact with caravans, and pissed off the elves by trying to trade some leather that were inside a wooden bucket (that they chided me for because hey that bucket was ONCE ALIVE). Sorry.

What I failed to do was set up a military, any sort of training, weapons, armor, or army, so when the goblin siege happened we were woefully unprepared. Not only that, but I had left the gates of my fortress wide open (ie: I had zero traps set) and I forgot that I mined away one of the support walls down on a lower level that lead to a flowing river.

Guess who flowed right in, turning the water red with blood.

Goblins. That’s right. Goblins.

BUT we survived! We rebuilt. We had a new mayor and things were looking up.

Until a wereass (yep, a were donkey..) showed up on the map. They wandered right into my base and turned into their typical self which happened to be a night troll. Looking for mates.

They bit a good portion of the population before they were killed, so once the wereass body was handled and things looked like they were calming down again (hah, things never calm down) shit hit the fan in a big way, and dwarves started dying all over the place.

That’s where I decided to abandon the fortress for now. Next time we’ll build up bigger, badder, better – maybe with some sort of military so we can handle stuff. Maybe we’ll lock the doors, this time, too. Maybe we’ll have doors at all (I just had staircases leading to our lush caverns).

Round three will be glorious.