Dwarf Fortress

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.

Down Goes the Fortress

stargrace January 25, 2019 No Comments

It started out innocently enough. A were creature made their way onto my map, transformed, and took out 5 dwarves. Little did I know at the time after my hunters were done with the creature that it had also bitten 3 children.

Those children turned into Were creatures and half my colony was wiped out in the battle that ensued. Needless to say it all went downhill from there. The children (there was an abundance of them for some reason) started becoming acclimated to the gore and death. They started throwing tantrums and fighting with the remaining Dwarves. Their thoughts were particularly dark, they would feel nothing after seeing dead animals or other people and they would get excited when they managed to choke someone to death.

Nothing creepier than having a whole fortress run by scary little dwarven children who want a taste of you, literally.

The fortress hasn’t technically ‘failed’ yet, I still have 50 or so alive (including the children who are still going insane). I have 4 ghosts, one berserk, and a handful of animals. Recovery is probably not going to happen at this point, so I’m just playing through it waiting until the last dwarf falls.

I don’t expect it will take too long, at this rate.

More Dwarf Fortress

stargrace January 20, 2019 No Comments

We started with 7 – and now we’re up to 116 Dwarves living in the fortress. Some interesting things have transpired and I’ve been having a lot of fun learning how to cope with each situation.

First, if you’re not using the sound pack that comes with the lazy newbie pack I highly recommend it because you can hear when things are happening even if you can’t see it because it’s on a different layer. My game pauses and I can typically figure out what’s going on.

Like when Traellan was taken over by a mood. It could be good or bad. He became inspired (so to speak) and had a deep desire to create a masterpiece. Except I didn’t have all of the pieces he required, so he was going to go insane and probably destroy my whole base.

I ended up locking him in his room, and he has been “missing” for a while now. I’m making sure the dwarves don’t go in so they don’t find the corpse and get upset over it. I think it’s working.

I learned how to designate rooms. I have proper bedrooms now. A dining area. A hospital (that no one uses yet). I learned how to mark animals for slaughter after our second winter which was really important because they were running out of food. They’re getting water from some place, but I have no idea where. I have not figured out farming yet at all. I have a mayor now (yay) but also (boo) because they want a huge amount of fancy things that I just can’t seem to supply them. They also mandated that we make catapult parts.

Why? Who knows, they’re the mayor and that’s all that matters.

I dug down a few layers of earth to create stock piles and zones and workbenches but I like being able to see everything all on one level. The elves are visiting right now, I’m wondering why they’re ignoring all of the trees that I cut down that are surrounding my trade depot area…

I do have one possessed dwarf who will probably go insane and finish off this rendition of the base because he wants too many items for his masterpiece that I can’t supply (or figure out). That’s OK, I think soon I will be ready for another attempt, and my second fortress will be bigger and badder than the previous rendition. I’m honestly surprised I’ve lasted this long.