Dwarf Fortress Boatmurder

[Smegs]

Just here to say: Well done gents. Top thread. Much enjoyment had reading the exploits of the overly aggressive axe happy midgets.

[Lachesis VII]

So fort has a good run, and I don't think we're going to lose it unless someone opens the circus, so how do people feel about retiring and starting a new fort on same world?

I think we should do this, and I volunteer to take first year at the new fort location, etc.

This will let new folks join (Hi there, Kai, saw your post in Discord), etc.

It will also solve the FPS insanity.

[Lachesis VII]

After talking with Noir on discord, I’ll be taking the first year of a new fortress in the same world.

If you want to join for this round, post up and we can get you in—with a new fort it should be much more straightforward.

I have chosen a site and fitted out our dwarves; I will strike the earth tomorrow!

[NoirAvlaa]

OP updated with full Knifering story in spoiler

[Lallante]

Few questions:

"unfortunately, my dungeon expansion project was not without incident. I had noticed several undead humans in the FHC taven and thought this an inappropraite place for such creatures. Instead, I created a series of pit cells adjacent to the barracks, and ordered the undead cast into the pit. Sadly, while being transferred to their new homes, they escaped from their captors and went on a rampage."

1. What is the "ordered the [friendly guests] cast into the pit" bit? I couldnt find any obvious way to arrest or cage or whatever my own or friendly creatures, much less throw them off a cliff?

2. In some of the screenshots it looks like the caravan access route is filled with cage traps - I thought wagons at least couldn't cross traps?

Luckily, the caravan arrived. Still wanting some of my FPS back, I marked just about everything that was trash and lying around to go to the depot.

3. Is there some easy way to do this that I'm missing (like a rectangle drag tool or something)? Right now I'm having to manually click 100+ times to get stuff moved to the trade post and then another 300+ times to sell the right stuff (and not, for example, break a mandate or an elfy sensibility). What's the easy way of doign this? A single stockpile next to the trade depot which is the only place that accepts shit like clothes and crafts helps A BIT but because everything is sorted by the fucking wood type the bin it's in is made from (how fucking dumb is this) the sort-by-value shit doesnt really help.

[Lachesis VII]

Apologies that this took me a few days longer than expected to get done. I uh, made a mistake at embark and selected the wrong civ. Got several months in before I realized "wait, we're not at war with the goblins and Knifering is not in our civ." So I rerolled so that this fort can be a true continuation of the previous story. The upside of this is that I knew something of the geology of the place before I rerolled, which helped with planning the second time around.

Downside is that I'm a bit short of screenshots as a result.


NOTE: Because we retired Knifering, which advanced the clock, rounds now run from 1 Slate to 1 Slate rather than 1 Granite to 1 Granite.

Without further ado, I present the chronicle of the year 112.

Our scouts had determined, in the manner of dowsers, but using a granite boulder rather than one of those hippie wooden divining rods, that the only deposit of platinum in the world lay about a day's travel to the north of Knifering.



While the scouts initially reported that the platinum could be found in the grasslands, upon closer inspection, they determined that the deposits were in the bed of a brook running through a little cactus desert.



Cue the music, Urist!





Also... that's a lot of angry goblins. And that necromancer tower is even closer.

Given the harsh conditions and the possibility of an early siege, I decided to prepare our party carefully for the journey. Seven hardy candidates were selected and outfitted, trained for the hardships to come.








And of course, our symbol:




Strike the earth!





We arrived near a bend in the brook and, since crossing was impossible, immediately dug a tunnel. This tunnel would serve as our home base as well, at least until we could go deeper. The brook was rich with fish, including sturgeon. A number of river otters were also about, as well as ibex.

As expected, trees were very sparse. A small number of saguaro cactus, a single maple, and a single walnut in the far northwest where the grasslands biome peeked into our new embark point.

We began digging, and as soon as we hit rock, we noticed an enormous quantity of magnetite and platinum. Huge clusters and veins of metal everywhere you swung a pickaxe. Moreover, the metal-bearing layers were made of chalk.... we'll absolutely never want for flux, and can make basically everything out of a mineral with a higher base value than ordinary stone. Deeper we found hematite, but it looks like iron and platinum are the only metals here.

Our scouts had also reported deep caverns, and so we struck for them immediately. With some patience, skill, and luck, we drove straight through to the third cavern layer and discovered a magma pool!



Of course the magma pool was full of undesirable creatures. But... a magma pool, surrounded by quiet cavern and muddy earth.

Reflecting on my experiences at Knifering, I figured that taking the fort down to the magma would probably be easier than bringing the magma up to the fort. So I hatched a plan. I would divert the river to the caverns so as to freeze over the magma pool, making it safe for dwarven habitation.

To support the endeavor I expanded our initial tunnel under the brook to include stockpiles and a trade depot, and some corridors that could be trapped. Apparently wagons won't pass trapped corridors, which is why even after digging the spiral ramp at Knifering we only got small caravans.



I then got to digging.

And digging.

And digging.

And digging.

And while I was digging I thought to myself "wouldn't it be nice if we just never had to go outside?

And so I decided to do more than divert the river into the caverns. I decided to move the river underground.



My mind was filled with a vision of a riverside community in the upper fort, with rooms hewn in a naturalistic pattern into the veins of metal. Happy dwarves!

Meanwhile I started turning chalk into blocks and preparing the surface fortifications.



I also set up a farm and pasture, which quickly filled with underlichen.



With the river channel excavated, I prepared the diversion gates, and added banks.

By first Obsidian it was time to pull the lever and divert the river!





I set up a series of four levers by the cavern stairs. These connect to:

The river diversion gates.

The gates for flooding the cavern stairs.

The drain for the cavern stairs

A fully filled cavern staircase should, when released, flood the entire magma pool with water in one go, sealing the fire beasts below. Do this by opening the "Flood Cavern Stairs" lever and waiting for the entire shaft to flood, up to the top. Then drain the staircase and it should send a huge jet of water that will glass over the magma pool (I tested this, it works).

A weir for the river on the surface, to keep it full with the reduced flow. Leave it closed unless you want the surface river to be shallow enough to wade across, which would let folks into the surface fortifications.



There's a secondary staircase that leads from the caverns to the outside that cavern creatures might use, but it should be possible to keep them out of the fort. If you want to pierce the other caverns, first do so from this secondary staircase—you'll find it to the southeast of the main one, accessed by a hatch on the surface. This staircase also allows access when the main cavern stairs are flooded.

My scouts say that digging outwards at Z -42 should get you into the first cavern, and at Z -101 should get you into the second cavern. The first and second caverns are really tall/deep, they each span 20-30 z levels and have lots of cliffs. Not very navigable.

Soon the underground river was flowing, and only one person lost their wheelbarrow in the process.







With the year drawing to a close, I finished the first level of surface fortifications and prepared to depart for Knifering.




Status report:

We have 19 dwarves. They are surprisingly happy given that they've been eating and sleeping in a single three-tile-wide hallway for a year. I think it's the chalk and the platinum.

We have enough food, but could use more. Our livestocks include a breeding pair of alpacas for wool and milk, a breeding pair of water buffalo for meat, some hens and a rooster, cats and dogs. We also have honeybees.

We have all the shops we might need at this stage, including a mill, screw presses, ashery, soap maker, etc.

We do not have:

Any bedrooms.
A tavern worth the name.
A hospital.
Any tombs.
Any deity-specific temples.
Any visitors/monster slayers.
Any guildhalls (none have been requested).
A library.
A decent source of wood for making steel.
Weapons.
Armor.
A military.

But we do have an underground river and a lot of metal. And that's a good foundation.

We also have this dude, who refuses to wear clothes.



I have made a bunch of beds, coffers, cabinets, and doors, so the next overseer can set up sleeping quarters and a hospital.


Enjoy!

[Kai]

1st Slate, 113

I had been dragged from the beer halls of civilisation to do penance on the frontier managing a newly founded settlement. Perusing the notes from my predecessor I immediately noted some distinctly elvish tendencies about 'following the natural course of things'. This would NOT be continued under my management: we dwarfs bend nature to our will, not the other way around like ELVES!!

One of my predecessors most notable achievements has been diverting a river underground - praise be, this is proper dwarf-like behaviourl. But no, the river is curved and hardly optimised for power generation - the degenerate was still reliant on natural methods like WIND! Worst, it - like out entrances - are open to the elements. This parlous state would need to be rectified, but first to our resources. The lack of wood will be a defining feature of this settlement.

The biome is dominated by desert and trees are sparse, we lack the defences to delve too deeply, so the priority of my time would be mitigating the lack of wood. Magma is the answer (magma is usually the answer). However the depth of magma in this location made the usual method - a pump stack - impractical. Thus I set about researching and implementing a novel system, magmacarts.

To this end I dug an exploratory shaft to the east to determine the location of any caves. That achieved I followed up by scouting, surveying and then digging a 97 z-level minecart track. At the bottom I - USING CORRECT SAFETY STANDARDS ie. a grate between the Floodgate and the magma - dug a magma channel to the immersion ramp, complete with outflow for any maintenance (correctly calibrating the speed of the minecart through the immersion ramp has proved difficult, and very rarely the cart has ended up stuck on the ramp - using the outflow [with the inflow shut] dumps the magma into an evaporation chamber and allows maintenance activities.

The system at the top was simplicity itself. A set of Track Stops was built that dumped the contents of the minecart into a succession of pits, once full of 4/7 Magma the track stop was deconstructed and the next in sequence would fill up. I successfully filled 7 pits in this manner; completing 4 Smelters, 1 Kiln and a temporary Metalsmith. Additional space for 3 metal smiths on the wester wall is available, with the first commenced. To the north and east there is additional room for whatever is required including Glass Kilns. The temporary Metalsmith can be deconstructed and replaced by a Kiln once the permanent Metalsmiths have been built. In due course this can be expanded with a second set of workshops on the outside of the cart-track if desired.

While this was being completed I surveyed and built 2 residential levels, with accommodation for approximately 40 dwarfs fully fittted out.

A tavern has been dug out and designated, but in desperate need of fitting out.

A throne room and addtional spaces, including officer for any Office-holders has been dug out, but as we remained a lowly settlement during my time have not been furnished.

The same is true of a set of guild-halls, dug but not yet furnished.

This effort consumed most of my capacity for year.

My efforts were rewarded with the ringing endorsment of immigration - the population of the fort has over doubled (going from merely one score and four at the start of my time to two-score and sixteen at the end - with NO losses).

In terms of enemies, the most concerning was the routine appearance of snivelling Kobold thiefs: I also saw these running away, so my belief is that they were scared off by our guard dogs, but it's difficult to be certain given there is a myriad of ways into the fort. I have outfitted a squad of militia in Iron armour armed according to their training in their home fort. A second squad of artillerists is available as well.

To mitigate our resource issues with wood, I have dug a 2 z-level tree chamber in the sand zone: it won't be much, but it'll be a relatively safe source while we expand into the caverns.

I commend to my relief to be unstinting in making nature bend the knee, and the following critical tasks:

- Entrances to the fort from above need to be sealed, the river is drained and grates are available for installation to close that path in, while the top level needs an entire design and build approach.
- The magma level still needs to be flooded. But I completed the walls started by my predecessor which makes it a little harder for enemies to path in. The only benefit is that the lower level paths into the fort by the river, which means you'll have a lot of warning if an attack comes from that direction. Defences need to be build.
- There are invaders in the darkness somewhere, I haven't seen any sign of them but they're there somewhere.
- A score of immigrants arrived in the last days of my oversight of the fort, the most obvious have been detailed tasks but we have gained some skilled dwarfs who's contributions are welcome but not yet assigned.
- Basic pottery industry is established, currently set up mostly to add some barrels (using some Ash that I had spare as glaze) and then make medium-value bricks, to allow our chalk to be re-apportioned to flux.
- We have sand for a glass industry, but no one skilled in it yet and no magma glass kiln. So I left that to you.
- Our dwarf traders wish Toys and Armour, none have been built for this purpose yet. But now we've kitted out our dwarfs, there is scope for building a large quantity of armour for export.
- Otherwise, our outgoing trade mostly consists of prepared meals. Given our recent population increase, this will need to be reviewed.

[Images and file are posted to the Discord]