Fortress Abandonment

Soon after the first goblin attack, I was attacked again by another group of goblins. Seven of them came this time, and killed off over half my military. I was starting to expand my hospital when I got an alert that ANOTHER goblin siege had come. This time there were over two dozen of the little bastards.

That's only about half of them!

Needless to say, they wiped out my remaining military pretty quickly. I don't know why they didn't invade my fortress to kill off the rest of my dwarves... they're just running around in circles outside my fortress and all over the map.

I could wall off my entrance and try and survive without any outdoor access, but at this point there are so many things I feel like I could improve on and would rather embark again. I'm also disappointed that there was no running water, something I'll make sure to take a look at next game.

Early Autumn, 253: Goblin Attack

Only a month after the Cyclops attacked, a band of four goblins decided they'd try and raid my fortress. My dwarves made quick work of them, but not before two dwarves had fallen: Ducim Kelkatak, Wrestler and Rakust Nerdumat, Axedwarf. Two coffins now in use :(.

Late Spring, 253: The Cyclops!

I was minding my own business, building up more walls for pasture area outside when I got an alert saying a Cyclops has been spotted!

Oh noes!

Fortunately, she was quite weak and none of my dwarves even got hurt badly. I quickly sent both of my squads to the front door to defend. They engaged the cyclops outside the tunnel and fought while the cyclops tried to charge into the fortress. The guard dogs assisted when the cyclops got to the entrance, and a stone fall trap finished off the creature.

Early Winter, 252: Three Migrant Waves Later...

Nothing over exciting has happened yet, so I haven't updated my journal in a while. There have been three waves of migrants since spring: 19, 8, and 7. The only notable migrants are a level 10 Fisherdwarf, level 16 legendary miner, level 10 gem setter, level 10 glassmaker, level 9 Marksdwarf, level 8 gem cutter, level 10 brewer, and level 14 carpenter.

I started construction of a wall above the entrance to my fortress. The migrants keep bringing in animals and the ones I already have keep popping out babies so I need some more pasture space. Even with two pastures I'll occasionally get notices about my alpacas fighting.

I designated a stone stockpile for only rock salt outside, and once the stockpile filled up I removed it. This gives my masons quick access to stone, and prevents my other dwarves from constantly refilling the stockpile when a mason takes a stone from it.

I recanted my previous statement saying I wouldn't bother with magma. I ended up clearing space down below and just building my smelters/forge down in the depths. I also dug out ten bedrooms, a small dining room, and a food stockpile room so hopefully some of my dwarves will just move down there.

With my metal industry going on in the basement, I've deconstructed my normal smelters and forge on the second workshop level. I've now set up some looms, a second craftsdwarf workshop, leatherworks, tanner, and a butcher off to the right (complete with horse ready for slaughter.)

I built out my graveyard on the residential level at the end of a long hallway. I smoothed out the walls to make it look pretty, and put down some coffins. No deaths yet, but it's always good to be prepared!

The last major thing I've done is some exploratory digging for metal ores. I have nothing to smelt, so I need to find some ore to smelt so I can start making things. As you can see I've dug out some adamantite, which I may end up using, but haven't hit ANY metal ore yet :(.

5th Slate, 252, Mid-Spring: Migrant Wave Three

Finally got a big wave of migrants so I can start specializing my dwarves more! 19 new dwarves arrived, more than doubling my previous population of 17. Most aren't very skilled, but a few have decent levels that I can work with. I've got a third miner (will need to make a third pick,) a fisher, a gem setter (too bad it's not a gem cutter,)  and some random crap skills like a presser and dyer.

With the unskilled migrants, I've capped out my first squad at ten dwarves. I dug out a second room for markdwarf training and assigned five dwarves to my new marksdwarf squad. This will be my first time training marksdwarves, so it may take some research to get them to work. I built the targets and crossbows, but I don't think I have any quivers yet. I'll have to figure out how the leather industry works or just buy some the next time the caravan arrives.

After reading up on the wiki about magma pistons and pump stacks, I've decided that I'm not up to the task of getting magma up 150 z-levels. That'll have to wait till later, or if I find magma closer to the surface, or another game entirely.

I smoothed the walls of my dining room so it looks nicer and my dwarves have more happy thoughts. I also dug a long hallway south from my living quarters to make a burial chamber. Better to have that all set up and ready than risk dwarves dying early from strange circumstances and coming back as ghosts to haunt my fortress.

9th Obsidian, 251: You have discovered a great magma sea.

Looks like on my way down I just barely missed hitting the warm stone indicating that there was magma nearby. With just a little exploratory digging on the lowest three levels and I found it!

Now to figure out how to make a pump so I can get some magma upstairs to power my smelters and forge.

Mid Winter: Magma Search Unsuccessful

I dug all the way down to the core (160 floors below the surface) and didn't hit any magma on my way. I did hit two different underground caverns on the way. It took me a while to figure out how to seal up the hole created when you breach a cavern. What I do is build an upward stair next to the breach with a matching downward stair on the floor above. Remove the up stair with the designate tool, then construct a floor over the downward stairs. This blocks off the breach preventing any flying creatures from entering your fortress from below.

The bottom floor has "semi-molten rock" that I had never seen before. It's different from warm stone in that there's no guarantee that the tile borders magma, and you can't dig through it. I'll be doing some exploratory digging on the level above to see if I can find a magma pool. To tide over until I get magma (I've never actually built a magma forge yet,) I built a wood furnace to make charcoal, two smelters, and a metalsmith's forge. I've got an abundance of wood so I should be able to equip my first squad with some iron weapons and armor.

It most definitely doesn't show here. Middle of winter and the plants and the foliage looks like it's still autumn.

21st Sandstone, 251: Migrant Wave Two

Six migrants came in this wave. I was really hoping for a skilled gemcutter or stonecrafter so I could make some high quality trade goods before the first caravan arrives. Instead I got a potash maker/dyer, engraver/mason, presser, fish cleaner/carpenter/woodcutter/bowyer, and two peasants. The carpenter/bowyer is higher skilled than mine, so he'll be taking over the bowyer job and using the second carpenter's workshop. The engraver is 9, which will be nice later on when I start engraving things. His masonry is also higher than my apprentice, so he's taking over as the second mason.

With all these extra bodies, I've assigned a few of them to military duty bringing my squad up to six. I think only the axedwarf has a weapon, I'll need to make some training weapons and see if I can trade for that anvil when the caravan arrives so I can work on my metal industry.

Mid Autumn, 251: Getting Comfortable

Spring came and went, and we're already into mid-Autumn. The trees have only just begun to change colors, it may be too warm to get true seasons and I highly doubt it will snow here. It's rained a few times, so at least I know if I do drain a murky pool it should fill up after getting some rainfall.

The tier 1 workshop floor is mostly finished and in production. The jeweler's workshop is planned and placed, but I don't have a jeweler yet to construct it. Same goes for the craftdwarf's workshop. Looks like I'm getting low on lumber, so I'll be sending out my axedwarf to do some clearcutting outside.

The dining hall has been furnished with tables and chairs to feed eight dwarves at a time with plenty of expansion room. The kitchen and still are in their own rooms off to the north of the dining room with a food stockpile so hungry dwarves don't have to go too far from the dining room to grab food and drink. Speaking of food... sometimes I have to wonder if my cook has any actual cooking training...

I wonder how filling honey bee brain roast is, and how many honey bees were slaughtered for 27 meals?

The residential floor has 18 fully furnished rooms, a hospital with room for five patients, and an additional 18 unfurnished rooms that have their furniture workorders already put in. You never know how many migrants you'll get in a batch; sometimes I get less than a half dozen and other times I'll get close to two dozen at once. I try to keep about a dozen fully furnished rooms over my current population so migrants have a place to move in to immediately upon arrival.

The last summer project was to make sure I have some defenses. I put together a barracks for military training by digging out a small 5x5 room off the main entrance with two armor stands and weapon racks and designated it as a barracks. When making a barracks, always make sure to hit 't' to flag it for training use, otherwise your squad won't train in it. I also created a squad with only my axedwarf in it, and set up the training schedule to allow him to train by himself for now (m, s, e, 1 soldier minimum, copy/paste to every other month.) I created a pen at the tunnel entrance and assigned all my dogs to stay there (2 adults dogs and their three new puppies!) I put down 24 traps at the entrance, and will eventually line most of the hallway with alternating stone traps/cage traps and eventually some weapon traps.

If you go back up and look at the screenshot of the dining floor, you can see a red 'C' next to the stairs. My cats also gave birth to a litter of kittens, so I placed a cage there and stuck the kittens in it. Dwarves won't adopt cats (and cats won't adopt Dwarves) if they're caged, and I'd like to avoid a Catsplosion.

First Migrants Have Arrived

Migrants arrived on the 27th of Malachite, 251 in mid-summer. Four new dwarves have been added to our ranks bringing our total up to 11. The first is a level 10 furnace operator and level 8 leader (not really sure what the Leader skill does, will have to read up on that.) The second migrant is a level 1 lye maker and weaver, so I gave him masonry to utilize my second mason's workshop. Migrant three is a level 10 herbalist and level furnace operator. I enabled both of those skills and added mechanic so he can get to work making mechanisms for traps. I also removed plant gathering from the three dwarves I added it to temporarily when I was getting settled. The last migrant is a level 6 armorsmith and level 2 bowyer. I enabled bowyer, and since he's a level higher than my miner with armorsmithing I've removed armorsmithing from my miner. The migrants also brought along an alpaca, which I promptly added to the pasture zone.

Summer has Arrived

Before my workshop level was finished being dug out, I built the two mason's workshops and a carpenter's workshop. The first three things I queued up for construction were a door, a table, and a chair. With these three items I furnished the office upstairs for my manager to use to assign work orders. The interface for work orders is much easier to use than going to each workshop and queueing tasks individually. I also set my bookkeeper to highest precision so I have accurate stock counts.

Queuing up the table/throne/door in the mason's workshop.

Placed the furniture, assigned the room to be an office and set the owner to my manager.

Once the office was completed, I immediately queued up a whole slew of workorders. 20 beds, 20 doors, 20 coffers, 20 cabinets, 4 tables, 8 chairs, 10 pots, and 10 bins. I can create bedrooms with just the bed and a door, so those come first. I could craft the table and chairs for my dining room second, but I like to finish furnishing the bedrooms with a coffer and cabinet each. The rock pot works like a barrel to store booze, but uses my surplus of rocks instead of my limited supply of wood. The wooden bins hold miscellaneous items like crafts and gems I'll be using to trade later. There's no stone equivalent that I'm aware of, so those are made out of wood.

Miners working to clear the workshop level while a mason and carpenter get started on their workorders.

I noticed brown down arrow icons flashing on my livestock, which indicates they're hungry. Some animals like dogs, cats, and my turkeys are fed by the dwarves. My sheep and horses, however, require a pasture to graze in. I didn't have to spend points to bring the horses, as every caravan starts with two random work animals (horses, donkeys, mules, buffalo, etc.) I don't want my livestock to die, so I quickly zoned a pasture area right outside my tunnel and assigned my two sheep and two horses to graze there.

My last project as spring came to an end and summer is beginning to arrive was to designate my residential floor. I dug down to -10 levels (my tunnel is on -2) and designed a floorplan.

I used to be a big fan of the 1x4 basic rooms that the quickstart guide uses. They're very compact, hold everything a dwarf needs, and don't look too shabby. My last fortress had 3x2 rooms very similar to RadGH's layout, but this time around I'm going with some 2x3 rooms. Having six tiles not counting the door increases the room's value and lets me place random things in them like a pen for pets in their owner's rooms. The large room to the right of the stairwell is going to be my hospital.

Week Two: Getting Settled

While digging out the first level, I realized that all the tiles I was digging out were sand. I thought you could only build farm plots on dirt, clay, and silt so I dug up one level into a silt layer for my farming. When I was placing the farm plot, I noticed that it would have let me place it on sand so I could have stuck with my original layout.

While digging out my store room, I found a large cluster of gypsum. Gypsum is common on sites that have it, but it's not too common to embark on a site with it. I brought 5 units of gypsum powder for making casts because you don't always have easy access to raw gypsum. The other stone I've uncovered is rock salt, which is one of the basic low quality rocks I'll be using at the masonry to craft furniture with.

I've designated an area to mine out for my workshop level. I've gone through various layouts and haven't found one that I really like yet. The quickstart guide on the wiki puts 4 workshops per floor in 5x5 rooms right off the main stairwell. RadGH puts almost everything on one floor with a wood area and a stone area. The wiki layout is probably more efficient for a new, small fortress but lacks a large stockpile for raw materials that can be easily shared between workshops. I've also become a fan of building two mason's workshops so I can produce furniture quicker. Here's the layout I'm going with for this fortress:

The level below will be for the upper tier workshops like smithing, smelting, leatherworks, and clothier. In my last game I had just started making things out of iron for the first time, but didn't have any fuel ores so I had to make charcoal. I've also never gotten into leatherworking/cloth making so hopefully I'll survive long enough to dabble in those this time around.

Week One: Embarking

There's a lot of planning you can do before you unpause the game. I like to take my time checking out the map; seeing where all the murky pools are, where the flowing water is (if any,) and finding a good spot to start digging.

I like my entrance to be semi-protected by walls, where I can remove the ramps up to give myself a nice "safe" spot. I'll start with a 3x30 tunnel into the side of the hill for my entrance. I used to make it only one tile wide, but expanding it to 3 gives you more space for traps and lets your dwarves move in/out quicker when several dwarves are traveling at the same time (when you send your military out, for example.)

At the end of the entrance, I dig out a 5x5 room with a 3x3 up/down staircase in the center (or down only, if there's not another layer above me.) Attached to that I dig out a 5x5 room that will be the meeting hall until I get a dining room set up, after which it will become the trade depot. I'm also digging out two 3x3 rooms attached to the main stairwell by a small hallway: one for my first farm plot and the other for my turkey farm.

Just outside the tunnel I create a wood stockpile and designate a large (~30x30) area to chop down trees. I make sure to turn on the wood cutting labor on my axedwarf and carpenter. I designate the same area for picking plants, and enable the plant gathering labor on my doctor, farmer, and organizer. I'll remove those labors once they're done with that area, it just gives them something semi-productive to do while they're waiting on the miners to dig. I normally create a refuse stockpile around the corner from my entrance. This time around I'm going to channel out a refuse pit to throw junk into. No particular reason other than I think a refuse pit looks/sounds cooler than a pile.

One z-level below, I clear out a 10x20 room for my main stockpile, and a small room that will be the bookkeeper's office.

The last thing I do before unpausing the game is assign my nobles. My axedwarf becomes the militia commander, the doctor becomes the chief medical dwarf, and the organizer becomes the manager, broker, and bookkeeper. Sherrif remains empty for now, and militia captain is only for when I put together a second military squad (I think...)

With all that set up, I can unpause the game and watch all my dwarves get to work!

Preparing for the Journey

I used to just go with the default embark settings, and while they work I eventually wanted to make a few changes. Two posts that I got a lot of info from are RadGH's post on Preparing Carefully and the Starting Build page on the wiki.

For Dwarf skills, I use a modified RadGH's setup:

1. Miner #1: Novice Miner, Proficient Weaponsmith
2. Miner #2: Novice Miner, Proficient Armorsmith
3. Axedwarf: Adequate Axeman, Adequate Shield User, Adequate Armor User, Adequate Fighter, Adequate Dodger (will be given Wood Cutting after embark)
4. Housedwarf: Proficient Grower, Adequate Brewer, Adequate  Cook
5. Doctor: Adequate Wound Dresser, Adequate Diagnostician, Adequate Suturer, Adequate Judge of Intent, Adequate Appraiser
6. Bookkeeper: Adequate Organizer, Adequate Record Keeper
7. Crafter: Novice Carpenter, Novice Mason (will be given Wood Cutting after embark)

For items, I again use a slightly modified RadGH setup:

• Remove both iron battle axes, add a wooden training axe for crafter to use until workshops get built, add a bronze battle axe for the axedwarf.
• Remove the anvil completely, 100 points is a lot on embark and there's almost always at least one for sale with the first caravan.
• Add 1 wine and beer for the barrels. It's only 2p for 1 alcohol, which comes in a barrel, vs 10p for an empty barrel.
• I drop to 10 of two types of meat instead of 15 of two types, and add 1 of 10 types of meat (only the 2p ones.) Make sure the 10 are from different animals, as chimpanzee meat and prepared chimpanzee brain are the same 'type' and will go in the same barrel.
• I don't use hunting for food, so I remove the three quivers.
• Add 5 units of gypsum plaster
• Remove 2 thread/cloth/bags (take only 3 of each)
• Remove the splints/crutches, we have plenty of wood at our site so we can craft those later.
• Add 1 nest box for the turkeys to lay eggs in so we can produce food quickly.
• Add a male and female dog (to guard your entrance,) male and female cat (to keep vermin in check,) male and female sheep (ewe/ram, for wool and milk,) one male and five female turkeys (for eggs to eat.)
• With all that I had one point left over, so I picked up a bag of sand (for the free bag, of course!)

Choosing an Embark Site

When searching for a good site, I mostly follow the suggestions in the quickstart guide: no aquifer, yes flux, multiple shallow metal, yes deep metal. I don't worry about soil/clay, because it's not too difficult to drain a murky pool into a cavern to get some mud on the stone tiles for farming.

After looking around at the results, I found a fairly promising site. It's a temperate broadleaf forest bordering a temperate savanna. Heavily forested in the hills, but sparse down below. There's also a brook for unlimited access to water. It has some soil, shallow metals, deep metals, and flux stone! Most of the time I'm unable to find a site that has both types of metals + flux stone and isn't completely devoid of trees. This site should do nicely.

Getting Started and Online Resources

If you're completely new to this whole Dwarf Fortress thing, it's basically an ASCII (text) simulation game where you're given control of seven dwarves with a caravan. You build up a fortress, craft hundreds (thousands?) of different items, develop one of dozens of different industries, trade with other civilizations, defend your fortress from sieges or creatures, and develop as much wealth as you can. There's no win condition, so you can keep playing until something bad happens and you lose. There's also an entirely different Adventure Mode where you control a single character like a traditional rpg which I haven't even touched yet.

To get started, there's a handy Lazy Newb Pack that includes the game, some utilities, and a few graphical tilesets. The Dwarf Fortress wiki (df.magmawiki.com) has an amazing Quickstart Guide that I followed to get started and learn all the basics. It took me several hours to get through, and is a great starting place. The official forums (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php) also are a nice place for information. Reading through some of the posts there has taught me how to do things I didn't even know were possible.

The Death of a Fortress

I've been dabbling/learning the game for about a month now, and just lost my first game. Most games I'll be learning so much about how the game works and what you can do that I'll abandon my current fortress to start anew with all my newfound knowledge.

My last fortress had many firsts in it for me. My first goblin siege came, and in the midst of the battle my first megabeast spawned. Said megabeast burned the entire map down along with my entire army and the goblins. I haven't learned how to use burrows/alerts so all my civilians then ran outside to pick up the corpses and loot... burning themselves to death in the process. The few that survived were badly injured with no doctor available and completely miserable. I didn't stick around to see if I could recover, as I wanted to read up on working with burrows and alerts in my next game.

Much of the information and inspiration I've obtained has come from the blogs of other players. I've decided to try and start one up myself to both share things I've learned, fortress layouts I like, and stories of great adventures!