dorfposting

[dorfposting]

Dwarf Fortress story time!

So, for the uninitiated: there is a mechanic in DF where a dwarf can be taken by a strange mood. Said dwarf will then commandeer a workshop and demand certain supplies in order to make a fancy, legendary item. But like... not necessarily a useful item. It can be something dumb. Like... I dunno... a table or whatever. But it's a fancy table!

Anyway, if you don't supply the right workshop and supplies, the dwarf gets upset. And might go mad and start violence. Or get depressed and die. So it's a good idea to try to let them indulge their creative whimsy.

This is how our story starts: a Dwarven farmer commanders my stoneworking workshop. He demands metal bars. Which is unfortunate because I have no metal bars. I also don't have any ore with which to make those metal bars.

So while I can build a smelter and a wood furnace to handle ore and provide fuel, I don't have any ore to smelt. Leading me to instruct the dwarves to mine deeper.

Deeper, deeper... and we hit a fungal cavern. Nifty! But still no ore. Probably because I created a world with few instances of metals. For science!

Right now, this means that my farmer dwarf is likely going to lose his mind fairly soon because I can't get him any metal bars. Boo.

But! I do see some gemstones in the fungal caverns. I can at least send some dwarves to get those. We'll get some pretty jewels to commemorate our farmer's descent into madness, or whatever.

So that's what I do. I send some dwarves down there to mine gemstones, and... all is well for like, ten seconds. Then the game alerts me to mining being interrupted. And dwarves being dead. And giant ants being involved.

Apparently, giant ants live in these fungal caves. And they're not thrilled to find dwarves gallivanting about their home.

Violence ensues. The dwarves fight back. There's suddenly a lot of dwarven blood and ant ichor soaking into the fungal floor. Multiple individuals are dead on both sides.

Ultimately, the ants retreat. The dwarves retreat.

Except for two. Two dwarves were injured in such a way that they can no longer stand. Or move. Or possibly feel their legs. And I don't have a hospital set up yet because that is beyond my current DF level. I'm able to build a well so other dwarves can bring them water and keep them alive, but they are otherwise stuck in the fungal caverns for the foreseeable future. Maybe until I can get a hospital set up, maybe longer.

One dwarf lays down there alone, but! The other is not alone.

The other downed dwarf has a pet guinea pig, and that pet guinea pig has been by her side both during the battle with the giant ants and in the aftermath. So while this dwarf cannot move from her resting place, she has a little companion that doesn't stray too far from her side. She's not alone down there, in the fungal caverns.

It's pretty dang adorable.

...

...

In other news, that dwarven farmer who really wanted to make some fancy trinket and inspired this entire unlucky foray into the caverns? Eventually descended into melancholy, wandered outside, and quietly died of dehydration in a field.

So. Uh. Yeah. :|

[dorfposting]

This is why we have Citizen-Only taverns.

And fast working Masons.

[dorfposting]

[dorfposting]

Okay, Dwarf Fortress story time.

Yesterday, during my lunchtime, I decided to start a new DF embark on my Steam Deck. I created a new world and opted to just get right into the game. Embarked and was met with just blood *everywhere*.

Three dwarves and a hippogriff died instantly.

I had to quickly pause to figure out why there was blood and bodies everywhere, and found that the game had dropped my dwarves on top of two giant alligators. Said giant alligators promptly committed Atrocities.

Two remaining hippogriffs had climbed (flown?) up into the trees for safety. Also up in the trees was the ripped-off arm of one of the deceased dwarves. I don't know how it got there, but it was there.

Ultimately, the remaining dwarves and hippogriffs killed the alligators. One lay dead on the river shore, next to a dwarf and a hippogriff it had killed. The other sank to the bottom of the river with the two other dead dwarves. And someone's arm.

Whole bunch of body parts strewn about, really.

So. That was maybe not successful, but definitely a fun story! Like most of Dwarf Fortress, really.

[dorfposting]

Dwarf fortress writing a three-volume book about a goblin mutilating me with a hammer

[dorfposting]

FYI: you can use dfhack and legends viewer to to export the map it generates into a variety of forms. It’s pretty cool

So... am recently got a lil shit laptop working agn, and learned it is to weak for Steam+DF but it can run Classic DF

issue is am has world on goblin's pc that am wants to use, but it's Steam world...

am hoping copying seed will be enough, am just wants map n don't care abt anything after world gen rn

[dorfposting]

back when dwarf fortress had an economy, one of the main ways of dealing with it was to have a room full of manual pumps connected to nothing that were set to always need somebody pumping them. This way, otherwise idle dwarves could make a living by spending their time pumping away at nothing.

This had the side effect of making them all JACKED

i cant be the only one who finds it incredibly funny that theres (to my knowledge) not a single colony sim that simulates capitalism within the colony. there is frequently inter-colony trading and currency, but never inside of it.

oxygen not included's dupes have no currency and no ruling class. rimworld lets you run an honest-to-Horax organ farm but the people running the organ farm work for the common good of the organ farm, the alternative is impossible. dwarf fortress, the granddaddy of them all, used to have capitalism but it caused infinite baby debt and fps death so now dwarves yet again work according to their ability and receive according to their need

could there be a colony sim that had capitalism within the colony? maybe. would it be fun? absolutely fucking not, it would suck massive ass, i would like my colony sims to stay commie and actually fun to play

[dorfposting]

oh my god I love him

An Olm Dragon, a heavily dwarf fortress inspired creature

[dorfposting]

Toady's Devlog for 03/01/2025

Toady One, from the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

There's a report for this month. In addition, there's a Future of the Fortress reply in the new thread.

[dorfposting]

elves will see you carve a magnificent city into the ground and say "he is not at peace with nature"

[dorfposting]

Dwarf Fortress is riduculous. a world I generated contains a manual on adhesives called "It Is Glue". it's 103 pages long and the game describes the writing as "completely serious, yes overflowing with sadness".

[dorfposting]

[dorfposting]

What's one of your fav things that has happened to you in dwarf fortress?

One of my first games I played when I was actually getting a handle on things, years ago before the steam edition, I had a fort that was going pretty good. Right away I had started to build a big grand entry hall with a spiraling ramp entrance, not bothering with stairs, and was just going to dig out the main hall and a few rooms before looking into making some arms and armor so I could get some dwarves training. I didn't have many dwarves, but I had settled near a necromancer tower (which are much more common if you let the world gen run for 250 years, which used to be the default instead of the current 100 years) so i wanted to get prepared early. I had the starting seven when the necromancer came knocking. I managed to get almost every locked aware inside in time, and spent a couple months waiting for them to leave. I was able to dig out that main hall and a few rooms and get a random dwarf to start practicing making copper gear. When they finally did and I opened the gates again, I barely had time to chop a bit of wood and for a migrant wave to take me somewhere around 12 dorfs before the undead came back. This was a much smaller group of 6 or so experiments with decent gear. I kept the dwarves locked up, started looking for flux and iron to equip them properly. After a while I realized just how much I was depending on forage for food and booze, which was beginning to become a problem since most of a year passed without the experiments leaving.

At the time, I still didn't have much of an understanding of how flux worked or where to find it, so I had maybe a few scraps of steel and a load of iron when our food reserves started getting really low. I never considered looking for the caverns because that was still a no-go zone in my mind. So, I hammered out what steel i had into a few weapons and used iron for the rest, plus what iron armor I could slap together. Shortly before we ran completely out of food and booze, I said fuck it, had the civilian dwarves hide away in what was going to temporarily be a hospital, and stationed the military dwarves at the gate. The necromancer experiments had spread out in the tunnel a little bit, so I thought maybe I could just let one or two in at a time, but they were quicker than expected and my dwarves a bit too overzealous. Pro tip: when you want to fight, station the dwarves further back than you actually want them to fight, because they WILL just charge ahead.

An all out brawl broke out which was taking AGES for some reason. The fight spread out all over the hall, and one of the experiments showed up a bit late and peeled off to slaughter most of the civilian dwarves. Several of my military dwarves had died, but a couple of them had too. Eventually, I had nothing left but one military dwarf and two civilians behind a locked door in the hospital. That soldier was wounded but still up and about. The remaining experiments had started spreading throughout the rest of the fort and the mines, leaving just one on the opposite side of the great blood-soaked entry hall, with a wounded soldier near the hospital door surely about to bleed out on the ground. I took a chance and let a dwarf out to rescue her, hoping to get her in a hospital bed before the undead got in. Almost worked, too. Got her in, but that experiment caught the walking soldier on the wrong side of the door. The two civilians fuckin jumped into the fray and the three of them together were somehow enough to take it out and get back inside before more came, at the cost of the lives of one of the civilians, who had to haul the military dwarf to another hospital bed before dying themselves.

Which is about when I realized I didn't actually understand how dwarven medicine worked. I had no medical supplies at all, so all that was left to do was wait and hope she got better. Just two soldiers, locked in a room of corpses, hoping the enemy leaves of their own accord. Miraculously, she got up of their own accord, and after so long of waiting I said fuck it and decided to try and take em on one at a time. They got one or two of them this way, on account of them all being pretty injured as well, but the remaining three all showed up at once. They got one of them, they got our brave rescuer from before, and my last dwarf, one who had been one of my favorites from the start, the one we lost the last two civilians to rescue, fought valiantly to the bitter end, but ultimately fell.

then, hilariously, a migrant wave arrived and was immediately slaughtered in the open.

[dorfposting]

Started a new Dwarf Fortress for the first time in a while, this time in a cold marsh rather than my usual mountainside, though conveniently there's still a large hill for me to dig my fort into.

Thus begins the tale of Junglepainted, in the Ponderous Swamp on the Continent of Passions, the southernmost settlement of the Dwarven civilisation of the Elder Sling.

[dorfposting]

DF Posting: KingChannels - Year 3

Here we are again. Much belated on account of me having an awful head cold for most of the past two weeks.

The beginning of the defensive layer, which, as time has gone on, has only gotten less solid. Regardless I think having room to retreat behind corners when archers come a knocking will be helpful.

We left last year with the trade depot Almost complete, and the defensive layer, starting up. Happy to say we made a lot of progress on both, but a lot happened so we'll start from the top.

Early on the elven caravan arrived; I personally have no abnormal distaste for the elves (even if selecting everything in a bin except the bin is obnoxious), but we didn't have any trade goods because I'd not decided to, you know, make any, on account of sheets being wanted next year. So we didn't really get anything, not that they brought much. Not even very many animals. Very dissapointing honestly. Didn't even get a screenshot.

Our starter library. We probably won't need it anymore after we start getting the tower constructed but that could be a while. I set a scholar to work here after I made it as well, and installed a table later on.

In the meantime we made a starter library for our scholarly pursuits to begin in earnest, rather then waiting for the tower to start construction. It's small, but it'll work. We assigned Ingish Arzesidan as scholar, our old woodcutter. She honestly loves it and is constantly getting good thoughts from debating and pondering, though these are somewhat offset by her bad thoughts from not practicing a craft. Thems the breaks. Around this time I also started making clothes from our pig tail fiber, to ensure our in fort child would have clothing. Also so anyone whose clothes rot off can get a new set.

Our first scholar.

After all that hubbub we almost immediately got a migrant wave; 9 dwarves, 2 melee dwarves for the military, and a High Master Surgeon, very nice. This reminded me we needed to make a hospital. My idea is to build it on the ground floor, likely near the cistern, hopefully out of the way of any trouble in the event anyone needs to be brought to it during combat. It'll also make getting the water from the cistern to the nearly required hospital well less of a pain in the butt.

The first two are our melee dwarves and the last is the surgeon.

Around the time of the migrant wave we got another Child Strange Mood; it finished around the time we finished sorting otu the migrant wave as Ablel Regezar only grabbed two apple wood logs. He made, adorably, a toy axe, Desiszisang. During the course of this year I caught several dwarf children playing with it so at least it's getting use!

The fort's most popular toy. And... only toy, now that I'm thinking about it.

Of note; all this happened in Early Spring. This was a very rapid fire series of events, but things slow down a bit henceforth. Not before finding a mysterious vomit trail from the trade depot to the first floor of the fortress entrance. Probably a dwarf that'd been underground long enough to get cave adapted. I didn't see any sign of combat, anyway, so it's not an injury at least. Regardless the fort now has its first streak of green mess. There will be many more.

Every fort, by the end of the run, is usually just covered in blood and puke. This is small potatoes.

Taking up the next large swathe of time was mostly me digging to find ores, rather then for fortress construction, with the completion of a stockpile I was digging near the metal processing area to store ore and coal. During this time I'd noticed unhappy dwarves were looking pretty intimidating, I think it hit a high of 16 which is more then a third of our fort. You've gotta nip this in the bud so in a mostly ineffectual attempt to do that I made some meals. Mostly quarry bush leaves, but higher food quality = happier dwarf. Unfortunately we don't really have a lot of edible wildlife, I've only seen ravens and they're too small to butcher and a pain to catch besides. Maybe one day we'll be eating raven eggs, but it seems like a bit too much trouble for now.

all of my mining floors start like this. I want people to be able to move through them well in the event I use them for something more important then burial site.

We hit Lignite and Iron shortly below where I started digging exploratorily. Very good sign; if we can find flux we've got steel, which is fantastic. That'll handily take care of most of our fortress defense needs, at least as far as we can hope for. We also found kaolinite which will make us some high quality ceramic stuff when I set it up. I also intend to use the exploratory digging tunnels for most of our burial slabs; it just feels appropriate to me.

During all this, the work on the defensive layer was moving along. The windows on the left are Gem windows, and we'll be layering some fortifications over hte front of them to ensure noone just breaks in through those windows. Eventually patrols or watch animals will keep an eye out through there to let us know when goblins or kobolds are skulking around. Hopefully, anyway.

It was around this time I realized my military squads had Never Stopped Training. I looked into a bit of stuff regarding the new UI and it turns out they've been on manual training, never stop mode, for like a year now. That's probably why everyone's so pissed off. I fix that and indeed the bad moods at the fort start dropping, thankfully. THe summer migrant wave also hit, 8 dwarves. A high master metalcrafter, a high master furnace operator, and a middling papermaker. Normally the papermaker would be on hauling duty, but given we're making a library... hmm. Two randos from the wave got drafted into our military squad making an even 10. Training can Really start now. Especially now that they're doing advanced training and teaching and sparring and such. They don't do that on manual evidently.

Once more, oru new Local Celebrities. I also assigned another dwarf to scholarship around this time I believe; Kadol Usenvabok. We'll probably worry more about the scholars when the tower goes up because if I keep posting dwarf thoughts we're gonna hit the image cap.

Seconds after this migrant wave the high master metalcrafter enters a secretive mood. Looks like we're getting a legendary metalcrafter. Honestly sort've stinks; he was allmost there anyway. Regardless, he goes to work. After some livestock butchery, he makes an Artifact Silver Chain out of Horse Leather, Chert Blocks, a Silver Bar, and cut bloodstones. Pretty nice sounding, and we can definitely find a use for it somewhere. Probably put it in a well, but maybe we can find some sort've novel use for it in the tower. It Is silver after all.

Pretty Good.

As we moved into autumn, I realized we were running out of food for some reason. Had the realization we weren't growing any plump helmets in autumn for some reason, so I fixed that. Also set about to making another still, as the population was getting quite hefty and a single still probably wouldn't be cutting it for much longer. As time went on it stabilized, and later in the year restocked itself so we're good again. Crisis Averted.

Shortly before the caravan arrived there were officially enough farmers in the fort to qualify for a farmer's guild. I immediately set about making one of the rooms I Dug out for specifically this purpose into a farmer's guild, and everyone was happy about it. Farmer dwarves will talk about farming in there, along with just generally socializing. It'll slowly increase their skills in various farming aptitudes. It's great.

The Dwarven caravan arrives annnnnd I forgot to make trade goods. God damn. I quickly hammer out some rock rings and buy some iron bars, using them to make a weapon for the militia. Need stuff sooner then later, and we're not exactly short on iron. The liason requested Amulets, which is great for us and I Immediately set on that to avoid this problem next year. I make our standard selection of military grade metals and silver.

Around this time enough work on the cistern got done for me to be comfortable draining the pond, finally. I wanted to get constructed stuff in there sooner rather then later because... I like constructed stuff. No dirty hole water here.

the top floor hadn't been walled in yet but I did take care of that over the rest of the year.

I love a bit of fluid mechanics in DF so this excited me. I've actually not done a lot of it, but I love the concept. We'll probably need another pool or two before it'll have enough loaded in to make its way to the hospital well, but it rains all the time here, so it shouldn't be too long. Since we've got enough standing water in the cistern too (about a full z level), we can just dump in whatever we can get and it'll be stored too, so that's nice.

Anyway the autumn migrant wave hits annnnnnd we got two dwarves. I forgot I had the migrant cap lowered to a pitiful 50 due to a previous fort I ran, so that's my bad, Yet Again. I raise it to 100. The two dwarves were not notable in any way. I also assign a scribe to our library to copy the books we do have.

As we trundle on towards winter, a child is posessed, which has become a commonplace enough occurrence that I honestly wasn't particularly interested. More livestock died to feed the leather requirement, and he got wood, bones and leather.

Before he finished his artifact, however, a werehare broke into the depot. He immediately bites down on Logem Urvaddatan, our freshly recruited high master surgeon, and shakes him to bits.

So much for that hospital. KingChannelses first fatality. Brutal.

There were two militadwarves nearby at the time so they immediately set to attacking the werehare (with picks?? why do you people have picks equipped you're not miners), and he goes down pretty unceremoniously, being an unarmored, roughly human size, enemy.

During the scuffle however, a militadwarf was bitten. This means they are now a werehare, and they Will be hostile to their fellow dwarves when they turn.

The bitten militiadwarf on the left, Iden Eshtanmubun and more competent combat on the right.

Me, not willing to create isolation chambers for bitten dwarves, and not wanting to have to deal with this guy popping off every quarter of a year, elect to banish him. Iden Eshtanmubun has no family in the fort, so nobody is going with him. He's upset, but what's he gonna do, come back as a werehare to take revenge? Hopefully not. He was actually also a aprt of the wave the surgeon came in on, so I guess the wave was just cursed. We'll have to keep an eye on Ablel Dumatdeleth, I Suppose.

After all of the drama and our first death, the child finishes his artifact, a horse bone pick. Maybe someone will actually use it. I kind've don't care right now kid I'm sorry.

I am normally quite happy about equippable artifacts, even if they're shit, but a pick is pretty hard to equip on purpose and they all behave the same regardless of material.

After processing all this I realized our defensive layer is pretty much done, our wall is done, our trade depot is done, it's time to build that overhang. I don't think the werehare climbed in over the wall but better safe then sorry. Unfortunaetly, while trying to do this, I realize my wall is too close to the edge of the map to build an overhang. So we have to rebuild half of it. Ugh.

In the shadow of death we find.... more menial labor. As usual, I guess.

I immediately stat making another layer of the wall on the relevant sides inside the fort. We'll worry about tearing down the outside layer later. I'd rather have a wall people can climb over then no wall at all. This in and of itself takes about til the end of the season, so we'll carry on with other stuff, though the death was the last major event of the year.

Other then some boring logistical stuff (we ran out of chert I can't color coordinate until I mine more rarrrr), the rest of the year was pretty quiet. We found some Green Jade, a 20 value gem, which is Very nice, we found more iron on the living floor, while expanding it for future waves, which I mined out, and our scribe made a copy of our one book, The Way of the Path of the Moon. Or whatever. It was something like that.

As the year drew to a close, the baby born in fort grew to a child and learned to walk on his own. He is no longer at risk of being used as a shield by his mother, and they ran out into the snow and immediately got pissed off about being snowed on. Thanks kid. She can now harvest and haul stuff, so she'll be a minor help for the next.... 15 years. Frankly if we see her grow to be an adult that alone is a fantastic run.

Baby Lolor Rimtarilir, like all dwarves, immediately knows where the clothes are upon gaining locomotion. She's also pissed off because of the snow. Get in line Lolor.

Along with the baby becoming independent, our initial Scholar, Ingish, became an astronomor. He's officially studied the book about the moon's path enough to gain a title. Our mental pursuits are looking up.

A monumentous occasion given the goal of our fort. We need more eggheads. They're chopping a tree right now but rest assured they are very intelligent.

And that's that. A death, a lot of construction and a working cistern; that will continue, but we are pulling up on the end of Surface construction not involving the tower, at least, maybe another couple of years? Hopefully we'll have sterling silver production in hand by then.

Next years goals are finally get that cistern loaded up with water and giving our dwarves an indoor well, Finish The Damn Wall, and hopefully find flux and start steel production. Also hopefully we find silver. I guess if we can't find any silver on site a ceramic tower might be good. And very silly. Same color anyway. We'll see.

Until Next Year. Our fortunes rise and fall together.

[dorfposting]

In medieval Europe, it was very common to greet people with generic religious phrases. “Jesus Christ be praised” instead of hello and so on. In English, we say “goodbye” because people said “god be with you” so much and got so lazy with it that they lost basically all the syllables, to the point that most people don’t even know what it used to be anymore

I consider it a moral imperative to depict foreign cultures in fiction so it’s clear their lives are equally as tedious and petty as ours. it’s too easy to imagine eg pagan blood sacrifice was as exciting to them as it is to us, or take their theologians’ word for it that God is everywhere and everything, and conclude that people actually lived in a constant state of religious fervor. this happens in classes about Islam a lot