#DwarfNotes

[dwarfbehavior]

New goal, capture and train gremlins

[dwarfbehavior]

Oh lol I've been buying them in bulk whenever traders come around because I thought they were used in decorating. No wonder I have nearly 200.

[dwarfbehavior]

Welcome to the first edition of DwarfNotes, where instead of getting overwhelmed and quitting the game forever, I lay out what I'm working on and the questions I have at the moment (no one needs to answer unless they want to, I'm looking at tutorials and the wiki when I have a mind to).

Work Orders - Orders are beginning to pile up and my Manager still doesn't have a proper office. I think he just needs a chair in one of the rooms I designated as office in order to actually process the orders. Animals Nest box not appearing - This feels like a glitch. The nest box option just does not appear under carpentry or stoneworking despite everyone saying it should. What to do with penned animals - Self explanatory. Haven't done anything with the animals I've brought across all three forts except milk and shear a couple. I take it I need to work on animal husbandry before butchering/tanning them. Vermin catcher - I made one of these just because, nothing has happened with it yet. Hunting - I have assigned hunters but I don't think they've done anything of the sort. If you didn't notice, Meat has been None in pretty much all screenshots. Maybe I need to keep hunters exclusively focused on hunting? Traps - No clue about traps, but probably important for meat, yeah?

Strays - Seeing some stray animals in my fort. Cats I understand can be useful to let roam, but I also see a mule and llama roaming around.

Temples - I need to spend more time looking at dwarf profiles and gauging religious interest. Do I just make a bunch of temples for each religion I see in profiles, or stick to one temple for one religion?

Hospital materials - Splints, crutches, and buckets are just carpentry. Thread, cloth, powder for casts, and soap I don't know how to make. I also need a steady supply of water right?

Water - Want to make an indoor well for easier access to water and in case everyone needs to take shelter.

Crafting - I'm starting to make goods without a clear purpose. I also have those troglodyte bones which I assume are good for bone gauntlets and the like, that'd be dope. Similarly, I have a lot of gem work being done without knowing what to do next, I guess time to adorn the goods with them?

Lore - As mentioned with temples, I gotta start reading dwarf profiles and seeing what my people are up to in between jobs. I think dwarves will use unused workshops to make random stuff when the mood strikes? I should make more workshops then.

[dwarfbehavior]

Punchsmiths is approaching the 200 population mark, and with that I think I need to think about reorganizing labor. Here is the current count of the default jobs:

26 miners (just now raised from 20) 3 woodcutters 5 hunters 8 planters 5 fisherdwarves Plant gatherers - Everybody does this 29 Stonecutters (just now raised from 20) (I typically make Miners into Stonecutters as well) 4 Engravers Haulers - Everybody does this Orderlies - Everybody does this Children - Every chore except Burial, Refuse, Animal hauling, and Water hauling (been trying to keep them indoors, but maybe that isn't worth it without just banning chores)

So far I've been making a lot of my makers specialized, because I had it in mind that they would otherwise pick tasks like hauling over tasks related to their assignment, such as stone that currently needs to be mined. I also wouldn't want doctors who are also miners to choose the latter in times of need, not sure if the game prioritizes that or not. I also wasn't sure if I wanted to make things more complicated by creating new labor tasks to assign.

I'm also thinking about expanding my forces. The Gloved *slidewhistle* are 10 strong and mostly Axe Lords now. The Loyal Mute belong to the Captain of the Guard, but I haven't made them a barracks yet. Same with the newly created Routed Boots, whom I think I will turn into swordsmen.

Should be noted that I barely have any defenses up right now, save for some walls around the top level staircases.

[dwarfbehavior]

Completely forgot about these settings! Have raised to 500 and 600, respectively.

[dwarfbehavior]

Moods be slipping. Too many cavern-related problems.

[dwarfbehavior]

DwarfNotes 2.1

Getting overwhelmed with labor. Work details, specialized workers, workshop masters, and work orders all getting too messy. It's also hard to keep track of what dwarves are in the military when assigning labors and workshops (though DFHack is exceptional in helping me pick new troops based on attributes).

So I'm going to wipe the labor slate clean and start fresh. First, a couple population facts:

Total population: 247. Cap is now 250 so will not plan for any more laborers. I may actually expel some of the more miserable dwarves who miss their families outside the fort.

Military: 65 total, 10 per every squad except the one led by my Captain of the guard, which is 5. I have not reviewed every soldier's emotional and physical state; it's likely some will have to be replaced with happier/healthier dwarves. On a sidenote, I've taken to putting dwarves who've lost the ability to grasp but still want to practice martial arts, in a wrestling unit. They've done pretty well!

Here's my tentative checklist for restructuring everything.

Review troops, see who needs to be replaced.

Set all troops to be "active", which if I have it right will make all of their job titles appear as Axedwarf, Marksdwarf, etc when assigning labors. To start, noone in the military will have any other tasks.

Remove all assigned work details

Clear all work orders

Unassign all workshop masters, then reassign most accordingly

Set labors for most dwarves who aren't already at a workshop. Maybe start with assigning haulers first? This will be the tricky part since I'm not sure what kind of labor ratios I should aim for or how many dwarves should be specialized.

Idk if I should be using infinite tasks or relying purely on conditional work orders. Might set a couple of these up.

Recreate the basic work orders, slowly get more complex again. I think everything should have a condition, which will take time to set up, hopefully worth it in the long run.

I know that DFHack has an autolabor tool to try and figure all this out for me, but tbh that feels a little too game breaky. So far I've been enjoying the note taking and planning.

[dwarfbehavior]

Status report. Mood is okay, though dwarves are beginning to throw tantrums again.

[dwarfbehavior]

Left a mineshaft unguarded, turns out only having one staircase to to fight on can kill even the best of the best.

[dwarfbehavior]

This would explain some things about the current production speed.

I should probably just relent and let only certain dwarves haul.

[dwarfbehavior]

Oof, keeping everyone to a barrow does a number on everyone's mood. Might need to look into making a barrow that doesn't only include a tavern.

[dwarfbehavior]

DwarfNotes v1.1

Thank you to the people answering questions/giving tips already! So far I've been enjoying going in mostly blind, but as I get deeper in the weeds it's nice to know the fandom is so helpful.

@sugoiney-weaver I didn't know the instrument names are also randomized, that's awesome! Gonna find and store that instrument in my tavern!

@gemstone-gynoid Oh damn, I was checking just the mason/carpenter shops! I later learned I can search all craftable items from the work order screen so I shouldn't have trouble like this again.

@gendergeometries It turned out they were already assigned to my pasture, they just were getting loose? Maybe I need to expand their area.

@ghostlyalbacore I have since done these things. I have a bunch of orders going now; it's getting a little painful to sort through when prioritizing certain things but so far it's manageable.

@frantic-btn-mash Making this checklist when I'm back ingame!

@baprr Adding to the aforementioned checklist!

@roborunner Very good to know!

@deafmangoes I figured this out after the possessed child took over my one crafts shop until she went insane.

[dwarfbehavior]

Ashenclash, Year 253

Doing alright for ourselves so far. The big things are not having enough beds and exactly zero water and soap. After I have some decent soldiers I'll get to work securing the caverns and begin work on a huge pump stack.

Metal industry is up and running, so said soldiers will have some good iron equipment soon. Steel might be a long ways off due to the needed wood.

As you can tell from the snow, I've had to work on securing the part of the volcano that leads into the fort. It's a little weird having to build upwards, but it's good practice for some other ideas I have.

"Queen" is still not getting what she wants until I can reliably build what she wants. What does she want? Traction benches. To be honest it's not a terribly annoying thing to make, and her preferences don't mention anything else that has to be built.

Need to get the justice system up and running. This land has a lot of enemies, and a lot of bards and soldiers have already moved in without being vetted. There have also been an increase in thieves and snatchers about so I might need to consider a rotating set of guards.

Over a hundred hours playing at sub 30 frames made me forget just how fast this game moves, so I'm going to try mining out as many floors as I can while keeping the population max low, say 100 to start with and slowly incrementing. That way it might not be so bad digging to the caverns.

[dwarfbehavior]

Sometimes learning on the job makes for an unfortunate lesson. Seriously considering going back to the Glitch Child timeline, abandoning the Ashensmash, and setting up shop at the actual volcano mouth.

[dwarfbehavior]

Alcohol is going up again, and also more mist machines have been built, so mood is climbing back up.

[dwarfbehavior]

DwarfNotes 2.0

Time for more notations to keep me focused.

-Animals

Have not done anything with animal husbandry at all, so I will work on dividing the large pen for all the animals into smaller sections in order to better farm (heh) resources.

Dwarves are slowly getting better at training captured animals, especially giant bats which they are now Knowledgeable of. A few facts are known about barn owls, coyotes, dingos, and wolves. On that note, I'm seeing more of these animals in the area now. Used to be kangaroos, but not sure I've seen a notification about one of those in a while. Maybe we hunted them all?

Untrainable animals include my Troll and Gorlak. Will build rooms for them to trap invaders in, once I figure out a good way of doing so.

-Clothing

Clothing generation has become more important as clothes start to wear. Like the rest of Punchsmiths, thread/silk/cloth production is a disorganized mess, including the animals who are all very spread out at this point. I think I will make a separate, close pen for animals that can be sheared.

Leather production would also be cool, but that ties to the animal husbandry thing and raising more animals faster.

Still want to build a spider farm so I can ramp up silk production. Looked it up on the wiki and now I plan to build a room and place a hatch overhead, place a loom next to it and assign some poor schmuck to it with the task of infinitely collecting web. The more complicated part of this plan is freeing all the tamed spiders I have in my possession. Which leads me into...

-Machines

Rock mechanisms! After nearly a decade in-game it's finally time to start working on machines, so I'm starting to crank out mechanisms. I need to figure out linking levers in order to free my caged spiders, but I also am arming the fort with more traps. Currently putting stone traps around every staircase, but I want to build more complex stuff, like using my river/waterfall to flood certain areas on command.

Being able to divert the river flow to this area between the two sets of walls would be dope, though that might require too much water/time during a siege. There is also a section of the map to the north that's mostly decline, so possibly routing the river to that and flooding the northern valley could be interesting. Of course, I also would like the river to serve less destructive purposes, so I'm thinking about what a waterwheel there would accomplish.

I'm building more bridges to link sections of the ravine, for both practicality and the aesthetic. Gonna be important to have dwarves to pull these levers should anyone come from those directions.

Wells

I swear I'm gonna figure this out eventually. I mean I have wells next to the river, but those of course are useless in winter, and get destroyed when the river unfreezes anyway (there's probably a way to prevent that but meh). I have a well next to the tavern, but that source also freezes, and anyway I would like a cleaner setup. So with that aquifer under it, I'm going to try again to build a room, dig holes in it, and create a clean water supply underneath. Also, I placed some wells down the in the caverns; hope I don't regret that later.

Raids/Exploration

I don't think I've ever posted a map of the surrounding areas so here:

I don't think Punchsmiths actually shows on the overworld so I highlighted where I think we are. The kobolds are apparently still a problem but I don't see where they could be coming from other than the nearby tower we razed. Just gotta deal with them I guess.

This is the real problem of course. The elves stopped our raid but were also kind of pushovers during the ambush (look don't listen to what the kobolds have to say about it okay). So I'm training my dwarves up so they can pillage the closest tree forts.

Now there's also exploration which I haven't done yet. Honestly the overworld is so zoomed out it's hard to notice individual areas for this, but I did notice something interesting

Girderpillar, my first fort! I knew it was in the area but I don't think I realized I made Punchsmiths so close to it. Probably nothing interesting there, but there may be resources to reclaim so this will be my first explore mission.

I was looking at the artifacts page and noticed, hey wow this friendly dwarf fort has a ton of the things. It's probably not worth starting fights with friends at this stage, but maybe important to keep in mind. There is a friendly elf fort nearby rumored to have an artifact, so that will be the a future raid mission.

Library

I've started production on scrolls and quires (not sure how much it will actually matter for wealth generation, but the wiki says making the quires into books actually lowers their value so no book binding for now).

Caverns

I have reopened the caverns. There's water near the stairway entrance so I built some wells there as an emergency water source. Don't really have a plan in place here except maybe build a bunch of walls to try and contain my suicidally explorative dwarves. I know the soil is good for farming so mayyyybe try that? Also I didn't think about it before but

There are dead zones in the caverns that don't connect to anything, so I could mine those out safely. Maybe that's where farming should happen.

The queen's rooms are almost up to her expectations, and I did accidentally learn that once they are I'll be encouraged to dig deeper, so cavern conquering is looking like another goal in mind.

Optimization

It's been mentioned that frames are gonna be an issue as I advance to a population of 300, and they already have been during the last ambush. For the most part though, the game is performing well enough that it hasn't been on my mind, but I will look into optimization options once things get more Fun.

That's all for now I think.