Too Many Nobles

Well, my fortress seems to have stabilized from the cave bat deaths.  No one threw a tantrum or went insane in the spring of 205.  I queued up a lot of jobs, and the dwarfs even worked on some of them.  I probably have jammed up workshops or something.

No one showed up in the fall because of the deaths being caused from psychological stress.  However, the message this spring was that immigrants were arriving despite the danger.  With the immigrants I got the Baron, a consort, a tax collector and the Hammerer.  It's probably good that the Hammerer wasn't in the fortress six months ago, he's have probably wacked some of the pouty dwarfs upside the head with his hammer.

Another production problem I had was that I ran out of trees.  I bought a bunch from the elves, I need to see if they are sitting in the trade depot.  I had to tell my woodcutters to do nothing but cut trees.  That seems to have helped, but I used up all my refined coal, so I need to cut trees and put them in the wood furnace to create charcoal.  However, I also need to turn the trees into beds for my new nobles to sleep in.  I don't have doors for setting up their rooms right now either.

All in all, the spring went better.  I still feel like my workers are way out of hand, in that I don't know what anyone is doing or where the work is happening.  I also feel like my farming is completely out of control.  I need to look at my fields this summer.

Back to the Dwarves

Lord this game has a steep learning curve.  I hadn't fired it up recently, and I had completely forgotten what my plans were.  I did get to see something I had never seen before, I found an underground cavern.  Immediately after tunnelling into cavern, a nasty bat flew into my tunnels and killed a dwarf or two.  From there, probably 10-12 dwarves have died directly or indirectly of depression.  Someone would get upset that their friend died, then they would go mad and starve then their friends would get upset.  On the plus side, there are quite a few nodes of gems along the cavern walls, and there is lots of spider silk.

I think the fortress mood has pretty much stabalized.  I had been tempted to abandond the fort, but I think I'll forge on.  Fortress productivity is way down though, hopefully I have enough food and booze to get by until I figure out what I was doing and where my workshops are again.

Killing friends and family in a subterranean dungeon

No, I haven't gone insane. Well, perhaps it is insane to be playing Angband again considering I do have a win over Morgoth with a priest. However I couldn't resist the call once I got my new Linux box up and running. I had forgotten how freakin' hard this rogue-like game is.

I feel bad for Dan and Angela, I did kind of kill them stupidly by reading a scroll of monster summoning. As a result, I decided to give Dan the human priest a second try by reincarnating him as Daniel the Dunadan Paladin.

Currently Helen from the pool league in Jacksonville is atop the leader board of my new install of Angband. She had the bad luck of failing three actions in a row while trying to take down an orc captain from an orc pit. I probably should have left well enough alone after taking down some of the easier orcs in the pit and stayed well clear of the captains, however I got overly ambitions after taking one captain down without too much trouble.

If I haven't already killed you off and you have a request for a rogue-like alter ego, let me know and I'll see what I can do. (If it's any consilation, I killed myself by falling into a spiked pit and bleeding to death.)

Helen - High Elf Mage, killed by an orc captain
Meagan - Human Warior, killed by a kobold archer
Randy - Dunadan Ranger, killed by a giant clear centipede
Chip - Gnome Mage, killed by Bullroarer the hobbit
Angela - Elf Ranger, killed by a blue worm mass
Jason - Human Rogue, killed by a hill orc
Suzanne - Human Paladin, killed by Bullroarer the hobbit (I got wishy-washy about wanting to fight or run, and got my sister's alter ego killed by Bullroarer.)
Dan - Human Priest, killed by a wolf

Fortress expansion

Well, it's the winter of 203 for my dwarves.  The fortress population nearly doubled in the spring, and with a few births and a few more migrants arriving in the fall, there will probably be nobles showing up in the spring.  I'm not entirely ready for them.  I've also noticed dwarves sleeping in the beds I've laid out to use as hospital beds, so the bedroom situation needs work.

One problem is that even though I've dug out some new bedroom areas, they are still cluttered with stone.  I've hollowed out two otherwise useless areas on the path into the mountain.  One is holding stone, and the other useful garbage.  Even with the extra stone storage, I don't have room to store all my rock.  I'm going to have to work on that.

I've got quite a bit of ore, but I'm low on charcoal to do anything with it.  I'll have to expand my tree cutting and charcoal burning.  One good thing that happened is that I've got an artifact leather shield.  I'm sure that will be useful if I can get someone to wear it.  I did have one dwarf die of melancholy because I didn't have any turtle shell when he wanted to make an artifact.  I've traded for some, so hopefully I won't have to start fishing.  I've got more food than I really need from farming already.

Many fortress milestones

I played a little DF last week, but didn't get my blog entry in.  It is now early winter of the year 202.  The dwarves of Darkbrew the Eyes of Elders have accomplished quite a bit since last I wrote about them.

They constructed a waterwheel, and used it to power gears underground which will eventually power a series of millstones.  They also finished construction of a well, which in addition to providing water to the dwarves, not that they would drink any of it unless they were out of booze or wounded, it makes a much better meeting hall than a tiny dining room.

New migrants arrived in the fall of 202 to push the fortress population to 35.  I appointed a dwarf to serve as sheriff of the growing community.  She's is currently cranky about not having furnished quarters or an office, but she'll get over it.

Finally, the fortress has it's first artifact and legendary crafter.  I've got an artifact quality rock idol, and a legendary stone crafter.  However, not having enough crafters to fully specialize yet, my legendary stone worker is currently weaving thread into cloth.

I'm addicted to this ASCII game

Well, after a winter of brewing and digging, I'm playing one more season to try to get some migrants to arrive.  At least the digging has given me enough room to clean up some of the loose stone cluttering up the place.  The goal for the spring is to get some pig tails growing and set up a loom for weaving the pig tail thread into cloth.  Ack!  Pig tails grow in the spring.  Maybe some elves will show up to trade and I can get some booze off of them, otherwise my dwarves are going to have to live with drinking fermented mushrooms.  

One of the things I did in the winter was to set up a row of traps leading into the fortress.  They caught an intruder, a "vicious" dear.  Yes, my traps killed bambi.  I built a butcher's shop and a tanning shop too.  My dwarves are making some bambi leather.

Dear lord.  I got my immigrants, 19 of them.  I've got to figure out what to do with them now.  I've got them smelting iron and burning coal, turning trees into crossbow bolts.  I made plenty of crafts, but no elven traders showed up.  I also cut a few gems.  At least I'll be able to brew some pig tails come summer, which has now hit.  I'm going to stop the game then post this.

Dwarf Fortress - The Gilded Axe

I learned about this game in a list of free games from PC Gamer magazine.  It's the most ambitious city builder type game I've ever seen, and the graphics are all ASCII art.  I decided that I would start blogging about my world for two reasons.

Without the blog, I tend to play for way too long in a single sitting.  Also, without the blog, you have nothing to show for you efforts.

I generated a world called The Gilded Axe, and I'm going to build my first fort at a river coming out of the mountains into a forest.  That should give me a good mixtrue of stone and wood to start with.  I selected a dwarven society called The Treaty of Obeisance as my home civilization because I liked the name.  And I gave a dwarf named Zulban some social skills so the game should make her the leader of my expidition.  

One of my goals for this game is not to build aboveground structures and keep everything below the surface.  I was going to customize my group name, but the randomly assigned one fits perfectly.  My dwarves will be know as The Banner of Depths.  Their fortress will be known as Darkbrew, the Eyes of Elders.

So I'm going to embark and see what I can get done in a single season.  The basic goals are to get a spot for the trade depot dug out, underground farming started, and a baracks built.  When I get a look at my map, I have an immediate decision to make on where to the entrance to my underground fortress.  There is a stream at the north end of the map, and a large plateau at the southern end.  I would really like to dig down into the rock plateau, but because trees and water are useful, I decite to start at the northern end of the map.

I got my spring goals accomplished, plus I got a baracks built.  I'm going to go ahead and play another season since this first one goes quickly.  I want to get my initial set of bedrooms built, and get my initial set of workshops laid out in a good pattern.  I want A Carpenter, mason, mechanic and wood burner on the industry side.   I also want to get all my storage underground.

Well, I didn't get a wood burnder built in the summer.  I should probably produce a few rock crafts as trade goods this fall.  Hopefully I get a few imigrants.  If I don't, I probably need to put a miner onto farming duty.  The bedrooms are dug out, but not fully furnished, so I want to get that done this fall.  I need to get my bookkeeper an office too.

Well, I didn't get any imigrants, so that limits my options for expanding things.  I went on into winter, where I think my goals are to burn a little wood into charcoal, harvest more trees to make up for what I've been using, and dig out my metal ores.  This game is so addicting.  I'm going to let it run while I'm not doing anything fancy and cook some dinner.