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Dwarf Fortress: It is terrifying

If this manages to be popular, I'm considering turning it into a succession fort. Good or bad idea?

  • Total voters
    45
Night_stalker said:
Why not? We live in a place where everything comes back to life to kill us.
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Well, thing is, zombies only kill dwarves. Ghosts on the other hand are just plain annoying,
In related news, Catten's undead hand just popped out of his coffin like a demented jack-in-the-box, jumping across the water before swiftly being put down.

The wayward appendage is swiftly returned to the coffin by this poor sod. Because that is a thing that happens. Sometimes the remains of our brave martyrs don't feel like staying in the coffin and we have to smash them a bit to get them to behave themselves like good little dead bodies and go to bed.



An additional burial space is also created for a dead baby, apparently it was one of the two dead dwarves' child and I accidentally left it outside to rot. Oops. Well at least there's the fully blinged out tomb to bury it in.


The staircase will be the path we dig down to the caverns. Time to find out what secrets the earth hides.


YOU HAVE DISCOVERED A EXPANSIVE CAVERN DEEP UNDERGROUND



The second image is actually 6 z-levels above the water as it shows multiple levels. Caverns are huge, as much a part of a dwarf fortress as the surface, or maybe even more. We can only see a small part of them as of now.
They are actually a gigantic cave system connected to the entire world and there are three of them at varying depths. "Expansive" is in no way an exaggeration. They have their own unique flora and fauna, and with their discovery the spores of the trees here will start spreading throughout every patch of soil in the fort. Instead of green trees, the lack of sunlight gives rise to towering mushrooms and odd, thistle shaped trees. At greater depths the coveted nether cap can be found, whose wood mysteriously holds a freezing chill no matter the circumstances. A beer barrel made of this wood is a gift fit for any dwarven king,
They offer a great bounty of resources for any fortress, like lumber, water and the subterranean creatures that inhabit it. Not only that, but the aforementioned spores can be used to create a "tree farm" underground, away from the dangers of cavern creatures and those nagging elves.
But we must not forget, these alien landscapes were not meant for man nor dwarf. In these light less depths lie things that those above are now blissfully ignorant of. Creatures long since having lost both the their eyes and the need for them, of such voracious hunger that they are more mouth than body, and in mockery to all natural order a creature that has eyes but no mouth, said to feed on evil alone. There are a spiders of such colossal size that... well, let me just show you their webs.

The giant cave spider is a creature that that deserves its reputation. But ultimately they are not the worst the caverns have to offer.
In the deep, there are beasts so fell and terrible, that only they know what they are, for none who have met them have lived to tell of it... they are the Forgotten Beasts, born of the chaos from before the world's birth... they have waited, brooding in the dark places of the world... and now... by digging too deep... we have awakened them. -The Dwarf Fortress Wiki.
These forgotten beasts are procedurally generated colossal monsters that can be made of flesh, stone or even fire, water and metal. They each have a random ability that ranges from breathing fire to shooting enough webs to make Spiderman jealous. The most deadly of them all is syndrome bearing dust or gas, that can act as deadly neurotoxin or simply rot away a dwarf's flesh. The dust can spread through dwarves covered in it and contaminated water, which has caused the death of many fortresses. For an example of these beasts-

Idi was a forgotten beast. A towering one-eyed monkey. It has thin wings of stretched skin. Its fern green hair is patchy. Beware its poison gas!

But enough stories for now, let us have a look at our very own cavern-


Oh. Oh dear.
Undead, undead as far as the eye can see. And dead, mangled bodies of the same creatures strewn about.



And remember those Giant Cave Spiders I told you about?



Great! Now we have undead abominations instead of just plain old normal abominations. Let us have a look at the rest of the cavern. 'Night_Stalker' Sigunbidok the miner has *ahem* volunteered to perform some exploratory digging.

Three doors are placed at the start of the tunnel, in case something unfortunate befalls the brave forumite and does not spread to the rest of the fortress. The militia is also called into the depths. He is going to have to wall up the stairway before anything climbs in. Let's hope he's quick enough.

Also, this image confirms that dwarves navigate in the dark using echolocation or something because there is no way this part would be visible from the hole made in the north. Night_Stalker survived the venture but he revealed something very disturbing-



Undead and mangled corpses everywhere, especially accumulated near the borders of the map. And not one but three Giant Cave Spider zombies.
This whole thing:


Is full of nothing but the walking dead.

It's like I embraced the spirit of discovery and it stabbed me in the kidneys and then flipped me off for good measure .

My theory to explain this is that when one of the cavern creatures got into a fight and died, it rose as undead and killed other creatures, creating more zombies. And these zombies kept on accumulating as more and more creatures wandered into the map until there were no living creatures left. If I'm right, then these two dozen zombies are merely the tip of the iceberg. The lower caverns could be full of hundreds of such undead monsters. :o
...
Well, it certainly explains the lag.

The path is clear, we'll be taking a look further down in the next update. That's all for now and holy shit look at the time I need to sleep right now.



Vikram, signing out.
 
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Night_stalker said:
Ah. So my inital suggestion of finding a lava pit, and just hocking the coffins in there is out of the question?
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Indeed, for three reasons:
  • I don't have a lava pit.
  • If coffins and the contained bodies are destroyed, a slab needs to be engraved to prevent spookiness.
  • You can't dump a coffin without deconstructing it, which removes the body
But more importantly, bodies take a long time to burn. So if one of the assorted pieces of our meatshield, I mean, brave martyr were to rise up, we'd be facing a bit of a problem. You see, creatures in dwarf fortress die in lava because of bleeding when the fat melts off of their bodies, not merely buring up. Since undead don't have blood, instead of a normal zombie we'd get a zombie that is on fire. Which sounds fun until you've seen one of them get into the booze stockpile. T'was a sad day for all dwarfkind.
 
Night_stalker said:
You can't make like a slide leading down to the pit?
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Well to be honest, I could just dig a deep dark hole, chuck the bodies in there and forget about them. No magma required whatsoever. Maybe a dwarven atom smashing bridge for maximum boring efficiency.

But the occasional zombie makes for good practice for the militia. And it's frankly hilarious how they have to beat the hell out of their former comrade to stuff him in his coffin.

But honestly, the real reason is this: I like big tombs and I cannot lie.

Notice how this is the fanciest place in the whole fortress. Those white statues are silver and the walls are made of gold. There is an actual moat around every coffin. I love building big, fancy rooms more than anything else in the game and I've been trying to curb that tendency for this LP to fit the fort inside that single z-level of hill.
 
I have to admit, a cavern full of undead long-forgotten creatures?

Sounds awesome.

Looks like it's time for your Dorfs to learn how to purge.
 
It is time. Time to explore the deep dark recesses of the earth, and purge them of undead filth. And reclaim some goddamn processing power, the game is slow as hell.


The military makes their way down through the narrow passageways.

A downward passage, eh. These tunnels connect two or more caverns together across z-levels. That does mean beasts can now climb to other levels though. And naturally, the path is full of dead, rotting bodies. Really sets the mood.


Another thing to consider is that a cavern is truly a 3-d environment. Creatures and dwarves can now climb and hold on to walls and ceilings. If I'm not aware of what's above as well as what's below, the militia can be ambushed by something unexpected. It is in these labyrinthine passages that Dwarf Fortress' procedural generation really shines. Case in point:

Now this was just a lowly undead limb but it managed to injure the only survivor of the Rough Limbs. One dwarf is already out of commission.

On the balance, this was pretty insignificant but if instead of a lowly undead limb we'd had a Giant Cave Spider lying in wait the encounter would have ended very differently. No matter how strong or skilled, a dwarf once trapped in its web is but helpless prey waiting to die. Speaking of helpless prey, I'm leaving Erith to die for now. I might try for a rescue later but honestly, what's one more corpse in a cave full of em? Both of his hands are now injured, and he can't hold a weapon. The time is better spent hunting. And we have a target.


A giant olm corpse, a good way to start off the undead purge. The militia moves to engage and...

Well, that was short. Moving on...

More corpses. Looks like all the action was down here all along.

Don't mind us... Just going to kill that Cave croc.

We now move towards the more dangerous mass of undead. En route we see just how the cavern came to be in this abysmal state.

The undead tear apart the living creature and it soon joins them in their accursed state. But there is good news as well,

Erith decided that being immobilized from two broken limbs is for pussies and walked his way into the fort and up to the hospital. This dwarf's utter refusal to die is making me reconsider his uselessness.

And we shall now attack the first real gathering of undead in the cavern.

They make a mess of the two poor cave crocs. But alas, Erith goes after a giant olm alone and dies swiftly

He is immediately avenged. But now we have attracted the attention of something truly horrifying.

Fuuuuuck. I don't even know if undead spiders can shoot webs and the bloody militia commander is asleep in the barracks. The troglodyte corpse is re-killed and now it is upon us!
 
Me right now:


With no hesitation, SteelRaptor hacks one of its legs off.

The axedwarf's our best bet in killing the thing before it gets webs off.

Holy shit, 5 of its limbs are gone already.

...And that's it. gg dwarves, gg. Guess there really isn't much an elite dwarven soldier can't kill.
And that proves to be true as the militia slaughters the vast majority of the undead in this first cavern. SteelRaptor, your dwarf is an utter badass:

I say this because aside from the fight with the GCS, she was part of my favorite moment-

As she was crossing that tiny strip of land a giant toad attacks her from the water. And she doesn't even stop walking as she cuts his head in two. I barely even noticed it had happened.

Gru's not a female dwarf, but I suppose he has the right proportions.
And all this time the militia commander has been sleeping like a baby. She has no idea what she just missed. But now she is awake, and we must handle the most dangerous group of undead in the cavern

Two giant Cave Swallows, a giant olm, a gorlac and another goddamn GCS. Surprisingly enough, all but the gorlac are killed with ease, but the damn thing refused to go down until all four dwarves ganged up on it.


All in all that went stupendously well. SteelRaptor only lost her right ear and a few cuts were stitched up among the rest. Dumat had a heavily bleeding head wound, but would quickly stabilize.
Oh and apparently Erith was SteelRaptor's younger brother, so I guess I should recover his corpse as well.

One grisly delivery.


Here lies Erith, brother of SteelRaptor. He was mildly interesting for a time. RIP.

On that note, that's all for today's update. Next time... Some beautification in the vein of the fort's tomb. There is a critical lack of fabulousness in the dining hall.

Vikram, signing out... well not really, I'm still here so if you have any questions about the game, ask away.
 
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It is my deeply held opinion that one cannot have a proper Dwarven fortress without a proper Dwarven Hall. I am ashamed that I have confined our hard workers' merriment to this tiny, cramped nook.

It is time we moved on to something a bit more grand...

Gold and silver furniture, enough to seat almost 80 dwarves. Never mind that it's raining blood outside, the parties held here will keep the dwarves in a constant state of euphoria.


This is going to take ages to furnish. We'll use that time to have a look at the other cavern layers. The first one was, in the end, rather underwhelming so let's check out what lies below.
And by below I mean a hundred and six floors below, at z-level -11. We're gonna dig until we find cavern or magma. Let's follow miner Ingiz down into the earth.

And down, down, down he goes. This really needs some elevator music. I think I probably skipped a layer and went down straight to the third, but whatever, the last layer is the most interesting anyway. Time to crack this open!


First glance, as expected. Zombies and corpses. Let's have a look at the units' screen get an idea of the inhabitants-



Ahahaha wait what

...

155!? Just in one part!?




......
....
...



That's a goddamn army! Even the mysterious underground structures of earlier versions didn't contain that many zombies. Nope, nope I'm walling that off for eternity and embrace my true calling as an interior designer. Time to get that Dwarven Hall furnished and pretend there aren't enough zombies down below to film a Hollywood zombie apocalypse film. But first, a little insurance...

Right below the tomb. I doubt it'll slow them down much, but a man can hope. I can only wait for when Tarn Adams implements the magical effects of materials into the game, so that sitting on a silver throne lights a weredwarf's buttocks on fire. Immature, but admit it, you'd laugh too.
Time for a little therapeutic architecture of the more earthly kind-

Behold, a fully furnished and operational Dwarven Hall!





It is capable of seating 81 dwarves.
...which is actually two and a half times the fort's population. I may have gotten carried away a little.:oops:
The total value of the furniture tripled the wealth of my fort, from around 600,000 to 1.8 million. Enough to make any dwarf shed tears of joy. They're going to need the cheering up, for there are dark days ahead for Bomrekakmesh, dark but glorious.

This is the point where most of my forts stagnate completely. But I think this update has brought me a vision for what I want this fort to be. It is time I removed the population cap, and recruited every migrant into the militia. We will create an army of steel clad dwarves, and throw it against the hordes below.

SV shall witness the biggest battle yet seen on ANY Dwarf Fortress LP. Goblin sieges pale before an enemy that is fearless, tireless and legion in number. We shall have death or we shall have glory, against a foe second only to hell itself. Yes, this is perfect. Even if I fail this shall be everything I hoped a terrifying fort to be.

Armok demands blood, and I can only hope that I am up for the challenge.
Well, as they say- Blood for the blood god.

For now, Vikram, signing out.
 


Notice something about all the pictures? Namely, the complete lack of them? Apparently the image hosting website I was using, picgur, deleted my account. Not only that, but I can't even access the site in ANY way. They haven't offered any reason and their social media accounts haven't been active since last year. I've already deleted the old images from my computer and so there is no way I can recover them.

But, I can guess why they did so.
Picgur is pretty much a no name site I discovered on accident, and I was using it because India banned Imgur for some strange reason. It's a tiny, tiny site and I've uploaded more than three hundred photos on it. Now what it does is display all recently uploaded pictures on the front page, and given that I upload in the dozens at once it would be flooded with dwarf fortress screenshots that push down everything else. Which probably pissed them off enough to kick me out as I was monopolizing not only the screen but also the storage space.

Now, I can't really be angry with them because that's an entirely valid reason and I really should have used something more mainstream. It was mostly because of my own carelessness that this happened.
Note that there was no communication to me, the site just barred access this morning. But this seems like the correct explanation and you can't really blame them. When I said they were tiny, I meant it. My LP really could have been impacting the site adversely.

That said, I will be continuing this LP using imgur via proxy. It's going to be fiddly but I think I can manage it. So don't worry, you'll still be getting your subterranean bloodbath. After all, there's nothing wrong with the game itself.

I'm still on here for now, so if anyone has any questions about the game, even in general you are free to ask.
 
I must apologize, but I can no longer continue with this particular fortress. FPS death has occurred, and an incoming migrant wave simply crashes the game. It has kinda become unplayable to me, and I can't really find the motivation and time to play in a fort with low single digit FPS.

I finally caved and used DFhack to reveal the map, and the true extent of the undead. There are more than eight hundred of them. My computer simply can't handle it and truthfully I doubt my dwarfs could make even the slightest dent in them.

So keeping that in mind, I'll be starting a new fort, NOT in a terrifying embark and play to my strengths as a player. Namely, designing an incredibly pretty looking fort. Not only that, I've updated to the newest version and am going to try it out in this new Fort.
That said, I'd like you all to check out the Dwarf Fortress Map Archive, in the favorites section. It holds the greatest forts ever made, including an incomplete copy of Boatmurdered itself. By far the most awe-inspiring Fortress is, in my opinion RadiantHalls. Please do check it out, it has to be seen to be believed.

I'm really not one for the fast paced survival of evil zones, and when you manage to get stable, you stay stable and the whole point is lost. No, I much prefer watching a goblin army smash itself against great dwarven bulwarks and being utterly destroyed. Traps, fortifications, size and most of all, MAGMA is what really appeals to me. And I have a feeling it appeals to more of the SV crowd as well.

This newest update, 42.06, is the 'tavern' update, where the world and your dwarfs finally seem to come alive. They sing, they dance and they learn. And write the occasional book as well. But what's more exciting is that we'll be getting guests to the fort from the outside world. Mercenaries, bandits, diplomats, performers and more. I can't wait to see it for myself.

It's a brand new world, fresh outta Armok's oven.


Smaksmo Bagsnub, "the land of wonders" takes shape out of the ether. Our story begins four hundred and five years from the birth of the world. 7 intrepid dwarves from the Dike of Perfection are sent to fortify a stretch of land which might be the tensest of the Dwarf-Goblin war


Sandwitched between the Dwarven territory Cattenuken on the left and a Goblin dark pit on the right, this no-man's land shall become the location of our fort. The Mountainhome does not expect it to amount to much, other than a forward base and an insult to the goblins.
But Ilonberul, MoonBastions has a greater goal. It's founders dream of creating something far bigger, a Fort that shall become worthy of the grand name bestowed upon it. It's name shall be heard the world over, and many will brave the dangers of this land to catch a glimpse of it, and maybe share a drink with it's creators, The Regal Galley. The Founding Seven have completed the embark preparations and are ready to make history-


We have brought plenty of sand bags, to kick start the glass industry and 30 units of bituminous coal.


Our tale begins on in a verdant green forest next to a frozen stream. At first glance, the land is tranquil, and filled with greenery.
The spring thaw has hit the Goblin side first, much to the dwarfs' chagrin.
Huh, seems I spoke too soon. The ice thawed the moment I unpaused. A good sign, I hope.
Okay, I'll just fast forward through much of the boring stuff for today.

We establish a farm, which will probably grow plump helmets for all eternity because I'm lazy about food.
The wood stockpile room is supersized to store stone and metal blocks for future construction, while the general storage of everything else is handled by a smaller room for now.

The first stone found is gabbro, which is just about as boring as you can get, barring microcline. And what's worse is that it generally doesn't contain iron ore or coal, which is going to be a major pain to take care of. Looks like the forest is going to be fed to our wood furnaces for fuel.
What it does contain is gold. Lots and lots of it, which will probably be used in furniture.
The new features added have me pleased as a peach, I mean you can specify what type of rock to use in a workshop now, this is going to prevent so much wasted effort.

There are new sprites for the workshops, in the lazy newb pack this time. Clockwise from the top, we have the clothier, the soaper, the smelter, the carpenter, the mason, the mechanic's, the still, the kitchen, the metalsmith's forge, the craftdwarfs, the butcher's, the tanners, the jeweler's and the bower's.

An outer structure is created, as the majority of the fort will be on the surface. For now, we accumulate food and building material.

The two dwarves with military skills are swiftly recruited and armed with... copper. Not exactly the best start but weapons material doesn't seem to be available. The squad has named itself "The Mechanical Eagles" which is perhaps the coolest name I have ever seen the RNG come up with.

They seems to have taken to military life well

Oh, spoke too soon, some exploratory mining revealed a vein of hematite, iron ore, far to the east. It seems the goblins are sitting on most of the weapons grade ore.
Rather quickly, some migrants arrive, six of them. Three of them are soldiers, two swordsdwarfs and a spear wielder while the rest are quite useless weavers. All of them possess some form of artistic skill.
The outer structure has taken shape quite nicely, if in a rather dull shape and color. I've not started a tavern yet as I'm leery of possible bar fights before I build a hospital.

But yeah, after these basic needs are taken care of, marble is mined in great quantities, trees are cut and burnt as fuel and we finally have enough raw material to get started on the base of what I intend to create. It's going to be big, it's going to be pretty, it's going to be attention grabbing and it's definitely going to piss the goblins off like nothing else.

Another wave of migrants shows up, only four for some reason of which two are soldiers.
In total we now have 7 military dwarfs, it doesn't hurt to have cannon fodder in this sense as the dead don't rise here.
The dwarven caravan comes and goes back, trading some drinks for armor. The outpost liaison brings no news this year, the world is the same as ever.
A proper raw material processing area is created, and now we can really get started on construction

I've just noticed something that was added in this new version of the game. Apparently dwarfs now have spiritual and religious needs as well.

We must build a temple, and stock it with musical instruments for prayer. I think that shall be the first floor of our tower. It shall also contain the living arrangements of the dwarfs we currently have, they shall live in the part of the fort they helped construct, close to their place of worship. Now, I prefer to complete a floor before moving on the next, so it might seem a little extravagant.
First of all, we must construct a few instruments. In this case we shall be making one called the 'desor', an organ like apparatus. It must be constructed from multiple components of different material.

With than done, the Red Church is now open to worshipers. Our fort is quite devout it seems, as all work stops and the dwarfs rush to prayer.

The church room is not yet roofed over, and the floor is covered with snow. Hematite, black bronze, gold and silver make up the ground, while the walls are rose gold. While I was completing this floor, the fort received a gigantic migrant wave, bringing the population to 41. Every single dwarf were completely useless weavers, farmer and peasants. Some were made performers at the temple. But they will at least be extra hands for construction.
The bedrooms cannot be furnished without a roof over them, so next we shall move onto the first idea I had for the fort, the Crescent Moon Tavern.

That's all for now, though the report was brief it's taken quite a bit of time to make. Hope you'll enjoy the new fort.
 
Ambitious! Will there be out-buildings, or will industrial processes be mainly handled underground? Is there any plan to dam the river and release it when Goblins draw near, washing them away-along with everything downstream?
 
Vikram said:
But, I can guess why they did so.
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Alternative explanation:
I tried to access the site. It said "This account has been suspended" and the site is inaccessible.
I have never heard of this site before I saw it in this LP. I have never made an account or visited the site.

My explanation is thus: It's dead Jim. Dead as a fockin' doornail.
 
So, you're making something akin to an Imperial Hive City? I can get behind that.
 
The tavern floor has been completely constructed, but the 2 z-level area needs to be covered with a roof to be furnished.



Building the walls was very tedious indeed. On to the next floor...



And has left. Of the four goblins here three left immediately and the last one was killed very quickly. There was a snatcher, but he got torn apart by the guard dogs. That was underwhelming.

Now, I may have gotten carried away with building stuff. The tavern, The Dinner of Enjoyment is now open for business!


It's covered in vomit in short order, but there's nothing I can do to stop dwarfs from drinking. We've got some visitors, finally, both dwarf and human. No elves for some reason.

Pretty soon, a dwarf drinks themselves into a stupor and suffocates. Or maybe it was a bar brawl, I wasn't paying attention and suddenly there was a dead body on the floor. Awkward.

Right below the tavern, we have the temple floor and rooms, now fully furnished and assigned to dwarfs.

Now, I've only completed two more actual floors above the tavern, but what floors they are.

This is the mayoral quarters, for the newly elected Mayor of MoonBastions. The floor is clear glass, and the room stands above the crescent of the tavern. The pink walls are made of rose gold, and the furniture of good old regular gold and hematite.
But this standard of living isn't reserved for just the sole noble of this fort. This next floor is what I want every dwarf in the fort to reside in, and the temple rooms will be used by visitors to stay overnight.


I really really like how it turned out. The design and colours almost give a futuristic feel.

Now, making and furnishing this took an unholy amount of time and there are going to be three of these floors. In the meantime we had three artifacts:
Stibmerbukob Alron Athser, Shorechoke the Amethyst of Charcoal, a green glass figurine depicting the foundation of the fort. This gave us the legendary glassmaker that made this floor possible.
Mozibushal Shasadlim, Swallowtreason the Musical Wisp, a rope reed skirt decorated with platinum. It depicts a goblin's head being smashed open and went straight onto the most well trained member of the militia.
Vadsithbudam, The Square Yearling, a... frilly pig tail mask? Marble leather and tin went into decorating it and it depicts the founding of another fortress back in year 6.

I'll be stopping right here as I don't really have much else to say. Look forward to more extravagant construction next time on this LP.

Vikram, signing out.
 
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