[Roguelike] Dwarf Fortress

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Wed Dec 07, 2022 3:11 am

in an extremely unlikely coincidence, i just read this line in this novel i'm on now:

"At the age of nine, GABY was ranked sixth in the world in the hundred-meter breaststroke and fourth in the GosuGamers eSports world rankings for Dwarf Fortress, widely thought to be the most complex video game ever made."

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:29 am

Ah Dwarf Fortress, you saucy minx. I got it yesterday and was able to boot it up around 10:30pm. By 11:30, I was chugging along in a fortress, the cobwebs softly falling from my mind as I remembered all the random things that I needed to do from what might have been almost a decade ago. The interface was a welcome change, but there are still the OLD WAYS(tm), all the extra clicking to queue up building things and crafting, the shortcuts, the hidden information (even though this is lessened by the addition of many new prompts). The minimap may be the most excellent new wizardry. In the days of smooth scrolling with a mouse, it feels weird to play a game with the jagged scrolling of screen jumps on the WASD. Before long my mind has incorporated it as the way THINGS SHOULD BE, modernity is lost. For a moment I begin to see the dwarves as they truly are, @ symbols with beards, gathering lowercase letters to build new lowercase letters in workshops made from = and |. But the vision soon passes, the new sprites carry on their work.

I DIG DEEP... we hit a cavern. Mushrooms sprout in lower level farms. In my farming, I find a pool of lava. With some extra work, partially due to my memory needing to be jogged, I have flooded an area in order to make my lava workshops. Soon the fortress will overflow with metal goods forged with the burning blood of the mountain.

Then I encounter another beast I had long forgotten. The dreaded CRASH TO DESKTOP. Ah yes, I remember. Losing is fun, and that even applies to data. I return to find that my save reverted back to the beginning of the season, about 30 minutes lost. No lava. No cavern. A reminder - save frequently.

Drama aside. I am struggling a little bit. I am certainly keeping the game (no refunds) but at the moment I am considering what factors would have me chose to play DF over Rimworld. In many ways Rimworld does all the things DF does, but most of the time easier and better. There is more "character" in Rimworld, you have small stylized psychopaths tearing things up, modifying their bodies, and doing bizarre rituals and parties. The dwarves, by comparison, require more work. You can click on them and see their stories, but you aren't going to see the same level from them without some work. The base in Rimworld is alive and the options are many, new tech brings new things, power allows for overcoming old challenges in better ways, science allows for magic and wonders.

That said, Dwarf Fortress shines where it always shines - the weird, the eccentric, and the self-driven narrative. You can't build an entire fortress of green glass in Rimworld.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Wed Dec 07, 2022 5:18 pm

baelthazar wrote: ↑Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:29 am The dreaded CRASH TO DESKTOP.

Crashing Much?

First, if you’re crashing, please know that the main cause appears to be widescreen monitors or other non-standard resolutions. We’re working on a solution but for now, the safest/best course of action is to use a 1920x1080 monitor or change your settings in the game to force that resolution in Windowed mode.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Wed Dec 07, 2022 5:27 pm

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 07, 2022 5:18 pm
baelthazar wrote: ↑Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:29 am The dreaded CRASH TO DESKTOP.

Crashing Much?

First, if you’re crashing, please know that the main cause appears to be widescreen monitors or other non-standard resolutions. We’re working on a solution but for now, the safest/best course of action is to use a 1920x1080 monitor or change your settings in the game to force that resolution in Windowed mode.

IIRC there were always crash problems with lava and lava workshops.
...
...
...
and cats.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Thu Dec 08, 2022 7:17 pm

Nice article from PC Gamer, Dwarf Fortress beginner's guide

You've completed the tutorial, but the yawning void of Dwarf Fortress is still open ahead of you, a thousand confusing buttons and strange untapped systems awaiting. It's going to be a good time, but let's ease you in some more with a bit of advice. Just be patient with yourself—and don't blame your dwarves when wild animal/goblin/dragon attacks derail a new fort.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 13, 2022 10:32 pm

So... I'm an old-school DF fan. Played it eons ago 'a lot', and played it not so long ago quite a bit.

The Steam version is certainly a new version. There are a lot of quasi-hidden departures from the 'classic' version that an old veteran player is going to need to unlearn a fair amount of things and it's mostly for the good.
But at the same time, it's not entirely great.

It's strange, IMO, the number of things that they failed to improve/fix while they clearly not only had the opportunity but used it in so many other places... Why am I still trying to figure out where the storage of Coke is? Honestly - that (the whole coal=charcoal=coke thing has been such a stupid problem they have failed to address for so long. There are a few nuanced issues like this that I am seeing. None of it is horrible, and some of it to a new player will just feel like the ol' "Oh Dwarf-Fortress was said to be cloaked in UI obscurity, this must be what they mean...", but a lot of this has been classic points of confusion that I would have liked to see the Steam version clean up.

Still. I'm having a good deal of fun with my first little fortress - but there are some classic (super easy) issues I'm seeing that are seemingly not things they felt like improving.

There are a few other things, for instance: the ability to make a door open for dwarves, but locked to Animals, which were famously horrible for pathfinding-performance, that they just took straight out of this (it's either locked or unlocked) that were clearly a short-cut to figuring out their path-finding engine's problem when applied to different tokens.

I'm still enjoying myself and I'm also re-learning a lot of systems that I have taken for granted. Which I have to imagine is a huge part of anyone that is familiar with the classic version... The differences are broad but very nuanced. And a few thing I'd have liked to think they could have gotten their UI around - they still are struggling with.

TL/DR -- this will still be a learning cliff for players uninitiated, even though they have indeed done a lot to help with that. That being said, I'm certain a lot of improvements have been made that will make the game more approachable to many players, but they will still need to be players that are willing to put up with a LOT of quirks.
For old-longtime-players: There is a lot to re-learn. It's not obvious at first, but as you play there is more and more that you learned that you need to unlearn.

Graphically, (for me) it's a lot of fun to see everything they have come up with.

If you are an old-school DF player, this will create a new novelty for you, and probably give you a new, insane game to "master".\
If you are an old 'I couldn't take it" DF player, this will be a fun new shot at it, and you may get more into it.
If you are a new player with no exposure, I imagine you will find this (more or less) interesting but still really hard to get into.

I have nearly 5,000 hours in Rimworld and it's fascinating how entirely different these two games are. There are elements to DF that just have Rimworld entirely dominated, but then there are aspects to Rimworld that have me seeing how held back Dwarf Fortress is, in so many ways.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Tue Dec 13, 2022 11:15 pm

Who doesn't like a good success story:

After spending 20 years simulating reality, the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to a new one: being millionaires

Acclaimed indie colony/existence sim Dwarf Fortress launched on Steam (opens in new tab) on December 6, and it's since been having a bit of a moment.

Other game developers gushed about Dwarf Fortress and its influence on launch day. Someone on the Steam forums asked if all the people reviewing the game on Steam moments after launch had been "playing free DF for 25 years and just waiting for an opportunity to pay $30?" So far, the 237 page thread is almost entirely people answering "Yes." Publisher Kitfox Games tweeted that Dwarf Fortress had blown past their predicted two-month sales figure in less than 24 hours. Now six days later, Dwarf Fortress has sold around 300,000 copies, developer Tarn Adams said in an interview with PC Gamer.

"Tanya [Short of Kitfox Games] posted that it sold 160,000 the first day, and we're about double that now," Adams said.

Adams and his brother, Zach, who've been developing Dwarf Fortress together since the early 2000s, were remarkably calm about the game's success on Steam so far—even almost a week after launch, the degree of success might not have quite sunk in.

Based on some extremely basic math, 300,000 copies of Dwarf Fortress sold equals $9 million in sales. Subtract Valve's 30% cut and you have $6 million to be split between the Adams brothers and Kitfox and new contributors, like the artists and composer who worked on the Steam release. Regional pricing makes that figure fuzzier, of course, and the Adams' didn't talk about their publishing split. But with Dwarf Fortress still among Steam's top sellers, the two must have millions coming their way.

"It's just a ton of money, but it's also for 20 years," Tarn Adams said. "So when you divide that by 20, you're kind of back down into normal tech salary range. Which is still pretty high, obviously."

"We found a foolproof way of saving our money, which was to not sell anything for 20 years and then drop it all," Zach deadpanned.

In 2019 the brothers announced plans for the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress as a way to help them afford healthcare; part of that announcement was a promise to fans that they would take care of themselves. They'll have to figure out exactly what that means when Steam's first payout arrives in February and they become millionaires.

"That is an inevitability, it seems," Tarn said. "I'll have to rework… my, uh, whole life, figure out what the heck's going on there. I don't really have any ideas or plans right now. I've just been thinking about dwarf stuff."

"My wife has plans," Zach said. "We live in a tiny little house, so buying a new house, that's a major goal."

Next year's first big problem, then, in between working on Dwarf Fortress updates, will be finding an accountant. But Tarn said that the money the Steam version brings in will also need to last.

"We don't have plans to sell Dwarf Fortress 2 or whatever in five years, right? It's just the same game. So this tail off this game, for however long it goes, that's it. We have to be responsible with what we've got, now, for the rest of our lives really."

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 13, 2022 11:55 pm

If nothing else, I sincerely wish Tarn and Zach every ounce of success and even maybe up to 10x more of the success they are due... They and DF are behind the "ant-farm" itch and I am totally itchy - and I can't begin to thank them enough.

I'm having a lot of fun discovering the nuances of this entirely new DF, but I can't pretend that I wasn't expecting them to conquer a few of their bigger historic problems with this Steam release... so there is some real room for disappointment...

And yet, I can honestly say that I am happy with the ones they did address.

It's certainly a net Plus... but dang.... I can't pretend I was actually hoping for a bit more on the "UI-interface-Interface with game-play" aspect.

It's a complicated game, but I'll be damned if they nearly blew it.... . on making it much better (spare the graphic gain)

They certainly did improve - but there still seems to be this massive gap in its ability to gracefully address what the user wants to be done. It's still locked in a system that is connected to its foundational origins, and yet it seems like this was indeed what we all quietly wished from this release, A REAL shift from their 15+ years-ago-start... Alsas, that looks likely to never happen.

I can only give them a B- or C+ on that.

The very idea that this game should result in two people (and their families) living in comfort, and upgrading their housing situation - goes entirely without saying (IMO) and I sincerely do hope they address that need where it has not yet been addressed... These 2 developers have been slumming it for way too long. I really wish them well, and I hope this is the beginning of them actually getting DF into a fully customizable and fun game for a million different types of 'ant-farm' enthusiasts.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Mon Dec 19, 2022 2:11 pm

Well, I'm still enjoying the new DF. I'm getting a hang of the new set of quirky interfaces and ever-so-slightly different behavior behind a number of things in the game.

For instance, Pro Tip:
Cage Traps are still excellent tools to defend your fortress but figuring out how to then move that filled cage, and what to actually do with the creature inside was not obvious to me at first - (If anyone has questions about it, I can shed a bit of light on that, but I won't bother here unless someone needs it)... The Pro Tip is, do not try and sell the "Cage with Goblin Thief" or "Cage with Troll" to a caravan. You will be given the option to sell them seemingly "as a package", but that is not what will happen (at least in my limited experience). Instead, a dwarf will go to the "Cage with Goblin Thief" and seemingly set the Goblin Thief (and/or Troll) free. I can't tell if it's because he wanted to sell 'the cage', or if these two creatures busted free.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 20, 2022 11:03 pm

New to me... (I'm sure it's probably not remotely new)

Drone Ant Man Spearman:
steel spear -- First right hand
steel shield -- Second left hand
iron shield -- Second right hand
steel shield -- First left hand

Oh boy... here we go.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Mon Dec 26, 2022 5:35 pm

Unagi wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 11:03 pm New to me... (I'm sure it's probably not remotely new)

Drone Ant Man Spearman:
steel spear -- First right hand
steel shield -- Second left hand
iron shield -- Second right hand
steel shield -- First left hand

Oh boy... here we go.

Sweep the leg, Urist!

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 27, 2022 4:50 pm

So I've had, I think, 5 Forgotten Beasts so far.

I captured a few of their descriptions:

First there was a huge one-eyed ant, composed of slate... didn't catch his text... He was slow and clumsy and we dispatched it with 10 speardwarves.

Then these two came. Not as a pair, but over the next two years...

The Forgotten Beast, Ath, has come! A towering quadruped composed of vomit. It has large mandibles and it appears to be emaciated. Beware its poisonous vapors!
The Forgotten Beast, Äb, has come! An enormous humanoid composed of water. It has large mandibles and it is slavering. Beware its hunger for warm blood!

Both were actually one-hit kills. Popped with a spear. Just a puddle of vomit and a puddle of water remained, respectively.

And just now we have:
The Forgotten Beast, Strerasdamsto, has come! A towering one-eyed ankylosaurid. It has a pair of squat antennae and it has a gaunt appearance. Its rust scales are jagged and overlapping. Beware its deadly blood!
(someone AI Draw that one!)

I'm a bit more worried about Strerasdamsto. Deadly blood is problematic. Jagged-rust scales that are overlapping sound tricky too.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 27, 2022 6:25 pm

OK, we made it past that one... A Monster Slayer staying at the fortress (a human axe-woman) ran forth and engaged the FB in a narrow cave. They fought for a while, and she did quite well - but alas she had an unfortunate headwound that cut the fight short. The FB moved onward and eventually made its way into the entrance of my fortress, where I had 10 spear-dwarves and 10 hammer-dwarves waiting for it. They made pretty quick work of the injured beast. Its blood didn't seem to have an effect that I saw.

That was in the summer.

Now it's Late Winter, (Year 108) - and it has been announced:

The Roc, Atup Bokashcir Ak Egu, has come! A bird of prey so large and ferocious it dwarfs many dragons. All beneath its mighty wings should fear the sky.

Time to burrow. The kids never listen to the Burrow commands... they are to lost day dreaming and playing make-believe. I think it's likely one or two of them is plucked off.

I don't recall if a Roc will actually come inside a fortress and down a staircase... I'm not prepared for an aerial 'drop pod' assault into my fortress...

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 27, 2022 7:49 pm

We caught her in a cage trap. OMG. Love it.
As detailed and complex as some of the behind the scene handling, DF will always have these little areas of code-based absurdities that make up part of its charm. I've got an iron cage with a Roc trapped in it.
It did kill one child and was about to grab our mayor.

I need to be sure this thing doesn't escape through my miss handling. Really a strong chance of that.

Now normally the Fun™ thing to do would be to use her against my enemy... but damn, I don't think I will pull that off without her killing everyone...
Assigning her to a chain (like I would a goblin) and using her as live military practice would also probably not work out well at all.

I may need to Indian Jones her away until I have some other FB that's about to kill us all, and then set her free... but I'd need to get that set up on a lever somewhere...

Also, it has value (~10,000 dorfbucks) . I can't trade it, but if I 'build' the cage in a room (like a temple, or a bedroom even) it should make that place of very high value.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Tue Dec 27, 2022 8:06 pm

Unagi wrote: ↑Tue Dec 27, 2022 4:50 pm And just now we have:
The Forgotten Beast, Strerasdamsto, has come! A towering one-eyed ankylosaurid. It has a pair of squat antennae and it has a gaunt appearance. Its rust scales are jagged and overlapping. Beware its deadly blood!
(someone AI Draw that one!)

I'm a bit more worried about Strerasdamsto. Deadly blood is problematic. Jagged-rust scales that are overlapping sound tricky too.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 27, 2022 9:24 pm

Oh, nice! Thank you.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Tue Dec 27, 2022 9:33 pm

Unagi wrote: ↑Tue Dec 27, 2022 7:49 pm
I need to be sure this thing doesn't escape through my miss handling. Really a strong chance of that.

So I see she's able to maybe be trained. As a War Roc. That could be pretty damn cool. I bet it kills me.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Wed Dec 28, 2022 12:35 pm

So Rocs are problematic. I ended up keeping her stored in her cage. I may try to tame her - but even if she can be tamed (she can) she will always treat my military as her enemy and they will always attack her on sight. So, that could lead to a downward 'loyalty' spiral in my fortress and that would be bad. So, I may just leave her caged for now - and then maybe some day have a use for her.

NEXT UP:

The Weregila Monster, Ramul Bathrupundik, has come! A large gila monster twisted into humanoid form. It is crazed for blood and flesh. It's eyes glow orange. Its sandy taupe scales are oval-shaped and overlapping. Now you will know why you fear the night.

lovely.

EDIT: And captured via cage-trap. Another total crisis averted by these cage-traps.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Wed Dec 28, 2022 2:11 pm

Did you put up "Monster Wanted" signs, or something?

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Wed Dec 28, 2022 2:12 pm

Mid-Spring 109...
The Forgotten Beast, Fimere, has come! A towering scaly snail. It has thin wings of stretched skin and it squirms and fidgets. Its chocolate scales are round and set far apart. Beware its noxious secretions!

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Wed Dec 28, 2022 2:12 pm

TheMix wrote: ↑Wed Dec 28, 2022 2:11 pm

Did you put up "Monster Wanted" signs, or something?

No kidding!

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Wed Dec 28, 2022 11:18 pm

Late Summer 109
The Forgotten Beast, Bugsud Lidodostar, has come! A towering jay with lidless eyes. It has two long, hanging tails and it squirms and fidgets. Its cardinal feathers are patchy. Beware its fire!

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 12:03 am

OK, well this one isn't going well at all.

The creature has killed (and it's still going on) about 70 dwarves or more. My military is basically destroyed.

Fire everywhere. The beast is seriously injured, but it still has free run as it hobbles from floor to floor, sending fireballs down the hallways and into the huge storerooms.

Fire everywhere.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 12:23 am

Finally. The creature is dead.

I lost about 100 dwarves. (not a single war dog was in that fight)

I'm down to 32 dwarfs... And these guys are going to need to honor these 100 dead dwarves with burials real soon. I only have 20 tombs 'open' and ready... So - damn that's going to be a lot of work.

Well. The old DF I was used to has finally shown itself. My ass was just thoroughly kicked. I'll try and see if I can rebuild - but this may get really ugly with all this death everywhere. But at least it's dead.

Of course one of the survivors is the obnoxious dwarf child that's always throwing tantrums. That being said, about 7 other dwarves with the same quality are now burnt toast.

lol- the carnage, the bodies, the burning fires... there is boiling dwarf wine everywhere.

Hug your dwarf-children.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 11:04 am

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 1:08 pm

Mid Summer 110: There are still fires burning in my Meat and Prepared Meals stockpiles... 8 fires to be exact. Not sure if they will ever go out at this point.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 1:45 pm

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:17 pm

Fort Unagi: Where forgotten beasts come to be remembered.

I take it you went to a dangerous area to start? Though I seem to remember forgotten beasts or escalating sieges coming every other year or so even is peaceful areas. Sometimes more often. And sometimes in quick repetition, like two in a season, just because.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:24 pm

Unagi wrote: ↑Wed Dec 28, 2022 11:18 pm Late Summer 109
The Forgotten Beast, Bugsud Lidodostar, has come! A towering jay with lidless eyes. It has two long, hanging tails and it squirms and fidgets. Its cardinal feathers are patchy. Beware its fire!

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 6:27 pm

I saved the game - quite DF and reloaded the save... that helped the fires continue their life, which meant they spread to nearby barrels (I should have cleared the area while they were locked in time... but - they consumed what they could and the fires are now finally out.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 6:28 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:24 pm
Unagi wrote: ↑Wed Dec 28, 2022 11:18 pm Late Summer 109
The Forgotten Beast, Bugsud Lidodostar, has come! A towering jay with lidless eyes. It has two long, hanging tails and it squirms and fidgets. Its cardinal feathers are patchy. Beware its fire!

I love it! It's only missing the fireballs and charred dwarves.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 6:33 pm

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:17 pm I take it you went to a dangerous area to start?

Not at all. My wildest wildlife is an occasional wolverine. The game seems a little more tame (even in this type of biome) than I recall. It could just be that I've got the accumulated knowledge of it all, but I've not played in about 2+ years - and I was no Ace before.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:17 pm Though I seem to remember forgotten beasts or escalating sieges coming every other year or so even is peaceful areas. Sometimes more often. And sometimes in quick repetition, like two in a season, just because.

That seems to be what I got, for sure - and it may have been because the first few were mostly ineffective. Counter that to this last one, where he destroyed our population... It's been silent since then (I'm sure I just jinxed it), so it seems like the game is giving me a little time to recover.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 7:33 pm

Late Autumn, Year 111

It's been well over two years now since the attack of Bugsud.

Migrants have shown no desire to join the fortress. It's just the 31 of us still. There are a few 'guests' (I suspect a few of them in a plot to steal our artifacts, one of them quite specifically) lingering on the edge of the map... I think they are waiting for their contacts to come out of the fort and report to them, but my guess is that their contacts are dead. Two of them are, I believe, what's known as "intelligent undead"... One is called a "ruined stalker" and the other, "faint slayer". They both have blue skin. They are not the ones I'm worried about.

Just now we got an alert of the next FB. We aren't really ready for this. I started a new Axedwarf squad after the Bugsud attack, but they are totally untested.

The Forgotten Beast, Nigit, has come! A huge quadruped composed of alabaster. It has a pair of fan-like antennae and it has a gaunt appearance. Beware its webs!

He's in the cavern (cavern 1. There should be 3 of them before the magma layer, but this is as deep as I've gone)... the same place Bugsud came from. I have since installed a drawbridge at our entrance to the cavern, and I think I can close that fast enough and maybe just wait him out. I haven't looked it up, but I recall drawbridges were not destroyed by building-destroyers.

Update: I closed our main door, and the FB targetted a squad of ant-men (19 of them) -- The ant-men respect my locked doors, so they live in one section of the cavern, while I have a small section completed walling in (floor to ceiling)... the FB doesn't care about the locked doors but respects the closed drawbridge. I watched the fight, it looked heavily one-sided, and the webs seemed to really give them trouble. Oddly, the FB fell over dead - so I guess it was getting hit more than I realized.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 9:02 pm

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 9:26 pm

Ugh... Game crashed... drat.

The game auto-saved in Early Autumn, before the above attack.

sigh... I'm going to take this moment to take a little break from the madness.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Dec 30, 2022 12:01 pm

OK - Break over.

The annoying thing about a crash in a game like this is that you come back and can't recall what you had taken care of and what still needs to be done.

I also liked that the FB and ant-men had killed each other off in that timeline, and that event (in a new and perhaps worse form) is still ahead of me now...

I was about to channel the local brook into my fortress. If you've played before, you know this is a big process. You need to understand how the game treats water pressure and you need to build everything dry... all in advance. Only then start pulling levers that actually open the flow.

That's where I am at right now. I've got one last leg of the system to build, the drain, and then I will pull a number of levers and get the water flowing.

I'm starting to itch for a new fortress. But I wanted to 'relearn' everything in this fortress first... and I've not yet reached the magma layer, so I will need to start pressing for that here soon.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Dec 30, 2022 1:52 pm

Late Autumn, Year 111 (Redux)

And as I feared, the FB is worse this time around...

The Forgotten Beast, Atac, has come! A huge iguanodont with lidless eyes. It has three long, curly tails and it undulates rhythmically. Its auburn scales are large and close-set. Beware its fire!

Fire is a killer.

I'm going to try and not engage this thing at all.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Dec 30, 2022 2:11 pm

I bet these fires in the cavern crash the game again...

He's running around burning everything that moves - fires are everywhere down there, but we are safe and locked away inside.

He has gotten injured and had reports of 'Heavy Bleeding' a few times. I believe that's from the fire mostly. He then suddenly becomes "Healthy". If you read his description, it has slowly added entries about "its neck's fat is gone" or "its left foot second toe's fat is gone". Preceded by reports of his face and feet melting... Right now - he seems to have lost all his fat... like every body part is mentioned in that list. I think he is just alabaster now.

It is annoyed after choking on smoke underground.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Fri Dec 30, 2022 2:19 pm

17th Timber, Late Autumn, Year 111
It's skull, throat, and ribs are burnt now.

Atac "The Hateful" w/ 13 Kills:
5 soldier ant women
5 queen ant women
3 worker ant women

I think its days up - it finally reads 'Seriously Injured' with an "Ability to stand lost" status.

Edit: 20th Timber.... still creeping around. Left and Right Lungs, burned... Heart burned... Brain and upper spine burned... but still.
Edit 22th Timber... both eyes, mouth, guts, tongue, middle and lower spine - burned... Up to 23 ant women killed as well.

Edit - and it's finally dead. Glad we missed it all. I think I will wait a while - save the game. restart... then let the fires redo whatever they need to do - and then also save and restart once more when they are out. My only thought on my earlier crash (as I've not had one before that) is something from loading the game with those frozen fires restarting may have led to some anomaly...

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Sat Dec 31, 2022 4:32 pm

Late Winter, Year 112

The Forgotten Beast, Oggez, has come! A huge quadruped composed of water. It has a short trunk and it appears to be emaciated. Beware its deadly dust!

I'm not going to engage it, but it will die very quickly to anything that lays a hand on it.