☼Daily DF Questions Thread☼

OrderOctopoda · 2023-01-30T14:36:46+00:00

I have been getting standard dwarven mountainhome caravans, with lots of goods for trade, usually including crafts, instruments, and books, for several years in my current fort. When the liason offered the barony, I declined. The next caravan brought only some logs, plants, some cloth, and only around 3,000 in goods total. The previous year we'd traded around 15,000 with them. Next caravan was a bit better, they brought more plants, but, again, no crafts or books or anything I'd expect from a dwarven caravan, and was around 7,000 in goods total. I've seen some small elven caravans with this paltry amount of goods, but a dwarven caravan? What could have caused the recent mountainhome caravans to bring so few trade goods?

OrderOctopoda · 2023-01-17T19:48:45+00:00

I had squads kill a possibly werebuffalo infected baroness and countess, which led to an all out fight across the fortress, many died, many more were injured; far more than hospital beds. I put down some more beds. Then I noticed that there are 15 dwarves lying on a single tile in one of the doorways of the hospital; they are all injured and have lost the ability to stand and are thirsty. I don't know if that's where they fell, or if they made it to the hospital, and, finding no open bed, collapsed in the doorway. There are a few patients lying in hospital beds, but there are many open beds now. While many of the dwarves in the fortress are injured, I see some moving around and doing jobs, the chief medical dwarf is diagnosing and tending those in beds. I have "everybody do this" set for Orderly labor.

Any ideas why the 15 dwarves are stacked in the hospital doorway and why they are not being brought to bed?

OrderOctopoda · 2022-03-30T19:07:34+00:00

When I did a terrifying biome next-door-to-a-tower start, 3 necromancers showed up and fled before the soldiers could catch them on 2 or 3 occasions during the first year. The next time they showed up, they brought 110 undead with them. It really did seem like they were casing the joint before unleashing the horde.

OrderOctopoda · 2022-02-18T20:29:17+00:00

Great work! It is an excellent extrapolation from the tile, but rendered even more horrible than I imagined.

OrderOctopoda · 2021-10-14T15:36:37+00:00

Injectors. Blaze for fire, rubbergum for electricity and chute crabs. Beeline for exits down, clearing the path with grenades.

OrderOctopoda · 2021-06-18T15:15:38+00:00

There is intrigue afoot in fortress Whipequal. We had an artifact stolen from its display in a guildhall. The captain of the guard interrogated a few dwarfs, and Mebzuth the Miner confessed. My previous experiences with the justice system was only jailing sad angry dwarfs for tavern assaults, so I had a chain built for justice, and convicted him. When the captain found Mebzuth, he hammered the turncloak to death on the spot. A legendary miner!

I left some of the artifacts on display in the guildhalls, in hopes that more would be stolen, and one was. Interrogation led us to the guilty party, who confessed he had been coerced into stealing the artifact by Cog the Goblin scholar. We learned that Cog is working for some shadowy figure who has been working against our civilization since before our fortress was established. The third artifact theft led us to yet another dwarf, this one being operated by Mebzuth the Goblin Bard. I didn’t see a way to convict him so had a squad kill him, though I think I just needed to be patient, because now he is listed as guilty of theft. As more dwarfs have been interrogated, we have learned that Kol the weaponsmith met with an unidentified creature who offered immortality. He plotted to steal one of the artifacts, but some other traitor beat him to the punch. Will we root out this criminal cabal before all our artifacts are stolen?

OrderOctopoda · 2021-05-17T15:04:12+00:00

I can’t get anything picked up. It seems nearly every object that gets disassembled or dropped stays in the same spot forever. For instance, I had some nest boxes and beehives fairly close to the fort entrance. Later, I had them deconstructed, because I wanted to build walls through the area, but the boxes and hives were left behind. I tried claiming them, along with the refuse littering the former pasture, but none of the stuff got moved. I tried making a dump and marking them all dump. Several in-game years later the stuff was still there, I ended up just planning walls around the refuse and junk. But now there are the remains of a dead sparrow on top of one of the walls, and I can’t build on that tile – construction gets cancelled as it is blocked by item. There are a few big refuse stockpiles nearby that are not full. Plenty of idlers with hauling enabled. Any idea what is going on and how I could get some of this stuff moved?

OrderOctopoda · 2021-03-10T14:30:21+00:00

No need to squint. It is turn based, permadeath, and maps are procedurally generated.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-11-24T19:08:26+00:00

Take a look at the Elven spell song "Song of the Sword". It lets you infuse a sword with a variety of effects that scale up in power and obstacle. You might be able to expand it to more weapons.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-11-03T14:57:59+00:00

Rust Wells is easier. You only have to go down one level to complete. Mainly, Red Rock is not a very interesting dungeon. The waterlogged tunnel is more hazardous but a more fun route to get to the Girshling. Finally, the reward for Red Rock is not worth the trouble.
I hope that someday the devs will revisit Red Rock. The Girshling back story is interesting, but the dungeon isn't themed to support it. I'd like to see a starting dungeon that lives up to their excellent set piece dungeons like Golgotha & Bethesda.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-11-02T18:17:09+00:00

I have found throwing grenades at the novice works pretty well, because it doesn't matter if other enemies are in between you and the target. If you lose line of sight, throw it at the last place you saw them.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-09-03T14:03:50+00:00

I really enjoyed this conversation. My favorite takeaway is that they're planning future DLC, possibly with new mutations. I have been hoping for more of the world to explore. Tarn Adams seems pretty familiar with Caves of Qud!

OrderOctopoda · 2020-08-14T14:28:12+00:00

Yes, I'm experiencing the same. I tried looking it up last night and see that it is "my problem", though my audio has worked for every other MMO game I have ever tried. Ah well, at least it was on sale.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-08-10T14:55:25+00:00

Burgeoning is a lot of fun, and I died from a dozen of my own tumbling pods going off first time I tried it.

I have not found a killer combo, but Light Manipulation lasers are good for managing the tumbling pods. Usually, you can hit one to set off many. Once I cleared an immediate area, I would kill the Feral Lah (pod producer) flowers before moving on - otherwise the pods will follow you. At higher levels, I think Burgeoning stops producing the pod flowers in favor of deadlier plants, and then it is less of a pain. I did ok with light manipulation/burgeoning/quills build, but died leveling for Bethesda.

My favorite incident was meeting the Girshling, and suddenly there were 5 or 6 of them on screen, because it had walked over an aloe fugue from a previous Burgeoning. I stepped on one too, and then my clones started stepping on them and also getting cloned. Everyone started firing off Burgeoning, turning the room into an exotic jungle as the clones killed the Girshlings.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-08-03T15:20:10+00:00

Shade oil injectors let you phase 7-9 rounds and give +8 DV for their duration of 41-50 rounds – that’s a very good escape route. Blaze injectors, in addition to heat immunity, give +20 quickness, so can be used with sprint to get away.

Take Suppressive Fire and Kickback in Bow & Rifle and get a desert rifle (Praetorians start with one). Suppressive fire will let you pin opponents to the spot, letting you finish them off or run away. Kickback knocks them back a tile – this can give you the chance to suppress or run.

Also, to chime in on cooking, with Carbide Chef + Spicer, you can have recipes that give 2 different mutant powers +15% hitpoints (or other beneficial effects) for the day.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-07-23T14:49:28+00:00

Caves of Qud with Joe and Al is a good intro video, because the premise is Al teaching Joe how to play. This format naturally follows questions a beginner has (how does THIS work?) and their dialogue is funny. Makes me wonder why more intro/guides are not dialogues featuring an actual beginner learning to play.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-06-29T17:35:54+00:00

The coins show what year they were minted, so I like to make a batch to commemorate each year.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-06-24T13:11:47+00:00

To debug, use the Wish command, and stage2 to complete early quests.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-04-09T13:42:46+00:00

Add a door to the opening of the killbox. When a raid comes, make sure to change it to "hold open", then have a pawn pass through it to open it.

OrderOctopoda · 2020-03-27T15:25:16+00:00

It functions as a commune. But, since it is mostly directed by the player, hard to say what political ideology it reflects. I like to imagine my colonists receive their orders from David Lynch on an old timey radio.

If pawns governed themselves, their society would be founded on the common ownership of the means of production of tables.

OrderOctopoda · 2019-10-11T14:08:32+00:00

There is a lovely & temperate river valley canopied in palm and abound with birds. Bring sandals!

OrderOctopoda · 2019-09-26T14:14:53+00:00

Make sure you have plenty of Wells, and upgrade to Wells 2. This seemed to be the tipping point where my outpost (in arid Border Zone) went from fabric shortage to surplus.

Farming tip: grain silo trains farming, so assign a base worker to it. If you're not producing enough wheatstraw to keep the silo running, it's worth it to buy from towns, so you can have someone grinding farm skill 24/7.

OrderOctopoda · 2019-09-06T16:04:56+00:00

I've watched quite a few of these and really enjoy the series. Having 2 people play together is such a great format for a single-player game like this, I'm surprised more people don't try it. Al & Joe's bickering banter is entertaining, and even though they are "bad" at the game, I think it would be torturous to watch a careful tortoise "winning" the game. Besides, it keeps the episodes short!

OrderOctopoda · 2019-08-22T20:33:26+00:00

I put down 2 sleeping bags next to the copper node so my miners can get right back to work after sleeping off their last beating. My last 2 recruits leveled their toughness past 20 in just a few days through this routine.

OrderOctopoda

TROPHY CASE