Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 109: Spookyfort V with Delphonso

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Delphonso joins us to talk about this year's Spookyfort horror fun. We also talk quite a bit about Adventure Mode strategy. Spookyfort V - Concerns of the Deep Seerspire - The Trial of Spirits Smallhands - Nearly 40 Years and Still Tiny! Kisat Dur: The Dwarven Martial Art Combat Tutorial

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. My name's Jonathan. And I'm Roland. Hey, I'm Tony. And today we have DeFonzo with us to talk about Spooky Ford. Welcome back, DeFonzo. Hey, thanks for having me. Heck, yeah.

Let's see, last year, I think we got on here and talked about Spooky Fort about a week too late. Yes. So we're trying to rectify that this year. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for that this time. I think that it was like Halloween that actually released the one that talked about Spooky Fort. And that was just, is it too late to get involved in it at this point? Not really.

I mean, it's the queue for Overseers, I think, is already full for October. But if you want to come in and just make comments or join, that's always welcome. So explain to us what Spooky Ford is. So Spooky Ford is a yearly succession game, and it is always heavily modded with as many monster and horror mods as I can get in there. Last year, we did it in the premium version of Dwar Fortress, which came with a lot of problems because of the way that mods work and the way that, like, sprites work.

So this year, it's back in 47.05, which has been fun to go back to. It's been a while for me. And, yeah, we'd just try and make a scary story about scaring dwarves and things like that with, you know, like a hellraiser just being there or like a predator. So the Spooky Fort 4 from last year, there was a Bay 12 forums post there. Where's the link this year? Is it there again? I'll send it to you.

Yeah. But this year as well, it's held on the Bay 12 forums. We're on Spooky Fort 5 named Lovecrafted. And I'm trying to go with a Lovecraft theme. But really, it's just been us making a nice fort. It's a nice marble-hauled, beautiful fort with very little bad things happening. To be fair, that is also very lovecrafting. Yeah, true.

That's right. It's not bad until it's bad, basically. Everything seems fine. This is fine. Large hallways? Just say, they're... How does he does it? How does he say, um, inhumanly large?

Yeah. Bleak hallways. Dreadful chambers. That surround my soul in a steely marble grip. Blood. Oh, yeah. you should just do it, because that's all I'm doing, is just writing an update, then rewriting it 12 times until it sounds like Lovecraft.

Nice, yeah. Well, what Spooky Fort is is really just an exercise in community storytelling. And as an aspiring writer or hobbyist writer, something like that, I really enjoy it because it's a great time to just throw whatever stupid ideas you get to the wall because it doesn't matter, a gigantic space alien could come into the fort and kill everyone in the next turn anyway. That's the spirit. Yeah.

Last year you did version 50, but it didn't go well because of the new mod system. So we're back to version 47. And is there a link to the download the succession fort? Yeah. The save gets updated at the end of everyone's turn. So you can grab the latest save. I think the latest was Dick Butte Great, the guy's name. Wow.

Yeah. Well, there were a clean rating. Jobs, the ghost of Jobs has banned us. I don't know. Have you guys gone back to 47.05 since premium? I have once. I did. Yeah.

I did. It hurt because of the muscle memory. Yep. See, I have, I have, the muscle memory is so deep. I'm trying to think of what the, like, input is and my fingers are already doing it. So I'm like, how do I have been? build a craftsman, oh, it's there. Yeah, I remember that I went back and played on version 47,

maybe six, eight months after 50 was released because there was a while that I thought that I might like the old one better, just because I'm resistant to change. Sure. But I think that's the only time that I went back. Now that I'm used to the new user interface, it'll be fun to see just how clunky I feel whenever I'm trying to use D for the old menu style. Yeah, I agree with. that. I also went back very short and I think I wanted to see a specific dwarf or a specific

fortress, not really for the sake of like going back for the actual version. And, you know, I was just clicking around and I was like, wow, I really got adapted to the mouse that quickly. It's crazy. Even though, you know, I did play with the DF hack added mouse support on that version anyway, but wow. And D.F. Hack also added back, this is a complete non sequitur, but DF hack added back my ability to see the pathability to my, to my trade depot. I like that. Is that not in the premium version? No.

It is not. Wait, what's not? Path to the depot. Whenever you used to be able to hit Shift D. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. I didn't know if they'd remove that mechanic.

They did. Or if it's, is a mechanic. So they can just get to the depots. now you don't have to worry about it. No, no, no, no. They didn't remove the mechanic. You just can't see it anymore. You just can't see it anymore.

They remove the mechanic of being able to check. But DFAC put it back in, so that's nice. Okay. Gooey slash pathing, I think, is what the command is in the DFAC. Goody slash pathing. Okay. Cool. Yep.

Let's see. One of the questions I have about Spooky Fort. What I need to do is need to download it and play it. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's all it is, really. It's just an experience. I recommend reading the old ones. downloading one of the saves is it in 47 they're all i think they've all been in 47.05 except last year or at least 47 because 47's been around a long time now i will try

to do that i will actually i will do it i will try to navigate the old menus i will have to use one of the uh the screenshots from the latest save of spooky fort for the show art what's the is it is it the asky graphics yeah and people like to go as creative as they can. So, like, I didn't do much. I just did a big, creepy tentacle as the entryway. But Sal, Salmiok has made, like, an insane, tessellated pattern for something. I don't have catacombs or something.

I don't know what it is. But I'll send you guys the image right now. It's amazing. Wait, what is that? Salmiok's a big community fort and succession game person on the Bay 12 forums. They put a lot of effort into their stuff. It's great. Wow.

Speaking of high effort stuff, if you want... I like that. Yeah, it's beautiful, right? If you want other spooky forts, Bay 12 Forums has one other going right now called Searspire. It's a very cool concept by Brewer Bob. And it's a continued game. So Spooky Fort is a new fort, new mods every single year. But Searspire now on its second year is a continuation of the same fort.

Yeah, I recommend either. Just give them a read. That's about it. oh yeah that's going to make great show art awesome thank you yeah all right so spooky for everybody check it out i'm down anything else you want to add about it i'm good uh just go to pay 12 forums and read some forts because somebody's got there's not many people who do these days how many people you got involved this year uh maybe eight 10 something like that that's i think that's more than last year isn't it yeah last year was pretty shallow.

Let's see. Yeah, we've got eight players and then other people reading, of course. I really like the focus back on the story stuff. I think that's really neat. You know, I think there's like a lot of the quick story of like, oh, I started this fortress out and the goblins games and we all died. And then you, you know, like that in itself is kind of a cool story. But then if you can kind of start to figure out who's in the fort and what they do and then

add like your own narrative at the top of it, I think that's what's really cool. and I'm glad somebody's doing that. Do you guys limit the number of dwarfs in your fortresses? I used to. So I ran small hands, which ran for the entire length of 47. Wow. Small hands could only run because the population cap was like 40 or 50. And it was only two embark tiles wide.

It was a very small fort. And that's why it could keep on going without getting like horrible FBS, fbs death you know i think that might also be the sweet spot for storytelling having yeah yes having not so many dwarves that you lose that at a low enough number that you can know everybody yeah like i i still remember dwarves from small hands like they're they're still locked in because there's only 40 of yeah i need to do that i need to do i need to limit the number of dwarves also if the dwarfs or the uh the fort starts spiraling downhill it won't take nearly as long for it to die. Although that may not be a good thing. Yeah, I used to play on roughly 80 dwarfs

a while because then I had a decent amount of dwarfs that could actually do things. So I could assign not just one to each individual task, but several. So the other always had stuff to mingle, time to mingle and socialize. But on the other hand, I was still able to actually remember the names of the people and have like proper clan families that are large and like interconnected. I really appreciate the smaller fortresses now and I think I'm now playing a fortress with 250 and that's a little too large. I only allowed this because I got snake people and I wanted to see how many snake people I could get and yeah, apparently they lay a lot of eggs and they all hatch at the same time. That was scary.

Jeez. Awesome. When you said that you had a two-tile and bark, was it a one-by-two or a two-by-two? One-two. One-by-two. Yeah. So that was... Did you note that it was able to keep its frame rate really good throughout the life of it? I mean, any four, after enough time, it'll break down. I mean, small hands went on for like 40 or 50 in-game years.

Mm-hmm. So if you load up, like, the latest small hand save, it runs awful. It's just, it's just sluggish, no matter how good your computer is. But it's still, like, moves, you know, like, it's not, it's not unplayable, but it is pretty rough. But it had a lot more lasting power. So in any community game I've been in most succession games, around turn five or six, the game becomes unplayable. It's The FBS is bad

There's too many dead bodies There's too many jobs to do And like it's just too much To like work through To like clean up And also just to deal with it Going slow anyway Somewhere around that turn is

With small hands a succession for it Yeah I'll send the link as well Cool How old was the how old was the world When have you started it? Do you remember? In small hands

Yeah The reason I ask that is because whenever you start with an older world that adds some weight, some heaviness to the turn-by-turn calculations as the years go by, because it's got to deal with a more world. It started year 150. Okay, that's not bad. Oh, okay. Was it Tony that you like ran a year to 1,000 to start it or something like that? Yeah, I used to do the 1,000,000-50 starts. And those are fun, but they slow down pretty quickly.

Yeah. The save is also huge, and it takes longer to boot up the game. Yes. Like all that stuff. I'm playing it under emulation, so it's even harder. It's also a pocket-sized world. So the world itself is tiny. Oh, yeah.

So how does that work? Like, do you bump into other civilizations? Like, is it, like, is it, how does it work? Because I've had mixed luck with pocket-sized worlds. Well, it kind of feels like we're moving into the adventure mode discussion, if you'd like. we can it's going to be pretty excited though we can segue back we can segue back and forth we can segue back and forth we can segue like an idiot tourist on on vacation yeah we can play tango it's fine we can we can segue like a two-wheeled segue um okay so it goes where it goes man all right yeah where do you know what a group of segways is called like if people are all riding on them it's it's subway no the collective noun is a shame of of segues. A shame of if you see a group of people, it's

a shame of segways. I don't know. That's the collective. That's nice. That's the collective noun. That's beautiful. There you go. It's like going to an Apple warehouse. Michael Eller is one smart cookie, I tell you. You see, he figured it all out.

Back in the early days of Tomb's Order, Olawn Paddle Cunger had things running smooth as you please, except for one little hitch in his plan. You see, he was hoping for a flood of good strong dwarves to come in and help expand the place. But wouldn't you know it, not enough showed up. Instead, we ended up with a bunch of human monster hunters,

strutton around like they owned the place. These folks weren't much interested in pulling their weight. Nope. They were too busy hunting for beasts and looking for glory to care about any honest work. They weren't after gold or silver, like most folk. Nah, they had their eyes on sloshing monsters and snagging glory, figuring that it'd make their trip worthwhile.

But all Olawn saw was a bunch of freeloaders eaten up our food and getting in the way of real progress. With two few dwarves and too many glory-seeking humans, things started to get a little crowded and not in the good way. We owe one to good old Michael Eller, for letting us know. So if you want to just play Fortress mode, whatever, right? Like the map size doesn't really matter. A bigger map is going to be more interesting.

If you want to play adventure mode, the bigger the map is, the harder it is to play. Because they will tell you, go find this artifact. And you go, okay, cool, where is it? And they go, over here. And then you look at the map. And it's on the other side of the planet. And like, whereas if you play on a small or pocket world, like, or what's the term, pocket and smaller. Yeah.

I think pocket is the smallest one. Yeah. And the smallest and the second smallest. Those two are absolutely manageable. You can make a trip across it in like a day of travel. Yeah. So if you want to get into adventure mode, start with a pocket world. That's really my recommendation.

Okay. for succession games and fortress mode it still works it's still fine you can still have elves and goblins and humans all in one pocket world even without boosting the number of civilizations and stuff i really do want to enjoy adventure mode but every time that i play it it's just an aimless wandering around and and i can't really find anything interesting to do so i play for a few hours and then i go back to back to fortress mode Is that the same for you, Tony and Roland? Like, you just kind of get aimless and then give up? I get a little aimless and then I get killed. Oh, right. Yeah, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. I kind of just wander around and I'm like, oh, okay.

I couldn't really get to where I wanted to go and nobody's very friendly. And yeah. Pocket, smaller, small, medium, large. Yeah, so pocket or and smaller are good options for adventure mode. You know, that's the thing. I always made very large worlds because I want to run around. But that's a terrible idea because then suddenly the thing that you're trying to reach is like days or months travel away from you. And you just run through empty forests forever.

And then stop to eat and then move and stop to sleep and then move and get some water from the river and then stop to eat. And like, yeah, that does suck. But in a tiny, tiny world, everything is next door. and you can reach everything in like two days travel or whatever and then you beat some goblins and you just walk back home and everything is very relaxed and it's so nice and maybe this is subjective but I feel like the the area in between is more lively as well

because if you walk in a large world and like the largest world it's just dead forests okay there's not really a lot going on there's not a lot of animals, but it seems to me that in the smaller worlds, I've seen more things happen outside of settlements. I believe the, so in the advanced world generation stuff, for a smaller world, I think the variance between the tiles is, has a higher, like, what's the term? Higher threshold, lower threshold, right? Like, it allows for greater distances between two biomes.

So you could have a desert right next to a, rainforest, for example. Whereas in a larger map, that that's more of a gradient where it's like desert into rocky wasteland, into shrubland, into forest, into rainforest. So do you prefer adventure mode to fortress mode, Defonso? Well, I think, I guess I see it as like two sides of the same coin. If you, I'm going to wax philosophical for a while, right? Sounds good. Okay. So when you're playing door fortress, I feel like there's multiple levels you could play it on. You can play a fortress and just maybe you limit your population to 40 and you get to know all your dwarves and that kind of thing. That's fine. But it is a very passive experience because in fortress mode,

the only action you can take is to send squads out and roll dice to see whether or not they come back with artifacts or things like that. You could also play sort of as like a civilization. So let's say you choose whatever it is, the coppery constructs, and you say, I'm going to play these dwarves, and I'm going to have some sort of, like, objective, let's say, I want to wipe all the goblins off this world. And maybe that takes four forts or something, right? Like you kind of build, you're building a larger narrative in your head. I like to play as the entire world. So that's why I like adventure mode, because there is no elf fortress. There is no human fortress or goblin fortress. But I can, as a

civilization of dwarves, wipe out many of the elves. And then I can play as an elf adventure from that elf place and go and murder some of those dwarves back and like push my own like world's narrative further through adventure mode. And you're right. You will just wander around and have nothing to do unless something really good presents itself. But that's like last time I remember talking about it of like, I want adventure mode in premium version because the goblins were attacking my fort and I just wanted to go over and murder the demon game. Like, I don't want to just sit there and wait.

Like, I want to just send one dwarf over. And if he dies on the way, maybe that'll make a more interesting story. And then I can keep rolling with it. So by that, I think adventure. Adventure mode gives me something no other game does, no colony builder game does, and gives me something that Fortress mode is missing, which is like the active participation in the world. I get that. I get that.

Have you played the Adventure Mode beta from 50? Okay. Yeah. So I did in preparation for this, because I tried to play before. It just kept on crashing. And I was immediately presented with a story. It was great. I made a pocket-sized world, and the only thing I could play as was a human, and it was human outsider.

And so I built a human outsider, and I spawned in a human town filled with undead. And so he slowly stabbed his way out of a building and was killed. And so then I made another human outsider who had an axe this time. And then he made his way out of there to discover the entire world is just filled with necromancers and undead. So now I want to play fortress mode. to reclaim that world. And, you know. Well, maybe my big mistake for adventure mode is playing worlds that are too large

because the most interesting thing that I've done in the new adventure mode is whack a horse over the head 50 times until he died. So my first community game on the Bay 12 forums. So the first time I ever typed up a story and presented it was not a succession mode, it was just a story that I wrote. I was experimenting with music and poetry. My thesis was, if I go out and give all of these characters in the world good experiences of poetry and music, I thought maybe that would like push them into being poets and musicians more often. On top of that, when you perform and people join, you're performing, that ups their experience in performance. So my goal was to seed the entire world with poetry and musician experience so that I could get more and more poets and musicians to show up in my forts.

All right? This took well over five years in the game and in real life like two years. But it was this mix of me doing adventure mode and like getting teams of people to go with me and like going on these missions and then building forts to help them out. So it's like, well, none of these musicians have any instruments. So I built a fort that just made instruments. Then all the bards showed up and picked up all their instruments and went to the town and blah, blah, blah. It was super fun.

And I don't think it really worked. But it is a way to play adventure mode where it's your experimenting or trying to, again, active participation, like actively take control of the world in a way. It sounds like you might build a lot of fortresses and retire them relatively quickly to seed things so that you can go into them with adventure mode. Yeah, I do. And that's also like, if you're wandering around an adventure mode and you're just like, it's so annoying how hungry my character keeps getting, then you could build a fort that's like an inn filled with food or you could build a fort that's got a, you know, a vampire who just happened to have moved in and is. already known to be a vampire so your adventurer can just go there kill him and drink his blood oh cool yeah so now you don't need to eat you're a vampire i would like to add one philosophical play style to fortress mode that i think that you might have missed there and it sounds to me like uh you are

more for focusing on uh individual dwarves and and you really enjoy controlling the individual dwarves if you look at fortress mode though as like a city builder game then that is another way that you can play it and i consider that to be an active participant whenever much like sim city where you're planting the seeds and hoping that it becomes an organic growth of success with your with your fortress so i just think that uh that's the way i look at fortress mode not as individual dwarf but as seeing the the the fortresses itself as an organism, I think. Yeah, I spent a long time, yeah, I do understand what you mean. I spent a long time trying to influence the civilization with my forts, which doesn't work. So I would tame, whatever, crows and keep on shipping them back to the mountain homes, and it just would never let me have crows in my next fort, right? Like, it's just not how the game works.

But I would find that cart in adventure mode and find a cart filled with seven hundred crows. I'd be like, hey, that was me. That reminds me of one time I was playing a bard in adventure mode because somebody did tell me that it goes in the direction that you tried. You see the world with the poetry to see more poets. But somebody simply told me that

the music that I write as a bard get seated into the world and then I get to see people play that in my tavern. Yeah, yeah. And that was already enough for me to actually try that. Yeah. And I succeeded. So I made a musical thing.

I don't even remember what it is about, I don't know, like a beer man, and he's boxing someone or whatever. Awesome. I got to see that in random dwarfs playing that in my tavern with a flute. And I think just these tiny changes are so nice at adventure mode, even if that means you have to travel around with a bod. Get really, really good at singing and dancing and playing music. So people don't go like, oh, he sucks. Get him out of my tavern. And then you just walk through all the dwarven fortresses and you play into each and everyone's ear.

I'm like, Plinkling, have you heard this song? No. Okay, listen again. but it's nice when it works. Adventure mode can lead to a lot of just great interactions later on. So this one even made me like emotional when I saw it happen. I had an adventurer named Cadol, and I remember he was sort of like a scald. Like he would dance in the taverns every time he found a tavern and he'd go out and fight monsters.

Eventually he was killed by a titan. But because he danced with so many people, when I played 14. mode in that world he was friends with every dwarf who showed up every dwarf that had moved from a from a hillock or whatever had on their like their relationship saying like cadol whatever his last name was friend or acquaintance and i was just like that i mean that's what other game right what other game gives you that kind of thing yeah that's cute yeah play adventure mode guys that's it man yeah i guess i got to give it a i'm gonna give it in okay I will, okay, for sure.

Give me a minute to dig up this thread. There's a thread, I think it's called Kisatur. It is how to do combat in adventure mode. You're here last week's, was it last week or the week before that that I talked about, not knowing how to deal with combat and adventure mode? So Kisadur, if I can find it, and if that's the right word, it is a collection of like moves you can do in adventure mode and like the value of those moves. So it's like all the wrestling stuff, grabbing someone's weapon as they swing it at you and all of this just insane, insanely detailed combat system that Tarn has come up with.

And that may also be one of the issues that I have with Adventure mode is I don't necessarily like the insanely detailed combat. Well, then you have to, and I'm sorry to say it, you have to go find an owl or a turkey and hold on to it and just press next, next, next, until your character is a very good fighter from fighting a turkey. Al or a turkey. Explain that to me slowly. Why a turkey or an owl? Is there like a specific thing? Oh, you guys don't know. Okay. No. So what's the turkey thing? Okay. So in In Adventure mode, you start off with a regular character. They have a certain number of skills. They gain skills throughout the game.

Combat skills are the hardest to gain because most combat indoor fortress is deadly or permanently injuring. So you have to find a creature that is quite small, say a rabbit, a turkey, an owl, which are easy to find in the forest. You sneak up on the creature, you wrestle it, so you hold on to it, but then you don't attack it. You just stand there, and it will fight you to try and get free, which will improve your armor user, improve your shield user, if you're holding a shield, improve your dodge, it improves your wrestling skill and your fighting skill. And then when your fighting skill is really high, you basically never miss. And so you can build up your sword, dwarf skill and stuff like that after your fighter skill is already really high. What? So I just wrestle the turkey.

And I hope you just... You spent... Don't get me wrong, Roland. You spent three months wrestling turkeys in the woods. And then you came out and now you can snap to Eddons' heads off in one motion. Jesus. Wow. Is this ethical?

Is this ethical? Yes. Okay. All right. It's fine with me then. Sounds good. Got to try that. I will find the links and I will put them in in also the Discord room.

Yeah. Because once you know how combat works, the combat works, the combat. That is very, very fun. So I used to play a guy. I remember his last name was bootstraps. And he only had a steel carving knife, but he was an incredible wrestler. So he just grabbed people with his feet and, like, collapse their knees and just stab them in the groin a few times. It's great.

Works great in real life, too. If you haven't troubles with somebody at work or whatever. Same. It's what you should do. Yeah. Yeah. Just stab people, if you don't agree. with them. Well, and it's also the time

of year where there are turkeys around the neighborhoods. Like, I don't know where you live, but I mean, I live in a city and there's still turkeys wandering on, so I might just go punch once what happens. You know, if I go outside and I see a turkey, I'm going straight back inside because I know something is up, and I'm not going to

deal with like a life turkey on the street. Well, you're going back inside to get your buckler so that you can go out there and train up your shield user. Do you have turkeys in Germany? That's right. I'm going to wrestle the turkey. on the street. And my parents will say,

what are you doing? I'm like, I'm trading, fighting, trading. Is there a German turkey? I'd say, do you have turkeys in Germany? I didn't realize that. No, no, we do not. That's why I'm going inside, because, you know, it's a turkey on my street. I thought that was an old American bird. Hypothetically. Clean O'Def has been there from the start, and this is what he tells us.

You see, Olaan wasn't the kind of dwarf to let a problem sit around in Fester. When he saw that manpower was running low, he came up with a new plan, one that had make Tum's order a fortress to be reckoned with. The idea was simple, build up some tall, strong walls around the fortress topside. But Olaan? Well, he didn't stop there. Nope, he figured why not dig out a good old moat too. One deep enough to keep out just about any thing that might come snooping around? The way Olawn saw it, a nice thick wall and a moat full of water, or maybe even magma if they could swing it, would keep the riffraff out without having to waste good dwarven muscle on guard duty. That way, the few dwarves we had, could keep their

hands busy with more important work, like dig in for treasure or build in new halls. It was all about working smarter, not harder, and that's something O'lon knew a thing or two about. Clean O'Dev is a treasure to the community, yes, sir. I want to talk just a few minutes about my fortress that I've been working on. The idea of the fortress was to create as many wars as possible with humans and elves as it could. But I accidentally punched into the caverns after like eight levels. underground and I punch into the caverns by accident. So I've had so many humans coming up to eradicate monsters that I have let them in the

fortress. And so now I think I'm going to think that maybe humans are okay, we're going to kill the elves. So my humans in my fortress now outnumber my dwarves in my fortress. They're all residents. They're not yet citizens, but eventually I think that they're going to start asking for citizenship. And I'm thinking about allowing them. And I'm going to turn my army into just an army of humans.

The dwarves will do the artistic and good stuff, but the humans will be the grunts. I'm going to try that. Yeah. So that's the new goal for the fortress. How about you guys? You guys played any fortresses lately? Yeah, I just have been playing my 200.

What are we at? 200. That is... 200! 180-year-old fortress with snake people in it. Ooh, damn. Ooh, wow. Well done.

That's a flex. I just can't leave it. You know what I mean? I just can't quit you. Yeah. That sounds like another difference in playing style that you can have. So, Defonzo, it sounds to me like you have time pass quite slowly in your fortresses. Well, yeah.

For me, because I am playing adventure. mode where time basically doesn't pass. Fortress mode feels like the world's zooming by. And it is, yeah. It really is. But most of my forts, I retire them after 10 years maximum. I do not keep forts around for long. That makes sense.

That makes sense. Because I will sit there and get something going and I'll just let them spend for two or three years, just fighting off the occasional goblin siege and and building up their drink stockpile. I know it's a little bit cheaty, but I really like the auto farm. I like it a lot. It's so great.

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm team auto farm all the way. It's really, really super. But you got to build them the right, you got to get them the right plots and stuff. You know, auto farm and the dirt layer doesn't work very well. Well, you know what? What does work well, whenever you turn on auto farm,

and then you put some small plots. up on the surface. Yeah. Oh, okay. They will try all kinds of cool things. Those surface vegetables. Yeah.

For that purpose, I have a like a fruit picking garden. I have a small greenhouse where trees are growing. Oh, beautiful. Let's see what I have. I have citrus. I have avocados. I have some coconuts. And I make them pick it like once a year.

and that's why I have like legit coconuts and I'm so upset that I can't brew coconuts into anything. They can't just eat the coconut in a meal. Pinacoladas? Come on. But they can actually make like coconut schnaps which would be very nice. Coconut, okay, yeah.

Sounds delicious. For our American listeners, schnaps is not horrible in Europe. Yeah, so, you know, I would like that. And I am surprised on how well that system actually works, like how much I get out of this, what is this area? At least they're edible, though, the coconuts are. It is... Coconut pill.

Uh, 400. It is, it is telling me the area size is 400. Whatever that means. Well, it's one more than 399. A 381. Okay, sorry. So it is a fairly large plot. But 20 by 20 tiles is not very much.

Like, that's a good return on investment, right? It's not crazy, but my dwarfs don't have to do anything. The trees grow automatically. The stuff grows automatically. I just tell them to pick it once a year. Okay, sometimes I have to thin out certain trees that I don't like. I like the lime and citrus trees. I don't want to have them.

I just want an avocado. and coconut trees. Limes are good, though, man. You should really... Honestly, add a little bit of lime to that coconut snaps. True, true, but you can't really do anything with them in the game, so...

Yeah, you put the lime in the coconut and drink it all down. Dwarven cocktails, I don't... You know, it's the cocktail tree. I would love the ability. I would love to have the ability to brew dwarven cocktails with coconut in it, like a dwarven mollibou.

But, uh, That's a mod. That's a mod. So if you ever want to try picking, berry picking, no. What's it called? It's called, yeah, it's like collect fruit off ground and collect from leaves.

It's two different jobs. It's surprisingly good, especially if you have the step ladders where they climb into the actual tree and pick the fresh line of the tree. Wow. It works great. I love it.

It's good to get them to do that. that is still an inconsistency into a fortress that I really don't quite get is the one of them is a task and the other one is a zone right it's like gather fruit I think is a zone and pick plants or something yeah I don't know why it does that

or the other way around implemented it different times in the gather fruit zone you can then say if they use stab ladders or not and with the step ladders I just noted that the best way to make sure

dear step ladder does not get stolen is simply by making more step ladders. It's just a man thing. Like enough to go around. I had a freaking

yak in a tree. I don't know how the yak got in the tree, but I had a yak that was stranded in a tree. Obviously, was it a tree yak? Yeah.

Can you imagine? Okay, buddy. I kind of think maybe he was standing on the tile whenever the tree sprouted or pushed him up. I don't know.

Oh, my God. Wouldn't it just grow around him? It's amazing. I think if a tree touches the world edge, animals can spawn on it as a surface, I think. That's correct. And then they- That wasn't the case here. And then the yak agilely climbed across other trees to get to wherever they ended up.

This was in my livestock pin, in my livestock zone. It could have been scared of the tree by another animal. Yes, I've seen the tree. That's probably what. happened because yeah there was some some disney logic if you have a fortune if you have an invasion they'll do it well i think my yak was scared by a badger so i have a i have some badger problems with this with this fortress so badgers are kind of scary in general like they're pretty they're badgering you yeah they're badger my yak god we're canceled now and see after you kill all the badgers at your

fort then you can make a badger man adventurer to come in and get some vengeance on those yaks Yeah. See, this is what I always wanted to do is that kind of thing where you go and you, like you were talking about earlier, you're the master of your own destiny. Have you been able to kill one of those goblin leaders or the demon lord? Demon lords or whatever if you want to? Okay. Yeah. Not too bad. If you become a vampire or like intelligent undead or any of these things, your stats get a huge boost. And then those become pretty paltry. You just dodge and cut them up a few times. Did you see pretty poultry? Speaking of turkeys. What is that a picture of, Roland? That is my snake people and my dwarfs picking stuff. I thought it would be nice to show that off while we're talking about it.

Man, that looks like a nightmare. Too, night. Yeah. God. The snake people, you mean? They're nice. This looks like more people than I've ever had in any of my forts. Yeah.

Honestly, I did not want that many snake people. They just happened. I wanted like five. I got over 100. And all the cats, too. Cats are coming out for the apricots. I have too many cats. But I think that that's a general, general D.F problem.

Not if you don't bring cats in your fortress. So, you know, seeding the world. Actually, this reminds me talking about seeding worlds and my snake people. This current fortress is trying to do exactly that. I'm trying it because I got only like, two, three snake people, they randomly came into my fortress. And now I'm trying to see the world, my dwarven civilization, at least, with snake people. Just make sure that they, I have a lot, and then they move around, and they procreate.

Well, if you expel them, they get kicked out of the civilization. So you want to keep them in your sieve. You could send them to other sites. Yeah, I've been trying to train them a little bit in hand-to-hand. in tail-to-tail combat and they have been pretty good about that especially because I think they now actually bite people and then I've been just sending them off

via military squad to take over small human towns in the hopes that they settle them there and then they become like part of my civilization right and then they proliferate and at some point I will have more snake people They should show up as migrants in other forts in that world if you're the same Dauvin civilization. Yes. I really hope they will because, you know, snake people would be cool.

Why are some of them wearing brown coloration and the other ones are gray? I'm not sure what is happening, but they are, they're like popping in and out of color all the time. It's camouflage. They're trying to sneak up on the fruit on the trees. Oh, you know what? All of the ones that are brown are flipping their tongues. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that was the intention here because if they pop out of color and they become brown, you don't see the... Yeah, the tongue thing. The tongue. My God. The tongue anymore.

So when they pop back into color, you see the tiny red of the tongue. And I think that was intentional where it's supposed to mimic the hissing of a snake. A flicking. So to our listeners, There's the, since the episode art is going to be spooky fort based, you're going to have to go to the show notes, and I will post this image that we're talking about of Roland's snake fort and the overpopulated gathering area that's full of, it's a snake pit. Let's just face it.

Yeah. Alternatively, you can always join our subreddit. My God, I'm cooked today. I'm sorry. You can join our, this. Our Discord. I will also show the picture on the Discord. Mr. Gutsi knows, yes, he does. If there's one thing Olaan was known for, it was being tough on humans. He didn't trust him much farther than he could throw him. But as time went on, and with fewer dwarves showing up to help run the place, Olaan started thinking maybe he'd been a little too hard on those humans. Sure, they didn't care about fine carved stone like most folk,

but offer them the chance to bang their swords around a bit, and you'd have their attention real quick. So Olaan, well, he had a wee bit of a change of heart. He figured if those humans were so eager to fight, why not put them to good use? Let them work as mercenaries, defend in tombs order in exchange for a few gems. That way, we could save our dwarves for what really mattered, digging, buildin, and making this fortress something to be proud of. Those humans would get their fight'n, and we'd keep the fortress safe without sacrificing good dwarven lives. It was a win-win, and Olawn knew it. Heck, who'd have thought humans could be useful, after all?

The only trick will be convincing them that they are doing it of their own mind. Yep, Mr. Gutsy knows, and now so do you. So I did a fort in 47.05 to get warmed up for spooky fort, just to get used to the controls and stuff. And I, was it Rurik? Yeah. On his recommendation, I chose a heavy aquifer. Oh, boy. And so I did the aquifer plug method, which is where you dig out like a cork of dirt and drop it down the level into the aquifer and then dig through that through.

Oh, through to the stuff. Did you have a good experience with that? Well, two of my dwarves died doing it. Sure. They didn't, but did you? And then I decided that this was just going to be the OSHA, like occupational hazard fort. So I just went full in with the most dangerous design I could.

You know, to make an omelet. Yeah, you know, sometimes you've got to break a couple eggs. Yeah, so the tavern was right next to the magma. forges, which, of course, people were dropping hematite rocks from 200 levels above down a pit, just right into that tavern. That'll get your dodge skill up, right? It's great. Oh, if the fire imps didn't get you that hematite would.

You know, there is no OSHA in the dwarf fortress. All right. So we are coming up on the top of the hour here. You know, it just... Tony, did you want to ask about spider thing? Do we want to do that? Oh, I got a question for you, Tony, there, too. So yeah.

The crazy spiders. Yeah. Spider fort or whatever, monster fort. Yeah. So I just, I put a picture in the Discord today. I got an invasion. Join the Discord. Yeah.

There's a Discord site for this podcast. I don't know if you guys were aware. It's a new thing we're trying. Hoping maybe it'll catch on. Other people will do it at some point. Anyway, I got an invasion and the undead invaders brought in a bunch of monsters, which I've never seen before. They look like forgotten beasts.

See, like the graphic is that. But they look like those giant black spider things. And I've never seen that before, but they're very mean, and they will break down doors. So that brings back the need for the drawbridge, I think. So what plug-in did you use to take that 3D picture? 3D picture? That's not perspective. That's just the edge of the map.

Yeah. But it's neat. Yeah, I know I used. It does. Very slick command. You could Photoshop a little bit of sky back there. It would look great. Very, very slick command that I used on the.

the Mac, which is command shift four, really technical. Oh, Windows has one of those. It's Windows Shift S, yeah. Yeah, that's it. Very, very skilled computer user. Yeah, it's so, so they brought them in and the, they didn't really give me much of a warning. They just kind of started doing their thing.

So, yeah, so the little bug monster things aren't particularly hard. My moderately skilled dwarves were able to kind of almost. Almost one shot them, which was cool. So they were sort of a non-thing, but they did break my door down, which pissed me off. So the little guys were breaking down doors or just the spiders? No, the big fellas. The little guys just ignore the doors. But they don't like, and these also, this civilization for whatever reason, is immune to cage traps, which is super annoying.

So I'm like, all my cage traps, they just kind of gallivanted past them. And then somebody in the Discord had recommended destroying the cage traps and then rebuilding them. but they didn't care about that either. So they just have trap avoid. They just have trap avoid, I think is what we're getting to here. So yeah, so that was unexpected. But and then, you know, my little squad went out and actually had a pretty good run against these jerks. But they killed the monsters really quickly, but then the, uh, then the, the undead just absolutely murdered my entire fortress.

So that was a little cyclopean looking things. Are those ant men? I'm going to have to look and see Well those would also be experiments So the Yeah they're all experiments The forgotten beast like creatures And those little cyclops are

Experiments made by a necromancer And then it looks like the goblin is an undead He's angry Could be like a ghoul Because he's purple Yeah he's super mean That one really mean So that's really hurtful things too

But yeah that was that was quite a fort So I guess it's gone, but yeah, I've never seen, I've never seen that. So maybe I'll, I'll take Delphonso's suggestion and try to roll into their civilization with an adventurers. All it takes is a really good axe and a lot of patience. Well, my weapons traps did them pretty, pretty big harm. I had a whole bunch of silver warhammer's weapon traps and that bludgeoned them, I guess, in a good or bad way, depending on how you want to look at it. Okay, no. The end.

Well, let's go ahead and wrap this. episode up. All right. Episode number 109 of Dwarforture Roundtable. Yeah, I know, right? It's getting on up there. If you're collecting

episodes on your punch card. If you collect 10 episodes of Dwarfurtess Roundtable, you get the next one free. Oh, I like that. Yeah, that's right. Thanks so much, DeFonzo, for coming on and talking about spooky fort

and schooling us on adventure mode. Oh, fine. And if you would like to talk with Delfonso, you can find him on the Dwell Fortress Roundtable Discord servers. So you need to join that, to chat with Delphonseo. I love how we're still chilling that Discord server. Tell me all the things I got wrong, because I know I got some stuff wrong. Yes, yes.

What is that? Cunningham's Law. Lives in this podcast. Yeah, that's how we learn. I can take it out of fun. You know, our community has got to be one of the nice. online communities ever because

no one is ever mean so it's really cool so yeah you're sure about that is we get all our aggression out on goblins and stuff exactly yeah have yourselves on the back community

all right thanks again Delfonso I guess we will see everybody next time around till then you know good luck and dig deep yep thanks for stopping by you're here This has been the DwarFortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode.

While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarfortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice. If you'd like to contact us by email, the address is Urest at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-F Roundtable.com. com. If you'd like to interact with the hosts and listeners of the podcast, you'll find a link to join our Discord server in the main menu of our website. If you'd like to help support this podcast financially, you can find us at patreon.com slash DFRoundtable.

This is a conversational podcast. All Craftsorship is of the highest quality. Thanks, Delfonso.