Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 124: Star Forts and Archers and More Update Banter

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Kind of short episode this time as Jonathan had to go on a mini-vacation. We had fun though - hope you enjoy! Google Maps of Kastellet BlindIRL short video on the upcoming update

Welcome to Dwarf Orters Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. My name's Jonathan. And I'm Roland. I'm Tony. We're here to talk Dwarf fortress again. We're doing it. So I have been trying to get my archers to work by doing a separate fort that focuses on 100% archers, all they're going to do is build bolts and build crossbows and everything else, all the production, you know, be danged.

Yep, that's great. I don't care if I fall to, you know, a siege or a forgotten beast, which I will be falling to. A minotars outside right now. Oh, that poor minotaur, he's going to get shredded by bolts. No, the poor minotar. Crossbows. Yeah, my entire army is a bunch of archers And they don't know how to use them yet

I still haven't got things I'm still trying to figure out what it is That I need to do to get them to actually practice So I've There's something that I'm missing And you know, it's much like Oh, is this going to be another archery episode Well, we could

We could do an archery 2.6-5 Yeah It's been a while Well, it's been a while since it's been something You could talk about Because it's not work for so long Yeah Um, have you, I mean, okay, if we, if we are starting another archery episode, we got to do it correctly, right?

Um, so, uh, let's, let's see. You shouldn't keep your bolts in the bins, no? I don't. I told it, no bins. Um, I actually like using some kind of quantum dump because that means I can just chuck all my bolts in one spot and then I'm good to go. I've never I've never really been comfortable with those I'm always afraid that I've got them set up wrong and they're too fiddly oh use df hack it's so easy yeah I think this is a

a mic special yeah if you just do it's called gooey quantum nothing in the world has ever made it it it's almost like wrong not to do it because he's made it so easy yeah just UI Quantum

you pick the stockpile and then just like it's too clicks and it's magic and it just works and all you have to have what what what what are you saying instant quantum stockpiles so unbelievably easy so if if you haven't played with it pull up a df hack magic window type in quantum and then you click it and then it pops up the little gooey window and then it asks you to choose the feeder stockpile so that would be like you would make if you were doing ammo you would just make that an ammo stockpile and I usually do it four tiles you could do one tile it doesn't really i don't think it really matters and then so you click

that and then it has dump direction north and then you can change it to be like south or east or west you know i guess the four cardinal directions and then we'll automatically create the quantum stockpile for you and if you have a mine card available they'll go get it and set it up for you and it just works like it just totally a mind cart demystifies the whole process yep got to have a mine cart do you have to have a track no I think it might do that for you but I don't yeah you need a stop

that is now the easiest way to actually do them all you need is two stockpiles one mine card one mine card stop and then you're pretty much good to go I'm telling you it's so easy so I just did when we're talking so I have in my in my archery

room or my proposed archery room. I have a stockpile of arrows and then I just do gooey quantum and then I clicked my starting stockpile. I told it I wanted it to dump to the west and then it brings up the little DF hack thing with the shield or whatever and then you just click it when the boxes don't turn red and automatically it works. Now in this case I don't have a mine card available so now I have to make one and then you just use the DF hack assigned mine card and they these clever little things figure it That's actually pretty sweet.

They've done it. Yeah. Now I've got my quantum stockpile. Yeah, it is, it's my favorite feature of D.F. HEC at the moment. But, like, that's usually whatever feature I'm using at the moment is my favorite feature. All right. I guess then I will give that a try. Cool.

Anyway, so, yeah, my fortress is focused on learning how to do archery. And then I'm going to go back to the fortress that I started for my long-term fortress. and we're going to try to get those archers up and running and get them up on on you know peripets overlooking the the battlefield outside of my city wall and Roland you said poor Minotaur yeah poor Minotaur nothing he's full on my livestock oh well maybe he'll be sleepy

well yeah I did have a drawbridge that I now have everybody locked inside so we're safe but for now for this update for this update well I don't this is not a long term for this is just a fort to try to learn how to run mine carts correctly okay not my cart dang it um archers yeah archers so what do you guys think uh after okay my next proposed topic is what's our what's the current thinking for how to how do we build siege resistant forts and I've been thinking a little bit about it but hmm oh boy uh yeah what do what thoughts do do you have rolling i'm actually considering going full on star ford mode no compromise just

full on star shape fortress uh double deep mode so like at least two tiles deep all smooth all stone blocks uh possibly some overhang over the wall so that that even if someone gets over the moat, they will not be able to properly climb up the wall and then get on top of it. Elaborate a little bit more about this star-shaped fortress thing. How's that work? Oh, wow. I'm looking online.

Yeah, it's very European. I guess so. I guess so. Because at some point, I'm not a historian, so don't like pin this on me. but at some point siege techniques massively changed because we had firearms and they started to build fortresses with firearms in mind both firearms that you have on top of the wall and firearms that are in the oncoming besieging army and they considered where can my guns shoot and started to make a fortress that is essentially a fortress surrounded by killboxes. So you would have, imagine an inverted triangle. And the inverted shape is where the siegers would be,

while the outside of the triangle, so to say, is where the fortress. This allows you to have two sides of defenders shooting into the inverted triangle space. so they can shoot at the enemy but they don't run into the risk of actually shooting at each other for example if you have like a parallel wall you could have the trouble of like shooting into your own fortress that way

with the inverted triangle you don't and then there is actually a star-shaped fortress in my city a little bit north and it's very interesting I'm actually considering for the podcast I'm might just go there, take some photos, and then

you know, like, dwarf it up. Oh, in your city in real life? I thought you meant in your city and dwarf. No, no, no, my city in real life. Send it to me. There's an actual star-shaped fortress in the north of our city. If you go to

Google Maps right now and type in Castellet, you'll see a really really, and go to the satellite view, you'll see a really good example of one. It's K-A-S-T-E-L-L-L-E-T, and it's in Copenhagen. Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo.

Pronounce that again. I think it's K-A-S-T-E-L-L-E-T. Castellet. I'm sure somebody's Danish listening right now. They're probably dying on the inside, so I apologize for that. Ah, that is nice. Round about moat, too.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. And plug for the place itself, if you're in Copenhagen, check it out. It's really neat. Don't siege Copenhagen, by the way. It's got to start. um yeah although it looks like it's surrounded by Starbucks so no you got real coffee shops in Copenhagen okay my bad you can get real coffee in Copenhagen yeah it's good stuff but um yeah

if you actually google star fortresses that is what i am considering so well if ever search of episode art i went to wikimedia commons and did a search for star fortress and and yeah there's this one that has like a green background and has a layout that I might just end up using for my next fortress. Oh my goodness, that is beautiful. Okay. So this is a little off, but when you Google Star Fortress, the Internet tells you various other things that you can put on top of it, right? Star Fortress and another word. And they start with layout 40K meaning Minecraft Star Sector and Star Wars.

That's hilarious. Um, but yeah, so depending on how much I go overboard, I will probably make a fortress before the update just to figure around how to make a good star fortress into a fortress. Yeah. And something, I've been playing a lot of Rimworld, for example, something that I'm really missing in Rimworld on the Z levels. Uh, in door fortress, this means I could actually make a star fortress that is not just on one Z level. but actually I have several levels where even within the Starford, you could have fortifications that can shoot inside the Star Fort. So even if you have a breach,

they will not be breaching into the entire fortress, just into a part of it. And then it goes from there. But I'm not sure if this actually makes sense, because if I build that much, I think I have a above-ground fortress. Can I just stand back here for a second and just say how excited I am for this upcoming update,

and I hope that it lives up to its expectations, because this is the first time in a very long, probably remember when the undead were off the scale hard, and so many fortresses would just end up coming down to an undead invasion? This is the first time since then that we've really had to sit here and think and discuss and strategize about how we can protect our fortresses from an outside force. Yeah.

The undead period. Which patch was that? That was the one where you're just like, oh look, I've just built my first wall. Okay, there's this 152 undead. Exactly. All right. That was, I think it was 4705 or is the 47.0 something.

That was the funny one. Good times. That was great. So, yeah, the Star Fortress thing, that looks very interesting. I like pretty fortresses. and that's going to give me chances to put flooring down and make some just really pretty stuff. I want to have something good looking

that I'm staring at for hours on it. That's town to city. That's your game. I'm just a little afraid because I, currently at least, I'm not really into above-ground fortresses. I would always channel down into the cavern layer and kind of live there.

But I think it will impact the way that I play the game. game if I'm starting to actually build a proper Star Fortress because that means I will have a lot of space above ground and just leaving it completely empty just doesn't sit right with me, you know? Well, here's what you can do. You can have three or four outlets to the surface and fortify the hell out of those three or four outlets. And, you know, you can use those as some sort of valve where your dwarves can get in, but the enemies can't get, sorry, the dwarves can get out. but the enemies can't get in, you know,

and maybe you could still focus on having a subterranean fort, but have basically, you know, pillboxes and have it look like, I don't know, like a, like a, what they call it whenever, how they prepare the beach for an invasion? The tank busters? Entrenchments. Entrenchments. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Tank buster, yeah, those kind of things. Those concrete, of course. We don't have concrete, but we do have marble. I mean Yeah Steel I used to

I used to build a lot of these These fortifications as well Into the cavern So like imagine a cavern Spire and then you can just shoot it out of it And it's like above the entrance But With the siege update

I don't think that the caverns Are the most dangerous part now We'll see We'll see Hey did you guys see blinds Or did you see TOTE's 30 second release, the video? Nope. Nope.

Oh, you don't check it out. Blind, blind, I think it took like an hour and just ripped it apart. Maybe it's like a half hour, but he released a 30 second video that it was a preview of a siege. And, dude, the ballistas sitting on in a Star Fort, what do you call the, a Star Fort Bastion, yeah, that would be really, really effective. because those ballistas are shooting kind of like, it looks like machine guns. The arrows are flying so fast out of them. Wow, okay, well.

I guess they're ballistas. I guess you'll have to check out the video. He said something about bringing back or making relevant catapults. Oh, yeah. I don't think I've ever used to catapult the whole time I've had this game. Yeah, they're not very good.

I built one, but, you know. Can you send me a link to that video, by the way? Oh, no, it's only eight minutes. The blind video is only eight minutes, so I'm going to go ahead and we're going to take a quick, quick break here. Listeners, go play amongst yourselves while I paste this link to my cohorts here, so they can watch the very opening of this video. This segment has been brought to you by the Great Garzini's Great. and delusions, turning goblin invasions into disappearing acts since time immemorial.

Whether you need your trade goods to appear twice as impressive, or your mare to vanish after another strange mood, call the Great Garzini, the only magician who accepts payment in plump helmets. Yeah, I think I did watch. Oh, yeah, so he does have the ballastas there, okay? I don't think I saw that. I think I saw all of the things coming in. Yeah, those ballistas are shooting off like freaking machine guns.

Okay, the ballistas are, those are very different than what I thought they were. I don't even know that they are ballistas. No, that's something new, I think. The ballista is, I think, what the hell? I know, it's what I'm saying. What the hell? Oh my God. It's like machine guns.

Let me see that again. That's pretty nifty. The troll, there's a lot of trolls. So, yeah. Yeah, no, those are not blisters. Check out Blind's video on this because he takes it apart Basically frame by frame It's pretty cool

These are not ballisters because they use Normal bolts and not the Massive Ballister bolts Yeah And this is a new weapon Oh my god Hey that's fun Those look powerful

And the large picks And they have they have Backpacks with blocks Oh my God I'm so hyped With bars they're going to build stuff I think it's what's happening. That's getting, that's like, that's getting into the Rimworld category where you have people, like, set up a little camp outside you. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Don't care for that. Yeah. Oh, my God. Let me see that. Don't care for that in a good way? Yeah, in the way that it's, you're going to fail. Yes, losing will again be fun.

Yes, it will be, it would be possible and fun. All right. Let me get back to the. Yeah, so, okay. So, yeah, I've got that. side fortress going and my monitor is eating my my pigs and yaks and i don't care and i don't yeah um so that's basically been my my last couple weeks since we last talked is putting my main fortress on hold while i try to learn how they use archers it's fun though it's i i've really

enjoyed playing this last call it's i think taking the summer off from playing was a good idea you burned out on games yeah true True, true, true. I got hot into Rimworld. That kept me motivated for a while. And then I softened on that and came back to Dorda Fortress. It's always nice to come back. And then managed to totally screw up my new Fortress.

Like massively. 30 dwarves in the red, angry face category right now out of the population of 94. Yeah. I think we're done here. Well, maybe you'll get a fell mood. Yeah. I'm just kind of leaving them alone and hoping that everything goes okay. They're just going to beat the hell out of each other.

What is even happening? Like, why are they mad? Yeah, why are they so upset? You know what? I'm not totally sure what set it off, but then everyone was killing everyone. And then there were a lot of spirits, ghosts, that they didn't see for a while. And so, you know, things happened. Oh, we had a siege.

And somehow one of the goblins got in. I don't know if he climbed the wall or what, but he got in and then just started killing people. And then apparently that was stressful for them. Damn. Yeah, you need to be more pessimistic like me. I always set up, you know, halls and halls of caskets early on to put my dead away so they don't turn into ghosts.

Because ghosts can be really, really production killers. Yeah, yeah. I think that's what did me in here. I think that's what's got me into the 29, Red dead Do you guys ever get those guys back Or do we just ride them off? No, you can't get them back

Get them back Put the ghost to rest And we'll stop scaring them And they'll eventually come back Unless it's too far gone Yeah Need to calm themselves Also, you've got to be really careful

That you don't have a vengeful ghost Because if you don't just have Like a screaming yelling polter guys You will straight up have a murderer ghost and he will rip limbs from dwarves and they don't really recover from that. They will have permanent mental and physical damage. I had a ghost kill a guy back in this was like early on in the podcast.

There was a, I set up a fortress and I got a ghost. And the ghost like ripped a dwarf to shreds. I'm like, what the hell? Why is it? I thought that was not a corporal being. Just killed a guy. That's not Casper. It's like Casper.

That's not even Casper's buds. It's terrible. I know. It's like a Garfield comic. That's horrific. This episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable is made possible in part by Christopher Harris's quality stone crafts. When you want a mug that won't chip, a table that won't crumble, or a statue that really captures your beard from the good side, Christopher Harris is your dwarf. Buy local.

Buy sturdy. Harris We should also talk about the little new release that came on the first because there were some changes. Yeah, I'm not aware.

Okay. I will just read the general updates then. Fixed crash caused by interrogating certain subjects, suspect, sorry, under certain circumstances in what generation? okay nice a fixed crash in legends caused by missing works of art by the way i have not experienced either of those nope i don't spend much time in legends so yeah that's that's fair uh fixed potential

out-of-bounce crash setting appearance uh contributions from parents and world generation good to know genetics or is this physical contributions for parents probably physical like whether or not you have brown here Oh yeah, that's genetics Yes, genetics Fixed pathing issues caused by building construction on certain maps Okay

Fixed some other issues And made training mock dwarfs Used the last bolt in a stack You know That was weird Because I have had I fiddled also with Mox dwarfs

You know after the update Everyone was like Oh my God, Marks The Back in Action and I noticed that they would shoot their boulds like a legendary Maxworth would shoot all the bolts in maybe two seconds like it's a machine gun

but very often he would not use the last bolt and just walk away and then he would not refill his quiver because there's still something in it sounds like the classic C N plus one problem allowed work orders to specific plans for milling jobs I think

this means that if you click on the milling stone or the quern you have a specific job option that just from the get-go says just mill that specific plant. So that means I no longer will have

to do a lot of micromanagement but like linking stockpiles here and quorne there and I'm very happy about that addition. if that is what it means. That is something that's been haunting me in my new side fort, which, you know, if I keep doing this kind of stuff, it's going to turn into a real fort.

So I've got the monitor outside. I have no access to tallow, and I don't have any soap, and I have some injured dwarves. So I need to be pressing plants into paste and extracting oil, but I've never done that before. So it's like I'm going to burn into fire.

You can also just use the fat from the animals that you kill. Well, no, the animals are outside, and so is the butcher shop. Oh, yeah. Okay, got you. You know, so maybe that's my mistake. In that case, rock nuts are the best thing ever. If I had them, I would be, yeah, that's, whenever I was like, uh-oh, I need some oil.

How do I get oil? Rocknets? Oh, great. I don't have any quarry bush seed. Great. So, do you guys use rock nut soap? I've never made rock nuts soap. I never have.

I like saying it, but I haven't made it. I actually like using them Because, you know, they grow underground and they're quite nice And I also think they have a good growing season Like a long one Because what was it? Cave wheat only grows in summer or something I found that to be very annoying

Even underground, yeah And are rock nuts from quarry bushes I saw on the wiki that Rockets, I think it was a 42-day growth season. Let me just make sure that... Or at least 42-day production. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Quarry bushed.

I like quarry bushes, okay, for several reasons. First of all, the leaves are edible, which means that you get delicious vegetables from this thing already. But the rock nuts are crushable into oil. So from one thing, you can... get some food and some soap. Don't underestimate quarry bushes guys. And not

only do you get food from it, those leaves are also brewable. I think it's in the dwarven ale. Oh, can you? Can you make quarry leaf wine or something? Is that a thing we can do? Let me see. Cannot be brewed

into alcohol. He just left. Oops. Did we? He's out of here. He clicked something. He clicked something. I bet he, yeah. Maybe he got a little too excited about Rock Nets. I bet he just click closed browser without thinking.

So what you don't want to do is go to the Dwarf fortress wiki on the page that you're recording on. Yeah. Oh, yep, that'll do it. So I think that I heard that I was incorrect, you cannot brew Quoybush leaves. Yeah, you cannot. through them into alcohol and you will need a bag to process plant to bag. So you you like pick the the leaves of the plant. But I found it to be very nice.

Also, you can get the leaves in fairly large stacks, which makes it easy to get like huge stacks of prepared meals. I don't know if you dabble with that, but I always try to get like maximum stack sizes for the same meals as like um so i always try to mix quarry bush leaves and uh eggs and fat together to have like a standard emery meal for my soldiers i guess yeah quarry bushes are the way to go here also uh stopped died item died not they're not dead died items from triggering inappropriate export prohibitions yeah after we talked about it i think

it was last episode, after we talked about the dying things, I noted that there are a lot more things that the caravans are trying to sell me that dye stuff. So, yeah. Huh. Like, I think, like, hazel dye. Hazel dye. Don't call me on that. Don't call me on that. Don't know. I don't think I've ever made a die. I made them. Oh, yeah, actually, I have used them. They, uh, I think that they automatically do stuff. It may be because I use D.F. Hack, but. Yeah, that's right. I use T.F. I'm proud of it.

Yeah. Yeah. I like it. You were always able to make black or green or red clothing and the like, and I always found it very nice to have like green pans and a black cloak or something. But I will fully admit that we did get the dye system. I should totally be into that. I have only barely touched it.

I don't know why. well you know that's the thing about this hobby there are so many facets of it that you know a year from now you may go you know what i think i feel like making a very colorful dyed fort and then you can go back to it true true true um the next thing is specifying wood in certain work quotas will now actually use the specified wood wow dang that is good that's music to my ears that's all i've ever wanted so they prefer the things that you're nobles are wanting that would be good that's that's actually pretty helpful yeah otherwise you have to kill the nobles like the noble says i want a whole lot of rings it'd be nice if you're a person who's just making rock crafts would favor rings yeah the next thing is however probably the best thing and i let's not say too much right stopped meandering behavior for animals that are trained for war or hunting. God bless.

Oh my God. I don't know. If you have had this love-hate relationship with animals like I have, because you will see like some fantastic creature and you tame it and you're like, oh my God. Or like an animal person. And they come into your fortress and they settle. You know, and you're like, yes, yes. And then you find out it's a meandering animal.

and they're useless. Wow. For those that don't know, meandering is a tag that some creatures have, which just kind of cuts their speed in half if they don't have a job. Huh. To the point where if a creature has a meandering tag, walking somewhere will take so long that they never reach their goal, they turn around because they got hungry.

So I have a hyena. man. I like hyena man because in adventure mode you can use both the human-sized armor and the dwarf-sized armor because you're just in the middle and that is so good

and now I got one and I'm very happy but hyenas have the meandre tag which means that this person is so slow in walking anywhere that he never gets it done. I had to build him a special bedroom

next to the tavern because otherwise actually walking from the tavern down to the bedroom layer would take so long for him that he would get hungry and thirsty, walk back up without sleeping

and then fall is sleep in my food stockpile. I don't know what the wild animal equivalent of no job is or what their equivalent of jobs are, but you know like they're going, if they've got a goal,

it seems like that meandering should be turned off during the, until they get that goal done. And then whenever they have no job, just, you know, then wander around. Yeah, the job is also very weird because I'm not sure when it specifies something as a job and when not. For example, I put

that hyena man as a like a tavern keeper, right? So he hangs out in the tavern and he serves drinks. And it works like this. So he gets a goblet and he goes to the barrel and it takes him three and a half hours to cross my tavern. And then he fills the thing. He fills the goblet.

Then he turns around and he turns into the flash. He sprints across the dance floor. And then he's at the dude and he's like force feeding him beer. And like drink. And then he turns around and he's again a slug person. and he crawls back to the barrels and then he does it again. So I'm not sure because fetching the drink is a job and then giving the drink to someone is also a job,

but only one of them is hindered by the meandre attack and the other isn't. What? Puzzle. Today's show is sponsored by Byron's Bardic Ballads in Battlehem. Whether you're celebrating a new artifact or mourning your last expedition leader, Byron's got a tune for the occasion. Available in taverns, temples, and anywhere fine lutes are finely tuned.

So I know this has been short, but I kind of want to wrap up here pretty quick so that I can get off to my woodland retreat. It's river time, baby. Is there anything else that you guys would like to cover in this episode? I Maybe one notice Because there was a mention Oh god, where was it?

Here Rurik said something Okay I don't know if you can do this with fly critters But to have automatic emptying of cage traps For critters I do not want to keep A.k.a. anything I can tame or eat

I create a special stockpour for these That sent the cages to a minecard shotgun With a double stop and a pit The first stop sends the cage flying. The second stop ejects the creature at speed into the wall and hole. Empty cages are ready to be filled again. Amazing. An automated cage emptying system.

And I then said, wait, flash shotgun for fortress defense, troglodyte bullets. That is also something that I'm currently working on. is that our t-shirt for the fundraiser troglodyte bullets troglodyte bullets yeah thanks for that imagery Eurik

that is very nice thank you Eurik I'm working on a troglodyde gun everybody if you're not in the discourse over and I really do think that most of our listenership is in there but if you're not there's some really great stuff in there there's side conversations there's lots

of little experiments. Yeah, it's a wonderful place. Thanks to all the listeners for making that Discord such a successful platform because I really didn't think that it would take off like it has. There's lots of great stuff

talked about besides the podcast itself. Yeah. And it's cheap to join. Well, it's free to join. You must click. And I'm sure you have to give Discord some personal data. Send check her money ordered.

to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable Discord server. Post Office box 10027, Los Angeles, California, 9-028. Don't send it. That's probably a real PO box. All right, guys, I'm going to wrap this one up then. Yep. All right. Let's do it.

Everyone have a great period between now and the next time that you hear us. And we'll catch you next time. Primo. I'm always ready to roll it Ready to roll it Ready to roll it Yep See you next time

And that's it for this episode And that's it for this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable Brought to you by the great Garzini's disappearing dwarfs Christopher Harris's solid stonecrafts And Byron's Bardic Ballads To make even the toughest minor weep Thanks to our patrons for keeping the fortress in tune

And mostly in one piece This has been the Dwar Fortress 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 DFRontable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-F-R-R-S-T-E. If you'd like to interact with the hosts and listeners of the podcast, you'll find a link

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