Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 127: We’re All Over The Place Here

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Wrapping up 2025 on a random note. Have a safe and dwarfy holiday, and we’ll see you soon after the new year!

Welcome to Dwarf Orchrist Roundtable, the podcast for all things dwarfy. My name's Jonathan. And I'm Roland. I'm Tony. Tony, you were right. I checked in Wolosi is the correct pronunciation. Wolosi. Okay.

Walosi. We'll leave with that. That's great. Wolosi. Not to be confused with Waluigi. I don't know that reference. You don't know Waluigi? Really?

No. Oh. Interesting. What's the reference from? Can we tell him? Mario. I thought it was just Luigi. Well, he's...

There's more than that. There's various other characters. Ah, the cartoon. Well, no. He's just... It's part of... It's just a thing, basically. It's just a whole thing.

It's like the Marvel extended universe where there's many characters and they have spin-off stories happen, right? My interest in Mario and his family ended with the original NES Super Mario Brothers I would say

if you're if or only if Super Mario World on Super Nintendo was I would put up there one of the best video games ever made

cool and would highly recommend checking that out it ain't no doom but it's good it's good game well I have never played

a single Mario game in my life holy moly well if you only if you only ever play one I would say Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo emulators. All right.

Yeah. It's good. My dorm had a Super Nintendo, and we spent all of our time playing Zelda. It was one of the Zelda. Yeah, the Zelda for Super Nintendo was really good, too. Zelda, a new beginning or Zelda? Yeah, I can't remember which one it was. It was a...

Yeah, there was this giant worm that you had to... It reminded me a lot of Commander Keene and Goodbye Galaxy, the way it was set up. Yeah, there's still. still doing Zelda, and apparently those games people really like them on Switch. I tried the Switch Zelda and you know, Hot Take here. I found it excruciatingly boring, but

I am a minority opinion. Welcome to the Nintendo Roundtable. Yeah, welcome to Nintendo Roundtable. That's unfortunate. We do need sponsors because we're going to have to pay for the butt to use this. Thanks, Mario. We appreciate you, sir.

I have to bleep that. Yeah. So about the roundtable that we do seek, how's everybody, how are we doing in our, in our fortress, so on and so forth? Shall I lead off because mine's probably going to be short? I have a wonderful fortress going, but I still haven't been sieged. I have been attacked by several Kia's. I've been attacked by a giantess, and my military made very short order of that giantess. I'm making glass. I've got enough steel to basically pave my entire fortress with it.

Sweet. But yeah, I've not run into a whole lot of the... I did surround my entire fortress entrance. You know, like, you... I'm not sure if you still do it, Tony, but you used to pop out to the top level and then build walls around it. Yep. I've done that. So I did that with reinforced walls.

And I've got two drawbridges made out of... One's made out of steel and one's made out of iron. I'm not sure if that's any stronger for, for sieges or not. But I did that. And then I covered the entire fortress with floor so that my stupid dwarfs, who for whatever reason don't like sunlight so that they won't get, you know, sunsickness. You've made a flortress. Yes, I have.

But yeah, it's gone very well. I've got lots of soap. I've got lots of metal. I've got lots of glass. So that's when you know you've arrived. In my opinion, that's when you know you've arrived. You're making soap. Glass is a tuffy.

If whatever you say, I'm making clear glass. Okay, clear glass. Good. That's what's about to ask. Yeah, that's the good one. So you got to make pearl ash. To make pearl ash, you've got to make potash. To make potash, you've got to have either ash or lie.

And so, yeah, it's almost as complicated as soap. It is. But it's worse. Or maybe a little more. Somehow, it's worse. You got to have blocks and buckets and all. kinds of crap. You gotta go collect sand.

Yeah. Yeah. And all the ones. You need so much wood. Where you look is sand. And wood. Yeah, you really do charm the heck out of the yells. Uh-huh.

Well, I have to have lots of wood for everything. I always go to a heavily forested biome because I always, I never go for the magma furnaces. I always just use charcoal and bituminous coal to make coke. You're a good American. One, yeah. This is not a political podcast. Well, I'm just saying, you know, why would you use renewable energy if you can cut down some trees? That's all I'm saying.

Well, it's the way I do it. It is kind of renewable, isn't it? God wouldn't have put trees here if you didn't want us chopping them down and burning them or making chopsticks. Well, Roland is right, though. And Dwarf fortress trees are much more renewable resource than they are in real life. Well, they are. About four years, they're back, cut them down again. And I definitely commend Tarn's commitment.

to green energy because literally it is in that way. But so, yeah, I've not experienced a whole lot of the new stuff. Yeah. Have you built a bolt thrower? That's what I'm asked. No. Oh, you can build them. But I do have a question, though.

Yeah. When did museums go away? Is that in version 50? Because I've, I had a bunch of artifacts and a bunch of really nice masterwork steel weapons. and the way I have my bedrooms, it's kind of like an apartment block and all of my, or most of my bedrooms at least,

have no door. They just have a stairwell that goes down into them from the floor above. It's kind of how I used to do it whenever the walls made more of a difference, whenever a door knocked down the value of your room. So I still like that. And what I will do is I will make,

like the area above it have lots of pretty things for them to ooh and awe as they go to their bedrooms. I used to put a museum in the middle of it where I could put lots of artifacts and display items. But whenever I went to actually create a museum, I didn't see it in zones.

And then I clicked on the actual display furniture, which is how you used to be able to create a museum. And I looked in the Dwar Fortress Wiki, and the museum right up there is from the version 40-something. And I don't think that it's there anymore. Yeah, I'll be. I'm looking right now. Yeah.

So I'm at the library. That actually reminds me. I think I stumbled on a similar issue a while back. I was trying to build, let's see. I think I was doing the kindergarten. And I wanted to have like a museum in the middle where they can hang out and like feel good and, you know, history lessons or whatever. and I was looking in the zone tab and I was realizing that I don't really get to do that

but I do also remember that there was a really convoluted way to get a statue garden yeah because that was your other trick in the old versions wasn't it you could make a statue garden yeah you could make like a statue garden and assign it to someone and then they would like hang out like twice a year and it would be super elated that they have a statue garden. Well, can you just build a meeting area around your statues?

Does that have the same effect? Does it spark joy? That is a... And that's what I did. That's what I did. I actually put a library in, so I lined a couple of empty walls with bookshelves. There you go. And turned it into a library, put some coffers in there.

That's a good idea. And I think it pretty much does the same thing, because the advantage of the museum was it became a meeting area where people would go to be around nice things, right? Right. Hey, Roland, you were talking about the statue garden. It reminded me, I also, this fortress, have made porcelain. I have used the kiln.

And I have made porcelain statues. Wow. That's sweet. That's a new one for me. That is really cool. I don't honestly think I've, I don't think I've ever made porcelain. It's really easy. You just take clay and then you, I can't remember if there's, I think it's clay and maybe gypsum

if you have gypsum and clay. then you just make a statue and then you fire it in the kiln and it becomes porcel. Okay, well, there we go. That's about to happen. Yeah, check it out. Doesn't it also depend on the kind of clay or something? Because I always go for the, what's it called? Mine has a crap ton of kaalanite.

Calanite. That's what it has to be, right? Exactly, exactly. It has to be that stuff. That stuff's everywhere. It's annoying. Yeah, but I really do love it. I tend to make my food storage containers out of it now instead of wooden barrels.

Various reasons to do that. For example, it just looks better. What, you don't piss off the elves. Burles? Yeah, well. Wish you could make beds out of it. Why can I not make beds out of everything else? True.

You do have to still fire it somehow, so you will. need some call. Kielm. Magma kiln. But the good thing is you can a-trade it to the elves if it's not encrusted with bones. And the other is that, I think I've mentioned this before. I made myself Electrum barrels and put my seeds in them specifically with like a serious amount of like min-maxing and like forbidding and good God.

How do you make Electrum? Is it an element on its own? Gold and silver together, isn't it? Gold and silver alloy? Maybe there's also copper in it. I don't remember. I've got a little bit of gold. I've not run across enough to really do anything with.

It's basically just an accent metal for some really fancy floors for things like nice temples. Electrum was the bees' knees in antiquity, I think, before they'd really sussed out how to smelt. I think they used it mostly for coins. And, you know, coins might come back at some point in the future. who knows yeah but um the bonus why i used electrum is

a i never use electrum for anything else and b electrum seems to be one of the items that is always on top of the list so that when i try to sell food containers i don't accidentally also sell my seed barrels but yeah i i love my porcelain pots what can i say all the caola night from the map is gone and i have made pots out of it no more left I would have to do a lot of mining to get rid of all of my KLanite because

you know it's it's near the the top level and then I have gone about 12 12 layers down and I found another vein of it so it's and the veins aren't small they're a significant portion of the map yeah they they go nuts

on that one I mean maybe that's how it naturally occurs the also like a really good thing if you care for silk and like a silk farm with the small spiders, not the big spiders, you could try and trap these little spiders and then like put them like you you put them in the animal trap and then you let them out of the animal trap within one of those mined out k-olonite veins and then you just close the door and you wait like six years then you open it and it's full of webs.

Hmm, cool. Well that's a cool trick. This segment has been brought to you by Lucas's luxurious stone furnishings. The only furniture line guaranteed to survive cave-ins, tantrums, and the occasional forgotten beast. Whether you need a granite recliner

or a basalt breakfast nook, Lucas crafts comfort from the coldest rock. Lucas, because wood is for elves. So I saw in our Discord, you've got a kangaroo man that needs that's going to get you hopping mad

if he takes your thing. Are you talking to me? I'm talking to you. What are you talking about? A kangaroo man? Didn't you say you had some kangaroo man plotting against you? You're pretty sure you did unless it was from last year. That's right.

That's right. Yeah, I never could find that book. It's not in my fortress. He's probably already taken it to a little scumbag. Well, no, I don't think that it ever was. I think that that may have been a discussion about something happening in some of the fortress. Because I kind of investigated it. There was no crime committed.

Oh. Can you find it in your mission? menu. Can you go steal it? I can't remember what the name of the book was. You put a picture in our... Oh, thank you, yeah. That's how I know it. Always good to use it like that. Yes, very good.

I've got a question for you guys. And we're all over the place here today on things. But this is about getting stuff into your fort. So if I ask for eggs from a trader, like here, I can have jabberer eggs and crundle eggs. Can I hatch those? Uh, if they bring them. I think they have to be fertilized for them to hatch.

Crap. And don't nail me down on this. You're probably right. But I also think they have to be in a nest box. Yeah, well, I was wondering. But they won't put them in a nest box. They'll just put them in a barrel and try to cook them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

See, that's so classless. I wish it worked a little different. Sometimes I play a different game called Project Zomboid. Okay. And now there's like chickens in it. And if you get the eggs from the chickens, they have this annoying tendency that you put the eggs in a cupboard and then the chicks hatch in your cupboard. And at some point you'd check the cupboard and it's full of like 200 chicks and you're like, what the hell just happened here? And I kind of wish something similar was, I don't know, possible in Dwar Fortress where you get eggs.

and then you hatch them at home and they don't have to be in a nest box, they would be pretty cool. I mean, great way to get crundles or jabbers. Imagine, imagine, that wild animals actually laid eggs somewhere on the floor and you could just pick them up and get them that way. I feel like we could do,

I feel like science needs more work with this one, so hopefully that'll be something we can do in the future. I wonder if I have a crundle If I can get the eggs And the crundle will Well I guess it's too late If you've already got the egg Anyway

I project Zomboid Do you do you like that game Is it good Liking? Yes Do I like the game No I am addicted to the game So like one step about that

Have you seen Let's Game It Out The YouTube channel I Because he plays some Okay I know that you're already mentioned that we're really just hopping from the theme to theme. We're hopping from

theme to theme. We're making this an edit nightmare today. I have to bring up something else before I can answer that question. Do that. Do that. Yeah. It will not be a nightmare. It will just be a random thing. Well, good years. It's fine. Dream of consciousness episode. Well, you know me. I'm here. I'm here. Jumpy. So I don't know how you feel about this, but there's a lot of these like recaps happening on various social media platforms and stuff. on YouTube and Spotify is doing it. And I've been honestly asked by people like, oh my God, how does your Spotify recap look like?

And I have to honestly admit, I don't have Spotify. I don't use it. And they're like, what? So they pressured me into checking other recaps from other apps. And they're all so mundane. When I check my recap for YouTube, I realize that I just I'm just watching either

canned German streams or canned Joel Vag Skeletris streams and that is literally it is the only reason why I'm using YouTube now Oh German streams are the best Yeah But I think Let's Game It Out is very Of that genre anyway

He does a couple of project Zomboid videos And there's one where he Creates an Apocalypse Which I think you might enjoy that he creates an apocalypse and the zombie survival game? Yes, and that's the joy of it, yeah. Truly, truly, if I were ever to make a video game,

I would want that guy to have a key, because I don't think you're ever going to get the level of unit testing in your game that he would be able to provide for you. Hmm. Anywho. And now for something completely different. Indeed. If you know the name of a fortress that is in your world,

how do you find it, can you locate it? Or do you just have to float over all of the individual blocks on the map? You can create a mission. Yeah, hang on, let me, let me, I've loaded the game. I will go look. I will, I will investigate for science. The reason I found that book, and it was last seen, it was last held in the in listen crafts which i assume is a is a fortress of some sort

sort the religion abridged last in listen crafts this is a iron bound codex the written portion consists of a 14-page essay entitled the religion abridged authored by cad uxenkati it concerns the ascension of the human kid search gifted to the position of abbot of the grisly creed in 74 The writing is excessively ornate. Overall, the prose is not awful, but not very good either. And it says that it was last in Listen Crafts. I don't know where Listen Crafts is. Oh.

But I don't know that this thing was, I think that that was just a note and an alert that came up saying that people were plotting. You know what you can do? I got it figured out. So go to the missions menu, you know, where it's the map and you center on Fort, missions, news and rumors and all that kind of jazz. Yeah, my missions menu is. is red. Yeah, yeah, so that's fine. So click Artifacts. Okay. And then in the search box, type in, just start

typing in the name of that book. And hopefully it will be in... That's where I found the description. Yeah, then you click that, and then it'll create a mission to go get it. And then assign your dudes to it, and they'll go take it. They'll go grab it. I still don't know where it's at, though. But that's, your people will know.

My people know, but I don't, and they don't tell me. And when I tell them, go get it, they know where to go. Yeah, they figured out. Whoa. I'm not sure that I want to attack whoever it might be that has it. Well, that's the fun. How you know your bolt throwers will work if you don't.

I will keep that in mind. I may, I may, I will ruminate on that and I might send after that. That sounds like a good reason for my fortress to be is to go steal the religion, abridged, and to put it in our library that is near our bedroom complex. Right. Maybe an army of kangaroo men will bounce over to, you and I don't know I wouldn't mess with a kangaroo. Have you seen those videos?

I think the kangaroo man was, I think the kangaroo man was planning on stealing it from someone and maybe that's where a listen crafts is. Maybe it's where the kangaroo man is. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So this world's plot is going to be the search for the religion, abridged.

Also, I do have to say a kangaroo man stealing is very fitting, you know? They do have an in-billed pouch, right? Yeah, that's right. No backpack needed. Shlep it in your pouch and call it a day.

Although it might be kind of icky when it comes out, but, you know. I mean, you just build a fort full of Australians and you'll be able to take down the kangaroo. Have you seen those videos where there's like Australian people like punching kangaroos that get aggressive with them? I've seen people fighting alligators. That's crazy because like a red kangaro is like two meters tall. I'm not punching a kangaroo. Yeah. Yeah, they're big and they're ripped too.

So I don't know, man, but Australians are kind of fearless. I mean, you've got to be. They'll unleash their mine cart shotgun on them. So that's my fort. Yep. Not much, there's a lot going on in the fortress, but not much as far as the new release goes. Yeah. How about you guys?

I can't, I have not gotten attacked yet. I'm also not starting a lot of stuff. So, you know, it's... You mean, like, problems? You don't go out and punch your neighbors? Yeah, I haven't started... I haven't really started getting too aggressive on people in the world. I'm trying to, like...

I made a mistake when I chose the location on my fort and have made it very difficult to secure. So I'm solving some internal domestic problems at the moment, which is I... I'm sorry, man. Do we need to record on a different day? Well, no, we'll work it out. We're going to work it all out. It's all going to be okay. Money dwarves are going to hug it out.

Okay. We're fine. We're fine. Everything's fine here. How are you? Boring conversation anyway. Yeah, I was. Hurry up, Luke. We're going to have company. What film is that? What? What are these guys talking about?

Yeah. There was a space epic back in the 70s and got really popular in the 80s. And it was pretty popular. It had a certain stickiness to it. Stickiness. Anyway. Any who'sy. Part of the reason that I haven't been attacked is my own fault because I limited my population to 50 until I got my fortress good and established.

So now I have opened it up to a population cap of 100. So I'm up to 88. So I think that I think that 60 used to be the trigger. So 60-ish used to be the trigger for getting sieges. So there may be one coming soon. I'm a big, I like immigration. I'm all for it. So I've always, I've always had open borders in my fortress.

I typically would, except this one I limit up because I wanted to get my reinforced walls. up before I was large enough to, to, you know, attract attention from the goblins, really. That was my main point. And then I forgot. My fortress was going so well. And I'm like five game years in and have a nice fortress. What size worlds are you playing now? I'm in a small one.

Yeah, I typically do small. Single, single continent. Everything saves faster. If I copy it to another location, it's faster. It's delightful. I like the small ones. Also, since I switched my game to multi-threaded, I have never seen the frames drop below 100.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm emulating. That seems to work. Yeah, I'm emulating and I've got 100 and 100, 800 and 100. Yeah, it's good. I think I've seen like one crash in this fortress, which, and I've been playing it a lot. So I think that they've done a good job with that.

They seem to have made the game snap. nappier, and it still seems to be stable. I mean, what more can you ask for? Yep. Well, you can ask for museums. I would ask for a native version on the Mac. That would be cool. You don't say. You know, I'm going to keep asking.

They can't say no if I don't ask. They can't say yes either, so. So, Roland, you still dabbling with your Snake Man Fort? I have to say, I'm currently a little bit, maybe probably in the exam phase. So I only played. marginally here and there so you know the problem

with an older fortress really becomes that people don't oppose you anymore there is no opposition the the humans sometimes like show up at my doorstep but they are themselves so unconvinced

why they do it that they just flounder around. Okay, I want them to attack me at this point. I want them to actually try and, like, be serious, you know? Come on. Do it. But they're not really serious about it, okay? They just send, like, six guys with some swords and, like, two that carry this, like, funny little ram, and then there's, like, another four archers, and they call that a siege. Oh, no. buddy, I have 300 people here. What are you trying to do? So I'm trying to take over more of the human population, like take over their settlements in order to actually remove a lot of the snakemen from my fortress, but have them remain in the world. And that brings up a much bigger issue

because the amount of humans that are opposing me in the civilization that I'm, at Warwick is now rapidly just vanishing. I don't think they have any more people to ascend at me. So... That's interesting. This is also the world where I had the problem that the last remaining goblins are on like the southeast continent. And I don't get there. I can't get there.

And I'm now, I kind of have to decide. Do I start attacking the elves To just have somebody that can attack me? Yeah, of course. Definitely attack the elves. Yeah, but they just bring animals. It's okay, I mean, it's a great sport for my both throwers Because, you know, it's unarmored and a lot of targets.

But I really, really don't enjoy elven sieges. Okay, their ambushes, they're terrible. to stay friendly. They just pop up out of nowhere, right? And it goes like pop-pop, and suddenly there's like 16 war elephants that came out of a bush. What?

And the next thing that you know is your game just is freezing up because they are not just 16 war elephants in that bush, but like 160. Have fun. Old throwers. So, yeah, do I, do I cheat and try to get to the goblin island?

Do I make a new fortress on the goblin island? But that I... Hmm. It's hard, but... I don't know that that's cheating. Yeah, but... I don't know. Then I would not have the actual big fortress that I have right now,

but I would need to start a new one, right? I could, of course, put the population cap, like ridiculously high and just wait that the migration waves cheat in people. And like, bloop, yeah, they're here. They don't have boats. You can't get it here. But, no, they're here. Okay.

But, I mean, otherwise, the siege update is amazing. It's just, I think I'm overpowered. You know, this is the moment in a game where you just grind it. And you're now, like, level 250. And you go to the boss. and you go like, boop, and he's dead. And you're like, oh, shit, I'm so over-leveled for this.

Oh, God. Now what? And you're right. Dwarves in general do seem to be a little overpowered. And I'm going to reserve judgment on whether or not they're still overpowered until when I start seeing the results of this update, because I really don't know that I've seen them yet. Yeah, definitely seems more powerful than they were back in the,

late 30s, early 40s. I don't know, maybe it's just we've gotten better playing the game. I think it's that because they, I mean, dwarfs always have been very overpowered. If you manage to get a dwarf

and you train them for long and you give them good equipment, which in my case is just steel equipment. I'm not assuming that you have to go at Manthine. That dude is becoming a berserker in maybe

10 in-game years and the only thing that will stop him is that your enemies are so numerous that at some point he's just exhausted topples over and gets his skull crushed by a chihuahua so

and if I for example I'm looking right now at just a random soldier in my fortress okay okay fair he's a little older he is 147 years old, has a wife and two kids.

Oh, he's just getting started. He is just getting started. He has... He has 12 notable kills and 101 other kills. His skills are so off the chart that they don't... They're not really shown anymore, okay? Like, there is legendary, which is supposed to be level 20. but there is levels above that.

It just keeps on going, right? And it becomes a little weird because I don't know if you've ever played Kenchi, but the actual skill experience necessary to gain the next skill is a bell curve, and at some point you start clashing down again and then it gets faster again, or something like that,

because legendary observer level this is like a df a df feature by the way level double plus it doesn't show it anymore and then it says he has two 22,449 experience out of the number is now cut off just says 225 so like what skill is this dude I don't know anymore. He's beyond legendary. His shield usage is at level 65. His wrestling is at 42. That means that striker, for example, is 22. That means legendary is 20, right?

The max is 20, but he just kept on going. He does not get hit. So... Well, he's like a ninja. He is... Amazing. an amazing ninja and I'm just a little confused

what do I do now? The bolt throwers seem ineffective compared to a militia who is like level 120 in wrestling. Yeah, but they look cool. They do. I say that not having built one yet

but I kind of have the idea that I'm going to put my bolt throwers on top of that roof that I was talking about earlier so they can shoot down at all of the things that come in but yeah I've got a boatload of bone bolts like we were talking about last time yeah sorry I wasn't meaning to derail you they're rolling so I have a question it's fine yeah the the bolts definitely are something that I've never considered um the amount of bolts that I made before was just very small like I don't really have hunters I think I have like one or two hunters just for the fun of it they kind of useless

It's a source of a, it's a source of tallow. If you set it to out of adventure. I mean, true, but it's not that I need it anymore, you know. It's more like, oh, it's funny. But now the boat throwers, they do give me a curveball, and they do actually give me something to do, where I now have to put in, like, bigger manager orders and have to restack my ammo stockpiles to the surface,

so they get to the ammo stock power faster and then stock the ball thrower again and it's like okay, okay, let's not make like 300 bowls like before but make like, I don't know, a thousand.

Okay, cool. This episode of Dwarforture Shrown Table is made possible in part by Mondragar's masterwork meat hall maintenance. Spill veil? Wobbly tables? Bards stuck in the rafters in. Mondragar handles repairs, refurbishing, and debartification. Mondragar, keeping your tavern rowdy, but structurally sound.

So with your bolt throwers, I think I've done something dumb, maybe with mine. I've put them, I've made my reinforced walls, and then I've set them up at the top of the wall. And it looks like they're shooting out at that level on top. I'm thinking that they're not going to hit their targets if the targets are coming in on the ground. They don't traverse Z levels? Is that correct? I guess that's my question. Hmm.

Hmm. That is an interesting question. I think they do travel Z-levels because I've already used them against human invaders. And I only saw, like, there were, in fact, front of my walls essentially and the bolt thrower were just like angling down and going like and I hope that you can reclaim bolts from the both forer because that's a lot of bolts yeah and because I have also mine above the entrance they do get angled down and then all the bolts are completely gone and you don't pick up a single one of them well I'm going to try

it now practice fire and let's see oh yeah yeah okay i think because you can angle them a certain way right yeah where are those bolts going though man they're just going right into the hillside holy cow i think they just vaporize i think when they target fire they just shoot straight right they don't really aim at anything and then it goes straight but if they do have an enemy to shoot at then they you know, they actually look where the enemy is. All right. I'm going to leave it ready, but do not fire. We're going to park it.

So I've got another aside here. I would like to do another shout out to Mike and the team at DFFHack because I have learned the utility of the DigV command in combination with a setting in dwarf fortress that I finally discovered. So whenever you use your arrow keys, By default, in any view, you jump over 10 spaces, so it's hard to actually select an individual cell. But I found that you can change that so that the slow cursor repositioning can go one at a time rather than 10 at a time. It used to be that the, I think it used to be anyway, that the cursor would move you one space until you hit shift, in which case it would move you 11, for whatever reason, 11 was the number.

but in version 50 that arrow the cursor move takes you over 10 squares are we all familiar with that oh yeah yeah if you shift versus yeah yeah really yeah at least in all of my new worlds

the default has been 10 spaces for moving your cursor so you mean the keyboard cursor right exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah okay and what the problem with that is is that it makes it hard to select an individual square that you want to want to select.

Yes. Because it moves up. So you can change that in the settings menu under game. If you scroll down, it's somewhere around the population cap. There's, um, pull it up here so that I can. Settings, game, roll down. Horizontal and vertical keyboard scroll tiles. And by default, it's set for 10.

Oh. And then the fast is 20. You can change that down to one. Oh. Now, it doesn't actually. seem to change it to one. It seems to change it to two, but it still makes it a whole lot easier to actually select a particular tile, which is very important when you're using the DF hack command, dig V. DigV will dig out, we'll select and dig out the vein of whatever

material it is that you have selected at that point. So if you like want to dig out all the magnetite, but you don't want to mess with digging out the, you know, the giant rectangle around it because you don't know what's in there. Then you can use dig V, and it will label all of the magnetite in that vein to be selected for mining. You can also do that without DF hack if you use the mining tool, and then you click the N show advanced options, and then you can do all dig every tile or dig only ore gems and auto mine any ore in gems, which are. next to it and they'll just go off and explore and dig out the whole vein like that. Well, that's fine. If you're looking for, if you're looking for bituminous coal. Oh, yeah.

No, they'll do that. They'll do it on BC as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you find, if you find a bituminous coal, they'll dig it out. They'll dig the whole doggone thing out. They don't care. Like the ultimat feature, you mean. Yeah, yeah, it's NB.

Let's see, I got some. It won't do it on things like, jet or or box site or many of the not useless ones. The DigV will. The DigVee, whatever, like you can do box site or whatever kind of. Actually, I did, I did place a mining order with DigV for Jet because I like to have Jet. Jet's cool.

Jet's cool. Jets's cool. For accents in my, in my floors. It is. It's cool. Jet looks really neat. It's a good, it's a good one. Jet Lee is a good, is a good Hong Kong film style.

So plug his career. What? Jet Lee. Do you know Jet Lee? What are these references, man? It's good. You like her. Your kung fu films, he's amazing.

Yeah, check him out. Jet Lee. I did like the DigV. And so I will try the Auto, the Auto Mine and do Dig Oars and things like that. See if that, see how that affects it. It kind of is cool, though, because it will make your mind, at least DigV, and it may do this with AutoMine too.

It makes your level look more like an actual mined than just a whole bunch of rectangles that are mined out. Yeah, it's neat. You can see, yeah, you can see the pattern with which the oars or whatever it is that you're interested in mining. You can see the pattern in

which they were placed into the into the earth whenever the world was generated. You get shelf into a little pickle though. If you do it in your fort, sometimes they'll dig through the walls in your fort and like carve stuff up or they'll dig straight into caverns. I've had that happen. Use with

caution. I'm only using it in a cavern that, or sorry, on a level that I'm using as strictly mining for resource allocations. Yeah, right, exactly. Not, well, I don't know if you ever do it and you're like building your fortress out and then all of a sudden you hit a vein of something and you really want it, but that's where your bedrooms are and you're like, you know what? I'm going for it. I'm doing it. Dig it out and replace it with a wall. Dig it out and wall it up. Yeah. Yep, exactly. Good old block walls. Good old black walls.

And now we can do it with reinforced walls. Yeah. How are we feeling about those? I wonder if they make it more valuable. What's the value there? Are they just harder for them to siege through or whatever? Supposedly, whenever the siege comes and they try to break through the walls, it'll make it a little bit harder for them to do.

Okay. I haven't run into it yet. So I'm wondering now if I want to do my pocket world, but like make it 500 years old because I have no undead and no goblins in my world, and it's 100 years old. And I'm kind of feeling a bit sad about that. No goblin? No goblins. There are no goblins here. There's a few mysterious forts.

Hab-gama. But there's no goblins in the whole continent. I'm like, what happened to them? There's a mysterious layer. A couple mysterious layers, but nothing. Man. Interesting. Well, yeah.

I miss the gobbos. I've got them. They're in my world. In fact, I have a couple of them living in my fortress right now. There's like a goblin poet. See, I love those. I like it. I always try to put a goblin in charge of something if they move into my fortress, like Chief Medical Dwarf.

Somehow I always want a goblin to be my chief medical dwarf. Like, just I'm obliged to do that. If there's a goblin there, I'm like, well, I don't care if you're a poet. You're not a doctor and a poet, pal. Well, actually, that's not even a bad idea because they don't die from old age. Oh. So you could just, I mean, if you keep him safe, right? that dude could just keep on cruising.

That's what I'm saying. See, I knew I was on to something. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Now, who I wouldn't trust with my medical supplies is the elves. Kangaroo man. Kangaroo man. Yeah, and suddenly you have like 12 splins less. Today's show is sponsored by Keith the Green Wizard's Enchanted Pickaxes.

Need to mine faster? Dig deeper? accidentally open up a cavern you absolutely weren't prepared for? Keefe's got a pick for that. Keefe the Green Wizard, where every tool comes with a complimentary, unpredictable, magical side effect. Is there anything that you can do to get more animal people in your world? Because I would love to have more of them.

You know, I asked myself the same question, and I've not come to a proper solution. it is just you pray to Armok that you got a good world and you probably did not and then you have to restart. Yeah and when I talk to myself, people think I'm crazy.

Listen. That's okay. So I think there is in the advanced settings a parameter that you can change but I'm not sure about that. The other thing that I've noted is that bigger worlds tend to have more opportunity for these creatures to actually have a habitat and come in contact with civilization.

It's just so exceedingly rare because you need to, A, have the actual animal person live in your world, which is not a given. Then that animal person has to come to a civilization and interact with them and become a citizen. Usually that only happens in elven civilizations for some reason. and then you need for the animal person to come to your fortress and like partition to stay you usually also need that elven civilization to be perfectly fine with you because if you're at war they're probably not going to come by so it's so it's a trick it's a big trick and you do have the ability with D.F. Hack to do a little bit of crispiness. You could make a adventurer. Yeah.

Of whatever. But adventurers are a romantic. And then you go with the adventurer and you make yourself like just a bunch of them. Okay. Just a bunch of kind of, I don't know what you want to have. Out people, elephant people. A bunch of them in a group. And you go to the fortress that you want to play. then you settle them down there and then you start up the fortress in fortress mode and then you have to change their

romantic setting with DF hack and that might work okay so I didn't know you could do that with DF hack yeah that to me represents that is new information yeah the the

the a romantic setting on your adventurers has a reason to exist but if If you do actually want to have a family of them in your fortress, you need to change it. How do I do that? What's the, do we know? Is it, what is it, GM editor? What's this thing to do?

Let me open the launcher. It is GUI slash GM minus unit. GM unit, okay. And that thing just opens up a box and you can change everything about that unit, including, Oops, that is not what I wanted to press. Including the orientation. Yes. It's called orientation in there.

And you can tell them, please have children and multiply. And that is actually very helpful. All right. I'm about to go. Somebody's going to get the blessing of our mock here. Let's see, Mr. Podashmaker. All right. Yeah.

We have talked for like an hour about a lot of, Nothing. A lot of things. This is an episode of Seinfeld. Well, well, now now. It was Dwar fortress, mostly. Now now. Yes, it has been mostly about Dwar fortress, you're right.

Yeah, mostly about Dwar fortress. And we have learned some really exciting things about civil engineering and some new things in general. So I'm feeling positive here. I'm thinking we're ending 2025 on a high note. What? Yeah. This is already the last one? Well, is it?

I guess that's the question. I was going to bring that up after we stopped recording. But okay. We can do this live. Okay, pause. Yeah, I'm cool with that. Maybe when we come back, one of us will have been sieged. I mean, it could happen.

It could happen. It could happen. I'm trying my best. All right. Until next time, everybody, have fun, and keep digging. Happy trails. Happy siegeen. And that wraps up, episode 120,

of the Dwar Fortress Roundtable podcast. Brought to you by Lucas's Rock Solid Home Decor, Mandergars Needhall Miracles, and Keep the Green Wizards occasionally hazardous enchanted pickaxes. Thanks to our patrons for keeping our fortress productive, lively, and only moderately cursed. This has been the Dwarf 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 Door Fortress 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-ST at DFRontable.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 DF Roundtable. This is a conversational podcast.

All Crafts Worship is of the highest quality. Thanks, Delphonseo.