Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 136: Moose Bites Can Be Pretti Nasti

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

This episode, we talk about werebeasts, fortress defense, and traps… among other things.

Welcome to Dwarfortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. I'm Jonathan. And I'm Roland. I'm Tony. So I uploaded that a bloodline fortress, and I got word from some of the other people who are doing it, that some of my dwarves have migrated to their fortress. So they've got, I can't remember, was Eleph-Fa-Fitz-Gerald is now in somebody else's fortress. It's kind of cool. You know, I thought that was kind of the idea to give your dwarves cool nickname so that people could instantly identify whose fortress that came from.

But the person, I think it was Criddle after me said, hey, you know, I think that I'll do that too. Or maybe it was Delfonso. But anyway, someone after me is like, hey, that's a pretty good idea. I think I'll nickname my dwarves as well. So that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. I think it's neat. I like it when they start showing up in different places.

Kind of cheating a little bit. I am still playing off of. that save locally. So I know that whenever I get my turn back on that, on that bloodline world, my fortress is probably going to be a shambles. But, you know, I'm kind of doing a little bit of a pre-construction. Well, actually, before the show, you saw that particular world. Berry wine, this sweet drink of youth. Hmm. Yeah.

Hollowing out some land so that I can fit my giant monument in. in. I hope I can do it. I hope I can get it done because I want to see if anybody recognizes the monument. I'll just leave it at that.

All right. I saw Krug Smash was back. Cool. I've not been on YouTube really lately. Is it YouTube that he's doing still? Yeah, he did another short fort with the dinosaurs. I don't know if he's going to continue it or if it was like, hey, I want to check this out.

It's kind of fun to see our guy back a little bit doing some stuff. So good for him. That's cool. I will certainly have to check that out. It's the same great quality that he always offers. Good fun, lighthearted. I would love to see things. Nice art. Yeah.

You know, just even if it's like once every couple months, it's good. It's very creative, dude. Yeah, he was going at it too hard. I think so, too. I don't know if it ever, you know, paid for the food on the table. And he was putting so much time into that. I think it's tough when you try to turn your hobby into a job. Yeah, it stops being a hobby.

I don't know. It's just my guess. You know what I mean? So, yeah. Cool. Absolutely. Well, I love it. I love the current pace.

If he just does one a year, that's awesome. You know what I mean? It's like, that's cool. That's enough. I agree. Yeah, thanks, Croke Smash, you bearded bastard. Yeah, man. Look forward to checking that out.

And so how has everyone else's fortress life been going? I've been What do they say When you make the same mistake more than once And you expect different results What does that make you? So I just did a whole cycle of Yeah

Yeah so I did a whole cycle Of that work engineer? Yeah So I did this world And I love the map It was really great I could build the forts where I wanted And have everything kind of accessible

And I kept getting Wear creatures Constantly And finally After about the fourth fort of trying to make this world viable with all my various projects and having them all snatched away from me by dozens of weird creatures, I decided to obliterate the world and start a new one. So that's kind of where I am back at Tabula Rasa. But Sel Avivie. With obliteration, you mean you deleted the world, not like you exploded the world or something.

Yeah, yeah. I will oftentimes, because I'll go and I'll make a bunch of worlds and then all the saves are there and they kind of cluttered. it up so I'll just go in and blow away all the saves. Just call bankruptcy and start again. Sorry if all of the civilizations have risen and fallen and I've destroyed all those little lives. I'm willing to look at that. Just don't write a newspaper story calling me a genocidal maniac, please. Yeah, I don't remember what the name of the world was, but a year or two ago,

I had a world that was that way as well. It was Wehramose. Actually, if you were playing in that world, you really can still download it from, from the website, but yeah, I would build a fortress and then it would get taken over by Wermose. And the problem was from the very beginning that I didn't contain the lichenthropy outbreak to start with.

So it was just a matter of time. Every fortress that I joined, you couldn't take in any migrants because one of them would inevitably be, or one or more of them would inevitably be a, It spread so much, yeah. Yeah, so that world just got toasted. It's like The Walking Dead, right? Except with wear creatures. What do moose do, the walking moo?

You know, the interesting thing is that it was, what is the plural of moose? Is it also just moose? Mm-hmm. Okay. That it was moose, because Meese? No, it's not mees.

Meese. I love mees. I think it's mees. Moose. Because that at least is a dangerous animal, you know, as like a wear creature. If I, I know that they're still dangerous. But if a weird chinchilla pulls up, I'm not scared. I'm laughing. And then I'm dead because it killed me. But I'm, I laugh before I died. I once had a wear mammoth.

that was really impressive, but they don't leave a lot left to be infected, if you know what I mean. That sounds like trouble. Yeah, moose are pretty formidable. My wife was biking on a cycling trail in Anchorage, Alaska, when she saw out of the corner of her eye something just off the trail. And she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, well, that's a moose. And then the moose, like, crossed the trail about 10, 15 yards. She got some great pictures of it. Yeah, they're big.

They're terrifying. You don't want to mess with them. No, you look at it and it's like there's something in your brain that's like, pass. When you see it, you're like, nope. It really does have that like a bear. I think that's called survival instinct right there. Yeah.

Like, I'm, no thank you to that creature. I don't know how aggressive they are if you leave them alone, but. They're dicks, I heard. Excuse me. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've heard they're super dicks. That's okay. I've given up on the, on the, on the,

safe. I just label all of them explicit now. Nobody's going to. Even the chatbots aren't listening. So I think we're good. Like they're not, they're not really scanning the content. I think it's supposed to be user reported. So please be nice. So yeah, so they're mean, huh?

That's what I've heard. But you know what? That's one of those theories that I'm happy to just kind of leave and not test. I don't want to just be like, I don't know. Are they really? I'm going to go up and poke it with a stick. You're like, okay. But I think hippos are the same, right? Have either of you come across a moose, not a wear moose, but just a regular moose in Dwar Fortress? Do they have them? Huh.

I don't think I've seen one. I don't know that I have. I'm pretty sure they do. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they do. They're not pack animals. I've never seen them drawing carts. Hmm. I don't think it has meas.

Or is it mice? What's the plural of moose? Mooses? What's the plural of house? Meushthans. Mustacens. Mustafa. Mustafa.

That's what it is. Mustache. I don't know. I'm out. I got nothing left. I'm actually struggling to recall if I've ever saw a moose. And for some reason, my brain only comes up with the fact that I've seen like two moose in Red Hat Red Hat Redemption, too. But that's the wrong game.

Hmm. They do exist in an indoor fortress. because we know that some dwarves like Moose for their broad antlers and their large size. You know, if you go on to the Moose article on the page, there's sometimes these de-rated additions to the post, you know, the humor part. And I'm struggling to comprehend this one

because it does not make sense in my head. it is written really weirdly and has like special letters Are you reading it in German or English? No, in English of course. So the moose is capable of bringing down the toughest adventures and soldiers with hooves that can cave in skulls with frightening ease. This creature has been dubbed the scourge of Canada

by survivors in such horrific encounters. Moose have also been known to bite female dwarves attempting to carve their initials into their flanks. Not really. She was carving her initials on the moose with a sharpened stick given to her by Bertha, her brother-in-law, an elven stick grower, and starved many elven plays.

The hot hands of elven stick-grewer, shoots of passion, and huge... It sounds like they're given an homage to Monty Python and Holy Grail. Yes, minding, moose bites can be pretty nasty. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have to put the umla, so it is. We apologize for the fault in the D for Dwarf.

those responsible have been sacked. Mind you, moose bites can be pretty nasty. I believe that. Yes. I've seen the films. Yes. I've seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail enough times that I recognize

that before it actually became obvious. We just like to go see that. Monty Python on the Holy Grail? Yeah, like 15 years ago. Yeah, you need to see, that comes from the opening credits. Ah. We watched it with John Cleese.

He did an event here, which was like the 80th anniversary of it. You bearded bastard. It was so cool. You know, we had to drive a bit to go see it. But it was really cool. It was just him kind of chatting about stuff. And then he sort of watched along with everyone and then told some stories about how they made it and answered some questions. It's cool.

It was really neat. I was glad to. Did you explain the reasoning behind putting such a unsatisfying ending to it? I think a lot of it sounds like it came down to they ran out of money. This is sort of what I kind of gathered from it. Like, we didn't have money. There's such a Monty Python ending, though. I mean, okay.

Anyway, so check out the moose page on the Door Fortress Wiki, uh, non-award winning website. And it is, uh, it is, it is pretty good because moose do exist in Door Fortress, apparently. But we've, ooh, they have a lot. Yeah. Meat 10 to 12. fat ate. They got a lot of

butchering returns. Nice. Moose liver roast. Delicious. Mmm. Succulent. It makes me hear the northern exposure. It's something in the head. This segment has been brought to you by Patrick

Shaw's Waremoose Response Service. Heard heavy hoofbeats in the hallway, found antler marks on the dining room door, is something large, furious, and Technically still a dwarf charging through the livestock pasture? Patrick Shaw's train crews specialized in rapid containment, reinforced barricades, emergency evacuation routes, and explaining to the militia that, no, it's not just a really angry elk.

Patrick Shaw, when the full moon brings antlers, call someone with a plan before somebody gets lichenthropy. When I do the dinosaur worlds, I still want to do it where they're domesticated and everywhere because my feeling is like I don't need more crazy out there because I don't think you can catch and tame them or if you can. I've had very little luck. And then the other problem I have when I turn it to like put the dinosaurs in normally, I just never find them. It's been one of my challenges.

So I'm just like dinosaurs connect the IV right in my arm. I'll take that. That does make sense because, you know, the way that animals in the game spawn is just, if you have them spawn in your map, then congratulations. You can do fun stuff with that kind of dinosaur. But it's not like you can go around everywhere and just get yourself every single kind of dinosaur. And the worst part is if you settle a really good map and you don't have dinosaurs, like naturally spawn, I mean, then you don't have dinosaurs.

Naturally spawn. It sucks. So you kind of have to buy them off the elves if they're nice. Yeah, I want me some dynos, baby. But so far, I have had good luck. I've not had rampaging angry dynos because I've been cutting too much wood or anything. So I'm feeling pretty good. I'm just waiting for the moment when I have like a T-Rex wear beast or whatever.

Oh, no. No, yeah, good point. Are there dinosaur-ware creatures? I mean, I don't actually know, but I don't see a reason why they shouldn't. Yeah, why wouldn't there be, huh? Oh, Lord. Oh, no. Dinosaur-ware creatures?

I'm saying, that's terrifying. Yeah, so far, my new world that I've done, because I know you guys, we've talked in the past about great ways to use world gen and I am such an idiot when it comes to world gen like I just I fail every time I never get what I want so I was kind of wondering just I just used this I use the slot machine method where I'm like nope delete nope delete nope okay I'll take that one like I've never tried to like when I've tried it it just doesn't ever work I've never gotten exactly what I want to but uh but if you don't change too much and you don't change too far then that I found that you can get things to. Oh, and also I used

a generative AI to help me along with it and it helped immensely. To help you, like, figure out the parameters and stuff? Yeah. That's a great use of the chat box. I'd tell it what it was failing on. And they would say, well, try decreasing the change in this parameter and see if that helps. Yeah. Yeah. It was very, it was very helpful.

Yeah, I did something similar with one of my chatbox. I had it basically used DFWiki and all the online documentation I could find on it to be the authoritative source. And it's going to be helpful with some of that stuff. I was trying to try to use a chat bot to help me with some mods, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Did you point it at Reddit? Because the sources that were the most helpful for mine was Reddit sources to help mine work. No, I haven't done that yet. No.

You should try pointing your, it pointed at a... Yeah, you're probably right. That's probably a good one. Yeah, you're probably right. It's a good one. If they don't block it. Well, I guess they'll block it. They didn't block Open AI for it.

Of course, Open AI may be paying Reddit something. I don't know. Don't know what kind of shady deals are happening in there between the goblins and the necromancers, right? Also, I am currently looking up wear creatures just to find out whether or not there's dinosaur wear creatures. There is a list that is supposedly the entirety of all wear creatures, but I don't know about that. That doesn't seem like a lot of options.

It's just very limited. I wonder what it was updated. Where moose? And I don't even see the wear mammoth. I know there's wear mammoth. We've talked about wear mammoth before, haven't we? Yeah, yeah. I definitely remember, oh no, I'm blind.

Here it is. I think that I got attacked by wear squirrels once. Where squirrels? Oh, where golfer. Oh, gosh. I kind of miss Lachanthropy now. It's been a while since I've been inflicted with it, but yeah, you get some pretty fun. I just wish there was an easy way to take care of it.

I was able to figure out a way to help control it. Basically, I just locked up a lot of people for a decent amount of time. and sequestered them to see if they turned at the next full moon. And if they turned to the next full moon, they got, you know, dealt with. Voted off the island? They were terminated with extreme prejudice. Fair enough. Yeah.

I like the casks of a Monteado style dealing where I like to just wall everyone up, you know. I did that. Yep, I did that with a child dwarf that I couldn't bring myself. to kill. Yeah. So I think that I occasionally would sneak toys and stuff into the room so they'd have something to play with. It didn't help his mood, though.

He was usually just depressed all the time. Speaking of toys, is there a purpose for them in the game? I mean, yeah, you can play with them. That's like asking, is there a reason why you buy Legos? Yes. Did the children actually play with them? Okay. Yes.

Okay. I think maybe I don't know. I mean, if they have time to do so, you know, if you keep telling them to clean the battlefields and they're going to do that instead, I don't really like appointing my children to do jobs because then they, I don't know, stand in the corpse stockpile and get really sad about it. Nobody is forcing you to do this. Yeah, why do they do that? That is crazy. You turn off all the labor for the kids? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

there's a tab called Chorce and at maximum I tell them to clean or whatever but hauling is a really bad idea because then they get stuck in like corpse stockpiles because as soon as they drop the corpse they go like no I'm free now I will play make believe

while you know standing in corpses but yeah they will play with toys and I don't think the quality of the toy actually matters too much So it could be like a really cheap made woodblock, and they're perfectly fine with it. But I like to make them a few toys, you know, give them options. Do where creatures age, does their human, or sorry, their dwarven counterparts, do they age? So in other words, if you have a child were moose, will it eventually become an adult wear moose?

Do you grow with your affliction? Not in the wearmos form. Like, will the dwarf grow up, basically, or will it be forever a child? I'm pretty sure the child will grow up to be a normal dwarf at some point. This is not that. I don't actually know. So it doesn't arrest aging. It just lets them live for them.

No, it shouldn't. It shouldn't arrest aging, but I'm not sure how it works with, like, max age. Oh, yeah. I wonder if they would still kill over, because I know that whenever they come back from their party day with the full moon, they are healed from whatever ailments they were having. I mean, I think that if they haven't got a leg, I think they still haven't got a leg.

But their wounds are healed, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That can't be exploited for a super soldier program, but then again, you have, you know, an insane preserve. You've got to hide everybody, though. Yeah, yeah, well, just ups and downs, you know. Yeah. This episode of Dwarfortress,

roundtable is made possible in part by Blood Toes Fortress Defense Works. From layered gatehouses and drawbridges to fortified entrances, protected stairwells, and emergency fallback positions, Blood Toes helps make sure the things outside stay outside. Goblins at the gates? Forgotten Beast in the Caverns? Something with six legs in a name nobody can pronounce? Blood Toes has got a wall, door, or bridge for the occasion. Blood Toes. Because a good fortress defense is a good fortress defense should be finished before the screaming starts. So I was kind of thinking about how my defense procedures have changed over the years. And it kind of made me think that it might be something fun to talk about.

You know, we've done defense episodes in the past, but it's been a while. And I think that I've become a worse and worse defender. I don't mess with traps so much anymore. I don't mess with much defense at all. I just make everybody a soldier. That seems to work the best. Well, what about you guys? Like everybody, everybody?

Well, I don't tend to make them be a soldier if they don't like fighting, but that's not many of them. Hmm. I see. And often I will exclude my mayor, but yeah, but pretty much everybody else. They end up being, you know, if the bookkeeper gets killed, then I just get another bookkeeper. Because once you have 40 or 50 dwarves,

then someone's going to be able to be a bookkeeper. It's not that hard of a job, right? Well, I mean, the bookkeeper is going to tell you a different story about that part. Do you also fully equip every single person in your fortress with armor and weapon? Well, I tell them to do metal armor. I don't usually do this until I've got a steel industry going

and I've built plenty of weapons. But yeah, I just tell them to do metal armor and then have them go grab their weapon of choice. Interesting. Okay. Uniform of metal armor and just run to it. I still haven't messed with archery or crossbowman. I need to do that because there's been some eagles that have been pretty annoying with my most recent fortress. I like to shoot them out of the air.

I get like agitated ravens and stuff. So annoying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, leave my stuff alone, you jerks. Agitated Eagles have been my thorn. Just like real life.

Why did they want a step ladder? What are you doing? What is a crow going to do with the step ladder? Crows like peanuts. I will also tend to adjust my schedule, my training schedule, so that there is as little overlap as possible. Because whenever you've got like, you know, I've gotten up to like five or six squads before.

And whenever you have five or six squads, you've got to be careful that not too many people are all in training. at once. So eventually, you'll get to where people are only training for a couple months out of the year. I also tend to send them while they're training, send them out on angry animal hunts. Like in this most Risa fortress, there was an agitated black bear that was just kind of wandering around the fortress. It wasn't bothering anybody, but that didn't mean that we weren't going to kill him for his fur. And we did. I hear that using your dwarves increases their abilities a lot faster than simply sparring with each other.

Setting them out to, you know, a cabin. I agree. I agree. Absolutely. Has your fortress defense techniques changed over the years? I think I wouldn't actually need to go back a little and see what I did back then. Dwarven toilet, man. Flush. Yeah, but that was never really like a defense measure. That was more of a clean-up

I don't want this crap cluttering my fortress kind of deal but I think back then I definitely made larger squads I would make squads of

10 and also just say take whatever weapon that you want man I don't care go train but I would already have like somewhat of a standing military, so not all dwarves would be assigned to military duty at some point. There would be generally a lot of civilians too. I definitely don't do that anymore. My squads now have like five

people in them, and they have dedicated weapons, so I have spears, I have axes, as like individual squads. And then instead, I just make more squads for each individual weapon type. Well, for general fortress defense, I have also started implementing, I like to call it either self-defense classes or just like dwarven take one dough, where I will draft normal civilians into a 10-man squad that doesn't have any uniform. And then I set them to train casually and just throughout the year sometimes, they're self-defense skills

because they don't have weapons and they don't have armor. The only thing that they train is like wrestling and fighting and observer skills and discipline. And that helps with the dwarfs not exactly freaking out when they see other dead people

or fighting going on or whatever, but it has a slight downside that some of these become very eager people and they will rush into a brawl and set away from it, although it's like full on military fighting and you're just a dude in a shirt and they go like, yeah, I can take them.

No, you can't. Please, stay back. But it works very well for everything that is in the caverns. Well, that's... Wait, hang on. That's not correct, because now we have, like, cavern dwellers,

and they're, like, a big thing now? They are everywhere. That's not really true. But back then, when we mostly had just animals hang around, that worked very well, because even, like, a cave alligator, yeah, like, they would attack your dwarf,

and an untrained dwarf would just go, like, and either... dodge into the water or be like really scared for the next two months. While the Take One Do-Dwarf will wrestle the alligator, punch him to death, kick him to death, wrestle his corpse, and then just go home like nothing happened, and he will be perfectly fine about it. Like, oh yeah, I improved wrestling.

I'm feeling pretty good about myself. Okay. So that is the way that I like to implement. although it helps with happen as more than actual defense I would say I got a couple questions for you so in the old way that you used

to do it whenever you would have a lot of civilians still in your fortress what exempted a dwarf from service was there anything in particular or would you or was it random that is a good question I think at the very start

of my career I think I just drafted whomever. I was like, yeah, whatever. And if somebody had skills in any kind of fighting, then I would be more likely to draft them. But at some point, I realized that skills are completely secondary. Like, yeah, it's great that you know how a spear works. And like, this is the stabby end and this is not the stabby end.

It's great, dude. But that's why you're here for. You're going to train this for like three years. What is way more important is the. actual personality. And this is also why my squads became so small, because I sat down and I checked every single dwarf. I went through their head, their memories and everything.

I was like, okay, do you like fighting? Are you okay with conflict? Do you have a robust personality? And I noticed that this is very peculiar. Dwarves with better social skills and abilities generally. generally perform better as a soldier because even in their small amount of downtime,

they're more likely to find friends or whatever. I adapted the way... Well, so I've been experimenting a bit with the reinforced walls, but I'm not sure... So I usually do kind of like a hard outer shell and a soft inner shell

because I don't do two thicknesses of my walls in reinforced. I usually just do one. And then I use a drawbridge still. I used to always use the drawbridge because I'd read some stuff. But then when I saw that like a door would seem to stop a whole invasion, I was like, oh, I just use a door. But I think that's been fixed now.

So I think you are better off using a drawbridge now to be the egress ingress point to your port. I don't know. That's kind of what I'm seeing. Like they actually, you actually do have to have defenses now. Yeah. Have you all run into diggers yet? Diggers? Yeah.

People who will dig up the walls. No, no, no, no. Tunnelers. That will dig under your walls. Yeah, no, I know. I know. Haven't had any. I have not seen that.

I've seen dudes with the battering rams. Yeah. And then you just kill a couple of them and then they drop the battering ramp. But sadly, I don't think you can do anything with the battering ram because it would be fun to take it. Yeah. So my other question, Roland, was did you notice anything improving whenever you changed your defense scheme or is it just mostly about happiness? I would say the

efficiency improved by like 500% Oh wow Yeah The difference between dedicated squad For a single weapon And soldiers that are Personality soldiers, not skill soldiers As I like to call them, is

huge The only thing that I would need to get better at Is actually giving them off time some real off time where they go and socialize because I struggle well my dwarfs struggle with the fact that they don't really have a lot of friends if they are in my military because I keep training

I keep over-training them. That is the only downside but I would say I don't really have soldiers that go mad as I'm like oh my God I've seen so much death oh my God I can't bear this you know, the warrior PTSD doesn't really happen. And if it happens to one person out of maybe like 20, he gets retired that instant.

And maybe he can become a teacher for the self-defense classes, but whatever. And the fact that I have dedicated weapons also means that I can specifically fine-tune who fights what. So spears are more like. to go down at the caverns and fight animals, especially large animals, because that's what the spear is so good at, while axes and maces go and fight goblins and humans. And that is a really, really nice way of doing it. Plus, I've tweaked my armor a little bit, so now I have

a breastplate and a male shirt. That works also really good. and I've had less not accidents well people die okay people die less if they have better armor not a shocker but yeah

that does tend to help they're not quite as squishy that is true and people die I remember this this was like years ago at this point but there was a threat that I read through about like metal values and what metal is best for what kind of armor. So usually I go steel full set, full set plate armor out of steel and a bronze male shirt because apparently bronze is like good against blunt weapons or whatever.

No kidding. Bronze. So you're mixing. Oh, you're mixing types. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm mixing metals, and I like to actually specifically tell them that they take a bronze nail shirt, not just metal nail show, and never make any other metal, but specifically bronze male shirt.

And sometimes they even go the double way and have different colored metal helmets. This is technically not like very min-maxy, but it just looks good. my spears have a different helmet color than my swords. That's really cool. So Tony, what about you? Besides the new use of the reinforced walls, have you noticed any major changes in the way you defend your fortresses? So I'm trying to use more bolt throwers because when I get them working,

they work really, really well. But I still don't quite fully get where the best place to put them is to defend my fort, do I put them on the ground level or do I put them on level up? Can they shoot through a fortification? I don't know. Those are the things that I'm kind of curious about. And then I'm all into the draw bridges. This is for the top level, the surface. But then, like, some of the biggest problems I have are like when I tunnel down, I usually will just, you know, build some kind of an airlock and then just tunnel straight down. And then until I hit a cavern and then I'll try to patch up the whole that I've created in the cavern and then, you know, just keep trying to go down like that.

But it's like those little mini defenses for me are not particularly good yet. And I'm still trying to work that out. I've relied on cage traps, but that's perfect. Anyway, that's where I am with my strategy. I do that too with the plug in the hole in the cavern. It's like I'll be like, no, you know, I'm really just not quite ready to deal with this yet. So I'll close a wall. No, thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Plus, if you make a more dedicated entrance, you have a much easier time actually defending it. Today's show is sponsored by Jamie McAllister's Precision Trappworks. Need a corridor that does more than simply lead somewhere? Jamie designs pressure plates, weapons traps, cage traps, retracting bridges, and complicated mechanisms that make unwanted visitors reconsider every decision that brought them to your front door. Each system is carefully planned, thoroughly tested, and connected to at least one lever that somebody definitely remembered to label. Jamie McAllister, turning ordinary hallways into very persuasive arguments against trespassing. But talking about traps, how many traps do you utilize guys?

I really don't anymore. I used to be really big into the cage traps. I would occasionally do a weapon trap, but mostly it was cancer. cage traps, just try to catch them. And I really don't that much anymore. I do that. I like cage traps because they're pretty effective. Yeah.

You know, just realistically, they're pretty effective. But I also like weapon traps. Like if I'm having a whole siege come in and I build my little traps hall or whatever, I still do. I will still do that if I make it that far to needing something like that. and then have them come smash in and I'll use stonefall traps too because I'm not embarrassed to

it. I like a good stonefall trap. It does hurt them. I did find out the hard way that cage traps don't work against them. We're creatures. They do sometimes. I think that is because they can count as your own civilization and those guys get to

just dodge the trap or not even trigger it, I think. I've had a few in the or patches get caught in it. Ah. Because I had somebody who was basically every, you know, every season, I used them as my alert detector and I had them encased in a wall in their cage and I would get an alert every single time it changed.

And then so I knew to go look and see who'd gone berserk. So I used it as an early warning system, the one that I got caught, was a very useful tool. Hmm. Yeah, that would be. Yeah. It's sort of like a detector. But it was interesting, though, like, you know, otherwise it would just be a dude. And they lived forever.

So I think it must grant them immortality as well, which not a bad benefit, I suppose. I personally have used weapon traps and cage traps as well, although I will fully admit that I only use cage traps for war crimes that I will do later on. Oh, right, to be the perpetrator of war crimes. not as a punishment. Yeah, like, I need some, what's the word? Victims? No, no, no, no, something nicer. Someone that, that, a volunteer, right. Subjects. I need some volunteers. Example. So step forward, usually the first line of attackers goes in the cage traps and the others are like, oh no, Stephen is in a cage trap. Oh, no. I guess we're just going to push forward. Well, guess who survived who didn't? I also like to make weapon traps, but again, honestly, only because I'm a little sadist, okay?

They're not really that effective, but I think it's hilarious if I have a weapon trap that is like 50 sawblades and Brozky just gets and you see just little body parts flying everywhere. That's funny, but it's not really practical because that cage trap, now is blocked by body parts and somebody has to come and unclasp it. So it only kills one person per raid. Hmm. I know that with better mechanisms, this can be circumvented, but still, the actual amount of people dying to weapon traps is low. But high is the fun factor when you read the log.

So, you know. Ah, yes, this is like the good old days, brutal, violent dwarf. Fortress Roundtable. Why not? Well, I'm, you know what I'm saying? I don't get to do it at the coffee shop. So I said, why not, right? Because, you know, I can't do this at the coffee shop or people get really mad.

You know, like you can't put a, you know, a cage trap, you know, at your local Duncan. Yeah, you can talk about things that dual fortress related that you just can't talk about in public. Or do them. You know, like if I built a stonefall trap at Safeway, people would really be pissed. You know what I mean? So I do it again. That's true.

And if I went out and chuck crossbows at Eagles, I'd be in trouble. Yeah. Actually, yeah, they're under protection, right? Oh, yeah. They're protected here. Oh, and if I take my chainsaw to the, you know, my neighbor's trees, there's going to be trouble. Oh, the neighbor?

And my neighbor's not even an elf, you know. So everyone cares in this world if I go cut down all the trees. So I mustn't. In general, in the real world, I'm kind of against clear cutting and strip mining. But, you know, I have no problem in the fortress. Yeah, no. That's true. That's true.

Pixels do hit differently. They do. Yeah, they do. They do. So does a pixel act. Yeah, you can turn them off and you don't have to deal with any real consequences. Thousands of civilizations. Have you guys, by the way, ever build like one 11?

Abrid trap, like a drowning trap or a magma trap or, you know, like a big mechanic trap. I've started, but I've never finished anything like that. I always get sidetracked. I took a lake one time and then dug it out to a huge thing that I had my entrance to my fortress at the very bottom of it with a hatch cover. Is that how I did it? I think it is.

and then I had that was down to the fortress and then I had another one at the same Z level that was the drain into the caverns so it would empty it and then I had a gate that would flood the fortress if I had an invasion and everybody better get down before all of the water rushes in so I would just kind of drown as much of the invasion as I could

in the lake and then I would drain them into the caverns that was a lot of work and hard to reset that sounds cool but i gotta tell you this excavation that i've been doing in my fortress has really especially since the lake leaked out into it it was really pretty so i'm kind of i kind of would like to do some more moat stuff and have things like reflecting pools and and things like that because they are very blue i think um reflecting pools dry in uh vandals so do do be careful i was waiting for someone to make that comment i was a tisd Yep.

That's a tee-up. Yeah, there you go. Knock it out of the park. Door and flag blue. Water traps and water mechanics can be really fun if you're not, you know, incidentally flooding your fortress, killing everybody. But a drowning trap. I will just, big disclaimer, way too good.

Be careful. You get so lazy. Because I know that with a flick of one button, I can't kill any siege of any size with a drowning trap. These things are unbelievably effective and I had to actually stop myself from using them because otherwise my military never gets any kills. They're so good. Wow.

I love them though. I would love to see a diagram of how you've built it out because I still, I don't think I quite did it right and then resetting it after you've used it. Oh, well, I like to empty the trap via gravity. So there is a reservoir below the trap and floodgates to the side. Admittedly, this was before the siege update.

And I just used tiny drawbridges in the wall. So they couldn't break through. Now they could potentially just ruin my drawbridge. Who knows? Essentially, I had like holes in the wall. I could open. and then the water would rush down into the reservoir and I could pump it up from the reservoir

using wind power into the K-trap, into the water trap. Admittedly, it doesn't fill up the water trap instantly that way because I didn't have like a water tower, like an above-elevation water fill tank because then it would just go and everything is full. It would take a while to actually properly, you know,

fill up. And I was okay with that because that's hella scary. Imagine you're in a dog dank corridor and now you realize where there's like moss everywhere and mud and dirt and it's wet. Oh, right. Water. Cool.

But yeah. You know that does remind me at the time that I built jail cells and I diverted water with a series of floodgates from my river to the area to the level just underneath the jails and put wells in each of the jail cells. That was a pretty intricate system that it wasn't a trap,

but it used a lot of the same principles that you would use during a drowning trap. I mean, I think you could turn it into it because the wells will flood, won't they? I don't know. Mine didn't. But I don't know. Yeah, they were at a Z level below where the river was. I've had my darned wells fill if I haven't pulled my floodgate. Fast enough. I lost a hospital life at one time.

Whoops, you do. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. I pulled my floodgate fast enough. Once I got to like four or five deep in the, in the layer below, I pulled the flood gate and cut off the water. So, yeah. So you put individual wells for every single jail cell?

Yeah, nine by nine, three by three jail sales, nine tiles with a, with a, with a well in it when each one of them so that the guy could get fresh water. Yeah. Wow. That's... He was changed. The chain would be in the middle. There would be a bed.

There would be a display furniture. I know. I'm an equally stunned reactions thinking, where are we like Norway? What the hell? I also put like artifacts in there with them. You treat them like people? It's not their fault of the damn mayor asked. them to build something that they didn't have the materials for, and then the stupid captain

of the guard goes and arrest them for not listen to the mayor, and they get thrown in jail for it. You know, you don't want these citizens. They'll get released soon, and you don't want them to be miserable. For a minute, I was thinking you were talking about putting goblins into nice jail cells, and I was questioning everything. This is internal law enforcement. I see.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Oh, few. We were worried about you. No, jail's not dungeons. Oh, okay. You can't make your prisoners of war into next generation's prisoners or next generation's warriors.

I don't know what you can do. Like, yeah, you got to treat the invaders bad. We call them re-education camps. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You know what, guys? I think it's about time for us to run up. I think it is.

All right. If anyone has the emails, let us know. You can, well, you can listen to the end of the podcast to hear what the email interest. But anyway, it's Uris at DFRountable.com. Send us an email and we'll read your email on the air. Okay, guys, I guess I'll see you next

time, huh? Yes, indeed. All right. Happy digging, people. Happy shoveling dirt. Don't get infected with a wear course. And that wraps up episode 136 of Dwarf Fortress

Roundtable. Brought to you by Patrick Shaw's Wermose Response Cruise. blood toes fortress defenses, and Jamie McAllister's persuasive trap design. Thanks to our patrons for helping keep the antlers outside, the walls standing, and the hallways considerably more dangerous than they look. This has been the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com.

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