Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 31: Graceland for Dwarves and Dwarven Psychology

Episode Date: May 31, 2020

Today we cover Roland's fortress with adamantine everything, the recent uptick in DF coverage in gamer press, and how psychology would be a good major if you're a young dwarf about to attend university. Graceland Wikipedia PageDev Notes for 5/13/2020Recent Dwarf Fortress in gamer press:PC Gamer 1 about procedurally generated monster spritesPC Gamer 2 about the world mapEurogamer also about the world mapGamespot another about the world mapDestructoid do you sense a pattern here?Reddit post on Dealing with StressForum post from ThreeToe -We need your help with game ending stress Musical Attribution - Thanks so much to Kevin MacLeod for making his awesome music available to content creators! Skye Cuillin by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4371-skye-cuillin License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Folk Round by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3770-folk-round License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. I'm Tony. We are here after another couple weeks of it seems interminable rain where I live and a lockdown and lots and lots of fun stuff that's going on. But that just means more time to sit in front of your computer and play Dwarfork. fortress, right? Exactly.

That was the plan. I have played a little bit of Dwar fortress over the last couple weeks, and we'll talk about it later. I've worked on our bloodline fortress some, and I have also, in the meantime, worked on some other fortresses. Nothing really interesting happened in my fortresses that were not the bloodline fortresses. So nothing really to comment about there. I'm continuing to progress in my learning.

I actually successfully fought off my first goblin siege. doing it probably the more correct way in that I didn't just lock the doors and hide I actually had three squads trained and I had a goblin siege of like seven goblins come in and my squads ended up going out and fighting them off so we lost a couple dwarfs but you know that's the price that you pay for Fortress Security

but yeah that was nice things started to work like they were supposed to Did you have any good melee battles with your archers? I have not even started training archers. I make sure to not buy any crossbows. I make great bludges. I have four squads. I've got a squad of macemen, a squad of short swordsmen, a squad of hammer dwarves, and a squad that is just whatever weapons happen to be picked up by those dwarves.

But none of them were archers. I am not that advanced yet to where I want to mess with training archers. Malay archers. Yeah. It's mixed success there. Have your personal fortresses progressed any over the last couple weeks? So I am still in oil world, which is now classified as a city with 167 population. Well, whoa, whoa, what?

Oil world, as in crude oil? Oil world. I don't know. It's world is in like to spin. Oh, oh, gotcha. Yeah, so it does sound more awesome than it is. And there isn't any oil here. But it is interesting.

So this is the one where the dwarves had a successful raid against the local necromancer tower and managed to steal the book and then had a few subsequent exciting raids on the Necro tower and kept stealing books. And now everyone in the fort is a. necromancer and then it also seems to be impacting people who come to visit who also become necromancers because we've copied that book so many times now so the whole world is i think slowly becoming necromancers so that's been really interesting to see just sort of everyone becoming a necromancer then for the first time ever my squad was able to kill and eradicate

the necromancer tower in its entirety so now it's just a ruin which is exciting It's just a vacant site now. So I've never had that before. That was pretty fun. Were you able to see any details of how those battles went to eradicate the Necromancer Tower? Like as in like the combat logs or whatever? Yeah.

It looked pretty mundane. Like it wasn't, you know, there were some big ones, but they took, the Necromancers took a lot of people, a lot of the dwarves hostage. And then some of those dwarfs were just. disappeared completely. I don't know where they've gone. They don't seem to be there anymore at the necromancer tower. But, yeah, it looks like basically it was just defeat, successful, ambushing defeat.

I'm looking through one of the combat logs now. I wonder if they stopped being dwarves and started being necromancer experiments. Yeah. So it's all, like, it's all human necromancer versus dwarf necromancer. So everyone's a necromancer. There's no such thing as no, we're in the solid necromancer. answer world. Let's see if I can find the very last mission log on this one because now I'm interested

and let's see how it went. I think I was just so excited, so excited that it succeeded. I was like, oh. That's really cool. We killed it. Yeah, and it's just, suddenly it just, we just kind of went in and kept scaling stuff, and then I clicked

raise the fortress, and then there were a whole bunch of artifacts left still, and then we just kind of kept reading it until there's nothing left. It's just, it's sort of just petered out, really, which is fascinating. Cool. Cool. Well, it's not cool that it just petered out, but it's cool that you were able to wipe out a necromancer tower. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm very surprised because I thought

those had like beasts in them or something that couldn't be killed, but whatever happened, it seems okay. So that's, so that's that fortress. And yeah, now I'm kind of like, okay, what now? Now you eradicate all other civilizations on your world. Yeah, I think I must. I mean, if you're the tower, capital T, capital T, then, yeah, that's what you need to do. Yeah, I guess technically we are the tower now, because we've got all the books and all the hotness. Yeah, I think we are the tower. I think you're right.

You had the epic locked cage battle with the other Necromancer Tower, and you prevailed. So that gives you the right to subjugate the entire world. Are we the baddies? So what will be interesting is if you retire this fortress and start up a new fortress, while your necromancer fortress is going. I wonder if you can be in the same civilization as your necromancer fortress and have it be the mountain home.

We also have a duchy and four baronies. So that's pretty exciting. And they're all necromancers. Yeah, it's really gone all gangbusters for us here in the world. I have to say, this one's exceeded expectations. But I did have a thing where, and I guess this kind of starts in the cheating thing, but one thing that happened is I'm playing in a

it was a, what do you call it, a purple biome? Evil? Yeah, it's an evil biome, but it doesn't seem to be, I can't tell if it's a reanimating biome or if it's just the fact that everyone's a necromancer and stuff just keeps coming back to life anyway because they keep raising it. But there was this echidna skeleton that

shows up from time to time and absolutely lays waste. So what had happened is I had four squads of Adam 19 dwarves that were all legendary, whatever, whatever's. And I was like, this echidna kept causing problems. And so I was like, okay, go get him. And it wiped out all four squads over the period of like an hour as it's grinding away at zero

FPS. So something bugged in the game, I think. And then the whole thing crashed. And so I lost that aspect of the progress. But now when I restarted, the echidna is not there anymore. So, hey, we beat it, I guess, by a game crash. So I'll take that as a success. So Roland, have you had a chance to play the last couple of weeks?

Indeed. I'm still in my cheese fortress. But at this point, you can't really say it's a cheese fortress anymore. Because really, I have more at a man time than cheese. Yes, yeah, it's ridiculous. I have five squads. think one two three four five yes and they are fully atmantine clad as well even the arches even the arches and I still have around eight hundred to seven

hundred atmentine wafers lying around and this spire is not even dug out like half the way cool So I have, like, a lot to go. And at this point, I'm just cranking out at Mantyne whatever's, like statues, chairs. I'm even making clothes out of Edmanty just to see if it's actually worth it or not. It doesn't seem like it's actually worth it, but okay. Can you demolish all of your workshops and rebuild them out of Adamantan blocks? Hmm.

Oh, that is actually a good idea. I should do that. The only thing that bugs me a bit is that you can't actually make beds out of Edmontine, which is really sad because I have so much Edmontine. I would love to give, like, everybody at an Edmontine bed, so everybody is happy. Wow. That's so wasteful. Yeah, it is.

but you know honestly I have enough at this point I gave my I don't even have like a duchess or anything I just have a mayor and I gave him an Edmontine clad tomb which means that there is a atmanteans sarcophagus chains of Edmontine chairs of that man time a chest of Edmontine I put a few coins of Edmontine in there just for the, you know, fun of it. There are two statues of my mayor doing stuff, like in one he's making cheese, obviously, and in the other statue he's becoming a mayor. They're both made of Edmontine.

So it's like ridiculously prized that tomb he loves it, and sometimes he even eats in it. Your fortress is the, you know, Dwar Fortress version of Graceland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, honestly, like, at this point, I have so much wealth that I don't know what to do with it. Do I need to explain the Graceland reference? I probably should because there's probably some onions. Yeah. So, Graceland was Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis, and it was well known for being just over-the-top gaudy with, well, for example, instead of, he had several limousines that he kept in his garage out back. And instead of chrome bumpers and chrome finish, it all was.

gold. So they had a gold-trimmed Bentley in his backyard. Because of course it was. Of course it was, right. He had like real fur carpet on the floors. Yeah, it's just gaudy. That sounds like your fortress. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the only thing that actually keeps me from being overrun by goblins is probably the fact that I'm out in the nowhere, I'm still on the mainland, but I'm like out in nowhere. I think there's only one thing next to me, which is a dwarven fortress that is also of my civilization. Other than that, I don't, there's like nothing. There is absolutely nothing.

The next thing is 10-day travel away. so yeah there's there's nothing going on it's a whole emptiness and this is probably the only thing that keeps me safe at this point because i have so much wealth the goblins do try to to kill me they send a siege of i think maybe a hundred goblins and a few like experiment people the annoying thing about what you know the goblins are Come on, I have like Edmantein armor. A few goblins don't do stuff against me. I also have a lot of drawbridges. But the experiments keep trying to destroy my fortress that is like open to the air and they keep destroying doors and my farm plots and killing my animals. It's not very nice. yeah honestly honestly um i think i might go ahead and just rate them to to like see you know

you can't come to me to my house and kill my animals that is not nice i will do the very exact same thing to you um but other than cranking out at mantine crafts i don't think I've done anything in this fortress. So, Roland, Trader Vic from the live stream is asking if you have any tips on generating a world with these crazy amounts of adamantine. It says that every time he tries to mine them, he just unleashes the clowns after a few bricks. Yeah, that's a thing, isn't it? Whoa.

Do you just luck out in this case, or do you have any strategies you use? No, I don't have strategies. This was pure luck. I just wanted a cheese fortress. And but one thing, I have to admit, I usually do one thing, because I have some kind of OCD when it comes to my layout. I use a DF hack to reveal the map to me before I start to do my layout just for the very purpose that I don't suddenly punch into the caverns while mining my photos. worse than that well

well yeah I get it I'm with you man I'm totally with you I do not want to punch into the underworld by accident on my first tunnel

it's just annoying yeah I mean I open up to the caverns later on in the game but while I do like deep fortresses like between the second

and third cavern layer I don't enjoy actually going through caverns themselves because they are a cesspool of danger. So I like to keep my distance to them. And sometimes I just scan how much Admantine I have

or where the Admantine is and if the Edmontine is accessible enough to make it an actual option to go down there. Most of the time it is not because you have like two, three levels of it and then you already have the um like a hollow in the spire and then you're going oh yeah nah nah but this this time was the only time where i've actually seen an advantage inspire that big um but i this is a normal world i did not use advanced perimeters

or like world gen uh stuff I think you can also use D.F.H. Inspect. Don't quote me on the actual command thing, how they're called. But I think there is something called Inspect, where you can inspect the map before you start in the very map. So you hit this keyword in and it shows you what kind of metal, ores, stone types you have. and usually it can also quote

how much at the mantine you have so you could try that at this point that's probably a little more information than I want to know about my map before I start though it seems like it would take some of the fun away unless you have a set goal like you really want to do a cheese fortress this time

so yeah yeah you're kind of like ready for that to happen yeah that makes sense yeah so for example I didn't do that because I just wanted a cheese fortress but if you want to to make an industrial steel fortress, then it is, I wouldn't say necessary, but it really helps because you might set up the whole fortress only to discover that you actually have no iron

in your map. That would be bad. And also a place for that would be if the whole purpose of your fortress is to do a great work and you want to make sure that your conditions are right before you start for building your, you know, 750 layer tower. Yes, especially for like

megaprojects. I think, I wouldn't say it's necessary, but because it never really is, but it can really help doing that,

you know, because imagine trying to do a megatower made of glass and you realize you have no sand on their map and you have to

start over because that would be just annoying. Yeah. Well, it's up to you honestly yeah I am I've I've used

DF hack reveal before to look at to see what kind of minerals I have just you know to save myself hours of exploratory tunnel digging like did I just step into something here or have I found a good yeah I'll do that

I'm not afraid to admit it I don't remember if there's actually what's it called, like, different levels of details you can question, so to say. But, sure, I did it once for a steel fortress, and I found a nice niche where I had a lot of steel, as well as natural coal. Oh, yeah, that's a problem, isn't it?

You got to have that coal. Yeah, I mean, you can use wood, but on the other hand. yeah it's it's a bit annoying also the the bitumous coal is so much better than what coal honestly it's like wow and you don't have elves coming giving a hard time yeah that's elves that's that's just a plus maybe you should go kill a couple elven forts with my with my squad here maybe I'll do that that sounds like a fun idea Yeah, yeah, because I honestly, at this point, I honestly fear for the entire elven population in this world where I currently play because, you know, I have a fortress of Edmontine-clad dwarfs that are quite bored because the goblins are too weak for them.

Yeah. See, that's where you've got to go after the necro towers. now this is this is your yeah I just have two and one of them isn't reachable from my position because it's on an island

because this is extremely funny I actually have a human island and on this island there only are humans and also a few what's it called like some cat people I don't

remember like lepers leopard people or something yeah but on the on the mainland there are also a few humans but just a few and that tower is in like a broadly forest

and on one side it is completely walled off with a dwarven fortresses and on the other side there are like in mass of goblin fortresses.

So that tower is already in civil danger without me actually doing anything. I'm going to also mention here we don't do a whole lot of self-promotion because we just don't like that sort of thing. But I did

mention that we got a question for the live stream and I'm going to just go ahead and throw in here that the live stream is a perk for our top level of Patreon support. reporters. And if our listeners should want to support the podcast, then you can go to Patreon and look up to a Fortress Roundtable. And so that's an option for you. We're not asking you to do it. But, you know, it's there should you be so inclined. It's an option, yes. Just wanted to put out that someone's going like, hey, a live stream. How do you get the

live stream? That's how. vlog they came out on the 13th and we have wonderful wonderful tree stuff I myself really enjoy the stuff you post especially about trees and plants and stuff because I like trees and plants in real life and the third option that he post is forest and crone shyness and I was going to make sure that we talked about that yeah that was cool yeah I don't want to like bore anybody with like the biological details behind that but while not all plans in real life do that I think it's a really really good addition to dwarf fortress because I really had

problems deciding okay this this tiny piece of plant annoys me and I want to get rid of it but which tree um like has those branches attached to it so now this problem is over because you can actually see that the trees are not touching against each other you have one separate tree and then you have a bit of space between that tree and the next one. So you can always distinguish where one tree starts and the other one ends. And I think that is amazing. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So it pretty much looks like they are still going full bore ahead on working on graphics things for the for the Steam release. It does. Yeah. And those those of those, it's so promising to see, like, these really tangible, cool visual updates that keep coming out.

I think it's going to be really exciting to see what this will look like once it, once we get the release version, first of all, I think that's going to, the Steam version, it's going to look really cool. And then just what people are going to be able to do with it in the workshop, it's going to be super cool. I'm not exactly sure why, but I have seen over the last few weeks a lot of chatting in the gaming press about Dwell Fortress and the Steam release. And it seems like there's just been a huge uptick in the frequency of Dwarfortress articles out there over the last, you know, since the beginning of May even. And I don't know if it's because of this last release. One of the things that he put in this last, in the last dev notes was the detailed picture. of the map so that you can zoom in

on the map comparing it between the ASCII and the new graphics and I think that we may have even touched on this on our last episode but I hadn't actually zoomed in and looked at the detail that is in this new graphic looks pretty cool have you guys seen the full-sized one?

Yeah, I did. This is this meth made a coolness that's coming out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, worth checking out. I think, and I know that there was some discussion about, like, oh, graphics versus no graphics. And I don't know, man, I'm all for whatever makes the game more fun for you to play. If you like it and ask you, obviously that's never going to go away,

or at least never's probably the wrong word there, but is unlikely to go away. And, you know, you can dress it up in all the graphics you want, you know, if that is what floats your boat. I think that's what's cool about it is that there's the kind of, options now. And it certainly gives it more of a, you know, more of a widespread chance for success on like wide, you know, like a wide release. Because I have to tell you, like so many people will like, oh, I'm never touching that game just because I can't figure out what a plus sign is. Like, well, I get that, you know, but you don't have to have it like that. It just

seems like it's kind of an auto turnoff. And I think having graphics be the face and the front door are going to make a huge difference in getting more people to like sign on for Steam or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you because now, finally, my friends have no way to get out of playing Doer Fortress anymore because now they can actually see what is going on. Yeah, I'll admit it. Like, I've played Aski and I can play Aski and it's still fun. Like, the game's no less fun.

But, you know, if I go to the subreddit or whatever and somebody posts a picture, and they'll say, like, I can't believe this happened. What luck? And I look and it's just, I mean, it literally just looks like symbols to me. Still, after having played this game so long, I just looked at it. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. Oh, here was the one I was thinking of. This is the best way to spend your adventure money.

And it's like a box with a bunch of lime green colored at signs and exclamation marks. I don't know what I'm looking at. I mean, I know there's goblins here. I happen to clue what's happening here. Yeah, I had to look in and like, tell somebody tell me what's going on. oh okay that's what's going on you know it's like if i've been planned for several years and i still don't know i don't know man i think graphics are going to be a helpful thing for people so i will post a few uh a few links to some of those articles that i've been getting them of all places as

notifications on my phone um and it's been google that has been recommending then to me because i guess because i do a lot of searching for door fortress related stuff i'm not sure but yeah i've been getting notifications about people releasing articles on the new Dwar fortress that's coming out. Please do share them, yes. Still haven't had any hint as to the win,

but yeah, time is relative. Oh, I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess summer. I feel summer is the most likely possibility. It looks like it's progressing quite well. So, yeah.

Like this summer, yeah? Like not in like four years, yeah? Summer's future. A summer. Summer is relative. Some summer. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it looks like things are going pretty fast. I think they're all working together on it. And I suspect if TOTE's collaborating with folks for this part of it, they probably want to get that wrapped up quickly and get people, you know, because I suspect that there is some aspect of development. You know, he's been doing it on his own for so long that, I would imagine it's going to be nice for him to get back to just, you know, playing by himself. Yeah. So I suspect he's probably motivated to not have to have, you know, people looking at like,

so where is it? What's going on? Hey, I'm just here waiting for you. You know, I don't know. I just imagine if you're used to solo dev having to collaborate just adds whole levels of complexity, you're probably ready to not have to deal with anymore. our next topic of conversation is shirastilus that's the name of the fortress it's actually easier to say than the human translation version wire thins i did some work on the bloodline fortress wirethens i also though lost about six months worth of time with a crash so i was working along and it was my second session on the year and I made it all the way through mid-autom but then Dwar Fortress crashed. So at this point we're back up to mid-summer. I lost about a quarter

of the year so we're going to have to go back and do that as part again. What I need to have turned on in my lazy new pack is to have it automatically save at the beginning of each season. I apparently didn't have that turned on. Typically, I do. Oh, yeah, that's useful. Especially given that we're on a beta of D.F. Hack, and it's going to cause some crashes sometimes. The one thing I haven't really had any success with is the legends move viewers.

Neither of them seem to work for me with my current world. I've retired the fort and done the dump and stuff. They just crash. It simply just will not work. Like, oh, well, I guess I won't have legends for this. particular. I mean, Legends mode itself works in the game, but like the Legends viewers don't work. So I don't know if there are known bugs out there or if I'm just unlucky with my world,

but it didn't happen. So I'm okay with it. Let it go. What I want to talk about our fortress, though, is the fact that I took a pretty deep dive into the personalities of our individual dwarves. And I'm going to go ahead and bring that document up here so that you guys can see it. And you made a document? Yes. So this is just a review of the, of the personalities of our dwarves. So it turns out that our expedition leader and another dwarf have a romantic relationship going, okay?

And that's fine and everything. And it looked like they were going to be the power couple of the, of the fortress. However, it turns out that there is a third dwarf. who also has a relationship with Zan, who is the female dwarf. So if you look at Irvad, who's the expedition leader, you look at his description, it says that he has a romantic relationship with Zan. You look at Zanz, it says that she has a relationship with Irvad. But then you go down to Shem's description, and it says that he has a relationship involved

with Zan, but Zanz doesn't mention it, and Irvad surely doesn't mention it. So it looks like that we started off our fortress with the Love Triangle. That will be very interesting. It's almost like that started off with a soap opera. So I'm going to very certainly, very certainly going to follow that as we go along. I also noted that Ervad, whenever he is under stress, he clicks his tongue. I nicknamed him clicker. It says clicker here.

I actually changed it to just nicknamed him click. And Zan... Whenever she greets someone, it says that she always points at them while she's greeting them. Kind of like, hey, how you doing? Finger guns. Yeah, finger guns. Oh, yeah, so I'm going to call that. We'll change her to finger guns.

Yeah, that's an awesome thing to do to that person. Right now, her, her nickname is Point. But yeah, it's going to be finger guns. I also added to the nickname of all of our original seven, added the word wire thin to the nickname of them. that they will be historical figures and they will be easily findable in the Legends browser. Do a search for wire thin, and it will bring up any of those dwarves. So, yeah, it's progressing along. Hopefully I'll have the rest of the year worked out within the next couple of days,

and I'll be able to pass on the fortress to who gets it, Roland or Tony? I mean, last time I got it, right? So we could switch it around or stay at the air? It doesn't really matter. Yeah, I'll just... You can turn it around pretty fast, whatever, whichever. I mean, I can get a year done, no problem. Yeah, I should be able...

I've had this for like two months now, but... Yeah, cool. Hey, man, it's quarantine years. But yeah, it's going to be an interesting fortress, I think. I like the, I like the, this is the first time I think that I've ever really read every bit of each of their descriptions and the personality aspects. Oh my God, the pressure's on now, not to kill this thing. No, they're going to die. They're all going to die.

That's just the way it works. Oh, unless they become necromancers. Unless they become necromancers, then they never will die. Yeah, because, yeah, because I've got a vampire active in my necromancer fort, and it doesn't seem to do anything to anyone. It's just pretty cool. I do hope that he ends up dialing back the necromancy bit to it eventually, because, I don't know, it just seems that the inevitable conclusion of any fortress now is to become a necromancer fortress. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little, there's a lot to that, isn't there?

It's a disease that spreads and makes everybody immortal. Some disease, right? It is interesting. I'll say that. How else are you going to get your sacred tummies? Last time we had a podcast, we cut Roland off short because we were running long, but Roland was wanting to talk about happiness in Dwarf Fortress. And I kind of suspect that maybe it is lack thereof.

Yeah, yeah. The last time we sat here, I read a thread on Reddit before, so it is now quite the old thread, really, but hey. Listen to the show, to the discord in and I'll put in the show notes. Ooh, I mean, sure, if I can find it. So it basically went that one person said that the, happiness system currently is broken and another person said that it is not that broken as people make it out to be and I thought it was really interesting at both points really so I thought a bit about it myself and so my opinion on this is that while the happiness system itself

seems to be broken, I don't think it is really that broken. I think Todi wants it to be quite hard and challenging for the player. I think he wants that some dwarfs are more miserable than others. And he wants some dwarfs to spiral downwards and you have to make sure that you catch before their fall and that it is not easy like when

like I don't know which version I started with but I remember that in that version the dwarfs were really easy to handle and they had no big trauma whatsoever and you know you could throw corpses at them and then horrible stuff

and they didn't care so in this current version it is completely different but I think it is good but hear me out about this so the only negative thing I have to add is that I think that the extremes on the Dwarven Happiness letter are too hardcore so both the positive and the negative because you get dwarfs that you can't help. It really doesn't matter what happens to them, you know. They can have a happy dwarf in life, a lot of food, a lot of clothing, a good room, maybe even, you know, a big family. It doesn't matter.

They are sad. And they spiral downwards because nothing. They get unhappy for like one time. Keep thinking about that one time and spiral downwards. And it doesn't matter if you give them like an Edmontine room or something, like statues made of gold or big beds, or they will continue to be miserable. And this is very obvious, but the other hand is the dwarfs that will stay happy no matter what. of course they are

somewhat less well you know you see the unhappy dwarfs mostly because they blink with that like unhappiness right little arrow arrow but it is

not that easy to see dwarfs that are eternally happy because you don't see them as bad as these sad dwarfs, but they are just as broken, I think, because I have dwarfs

in my fortress that are eternally happy. It doesn't matter what happens. You know, they can be naked. I have a smith that is completely naked. Completely naked. For years, he doesn't care.

He doesn't even get clothed because he doesn't care. And his wife died. His two children died. He is completely naked. He's seen rain, smoke, miasma. Dead children, dead

dwarfs, dead goblins. It doesn't matter. He doesn't care. He's the happiest dwarf in my entire fortress. He should be absolutely miserable. But he is on top of the happiness ladder. And I don't get why. It's the mushrooms he's eating.

It has to be because this guy is impossible to break. It is absolutely impossible to break. And I looked into his personality, and he's not that special, honestly. Like, the biggest difference is just that he is extremely invulnerable to stress. So that stress doesn't get him. That's it.

Other than that, he is a completely normal dwarf, nothing out of the ordinary. While you were talking about this, I did pull up Reddit and did a search. Now, I know that this is not the thread that you were talking about, because the thread you're talking about, it was over two weeks ago. There is a more current thread, though, called Dealing with Stress and Game that I will post a link to in the show notes. And that talks a lot about the same things that you're covering here. And it also gives some nice pointers on things you can do to help improve them. Now, getting them to react more realistically to tragedy in their lives, it doesn't cover that. But,

Yeah, and this especially says they have to expel sad dwarfs from the fortress to make sure that the rest of the fortress doesn't get dragged down. And I think that's like, you shouldn't go that far just to make sure that your fortress doesn't get dragged down. Minor inconveniences in a dwarf's life should not be that massive in the dwarf's life. should not be that massive in the dwarf's life because we all know that rain is terrible for dwarfs. And while, yeah, okay, I get it. Like, they're underground creatures. They do not like water from above.

Okay, okay, I can get that. They get miserable from it in a way and density of sadness and depression, you know? They get rained on one single time and they will think about it for the next six years. And yes, I actually had a dwarf that kept thinking about getting wet outside for six years. And he went absolutely insane because of the grain. There was nothing else. He liked like the tavern stuff, he drank alcohol, he was a completely normal dwarf.

but he kept thinking about getting wet. Like every second day. Didn't like the rain. Yeah, he really didn't like the rain. So I had heard of the Remove Stress D.F.Hack command, but look in here, it looks like there's also a Phil needs D.F.Hack. So what would be the difference between those? Well, the remove stress just sets the stress.

the stress to the... Okay, so first of all, stress works like this. If you go in the minus, like minus 100, minus whatever, then they get happy. If you go up,

like 100, 200, they get sad. Well, they get stress. And zero is like the medium. Like a dwarf gets born at zero. and remove stress just sets this number to the most negative number there is, like minus 100,000 or something. It's a dwarf an antidepressant.

Yeah, it's an instant antidepressant, but it is just an antidepressant. If the dwarf wants to pray and you don't have a church, if the dwarf wants some clothing, if he's like, something to drink or he wants to see his family, then those needs will still not be met. And he still gets in the next tick as soon as his needs get questioned again, he will get the same big minus again. And Phil needs just fills his needs, but completely leaves his happiness number untouched. Okay, okay You know, I'm not completely sure about this I might be just spewing something out there

I haven't done data mining on it but I have the feeling that minor inconveniences can be more often remembered than major life events because I see getting rained on or getting nauseated by the sun way more often than I see. like remembering his child died or something. Something that should make a massive impact on the dwarf's life

just gets remembered, well, sometimes. But like getting rain on, that's like every second entrance in his thoughts, you know what I'm talking about? I would get it if it was like nauseating slime. Like if you got rained on by nauseating slime or blood or whatever, sometimes gross things I would get it if that's what you're remembering because that sounds really horrible

but just regular rain I'm like come on so in conclusion I think the extremes of how a dwarf could be sensitivity to stress I say that is like

it's way to extreme on both ends you have a dwarf that go miserable no matter what you have dwarfs that stay happy for the rest of their life and doesn't matter what happens and it should be like the median of those things because normally your dwarfs are fine most of my dwarfs are like they don't like being rained on but they get over it they you know they see dead things and they go like oh no but then they have have a nice tavern and they go like oh yes so it's fine so the median of dwarfs is manageable and just the extremes on both ends are just too extreme just way too extreme I think minor inconveniences could maybe be remembered for a few days maybe a few month, but after years, they shouldn't be, they, they should not remember being rained on

after six years. I am saddened and I am upset by remembering that I couldn't drink from a mug six years ago. Yeah. You know, that's, that's remembering that your spouse died or that your child died a few years ago. That is legit. Yeah. But, but that you couldn't find a mug six years ago probably is not.

Yeah. Yeah. I think a Dwarven therapist would be a good job, an in-game Dwarven therapist, just to help them work through their issues. I think that's a role. Yeah, like a mix between something they could, you know, get rid of bad memories or general a whitewashing of memories so they can start over. And they don't have to remember, like, bad things that happened a few years ago. I love that they can remember stuff now. Yeah, don't get me wrong.

I love it. But they also have to forget things because if not, they just become really unstable. It's really important for them to move on. Yes. Dwarven psychologist sounds like one of the custom professions that Meph would add to his game loader. Totally, yes, exactly. That would be hilarious. There was a forum thread started by Threato a few months ago, I guess about six months ago now that he's actually asking for input from the community about things in specific, things like what Roland's talking about that caused problems with the game.

So I'm going to dig into that over the next few days because it looks like it might be an interesting thread on the forum. If you're interested, the forum is actually called, We Need Your Help with Game Ending Stress. and it was posted by three toes. So I guess we should go ahead and wrap up the episode and hope everyone stays safe and COVID-free and plays lots of Dwarfortress. Feeling good. We'll be back in a couple weeks to talk more about Dwell Fortress

and until that time, everyone have a great week. Yeah, see you guys later. Have a good one. Bye. This has been Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com. Please stop by and leave a comment 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. Music for this episode is from filmmusic.io.

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