Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 65: In Which User Comments and Questions Are Investigated

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Special Thanks to Tekkud for the Dwarf-O's spot! And keep those emails coming! Tekkud

Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, episode 65, recorded March 20th, 2022. Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. Every couple weeks or so, your hosts gather to talk about our favorite game, Dwarf Fortress. So let's join your hosts, Roland. I think about that going to, like, standard time. You are your room. Tony. This is not just about video games.

This is serious. We're going to start talking about. And Jonathan. What they should do is exactly what they've done since 1974, the last time. As they present insightful, irreverent, and often incorrect analysis. And always remember, losing is fun. I have been in a play for the last two weeks, so I have not played more than 15, 20 minutes of Dwar Fortress in the last two weeks. So I have nothing to add to the last two weeks.

the Personal Fortress conversation. You guys? I have to admit that I had to put even the stream on hold, like the bloodline, because I was getting crammed with a few things in school. So, no, not really, sadly. Hi, future Jonathan chiming in here. And it looks like that we were actually mistaken about the length of time before the next release that we're about to come up on here.

So just wanted to let you know that. And it looks like it is still going to be probably this fall if they concentrate on fortress mode and legends mode. So, never mind. And I've done very little as well because I've got a whole bunch of work stuff happening. So, yeah, not so much. And I also kind of slowed my role a little because I was like another year before there's going to be a release. Oh, goodness. So I was like, well, we'll park it for now and come back to it in a few months.

So have you heard something after we have last spoken? I thought I read in our Discord, and I could have very easily gotten this wrong, as my attention to specific details has been somewhat limited in the past few weeks. But I thought that they were saying it was going to take about a year to get some of the current roadmap things done

before we see a release if they just focused on Fortress mode. Did anybody else see that? Or am I just winging it here, because I thought I saw that, but I could have totally gotten it wrong. I didn't see it, but unfortunately, my attention has not been the best in the last couple weeks. There's one thing I've learned.

That may be so, and it may not be so. If there's one thing I've learned from engaging on the internet, all these years, it's that if you want the right answer to something, you can emphatically state the wrong answer, and you'll and somebody will tell you the right. Somebody will almost certainly correct us very, very quickly when we say. It's a year to the next release. That is true. That is true.

All right, so let's press on to the news segment. That helps us. This episode is made possible in part by a grant from Logan Hastings, creator of Kuhn-Oz-Cack, the Cat of Carrying, a Bismith-Bronze-Anvil. All craft's dwarf ship is of the highest quality. The anvil is studded with bismuth bronze and menaces with spikes of shale. On the item is an image of Solon Mirror Tapered, the dwarf and dwarves in shale. Solon Mirror Tapered is surrounded by the dwarves. The artwork relates to the appointment of Solan Mirror Tapered to the position of General of the Ageless Cave in the Year 1.

I believe since we last that a new version of D.F. Hack has been released. It's not in, at least as of yesterday, around 1 o'clock in the afternoon local time. It is not yet in the starter packs. But I did download it and I patched it into my latest version of the Paradexas-Sarrant starter pack. And I got it working. So it gave me an error about TWB. So I searched through and I found the latest release of TWBT that has been compiled at the last week of April for this release of DF Hack. So, yes, I have it up and running in Dwarf Fortress and it seems to be working fine.

I haven't used any of the new features. Hmm. But I do have it running. Yeah, I was just pulling up the page to see what the new features were. I think it's amazing. I think it was just the blueprints and quick for it. Yeah. That's cool. I love it.

that we get a new D.F. Hack, like, now. I think it's so cool that this far after the release, it's great. And I was actually somewhat concerned that it would mean, or excited that it would mean that a new release of the game was right around the corner. Because I think sometimes that's a good indicator of when they're releasing a game. It's when there's some really big new DF hack update. One of the things I'm really interested in for the blueprint in QuickFor. Are they mentioned that there are now blueprints for pump stacks and aquifer water taps?

Oh, blessed. Which kind of meshes in with what we were talking about the last time we got together in that I was complaining that pump stacks are too much of a pain. So if you can create a blueprint with them and put them in with some sort of automated script, then that would make it so much easier. So I'm going to have to see if I can figure out how to use quick fort and blueprint. I think that's a good idea. That for pump stacks would be cool because that's what's kind of kept me from getting too curious about pump stacks.

because it just seemed really hard. And tedious. That's the word that I actually wanted. Tedious. I think tedious is a better way for it, yeah. I feel like that is the correct word. It feels tedious. So yeah, anything that would shave off some of the tedium

and get me to the sweet, sweet windmills of Doom or whatever would be awesome. That would be pretty nifty. So that's cool. I haven't been very, I haven't had great luck, I'll be honest, with Fort Blueprints, because I feel like I've tried to follow the directions, but then it ends up not quite working the way I had hoped it would work. How have you guys had? What's been your experience? Never tried it myself. I want to. I will do it. Oh yeah. It's pretty fun. I don't use it for like most of the fortress, but lately I've started trying to make more round layouts, you know,

not like the block and block and long hallway that is also blocky and then another block because that's terrible on the eyes after a while and everything kind of looks the same so you're not even sure in what fort you actually are right now so I started using it for circles just circles because sitting there and like doing the math in the head like oh yeah a one two three four five block one two three four five block is is okay you know

it has like this dwarf fortress feeling the same as when you do bedrooms. But let's be honest, I can put that time into something else and I don't have to manually. And then the worst part is if you actually miscalculate

it and then it is not round and ugh. So it's very nice for circles or bedrooms even. You have an oddly unbalanced ellips. Come again. Well, if you yeah, if you miscalculate and you have it

off a little bit, instead of a circle you have an oddly imbalanced ellipse. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is looking gross and especially if you don't notice it at first, like instantly, and then you start building more and more, you can't really

fix it anymore. You know, it's done. The damage is done and now you have to live with the ugly like oval in your fortress and you pretend it's fine, but inside you cry every time you go into the shower. No, no, no. Not again, but being there, thanks.

I've been using the circle function in DFF hack. There's something that will dig circle or something like that, where you can tell it to dig a circle and then give it some numbers, and then it automatically prints the circle out, and then they'll come dig that out for you. I've had good luck with that. I enjoyed making my circle rooms with that one. I don't know if you've tried that.

Huh. I want to sit down with a brand new fortress and just go, through each of the scripts that are in DFHack and just go through them one by one. I mean, I think there's like close to a hundred of them if I'm, that's just me pulling a number out of the air. But there's a lot of them. If you look at the documentation for DFHack, it looks like, you know, a programming API documentation.

Yeah, it kind of is. So, but yeah, I want to sit down and try them because I think that using them would make a lot of my life easier and perhaps automate some of the things that I've done if I would just sit down and learn how to use them. Yeah. I believe there's one that looks really interesting about fixing some of the workflow things with tailoring and gem cutting carving. And I think maybe it was, it could have been, I could have been anyone really that was

talking about how they use that to kind of automate the gem workflow, which I thought sounded pretty useful because I can do that, but it's very micromanagery. Micromagy, micromanagery. I'm not sure how to say that. When I was getting this new release of DF Hack running and I was searching for a TWBT that would work with it, the first TWBT that I came across, the first GitHub repo, was from Mifki. And it looks like that was the original TWBT repo. So that's been forked 30 times. And the release that I found that was updated for this current version of DF Hack is from 4.4.

Thurin on GitHub. So it's the Thurran fork of DF-T-WBT. And that brought to mind, I couldn't find anywhere in the Dwar Fortress Wiki or on the Bay 12 forums, any mention of what is the, and I'm flying air quotes here, official TWBT release, which one is the, it looks like that I may have stumbled on the most recent and the most maintained one. But if you look at the actual GitHub Repo, I can't find any code pushes that correspond to this release of nine days ago. Because the most active branch of the GitHub repo looks like that it hasn't been updated in a few months. But this release happened nine days ago.

So there's been a compile nine days ago. And I assume that you would have to update something to make it work for a particular branch of DFX. So I really don't know how that works. If any of our listeners do know how that works or knows how to find out what the, again, air quotes, official release of TWBT, that would be great if you could send us an email to Urist at DFRoundable.com. Because I'm very much interested in that sort of thing and how the community works out

what plugins are the ones that get used the most. Because it has to be some coordination in there. Otherwise, everyone's just doing their own thing and nothing gets done. I have a theory. I think that that. that the official TWBT was abandoned or no longer worked on by the original creator. Yeah, I think that was the myth. Yeah, and so I think wasn't there some problem with source code that wasn't available

or wasn't made available or something, and the versions that are out there now are kind of things that people have been, I don't know, like wrong hacking or something, I could have that totally wrong. Again, the fastest way to get the right answer is. You know, whenever you say that I kind of able to remember when 4705 came out, or actually the 47.00 branch came out of Dwarfortress, I remember it took a while to get the starter packs out because it seems like that was part of it. Yep, I agree. Yeah, I personally have nothing to add. I didn't even know there were like different versions of things.

I just used, like, the new Pag. And when people, people I don't know about have put everything neatly together for me, I use it because I'm lazy and I don't know how to do these things myself. So, yeah, and you're absolutely right. Due to the generosity of the people who make the starter packs, thank you so much because we don't have to think about that. much. Yeah, big shout-outs.

Yeah, thanks, everyone. So, yeah, so thanks so much to the folks like Paradexas-Arant, McCarckity, Ine, Jequois, El Puma. And that's all of them that I can see just right off the list out of the D.F. Wiki for building those starter packs because you're making it so much easier for the rest of us to to not have to think about things like where is the actual release of TWPT that works with some particular BFAC? Attention members and guests.

Jack Dillon invites all rangers of the Company of Blossoms to hone your expertise in animal husbandry and slaughter in the Guildhall, the Cyclopean Pearls. If animal husbandry is your game, the Cyclopean Pearls is your place to visit for fellowship and knowledge. Remember, there is more than one way to train a bear, and failing that, you can hunt it down. So the bulk of our episode today is going to be answering some questions that we have received from our listeners. So if you would like to send us a question or comment, you can either comment on this episode at dfroundtable.com.

You can also send in a email to Eurist at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-F-Roundtable.com. And also you can comment on the Reddit post of any particular episode. That is going to be hit and miss on whether or not we're probably going to see it. But I added that because we have a Reddit comment in today's comments that we're going to go over. So Princess Hal commented on Reddit, speaking of which, And this is a, I'm just going to go ahead and read it because it's a pretty neat post here. Princess Howe wrote in regarding episode 64.

During the discussion on nobles, I recalled a very annoying noble who became king when his father died in the war. He went from being a nobody to being the head honcho, and our fledgling fort was not ready. It took us a long time to create adequate accommodation which angered the new king. Additionally, he was having citizens mangled for not producing towy boats. Needless to say, that king died during an unfortunate accident in the first. the fighting pits involving a furious cyclops. So I rode back to find out whether this new king was one of the original seven, or whether it was a migrant.

And it was a migrant who was the noble, the baron that became king. I thought that was a neat little story. I bet you it's a vampire. What's that? I said I bet the king was a vampire. They sometimes are rare. Well, if it ended up having an accident in the fighting pits, then probably was not a vampire because it would have been.

That's true. Yeah, they'll do anything. They'll... They're tough, aren't they? So thanks for commenting on that, Princess Hal. I'm trying to think of a story like that because it probably also happened, but I'm usually very okay with the no-bolts.

You know, they add a little bit of spice to my gameplays. And, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean with the spice, the fact that they beat my other people for, like, not fulfilling things. Because, you know, wanting glass-blown, wonderfully crystal-clear tables in a fortress that was founded half a year ago

is not okay. But I like to work around that simply because it gives me some, some, how you say? Not RP, but it's more like a difficult thing that I have to overcome, and it makes my fortress is usually quite enjoyable because if nothing happens and why I'm playing the game, yeah. Well, I'm interested to see if my baron ends up getting promoted to king as this fortress continues on.

Is that a common progression that a baron will become king? No. If they're baron, they stay a baron usually. I don't think they can have two titles. Not sure about that. I'm not an expert on that. So thanks again, Princess Half. Paul Jackson sent in an email saying that they would like to try in Fortress mode tracking down the criminal bosses that are revealed through justice interrogations.

And these ideas to create a most wanted gallery filled with statues and engravings of criminal masterminds. Okay, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I thought about you whenever I read this. In theory, the statues and engravings should reveal scenes from the criminal's life and present clues as to where they can be found. I don't use Legends viewer, and I don't want to retire the fortress just to check Legends mode.

So this seems like a fun workaround. Do you think this would work? And this is pretty much aimed, I think, at Roland, because you seem to be the one of us who really digs the justice system. For a reason, I mean, now I get to actively pummel people and be the good guy.

So, but, um, I think there's one problem in which you can't really tell them which event should be engraved or made into a statue. So they will pick at random. If it's like, oh, yeah, this and that man founded that and this settlement, then that's a fairly big clue. But honestly, I think you're mostly just getting minor artifacts that will not give you any. real hints to where this person is like oh yeah he acquired this random sword that you know he stole from us or uh i don't know he he married his wife and and and and whatever so it could work but i think the potential that it doesn't is quite high but it's pretty cool like the simple

idea of making a most wanted gallery is so funny to me i think i'm just going to stay Because that's cool, especially with, like, explicit bosses or people or general criminals that, you know, come into your fortress more often. And they have become very iconic to the point where they, like, walk into your fortress and your military is like, oh, you again. Yeah, no, I like that idea. I like that idea. Well, here's how I think it might be able to work. You take four of your craft dwarves, or actually, I guess it's masons that make statues. You take four of your highly skilled masons and set them to engraving.

Because while you can't pick what the engraving is of, you can pick who the engraving is about. So you have these four doing repeated statues, this set of people, and take a look at each of their statues. And the ones that just show them picking up a sword or stubbing their toe on a lead bed, you sell those to the to the humans or the dwarves as they pass by, and you only keep the ones that have something interesting. Okay, okay, fair. If there's like 20 statues of one person made, perhaps one of them will reveal something that is a clue as to what the plot is.

Yeah. It's an idea. Yeah, I think just going ahead and overproducing statues like that is the only way to actually get like really big clues. and then you kind of get rid of the other statues that you don't want unless there's stuff like oh yeah this criminal mafia boss is like hugging a pet warm or something because that is amazing I would keep that anyway but that's just me I haven't had great luck with the justice system and the wanted and all of that I've I mean I've done the investigations and they don't ever I mean, sometimes you can get information, but usually it's like, you know, so-and-so confessed under, it doesn't know anything. I haven't been able to really unravel or unwind any of the complicated plots. So for me, it's more, it's been more of a novelty that I do if there's time, but I haven't really had a lot of exciting gameplay from it yet.

I can see how it could turn into something, but I haven't had that yet. And I have completely ignored the justice system since it was. oh no they stop there so oh no I mean it's sometimes I appoint a sheriff sometimes I don't

sometimes I just convict dwarfs that I don't like yeah what I would never do that what this guy throwing a tantrum right now of course he's the murderer goodbye

is I like to keep a few of the vampire ones open you know if vampires going around killing people it's always good they can help you you know a call the fort

but you can also then usually your own people to kind of throw people in jail for committing the crimes that they're not doing. Although I've had tantrum spirals as a result of that, where you put the wrong person in jail. And I thought I'm the sadistic one here, huh? You know, I just call the fort with armies. Wow. Oh, wait, you don't mean your armies.

Yes, I did. Yes. I call the fort by just sticking people who may or may not be prepared into, you know, if you come in, And if you're a migrant and your occupation is peasant, you're getting drafted. Oh, oh, I see. I see. So either you win a soldier or you have one mouth last to feed. You're conscripting the fort, basically.

Well, yeah, and whenever you send them out to take care of that forgotten beast, then there's a few less mouths that are going to make it back to the fortress after the fight. You know, I'm cool that way. That's the way the game rolls, though, you know. It's a cold, it's a cold world. So thanks Paul for writing in. Yeah. So next up is Byron Kilbourne.

Nice name. So he had a couple of things here. What's that? I said nice name. So Byron had a couple of things here. First of all, he said that he always uses millstones and screw pumps in, in his fortresses. And that brings up the question to me, what exactly is a millstone used for? making flour, I believe.

Yeah, this is like big brain energy. It's usually used to meal plans. Well, no, I know in real world what they're for, but in Dwarf Fortress. No, in the game. Yeah, I actually, I actually meant that. Yeah, I think you can you can ground. Is it cave wheat? Is that the crop?

Yeah. So you just grind up your cave wheat, right? Turn it into bags of flour for an ingredient for fancy meat. else? Yeah, exactly. It's a nice modifier. Can you grind other things like acorns? What?

Can you do acorns or something? Can you grind other stuff? Or is it literally just cave wheat? No, no, no. It's a lot. It's a lot of things. So a lot of plants can be ground. Like, what is the actual word for it?

What's the word you want to use? And maybe we can figure it out from that. Like grains. Okay, there are a lot of green plants in the game. And all of them can be made in doing. flour. You can also process stuff into squash. No, what's the word here again? It's like a plant paste and you make paper out of it. Okay. That is also done at the Milsong and then you use a screw pump to press the whole thing together into like the actual paper and press the

That's right to make parchment paper, right? Slurry. It's called slurry, make slurry. And then there is some stuff about nuts. You can mill nuts, if I remember. Yeah, not only rock nuts, actually. I think it's called press nuts into oil. No, that's press.

Never mind. Yeah, but it's pretty cool. And if you want to have a oversaw. food industry like myself, then they're a great addition because you get a lot of flour and flour is a good

modifier for things that you're trying to make food wise. I like that. That's actually I actually kind of like that. I think I might even take Byron's suggestion to heart here and always build millstones and screw pumps

now because I like that idea of basically kind of building that in from the My food stuff gets really lazy because they usually just do chickens to get the eggs and then maybe a farm for the mushroom wine or whatever. Yeah, kind of the same way with me. I do like to grow above ground crops whenever I'm able to get some seed for them so that I can have like a variety. Things like I think that I grew some strawberries and some asparagus. Well, here's a question. Are plump helmets hallucinogenic mushrooms?

I think that they might be. And hear me out. Really? Well, strange mood? You know, maybe some of them are hallucinogenic, and that's what causes strange moods. But that would imply that the plump helmet itself is not a single plant,

but more of a common term for any kind of cave mushroom. Right. Yes. Which... That does make some sense. You wonder. It's dark in there. You can't really see what you're doing anyway. because they don't have torches.

Well, as far as I know, the only mushroom that is in the game are plumped elements. Right. What if that was the, what if that was the Dwarven name for the word mushroom? Right. You know, I'm agreeing with him for that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, maybe there's different, you know, species.

And this plump helmet is psilocyte-fibinsis. Exactly. Hey, Tarn. Question. So now we know where. where Tarnan Zag get their ideas for the game. It kind of explains a lot of the game, actually. Back to the track.

By Apple. No, I think you have to be in order to get canceled or, like, threatened to overthrow the government or something. Want to try it out then? You first. Well, if they just listen into a little bit out of context, you know, early podcasts talked about throwing children against.

Yeah, I mean, I think this. Using children to beat shields. The things that, like, I don't know anyone that's gotten canceled, and the people that complain about getting canceled are, like, the racists. So, like, feels a pretty low bar. Yeah, okay. And we don't hate L.C. No.

Hey, man, I like diversity forts. That's all I'm saying. I've had goblins is my chief medical officer, my chief medical dwarf. Rat people. I strive for that in my forts. If I can have the chief medical dwarf not be a dwarf, that's my optimal. Fort composition Oh, blessed.

Slug Zoidberg. You know it. Oh, God. Wait, there are no like crustacean people, right? Not yet. It's good. Let's do it. Ah, I should put them in.

Introducing Dorfos, the new hit cereal that's sweeping the continents. Everybody's got their favorite way to eat them, like Euris McGladiator. I use a battle axe instead of a spoon. And Melville the Mandarin. I eat mine with koala milk, Yolmi, and Manager Taka.

First, I prefer to get three bowls and stack them in a vertical orientation, after which I classify the various types of cereal pieces by color and shape. Then I... Dorfos! How do you eat them? Okay, Ben. Byron Kilbourne also indicates that he's been having some problems with the 4705 release, being that, well, his quote is that it may be true that losing is fun, but he's been running into crashes and FPS death more often with the late. this release of War 4. Technically losing.

So, yeah, losing is fun. FPS death is not. Fair enough. Really? Yeah, I mean, we've gotten last. I have not noted that. We've covered a lot of those FPS death common problems. And I think Roland helped me out with one, which was one of my worst ones, which was

there was a cat stuck in the caverns trying to get through a locked door. Yeah. And once I let the cat in, then suddenly the game, it certainly that it gave me my game back. So I always wonder if I, I, I felt like it was a hopeless situation that Roland helped me resolve. So I always wonder if there are things that one can do to get out of FPS death other than, you know, it's like you can have 500 people in your fort. Yeah, yeah.

It's usually that kind of small stuff that actually boggles down your PC. To my knowledge, I've not seen actual frame death, like actual 2,000 dwarves bogging down your PC or like 300 chickens running loose. over the map. It's usually like small insignificant things, you know, like a cat's stuck behind the door that completely eradicates your hopes of actually playing the game. And I feel that it gotten slightly better for me, the new update I mean, that could be, you know, hinged on the fact that I kind of have a new PC that is a, in my terms at least, you know, I'm not a computer scientist like somebody else here that has probably a better PC than I do,

but for my expenses, this is NASA technology already. So I can run good fortresses now. But crashes, not really, unless I do a lot of weird stuff. But like an actual random crash hasn't happened to me in a really long time if I think about it. You've deemed yourself. Yeah, probably.

The only crashes that I've had with 4705 was whenever I was trying to set up those water wheels. And it turns out that it was something either with D.F. Hack or the tile set. And every time the game would crash as I'm building them. So I would start back up at the previous save that was, you know, which is what you have to do after a crash. And I would do it again. And over and over and over again, a dwarf fortress crashed. So I spun it up in vanilla mode. And when I did that, I was able to build my water wheels and then restart it back up with graphics and with the starter pack.

So that was something about the modifications that were causing that crash and not Dual Fortress itself. Hmm. Curious. So, Byron, that is something that you can try. If there is something in particular that you find that is crashing your game, try spinning up in vanilla mode and see if it still crashes. Should I say, should I jokingly say? and be feel you know feel free to pull up the error log um yeah i think it's i have had a lot of crashes

crash at embark that that's been my most common one where i try to embark somewhere and you know then it immediately crashes after i've done careful load out i get that a lot and then um on the mac anytime you exit you crash it's always a crash on exit on the mac which is kind of annoying Well, I had the Embar crash sometimes, but it usually, usually just happens when I have a fortress and I play in the fortress and then I retire it and then I either make a new world or start in the new world and then it crashes usually. But if I retire the fortress, then close the game, start it up again and then start a new fortress, it works perfectly fine. I know that.

So it is really like actual witchcraft. You appease the PC and then it's fine. You chand mysteries of the arcane into your laptops ventilation system. And then it's, you know, incense. I've had some problems when I've used Embark anywhere. Sacrifice to the transistor gods. Oh, sorry. What's that Tony?

I was just saying, I've had some problems when I've used embark anywhere. I embarked in a goblin pit one time. That was bad. I've never, I've never, I didn't even, I was not even aware of this feature. It's, yeah, feature is a good word for it. It's really more of a, hey, let's try to fuck the game so hard. It crashes instantly, and sorry for the swear word, but, um, now we're really, of like if you don't have anything specific in mind and you use embark anywhere and then

you go into a goblin pit you're going to have a bad time even even embarking on something small as like the layer of a hydra or a vault which i once did that was it was terrible okay there was a lot of slaughter a lot of people dying and dwarfs kind of clipping through the earth you're not it wasn't really yeah and when you embark in somebody else's fortress like if you embark on

another Dorvan fortress it's almost FPS death from the start because like I landed and there were like you know 1,300 creatures that my computer is not good enough to do that

so I was getting you know instead of frames per second it was like frames per minute basically not a good experience I tend to have my frame problems be caused by overproduction of stuff. And I found that atom smashers really help with that. I have taken fortresses that were running at about 12 frames per second and gotten them back up to 35, 40 frames per second

just by getting rid of all kinds of crap that my dwarves had in stockpiles. And also the refuse. and corpse stockpiles. I've found that if you take the stuff that's in that, throw it into a dump and atom smash it, that also will help me out a lot soon. Yeah, that's true. I kind of hope he doesn't patch out the atom smasher. Or if he does, he builds a, like, a trash disposal workshop or something. That would actually be great.

I don't think that he would. What's that, Roland? Like an actual trash disposal workshop would be quite interesting. not sure how that would even work game-wise, but it could be helpful because sometimes you have like 200 really tattered leather trousers and the trader is not in for another full year and you just kind of sit on it and you really notice that because they're laying everywhere on the surface, your dwarf are really busy just getting those tattered trousers. forbidding them what just mean that you have to do the work of, you know, getting them off your

map and some other point in time. So it's really just like, do I do it now or later? Attention members and guests. Christopher Harris invites all metalworkers of the company of Amethysts to frequent the iron of aquamarines, Guildhall located on level 14 of iron traded. Come join your fraternal metalsmiths in fellowship as you explore the art of pinging hot metal with cold hammers. Remember, without iron trading, there would be no iron traded. And Byron's last question deals with mega traps, like pits, blackfields, magma labyrinths, forgotten beast traps.

The good stuff. And it brings up a dwarven toilets. Yeah. I built a flood trap at one time. I spent way too long on it, and I never actually used it. So I don't tend to go much for the, for the big traps. Maybe I'm robbing myself of a wonderful part of the game, do you think? It depends on what you're trying to achieve, you know,

and what your goal with a fortress actually is. Because, for example, my latest fortress that I tried out was a family fort of, like, I think I have 11 people now. And I feel making a, like, super mega-droning labyrinth is, You know, it doesn't fit my play style. Yeah, you need a work crew to do that. But if you're doing a really large fortress with, like, a lot of people in it, then it can be great fun. The question here really is, is it worth the expense?

And I feel like if you have one goblin civilization that attacks you, then a medium-sized trap will have quick results. is usually easy to clean depending on what you're trying to do and it's just fun to look at like a spike corridor that is triggered by traps and not by traps by plates

what's it called? Pressure plates. Yeah, pressure plates at the start. So, you know, the stuff that a specific YouTuber once did in a B fortress so two people would push in and then

the rest of the soldiers would continue to walk over the pressure plates, continuously triggering the spike trap, thus killing their own mates by just walking in. Great fun, hilarious to watch, hilarious to read about, a fairly decent amount of clean-up servers, you know. It's not a drowning trap that shoves everything off the screen, but then again, you maybe actually want the equipment. It seems like that you could actually, if you wanted to go through the effort,

you can build a flush system for that spike corridor, such that once the goblins are all there and you've collected all the goblinite that you want, then you flush it into the end. I guess you would flush it to the end of the river. That's, yeah, you still want to be able to get it off of your map, right? Yeah, you either flush it to the end of the river or down into the caverns and push it out of the caverns.

I both work. I find stuff gets stuck sometimes on the side of the map. Yeah, yeah. Like a lot goes out, but some items, not even a specific group of items, just some specific items don't want to. And usually then collecting them later on when everything is dried up again and then atom smashing those particular items works fine. But I feel like as soon as you try to make like a flooding system,

like the actual Dwarven Toilet TM, it becomes a hassle and that is something that I would consider it to be a mega project simply because there is water involved and I really don't like working with a lot of water in Dwarfurtress because it is

quite tedious. And dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I built one of those big traps one time with the water and I made a giant, I made the entrance of my fort at the bottom of this huge pit and then I had it so a switch would flood this huge pit

when I locked and closed the doors and then I would get everybody in that huge pit and then flood it and hope that they would drown and then flush them down the river and everyone that was invading, most of them just swam out of the pit and that name was sad. I once destroyed a fortress that I was

bored with by having only a single entrance into the fortress at the top, taking a river channeling it and flooding the fortress. It filled up completely. Oh no. Yeah. Yeah, it happens. That's when you just need to pull the switch and then all of a sudden you just go, oh, no.

Oh, no, I did this one on purpose. I just wanted to see what would happen. Everybody died is what happened. In that same section of Byron's email, Byron mentions that elves are the only creatures I truly fear, so I don't cut down trees unless I can't avoid it. Talking about reasons for building megatraps. But am I missing something?

Elves seem to be trivial to defeat in battle. Yeah. They're shooting at you with sticks. Yeah. Well, I really don't get it. Like, fearing elves, are we playing the same game? They usually come to me with like sharp in sticks and wooden armor. And the second, I have a single dwarf with a full costume.

They're not really a threat anymore. And if they come to me talking about like, Oh, no, you don't have to chop the trees. I'm like, what are you going to do? Like, poke me. I'm not scared. So, Byron, we'd like a follow-up email. So what is it about elves that you fear?

Well, it could be the war animals. You know, my proposition is he is scared of the war animals because they can come in great numbers. Bears. Yeah. The bears can, can take out some. dwarves. I don't care for them elves at all. I find that they're kind of annoying, and I just cut down the trees, and if they complain

about it, I just keep cutting down the trees, and then if they attack, I've never really found them to be problematic. They usually die pretty fast. They're their elves. Yeah, they usually go pretty quickly. So, I mean, even one or two poorly trained dwarves can usually dispatch the invasion force of the elves. And the elven caravans are fairly useless.

everything is grown wood this grown with that yeah except for well well you like you like the fancy animals rolling yeah yeah exactly yeah there is no other point on actually trading with elves unless you're really really trying to get that like giant polar bear breeding pair going you know like who cares about the wood i mean there are some exploits uh where they can't and come to you with, like, divine metal strings or something, and sometimes you're able to melt those down and make, like, a flaming metal sword. But ultimately, that is not much better than steel. So it's really just for the flavor.

All right. So thanks, Byron, for sending us an email. And everyone, if you'd like to send an email with questions or comments, erst at D-F-R-R-R-I-T-Bel.com, that's U-R-I-S-T-E-T-E-E-E-S-T at. D.F roundtable.com. Okay, guys. Fantastic. Anything else that is going on?

I don't think so. And next week, our clocks are back in sync. The roadmap came out, and so I think that everything is still just kind of percolating on that. I have to check a little bit more deeply to see if I missed a message about, because I the initial idea was that if they just released with Fortress mode and, I think it was Fortress and Legends mode, that it would be hopefully in the fall, but it sounds like that may have been revised. I'll have to find that out. Well, we hopefully, we may have an update on that. We may draw an update.

From our. We'll update whether it's correct or not. We will find out. We will get to the bottom of this. We're not. please remember that we have no insight nor do we have any influence yeah

sad okay then well everybody have a good couple weeks and stay safe if you are in the Ukraine we are thinking about you it's just Ukraine what's that

it's just Ukraine not the Ukraine oh sorry why is that that that has to be an um is that just an american thing no it's it's a russian thing because what they what russia contends is that ukraine is not a sovereign country and it's a district or an area of their country that they refer to as the ukraine and so it's in it's an attempt to um de legitimize them as a country and wait what yeah that's that's why that's why it's done that's why it's the That's why the Russians will say that Ukraine to imply that it's not a sovereign nation.

It's just a part of their overall territory. Noddy. Noddy. If you're having bombs dropped on you, we send out our, yes, it's, it's, it's, it's, I wish that wasn't happening. Freaking awful. Yes. Not just in Ukraine, but anywhere that you're getting bombed, it's awful.

It's just that's what's in the Western consciousness at the moment. It happens too often around the world continually, and we don't think about it because it's not, you know, taking the top headlines of our newspapers. But, yeah. Anyway, let's play dwarf fortress and have fun, huh? We're losing its fun instead of catastrophic. That sounds amazing. Beautiful. Yes.

Beautiful. All right, guys. So happy Fortress and everybody. We'll catch you next time. Yes. 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.

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