Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 74: Evilevil the Evil Evil Evil-evils of Evil

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

Happy Halloween everybody! We are recording a week early to release a Halloween-themed episode. Hope you enjoy all the evil talk! Kruggsmash's Evilkings Support Dwarf Fortress at Bay12Games.comSupport Dwarf Fortress Roundtable on Patreon

Welcome to Dwarfuson on the beat, Naws, and a bussers now foewe, and me as a viskis de la haze it's a stroke fro. Are we? Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. Every couple weeks or so, your hosts gather to talk about our favorite game, Dwarf Fortress. So let's join your hosts, Roland. Yeah, it's stop the recording before you. Tony, company excluded, I hope.

Boy, that was, that was wonky, wasn't it? And Jonathan. Or I will stop saying all those horrible, horrible things about people that I don't want to hear. As they present insightful, irreverent, and often incorrect analysis. And always remember, losing is fun. Did either of you guys do any play in the dwarf fortress this week for preparation for killing off dwarves or anything? Because I tried, and I failed miserably. What, on killing dwarfs?

Yeah, well, I was trying to find interesting ways to kill my dwarves. and I thought that I would start this by having an evil biome but my evil biome doesn't seem all that evil. I don't think I have it be evil enough. Huh. Yes, I had the same situation. Funny you mentioned that. And I tried four or five different forts and I got there in purple biomes

and I had haunted and I had terrifying and everything was totally cool and I built thriving forts and I was like, this is not what I expected. I needed to die right away. But it didn't happen. So if you look up on the on the wiki, evil, if you just look up evil on the wiki, I thought it was neat, the grid that is on there under combinations and characteristics of surroundings, the three by three grid of good, neutral, evil versus benign, neutral, and savage, my biome that I embarked to was about two-thirds haunted and one-third not haunted, right?

because you can you can straddle it with your with your four by four embark location yeah and I think that maybe that was that was my issue I did have a night creature show up but it didn't seem to want to bother us it's just like it was called a um knights warrior oh yeah that's one of those procedurally generated creatures yeah it was a I would say so it was an it said literally that it was a night creature but that it was created it was a it was a necromancer experiment it was really fast and it was running all over my map. My fortress doors were wide open. I left the drawbridge down. I left all the doors unlocked. But he ran around the fortress

a few times. Said, hey, guys, what's up? I'm going to take off now. I might come back later to kill you, but not this week. It's cool. No one seemed particularly bothered. He did his, you did yours, and everyone was fine. Okay. Sure. I guess maybe post-COVID, that's the way the world works in this game. Do you think that all of the creatures are just, they were locked in their warrens and caves for, you know, the last couple of years. And now we've left their biomes alone. And now we're going back in them. And they're just so darned happy to see people again, they put all their problems aside.

Whatever hauntings or scars they were given by the necromancers, they're like, you know what? Things happen. And everybody's just doing their best. And we're going to get on with it. I wonder if that's been coded in. That's Tarn's kind of secret thing. So if anything, what I've taken out of this experiment is that I shall fear no evil. It seems pretty random, because I've had those biomes where, I know, I mean, maybe not,

now I'm trying to think back, did I do that in this newest release or not? But I've, like, for the last time we did one of these Halloween things, like, I set it out, and it was just like there were necromancers everywhere, and, I mean, it got kind of wild. And then I've done others where, like, immediately you have a necromancer. siege or the fisherman kills the carp to eat it and the carp skin comes back and like flops around and kills everyone else and then you've got like reincarnated everything going I mean I've just had it those complete chaos spirals that we all know and actually quite love um you know I've definitely had that and this just I couldn't I couldn't make it happen this time but I was

a little disappointed and it's not because I got better the game that is not that is not oh you're just, you just know what you're doing. Well, no, I want to be really clear. Roland, do you, when you're searching for embark locations, do you filter out evil locations to have that not be high evil? Oh, no, I do the opposite. I filter out high goodness areas because they're not engaging at all to me. I mean, okay, sure.

Yeah, they're unicorns. They're funny. You get feathered trees, very nice wood. But evil biomes, and you get like, elven blood raining from the skies on your dwarfs? No, that is, that is a flavor. Does it take a terrifying, which is savage evil on the grid? Does it take a terrifying biome in order to get the blood rain and the evil clouds and all that?

Because I'm not seeing any of that. It rained, but it was just rain in my currently haunted biome. I think so, yeah. I think you need savagery for something like weather symptoms to occur, which does include the missed zombieification stuff going on. Yeah, the evil clouds. Which I had happened exactly once, and it was very terrifying. Based on those early Krug Smash videos where he tried to embark in an evil biome,

it was reanimating. He had evil clouds that seemed like coming on him every five minutes. maybe it's maybe that was um moderated by the developers of dwarf fortress since that older release that that cruxmash started with yeah don't you wonder i i am i am equally wondering that i would love it if somebody hears this and could say definitively i know exactly what you're seeing this is why so if that's you you know what to find us yeah that's why yeah that's why i have been hiding from evil so much with my fortresses is because I saw that Krug smash video and it traumatized me.

There's no way. Why would you even want to play that where whenever you cut off the hands of a cow, the hand reanimates and comes after your fortress? What's the point of that? That's just too hard. It's kind of silly is what it is. It kind of cracks me up. I've done it and I've played one like that.

But the thing is, it's like the carp eyeball. or whatever that ends up reanimating. Like, they're a lot harder than you think they're going to be to kill, which was the really weird thing about it. Like, I think I had lambs wool one time, like, reanimate. And it was, you know, they killed that one pretty quickly, to be fair, the lamb's wool wasn't too life-threatening. It was terrifying and scary and scarring, but it didn't kill them.

But I think, like, we got wiped out one time by, um, it was a, uh, we had a wear creature in there. And then he turned back into, I locked him in a room and he turned back into a normal person. and then I killed him because I don't like that kind of activity in my fortress and then he reanimated into something that wiped the whole fort

out and that's what I come to know and love with the game but that I couldn't force that so who knew, who knows who the heck knows what's going on yeah I think you got to smash them into little mushy bits and mingle them and hit them

with war hammers to kill the reanimated crap going to make a nice moist paste yeah exactly and that is the reason why for example reanimated skin seems so hard to kill simpler because there's nothing under the skin that you mush into paste for example if you have the full creature it's apparently simpler for the game to track oh yeah

it's impacting into here and you're mushing the muscle tissue and some fat and the bones break and stuff but if it's just skin you have to rip the skin apart into like small small pieces until it's like nothing more like jam and that seems a lot harder to pull off

what would happen if you made a pit and you threw all of this reanimated crap into a pit I can tell you exactly what happens you do not dig the pit deep enough and you forget to smooth the walls and then it climbs out. No, I see.

I can imagine that. Yeah. How would I know? No, you have to actually make sure the pit is deep enough. And deep enough is, if you think it's deep enough, it's not deep enough. And if you think I overdid it, it's correct. Because you have to be sure that the pit is so deep, your dwarfs can see the bottom. Otherwise, they will get scared every time they try to dump something.

And then they stop dumping it. and then you have the reanimated skin instead of in the pit, it's now just next to the pit. So I don't know the math, to be honest, how far they can go. I did a pit that is like 20 levels deep, worked perfectly fine. I did a pit that was only eight, and sometimes they got spooked. Interesting. Or you could have the pit end in the magma sea.

That might do it. that would work perfectly. Yeah, but the pit idea is great, and that's where my Dwarven Toilet trademark on me, Roland, came up because I was like, okay, I'm going to dump everything, and then the pit, like, teemed with undeadness. I was like, okay, this is bad. So I flushed it away, and also that works.

Attention members and guests, Lucas, Guildhall Administrator, calls all farmers of the Guild of Fragrances to the Guild Hall the Lake of Nuts. In the Lake of Nuts you can find, engraved on the floor, a masterfully designed image of Moses Nozax the Dwarf and Dwarves by Zasset Ducimical. Moses Nozax is surrounded by the dwarves. The artwork relates to the appointment of the dwarf Moses Nozax to the position of militia commander of the cradled rampart in the early summer of the year five.

Lucas invites all guild members. to come learn and enjoy fellowship. I got to tell you the name of my fortress that I built because I was focusing on evil, so I thought that I would give it a custom name. My fortress was named Gadorra Gador Gador Gador Gador Gador Gador Gador, Gador, Gador, which translates in English to evil-evil, evil, the evil, evil, evil, evils of evil. Got it.

Yeah, that's pretty evil. Well, you're going for something, and I think you hit it. And it was a pretty lame fort when it came down to the end of it. So, yeah, I think that I will try to not take into consideration the evilness and savagery of a biome whenever I embarked there. Because, yeah, I think you're right. I think that my fortresses are getting a little dull. I'm able to have them go until they collapse from my mismanagement. rather than any outside forces.

And I can now handle, thank you, Tekin for your military coaching, but I can now handle pretty much any goblin attack that comes in on me. Oh, I can't wait to see how this plays out now. Yeah. Yeah, I can totally see it already. Famous last words. Overconfidence. So I'm going to have to finish my current Fortress Ivory Channels because it's in full swing.

I will let that one play. out to its end but the next time i ivory channels yeah ivory channels so yeah it's um in the last episode we had our first memorial gardens installment for that one because two dwarves passed away may they rest in peace oh yeah but um you hate so yeah once ivory channels runs its course however that may be i will then do a fortress that is in an evil biome and see how that goes i will Fear no evil, though I walk into the valley of the shadow of death or something along those lines. Yeah, no, I got, I was super ambitious with thinking that I was going to, you know, completely get skunked. And then I didn't.

And I was puzzled and sad. So, yeah, I guess it happens to the best of us. Yep. I had a great fortress going on and I did not want to abandon the fortress per se. so I instead made a copy and did a little scouting because I have two towers and it seems that one of the towers has interesting yet weird history and I wanted to check out what the thing was about

because when I look at the tower in the world map it says the dwarven tower and it actually does tell me a dwarven civilization that apparently has hold of this However, I don't know this dwarf in civilization. I've never traded with it. And as it turns out, a dwarf just one day left their husband, went into the wilderness, built a tower, and now is the only member of that very civilization.

The king, all nobles at once, and the only member, hilarious to me. How odd. and apparently we're not at war they apparently still have friendly relations with us they have never sent any zombies it doesn't say that we're at war and the whole history has never shown

that the dwarfs waged war against that tower they send some elves over there like the elves of the primitive styles one sent some dudes over there they vanished. It only says in my world history that they went there. But it never says they arrived.

It never says they killed anything and it never said anything about them being killed. So I wanted to investigate. Maybe they were assimilated. They were, in fact, assimilated, yes. And when I arrived there with my adventurer, I was greeted by a few zombies.

But, okay, there were terrifying, shambling monstrosities, but quickly dealt with, because it were like three, and I specifically brought a warhammer for that reason. But the tower was very full of intelligent undead, as well as three necromancers, another dwarf, and I think a castro-man necromancer, it was. Oh, I didn't know that creatures could be necromancers. Yeah, they're rare, but apparently they do, because they also wish for an emotional. mortality sometimes. Oh.

And the necromancer woman that built the tower is now the leader of the thing. And everybody else is like their apprentice. But nobody else is part of her civilization. So they just kind of hang out there, question mark. So I wanted to go in. You know, I broke down the door and was like, oh, necromancer's death to you. And there were very chill people. And they just greeted me like, hey.

What's up? Hi. What you doing? I'm like, are we not at war? We're just like you, man. We just know the secrets of life and death. Yeah, man. Want to know it? Yeah, and the castor man necromancer, I talked to him for a while. The dude actually seems fine. Pretty, pretty nice dude. All in all, considered.

So we talked to a little bit. He turned out very fine. He misses his family. Further probing revealed he doesn't even have a family, so I'm not sure. what that is about. He really enjoyed my humor. He laughed about my jokes. We drank a bit of wine together. And I was also able to talk to almost all of the intelligent undead. They did not attack me at all. And so I just talked to them. And there were other bird people. So it seems he turned more castro people into intelligent undead. And some of them were a bit dull-witted at this

point, but on all, most people just talk to me. And I felt really bad for like coming into the tower they intend to kill. And I was like, okay, are we still doing this? I'm a, I'm still going to bash some skulls in and like steal the slab and die in the wilderness like a really good dwarf wood? Uh, the answer is yes. I did. Of course. Of course. Of course I did that. obviously you've got to do what you need to do yeah obviously you know it's a necromancer i however only killed one necromancer which was not the castor man he managed to fly away before i came to the decision of actually going through with my plan so i killed one other necromancer who is not the leader it was just another apprentice he didn't even know what

was going on it just killed him like two swings he was like what is going on And I was like, this is not a great fight. And all the experiments and the intelligent undead in the tower were like, oh, hey, hold on, combat. What, who's fighting? And I was like, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm fine, I'm cool. They were like, okay, can you leave, though? Can you leave, please? Did you get kicked out?

Kind of, they started to be rude to me and like spitting on the floor around me and yell, oh he is the killer of Orvat I'm like yes I am they weren't really rude to me so I was like okay do I just beat you now or was that figurative or did they literally spit on the floor around you no they literally spit at me at the floor

oh my well first of all spitting is disgusting I mean so you were well within your rights to shoot them because that's gross spread disease yeah it basically just evolved into me going through the tower and people spitting in my face because I just killed

Urvad, me then punching them because half of them were just fairly small animal people versions of undead I dealt with them very quickly. There were two else in there. Yeah, okay.

Some dwarfs but they had no armor. Some had weapons and I just kept going and they kept like spitting at me and the whole thing was really surreal. Because there was no point in the entire thing where

I had an open fight and like an open fight broke out and people attacked me. It was always just me beating people after they spit on me. Like, oh, you are the slayer of Urbaud. Yeah, I am. I'm killing your friends.

What are you doing about it? And at some point... They're spitting. That's one thing. Yeah, they're spitting. But nobody attacked me. At some point, I found the slap. and I consider taking it but I didn't because what did I do I do with the

snap? Do I bring it back to a fortress and doom it to extinction? Nah. So I just left again. Well, that sounds like your move. Yeah. I don't know. You know, because necromancers are funny, but you don't want them in a fortress

because that just becomes annoying. Well, you don't have to take it to a fortress you like. You can take it to some other fortress, right? That is true. That is true. What about that is a few? feature managing multiple fortresses on a single base or on a single map. They can't easily go back and forward. Yeah, you can't because you have to retire and unretire.

And every time I retire a fortress and come back to it, it's in shambles. Like everything, all of the supply dumps are just like strewn across the map, which is really. Yeah, that's irritating. Yeah, it's kind of disappointing. But I suppose, you know, you don't know what's going to happen. You would hope, though, that if you have a moderately sized fortress that was organized pretty well and you retire it for, you know, a year or two so you can do some adventure mode, you'd hope that they could handle themselves and not just start flaming each other with, you know, magma carts and, and, you know, have it be, you know, the last days of Caligula. Yeah, well, I agree. Like, really, you guys can't work it out.

Like, we've put a government in place. Everyone seems to be doing fine. I step away for two minutes and this place is in ruins. Like, come on. Really? Is that what we're doing? I thought more of you, Ervad, you know? Turns out you're not the leader I thought you were.

Okay. Maybe we're leaving everybody drinking. Maybe we shouldn't, you know, do you do like Denmark did to, you know, poor Greenland in the pandemic and take away the alcohol? Because, you know, it's going to be a problem. I mean, there's no good way to handle this. So the thing is,

I think that I know what's going on with that. So the dwarves, whenever they know that their God is watching them from on high, and they know that they're being managed, they are on a particular behavior mode. But whenever you pull back, put it in retirement mode, they completely change their personalities because they know that you're not watching closely. Yeah, exactly. Ope, he's away. He's away.

We can cut taxes on everybody and, oh, the trash stop being delivered. Oh, no. What happened? There's no mail. Oh, crap. Feel free to insult your fruits. Oh, no. Yeah, right? I think they just go full libertarian or something and it goes in the park. Nobody, nobody making the alcohol and everyone needs to go dehydrated. Yes, that's right. Where's the well? Do you, do you guys, is that, is that sort of your, like, I will, I think one of my haunted forts I deployed in a, in a saltwater biome. And, you know, the game really doesn't want you to do that. It's like, hey, hey, buddy, saltwater biome here. What are you doing? You, you dumb? Like, I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to save you here. This is not even remotely fair.

But you do it anyway, because you're confident there's water. So, yeah, one of them, I was confident that there's water and I dug down and there was no water in any of the cavern. Really? I was like, well, you guys are dead. Well, dead, dead, dead, dead. Yeah. I've never seen that before. Maybe that was what made it haunted or terrifying. You're going to die of thirst. Oh, okay. Yeah. That reminds me of a funny story. In my current fortress that I really like, I have a underground lake. It's not huge, but it has access to the outside. So it refills all the time. And I was like, oh, this is perfect. So I put my tavern directly above it and there is a well in the ceiling and it drops directly down and it's very nice. And for a really long time, I just ignore the fact that that well is just open and something could fly up. I was like living with that.

You know, like, okay, whenever, like, something large and flying and terrifying, like a forgotten beast with wings comes in. I'm just going to tell everybody to get the hell out of the tavern and kill that thing as quickly as possible. It did never happen. It never happened. And at some point, I was like, you know what? Now I have the resources and I have the time and my thing is going perfectly fine.

So I can now sit down, drain this stupid thing, and, like, put, everything in place so that the well is now completely shut off and like nicely done and it has grades and no items flood in and no contamination floods in and then a legendary floodgate that it can open and close and it's it's really nicely done and the second I do that the next six beasts all have wings and I'm like what what did you know game did you know

that is very kind of you but you know I was kind of waiting for that I was like, oh, no, game better. Nobody sends some wings in here. You know, I was waiting for that to happen, but okay. I've never had that happen, and I've always been worried about it. And I think maybe it was because of what's his name's, that guy that used to make the YouTube videos. He had shown that things come up through that, but I've never experienced it. And I never put the grade in from my wells.

I always just, I live on the edge. I just live on the edge. That is so nice because it happened exactly once to me and that I remember it because the forgot beast was a dinosaur. Oh, God, really? Yeah, and I didn't check what kind of dinosaur.

So I was like, okay, cool, dinosaur. And my brain conjured the image of one of, like a stegosaurus in my head. But I didn't read what it actually was. and 20 seconds later is directly in my sleeping chambers because that's where I put there. Yeah, and I was like, how did you get there?

Yeah, it flew up through the well. It was, you know, a terradactyl. It had wings. And I didn't check because I'm an idiot. And I was looking, you know, oh, it doesn't say it had wings. Yeah, because it spawns with wings. It's just an animal with wing, Roland.

Come on. So it actually did flew up into my thing and killed, I think, a child or something. And I was like, oh, God, I'm so sorry. You hate to see that. Wake up. Yeah, I really hated it. Sorry, kids. That, I think, is the only point in time where something actually came through my well.

And I was befuffled because I'm like, okay, first of all, it works. Things can actually fly up. And you got to check what the hell this. dinosaur is because it can spawn with wings and it doesn't tell you that it has wings like a grackle. I know what a grackle is now, but you know, I kind of have to check my dinosaurs. Come on.

Hey, Roland, you're rusty on dinosaurs? Come on, man. What are you doing? Is steel magma safe? I think so. Is what? Is steel? Oh, yeah, steel. Yeah, I think it is, yeah. So let me ask you, could you make a well for magma? if you use

magma safe materials to create the does it have to be a wooden bucket or can it be a pot? No, I think it has to be a bucket. Also, I think it just fails at the very thing that the dwarfs

probably don't know what to do with it anyway. Like, they're like, okay, I have a bucket of mud one now, but what to do with it now? Well, the same thing that you would do with a... Of course, I've never actually completed a magma furnace

So I've never Oh, well there's an afternoon project for you Those are awesome That's like one of my favorite things to do Because it saves you all that hassle of going to get the What do you call it? Charcoal

And then you know Bituminious coal and lignite Like you don't have to do any of that malarkey It's just everything just works Well you still have to make pig iron I mean yes it's Yeah you still have to do that So you got to have to go with that for

Oh that's right You still have to know I thought you only had to have um i thought you only had to have a flux element for that like a chalk or something yeah you're like marble that's right you have iron you have iron ore i was thinking that like that was an iron ore no that's that's a that's a fuel source okay so but yeah my i've never done it because i've gotten by fine on on charcoal putting a chart a wood burning furnace right by my smelter right by my uh metal worker so it's i've gotten into i guess you could say a rut but I think that it's more of a process.

But, yeah. Magma safe just takes the charcoal and the fuel source out of it. Or a magma. Well, that's cool. Furnace wood, I guess. But you got to put it, you know, over your magma. Yeah. Yeah.

That is not an evil thing. That is just an aside. No, it's a good aside, though, because even evil needs steel. Yes. This segment of Dwarfords. The Fortress Roundtable is made possible by a grant from Brandon Wright, creator of Isanagast Bicareril, still clenched the dipped fellowship and orthoclaced bed. All crafts worship is of the highest quality. The bed is encrusted with cushion orthoclase cabbichons and encircled with bands of pear-cut cat's eyes.

The object is adorned with hanging rings of aquamarine and menaces with spikes of sheepbone and pigtail. On the item is an image of a mud man in aquamarine. aquamarine. Isanagast Bikareril still clenched the Dipped Fellowship from Brandon Wright. You know what is spooky, however? Ghosts. Ghosts are spooky. Oh, yeah.

And there are different kind of ghosts, as we know. But, okay, this will sound insane. But I'm kind of hoping for like a most violent ghost version that there is. It's like, I think it's just called violent ghost, violent haunt, whatever. I'm hoping for that. And I had it once, and it was the most cursed thing ever. Well, you know how that happens right. I'm still hoping for another.

You know how that happens, right? So they, oh, no. How your ghosts get violent. They have to be unhappy when they die. If you've got a, if you've got a fortress that has everybody, you know, tip-top shape and happy, Then you're just going to get ghosts that are hanging around, you know, scaring a few people sometimes, but they're not going to rip their arms off. You have to have a fortress where the unhappiness level is high whenever the people

die and don't get properly memorialized. And then they're going to come back and be violent ghosts. So, yeah, you've got to take your, you've got to actually kill people in the caves, drive them insane with, with violent madness. Let them die and not memorialize them. and you will have your evil violent ghost. Oh, that explains it because I was annoyed at my lack of funny ghost stories. Yep.

I don't remember where it was that I heard that, whether it was on a dwarf fortress talk or whether I read it on the wiki. But, yeah, I did a little bit of research into that because my first ghost that I ran into, yeah, that was not nice at all. It was before I, it was real early in my playing career, and it makes some sense that my first ghost would be violent because I was horrible at running a fortress and everybody was unhappy. Yeah, it used to be easier to have unhappy dwarves. I have to say, I do think there's, you know, that the jump from, was it like 44 to version 47, I feel like mellowed everyone out a lot. Do you guys notice that?

Do you think, do you think that the fortress is? are just shiller than they used to be because I feel like sometimes people are unreasonably jerks. Maybe. Or is it just that I'm better at playing Dwar fortress? Well, you wonder. I think it's a mix of both. Yeah. Actually.

Because now I know what I'm doing and the dwarfs. Like if it runs for longer the fortress and it's fairly okay then they will make good memories and suddenly it's so easy to take them out of like a bad loop again. That does make sense You know what I think is going to be interesting

Is the influx of people I suspect more new people will be joining To play this game In the future And you know Because I hear there's an update coming Really Somebody mentioned that

I don't know Did you see the I guess they're still building it Did you see the dev notes that dropped last night Yeah It looks like things are I mean Things are coming along

I'm I'm impressed. I love those dev notes. I feel like they really go above and beyond to just spill the beans. I think that's amazing. So let's table that until next episode because I thought about maybe let's talk about those dev notes this time, but let's go ahead and table that for the next episode because I want to do a little bit more into ghosts because we might even have more dev notes next

time too. So let's do a dev notes episode. That sounds good. Yeah, the ghosts. thing is interesting and understanding the haunted biomes I think is more interesting like really what is the difference between haunted terrifying and

frightening is that or is that R3? Is that the trifle? No, sinister haunted and terrified. Thank you. Yeah. Sinister, haunted and terrifying. Okay. Cool. Got it. Apparently it is not whether it is a reanimating

biome or not because according to the wiki that half of the evil biomes are reanimating, or approximately half. But it doesn't say that those are the terrifying ones or the haunted ones, just like you're rolling the dice or flipping the coin, as it were. Roland?

What's your experience on that? Wait, on what now? Reanimating biomes. The wiki says that about half of the evil biomes are reanimating. half I would disagree with the half because every time I on purpose

go out into any of those biomes and I'm trying to get anything done it's never a haunted but when I go like oh yeah you know probably not a haunted reanimating it's a reanimating do you think it's just a gamble a crapshoot

honestly honestly it is a big big gamble and the amount of stuff that I just built realized it's not reanimating and then be grungy and instantly just leave again has been way too high. So I would actually just say it's a third, not half.

Well, here's the direct quote from the wiki. And also, we have to keep in mind, the wiki is not being written based on seeing the development logs and seeing the truth. It's being written based on people's experience. Yeah, if people are making, people are generously contributing their time

to keep that updated and may get it right, making it wrong. So like if the game gets moderated where it gets a little bit easier, people just may not realize that and who knows when the update of this page was. But in any case, the actual quote from the 12 Fortress Wiki is,

About half of all evil regions are reanimating, meaning the wildlife and plant life will be undead in any creature that dies after a short time will be reanimated as undead. So this is about half. So that's... But yeah, I think that you're right. I think that it's probably closer to a third. But the thing is, there's not anything you can pick to know that it's reanimating before you embark there. It's going to be a surprise. It's a nicer almost.

Yeah, you have to try it out. Yeah. You know what? I kind of like that. And because I don't know, I think there's something to that. Maybe we'll call it a bug, but I'm actually thinking that's kind of a happy accident because I like the dice roll aspect of it. It's like I want to play in a haunted biome and this might turn into a total and

unmitigated disaster, but it might also be okay. And I don't know. There's kind of something hilarious about that. Yep. I agree. If you give me the option to filter it out, there's a good chance that I'm going to filter it out. and have a dull fortress as I seem to be doing more and more often. Yeah, yeah, I was definitely, as I was saying,

I was going in spoiling for trouble and didn't find it. And I was like, well, that's disappointing. Because sometimes you do want to go spoiling for a fight. I do too. I think that rolling the dice for especially things that make the fortress difficult is a good thing. And I need to stop spending so much time picking the perfect place to embark and just embark somewhere. Yes.

it. Dwarf Fortress Roundtable is brought to you in part by Eurist J. Jennings, creator of Aristonem, Dented Thunder the Assaulted Mortal, a Yak-Bone Warhammer. All crafts' warship is of the highest quality. On the hammer is an image of Stillclench the Dipped Fellowship, the Orthoclaced Bed, in Yakbone. Also on the item is an image of Jirdo Rock Judges the Rock in tetrahedrite. Jirdo Rock Judges is laboring. The artwork relates to the settling of the Rock Jirda Rock Judges

in the Finger of Pleats in the Year 1. Lastly, also on the item is an image of giant white storks in Cherrywood. Aristonam, Dented Thunder The Assaulted Mortal By Juris J. Jennings All the funky biomes, all the, you know, terrifying, etc. Even if you don't go the full way and go terrifying, reanimating biome, I would actually say they make the funnier stories. Especially if you get a mixed biome where not the entire map is terrifying or reanimating.

So you get like normal trees and some normal animals or whatever. They make great stories, especially if the part that is like quote unquote normal is larger than the part that is like, reanimating. So sometimes things spawn in but it's not like constantly and sometimes you have like undead camels or whatever or you make a dumping pit in that very spot for that purpose of like having

stuff come back because you like things coming back. Side eyes I would not know who I'm talking about. That makes for good stories. You can still dig in your dwarfs still have to fight zombies but it's not like a constant

thing everywhere. You get normal wood. That is also because very often in these terrifying ones, I had no trees. I just had like weird eye shrubbery that looked back at me. And you can't build a bed with eyed shrubbery. I guess you'd have a pretty scary bed. Yeah, yeah. And so you had to like dig down and get under surface trees and like stuff, which is fine.

It's not that hard to do. But, you know, if you want cherry wood beds, you've got to implement. pour it the cherry wood and it's like a whole thing and you're like ah okay wow i can't tell you the number of times i've wanted cherrywood beds as opposed to what was available yeah no no for the flavor you know walnut bed because somebody likes walnut wood yeah no no no no no no denying that in my fortress evil evil evil evil the evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evils of evil. Half of it is evil biome. And

the other half is not. The half that is evil biome is badlands. I think that there are some things on there that look like trees, but I haven't tried to cut them down. I've done all my forestry work in the non-evil portion. So the badlands are easy to spot

on there because they're this really dinky icky, icky-looking brown. Badlands, I think, can spawn zombies. Definitely spawned. It can be trees. Oh, fun. They definitely can't have trees as well.

I just had like no RNG on my side whenever I started. I was like, no trees for you, buddy. Yeah, I said it spawned a night creature. It spawned a necromancer experiment that was identified in the description of it as a night creature. It said that it was a night creature that was developed by experiments by some necromancer. And their pronouns are he and him. Yep. I was actually it was a she and her.

It was a female necromancer experiment. I don't know how they identify. What's that? I'm not sure. I have no idea how they identify. Well, it actually used those pronouns. She. They, them.

Oh, she. Okay. I feel like if any game is going to implement it, it's going to be Door Fortress. I mean, we already have like bisexual dwarfs. Yeah. I love it. I think it's amazing that he did that. I think that's very cool.

And that's why I was saying, I think if somebody's going to implement pronouns and pronoun choices, I could see that happening here. Procedurally generated neopronoms. Dude, that's how you bring Gen Z in. I think we both, I think, here's what I think. I think we set out to fail and we set out to succeed.

No, we actually set out to fail. Set out to fail. I did not. What now? I said that right. I set out. to fail in this endeavor. I set out to have a story where I could be like, you'll never believe how wild this was. I set out in like the worst sounding biome ever and blah, blah, blah. And there's

no story to tell because every fort went perfectly. And I'm just kind of annoyed by that. In the words of Stephen Stills, and we never failed to fail, it was the easiest thing to do. Yep. Well, there we go. And I'm not saying competence here. It's just happenstance, I guess. Luck. Well, yeah. As is so much of this game. Yeah. Or it was being too timid in my choice of evil. I wanted to have it to be playable, but still fail. What I did was get something that was immensely playable and probably fun in the lowercase fun sense. So. Lowercase fun. Yeah. Not not the DF fun. Just fun. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Not the Dorf Fortress spirit of fun. Yeah. We were looking for the dwarf fortress spirit of fun,

and we found everyday fun. I definitely wanted the door fortress experience. There will be a time, and it will be one when I'm like, this is going to be my best fort ever, and it's going to just devolve into chaos. And I'll remind myself of this conversation when I requested failure and got success.

Okay, well, I hope everyone has a wonderful and happy Halloween. Everyone's safe. I'm going to go check out the, of course, it will be over with by the time this is released, because this will probably release the day before Halloween, but I'm going to go check out the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday at the Gilliose Theater in Springfield. It's going to be a blast. It always is. Yeah, if you guys

have a chance to go to a Rocky Horror Picture Show, I highly recommend you to it. It is so much fun. That is my traditional Halloween tradition. Done. Sounds amazing. And can not be in the United States, so. Oh, bummer. Well, or great. I don't know if it's a bummer. Not the worst thing in the world It's not an accident Are you going to a haunted bio? He's returning to one. Yes, that's right.

Look, I couldn't find one in game, so I had to go try to find one somewhere on the planet that I live in. All right, guys. We will see all of you next time. It'll be two weeks. The plan is anyway, two weeks after this episode is released on Halloween

for us to release our next episode. And so until next time, everybody, spooky fortressing, right? Spooky, spooky. Happy Dwarven. This has been the Dwarfortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundtable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarfortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice.

You can find video content on our YouTube channel. and you can send us an email at Eurist at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-F Roundtable.com. Please consider donating to the creators of Dwarfortress at Bay12 Games.com. If you'd like to help support this podcast, you can find us at patreon.com slash D.F. Roundtable. This is a conversational podcast.

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