Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 85: Capturing Hydrae and Other Beginner Topics With Willow

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Welcome back to the Roundtable. This episode, we get the perspective of a DF user who dove in after the 50.x release. Willow joins us to discuss beginner strategies, capturing a hydra, and tabletop RPGs. Enjoy! Show Links: Dwarf Fortress Hot Potato 2023 (for Doctors Without Borders) Roland's Twitch channel DF Hack on Steam and Github Noita World of Dungeons Steam Plugins mentioned by Willow On/Off Burrows Burbon's Dark Depths Burbon's Dark Floors 2.5D Perspective Walls Squad and Burrow Icons Conundrum's Tweaks - Ramps & Flooring Shaped Shoes/Boots See Through Smoothing Designations w/Priority Leather output scales with creature size Gauntlet Equip Fix Interface Tweaks Let Dwarven Women Have Beards 2 Lightly Detailed Grass Metal Beds More Food Names Obvious Engravings Workshops without floors

Get ready for the Ultimate Gaming Marathon for a great cause. Halcyon Frequency presents the Dwarfurtress Hot Potato Fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders. For four days, 22 streamers will take turns managing one fortress for 88 hours straight, starting at 3 a.m. Pacific Time on April 28th. Your donations will support the lifesaving work of Doctors Without Borders. Join us for unforgettable gameplay and a chance to make a real difference. You can find links in the show notes or at DF Roundtable. Welcome.com.

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. Just one place. Let me just tell you where I have been. Tony. Wife. I.

It's supposed to be a parable. about one spouse keep and Jonathan Buck, Lenny and Wiffy, ginger, oh, cheesy poo as they present insightful, irreverent and often incorrect analysis. Joining the roundtable today is Willow, a relative newcomer to dwarf fortress.

I really thought you were going to say, like, don't go with someone who will rat on you. And always remember, losing is fun. Get your cat sauce. and coffees ready for another episode of your favorite podcast, Dwar Fortress Roundtable. It's dark. Is there an SPCA that's going to come after us?

Well, hopefully. You know, it's all in good fun. No cats are hurt, and we all love animals. You know, the SPCA has to hate Dwarfortress. There's lots of donations. Let's see, I'm going to get all of these wild animals. someone to chain them up until they are tame. I mean, there used to be a thing on Reddit

where you could cross-post something that sounded absolutely insane without the context. And the entirety of the War Fortress got kind of banned from that because it is just too easy to do it. Yeah, it's the shit Reddit says or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or I think it might be our no contact. Either or, yeah. Exactly. You listen to five minutes of this podcast. We had an episode with Alexei Pepper some years ago. And if you listen to like five minutes of that episode without any context, it sounds like we're planning murders. It's the murder incorporated podcast. Well, if you've listened to five minutes of this podcast, first of all, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. It's really hard to come into the middle of a podcast, though.

Well, you wouldn't want to miss out on the early episodes to really understand where the plot has gone. That's important stuff. If you're wondering who this other voice is, this is Willow. And Willow first started playing Dwar Fortress after the Steam release. So we wanted to talk about what it's like if all of your experience with Door Fortress is post-Steem release. So, yeah, could you give us an idea of your dwarf fortress start? How did you get started with it? Yeah, so I did play a small amount before the steam release.

I was working in a call center, and I had way too much time on my hands. I need to occupy my brain somehow because talking to these people did not do it. So I... Been there, done that. You know, I messed around in Microsoft paint, making pixel- and I ended up picking up Dwar Fortress because I knew it wouldn't look like a video game. So I tried it out and I did not get very far and I ended up leading that job not too long after I started trying it out. And I did not pick it back up again because I basically bounced off of it the same as people normally do.

You know, we've heard several times people will say they gave the game a show. shot and it was too difficult, too arcane, bounced off of it, came back, tried again. And between then and the steam release a couple of times, I had thought, you know, maybe I should give Tor Fortress a try again. Maybe I should give it another go. And occasionally I would actually browse the wiki just because it was so fascinating. So I knew a little bit about it, but I did not play it anymore until the steam release came around. And then I was like, okay, well, I have to get it now because it's going to be so much easier. So I did. And it has been absolutely a breeze to learn it. Like there's absolutely no comparison between trying to learn it

on the, you know, the pre-Gui pre-Mouse support version. I guess pre-GUE isn't quite right. Technically. I know what you mean, though. Yeah. Yeah. It's been worlds easier learning it on the, on the Steam, on V-50, I should say. That's the, That's the way to refer to it without excluding itchio, which is a great platform. You should check that out, by the way. That's a good point. That's a good point. That is a very good point. Because I think Steam or the free non-premium version, which I have downloaded that and played it.

So Door Fortress made you quit your job? Is that what I'm doing? You got into it and then you... It's interesting. We haven't had anybody that left their job. That's great. I know what I was going to ask. Whenever you first tried Dural Fortress, did you use any of the starter packs, or did you just use vanilla?

That's a tough question. I think I remember messing around with Lazy Nube Pack. I remember seeing that tile set. So I think what I did is I used Lazy Nude Pack, but then I did not really like the tile set that came with it. So I turned off the tile set, but I probably was still using the Lazy Nude Pack to, like, launch the game. Yeah, that's the way, that's the recommended way of using Dwar Fortress at work is to turn off the graphics so that it just looks like network nonsense. Yeah. Exactly.

Trust me, I'm working. What program are you writing right now? Well, it's a cobalt. Yeah. And also the, one of you pull up a dwarf therapist, it looks like you're running a, you know, an analysis on an Excel Sprit. spreadsheet, so. Kind of are. So Willa, have you successfully, how long did it take you to have success?

Did you feel and successfully build a fortress? Well, my... Do you recall your first fortress? Yeah, my first fortress went fairly well, just off of the tutorial. I didn't get any kind of like super evil biome or anything. I'm trying to recall how that fortress ended and I'm struggling, but I imagine it probably ended something similar to how most of my fortresses end, which is I realize that I don't like something about the layout and I start over. Well, I tell you what, it's nice to hear that that is still the same because my first five fortresses probably didn't last over two in-game years because I'm,

be like, oh, I did that horribly. I'm going to retire it and go do something else. Eventually, I stopped doing that and just started working around my design mistakes, because I figured out that if I keep doing that, I'm never going to design the perfect fortress, and I'm never going to get past year two. Yeah, that's about where I'm out right now as well. What I'm working on right now, I am, I want to run a short D&D campaign, not in D&D the system, but, you know, a tabletop RPG similar to D&D, same vibe. And the idea I had for it was to play a game of Dwar Fortress and, you know, build a fort, dig deep, not be too careful about security.

And then when inevitably something happens and the fortress dies, then I have my dungeon that I can send the adventurers into. And then I also have, like, a reason for them to go there. They're reclaiming the fort. They're a party of dwarves sent from the Mountain Hone to reclaim this desolate, destroyed, ruined fortress. And I always like the idea of sort of restricted player options in RPGs. So I'm going to say, I've told them, you know, for this game, if you're, you don't have to be a dwarf. But if you're not a dwarf, you've got to explain to me why you're on this expedition for a bunch of dwarves, you know. Well, Roland, you've integrated dwarf fortress and Dungeons and Dragons in some way, didn't you?

Yes, I used it as the, as two things, actually, as a world creator and a character creator, where I would map out a world, and then I used the picture of the world. as my world map with all the towns and yada yada or i would create an adventurer and you get all these little tidbits like he's vain he's zany and blah blah blah and you would make a the guy that you kind of want to play and then you just copy the text that you ultimately came up with so yeah no i can i can see why you use dwarf fortress to generate something because Because it's amazing for that. Yeah, great idea. Also, you get the back history.

Yes. True. Yeah. True. And the gods and stuff. Can I ask what kind of system you used for your thing? Like what computer I'm running on it? Oh, what TTRPG system?

Mm-hmm. Yes, I am having trouble recall any name. Let me look it up. I used Osric. I did a whole Osric. campaign that was basically first edition D&D because that's all the books I had because I'm so old. I had every

book from 1980 through 83, the old first edition, advanced Dungeons and Dragons. So I use the Osric rule set. Old school rules index and the sea stood for something. It was pretty fun.

World of Dungeons. It's called World of Dungeons. It is a three page. system and yeah the whole system is three pages the entire rules for the system is three like well I guess technically it's it's six side like it's three pages double-sided um but two two of those so so what one of those double-sided pages is two character sheets and then a quarter or half of one of those pages is just a giant image so it is a very very very concise rule system.

I'm planning on running this for mostly players who are completely new to TTRPGs in general. And I like the vibe of it. It reminds me of when I found my dad's first edition A, D, and D books

when I was 12 and forced my family to play D&D with me. I'm chasing that high ever since. In ages past, Jack Dylan, the renowned minstrel of Newtower, sang of Elder Bim's conviction that he had been chosen by the forces of nature and divinity to lead his fellow dwarves on a great and noble quest.

Though the purpose of this quest remained shrouded in mystery, Bim remained steadfast in his belief that its importance could not be overstated. Thus, the elder knew that he must gather together a great host of motivated and skilled dwarves to help him fulfill this sacred task. To this end, he commanded the elders to carve out well-appointed living spaces, a grand and opulent tavern, a luxuriously appointed dining hall, and a magnificent temple dedicated to the worship of the great God Mandel Ibrachash and R. And so it was that the elders worked tirelessly,

carving the very rock of the earth to create a home worthy of the noble quest that lay ahead. They toiled with hammer and chisel, shaping the stone with a stone with a care and attention to detail that could only come from the hearts of true craft dwarves. Elder Bim watched with pride as his people reveled in the glory of their new home. He knew that the road ahead would be long and arduous, but with the steadfast determination of his people and the blessings of the gods, they would prevail. Thus saith Jack Dillon, Bard of Newtower, who will forever sing of the courage and determination of the dwarves of that great and noble fortress.

So, Willow, Fortress Defense, do you have a preferred fortress defense method? Yes. Do you prefer like a drawbridge over a door? Drawbridges all the way. Something I've noticed is that whenever I bust into the caverns, if I want to continue my stairwell, it is very difficult to do that. I've found that what I have to do is just put a floor at the bottom of the stairwell like before it busts into the cavern ceiling and then dig around and down through like a column

in the cavern because, and this is something that has been brought up on a few recent episodes, the stair building system, while it is so easy to use for most purposes, the stair mining and building you don't have to worry about upstairs and downstairs does not work if you bust through the cavern ceiling and then you make your way down to the cabin floor you cannot then connect a stairwell that you've constructed from the cavern floor to that hole in the cavern ceiling unless you remove your entire stairway which often is tens of z levels and rebuild your stair your stairway from scratch all the way up which is so annoying so someone brought up the idea of an advanced mode for stair building.

It was Twisted Logic Gaming, I think. Yes, thank you, Twisted Logic. That is a great idea. Please do that. I would love an advanced mode for stairs just for that one connection point so that I don't have to remove this entire... I mean, it's a perfectly good stairwell. Yeah, yeah, I know exactly.

I know exactly what is meant by that. Yeah, it's annoying. Yeah, especially when... When I encountered it, it was very new the version. Like, I did not know anything had changed too much here. And suddenly, I had trouble connecting those stairs. And I was like, well, what is happening? Did I just lose half my brain?

Why are you not doing what you used to do before? And then you do actually have to like slap a floor on it. And the whole thing of you breached down. And then you have a up-down staircase. So there is now a hole in the ceiling of the cavern. So something could fly up. Yeah. And getting rid of that is like a, a not working.

It is not working the way it should. Well, they can't fly up if you put a floor over it, can they? That's true. But in two times, it removed the entire stair. Yeah, you get trapped down there. Yeah. Yeah, you got to be careful. Yeah, so you're dudes, you have to build and know,

staircase to get at it. It sucks. When you punch into the caverns, it sucks. I lost a bunch of dwarfs one time because I couldn't figure out why they couldn't get out. But they were in my mind. Anyway, it's crazy. Yeah. I don't think it's working quite the way it's supposed to. I wonder if it would be possible to add that feature through modding or not. I don't know anything about modding in this game so I don't know if that would be possible or not I think that's a level below what you can do

with modding based on my understanding of how the modding system works I think that's kind of in the core mechanics side of things so I suspect it's unintentional and that eventually someone at Dorff H.HQ is going to go hey you know what I mean it used to

exist. It is like the temperature. Temperature is still in the game. It's just not being shown. So you would probably just need a place. You would need to make a place inside the GUI so you can access the currently hidden points of the game again,

like temperature or whatever. Unless they actually could be that they ended up refactoring the stairwell code. And if that's the case, then it may not be so easy just to add a button. As long as there's a workaround. Okay, fair. Well, to anyone out there in the modding community, if you're looking for a project,

please do us all a favor and give us a way to make stairs work. Hey, speaking of mods, I heard that DF Hack was going to be going into the, into the Steam Workshop. Is anybody, I looked there yesterday, and I didn't see that it was in there. Anybody heard anything about that? Yes, yes, actually. It is currently just in the beta. They're trying things out.

They're trying how stable it is. A few days ago, you could get a beta code on our subreddit. I saw it, and I got a beta code, and I still have to try it out, actually. Our subreddit. The Dwarfotry subreddit, I mean. Thank you. Not the roundtable subreddit that does not exist. We hope we're all cleaning.

Yeah, no, it is like, it is currently in beta, so you can't access it normally. You need a code to download it, and then they're testing how stable it currently is and if everything works. And maybe in a few weeks, if they have finished working on a few bugs or crashes or whatever, they will put it up and then it's done because Steam always requires a little bit time where you actually show Steam, oh, it's not like something that we pulled out of our nose. It actually works. And then once the DFHack version is out, I think that's the indication that we're about to get a new version of the game.

Usually, once the DF hack is stable. If the pattern holds true, you know. Yeah. True, true. But the good thing about the Steam Workshop DFHack would be that you just have to click on a single button, it had started. and self, even when your game gets updated, it keeps there. It does not

de-install, it does not break your game, it just goes back and pretends that it's not there. So, in the meantime, you kind of have to play with a normal, normal dwarfs and as soon as the DF hack version on the workshop is up to date, it instantly is there

again. So I think that is so, Roland, what are the go-to features that I really want? If I'm not a DFHack guy, and I haven't really installed it before. Not that I'm saying that that is the case. But if I were, what would I be most excited about in DFHack? If I was new to Steam, no idea what this was.

Why would I install it? What am I going to get out of it? Stone Sense. For example. Okay. Yeah. Stone Sense. You guys like Stone Sense.

A 3D program is pretty good. At some point, we will hopefully have the whole Legends Viewer thing, again so that you can export legends you have a full window you have a world map and the world map is interactive but just in the game you also get neat little tricks like clean owned x so that every single item that a dwarf wears that is very worn gets automatically dumped so that you like marked for dumping not dumped but they marked it for dumping and suddenly half your population goes and throws their own shirts away. So they don't have like a, like a, way, I'm not wearing a good shirt anymore.

Yeah, right now there's no way to get rid of worn clothing, right? You have to trade it. You have to go into the dwarf, click on the item, click on the item to be dumped. And that is, if you have 200 dwarfs, it is, ugh. But I thought I heard that they won't dump it even if you do that. Sometimes they're weird about it because, yeah, yeah. I've been trading it away. Anything with X's in it, I usually just give to the elves or whatever.

Yeah, but that is not own clothing. That is not the clothing that they have in their bedrooms and on their bodies. That is the big difference. Oh, that's right. It's only just the crap that's laying around, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So can you, I mean, theoretically, like, I'm just trying to think about, like, ways that people manage this without that. And I guess if you have a steady stream of new clothes for them to wear,

Will they go grab that stuff and dump the old stuff? Yes, yes, yes, yes. They will. They will. It will take longer because they will often wear a shirt that is already, like, worn. Yeah, they're thrifty. And then cry about it. Like, oh, no, my shirt is worn.

Even though they're perfectly good shirts, they could just grab it because it's dwarfs. Yeah. Just little martyrs, aren't they? The problem that I often see is that you have a lot of dwarfs that are very, chaotic or they're really like looking good and they end up having like a walk-in closet out of their entire room and the entire room is like plastered full of clothing and it's just all over the floor so one dwarf does not own the few things that he has on his body but the dwarf owns like 100 different pieces of clothing and can you not can you can you can you throw it away it's all

tattered it's all old need a marie condo mod yeah That's right. What's that? We need a Marie Condo mod. She's the Does It Spark Joy woman? Ah. Oh. Yeah.

Good joke. Dashtot. Does this bring you joy? Does this tattered loincloth bring you joy? Oh, boy. Yeah. That's a good idea. If they put shells on a tattered loincloth, no, it does not bring me joy.

It shells on it. Well, it tatters. that you've made something new. After a harsh winter, Logan Hastings tells us that spring of the year 106 arrived, bringing renewed hope to the resilient dwarves of Newtower. Despite the mediocre soil, they toiled tirelessly to prepare it for planting, eagerly anticipating the coming harvest. But the dwarves knew that they must do more than simply survive,

they must thrive. And so, they devoted themselves to the creation of magnificent works of art, using their calloused hands and unbridled passion to craft masterpieces of unparalleled beauty. As the sun set on the first day of their artistic endeavors, the dwarves gathered in the great hall to marvel at each other's creations. From statues of heroes and gods to intricate engravings on weapons and armor, the works were a testament to the dwarf's artistic prowess. watching with pride elder bim knew that the future of new tower of showing was bright indeed with their mastery of both agriculture and art they would surely become renowned throughout the land as logan hastings bard of new tower would later recount spring had brought with it not only the promise of a bountiful harvest but also the birth of a new cultural center in the untamed wilderness great use for D.F. Hack is removing aquifers. You know, if you've ever wanted to embark on a river, but not have to deal with an aquifer and you're on a small world and you just

can't find a location like that, just embark anyway. And then, um, I forget the command, but you can clear out the aquifer entirely, just drain it and then you don't have to worry about it. There's a mod for that. That's one of the workshop mods that I, that I use every time is no aquifers. There you go. Yeah, they're kind of annoying. Yeah. Yeah, it's very, very, very useful.

I have not looked back since I got rid of, I don't care that the realism is not as high. Yeah, it's great. I can live with that. I can live with less realism. Yeah, I mean, it's not like you always have an aquifer to deal with. You can just embark on a place without an aquifer. So if you're doing that anyway, it just expands your options. Although there are some really cool things you can do with aquifers, waterfalls, and such.

If you look on the subreddit, there's some really neat stuff people have done. It looks really cool. I saw somebody made a stairwell that is fairly large and had a waterfall in the middle. So the waterfall was actually like two by two tiles, so big. and it fed entirely on like two layers of slowly dripping water in a cave that kind of came together and made a whole waterfall. That was pretty cool. Nice.

How about those frames? Isn't that a frame rate murderer? I always had problems with that. Whenever I started messing with waterfalls and misgenerators and stuff, my FPS dip to uncomfortable level. I've not had frame rate problems at all. since the version 50 came out. It's been much better, it seems to me.

It has gotten a lot better. Yeah, it has gotten a lot better. Yeah, I think I've had ridiculous fort sizes, like 300 or something. Oh, yeah, we remember you're ridiculous way. You show off with your CPU. No longer, no longer a single core leader here. There's multiple processors that are more capable. But it is, it is a testament to the fact that they've clearly done

lot optimizing. Hey, I tried out the new Dwar Fortress beta branch that you can go into. Yeah, I tried it out for about a day. Does everybody now to get that one? Yeah. I don't know if everybody does how to get into that. You right click the Dwar Fortress thing on the steam launcher and select properties and there's a option for beta branch. But I had it crash on me three times. So I went back to the to the stable branch because are you using hackers? plain. Nope, no. I am using the no aquifers plug-ins, or no aquifers workshop

mod, so I maybe want to turn that off and try again. Could have something to do with it? It seems like that would only have an effect during WorldGen, but I don't know, maybe it has his fingers in there. How do the children look? It was a very weird question. I didn't ever get that far. Aw. It's a brand new fortress. I've only got seven dwarves in it, so... Oh, that new? Yeah, and I was building my

initial bedrooms and it crashed on me I mean you know how dual fortress crashes it just goes away that hasn't changed with the new version doesn't bill labor at the point with long error messages and debug logs it just

gets out of your way it just let's you deal with the loss on your own terms yeah so considerate yeah they did that to me three different times whenever I whenever it would crash I would try doing something else

So it did that. And I was like, well, you know what? I'll try again in a couple months after these bugs have been worked out. Yeah, if something has changed where I can submit a dump, then that would be great. But I don't think that's an option. So I didn't really report anything because I have no idea what it was that I was doing that caused the crash. Yeah, I've, I've had the beta up and running, but I haven't seen much. I mean, I guess I can see a little bit.

The kids, the children don't look too much different. I'm I supposed to be looking for, I guess. Just disable for you? Yeah, I haven't had any problems. Oh, cool. Child animals, like small animals, young animals? Child animals, yes. Dragons, if you have any?

No dragons. I haven't had dragons for ages. Why not? No, no, not since the olden times. Megamite meme, no dragons? Oh, I ran into a hydra on one of my early forts. there was this hydra just chilling over on the side of the map. I did not notice it for like over an in-game year.

Oh, boy. I was looking through my dwarves and I noticed they all worshipped different, different gods, but there was an actual picture. Usually there's like the blank picture frame next to it for, for each god but this one had an actual picture i was like oh that kind of looks like a dragon or something i clicked on it and it took me over across the screen to this hydra that's just chilling on the other side of the map all of my dwarves worshipped this hydra under various names so at that point you know i was so relatively early on in the fort but i knew right then that what i had to do was

to capture the hydra and then build a temple for it so they could worship their God in person, you know. And I managed it. I like dug around to the other side of the map underground and dug out a little tunnel and I set up a cage trap. And then I sent one, one, like my, my worst dwarf, picked the shortest straw, had to like run out there. I think I told him to like pick a plant or something.

Yeah, was his name Bait? Yeah, right. And then as soon as the hydra noticed him, I had him run back inside and the cage trap worked. And then I was able to move it over to this temple. There was a mesa or Butte with a cave under it, which was really cool as well. Technically, the hydra, according to legends, had taken up residence in the cave. But really, it was just on the same like map squares. It was just chilling over on the surface, like on the other.

side of the embark from from the cave we moved it over to this temple we built on top of the cave um i wish i still had that for it i have a bad habit of just deleting all of my forts when i move on because i don't like how they clutter up the ui i should probably back them up before i do that but uh haven't been doing that yeah i did the same thing every time a new version would come out, I would just, I would just abandon the old version. Okay, hang on. I have, I have a question. Why don't you embark in the same world?

If you have the feeling that you're done with the fort anyway, then you can just retire to fort and embark in the same world. And you'll visit, you'll have visits from your old friends in a lot of cases. That's, that's a good idea.

I've tried doing that a couple of times. One problem with that is that I like to use a lot of mods, and sometimes And, you know, I won't be happy with the mod configuration. So I'll need to create a new world to adjust that. Another thing is the world generation. Often I want some very specific things in my embark. One thing, so Jonathan, I know you've talked about how you love to dig into the side of the

mountain. And I'm right there with you. It feels, it feels dwarfy. It's dwarfy, yes, exactly. Moria, man, moria. Exactly. Exactly, yeah. So I want to do that, but often the world generation is quite shallow hills. Even if you embark at the edge of a mountain, you don't get these like steep cliffs.

And I would really love a really steep cliff like three or four Z levels up and then more flat terrain, like an actual cliff. But you could just get these gentle hills. And I've tried messing around with the world generation quite a bit, you know, turning off erosion and everything. And I've gotten embarked, you know, looking at the embark screen, you can choose to show elevation. So I'm looking for these steep, you know, differences in elevation. And even embarking on those, you get these very, like, giant hills almost like a cliff, but they're very rounded. It looks like a giant butt. there's these big voluptuous hills and great tracts of land but not a steep cliff and i i wonder have

any of you all messed with world gen or found a way to generate a steep cliff like that i don't know that there ever was i never saw even in in the pre 50 days i never saw a cliff that you couldn't traverse the the arrow to the next z level on it is there any that you just can't climb? I have actually been able to generate a cliff like I was describing, you know, just voluptuous giant hill where the very bottom of it where it meets the ground because it'll be like perfectly flat for half the map and then just this giant. It's like two spheres almost.

And there is a small section where it goes up about three Z levels with just a sheer cliff base. So yes, I have have been able to see that's technically not traversed. Okay. I'm not run into that, but it may just be because I didn't look for it. It took a lot of finagling to get that to generate at all. So I'm not surprised that you haven't run into it organically. One one, Tony? Either have you tried that? I only dabbled a little in what generation. I wanted more volcanoes and more wetlands and then I wanted deserts. That was kind of it. I do have to admit that while channeling

into a mountain sounds very nice. I know myself. I will just settle for a boring fortress on the flat lands and then I built like a castle over the entrance. Fair enough. I'm trying that with my

current fortress. It can look very nice and the amount of above ground crops and animals that you can keep is pretty nice, but I'm currently trying to build something that looks like houses and sheds like actual houses with a slanted roof and like barns in a small

idea fort that is just 10 people having their own community tavern and oh god a beauty building in dwarf fortress is just something else are you using stone sense to to get an idea of the layout um no i mean i kind of know how it would look like i just have trouble seeing wooden ramps currently. So it looks very blocky. I know that there is a ramp because I can see the ramp is there. The blue triangle is there, but it just looks like a dark roof. For people who don't know, Stone Sense is a DF hack command that allows you to view a 3D representation of your fortress.

It looks kind of like you're looking at Minecraft from a third person point of view. It's a way for... Yeah. So it's not... You can't, like, pan the camera around... Is Pan the right word there? I think so. Yeah, it would be.

It would be, yeah. Sure. I mean, you can move the camera around, but you can't really... It's not like playing a first-person shooter or anything. Right. Armach vision is more like that, right? Yeah, that would be great to have work, but I never could get it to get to above, like, one frame every three seconds.

but that was that was not so good that was some time ago i might try it again eventually so you said willa that you use a lot of mods what are some of the mods that you do use so i've got one that called on off burrows activation button that switches the little pause button that just gets highlighted for your burghers to an actual like green on red off so you can tell need it which one it is that's useful uh bourbons dark depths and dark floors instead of the like blue z-fog it's like a darker gray z-fog and then the dark floors there's a slight blue tint to the like standard stone texture and this kind of makes it more of a gray gray what i really like especially for this um tabletop project i'm working on is

2.5d prospective walls uh it makes the the north side of walls have like a little bit of height to them So it kind of, you know, puts everything in a little bit of perspective. Squad and burrow icons gives you a lot more options for when you're making your squads and burrows instead of just shapes. You know, it's got like actual symbols. They can have, there's like a little paw prints for your pets and stuff. There's a grain if you want to have like a farming area. So it sounds like you go all in on the workshop mods. Oh, yeah.

I used to have more. I only have these six right now. Although, huh, that's interesting. I'm looking at this list and I'm noticing that even though I'm only subscribed to these, was a six or seven, eight, I'm only subscribed to these eight mods. But when I create a new world, there's this long list. So I think that something is happening with the workshop where mods that I've unsubscribed, described from or not getting removed from my system. It's interesting.

I'd say probably my favorite quality of life mod is the see-through smoothing designations with priority. Because you can, just like mining, you can put priority on your smoothing designations, and that does not show up at all in vanilla. And the smoothing designations, I'm sure you all have noticed, are very over. hate in banana. So this makes it much more see-through so you can designate a whole area of smoothing and then still be able to see what you're working about. Listen now, oh people of the land, and hear the tale of the midsummer 106 migration, as told by the wise bard Nome Gaul. It was then that a group of dwarves, each scaled in their own right, set forth on a journey to seek out new lands and new opportunities.

Among them was Lickett Tower Manors, an accomplished woodcutter and adequate potash maker, who found himself drawn to a mysterious door. Uvash Tomes Caasas, a cook and bookbinder, harbored a deep dislike for someone, yet proclaimed that all was well. Oboktool traded, an accomplished gem cutter, declared that she was doing well, while Cat 10 Rift Channels, a proficient spinner and competent doctor, pondered how one could be consumed by hate. Ineth Wain Castle, a competent sword dwarf and pike dwarf, was unmoved by the presence of a nearby door, while Zutton crafted wets, who felt ill at ease in formal attire, declined to dress up. Yet despite their disparate natures and attitudes, Elder Bim saw in these dwarves a sign from the God-Mondel Ibercrash-N-R raucast that all was well,

and that their arrival to New Tower of Showing would be blessed. And so it was that they became one with the elder dwarves, their fate uncertain, but their spirits strong and their hearts full of hope. So saith the bard gnome gall. What other kind of simulation games have you played before? What's your other gaming interests? Yeah, so funny enough, I generally do not go for, any kind of strategy game.

Like, I have a few friends who play Stolaris. They love it. I tried playing it, and it just reminded me strategy games really are not my jam. I think the main difference between them and Dwar Fortress for me is just the lack of competition. It's, you really don't have to worry about enemies. Once you get the hang of, you know,

making sure there's enough food and drink, As long as you're not embarking in a super evil biome, it's not too hard to stay alive. And so having that pressure not be there or being able to set the level of that pressure based on where I'm embarking, I'd say, makes it a lot more enjoyable for me than a strategy game like Stolaris or Supreme Commander or whatever. Well, you mentioned caves of, oh, go ahead. Yeah, I was about to say caves of Cud. So you mentioned Caves of Cud

on the podcast a little while back and I checked it out. That game is so cool. The vibes are off the charts amazing. And I've been interested in roguelites since actually about the same time as

when I tried out Tor Fortress, I tried out NetHack because, you know, another game that you can play at work. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And I thought it was super cool, but it's quite difficult and I never really got very far with it but then Caves of Cud is so much more accessible because they have different modes you can play in so there's the role play mode and wander mode and then there's like classic mode so classic mode is your general rogue like

you know you die that's it uh role play mode you get a checkpoint at each settlement so that if you die, you respawn back, you know, back at that, uh, that checkpoint. It's almost like Dark Souls kind of a checkpoint system. And then Wander is, um, enemies are neutral towards you and you can kind of just explore. And having those options made it so much easier to learn the game because, you know, I could start on Wander, get an idea for how things work generally, move to role play, you know, and then if, if there's some, something that completely catches me off guard. Like, you know, the normal roleplay, I mean, sorry, the normal roadlike experience there is, oh, well, I guess now I know that that will kill me if I don't plan for it. And then you

have to start a new run. But now with the role play mode, you can be like, oh, I guess now I know that will kill me if I don't plan for it. And I can keep going with this run and actually plan for it right now, which I love. And now when I play, I'm actually always running on the classic mode because I've got a feel for it. I know, you know, what to look out for generally, and I can enjoy that classic roguelike experience without having to put, you know, tens of extra hours into it just to get to the point where I can really enjoy the game, which I love. I think more roguelike should do that. If I can, if I can recommend one, have you ever played Brog, B-R-O-G-U-E? No, I'm not.

You should check out Brog because it's very nethacky, except the interface is much better. There's mouse support. Yeah, just go check out Brog, B-R-O-G-U-E. And yeah, I think you'll like it if you dig Rogue Likes. Okay, yeah, right on. That's how I came into Dwar Fortress was through Rogue Likes. I was at work, and a friend of mine said,

well, if you like Rogelikes, then you should check out Dwar Fortress. And at that point, I had never heard about it. And so I moved. And roguelike radio, which was a roguelike podcast, they had Tarn Adams on an interview. So if you dig podcasts, you should go listen to at least selected episodes of roguelike radio. Another roguelight game. Have you guys checked out vampire survivors? No.

It's a steam one. You go around and kill lots of things and then get power-ups that persist. through your death. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very... I got it for the phone. I got it for the phone. It was even free. Does it work on the phone? I didn't know about that.

Yeah, it's amazingly well on the phone. And I was surprised on how many things there are in the game. Because it's not just... Like, it starts off as, oh, yeah, choose one of those four people and you killed some bats. That it ends up, you kind of defeat some God, but no spoiler here. It's pretty good.

If you have a Steam deck, it plays really well on that, too. But very basic game, very addictive gameplay mechanics. I'll have to check it out. What advice would you give to someone who's just starting out with Dwar Fortress as someone who's been into it in the last year or so? Before I do that, quick shout out to Noita, which is another awesome roguelite game. If you've ever played one of those falling sand games where every pixel is simulated, well, in Noita, every pixel is simulated.

It is one of my favorite games of all time. Definitely try it. Yeah, send us a link to that on in the show. And we'll put that in the show notes too. Right on. Thanks. So advice for new dwarf fortress players, try to, try not to start over all the time. Your first couple of forts.

You know, maybe that's okay if you're learning new mechanics, but after a certain point, you're going to be doing yourself a disfavor if you keep starting over and let it be messy. Something I'm doing right now is, you know, for a while I would plan out my fortress to the last detail. and, you know, to the point of, like, I don't want to build a wall here to make this column. I'm just going to carve it out of the stone, right? Like, I don't want to build any stone structures. I just want to carve my fortress perfectly out of the mountain. And that sounds really cool, but what's going to happen is you are going to hit a cavern or you're going to hit an aquifer or you're going to dig a staircase and then not be able to get back

up and you're going to have to dig your rabbit. And it's going to get messy at some point. So you may as well let it be messy from the get-go. You know, don't even start digging your actual fortress. Just dig a hole in the ground. Some place for your dwarves to get out of the terrifying sunlight and rain and put all their stuff and just expand that. Give yourself a place to put your industries. And then once you've got, you know, livable, quarters established. Then, you know, dig down, dig out something cool, you know, make a grand tavern or something. And then, you know, build on that, make a more developed fortress complex. And then just dig a new entrance, you know, dig a new entrance. And you'll

have this awesome, like, remnants of the starting fortress there. Maybe you don't even use it anymore. And it's going to be a lot better for you in the long run from a learning standpoint and just from a, like a mental health standpoint. It's going to be better for your brain if you don't try and do everything perfectly. Yes, we'll wrap up with a philosophical note. Yes, dwarf fortress like life. You can make all the plans you want, but be ready for for pivots because it's not going to go as planned. Well, that's half the fun of it, isn't it? You know, adapting to what it's really discouraging I'd say for new players like super discouraging when you have like a forgotten beast come through and kill all of the people that are down there and you have like

five people left but you can come back from it and you learn a lot seconding and at that point at that point I would say you know maybe consider letting that fortress die but consider reclaiming it you know if you're down to fewer than you're starting seven dwarves maybe maybe not if some of them for skill. But if you're down to fewer, then you're starting seven dwarves and none of them are particularly skilled. Maybe just abandon the fortress and then come reclaim it. And then you'll have a little bit more manpower. You'll have your starting resources again. And then that gives you an impetus. It gives you a reason to be there. You know, you're going to reclaim the fort. You're going to kill that darn forgotten beast that got to your last set of guys.

On that note, if you have a fort that's failing or you've had that forgotten beast that came in, and paralyzed everybody or broke their arms or they've all lost the ability to stand and everyone's just laying around. Just abandon the fortress and or retire it and then set up a new one nearby and all those injured dwarves who've lost the ability to stand will magically get the ability to stand again and appear in your fortresses healthy dwarves again. You don't have to, yeah, it's a super weird bug I've been playing around with. But every time I have a dwarf that's lost the ability to stand and is useless, I'll, I'll give them a nickname saying injured. And then, you know, they'll turn up as migrants in my new fortress

and everything's stickity boo. But a lot of them will still say lost the ability to stand. It doesn't seem to be slowing them down. They seem to be pretty good. Like one of my legendary dwarves had lost the ability to stand, but now he's my squad leader doing a real bang-up job, but still has lost the ability to stand, but can still stand quite well. So, yeah, you can kind of take advantage of a bug if you have dwarves that you're attached to. They don't, their injuries don't seem to persist between forts. That's good to know. Roland, any final notes for you?

Let me think whether or not I want blatant self-advertisement. Yes, I want to. Sure, sure. So everybody knows I've been playing a bloodline fortress again, together with the Taked and a new person called Not Saferer. She just started War Fortress. She's very new. And we are currently playing Distant Cole.

And it is great fun because we started in a savage biome. We have a lot of large, angry birds, and people die. Cool. Sounds great. That was very abrupt. And people die. End of line. Hard to see anything wrong with.

All right. Well, thanks Willa so much for stopping by and talking with us. Well, everybody, thanks for listening in to episode 80. of Dwarfortress Roundtable. Thanks, we'll love for coming by. Yeah, thanks for having me on. So everyone out there, good luck and dig deep. Keep deep.

See you next time. Bye-bye. See ya. Okay. 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 Dwar Fortress Roundtable, or find us in the podcast.

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