Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep.114: Odds and Ends

Episode Date: March 2, 2025

Three folks sit around microphones and chat about Dwarf Fortress. Come along! Detailed Landscapes - the mod that Jonathan talks about with lots of grass tiles. Primitive Technology YouTube channel

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfey, where we talk about dwarfy subjects and this game we play. Like snowing and dwarves. Yeah, well, it does snow sometimes. Fortunately, it ever snows blood yet. You know, I haven't had a lot of, maybe I've been picking too warm of, of a biomass. because I haven't got a lot of snow lately in my, in my dwarfy places. Go for the white. Just wherever you see white, just, that was my hubris fort that I did a few seasons ago here

at our podcast when I was like, I'm so good at this game, I literally can't lose. And I decided to build an ice cat fort. It could be because I've been doing pocket worlds for so long now. There's not a whole lot of, what's that? I said, and I ate humble pie. It was amazing. Yeah, pocket worlds, I don't know if they make them with really cold biomes Yeah, they do, it's just the cold biome is just that much smaller

So you don't get a hundred different tiles, but you have snowfall You maybe just get one It's the way of the world, man But I don't know about you, but now it's snowing outside And I'm playing a different game while it's cold in the game And I'm walking around and then my dwarfs They're not exactly cold, but I keep imagining, like, how warm would it be, would it be cold, and I don't know about you, but every time I play a game where it's like cold outside and I have to dress my character, then I get a little freezy while I'm sitting, playing, and it just, it just does something, you know, that homely feeling when you sit in a game at your own, like, little fireplace. and it's like snowing e-snow outside in your game.

Which game is this? What is this game that's taking you away from here? Currently it is still Project Zamboyd. Oh, okay, sure. With the new update. But that does remind me because I also haven't played a lot of snowy mountain fortresses, I think. I tend to go to swamps. Well, you know, I do tend to look for something that has fishing spots, little sweetwater, and not that many trees.

So I often end up in various zones like savannas or swamps, but I haven't really done any tundra gameplay, I guess. it's tough that's funny typically the first thing i do is turn off fishing in my fortresses nobody fishes nobody fishing attacks are on the rise worldwide so it's probably for the best you you gasped at that rolling so yeah i kind of did too before i made a joke i don't say more about okay well i mean i i don't allow it for everyone because i i'm not sure if the game actually just allows it for everyone from the default but i don't don't allow it to everyone. Currently I just have like a crab man and two other idiots that are fishing and they are producing such an insane amount of muscle that my entire fortress could

essentially just eat clam and I do get to decorate the clam shouts onto everything. So that's actually quite nice. I like that part because it's like an endless supply of things that you can decorate with, which in turn increases the craft ability of the people that do that. By default, fishing is only those who are selected. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. But I don't like selecting a lot of people for that whole thing, because otherwise, you will just drown in clams.

And while I personally like eating clams in real life, I don't think I want to eat him every single day of the entire year you don't have to manage the shells in real light do you like that's the other thing that I find is like the mollusk sleep shells or whatever some fish yeah shellfish sleep shells I mean if we're talking about like modern day then yeah obviously just

you just kind of throw them away right but if we're talking about like medieval technology then you can actually use those clam shouts for various purposes So I Maybe I'm a little weird in the head Definitely I am a little weird in the head But whenever I eat clams and I throw away the shells

I always get like this That's so bad I could do like Something with it You know My Neanderthal brain is like Yes we have to acquire the shields You've got a stockpile in your closet right

You know Maybe Have you seen Okay, this is a little off topic at this point, but have you seen primitive technology? It's like a YouTube channel. No. Oh, you should check it out because it's quite cool. It's a dude, and he goes into a forest in, I believe it is Australia, but I could be wrong

about that. And he just makes stuff from nothing. So he builds like a hut out of wood or like bark and stuff like that. And I like to imagine that especially the founding, the embarkation seven dwarfs that stop with absolutely nothing, essentially start like that man. They just go into a forest and they have maybe an axe, which he doesn't. And then they chop wood and they make these little huts. for a while to live in and then like

I don't know that's... Is his name clean or dev? No, no, it's not. That sounds like his Embark profile. Honestly, that is very

on point. That is literally that. Yeah. But it's a cool, cool channel. It always gets me thinking about these, these like stone age,

bronze age technologies. I mean, this man is definitely like stone age technology what he's doing but I am never too sure where my dwarfs

actually at at the technology level I mean sure they can make steel but they can't do a lot of other things on the other side yeah I feel like steel is a pretty recent like a pretty

modern thing for these guys to be able to do. I would have capped them somewhere in the like the Roman technology era maybe or I don't know. I think that the 1400s was kind of his cut off back in the day. So think Constantinople before it was sacked in the 1400s, right? Whatever they had. They had pipes. They had really nice plumbing and fixtures and stuff. It was amazing. It was amazing what they had. I don't got plumbing. Yeah, exactly. So, um, didn't, did steel not exist? Well, here, I got what I don't think steel existed in the Roman Empire. I think that's a late Victorian era. I, I think, um, some, some part of India already made steel like a ridiculously early point of time because they had like cool machines where, uh, like some kind of windmill and the, the wind was like blowing from the bottom. And, and I don't know, you should check that out. There's an article. Wikipedia, really interesting.

But it always gets me into thinking, like, where my dwarfs are at, technologically speaking. Woot's steel was developed in southern India and Sri Lanka in the first millennium BCE. It sounds like they couldn't really figure out how they made it, though. High carbon steel. High carbon steel was produced in Broxmouth Hilfert from 490 to 375 BC. So, yeah, pain of the butt to make, but it looks like they did have it. But I don't think they were able to reproduce it reliably. That's what it looks like.

And it doesn't look like it was really used for all that much, Damascus. I mean, you do have to imagine that, for example, the Vikings also did, like, a happy accident where they put, like, animal bones into their iron because they thought, like, a cool animal spirit would then live in their sword, make it chop harder. And that was actually very smart of them because then you. also have like some carbon compounds bound into your iron, but, um, I think we're all right. I think we're all right. Western Tanzania, it says there's evidence that carbon steel is made in Western Tanzania, uh, as early as 2,000 years ago by allowing the temperatures inside their furnace to reach 1,300 to 1,400 C.

So you know they had some of the best, uh, Tanzanian thermometers in the world then. So they can really, I'm not saying they would want to build, you know, skyscrapers out of it, but. You know, they might be able to keep an edge on a sword. Yeah. I think, like, it for as a building material, I mean, the Victorians were still making giant structures out of iron. Like, there's that, what is it? The Crystal Palace was made of iron. And I think iron is just so brittle that you can't get very high before it starts to break.

I'm sure somebody's listening to this as an engineer going, oh, dear God. Stay in your lane, fellas. Stay in your lane. Hi, Tekin. Yeah, Tekon's a big metal worker. So he's probably going, oh, God. Oh, gosh, these guys are idiots. He's going to die in and start rolling over in his grave.

Speaking of Teked, I saw that yesterday he did a Twitch stream on Adventure Mode. Yeah, so it looks like he's back to his content creating shenanigans with Dwarf Ortrus. Beautiful. Oh, that's nice. I've been missing Tekken content in my life. Yeah. Check it out. He starts off the stream by drinking out of a very dwarfy vessel.

It looks like he's drinking maybe ale, but it's out of a cow horn. It's pretty cool. I think it's a cow horn. So it's very dwarfy, very dwarfy. Kudos to you, Tekken. Yeah, yeah. One little anecdote on the side, a friend of mine watches a stream because I'm not in the same time zone.

I often don't get to see them when they happen. And she caught one of the streams, hung out a while. And apparently somebody mentioned my name. and they were talking about me and I almost cried when she told me that. That was very endearing. So, yeah, I'm very happy that he's back and he's like doing things.

Happy to check that up. All right, everyone. It's the spring of 56 and we've had another slab up here, which means another council session. This one said, I am Rainer. Stone shatters,

but owes endure. Gather, lest the mountain forgets. The gods are clearly tired of our slacking. Let's call roll, and everyone give a quick status update. I am Dusam Copper Whip, Mayor and Broker. Adil Attic Road, militia commander present. Things go well. As it turns out, the barreness of Ammonest

can wield a spear like a champ. However, she is now demanding a squad captaincy. She lives for the spotlight and won't settle for less. Cadall Father Arch, manager, present. We need wood. We're completely out of trees topside. It's time to start ripping fungi wood from those caverns, post-haste. Culek craft charcoal, bookkeeper, present.

Our economy is sufficient, but we have a surplus of trinkets. Own all channel ransacked. Chief Medical Dwarf, present. The hospital's running smoothly, but with our well-trained militia, it's not been particularly busy. That's a good thing, right? Good. So here's the deal.

To fix our shortage of wood, we dig for mushrooms immediately. And as for our high and mighty guests, why not put them to work? If Baroness Armournest wants a squad, she can earn it on the battlefield. Agreed. A little spear practice might curb her demands. And while we are at it, there is another nuisance. Baroness I turn as Starterlath of Stan's mind has moved in. Perhaps she too should learn to fight instead of fuss. Right. No more pampered nobles whining about spears or quarters.

They can join a squad and get a taste of real discipline. Then it's settled, get that fungi-wood extraction underway, and draft the orders for squad training for our barrenesses. Let's show them that a future flagged, even the high and mighty earn their keep. As sure as the slab stated, I am Rainer. Stone shatters, but oath endure. Gather, lest the mountain forgets. We shall forge ahead.

Here we hear. So for just reasons, we ended up not getting one episode that we recorded out to the public. And we did cover listener questions. So I thought that we might go back and talk about that one. I think that there was only one that we didn't pick up in a later episode. That one was from Keith. So Keith said that he's a longtime listener since 4705. and that he had started poking around in the Raws and editing Raws,

and he's curious if there's any tutorials or utilities that can help with making new things. The numbers of the creature Raws and how the game handles sprites are esoteric at best to him. So he's wondering if we know anything about that. I know that back in the day, Roland, you made a cool bird. Was it a crow? Yeah, like a three-eyed raven because I was watching Game of Thrones. Yeah. Ah, yeah.

Oh, yeah. What was the special powers besides having three eyes? Obviously able to see better, right? Well, I believe I made him able to spew fireballs at one point, but that was really bad for World Generation for some reason. So I had to take that out, and it was just a normal bird, but it had three eyes. That's it. But I also made, well, I tried to make like an adventure man.

species, like a person whose flesh is technically metal, but they kept exploding into gore the second I spawn in with them in adventure mode. So I, at some point, just shelved that idea. Did you figure out why they were exploding into gore? No, not really, but apparently you can't just replace, like, a part. You have this raw, and it says, like, flesh and spleen and whatever, and at some point you can't define what is, but if you just put in metal, it breaks something and the creature just crumbles in general because it no longer has the correct adherence to like specific body parts. Essentially, your internal organs get crushed by the external metal skin.

Yeah. It's like every time you move, you're getting whacked with a metal weapon, your skin. Kind of, yeah. It's really bad for your health. Has the place of Raws changed in the 50-plus releases? Do they hold a different place than they did in 47? Is it still pretty much the same? Do we know?

I actually haven't checked. I would believe, however, it to be the same place as before. Yeah. Just like, you know, now under your Steam library instead of wherever you saved it before. Just in case anyone doesn't know what we're talking about, we're assuming that everyone here knows what Rawls are. They're text files that hold, what would you say, attributes of all of the entities in the game. And it allows you to make changes and edit some of the behaviors, some of the attributes of the game.

How would you say, Roland? Speak English for me. Change the components. Is it like you can actually change the variables or the components that go into building the world by adding extras? Yeah, yeah. Changing the mechanics. Because essentially the game is programmed. ground in English, in like text files. So if you go into the text file, you can change something.

So, for example, it will say max age, and then that is the maximum age that creature can reach. So if you, like, reduce it or increase it, creatures can now live longer or have a shorter life, depending on what you just did. Yeah. Is this how the mods that were kind of total game conversions Do they just go in and change a lot of the things about the ROs? You mean like the one mod that gives you laser weapons and you play in a zombie apocalypse science fiction scenario? Yeah, I played that once. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what it does, but it just takes everything and changes up everything.

You're no longer playing Dwar Fortress at all. Right, right. Basically, you're using Dwar Fortress as a game engine at that point. Yeah, which is really fun. you think about the potential for programming it or for like mods and stuff in the future that's neat i love it keith also asked about uh about the sprites and i believe that this is the same as before as well that you have images and those images have a prescribed dimension so it's a certain width and a certain height to the image that are the sprites and it's like almost like a sheet of

stamps. You can look at it that way. So the game will reference, okay, this sprite sheet, pixel number 64 through 128 will be this particular, it'll be a goblin maybe. And then pixels 128 to 256 will be a dragon or something like that. So in prior versions, before version 50, so yeah, version 50 was a big split where a lot of things changed. But before version 50, you could create your own sprite sheets and replace the sprites that were in the game. Because the game just had sprites that were Asky graphics. So if you were playing in version 47, anytime that you had sprite graphics, that was aftermarket. That was done by, you know, community members who enjoyed, you know, playing with a game and tinkering.

So, I think there was a good place to look would be of DFWiki. What's that? There was some wizardry involved in that. Oh, yeah, there was. Layers switching and stuff. Boy, I remember that. Golly. What a, what a complication. It's neat how far we've come. I always wanted to get into that because I loved the various sprite packages that you could install. And I would play for a while with one sprite set and play for a while with another. And I actually wanted to get into it. And then I tried. And it was, it was just way above the time that I wanted to spend to make anything look worth a plug nickel.

So hats off to anybody who actually will do the Sprite. editing it's a task i haven't heard of anybody doing a whole lot of massive sprite editing though i've seen some steam workshop plugins that you can use yeah to make some minor changes like one of my favorites is one i can't remember what it's called but it makes a different sprite for every different kind of grass that's out there in your world so it gives your it gives your map a very varied uh very varied look yeah i might have seen that um there's also like undulate graphics, and there's dog and cat graphics improvements, things like that. I don't know how.

I install them. I just can't really tell you quantitatively how much it's improved my gameplay. And it's kind of a hassle to install them when you do the mods. You know how you have to put the mods over into the list of world gens, and you have to click that arrow to get them in the right order or whatever. I quit using them because I was a really neat idea, though. So thank you, Keith. Thanks, Keith.

Thank you, Keith for the question. I hope we answered it. I think that the big answer there was we're really not sure, but it's cool. Doggone, dogon cool. We love it. A little bit. So, Roland, in episode number 115, was that right? No, we're not there yet.

112. Episode 112 you had talked about your first encounter of some magic items with the new version of dwarf forger's. So we got a couple comments on that. One was from the website. A listener calls himself untrusted life, said that at what you encountered were the newly introduced mysterious dungeons, layers, palaces, which generates sphere-based creatures. And I think it ties in with the fact that you can't be a chosen unless you have a established religion in your world. Yeah, that's tricky. It's hard to get that to do.

Yeah. I've had very minimal luck with that. So yeah, go check out the comments on episode 112. If you'd like to take a look at Untrusted Lives. He gave a nice summary of it. We also had on the Discord channel some folks were chatting about that. There is even a Dwar Fortress Wiki page now about this very thing. I saw that.

It is very much what I was describing. The wiki page must be new. like newer than when I found it because I found it and I tried it to find it on the wiki and it was not there so this is like incredibly new and there's even a few pictures down below on the wiki page that show you how such a dungeon can look and it's it's really accurate okay and these are just like silly little rectangles of stone and they're they're weirdly shaped in the inside and one of them had the elf that could regenerate. It was just one hall and like one trap door to a small basement and the other was also like two rooms, one big, one small and a gallery

and the bigger one. And that was where the invisibility person was. It now makes sense that they are bound to spheres and that some spheres are that. I just want to know how do I find out in, for example, adventure mode. What kind of sphere is that? Sounds like something for your character to investigate. I wonder if you can find out.

It says here, though the Guardian's entity tokens suggest that they should be able to make use of divine metals and fabric. They do not have access to those materials, which is very sad, and probably also really good. Otherwise, you will just, like 20 minutes into a game, you will just straight up have divine armor or whatever. That would be crazy. Yeah, if anybody wants to check it out in the Dwar Fortress Wiki, it's under a heading called Primordial Remnant. And Criddle was the first one to post that to the Discord channel. So thank you, Criddle for that. It looks like that they're primarily in adventure mode.

But Mike from DF Hack fame said that he saw a post on Reddit that they did. did show up in Fortress mode in a clump on top of a rock, flashed him, stated that they got a remnant in Fortress mode, but it was from a previous Weir Gila Monster adventure that they played that invaded. So perhaps this was a situation where something from adventure mode can carry over into Fortress mode if you get lucky and place your people right. I know that, Tony, that's something that you've always kind of wanted to have, right?

have your adventure mode affect your fortress mode and vice versa? Yeah, that's what I've been trying to do. I did a cool thing with it, and then it didn't go great afterwards. But, yeah, I've had good luck with it. You got to elaborate a little bit, man. Yeah, so I built one of them fancy old pocket worlds like you're talking about. And that was good. It was good.

And then I tried to age it up to make it a religious world. And that happened. And I went in and I found some artifacts, some sort of weird. orb or whatever, and I grabbed it. I brought it back to my fort, retired, started building the fort, and immediately was encountered a siege of like 2,500 goblins

came in. It started at like 800, then it was 1,000, and then it was 1,200, and it just I guess they wanted it too. More and more and more kept coming until basically it was framed death because like 2,500 units is just

it's, I mean, it's game over, right? Oh my. I use the extermination. T.F. Hack feature just so I could like leave the game. Yeah, it didn't go great. So anyway, abandon that one because shoot. It'd be great if there was like an animation of a Dalek that come on to exterminate. Yeah, the problem I have is that in order to get a world that has an organized religion, you have to make it older usually. But by the time you do that, it's usually just goblins and necromancers. So I don't know. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but that's what I've been experiencing and it's it's tough it's tough tough world so you said that your world

aged into to having an established religion yeah I I just tried lots and lots and lots of world gens until I got one that worked gotcha gotcha I was wondering if someone played a world long enough and that's that's difficult to do to play a world for a really long time whenever you have such a short attention span like me who wants to you know generate a new in like every fortress. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. But anyway, that's half the fun, isn't it?

Like the whoopsies? Because it was like, oh, no, I think I posted a picture of it in the Discord. And I was like, uh-oh, things are bad. Bad things are about to happen here. So if anybody would like to send us questions or comments, you can do it through our email at Urist at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-Roundtable.com. Or you can leave a comment.

on our website for a particular episode, and you can also join our Discord channel. The link to join is on our website. D.Froudable.com. Got that promo in. Thank you. Let's call this meeting for the

autumn of 35 to order. The slab states, by the pick and beard of deck on broad room. The fate of the deep is struck upon the anvil of choice. So get ready for some divine tough love. We've got a royal mess on our hands. One of our fortress citizens has inherited the crown and future flag is now the capital of the patterned tomes. A queen in our midst means more protocols, more pomp and basically more work. A queen, I'll need to update the ledgers for new royal expenses. This isn't exactly in the budget. And as if that wasn't enough,

my scouts report that our caverns are crawling with webs and mangled elk bird corpses. We suspect a Forgotten beast lacks down there, but my squads haven't managed to pin it down yet. Good news on my end. The hospital's running like clockwork. But if that beast ever shows up, I'd rather not be caught between royal tantrums and monster mayhem. All right, time for a plan. Catall, draft some royal protocols for this new capital. Adil, intensify your beast hunt. No more ghost stories in the caverns. And Colette, keep those ledgers updated. Or the Queen might just declare us bankrupt. On it, though managing crowns is hardly my idea of fun, especially when you consider that work orders never sleep.

I'll remind my squads that a beast isn't a myth, and if it keeps dodging us, I might just have to bring in the heavy hammers myself. And I'll be watching the numbers, royalty or beast bounties, everything has to balance. At least the hospital isn't adding new complications. I prefer treating a common cold over a royal headache or a beast's bite. Then it's settled. We address the crown and hunt down. this elusive creature. Let's remember the sacred Slav's words. By the pick and beard of deck on broad roo, the fate of the deep is struck upon the handle of choice. Let that be our guide. Meaning adjourned. Now, let's get it together for the sake of future flag.

Here we're here. So, my fortress is doing quite well. I'm still keeping up with my highly organized. Fortress. Things are actually going quite well with it. We have successfully beat off a few goblin sieges, some decent ones. We've got four squads now, and I keep putting the nobles into the squads. I don't know what's going on, guys. I tried to fend off becoming an outpost of the civilization, because that automatically makes you promote somebody to a baron, right? Yeah, I think so. So then I had a baroness move in from outside. side.

So, like, well, great. It didn't give me a chance. It just, she just showed up. I think that's what happened anyway. And then I had a caravan come up and say, you know what? You are going to be part of our civilization. It didn't give me a, would you like this? It just gave me okay as my option.

So then I had two baronesses living in my fortress. Okay or great. Those are your choices. Yeah. Yes or affirmative. Good or the great. Greatest, yeah. So get this.

Not, you know, two game months later, I get the notification that one of my citizens was in line for the throne and became the queen. So now I'm the capital. I have a queen and I have two baronesses all living in my fortress. All of them, like, griping because they don't have the things that they want, all of them wanting elaborate quarters. So, yeah. Have you ever had three nobility members of the royalty living in your fortress at once? Yes. Yes?

I've had a king and a baron and other stuff. I've had a whole bunch. I've had one where it was just like a whole gaggle of goons. Gaggle of goons. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think I once had a fortress that had like seven or eight different nobles. it was definitely so long that I had like a little scroll bar and I could scroll through

the different nobles that was crazy. I don't think there was a king in there. I just think I had a bunch of barons and duches and whatever else there was. But that was like one of those worlds where your civilization is about to die. So it's for some reason pretty much everyone that was still alive came into my fortress and pretty much everyone that was still alive had some kind of noble title because there were like seven people alive.

Yep, that's where I've had it. Yeah, the dying civilizations. I love those, by the way. Those are really awesome. They're quite fun. Yeah. Bring back. If I can help some way to restore a fortress that's dying

or a civilization that's dying, gosh darn it, I'll do it. My sieve definitely is not dying. I looked at the civilization map, and there's like seven different outposts other than my own who are part of this same civilization. So it's pretty much thriving. Maybe this is the danger of having a well-organized fortress. We've been producing lots of money. We've been trading very nicely with the,

we trade with the humans, we trade with the people from the mountain homes, although I guess now we are the mountain home. So I guess that that caravan has sailed. You are the empire, sir. Yeah. So we'll write it out, though. That actually reminds me, I'm missing my king or queen. They're kind of gone. So I'm not sure what has happened to them. I have to check in Legends mode. But essentially it works like this. I made a library fortress before. Then I made Sword Kingdom, which was supposed to be like the big main capital with a lot of military. And then at some point I went back to check something out in the library fortress. So I retired Sword Kingdom and went back into priest minds, the library.

and I think during that move, my king must have also moved into the priest minds, because now I should have a king. Sword Kingdom is definitely the capital, but I have no king. Dude is gone. His bedroom is empty. I just know this. So... The priest mines? Yeah, no, the sword kingdom is the grand capital. And I just retired that, went into Priest's Mines, and then retired Priest Mines again, and went back to Sword Kingdom. And during that move, my king just went somewhere because I had him in Sword Kingdom, and now his bedroom is empty, and nobody has claimed the bed. And I don't have the noble role anymore on my screen, but it still continues to say capital.

So somehow my king just abandoned the fortress and went to. somewhere. Can you go find him in adventure mode? I think I'm going to copy the world and just try to find out in Legends what just happened, and then maybe I can go and, you know, find him in adventure mode if such a method is necessary. Oh, I think it sounds necessary for science. Yes, I agree. I love the idea for science. Speaking of Legends viewer, I did do an export. I did to save and I did employ Legends viewer next. It's pretty cool. I like it.

It is fun. I need to do another one now that we've become the Capitol because, you know, the data that I have was from the earlier version. Enjoyed that a lot. Nice. Glad that that's back. I will probably employ that because raw dogging, the vanilla legends is, that's a little crusty for me, and I can't do it.

I started a fortress. I wanted to kind of dovetailing into what we were just talking about, I love to resurrect dead civilizations. So I found one, and it was a civilization that had one dwarf, the king, and only one fortress, but it had fallen to ruin because of something. And I decided to start a new embark, and, you know, with siege mat, like, you know, I militaryed up all of the dwarves going in as a siege. And then I went in and I've taken over this, you know, procedurally generated fort. It's really weird. I mean, it's super weird.

The procedurally generated stuff. That's kind of cool because a lot of the workshops are there. The bedrooms are there. And then there was somebody called a, was he a giant killer? Giant Hunter. And he and his troglodytes were, I guess, in the fortress somewhere. And it was a bad time for people to migrate to the fortress. essentially, because I think things seem to have gone kind of haywire. Yeah, so that went a little

out of control. And now I'm down from 16 to to five dwarves. So things aren't going great for that fortress. And then there's no trees. It's been a bit of a ride. I don't know if it's going to be a successful reclamation, that's for sure. Fun to try. Have you already found the caverns? I just found them. But we're already starting to die. Oh, no. Oh, no. So, I might populate the fortress with some adventurers and try to keep going. I hear there's a call for help. So, anyway, somebody might respond to my call for help. That sounds really fun, though.

Yeah, it's a good one. So I'm really hoping I can make it be successful because gosh darn it, I want these guys to survive. So when you do an embark like that, the seven dwarves that end up with your embark, Are they generated out of whole cloth whenever your embark takes place? It's a great question. Or do they pull in from some other civilization? Because they can't come from that civilization if there's only the king left. There's only one dwarf.

Well, there's an excellent question. I don't know. Yeah, where do they come from? Are they just? So one way to regenerate a civilization might be to embark, retire, embark, retire, you know, increase at seven dwarves at a time. Or wait for a few migration waves and then retire. You can get a pretty decent-sized posse of creatures and dwarves in adventure mode.

Do adventure mode dwarves? They have a civilization, don't they? Yeah, you can say which one you want. Back in the day, it used to be a little weird where your dwarf started and where you could not start. But now I do believe that you can start in any civilization that you want. But not exactly in all places, because I'm not sure if I can't play, like, start in my own fortresses. I'm not sure about that. So far, it has only given me hamlets and, like, little towns to start it.

Well, I'm going to keep bashing away at this civilization. Well, hopefully not bashing. Hopefully, succeeding away at this civilization and all. I'll have fun to share later. Let's all find our seats, my friends. I know it's only been a few months, but the latest Slav's message is simple. It reads, I, Sir Nonigan's, decree, gold gleams, iron holes, but only the wise shape the future. Let's see if we can shape our future without tearing each other apart.

Also, I would like to welcome her majesty, Queen able oily spirals to our council. Rejoice, esteemed counsel, for your fortress has been elevated beyond its station. I have arrived. I am able-oilis spirals, queen and rightful ruler of the patterned tomes, the living embodiment of strength and wisdom.

Your duty is now clear, to enact my will, to ensure my comfort, and to elevate this capital fortress to a realm worthy of my reign. I expect competence, loyalty, and above all, results. Do not disappoint me. Now, where is my throne? Right. Thanks for sharing. Militia Commander Attic Road. How low is the hunt for the forgotten beast?

Our squads found that it is a three-eyed tarantula with an emerald exoskeleton and a twisting trunk. A real horror show, but guess what? It's stuck behind impassable water in the third and while we're busy fighting nightmares and royal tantrums our organization is slipping we're out of sink our work orders are a mess and our food reserves are getting thinner by the day we need a fishery pronto i don't like seafood and let's not forget i demand royal quarters befitting my status and also enough is enough the goblin filth has no place within fifty furlongs of future flag i demand we wipe out the goblin civilization in immediately and ensure they never threaten me, or us, again. Right. So we hunt goblins, chase tarantulas we can't reach, and build a fishery, plus fix our organizational mess, all while providing you with a palace. Sounds like a typical day at Future Flag. Then it's settled. We sort our food crisis, tighten up our operations, and figure out a way to bypass the water to get to the giant beast. And yes, Your Highness, we'll get you your royal quarters, if only to keep you off our backs.

Remember, counsel, as Sir Nottingens declared, gold gleams, iron holes, but only the wise shape the future. Let's be wise. Hit our act together and show our enemies what future flag is truly made of. This meeting is adjourned. Here we are. So there was another update for... Dwarf Fortress, I believe that it was a bug fix, and my D.F. Hack wasn't working for a couple gaming sessions there because they hadn't updated it yet. So I had to live without D.F. Hack

for a little while, and I didn't like it. That's tough. I didn't like it at all. I agree. Bless D.F. Hack. That's a, I mean, it really is a really critical part of the gaming experience. It's really difficult to play without it. Yeah. Yeah. Really. Just again. Thank you. so much to the D.F. Hack team for all the work that you guys do. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is just amazing. It's become an integral part of my playing. You can play vanilla. That's fine, but it just ramps up the fun factor to me. I agree. Gives you a little bit more control when you want to totally nerd out. I would probably not recommend it for somebody who's like, hey, what's the store fortress thing? Like, just take it slow. And then when you know, you know, like when it's time, you'll know. What happens if I exterminate dwarves? Dang, it'll do exactly what it says. Are you gargamel or something?

Like, what's going on? I think that in a few places, there's extra lines of code because sometimes, at least back of the day, it would tell me like, no. So, for example, I had, I wanted to have like a super dwarf. There's like a super dwarf command that makes one dwarf really, really, really fast. or was it the you could edit their skills and just say put everything to 100 and then I said like put everything to 100 for everyone and the command was like no and I'm like oh wait you put that in you put in that it says no it can't do that like I'm not going to let you do that with a that was nice that was nice I like that so you're saying DFAC has a sense of humor it kind of I kind of said, like, we're, we're not going to let you cheat that hard. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't respect that, but, uh, sure.

Don't, don't gate keep me, D.F. Hack. I think it means you were going to inject something into memory that would crash it. That's my theory. No, no, you could, you, that's not the problem. There's, uh, it's literally just like, oh, you want to put everyone to 100, no, uh, when, ain't going to happen, buddy. Well, I can't wait for Mike to comment on this. All right.

Well, I think that we've pretty much run the course of subject matter for this week. We've had a good time. We have. Hope you've enjoyed it. Indeed, indeed. I've got my instructions for next time. I'm going to be continuing to try to resurrect this darn fort that's in a very difficult area to reclaim. But hopefully I'll have managed it.

Next time we speak, I'll be the leader of a brand new civilization. cue a whole new world by Disney I'm going to see if I can deal with all of these you know noble royalty people in ways that you know might get them killed we'll see actually I think I'm going to go

and look where my king is because at this point it's ridiculous and he's gone also snake breeding what if I combine the two snake king snake yes

King Cobra. Dang, that would be cool. Oh, they are King Cobra. Oh, you're right. Yeah. That's perfect. Snap. All right, guys.

Everybody, thanks for listening, and we will catch everybody next time. Cool, cool. Yep, see ya. Bye. Bye, everyone. This has been the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DF Roundtable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode.

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