Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep.116: Building Materials

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Welcome back - this time we talk about things we like to stack on top of other things.

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. I'm Jonathan. And I'm Roland. I am AI. AI Tony is today with us. That's right. I wish I could sound more like Siri. That's what the world wants.

Tony couldn't be here today, so we submitted a 45-second audio clip of Tony to a AI generator that gave us his voice. And, I mean, it's basically done it, hasn't it? Welcome, fake, Tony. Yeah, it's good to be here, guys. Thank you so much. And I'd like to thank my sponsor, Nut Basket, for all of the nut deliveries that you might need throughout the course of your week. Nutbasket.com. Your script has been generated by ChatGPT.

Nut Basket. Cool, man. Building materials. What are you thinking? So, yeah, I thought we might talk a little bit about our favorite building materials. Yeah. And what we like to do with them. All right.

What do you like? Wood. I like Jet. Yeah, Jets, cool. Oh, yeah. The new Jet in version 5.X is, no, sorry, 50.x. It's a nice, it's not quite black. It's got like almost a blue, almost like a really, really dark navy.

And it makes for a really good contrast against things like steel and iron. I don't build floors with steel a whole lot because it's, you know, takes too much resources to make. Yeah. But iron floors seem to generate value almost as well as steel does for a building material. And, you know, whenever I have a fortress, I end up with like a thousand bars of iron. So I just use that as a building material. It's not bad. Yeah.

It's not bad. I know it's heavy for them to schlock around. Even the bars? You think so? Maybe. That is actually a good idea on how to use my metal bars. I don't really use metal to build anything, to be honest. that stuff. I have the only metal box that I have built as floors are currently in my

tavern as like dance floor and they have like a checkerboard layout. I'm not even sure what I put there. I think it's bronze and gold. That's yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I've really gotten into using metal for highlights. I've always been into the aesthetics of the layouts whenever I'm looking at them though, so that is high priority on my fortresses. That is a really good idea. I think I'm just going to put a lot of metal bars down. I have, let me see. I currently have 2,300 iron bars and 3,000 copper bars, by the way.

So maybe I should get on that. 3,000 copper? Hmm? I never seem to be able to find the ore for building, for making copper too much. Oh, this is not from ore. Tetrahedrate? It's tetrahedrate, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

But this is not from ore anymore. This amount is from sieges. From goblinite. Oh, nice. Humanite, to be exact. That sounds terrible. Soilent green. Yeah.

In this fortress, you know, the old one that I'm playing with the Snake Man, I've been using a lot of siltstone because I nested myself right in in siltstone layers. I will admit right now that I don't even know what Siltstone is in German Oh God Wait, let me look that up You're going to be underwhelmed

Wikipedia to Germanic Please schlufstein Oh Yeah, it's the good old schlfstein What does Stein mean? Stone? Stone. Oh, Schlofstein

So it has a very nice sandy color And I like it And I have a lot of it Yeah But I came around and when I put flooring into rooms, I now actually put flooring into rooms instead of having the gray bear rock there. I like to put wooden floors because, you know, I imagine it feels a little warmer. And I always put one block, like one rock block under the door. So when the door opens, it has a different color than the actual room interior.

and I like to use dark rocks, like Jet, for example, because that makes it look like the doorframe is darker than the rest of the hallway. That makes sense. That makes sense. I tend to take whatever the interior flooring is of the room and extend it out to the doorway. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. For example, I'm looking at my tavern right now, and two of the doors have the dark blocks and two don't.

They just have the normal wood floor. and I like the aesthetic that the door opens and you see a different color for a second and that the door passes through and then you only see the closed door. I really enjoy that. That has like a little bit of a breakup in the optics. What I don't use for construction really at all at this point is wood. I don't construct anything out of wood. And when I build, except for floors, I mean, but we're talking walls or like houses.

When I construct, like construction, how's it called? When you, like multi-layered walls? Design, build. When you want to construct something and then you make like a lattice around it so you can construct it. Scaffling? Yes, thank you. Gotcha. I build the scaffolding out of fungi wood because it's like this disgusting yellow color and it's really easy to see.

Well, I was going to say something similar. I have never thought of actually building scaffolds. That's a really good idea. What I tend to do whenever I'm building multi-level walls, I will build like several stairways around the edge of where I want the walls to be, and I'll make it like four levels high. And I will typically use wood to do that because it's usually outside, and the trees are usually right there that I have just cut down for the purpose.

Yeah. It's easier to distinguish what goes after I'm done constructing and what stays. when it has like a very offset color also I have just so much of it and I don't like using it for furniture because then I have this weird yellow wooden color I don't even like it for beds to be honest

Tony is there anything that you like to make look pretty in your fortresses? You know what I'll do if I'm trying to zizz up the value of a room like if they want a guild hall or a temple I like to use gold bars for that.

Gold bars. Nice. Yeah, I'll just do gold flooring. And even just a few squares of it will usually get you past the threshold of what you want. So I'll do sometimes like a little, you know, like a little plus sign or a circle or just try to do some sort of cheesy pattern with gold. But I always go for the gold because it's like the fastest way to increase the value of some room, at least that I've found. I don't run into a whole lot of gold in my fortresses. Okay.

Yeah, usually have to be a little deeper, I think. I bottomed out this time with my... Oh, platinum. That's another one that'll do it. Platinum. It'll zizzy up. I like to preserve it for statues and only make them when I know that the people that are making it are good. And I get like masterwork statues.

But a proper masterwork statue made out of either gold or platinum is so good in value. And then you put some nice decorations on it. And just one statue can sometimes bring up the room and instantly get you into, like, large guild hall. It's crazy. It seems like I've noted the masterworks don't have the same cachet as they did in version 47. They don't seem to be quite as increased in value as they used to be. Oh, really? Yeah.

Oh, that's interesting. Now, I'm not thinking about, you know, platinum and gold masterworks. I'm talking about just like a masterwork bed made out of regular wood. I mean, I can see what you mean. For example, I'm currently looking at a brass statue, a masterwork, and it has a lot of decoration, and it only has a value of 780 dwarf box. So it's not that crazy. Yeah.

And I bet most of that's from the decorations. Yeah, most of it is probably from the decorations. Yeah, I found that decorations is really the best way to bump up the value of furniture and things like that. It is. I took a strategy where I put a single jewelers workshop and put furniture stockpiles around it. But those furniture stockpiles only include things that are used for bedrooms to decorate, like beds, chess, and cabinets and things of that nature. And also, I've got some armor stands and weapon racks in the stockpile. And that particular jewelers workshop only decorates furniture, encressed furniture, with,

with cut gems. So that gives me a nice supply of decorated furniture because I haven't figured out a good way to say, I want you to only decorate beds with, you know, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with gems. You can do finished goods. You can do furniture. You can do ammo, which I have no idea why doing ammo is a thing. I think, yeah, is that just a flex? Just a flex on your people.

It totally is a flex, yeah. But I think I can actually help you with this. So what I like to do to get. specific furniture encrusted is I have certain stockpiles that only take this very item and then then linked to the gem workshop or such. So that when I put the work order into said workshop, they will only take things out of that very stockpile. It is so helpful when you're trying to, for example, quickly make a bunch of statues and then you can just cue the statues being made as well as the decoration stuff.

And then your decorators will just go through the amount of statues that is in the stockpile. And if it's large enough, other dwarfs will carry the statue back into the stockpile. And a decorator will then take it again and apply decoration that is not yet on it. Yeah, that's the thing I didn't do. I didn't link the stockpile to the jeweler's workshop. Yeah, I have to do that. That will be good. Whenever my fortress recovers, we'll talk about that later.

Oh, oh, that doesn't sound good. Uh-oh. Cat soap is something I seem to end up with an extraordinary amount of it. But do you use it to build? I wish you still could. No, but I think you can't now. You can't? I don't think you can.

Oh. Yeah, soap is no longer a building material, unfortunately. Yeah, that's okay. Well, it used to be, that used to be kind of a schick. Yeah. I remember one of the old Tor Fortress Talk episodes, they had a, like a bonus competition and it was like who could submit the coolest structure built out of nothing but soap the reason i end up with so much of it is because when they go butcher an animal they

you know i guess this is probably going to sound callous or something but they break it apart into lots of different materials and then the tallow they seem to love to cook first so whatever i can ban from cooking fastest is like the type of soap i have in that for it so that's why i have cat. I think there's just so much cat tallow. They can't cook it anymore, so they have to do it like this. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, otherwise they just cook it and I end up having like ox tallow stew and stuff. I will admit, I don't think I've ever really built anything out of soap. I found that to be weird. Just imagine you have a house and that is literally built out of soap. It's clean. Then it rains.

I love that, though. No, I imagine that to be absolutely terrible. Yeah, I think so. If you build a hospital out of soap, will you just rub you the patients against the wall? Yeah, I don't think you can build anything out of it. The one thing, the one bars that I'm trying to get more of are the weird ones, like twisted metal and that sort of thing. So I kind of started trying to focus on how to get some of those things. If you can even do that in Fortress mode, I read some kind of a post somewhere in it.

And I think this might be outdated now, but you could like take a bar, smelt it into a bar, you know, smelt it into a bar and then melt it down and then rebar it and then rebar it. And if you did that enough times, it might turn into something else, but I don't know if that's accurate. What? Come again. Yeah, so, so this, I was a Reddit post because I'm trying to, I was trying to get twisted metal. Because that's one of the things And I just thought that would be fun So they said if you take a stockpile of bars And then you just constantly melt them down

And re-smelt them and melt them and resmelt them Just after doing that a lot of times They might transmute into twisted metal I don't know if it's true or not But it's something, it's Dorvan science I want to play with Huh I wish I knew more about that But yeah, I don't know

Maybe that's an old thing or old version I'm sure somebody's going to write in and let us know now That would be awesome but yeah i thought that it was that twisted metals one of the divine metals i think it is but i i don't think so but i was curious to hear that you might be able to make your own so that sounded fun hmm that's interesting well i haven't had a happen in my fortress but then again i haven't really smelt it down any bars me curious let me try that From the ashes of ruin, the forge of resilience burns anew.

Another message from the spirits, this one from Patrick Shaw, sounds like a call to action. Mr. Mayor, do we feel particularly forged today? Forged? More like hammered into the dirt. We are down to 98 dwarfs, and half of them are either in a hospital bed or waiting for a bed to be built. And speaking of that, I'd love to treat our patients properly, but we're out of soap. Again, you ever try cleaning an axe gash with just a stern look? It's not ideal. I can confirm that our soap stockpile is non-existent, along with our patients, and sanity. And workers, there aren't enough hands to keep up with the work orders. Every time I assign a new

task, the dwarf I assign it to either limps away, falls unconscious, or is already dead and I just hadn't noticed yet. That last one's on you, Cadol. Look, things have been chaotic, no? You mean a complete disaster. The fortress is held together with splints and spite. And neither of those are sterile. Then we fix

it. We prioritize expanding the hospital, we get soap production back on track, and we find some way to catch up on our work before the whole fortress grinds to a halt. Bold plan. Where exactly are we finding the dwarfs for all this? Got any ghosts who still owe

us a fever. No ghosts. Just us. And our patron, apparently, who insists we burn anew. Patrick Shaw, if you've got any more miracles lying around, now's the time. Dwarfs, let's get to it. Meeting adjourned. I'm a little bit surprised that I haven't run into the magma sea on my fortress because I bottomed out the negative levels, but I still haven't run into any magma. And there's magma available in every fortress, right? If you go deep enough.

It should be. If you go to the bottom and just start digging bigger holes and bigger, like just keep clearing it out and clearing it out and clearing it out, you will absolutely find that. Okay. I'll have to do that. It's there. I bought it out, but I just basically built a stairwell down to the bottom.

I didn't, you know, clear anything out yet. You are solid. Also a building material that I don't use too often is any kind of glass. I could make green glass a lot, but I don't know. It just... Kind of sucks, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, it doesn't look.

I mean, I like the green color. I like green. Yeah, sure. But if I look at this statue, for example, okay, it's not a masterwork at all. But it is a green glass statue and it is decorated and it doesn't even hit 100 dwarf bucks. It is just slightly below that. And, okay, sure, you can mass produce them, but you can't even sell them to traders because they're way too heavy unless they bring six wagons or something. Then you only get to sell like three for the value.

of, I don't know, one pair of use pants. I had a fortress previously that I had a really good setup for all things kiln and forge related, and I had a nice stockpile of things like glass and metals and all that. I can't remember that that fortress had a untimely demise, though, but, you know. Do you ever get the clear glass going? No, I didn't. What do you have to add to that potash?

Is that right? Yeah, it's Paralash and Potash. Is it Paralash and Podash or just Potash? I can't remember. The flow is a bit fiddly. It seems too fiddly, yeah. That was the word I was going to use to. It's one of those things that I don't mess with because, you know, to me, soap is too fiddly, but you need it.

Yeah. I have made some clear glass in this current fortress, but I don't even remember what I used it for. There is, like, a bridge that could potentially cut off everything to the outside, so people could just live inside the tavern for a while, that is the only thing that I clearly remember has clear glass. No, actually, there's, I do have windows. I have clear glass windows. Do the dwarfs care if it's clear? Like, for me, I don't use green glass because, I don't know, it just seems like that old 70-ish, that's just gross, you know, and I don't like it. I just don't any part of it.

It's funny. I think of it as like 1940s Mason jars. Yeah. Do the dwarfs care, though? I think because of the room value, it has a big impact,

but beyond that, I don't think the happiness is influenced that. Beyond maybe the dwarf likes clear glass, then the dwarf is going to like the clear glass instead of the green glass. Yeah, it just depends on the dwarf.

Okay. That seems fine. Why wouldn't it? What do you guys think about building buildings outside, like structures, multi-floored structures and things like that? Do you do it much? Yeah. I was just to say, I still love the stone sense pictures of castles and fortifications and things like that.

That's one of my goals is to make a very pretty fortress that is worthy of being put on the Dwar Fortress Wiki's front page. Oh, yeah, definitely. I know what you mean. Let's say I like how it looks, but I never managed to get it done. I do have plans on how my current fortress should be looking above ground, but there's a few things that are essentially in my way. And thing number one is it would be an absolutely huge castle that would be fully empty. I don't need that space.

So I feel like what would I put in there? I have everything that I need already on the ground. And the other is... It's a flex. Yeah, I mean, okay, I could see that. But imagine you're a visitor and you arrive to this huge dwarven castle. And then it turns out it's just like three very large, empty grand halls. And you're like, what is this?

And the dwarfs are like, yeah, I don't know. We build it to impress you. But now let's get down below because that's where we live. A bit of visitors tavern up there. I do. That's what I like to build them. I usually just build a one-story visitor's tavern. And then if I'm feeling saucy, I'll put hotel rooms above, above it.

Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. That's been nice. That's an interesting idea. Those haven't been enacted to be, to be functional yet, have they? The bedrooms attached to taverns?

I mean, the bedrooms, but they just treat them like regular bedrooms, even though they're... I think so. I don't know if somebody rents it or not. I think it'll say if it's rented, but, like, I don't, like, would don't have income so I don't really know I don't know what they're paying me in it seems like that was one of the concessions made whenever they released version 50 that was no longer quite as functional as it used to be yeah don't know I've built what they call it rental rooms quarters yeah and in I guess is kind of the way I'm thinking yeah yeah I have done that especially

whenever I was doing the the quick fort the dream fort from quick fort they had a they had the in rooms that were attached to the to the tavern on that like to get back into that there's so many things that i would like to do with door fortress and you know i need to enact a getting things done procedure just for door fortress gtress yeah i've got my like here's how i set up my food here's how i keep them vaguely happy here's how i and i just kind of try to do that and then the other thing that i where i usually get myself burned is i'm not fast enough sometimes building my defenses before that first siege comes. Yep. Or I'll have a wear beast, which will suck, and I'm too slow at getting that sorted

out. Knock on wood. I haven't had wear beasts in a while. I had those couple worlds there in a row that just were freaking infested with them, and it just destroyed the worlds. But the last couple worlds that I've generated and played any time in, I haven't had wear beasts, which, you know, if I don't have another wear beast, it will be just fine with me. Those things are pain in the but they will ruin a world. Do you kill the people after they turn back into the people when they're aware of beasts? If you've managed to contain them and then they turn back, do you let the person go or do you kill them? If I get them in time, yeah, I kill them.

But for whatever reason, I always seem to miss somebody. Yeah. I'm not really into the interrogation thing. So whenever I get migrants, I don't tend to pay enough attention to them. So back in those previous worlds, the vector of infection tended to be migrants and they would come in and they would be inside and turn into a wear beast. And, you know, pretty much that's all she wrote.

Full moon comes and, you know, they would be killed fairly quickly by the people around them. But it is really tough whenever you've got, you know, 50 dwarves in a tavern to know, to, you know, just sort through all of the logs to see who was in combat with them and who got bit. Yeah, true. True.

And even when I tried to do that, I tended to miss somebody and, you know, the Werby spiral would happen. Yeah, that's a real pain in the butt. I had a giant come through and I felt bad for him because he seemed to be terrified in conflict, fighting with, like, badgers and stuff. And so I was like, oh, well, I'll see how he goes. But then he just goes nuts. And so we ended up killing him and I felt bad about it. I think I didn't want to. He said he was terrified in conflict.

I felt bad. I was trying to, like, offer him a fig leaf and all he wanted to. to do his fight. So I'm not sure what to... Sometimes you're your own worst enemy. That's what... He was an adrenaline junkie. He was terrified of combat, but he loved it.

Yeah, exactly. He just flew a little close to the sun. Hmm. You know, okay, fair. I have been playing only the same world over and over again, but there's still no wear beasts or vampires or night creatures. And, yeah, I don't know. I don't even think there's any...

towers, yeah. I forget, what's a night creature? What do they do again? Sorry, I meant the necromancer experiments. Because I have not had any necromancers. There's no towers, nothing. Yeah, it's pretty bleak for the goblins because I'm, you know, ramping up my speed.

You know, now that I think about it, my lack of wear-beasts has coincided with my switch to pocket world. So I wonder if that has something to do with it. Maybe the tiny worlds have a lesser chance of developing wear beast infections. Hmm. I mean, there's less people in there, so less things happen, I guess. I could also see the wear beast getting put down earlier because it can, quote, unquote, hide in nature. I think it can crescendo faster in a small world.

I think if one spawns somewhere, you'll start to have some problems. Could be, could be. And I also still go on really young worlds. 50 years, I think, is what my typical has been in the last few worlds. Okay. Hmm. I'm still enjoying the 250. It seems to be a pretty good, happy medium for what I've seen.

Yeah. It's also interesting to see how the world ages when you play it, because I think I did still. this game and I don't actually remember when I started playing this world but now after my warfare

and completely annihilating all the northern goblins the world has gotten a lot more relaxed and all the other weird creatures in the world have been decimated to a shocking degree

and the only thing that is now happening is I get sometimes some kind of creature like a hydra that was very recent, or human sieges. But at this point, pretty much exhausted most of the humans as well. Why are the humans so after you? I'm not even sure. I think I annoyed their merchants one time, or something happened with their merchant. Some merchant bugger was.

And then they just declared war on me, and I can't tell them that, hey, I would love to trade with you more than to like have your junkies come to my doorstep and then I beat them up and then I steal you a metal. But okay, sure, whatever you want. The dead linger when the living falter. Honor the past, lest it rises. Lest it rises. to claim the future. Another divine slab. This one from Lord Byron seems even the spirits are telling us

to get our act together before we're outnumbered by our own dead. I don't think we are far off. We are down to 80 dwarfs and if we keep losing workers, we'll need to start asking the ghosts to pick up shifts. Funny you mentioned that.

Most of the dwarves who weren't nobles are in the military already left with the trade caravan. So unless the queen wants to personally start making rock mugs, We have a tiny productivity issue. A productivity issue?

We can't even dig tombs fast enough to keep up with the corpses. If we don't get more hands, we're going to be the most well-documented ghost town in dwarven history. And let's not forget the ones who aren't leaving. My hospital is full of maim dwarves who can barely lift a pick, much less hall stone. Even the ones who can work are slower than a one-legged llama in a tar pit. On the plus side, if the five full squads of soldiers are keeping things locked down,

Every forgotten beast, but thing, the random goblin that sticks its head into future flag gets promptly introduced to the concept of being stabbed repeatedly. That's great, but unless you've trained your squads to farm, craft, and build coffins, we still have a problem. Then we need solutions. We need dwarfs. Perhaps we attract more migrants. Or maybe the answer is to reassign squads from military training to work details.

Maybe we start a voluntary noble on the job training program. You know if for the health benefits. Indeed, nothing boosts productivity like mandatory volunteering. One way or another, we will turn this around. We honour the dead, but we must fight for the living. Lord Byron's message is clear. We can't let our failures drag us down. We must move forward.

We must rebuild. And we must make damn sure we don't become ghosts. ourselves. All right. Fine. We'll make a plan. But if we don't start seeing some progress, I'm putting the next noble in charge of soap making. Meeting adjourned. You said that you weren't sure how old your world was, how long you've been playing it. I wonder if you could use the Legends mode-related applications and plugins and things to go back and find out when the, you know, how long, how old the world was whenever you started playing in it. Oh, my God. Yeah, of course.

Hang on. I can do that. I don't know how easy it would be because. because the historical things that happened before you actually start playing, those things will be taking place. Well, I can at least check when I started my first fortress in the world. That's true. Yep.

I just have to remember where I put the Legends browser thing in the jig. Did the world exist before you started playing? Did it ever exist? Yes. Well, you have to do the first fortress at the, however long you built the world for, right? I did not find the... Okay. Give me a second.

Yeah. You got all the time in the world, man. You got this. You got this. Oh boy. Where is it? So I like to build taverns, like the big taverns, the ones that I want, like, the outsiders, the non-fortress people to go to.

I like to build those outside because then if bad things happen, I found a couple things. One is people don't rob me as much and try to steal my artifacts. if I have the tavern above ground because they're just not really welcome below ground. And then the second hand of that is, like, I don't know, I've had better luck attracting more people to my taverns when they're above ground. So I don't know if there's a there, but that's my... If you put a roof over a building outside, will the dwarves still consider themselves to be outside, even if they're in that room? No, it's inside when she'll do that.

Okay. Yep, that would be, that'd be cool. But you can put it, you can put a roof over your plans and that will still be considered outside. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. And that's kind of what I was thinking about. That's one of the good ways how to build or farm outside plans down below in the cavern layer. You make a huge shaft and then you essentially expose the exact plot where you want to farm,

outside plant to the quote-unquote sun, and then it works. Then you can actually grow stuff down there. And then you can even completely fill in the entire shaft again with rock blocks or whatever. And it still works. Oh, that's tricky. Yeah. So you dig down, you make it a big open hole and then it becomes, quote, outside. And then you can cover it up. And once it becomes outside once, it's outside forever. Exactly. And I think that may be where I kind of got the idea that perhaps dwarves still felt they were outside when they were in a roofed tavern. I do think they're they think they are outside, but they don't get affected by the rain or the sun, because so far you can really tell when cave adapted dwarfs go outside and there's

a roof and they're completely fine, and then there's no roof and they start puking. So I would say then, yes, they do think they're outside, just not like outside, outside. I never really have that issue with cave adaptation. They complain about the rain, but I never have them complain about being outside. Look for a piles of puke. I had it a few times, yeah. It could be that pretty much all of my dwarves are always involved with gathering plants, so I always send them outside to do stuff.

Yeah, I'm a big plant gather, and I still sometimes get confused about the difference between a zone for collecting plants and the task that you build for collecting plants. So, I don't know. You mean like a gathering zone? Yeah, there's a gathering zone, and then there's a go out and pick fruit. But they're quite different in functionality, it seems. Is that right?

I didn't realize that. Yeah, because if you take, it's G, set plant gathering orders. It's just orders. So if you take that and you go over fruit, that has fallen from trees. For example, avocados are currently on my floor, and I go over it. It will not pick up those avocados on the floor, while the actual zone will pick them up. And the more interesting thing is they will actually get a stab ladder and walk into the tree to pick fruits.

Which one? If it is a zone. Okay. So you can make a greenhouse, essentially, this is what I did. you can make a little zone, and that's kind of inside your fortress or whatever, and it's like open to the sun, obviously, and then you have some trees growing and stuff, and you just set it as a zone, and twice a year, I believe, they just rush in. Like your entire fortress, 200 people rush in, gather everything that is there, clear out,

and then you have like a weird amount of random fruits, like avocados, or canned. cashew apples and, like, lemons. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. So how do you get a tree to grow underground? Oh, no, no, no. It's not exactly on the ground.

For example, I made it above ground. I just, it's like inside, behind my walls. It's behind my walls. Okay. So they're completely safe whenever they go there. But you could do the pit method and then, like, flood the place so it's muddy. And then you, I do believe at some point that will be grass growing. I might be wrong about that.

Grass will. I mean, yeah, you'll get grass and cave moss and crap. But trees, I was like, I could, I would love to be able to grow, you know, fruit trees and nut trees underground. Although, I don't know if nut trees actually give you any usable food. You can grind them up into oils, I think. Yeah, you can grind them up into oil. Fiddly again. The trees that grew here in my fortress, they grew naturally.

I cleared out those that I didn't want, and new trees just spawned in. naturally. So whenever, for example, there's a lemon tree, like a citron tree, I do actually remove it in the hopes of getting more avocado trees. And then they, you know, naturally just pop in. And as it's dwarf fortress, they don't grow like a normal tree wood. They just, they're small sapling. And at some point, it goes, poof. And they're like a big old tree. So you know, you say that. And I had cleared out all of the trees from my above ground area. So I had to dig down to get fungi wood and then I noticed after a few years I look up top again and hey it's almost fully forested again yeah I had never noticed that actually happening although I do have to say

the fortress that I'm on now is one of the longer-lived fortresses that I've that I've administered so maybe I hadn't waited long enough how many seasons I wonder between the time where you're completely deforested and you have trees let trees out there to harvest again a couple seasons, a couple of years? I do believe that there is a hard-coded time for alt-trees, and without going on the wiki, I would wager it is probably roughly around two years. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense for the amount of time that my dwarves were not making beds,

and I didn't realize why. I'm not too certain how the saplings come to be. I don't think they have to, like, fall from a tree and then, like, dig underground for something weird. I do just believe that they come into existence and then at some point grow into a tree because otherwise I would not have, like, citrus trees grow inside my fortress all the time. Hmm. Not true about it, though. Stone endures, fire tempers, and the steadfast shall rise anew. The great Garzini has spoken.

It seems even the spirits think we're due for a comeback. I'm not saying I believe in omens, but after everything we've been through, I'll take any sign that doesn't involve more death. We're up to 99 dwarves now, thanks to a couple of migration waves. I don't know if they heard about the riches of future. flag were just didn't hear about the other part but hey we'll take them maybe they heard we were desperate and figured they'd get a quick promotion fine by me my hospital is finally quiet for once just the usual minor injuries no gaping wounds no missing limbs no screams of eternal suffering

it's almost unsettling don't get too comfortable the squads have been busy and while we've kept the caverns and surface clear there's always something like The goblins haven't forgotten us. And we won't forget them, but for now, we rebuild. We've got an opportunity here, strong numbers, some breathing room. It's time to dig deeper, carve out something grand. Future flag should be more than a fortress. It should be a symbol, a place where dwarfs want to come, where they thrive, not just survive.

Logurious quarters, proper tombs, halls of splendor, not just another hole in the mountain. Well, technically, you really could say that it's just another hole in the mountain, but it is indeed a really nice one. As long as I get a hospital with soap, I don't care how fancy your rooms are. And as long as we have the military to protect it, I don't care how deep we dig. But I agree that it's time to make future flag worthy of its name. The great Garzini's message is clear. We will endure, we will rise, we will build. future flag will not just recover. It will prosper.

All right then. Let's get to work before another forgotten beast decides to temper us again. Meeting adjourned. So, Roland, I last episode, you said that the, I think it was when we were talking about the, the Reddit scraped large language model generated description. You said that it had inspired you for your next story. And I totally interrupted you. and we never came back to it. And I was like, I was editing the show and I was like, hey, you know what? I was just a jerk there.

Well. Do you remember what it was? I have to think. So, first of all, I do believe the Reddit Scraped joke was like sexual stories about dwarfs or something. Like hot stuff stories, right? Are you really creating that? Man, that's interesting. That's interesting.

Yeah, kind of, kind of. Dwarfamax. I meant that as more of a joke like he-h-h-haha, you know, like that dwarf fortress smut. But unironically speaking, I have been interested in family history of my fortress. So that was more of like a getaway get into story about, oh yeah, the dwarf fortress smut. But I'm legit talking about this family tree. And then I was talking about the family tree that exploded the process. program? No, not the Snake Man?

That's kind of the deepest level of dwarf fortress smot we will ever really get from the game, I think. I think it kind of turns plump helmet into a double entendre, doesn't it? Well, there goes our Apple rating. Never think of the plump helmet again. I like big helmets, and I cannot lie.

That's right. The plumper, the better. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's probably going to get cut. And scene. Sir Dwarfs a lot. Sir Dwarfs a lot. Sir bleeps a lot. Man.

Stuff. All right. So you don't have a... There wasn't a... Just sorry about cutting you off like that. Yeah, no. It's all fine. That was a joke that kind of went nowhere.

I'm not writing Dwar Fortress Mont, everyone. Sorry. Well, there's still time. It's early in the year still. Yeah, our next hiatus, that's what you're going to have to spend your time doing. That's right. just the, you know, darkened room and a word processor.

Ripped dwarves with like, what do they call it, the bodice ripper, but like the Dorvan bodice ripper or something. So my fortress that last episode exploded on me and actually killed my, I think it made my, either my computer crash or my web browser crash or something.

So that has kind of leveled out and it has, it has recovered for the most part. I lost half of my population because at this, just as soon as we got that forgotten beasts taken care of, and that was what brought my frame rate down to, down to nothing. I kind of just let it go and eventually we killed the forgotten beast and I recovered my frame rate. Well, we hadn't even buried the dead yet. I hadn't even gotten enough coffins made to bury the dead yet whenever we got a Batman attack from the

underworld and I had missed a spot where where they could get up into my fortress. Oh no, not the bad man. Yeah, the Batman are pretty bad because and I don't have archers. They can fly. They can fly. I don't have archers.

And whenever you are in the caverns, your people can't get to them and they can swoop down and, and, you know, wreak havoc. So, yeah, I've still got a few of them that are lingering around down in the fortress, down in the caverns that I, that I'm not able to get to, but they're not quite as much of a threat anymore. My squads, my squads are pretty good. They lost a few dwarves, but for the most part, I've got four squads that are full,

and they're all pretty tough. So if they can get to the Batman, they can kill the Batman. Nice. Oh, old men, too. Oh, those guys suck. But they're super squishy. You can squash them like grapes. Yeah, they have darts.

that they've been that they attack with which is kind of a pain is that right okay but first of all i do want to make a joke about like it's it's easy we kill that man uh also um i've heard that the the the uh the blow dards are coated with something that makes a syndrome happen i've yet to actually see anything like that and i wanted to ask you if you noted that people attacked by blowgunners are experiencing some kind of syndrome? It's possible. I haven't delved into the health of my people a whole lot yet. Like I said, I lost half of my population. I would drop from 200 down to

100 for the dwarven population. My mayor got killed. One of my baronesses got killed, I think. I think that she was immediately replaced by another baroness. But yeah, my mayor got killed my chief medical dwarf got killed yeah i haven't played a whole lot since i recovered the fortress it was kind of time to step back and take a breath and determine how i want to proceed with this one because if you recall this was my resolution fortress this is the one that i was going to keep organized and i'm going to take this opportunity to actually redo the organization of the fortress it had started to let chaos creep in as as will happen so i might take a level that

I haven't cleared out and go ahead and, you know, rebuild my fortress on another level, another set of levels. I don't need trading anymore. I've pretty much become self-sufficient. Wow. Okay. But doesn't trading, I think if you, if you, this is what I think. So tell me if I'm wrong.

The reason that I did that I do trading now is, well, to get animals, I guess, but to like bribe the dwarves that I'm really cool. So like, I'll usually give them some gold goblets. or something is a gift because then won't they bring better wagons and then maybe promote me to a barony or something if I show them that I'm if I show them I'm all tight

tough. Yes. Yeah kind of I mean if you want to become the capital you have to yeah exactly like if you want to become the capital you have to do some trading but if you are the capital it's like I don't really trade

either I just get a absolute ridiculous amount of tributes from my subsidiaries. And that is like trading, but except for the part where they just bring it for free. So, uh,

you know, I'm the capital, but I still think that I'm getting a dwarven caravans in the autumn, which, which previously when I'd become a capital, I didn't get any dwarven caravans anymore. I think if your sieve is big enough, right?

They'll still trade with you. It could also just be another sieve. Could be. Could be. For example, I do get trading caravans from the other sieve that still, technically it's two, technically it's two civilizations. And they do still trade with me, which is pretty much the only thing that I really don't trade because all that dwarven stuff, I already have, buddy. Like, your crappy silver sword is not appreciated here. Thank you very much.

Exactly. I have crates and crates full of steel armor and steel weapons. I don't really need the stuff that's on there. I will occasionally take things like glass, clear glass and stuff, things that, you know, if a dwarf gets in a strange mood and just really has to have. Yeah, yeah. They'll have it available. But for the most part, yeah, I just have stopped building trinkets, you know, crafts because the only reason that I built them for the most part anyway was either a noble, was. complaining that they wanted some or

to trade. Yeah. Because they're light. The crafts are all light. So you can trade a lot of them. And they get pretty valuable whenever you start putting gems in them. Oh, that's right. If you decorate the crafts, yeah. I've been selling the gems. That's like my early

fort money makers. I just set up a jeweler and then have them constantly polishing gems. More efficient if you encrust the things with gems and then sell the things that got encrusted. Yeah. True. But I feel so sad because the amount of metal that you can get in one fortress is not limited because you can't just get sieges from either the goblins or the humans.

And then you have an unlimited amount of, let's see, iron and copper and sometimes bronze or brass. I've seen them wear that. I've had trouble getting my people to melt, though. Oh, yeah. I'm not trying to melt my dwarves. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. I will have people attack us with arrows, copper arrows, and I'll mark them for, for, for melting.

It never seems to get done, though. Yeah, outside stuff doesn't. They, no, they don't like to take things from outside. I said it to collect all the outside stuff, so they will collect them and they'll put them in a should. I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. And I will just make more DF hack. advertisements in this case, because what I did, and this is not just good, it literally has

taken all worries from my shoulders. I've made a quantum dump, and now everything that isn't steel and masterwork or at Mantine or whatever gets dumped into this thing. So even stuff that my dwarfs make, but it has low quality. It's one big pile. And now this is where DF hack comes. in because you can now click on it and you have extra options from DF hack. For example, Control M makes everything that falls into this stockpile automatically into

melt designated. So as soon as anything metal falls into that, my dwarfs will try and melt it down. And then I have like made an automatic manager order that starts a melting process as soon as I hit like 25 items, which means I constantly have like a pile of wooden crap that is in there, because sometimes the elves come or whatever. And this also applies to stuff that I take from the humans, stuff that I make myself and it has low quality, stuff that people bring me as tribute, everything goes into the pile and gets melted.

It's so good. Well, I'll have to try that. that inspires me. Yeah, I have to say the DF hack use quantums has been really good. I don't, is there a downside to it? The downside? Well, I mean, if you set it up properly, for example, me, I have set it to not take anything made of at Manton and steal above a certain threshold. So masterwork stuff, for example, does not end up in the pile. And that means you get all your armor back. The downside is maybe if you have, have a decorating job in your smithing hall and the melting piles also in the smithing

hall. It seems that the dwarfs will sometimes decorate things onto things that will be melted down and then you lose the decorate item. So for example, if you take gems, they will be gone forever. That is sad. But anything else, I've had not experienced any problems beyond you know, maybe losing some decoration items, which in my case would be mostly bones. It's pretty good. And I think you should try that out, definitely. Well, guys, as tends to happen,

our time has slipped away in another engaging episode of Door Fortress Roundtable. Wow. That was an hour, huh? That was an hour. We did it. We had a lovely time. Yep.

Anybody got anything else that they want to, bring forward maybe just a quick note because I Photoshop the Snake Man

right and I don't know if you saw that I put that into the Discord server for this

podcast by the way if you're listening to this right now and you're not in our server right

now then please get on that so you can see my beautiful Photoshop Abominations

Do you remember what Shal you put it in? Just general I think meeting the meeting area. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I see it. I wanted to imagine what my snake warriors look like. And talking about like AI generated stuff, I don't want to support that because I believe that the badly photoshopped images. For example, I want you to Google Ryan Gosling, Lyos from Delicious in Dungeon. It's a scuffed picture, but it evokes emotion from me. It is made with love.

Your snake dude is buff. Yeah, he is. He is, actually. He's got a male shirt. A big shout out to Ethel, because he's a good, good snake man. I like him. Ethel? Athel with an A. Athel with an A.

Okay. Athel glazed road. Oh, yuck. Don't like the name, but sounds cool. And the whole translation thing slays me in my head. I don't like it. Anyway, that's a topic for another discussion. Oh, yeah, write that's our next, that's our next one.

Cool. Well, we did it. We done did it. We done. Translation slays Tony. Okay. That's for the next episode. It melts my brain.

So everybody, thanks for listening. And we will catch you all next time. And until then, get fun, plants, door fortress out there, right? Godspeed. Yep. Stay safe and drink a beer. That's the way. This has been the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast.

You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarfortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice. If you'd like to contact us by email, the address is URest at DFRontable.com. That's U-R-I-S-T at D-F-R-R-Table.com. If you'd like to interact with the hosts and listeners of the podcast, you'll find a link to join our Discord server in the main menu of our website. If you'd like to help support this podcast financially, you can find us at patreon.com slash DFRoundable. This is a conversational podcast. All Craftsorship is of the highest quality.

Thanks, Delfonso.