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level 9000 wizard

@foulfantasyslime

elliott / bi / he/him / 18
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they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells they are hurting you with spells

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eliteknightcats
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amygdalan-arm

yes you

so with the new version of Dwarf Fortress out on Steam, lots of people are getting into it for the first time. i still don't have this new version (yet) but here's some advice going off my playing the older versions on and off for like the last thirteen years. i'm not going to get into the extreme basics as there are plenty of full guides about that, this is just some personal advice from me:

  • especially for your first embark, pick a mundane-ass location with plenty of vegetation and trees and normal weather. don't fuck around with deserts or evil or glaciers or savage lands if you don't know what you're doing, you'll get killed by lack of water/the undead/the cold and absolutely nothing growing/giant wild animals, respectively. good-aligned regions are usually okay, if you want at least a little bit of the fantastic in your general vicinity. use the site finder to find a place with trees, vegetation, a river/stream/some other source of running water but NO AQUIFER, and multiple deep and shallow metals. personally my favorite embarks are the borders of forests and mountains, that way you have plenty of shit to mine AND plants to eat/brew, trees to chop down and make stuff with, etc. aquifers CAN be beneficial IF you know what you're doing (essentially they're a source of infinite fresh water if you can harness them, unless you're too close to the ocean and you get a saltwater aquifer, which sucks) but they can just as easily flood your entire fortress if you fuck up in even the slightest. i've been playing this game for over a decade and even i don't know what the fuck to do with aquifers so don't ask me
  • i personally prefer embarks with shallow soil. soil's super-easy to farm in (you CAN farm on stone but you have to have a way to irrigate it, and that can be a pain in the ass) but IMO most of your dwarves' living and working spaces should be carved out of stone, because soil can't be smoothed and therefore can't be engraved, and dwarves like moving around in smoothed areas and seeing high-quality engravings
  • your first priority when starting a fort is digging out a shelter for your dwarves. then make spaces for your first few workshops (stoneworking, carpenter, mechanic, and such) so you can get doors installed on your front entrance, and then immediately get your farms up and running. all dwarven crops can be grown indoors and plump helmets are a great choice of staple crop for literally any settlement since they can be eaten, cooked, OR brewed into dwarven wine. outdoor plants have to be grown on outdoor farm plots but they're still great for adding a little variety to your booze stocks and dwarves love that. take note of what kind of trees grow around your fortress, lots of them grow stuff that can be cooked (like walnuts or almonds) or pressed for oil (like olives) or brewed (almost any fruit tree) and you might not want to cut down those apple and pear trees right next to your fort's entrance when you can use them to make cider
  • NEVER BUILD ANYTHING OUT OF RAW STONE, WOOD, OR METAL. one raw stone can be used to build a single tile of wall or floor, a workshop, counts as one material for a bridge, etc AND is heavy as fuck, slowing down any dwarf carrying it to where it needs to go. FUCK THAT, have your masons cut that shit into BLOCKS. a raw stone will get you anywhere from 1-4 blocks, EACH of which can be used to make anything i mentioned earlier, AND won't weigh down your haulers or builders when they're carrying it. wood and metal can be cut into blocks too, if you need to make walls or floors or what have you out of those. HOWEVER, remember that blocks CAN'T be used in ANY crafting (that includes wooden blocks for burning in forges, making charcoal, etc), so once it's been cut into blocks, it's blocks FOREVER. you're gonna have a shitton of stone around almost any fort so making rock blocks is a good way to train new masons, but i'd only make wood or metal blocks if i needed those specifically
  • make some mugs early on, your dwarves like drinking out of them more than sticking their heads under the spigot. don't worry about individual bedrooms early on, you can absolutely get away with just sticking a bunch of beds in a big room at the beginning of your fort and digging out rooms later when you're more stable. don't build most workshops out in the open, dig out a room for each one and put in doors you can lock for each one. you'll thank me the first time one of your dwarves goes berserk after failing a strange mood and you can just lock them in there instead of letting them rampage around and beating your other dwarves to death
  • rock crafts will probably be your main trade good early on. most forts will have stone just laying around, absolutely fucking everywhere, so you might as well put it to use by carving little trinkets out of it and trading it for whatever the caravans bring
  • break into the caverns ASAP and then IMMEDIATELY seal that shit up. the easiest way to do this is digging an up/down stairway until the game lets you know you've found a cavern, then put a hatch cover on the stairs going immediately down into the cavern and lock it. you're not going to be able to handle hostile cavern creatures early on, but breaking into the caverns releases CAVE MOSS SPORES so ANY underground soil tile can start naturally growing moss or fungus. this is functionally identical to grass, so this means you'll be able to pasture your animals INSIDE, keeping them safe from any wild predators that might come along like wolverines or bears as well as keeping goblin raiding parties from using them for target practice
  • get a militia going sooner rather than later. a good array of traps and a locked door might keep the first couple bands of goblin invaders away, but larger armies of them are more likely to get through traps and keep you from sending your dwarves outdoors until they get bored and leave. were-beasts are not deterred by either, being capable of avoiding traps AND smashing down doors, and the bad guys only get tougher from there. check your migrants' skills, they always arrive as civilians so the guy with a title of "peasant" who isn't good at ANY labor might actually be pretty skilled with a mace. dwarves with only more esoteric skills like cheesemakers or gem setters are also good candidates for bolstering your military, once they get some training under their belt
  • IN GENERAL, for military purposes: wood/bone/leather <<<<<<<<<<<<<< silver <<<<<<<<<< copper < bronze < iron < steel < [REDACTED]. some exceptions: silver absolutely sucks for everything EXCEPT blunt weapons, where it suddenly becomes the best material in the game; pure copper is better than bronze for blunt weapons but bronze is better for edged weapons and far better for armor; bronze is only a hair below iron in terms of general military use. your greenest recruits who aren't fit for battle yet might actually benefit from wearing leather armor while they're training so it weighs them down less (at least until they get a few ranks of Armor User), but absolutely all of your actual fighters should be wearing metal helmets. [REDACTED] is the opposite of silver, it's the best metal in the game EXCEPT for blunt weapons which it absolutely sucks ass at. making steel is labor-intensive and time-consuming and requires specific materials and also kind of overkill since only dwarves can make it, but it's by far the best general-purpose military-grade metal you're going to possibly get reasonable quantities of
  • save metallic crossbow bolts for fights. wooden and bone bolts can't get through most armor but since wild animals aren't known for wearing armor, if you have hunters they will take prey down just fine without metal bolts. likewise, your marksmen should be training with wooden and bone bolts so they're not wasting metal ones on target dummies. yeah this means you'll need to constantly crank out wooden and bone bolts, pretty much

might add to these later if i think of anything else

I adore trans harry headcanons so much but I have to wonder. did he forget what being transgender is in these hcs. does he think EVERY guy has a pussy. or is he post-phallo/meta & has utterly no idea he is not cis. there is untapped potential here I feel

ENCYLOPEDIA - Most men have two testicles, you are male so you likely also have two testicles.

HALF LIGHT - You should check, just to be sure.

  1. Openly check how many balls you have
  2. [INTERFACING - Formidable] - Subtly check how many balls you have
  3. "Hey Kim, do I seem like a guy that would have two perfectly average testicles?"
  4. No. I'm normal. (discard thought)

[INTERFACING - Success] - You pad around for a bit while no one is looking and... nothing. You are completely flat down there. You have no balls.

DRAMA - He speaks truly, sire. You have no balls to speak of.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Holy shit. What the Fuck.

LOGIC - Don't freak out, there must be a logical explanation for this.

  1. [LOGIC - Impossible] - Come up with an explanation
  2. "KIM WHY DON'T I HAVE ANY BALLS"
  3. Break down crying

[LOGIC - Failure] - You have been neutered.