Toraliden, 1053

This is the continuing saga of the settlement of Toraliden, my latest Dwarf Fortress game (version 0.31.12). The first installment is here.

1053 was a rough year at Toraliden. It had started on a high note, when we were declared a barony, with our leader, Aban Joinedfortresses as baroness. Sure, she had demanded better quarters to suit her new rank, with a well-equipped office and a personal dining room, but that wasn't unexpected. Unfortunately, she soon stopped cooking for us. In fact, she started doing little of anything, except for holding occasional parties which pulled productive dwarves from their duties.

Litast Blowrelics, a legendary miner, high master woodcrafter, and talented metalcrafter, replaced Aban as mayor. He insisted on an upgrade in residence as well, and has demanded that we make some gold items, but at least he continues to work as hard as ever. We must be thankful for small favors, I suppose.

The humans sent a trading caravan in the summer, our first contact with that civilization ("The Curled Realm of Blankets" - an interesting name for a nation, don't you think?). But while they were here, they witnessed a terrible industrial accident. Rakust Praisedstockades, working high above ground on our planned goblin trap, misjudged the strength of a construction [my own error, in fact] and fell ten stories when the floor gave way beneath him. Worse, the dust cloud - or perhaps the vibration - knocked two other dwarves off the narrow ledge as well, nearly wiping out our small staff of trained masons. It was really a terrible sight, with arms, legs, and heads flying everywhere.

Rakust and Catten Tribebolt each left a child behind, but even worse, from the standpoint of our fledgling community, was the loss of Kitty Pagefills, a legendary weaponsmith and talented metalsmith who'd been moonlighting as a mason. The loss of any of these three fine dwarves would have been a terrible tragedy, but without Kitty, we can't build the high-quality weapons needed for our defense.

Trapped passage, ten stories above the ground. The pressure plate opens all hatches and the door alongside it.

But we continued to build the structure, using unskilled masons (urged to use extreme caution), finally finishing the job a few months later. Now, in the meadow just outside our moat and drawbridge, a stairs climbs ten stories, ending in a narrow catwalk leading high over the wall. At the other end, another stairs leads down into the heart of our fortress. But the catwalk is cleverly designed with a false bottom. It's a trap to catch trespassers.

Unfortunately, it soon proved to be far from foolproof. That winter, Sigun Patternspear, animal trainer and mechanic, was working at the kennel when he was surprised by goblins. The kennel is on a ledge, partway up the mountain, within our moat and safe from most attacks - but not, as it turned out, safe from arrows and crossbows shot from further up the mountain. Even so, Sigun would almost certainly have survived if he hadn't panicked, running away from safety instead of towards it. And once he was immobilized by a well-aimed crossbow bolt, there was little we could do for him. He bled out from multiple wounds.

Well, after that, we were anxious to get our revenge and watched with glee as the goblins, meeting our closed drawbridge, headed into our shiny new trap. But here is when we realized we hadn't fully thought things through. For one thing, we hadn't enclosed the staircase, expecting that our marksdwarves would get some target practice as the goblins climbed up in plain sight. We'd forgotten that they could shoot back. Even worse, the stair was high enough that they could shoot over our fortifications.

When we discovered our mistake, we tried to move our soldiers to safety, but two young recruits, Atlas Controlhalls and Thor Girderpets, were shot before they could get away. Then, as each goblin climbed high enough, he emptied his quiver into these two targets. (Thor suffocated in his own blood. Atlas is being treated in our hospital, in intensive care, still bleeding profusely and in intense pain, with all his extremities mangled, plus damage to his heart, guts, and pancreas. It's touch and go, and if he does survive, he may be crippled for life.)

Since each goblin stopped to shoot before continuing onward, they ended up well-separated, and when the leader stepped on the pressure plate built into the floor, opening up hatches in the corridor ahead and behind him, only one of his squad fell to his death. Yes, it was a rewarding sight, when that goblin hit the ground, pieces of him flying off in every direction. But it was still only one out of seven.

And that's when we discovered another design flaw. Blocked from going forward or back, the goblin leader (an elf, actually - apparently a snatched child, grown to adulthood among his kidnappers) stepped into the doorway that we'd opened for him. But then, instead of moving back to the stairs, he simply jammed the door open, and when the hatches closed again, he had a clear path into our fortress. Even worse, his remaining followers could also take that path, avoiding the trapped passageway and the pressure plate entirely. The entire goblin warparty ran towards our people, yelling terrifying battle cries.

Luckily, we hadn't entirely trusted our experiment, not without a good test first, so we had backup traps. Those killed two goblins and captured the others (including the elf leader). They're awaiting judgment - death, like that dealt out to the goblins we captured in earlier years (they were disarmed, then forced to face our entire military).

Losing five dwarves - with another barely clinging to life - has been a hard blow to our young fortress. Morale is still pretty high among our residents - we did construct modest bedrooms for everyone, and our dining hall is truly a wonder to behold - but our reputation has suffered. We received no immigrants at all this past year.

But we continue to build and we continue to explore. We've discovered vast caverns underground, amazing places which thrill our dwarven souls. And far, far underground, we think we've discovered magma. It's a long way off, but we might be able to harness it for our metal-forging and glass-melting workshops. We're using coal-fired forges now, but that's just not as elegant as using liquid rock. (On the other hand, coal is abundant and a lot closer to where it's needed.)

A small part of one cavern system, far underground at Toraliden.

Now that spring is here, we're hopeful that the new year will be better than the last (much better, if there's any justice in the world). We plan to make big changes to our flawed trap system, if goblins give us the time we need for rebuilding. We plan to explore the caverns and the magma ocean. (We must decide whether to make that long trek regularly, or instead, move our whole community further down into the heart of the mountain.) And we hope to start attracting immigrants again, since we desperately need a larger labor force. We're down to 55 dwarves right now, and five of them are just children.

We need a better warning system for goblin attacks, and we need to build walls and ceilings to protect against missile fire from above. For that, we desperately need new masons. And we need to improve our military, because we can't depend entirely on traps. Well, we're a young fortress, and there's always too much to do. But we've got a good location, with good resources, and we're becoming a regular stop on several different caravan routes, elf and human, as well as dwarf. Toraliden has only just begun to make a name for itself.

Note: Dwarven last names are composed of two words in the dwarf language (just as "Toraliden" means "Lawpaddles"). In this post, I've started to translate these names, which is different from how I started this  history. I don't know, it just seemed like "Patternspear" was easier to read and comprehend than "Lilarlokum."

Dwarf Fortress: Toraliden

I've been playing Dwarf Fortress lately. No, I don't really have time to be playing computer games right now, but I just couldn't resist any longer. I've been wanting to try the new version since it was first released, just waiting until the major bugs had been worked out. (This is a free game, still in alpha, so the developer relies on his players to find the bugs - and on contributions from his fans to keep the project going.)

I started the game a couple of months ago, but it kept crashing (a problem I'd never had with DF before). So I put it aside for awhile. With the latest version, 0.31.12, that's been fixed. And a couple of rainy days gave me all the excuse I needed to pick it up again. It's been great fun!

If you're not familiar with Dwarf Fortress, it's really kind of hard to describe the appeal of the game. Frankly, the interface stinks, the learning curve is a killer, and the unmodded game uses ASCII graphics! Even with the May Green graphics bundle I'm using, it's an understatement to describe them as "minimal." (I've posted some screenshots below the fold.)

But the gameplay is wonderful! My description won't do it justice, but basically you take a party of dwarves into the wilderness to carve out a home. It's a fortress, because it's a dangerous world. But it's also a trading post, a farmstead, and a center for all sorts of crafts. If you're successful, you'll attract immigrants until you have a thriving community.

And every one of your dwarves is an individual, with an individual appearance, personality, likes and dislikes, mannerisms, and skills (which improve with use). You can give them a task list and assign them responsibilities, but they themselves choose when to do what. They eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, rest when tired, sleep when sleepy, and even socialize when they need a party. They make friends (and grieve when those friends are killed), adopt pets, get married, and raise children.

For the most part, the game is perfectly logical. If you can think of a logical way to do something, you can probably do it. It's wide open. This game doesn't tell you what to do, it lets you make the decisions. And although there are many, many ways to lose, there's no way to win. "Winning" just means that your fortress is still going strong. Dwarves die, they're buried in plain coffins or elaborate tombs, and life goes on. Until it doesn't.

My latest fortress, Toraliden ("Lawpaddles"), has been under construction for just over two game-years now, which isn't long at all. Still, we're up to 60 dwarves (including three babies and two children), having lost two in violent incidents. I didn't originally intend to document our experiences, so I don't have any screenshots of the beginning. But if you're interested, I'll describe what's happened so far below the fold.

Dwarf Fortress - Lazy Newb Pack

I already posted about one game today, so I thought I'd add a few notes about another - one of my all-time favorites, Dwarf Fortress.

I never did get back to Toraliden, my last fortress. Just too much else going on. However, I still plan to test my revised trap there, the one which drops invaders through a series of trapdoors.

But Dwarf Fortress has gone through multiple revisions since then, and I don't think the old game saves are compatible. So when I downloaded this Lazy Newb Pack, I started a completely new game - in Adventure Mode, this time.

But first, a little about the Lazy Newb Pack. It's a package of the latest version of Dwarf Fortress, along with various graphics packs (sorry, but I just can't do ASCII graphics) and utilities. It's designed to make it easy for Dwarf Fortress beginners, but it's really nice for pretty much everyone. I highly recommend it.

Just unzip the main folder somewhere and it's ready to go. Click on Lazy Newb Pack.exe to start the front end. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory. The only thing it doesn't do is change the screen resolution. If you want to do that, you need to edit the init.txt file (you can do that from the Lazy Newb Pack screen)... and to know what you're doing.

Really, if you've ever thought about trying Dwarf Fortress, this is the way to do it. It's really nice. I suggest checking out the wiki before trying your first game, though. Once you get started, you can press "?" for help, but it's not easy getting started if you don't have a clue what's going on.

Of course, the Dwarf Fortress motto is "Losing is Fun." If you do something wrong, so what? Just see what happens. If your fortress goes down to crushing defeat, well, that's fun, too. And it's something that's happened to everyone who's played this game. (In fact, there is literally no way to win in Dwarf Fortress. There are many ways to lose, or you can just get bored and decide to start over. But there's no way to "win" - except just to have fun.)

I can't say anything about the utilities included with the Lazy Newb Pack, because I've never used them. Some people swear by them, though. Check them out, if you want. And note that all of this is free. If you like the game, you might donate at the website. After all, the developer, Tarn Adams, lives on voluntary donations from his many fans.

Fortress Mode is the heart and soul of this game, but I wasn't ready to start a new fortress just yet. So I thought I've give Adventure Mode a try. I'd played it briefly, a year or more ago, but there didn't seem to be much there yet. But Tarn has been working on it, and it shows.

Adventure Mode is more like a traditional RPG. (Fortress Mode is like nothing else you've ever seen before.) You create a character - I'd go with a human, because he'll start in a human town - set up his beginning attributes and skills, and send him out to gain fame and fortune killing monsters.

There are shops in human towns (but not in hamlets), where you can trade goods. And there are NPCs you can recruit to join you (it's very important to recruit a meat shield). It won't be easy getting people to join you at first, but after you've killed a few monsters for them (ask them about performing a "service"), they'll be eager to die for you.

My first adventurer was killed by bogeymen when he foolishly tried to sleep alone at night. Well, my companions were all dead, and I was hoping I could risk it. And I figured he might be tough enough to take on a bogeyman. But six of them killed him before he could even wake up completely. Lesson learned.

Now I'm playing another swordsman, Willam Leafape ("leaf-ape"). It's kind of funny. Right off the bat, I recruited three peasants, armed only with knives and wearing no armor. Two of them were killed in our first fight, and the third was critically wounded, such that he could no longer walk. From then on, he crawled everywhere. But he was still fast enough to keep up with everyone else, and he was a bonafide killing machine with that knife.

Often enough, my peasant would kill an enemy before I could even get close enough to take a swing. And though I started recruiting soldiers after that, they would die like flies, and my crawling peasant would come out of every battle alive - grievously hurt, often enough, but it never seemed to slow him down.

But on my last play, we got ambushed by goblins. I had ten soldiers with me, and my own character was fully armed and armored in iron. But there were a lot of goblins, and they had a goblin leader with them who was just unstoppable.

I had to run to the north, escaping the ambush, in order to drop behind a hill and start sneaking. I came back, but my guys were dropping like flies, even my incredible peasant. Staying hidden, I killed every last goblin except the leader. And then I started after him, but I just couldn't seem to hit him at all.

Even when he couldn't see me, he'd parry my attack and return a devastating counterstrike. Pretty soon, I was crawling, too. If I hadn't been hidden, I would never have escaped. As it is, I'll never walk again. But I happened to have a crutch in my pack, so I hobbled back to civilization.

I don't know if I'll retire this guy or not. I'd really like to take down that goblin leader sometime. But that would take a lot of grinding - first, to become a legendary crutch-user, and then to improve my fighting skills enough to have a decent chance in another fight. I really don't think that sounds like fun.

And Adventure Mode is great for killing a few hours, but Fortress Mode is where the meat of Dwarf Fortress really is. Nothing beats leading a handful of dwarves in carving a home out of the wilderness, to go from sleeping in the dirt and scrambling for enough food to an enormous fortress - a barony, perhaps - full of skilled, prosperous dwarves and capable of withstanding an assault by a whole army of foes.

But we'll see. I still need to go back to Toraliden and test that new trap design, sometime. And believe it or not, I really don't have much time in the summer to play games.