Dwarf Fortress Stories

Prepare to lose a weekend: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=41896.0

As for my stories, I had a fort saved by what can only be described as the dark knight from monty python("It's only a flesh wound!"). You see, I was carving out a hall deep underground, when all of a sudden my digging was interrupted when I stumbled across an underground river. As these things tend to be, it was full of all sorts of nasty creatures who promptly swarmed out. They killed all but 2, who managed to seal off that area by building walls. Of those 2, one was generally in good health, while the other had lost both arms and a leg. He somehow managed to not bleed out and make it to a bed, where he promptly went unconcious due to his injuries. The dwarf who was in decent heath meanwhile became extremely depressed due to watching nearly all his friends being ripped apart by the creatures from the river. This lead him to comit suicide, leaving only the single, unconcious dwarf lying in his bed without arms and only 1 leg. That dwarf managed to survive for an entire year all by himself, unconcious the entire time, with no food or drink until a wave of migrants came and took over management of the fort. He eventually secumbed to his wounds about half a year later, although the parts of his limbs not completely severed had almost healed. By lasting longer than I had ever seen a lone unconcious dwarf last before, he singlehandedly saved an entire fortress from its otherwise certain demise. He was buried with honor in a room carved specifically as his tomb, surrounded by statues and objects of wealth fit for a king.

I have at least a dozen other stories as awesome as that from DF, but as it is getting very late/early, I must go off to bed...

I've been fiendishly working my way through the forum archives (got through SG1-4,6 and am currently finishing up Headshoot) since Boatmurdered got me into Dwarf Fortress a little under a week ago.

I don't have any ridiculously awesome stories (just ridiculous ones, like accidentally flooding my entire fort with lava while failing to understand magma cannon construction.) but soon, soon.

I hear a lot about this game, but I can't manage to even understand the interface, let alone the capability to build complex fortresses.  I got as far as digging out a tunnel, and building a carpenter's workshop.  There's far too much going on in this game for me to grasp.  

Perhaps someone can steal this idea and make a similar game except make it more accessible, maybe release it as a wiiware game so dummies like me can get it. 

It took me a while to get the hang of it when I started too.  Probably 5 games in two or three days before I realized a well would suffice and my Dwarves didn't need to drink alcohol.

Later,
LAR 

Ya, it takes usually between a week and a month to understand the game enough to not die horribly from starvation or thirst. But for entertainment value, it just can't be beat.

Here's a visualizer image of one of my most ambitious forts, complete with 3 pyramids, a somewhat complete colloseum (right side) and a stargate tribute!

I had quite a bit of fun with that map; I knew I was going to be building tons of stuff, so I turned the homeotherm value of orcs* in the raw files up to 20,000. This meant as soon as they entered the map, they spontaneously all combusted, starting mapwide fires. The goblins, on the other hand, were combatted by my uber-legendary axedwarf. She had around 400 kills by the time I took this shot, and I had so much fun watching the goblins flying through the air before exploding against a tree that I deforested the area around the entrance where she stood. This allowed the goblins to fly even farther before exploding against a tree!

IIRC, there was also a medium-sized tantrum spiral a few years into it which brought my population back down from 70 to 10.

This cannot end well.

Well, that was lame.  A dog and 5 unarmerd recruits killed it, and only the dog died.  I wasn't even a war dog.

I am now imagening Giant Zombie Eagles.

SKELETAL.

GODSDAMNED.

ELK.

HOLLY F*$%& S$&%( A &%(* STARGATE EPIC!!!!!!!!!!

thats one big stargate... lolz

that is so fracking epic...

amazing

its missing 2 chevrons. there are supposed to be 9.

<3 stargate.

Yes, but as in most non-floating-in-space gates, the other 2 would be underground. There are 7 visible on most gates, with 8 and 9 being on the very bottom of the ring and almost always obscured by the base on which it is mounted.

Incidentally, I found a more recent photo of that fort (I knew it was there somewhere!) which gives a much better view of the colloseum; updating the other post with the more recent image.

Also, SKELKS! Someone call Captain Ironblood! And be quick about it!

Here's another image I dug up. This one is from the "soap tower" competition they had a few months before the new version launched. Every block of contruction material which made up this tower was soap, acquired through un-modded means. I had over 100 animals at a time (mostly cows) and had clearcut the 6x6 map for lye several times. And yes, that is a river going through it, as I carved out several layers around it to allow for taller construction.

Goddamn thats a lot of work you've done there.

Later,
LAR