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[Rushmik]

.

I have decided to end my lurking with a let's play! I figure if I'm going to stumble through learning Dwarf Fortress I may as well work on my writing and drawing skills at the same time. I also hope that I can get advice on how to better build my forts from all you pros out there. Oh, and I live in Australia, so excuse my awkward posting times. I hope to do one every 1-2 days if all goes well.

As a disclaimer: I'm not great at Dwarf Fortress. I've played for about a week and have two semi-successful forts, but they're both in fairly quiet forests. I'm past the hilariously aggravating stage of flooding my fortress making a well, or dropping a house through eight z-levels because of bad channeling. I still manage to find some hilarious mistake nearly every dorf-year, so this let's play should be interesting enough!

I've also grown accustomed to calling my dwarves "dorfs", as I think it better describes their intelligence.

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LÉ CONTENTS

Spoiler: Lé embark (click to show/hide)

Apparently I'm embarking in a very defined forest, with a brook that will provide supper for me
(I'll save the volcano for another fortress)

Spring, 127 - Fun! in the first few seconds! Also a lot of digging
Summer, 127 - A lot more digging
Autumn, 127 - Flooding farms and wrestling bears

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DORF ME!
I'll try to match you up with the roles you request, but this might not always be possible. If that fails, I'll dorf you as something interesting, such as an adamantine miner, gladiator or !!SCIENCE!! dorf. ;D
I'll also just name them exactly what your username is, for recognizability's sake.

Spoiler: The dorf list! (click to show/hide)

Rushmik	M	Expedition Leader
Plisskin	M	Marksdorf
Ale Explosion	F	Doctor
ShadowZane	M	Marksdorf
SqueekyReaper	?	Farmer
Polar_Atom	?	Mechanic
ililiilliillliii	?	?

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HALL OF HEROES
Here lay the fallen dorfs of Swordstruck (named dorfs highlighted in orange):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are none yet!

[Rushmik]

SPRING, 127
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Granite

Ah! The serene, unadulterated wilderness. I've been holed up in the mountainholmes for as long as I care to remember. Heck, I'd forgotten what the sun looked like - and it quickly reminded me not to check.

Regardless, the first day of spring marked our arrival at the sight of future Swordstruck. I'd chose the name myself on the way here! It is to be a grand settlement, a jewel amongst the rolling hills. I'd rather not return below ground (the dwarves accompanying me gave me strange looks when I mentioned this to them), but I understand it to be necessary, if only for a year. I can see it now, a tower stretching above the pines; one to rival even the humans' crude constructions!

Unfortunately two of our original seven had perished on the journey, victim to a strange sickness. There was nothing we could do to save them, and now we could only hope that it did not spread to any of us. We had no means of respectful burial yet, so we laid them under a pine tree to at least keep them away from the sun and curious animals.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I want to call it a glitch in version 0.31.19. I had the designated miner channel away part of a slope to make for a neat entrance, like I've done 100 times before. Somehow part of it collapsed on him and he died instantly. After I head-desked, I assigned the woodcutter/crafter to try, and the same thing happened.
Third time lucky, I guess. What a great-and-not-at-all prophetic start to Swordstruck! >.>

Plisskin had the most meat on his bones of all of us, so I sent him to work tunneling into the hillside. We'd set up a safe place to sleep, store and eat, then get to work on the surface as soon as possible!

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Slate

Hollowing out the storage room was going slow, so I gave Plisskin a hand. Neither of us have ever held a pick, but I'm pleased with the progress so far. It's a shame Monom's death, our miner-to-be, had been so untimely.

If I'm not mistaken, we're digging through talc and dolomite right now. I can just smell the forges of our steel industry blooming!

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Felsite



A month's passed and not much has happened. Plisskin has opted to go hunting, and trained himself a war and hunting dog before leaving. He hasn't returned yet, but by the looks of the shoddy old crossbow he was carrying I'm not getting my hopes up. I've seen turkey and deer roaming the woods when I surface for a drink though, so who knows.



We've set up a temporary living quarters for now, literally just a few beds, chairs and tables thrown into a corner that had been dug away. We've also managed as respectable a casket we could manage for poor Monom and his woodcrafter friend. Our doctor (whose name escapes me) was quite distraught over seeing their remains wasting away under that pine tree. The smell was getting to me a bit too. Anyway, they're locked away where no one can see or smell them now and everyone's emotions seem to have settled down.

I keep reminding myself that we won't need to expand this warehouse cave for a long while once it's done, but by my beard I'm getting sick of all this mining!


It seems I underestimated Plisskin, as I was writing this he strode proudly down the ramp with a deer slung over his shoulder.



I guess he was content with his kill, as he's now helping the others hauling the refuse into a neat pile. I need to be writing less and mining more to be honest.

[plisskin]

Dorf me up a soldier nicked "Therleth" with the job title of "Saboteur." Give him/her a knife and a crossbow.

Man, it's too bad the "ambusher" skill can't be used against goblins.

[Rushmik]

You can take the proud place of fort defender / hunter then, in the original seven! I can't promise you a long, happy life though.

[plisskin]

You can take the proud place of fort defender / hunter then, in the original seven! I can't promise you a long, happy life though.

What true dorfy life is long and happy? I hope to die with my knife in a gobbo's stinkin' throat.

[Rushmik]

All the better!

I'm just going to name dorf-you "Plisskin" if you don't mind. I want to name people after their forum names, as it helps to remind me who to laugh at when something obliterates their dorf.

[Ale Explosion]

Dorf me as well please

I'm curious to see how the new version plays out, especially as it seems you're not going to have any metal at your site.

[Rushmik]

Dorfed!

Bah, who needs metal when you have hordes of goblins?

To be serious: I completely overlooked that! Perhaps we'll all make like the elves and wield swords of wood? Mind you, which is better armour: wood or leather?

Either way, I'll try to trade for a few mismatched weapons from caravans and such.

[plisskin]

Dorfed!

Bah, who needs metal when you have hordes of goblins?

To be serious: I completely overlooked that! Perhaps we'll all make like the elves and wield swords of wood? Mind you, which is better armour: wood or leather?

Either way, I'll try to trade for a few mismatched weapons from caravans and such.

-> Leather armor. <-

Watch an elf fight . . . anything in their home-made gear sometime.

You can get by using a squad of wrestlers if you vastly outnumber your foes and have some armor. I'd suggest slaughtering animals and making bone bolts to compliment wooden crossbows for your military until you can harvest goblinite. And the safest way to harvest goblinite is with traps.

[Luftwaffle]

Diggin' the awesome logo.
Dorf me up! Stonecrafter. My stone mugs will blot out the sun.

Speaking of traps for harvesting goblinite, I've always found this to be a particularly effective one.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Let goblins in, lock doors, flip switches to drop them, flip more switches to drown them, flip more switches and open the floodgates to allow for loot collecting.
Bonus points if you drizzle the water out to set off pressure plates and automate the whole process.

[Rushmik]

I like it! And hopefully I can fill the drowning area with all manner of cave creatures I might catch. (Just for lols) And the crossbow+bone bolts idea will be a great use for all these kittens!

On that thought: Leather or bone armour?

[ggamer]

I would Like to be dorfed as gaaben. Either...
A WESPONSDWARF
A METALDORF
or A !!SCIENCE!!DORF (general engineer)

[Rushmik]

SUMMER, 127
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Hematite

Ah! We've finally finished digging out the storage area (and a few workshops, too!). It still looks like a hole in the ground, but neither of us feel like smoothing the stone. I'd rather be digging out a place to sleep and eat first, as some of the other dwarves are grumbling. I told them to be glad they weren't the ones swinging a pick, but they looked sadly over at the ramshackle caskets and said no more. To be fair, even I might sound like I'm grumbling, but the digging process has actually become a lot easier - I might be getting better at it?

I'll still be handing over this pick as soon as I can.

Plisskin approached me earlier, still with that crossbow slung over his back.
"Those yak are looking hungry" he told me simply,
"What do you mean?" I replied, looking over at the furry beasts. Sure enough, there was a lot less meat on their bones than when we arrived. Less of the meat I was looking forward to eating, if you know what I mean.
"Err, what do they eat?"
I swear I saw him roll his eyes under his great eyebrows.
"Grass, just send them outside"

Just send them outside? Pah! It is my job, as Expedition Leader, to dream big! These yak shall not merely stand beside the brook, these yak shall dine in the greatest animal pit known to dwarf! And with that, I picked up my rusty pickaxe and strode outside.

"You know grass isn't going to grow down there?" Plisskin commented as I finished the Great Yak Pit.
I looked down at my feet. Sure enough, I was standing in a pit of talc.



I guess the Great Yak Pit is now just a Great Pit.

I swear Plisskin had passed by it a few times during its construction.

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Malachite

I went up for a drink earlier today and was surprised to see eight new dwarves milling about the now absurdly small dining room. They were already hauling stones, so I left them to it and went to mine out a new farm. We'll certainly be needing the extra food and drink! The stairwell could wait, I figured. Luftwaffle gladly joined me, and I feel we've made good progress despite his lack of skill.
 

Spoiler: Lé farm (click to show/hide)

Some of the other dwarves set themselves up a few workshops around the storage room. I noticed a few gems being cut and beds being made, so we should have plenty to trade should a caravan come through this part of the woods.

It just occurred to me that we should probably move those caskets away from the drink stockpile. Eh, maybe another day.

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Galena

I'm getting enough of this mining. The farm is about complete, but I know there's still plenty yet to go considering bedrooms, dining rooms and the like. I suppose a place to dump those caskets wouldn't go amiss either.

I've asked Luftwaffle to make a few doors to seal the farm in, and another dwarf named Ggamer for two floodgates. It doesn't seem like a lot of progress over the last month, but at least we can do a bit of science in the days to come!

[Luftwaffle]

Luftwaffle gladly joined me, and I feel we've made good progress despite his lack of skill.

Well excuse me if I'm not good at making stone hinges for big stone doors!  That's what you get when you hire a dropout from Urist McCraftsdorf's Stone Carving Academy.

[ShadowZane]

This is so epic, PLEASE dwarf me as crossbowdwarf!^^