Beards, Fear & Incompetence: A Dwarf Fortress Diary (Part 3)

Winter

Winter arrived, and so did some more immigrants. Thank fuck this Fortress doesn’t take the Daily Mail.

These immigrants were surely glad to be informed that Fikod’s remains had been scooped off the ground and tossed into the corpse pile, although they might have been slightly perturbed to discover that all his clothes and belongings were still on the floor where he fell. They’re very nice about it all though, and don’t even ask whether it’s normal for the dead to be stripped of their clothing before being dumped outside alongside the hamster remains that continue to decorate my fort like so much confetti.

There are now more than seventy Dwarves in my Fortress, of whom an insane amount are children. Of course this means that the vast majority of the fort contribute fuck all, eat my food and throw hugely disruptive parties all the fucking time, but that’s the twisted, perverse beauty of Dwarf Fortress – it manages to screw you over every five minutes whilst seeming innocently unaware of it, like a child who doesn’t understand why leaving Lego bricks all over the floor in a darkened room can make people upset. I don’t mean to complain about children for this entire series, but they’re all massive gallivanting shits, both in the real world and in that of the game.

Anyway.

Winter was, I won’t lie, difficult – both for me and the poor Dwarven schmucks I’d been left in charge of.

There’s less food around in Winter see, and when your fort has been attracting new settlers at the insane rate mine has, it doesn’t take long for the supplies to run out – especially when my only source of water (the aforementioned murky pools, which are basically puddles) froze. Also, due to some monumental screwups on my behalf, I realised during the first snowstorm of the season that all year I had been accidentally cooking the mushrooms I was growing, which mean that the seeds they produced weren’t being collected like they would be had the fungus been eaten or brewed into alcohol – which meant that eventually, my Plump Helmets were going to run out; and they were my main source of food. This is not good news, for those who weren’t paying attention, although according to Dwarf Fortress players, it is apparently Fun.

(Note to Bay12: Potential promotional line for the game: Dwarf Fortress; make accidentally starving a community to death fun!)

As a result of this, the majority of winter involved desperately clawing for food, before discovering a huge stash of seeds I didn’t know about and then immediately digging farms absolutely anywhere that I could (after headdesking so hard I nearly broke my own knees). Other than that, the only other thing that happened over the Winter was that Tun, one of the many, many children I seem to have attracted to my overgrown, understaffed Day Nursery, was taken by a Fey mood.

Yep, another one of those, like Fikod.

Luckily, Tun’s childish exuberance meant that he was nowhere near as picky as the skill-less oaf who was once my militia leader (and was now a ghost; must remember to lay his spirit to rest), and as such didn’t demand stupid vague things that I had no hope of providing him with (ARE YOU LISTENING FIKOD, YOU CORPSIFIED MOTHERFUCKER?). The items he wanted were all available in my fort and so little Tun soon skipped around the fortress, kicked my resident jeweller out of his workshop, and made a lovely clay crown. Good job Tun. Depression avoided (I couldn’t deal with having a terminally depressed fucking child wandering the halls).

Further fantastic news: this miracle of craftsdwarfship meant that I now had an expert jeweller in the fort, a Dwarf who could produce legendary shiny accessories that would be famed and lusted after the world over. I immediately set him to work.

Well, I tried. Then I remembered he’s a child and they do whatever they like, which is very rarely making jewellery. Children’s tasks involve being a drain on society, holding parties and getting in the way, as I may have mentioned before.

My brain boiled. The most talented dwarf in my entire fortress was a child who couldn’t be made to do the only thing that stood to make us any serious money. I started to understand why Primark do it.

Dwarf Fortress is a twat, and while I understand why so many people love it for the hilarious journeys it takes them on, right now I wanted to poke both the game and the pissy little sod in the eye.

Instead of physically abusing a child however, I decided to take somewhat of a different tack: I made him his own grand bedroom, complete with smoothed walls and personal workshop. I didn’t know if that would encourage him to do anything useful or not, but I figured if I kept him happy and alive (mainly alive) then one day he might grow up into a lovely skilled jeweller that would produce legendary shiny accessories that would be famed and lusted after the world over, like I wanted him to.

If you're a good girl, I'll build you your own workshop.

This was me attempting strategy in Dwarf Fortress, and it was about as effective as playing Alex Kasparov at Chess, but trying to move the pieces with a twelve foot piece of drainpipe and your eyes superglued shut.

Once the Tun debacle was over, all efforts within the fort returned to ensuring food and booze supplies were replenished, and Winter came to a close rather quietly as food was scurried away, ready for the next batch of MOTHER FUCKING IMMIGRANTS that were bound to turn up and ruin everything for me.

Next episode: Things that aren’t immigrants ruin it for me.


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8 responses to “Beards, Fear & Incompetence: A Dwarf Fortress Diary (Part 3)”

  1. Madd Avatar
    Madd

    Can you provide screenshots of your entire fort? Would really like to see it!

    1. @cs87 Avatar

      Erm… That might be tricky, for reasons that will become apparent next week.

  2. guillaumeodinduval Avatar

    I don't think shouting at Fikod loud enough for him to hear you in the afterlife and cause his corpse to bleed from its ears (even in an advanced state of decomposition) will contribute to lay his spirit to rest… but it's hilarious and I approve of it!

    I hate myself for this… and you probably will too, but… I almost want you to get a big batch of children coming in your fort next season just so I can read about it and laugh 'till kingdom come!*

    *I am honestly not sure if I can even say that line in such context, but seeing how fiery your mood was when discussing the issue of the parasitic little fiends known as children and of Fikod, it reminded me of the fierce downright pissed Leader of a group of Waysiders in Lost Planet 2 when [SPOILERS!!!] he comes back to his home town after an exhausting and costly 36-hour train-wreck-of-a-train-trip from the desert only to realize his town has been entirely covered in snow and a HUGE Akrid (another type of parasite, one could say) is the cause for it. The depiction of his anger probably turned out to be the most convincing part of acting LP2 had to offer.**

    **Been playing a lot of Lost Planet 2 lately (and that train mission too) soooo, yeah.***

    ***By the way, AJ, if you are reading this: WE FINISHED LP2, O GOD THAT WAS INSANE: MIKE AND I MUST HAVE SHAT OURSELVES 10 MILLION TIMES THROUGH OUT THE LAST EPISODE.
    (p.s.: mike totally died a lot more)

    1. badgercommander Avatar
      badgercommander

      Glad to see that there is some love for the Dwarf Fortress going on.

      As an unrelated aside, yes that final episode with the epic amount of epicness (in SPACE) is brilliant, just hearing your reaction to being jetisoned from the ship brought a massive grin to my face. The last boss is kind of crummy but other than that the final episode goes out all guns blazing.

      1. ShaunCG Avatar

        Seconded, excellent game but wow, what a final boss. I've seen blancmange more menacing.

        Oh, next Monday cannot come soon enough. Part four of this diary series is too good for words. Heh heh heh.

        1. Madd Avatar
          Madd

          Woo! Can’t wait!

          Also, AJ, you are totally dissing that boss, but I recall doing my tentacle waaay before you did yours when we killed him. Obviously you should have done more of the training levels.

          1. guillaumeodinduval Avatar

            I'm perfectly fine with Lost Planet 2's last boss, probably only because I've been shocked from having flawlessly killed – while drunk – Gears of War 2's last boss which is, how could I put it, less threatening than any interactive cutscenes from LP2. Since ya know, those can kill you at least.

          2. badgercommander Avatar
            badgercommander

            I was pretty drunk when we played and have since beaten that boss many times over. The way it is sent to its death is rather spectacular.

            Got in a rather silly argument with Angry Pat (of Two best Friends Play fame) about Lost Planet 2, once again the 'you only like shit games' card was thrown at me. I am getting tired of being pidgeon holed but I can't help it big games tend to be massively disappointing while a lot of the lower rung games tend to be more interesting and fun.