Rushlashed

Rushlashed is a bloodline Dwarf Fortress game currently being played by a handful of hellmoo players from playnet. If you aren't sure what that means, check This[1] out.

Game Settings/Saves information

We're playing with elevated magma and megabeast levels. Our "saves" consist of the entire folder (to ensure we're all using the same settings, tilesets, and whathaveyou). In most cases, you'll want to grab the latest save. In the case of a player causing a major fortress collapse, we'll agree to revert to an older save. Saves will be uploaded and downloaded via FTP, so you'll need a way to do that. The FTP information is:

• Server: ftp.offendulon.org
• Username: playnet_bloodline@lendemaindeveille.com
• Password: hellmoo_df2009

Player List

Since there's not many players on board yet, when we hit the end of the list, we'll rotate over to the top. Feel free to add yourself.

• Czernobog
• Dagon
• Senso
• Airistifanese
• Volin

Year One: The Birth of Rushedlashed

OKAY SO REPORT TIME BITCHES

Rushedlashes is coming along nicely. I've laid, I think, the foundation for a fotress of unfathomable awesomeness. This site has everything we need to be rich, strong, and elegant as hell.

THINGS I'VE DONE:

• All the basic startup stuff. Found a suitable starting location, dug in, built up some stockpiles.
• Drained some lakes on the Z level above the entrance level of the fort.
• Began farming.
• Began brewing; placed the still (and room for the kitchen) INSIDE the food stockpile so supplies are always on hand.
• Moated off our entrance, got rid of all the ramps that could lead to it, bridge'd and levered the entrance. The lever is in the dining room, between the northern table and the staircase (Make sure to raise it when you see a caravan!)
• Paved the road between our side of the drawbridge and the entrance, just for fun.
• Built a dining room and a bunch of very large rooms leading off of it. Right now they're assigned to the 7 starting dwarves, but those rooms are gonna be worth a shitload so consider giving them to needy nobles.
• Random furniture crafting. Beds, tables, doors, etc, just to get the dining room and bedrooms started up. Nothing of the money-making variety yet.
• Smoothed that ENTIRE area. Dining room should be legendary or something about as good already.
• Switched around some nobles; hired the aprraiser as the town broker so we could see prices, assigned a random peasant to book keeper, and set it on highest accuracy. He has a chair assigned to him in the dining room-- just a 1x1 room-- and he'll be working there 90% of the time to keep our records right.
• Chopped down like half a forest.
• Stacked some stockpiles* to save space for the next guy.
• Cleaned everything, everywhere. No stray stones uglying up my fort, tyvm.
• Created custom job titles for just about everyone. Read the first part under THINGS I SUGGEST DOING for an explaination.

• • Stockpile stacking works like this: once your stockpile (of any kind) fills up with things, build a 1x1 garbage dump area [i enter enter g] on the square of the stockpile that's closest to where the dwarves tend to access it (in our case, that's the stairway). Then, make sure NO OTHER GARBAGE DUMPS ARE ACTIVE (this is important. You'll find yourself wondering where stuff went if you have more than one active dump at any one time). After you're sure of that, use [d b d] and highlight the entire stockpile. Unpause and wait as the dwarves "throw away" all the items into that one square. Once it's done, use [d b c] and highlight the garbage dump square to reclaim the items there. Nothing's changed about them except now the ENTIRE stockpile's contents are comfortably in a single, easy-access square. Use [i a] on that square to deactivate the garbage dump and you're done!

• • Another important tip: note the refuse pile below the farming area. See how there's no way to access it other than going diagonal? This is important because miasma only spawns in cardinal directions, so if the only way into your refuse pile is diagonally, no miasma will escape it.

INTERESTING EVENTS:

• Fuck, it's the first year, guys. We had a snatcher show up and I didn't even have to activate anyone into the military because he just chickened out.
• Caravans which I didn't interact with. We have nothing to trade at the moment.
• Oh yeah we had 8 immigrants.

THINGS I SUGGEST DOING:

• http://minoku.net/dwarfmanager/ GET THIS. Download the .net framework-- there's a link on that page, and after you've installed it, install the dwarf manager program. It lets you change jobs for dwarves on the fly which is really nice. It goes hand-in-hand with custom profession names for dwarves because you can also change all the jobs for an entrie profession, all at once. This is helpful when you wanna switch a whole group of people on and off a task. For example, I want ALL my peasants to smooth stone, but I don't want them engraving things with their shitty skill levels. So when it's time to engrave, I can just pull up the manager and switch all my peasants off the stone detailing profession, and switch my engravers on it. Good stuff.

• On that note, I strongly strongly suggest NOT engraving anything until we get a legendary engraver, or at least a really good one. We could get a lucky fey mood and have an engraver in the next year. The point is, bad engravings don't really do much for the dwarves, so it's probably not smart to make bitches engrave until they're reallllly good.

• Stack stockpiles whenever they fill up instead of making larger stockpiles. If you make larger ones, you're just increasing the travel time it will take between getting the thing and actually using it. If you stack, then you're SHORTENING it and that's just sweet.

• Try to be tasteful as you build. We want this to be a badass fortress (or at least I assume we do. What else would we be going for?) so keep that in mind when building things and placing buildings. I built the road out of only sylvite and all the tables/chairs out of rock salt for a reason-- it looks better when shit matches. This may seem over the top, but give it a thought when you're placing things.

• Get a military pretraining program ready by building a room with a bunch of screw pumps, beds, food and water. Put dwarves you plan on militarizing in there and lock the door. Give them all the Pump Operator profession and let them get to work. They'll toil away at the pump and increase their toughness to maximum in about a year, or so I've read.

• Once the peasant working as bookkeeper reaches legendary status, switch him out for a new on. You won't actually see the performance drop, and you're giving another dwarf a chance to get legendary'd out. Probably put the previous shopkeeper through the pretraining program since his stats will kick ass already. If he goes through that he'll be a super-soldier. Then rinse and repeat when book keeper #2 hits legendary.

• There are some things you should request from a caravan at EVERY opportunity, in my opinion: ALL types of wood, ALL "misc" items (potash and stuff), METAL BARS: gold, silver, platinum, iron, pig iron, steel (we need these for bling and/or military), ALL barrels, pig tail bags, pig tail ropes, pig tail thread (they're cheap and good to have extra of. If we're making glass, then we'll need a shitload of bags). Put all these options to the "200%" mark-- once we get a good craftsdwarf or cook, it really won't matter how much they charge because we'll be able to cover it.

• Once you have a good source of cash, every caravan should CLEAN YOU OUT. Buy all the stuff you want, and then [o] offer all the rest to the caravan. You may think you're just giving away 50,000 gold, but offerings mean more wagons next year, and it's not like you really NEEDED that barrel full of rock mugs.

• Pleaaaaase don't attack caravans, they're a key source of stuff and if you attack them enough, they'll just come and lay siege instead of helping us. If you have to attack one, attack an elf caravan I guess. And then train a shitload of heavily, heavily armored dwarves because elves are fucking snipers.

• Name a dwarf after yourself so your presence can live on. Build all the way down to the bottom Z level and dig out a hallway. Branch off a room and make your dwarf an insanely extravagant crypt for when you die. I would have done this myself but I didn't have time so I suppose I'll make mine when I take my second turn, after Senso goes.

That's all I can think of. Good luck.

STRIKE THE EARTH!

Year Two

First off, the previous ruler didn't bother to take any photographs of the fortress, so I've uploaded some pictures.

Rushlased, first floor, year 1.

Rushlased, second floor, year 1.

Not pictured is the farm, which is on a floor on it's own.

The first thing I noticed about the fortress: It's build right next to a river and we have NO fisherdwarves. Aside from providing extra variety in our dwarves' diet, fish leave behind bones (and, in the case of turtles, shells) which are good for grinding our dwarves' skills and creating weapons. I added fishing jobs to our otherwise idle peasants and built a fishery right next to the still (which you can actually see there in the screenshot).

Once this was taken care of, I inspected the current work orders. It seems that the previous ruler left almost all of his dwarves idle. Aside from the farmworkers, the ONLY working dwarf was churning out stone doors. Which we didn't really need more of. I had him stop, and started construction of beds and cabinets for the bare bedrooms which had already been dug out.

Seeing the lack of defenses other than the moat, I added a small-ish barracks at the main stockpile area, which eventually will be stocked with military dwarves to defend the fort.

An elven caravan arrived. While the previous ruler ignored the caravans, I decided to let this one in. I've decided to define Rushlashed as a strictly anti-elf fortress. We are not yet strong enough to take the elves in battle. However, that doesn't keep us from deviously claiming their goods. Once the elves were unloaded and ready to trade, I deconstructed the trade depot. Dwarves 1, Elves 0. For our efforts we got some wood, some seeds, and several bins and barrels (one of which was made of gold - I forbidded it and plan on selling it to the next caravan).

More migrants showed up.

For a lack of anything constructive to... er, construct, I dug a few z-levels down and laid out the frameworks for my own grand tomb, something the previous ruler failed to do.

Gatizƒtast "Fondledbrave"

About this time one of our new migrants, a weaponsmith, began running around the dining room screaming like a madman. In an effort to shut him the hell up, I constructed a metalsmith's forge, a wood furnace, and a smelter. The dwarf claimed the forge for himself and demanded metal. Since Rushlashed is to be the finest of fortresses, I saw fit to provide him with no less than platinum. He took three bars of it and hid himself away.

After a short while, he returned proudly holding the item that makes up about four fifths of Rushlashed's current wealth - Gatizƒtast (or "Fondledbrave", in english), a platinum spear.

• This is a platinum spear. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of platinum. This object menaces with spikes of platinum.

At a base value of 144000, Gatizƒtast is easily the most valuable item in the fort.

Dagon and his tomb

The dwarf who created Gatizƒtast got the honor of being renamed "Dagon", after myself. His tomb was finished shortly after. It is as big as his giant dwarven penis, which surely is gargantuan. (Of note: "Dagon" the dwarf is female.)

The tomb itself is one z-level down from where the dining and apartments are. It's of a large circular shape and is the maximum allowed size for a tomb.

There's a long hallway running past the tomb, a designated area for the tombs of future rulers of Rushlashed.

Summer hits

Yes, all of that was only during the spring.

As summer hit, I decided to improve the living quality of our noble, who, aside from having to do his work in a noisy dining room, also did not have a bedroom and had been sleeping in the barracks. I built him a nice little office, right next to the food stockpile, which will also serve him as a private dining hall. I also added a smaller connected bedroom for him.

After that, I decided to head to bed for the night. Expect a much more boring rest of the year, as I plan on spending the rest of it mining out stone, gathering wood, and hunting/fishing.