Building above ground in Dwarf Fortress AKA Speedrunning Carpal Tunnel

so the steam version of Dwarf Fortress has been released and somehow this snuck up on me despite the fact that they've been talking about it for a couple of years now and I'm sure it was no surprise to people that have been following more closely but I only found out because I just happened to make a colony of dwarves in rimworld how's that for good timing I've put a good chunk of time into it already and while it's got some issues I've fallen in pretty deep or have I well yeah I have but the point I'm making as you may have figured out based on the title and thumbnail is that I wanted to focus on an above ground Fortress in this video the video so far shows bits of random other more traditional underground strikings of the Earth I'd hesitate to say that this is the intended way to play Dwarf Fortress as barely anything feels like the intended way to play this spider's web of a game but I can at least say that it's much much easier this way dwarves like being underground and their methods for construction and living are very much set up for being there and yet here we are creating a world with a rich 250 years of history in which we'll Embark with seven dwarves some pigs and a few geese hoping to found the rather contrarian above-ground Dwarf Fortress of akoka soth or Champion Palace to you and I the site we've chosen is here the Merc of frost in the lyrical land a temperate freshwater Marsh and generally a very friendly place there is a light aquifer on this site but don't worry I'm an adult and I can handle that the intersection of various Rivers should provide Plenty of Fish and some fun defensive opportunities a little later down the line but first things first let's dig a tiny little hole into the ground and plant some mushrooms there are plenty of above ground crops to grow but I brought the default Caravan load of seeds so I might as well use them for now at least we'll need to cut some trees down as well so that we can start building places to live and work starting with a couple of workshops up here out in the open dwarves don't like to be out here too much getting caught in the rain is sort of like eating without a table in rimworld to them but to be fair the dwarves also really don't like eating without tables I dug these quick and dirty bedrooms out of the soil here because it takes a very long time to build anything substantial above ground and I didn't want everybody ending up asleep on the floor being pecked at By Ravens that think they're already dead a few migrants for some reason thought it would make sense to come join in on this Folly not many mind you just three more dwarves no one of particular note at the same time I finally put a roof or rather a floor over those first few buildings we made this large Square building will sort of serve as the fort's early game hub for all kinds of craft dwarf ship from gem setting to plant Milling and after much Gathering The Dwarves made a couple of little plots to plant some foul crops of the Sun Ryan White Millet both of which are basically just hipster versions of wheat at some point I also had some blackberries on the go next to these but for some reason these two are the only ones that I could really get to go in a stable cycle the whole crops and seeds system in Dwarf Fortress has always kind of stumped me it should be pretty simple you grow the plant use the produce and get the seeds back but that process is more simple sometimes than others for example with Ryan Millett they can either be milled into flour for cooking or brood directly both of which processes immediately give the seeds as a byproduct compare that to other plans where the produce is cooked directly and as such yield No Seeds how am I supposed to have cute little fields of celery and lettuce every year force feed them to my dwarves Raw perhaps I'll have to wait until the seed stage is developed for flowering plants to realize that particular goal anyway the next thing on my list of basic tasks was to build a small Hut for a manager to work in so that I can start making use of work orders using the mouse driven interface to create jobs at workshops is excruciating compared to the old ways where I could just Spam a b a b a b a b on a carpenter's Workshop if I needed a few more beds and using my newfound work orders I had some Sandstone tables and Thrones made for a small Tavern across the river here the dwarves will eat their meals here and it'll also attract various types of travelers to stay at the Fortress which is usually a good thing the next thing we needed to get on here was making some stuff out of metal so I made the various workshops required for that endeavor on the first floor of the central tower and it's not really a tower yet but the idea is that it will be eventually okay and while I'm subjecting myself to the Torches of making buildings in Dwarf Fortress let's hack some bedrooms onto the tavern if you've ever wondered what the fastest way to develop carpal tunnel syndrome was I suspect that it might be building above ground in Dwarf Fortress granted this was always a very input heavy thing to do but I feel like I could actually do it much faster with pure keyboard controls the UI here isn't exactly responsive at times it's easy to question sometimes how a game that looks this way can run the way it does on an 11 900k but then you remember it's Dwarf Fortress and just move on this time we're moving on to that light aquifer I mentioned earlier it's not particularly hard to safely work through this water leaks from The Damp walls pretty slowly and they can be smooth to stem the flow layer by layer with relative ease the hardest part is scrolling down to just below the video and clicking subscribe well that and leaving all the shinies in the wall on the way down I passed by our vein of lignite in the aquifer and didn't find any more for ages meaning I had to burn a lot of logs for charcoal to run the smelters which isn't ideal when you need so many building materials to make bedrooms with and at the very bottom of the aquifer are some Caverns I'm not confident that they aren't gradually filling with water so it's best to just leave them alone and find more Caverns further down I also started to put the beginnings of an outer wall down here most of the fort's construction will likely take place on the Northern side of the river here since it's a nice flat area here on the original Embark site is where we'll keep the Trading Post gate houses and entrance to the underworld naturally it'd make sense to train our military here too but we'll get to that soon I always leave the military for far too long and that's not being helped here by a distinct lack of migrants the population is being bolstered by Travelers petitioning to stay here but that's mostly entertainers not exactly classical military stock and sure enough I did indeed find another Cavern deeper underground I don't need anything from here right now so let's just wall it off and continue downwards in search of more shinies actually not particularly Chinese I'm still struggling to find lignite or cold so that's mainly what I'm searching for here and at this point we get our first strange mood if you're not familiar with Dwarf Fortress every so often one of your dwarves will go a little bit weird and claim a workshop to make an artifact in on this occasion it's kick crossed boric sazar who is possessed and mutters about rocks and gems they found whatever it is they're looking for and got to work producing a tetrahedrite alt Hood which is some sort of multi-gong thing based on its description but alongside this many of the fort's inhabitants aren't happy about the distinct lack of clothing available I've dragged my heels a bit when it comes to setting up this industry so it's time to plant some pigtails set up the appropriate workshops and start pumping out trousers so that I don't have to look at all this Goblin ass Goblin Dallas because yeah we have a load of goblins living here as well as elves and humans who need differently sized garments to fit their differently sized bodies the result is a horrible mess in my work orders tab I'm not actually sure whether all of this is required it may only be humans that count as large when it comes to clothes sizing but it's too late now it's done Goblin ass successfully covered up as a brief aside from the story name a more iconic Duo than dwarves and suspending construction I dare you anyway another dwarf started a mysterious construction bucim Adil I didn't catch them yelling about it this time they just got straight to work on what turned out to be an apricot wood scepter named stet atmosphere and I wanted to start making some soap now because I can imagine the tavern smelling something like a Smash Bros tournament I wondered whether I could use plant oils rather than animal fat for this so I made a screw press to get oil from Rock nuts which are the seeds of Quarry bushes but this goes back to my earlier thing about seeds I can't figure out how to do this sustainably so I guess I'll just use Pig and goose fat instead I put the whole thing off for a little while after this too so the tavern will have to just stay stinky for a few more months because now it's about time to do some more building so I got another block of bedrooms put together and started to put more defensive structures in place which for the most part just means putting drawbridges over pits but I want it to be a little bit extra on this front and started to dig some moats I'm not sure how much of a purpose they'll serve but if nothing else they look good it's only at this point that I realized that the southern half of the fort was actually set way above the river since it goes down a waterfall up here so that may just have to be a dry moat unless I'm gonna start pumping something up to it so continuing on that theme I started to enclose the pasture after a buzzard picked off one of my geese the bonus being that every little bit of the Fortress that gets a roof is a dwarf kept Happy by not being rained on a laugh terrorist taker made another artifact for the Fortress an almond wood armor stand nothing to get too excited about but it'll make a noble happy when I accidentally stick it in their office later on I guess speaking of nobles lorbam Road Court was elected the only bone of the Ashen Doctrine I don't know who that is or what the Ashen Doctrine is but okay good to know for some reason my pigtail production wasn't working out maybe because it's not a year-round crop I don't know whatever the reason I decided it would make sense to Pivot to rope read anyway as it's a year-round above ground crop which grows here near the rivers so after collecting enough of it I started growing some of it here in this little plot and set up the appropriate stockpiles and work orders to make sure they were absolutely massive quantities of rope read cloth and thread available at all times foreign I had a whole load of strange moods happen around this time so let's rattle some off firstly thicker lemon created udillunal a garnierite earring which is nice I guess and it on eters is a child claimed a crafts dwarf's workshop and was sketching pictures of skeletons cut gems a forests shining bars of metal and stacked leather something on that list wasn't available and I figured out eventually that it was leather I remembered buying a load at some point but I guess it all got used for something so I hastily threw a butcher and a Tanner's Workshop Into the Now indoor pasture slaughtered a pig and tanned its hide allowing little it on to make and almond wood ring it could shed him which they claimed as a family heirloom I think being above ground is going to their little Dwarven brains and giving me all these wooden artifacts sure they're embellished with gems and gold but why not make the ring out of gold in the first place hit on never mind here's deduck on a lingish claiming another craft dwarf's workshop and using jet blocks pig bones yellow Jaspers gold nuggets garnierite and camel leather to make cutest thick thog one on Rival a pig bone short sword which translates to Prince drenched the sanctuary by the way whilst they were doing all of that lunacy I got a few things done around the fort I unleashed the river into that moat I had dug on the North side which looks great and makes a little waterfall down here as it meets the lower portion of the river dwarves often enjoy seeing waterfalls so it'd be fun to try and engineer some kind of water feature within the walls at some point I also removed those original underground bedrooms since I had plenty of nice ones spare above ground now at the same time I set up a little area for soap making on the first floor with his own kitchen dedicated to rendering fat and while I was working up here on the first floor I finally realized that either the first or second Merchant we ever had here got stuck and has been hanging around gazing out longingly with their single bull lamenting how they miss their family and home I had noticed earlier that the trade Depot was left full of someone's stuff but I only spotted these guys stuck up here just now predictably the issue was resolved by removing the depot I also got to keep all of that stuff they left lots of cheese this probably explains why I had no Traders for the last three years it's finally time I made a military I appointed obok Casa fellas the militia commander and created his Squad of eight dwarves named the nuts of winding they're equipped with battle axes and wear full iron armor one member of the squad on all shemlers is a legendary ax dwarf which is neat I set them on an alternating schedule to train every other season as most of the squad do still have other jobs to do since we're still running a pretty small population of dwarves here and they're training with their actual weapons which might not be the smartest move but hey ho we'll build a hospital soon to deal with any mishaps at this point the fort has way too many animals so I committed a bit of a massacre generally I just butcher animals as they become adults whilst making sure to keep a decent breeding population but things have gone a bit out of hand with enormous Gosling explosions happening more and more often so something had to be done now if you're an above ground Fortress veteran and have been watching closely you might have realized I was being quite dumb up until now early on I sat to making rock blocks then stopped after realizing they don't have a different texture to making constructions out of the Raw Stone the thing is that when you make blocks from a stone you get four blocks per Stone and they're considerably lighter than the raw materials I didn't realize either of those points until just now and had been lugging heavy inefficient Stones up to build with or just largely building with wood but by having a few Stone Cutters working constantly alongside a very Intrepid minor I can make hundreds of blocks that can be quite easily and quickly carried to construction projects at least I realized this now instead of waiting to have people yell at me in the comments about it that being said please go ahead and yell anyway the algorithm likes engagement and I'm sure you've got plenty of other things to yell at me for now something must have clicked and started to make the Fortress more valuable because here I got our first significant wave of migrants it's only 10 which isn't exactly a tsunami of dwarves but so far the population had only been very slowly creeping up exclusively by way of adventurers I'm not sure but I wonder if this has something to do with finally releasing that trapped Caravan maybe on their return they were able to tell the Mountain Homes of our progress went ahead and made Ron Arts which is a goosebone shield the counterparts are Kudos thick fog bottom Revolt from earlier I guess if we get some pig and goosebone armor made we can kit someone out all freaky like and they can just stand on the walls and scare away any would-be Raiders anyway when a caravan finally arrived I had to hastily make them a usable path and rebuild the trade Depot since I forgot to do that earlier I bought shed loads of spider silk cloth from them since I'm never sure whether I'll be able to provide that in a hurry if someone decides they'll go insane if they can't get a hold of some to embellish a wooden amulet to calm down the demon that's whispering to them alongside the cloth I had some of their cheese and a few bronze and steel pickaxes too all that for a few boxes of bone crafts and some gemstones not bad a second wave of 10 migrants showed up so clearly something's been shaken loose and indeed the fortress's wealth has climbed up past 250 000. again I'm not exactly sure what did it but it's attracting dwarves which on the one hand is great on the other it means I'll have to build more bedrooms so I'd best go get the wrist brace out before that though a hospital I appointed alatiristaker who made that almond wood armor stand from earlier as the chief medical dwarf and put them in charge of their little blue domain it wasn't intentional to make the little Hospital in blue but I do think it looks appropriate hopefully we won't need it anytime soon right then good thing we put that Squad together now I really bungled this and I sent the squad in to go attack the Cyclops then realized I didn't want them dribbling in one by one and whilst ordering them to instead assemble in front of the Fortress I disbanded the squad after quickly remaking the squad under a different name with I'm pretty sure the same roster I just commanded them to run at the Cyclops since by this point it was very much upon us half dressed and poorly organized they handled the problem admirably but not without losses once again for those less familiar with Dwarf Fortress combat can be very granular the logs go on for pages and pages with specific descriptions of every action taken by every combatant essentially this particular combat boils down to this the squad ran up on the Cyclops which was at the time getting friendly with zugla nishas a Woodcutter who apparently didn't get the cyclopean memo they piled on and started hacking away at it with their axes wounding it bit by bit whilst it chose a second target after finishing off poor zugla unibok a child if I'm not mistaken this was the child of one of the squad members who got brought along for the ride and was unintentionally used as a meat Shield so far as I can tell none of the actual combatants were injured at all well except for the Cyclops by the time it was finished mashing poor unib's limbs into unrecognizable masses the squad had it on the ground and were working away at detaching its head from its neck so okay that could have gone better but that's largely my fault but a single Cyclops is hardly a fortress-ending threat and neither are goblin thieves which came next it seems like unsticking that Caravan allowed the events to flow normally again because I had nothing for about four years until now anyway I had the squad chase them around getting a hit in here and there killing neither but effectively driving them away so while I would have preferred to watch them cut down the end result is the same so while the other zogla was being mashed to Pieces by her Cyclops zugla gisser castle made the Fortress an artifact to really be proud of in the form of estu novog eshon bab a garnierite ring worth around 19 000 Sons whatever that little value symbol represents so now it really feels like we're gaming combat has occurred The Fortress is beginning to look more like a fortress and it can be expanded more easily thanks to the Advent of stone blocks and I feel like I've at least gotten started on most of the industries that I tend to lag behind on what's next well it'd be good to build some temples to keep people happy especially with the population starting to Boom similarly I'll need to build even more bedrooms and I know I could much more easily make dorms for the dwarves but I just can't bring myself to make them share it's not in my nature what is in my nature is to force you to watch further at a later date this is long enough already and I want to try something new I'm going to keep this Fortress going over on my twitch for as long as makes sense naturally you'll find a link to that below and in case you missed it I finally launched a vods channel here on YouTube also linked below and on my channel page where the full vods for all of my streams will get uploaded since twitch doesn't actually keep them forever in fact for Affiliates like me they only keep them for a week [Music] though this isn't a universally loved idea but it works for me in a number of ways so I'm going with it whether you love that idea or just unsubscribed in a rage remember to stay indoors it's gotten bloody cold out lately and it's impossible to tell whether it's snowing or just raining radioactive Ash again as always thanks for watching and until next time goodbye [Music]

Channel: Hazzor

Views: 517,097

Keywords: Dwarf fortress, dwarf fortress steam, dwarf fortress above ground fort, dwarf fortress stories, dwarf fortress gameplay, dwarf fortress tutorial, dwarf fortress playthrough, dwarf fortress kitfox, dwarf fortress 2022, dwarf fortress lets play, dwarf fortress tavern, dwarf fortress guide, dwarf fortress ep 1, lets play dwarf fortress, dwarf fortress review, learn dwarf fortress, beginner dwarf fortress, steam dwarf fortress update, dwarf fortress

Id: HG3eQOMtXXk

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 21 2022