Fun Fact: If the caverns are closer to your base than the surface traders will leave through them. If they get killed for making such a bad call their civilization will hold you responsible.
This is a useful fact to leverage if your surface is more dangerous than cavern layer 1. If you wall off map edges they used to be forced to enter here too, not tested recently
A tip for web slingers is that they only shoot up/down/left/right, not diagonally. So you can fight them much more easily in a room with a chessboard pattern of walls/spaces.
Yup, I mentioned this in one of my other videos! Although right after that video I fought a forgotten beast who had a cone based web attack that was able to go diagonal. D:
one thing that helped me a lot was making seal-able tunnels to each cavern layer, with a bridge to lock them out at will. at the top where all the paths to the cavern connect I just have a bunch of cage traps. only thing that can get past it is forgotten beasts so far, though that too could be mitigated with webbed traps.
Great stuff! I'm up to 150 hours on this game and just learned we can assign labor from the character sheet. Now I can put all those free loaders to work!
I like having my cats roam the caverns before I have dedicated monster hunters because they act as an early surveillance system to scout out and spot cavern dwellers
I started playing recently I just opened my first cavern; got the notice, paused the game to read the notice and to see where the cavern actually was, the instant moss on the ground all over the fortress didn't surprise me, but there were a lot of troglodytes not only in the cavern but already all over the fortress. Next time I'm going to be way more cautious I guess.
In my current fort I started Around Z lvl 0, found 2 cavern layers initially but didn't breach them. I kept working my way down to Z lvl -105 where I found a volcano and a 3rd cavern layer. We had 3 forgotten beast breaches while setting up. Pretty much 75% done of moving the whole base setup down to the new mega forge, (every ore has its own smelter feeding 6 legendary Smiths.) sitting around 250 pop now with 6 full steel Legendary military squads that have now been conquering the local settlements after filling up the library of stolen artefacts in seasons past... I just now finished off using around 750 granite blocks to secure our own large cavern area for farming/pasture and better entry. I'm a new player and its only my 2nd real fort, this game's awesome ha!
Im am in a fortress where I get bat men invasions. The biggest danger they pose is when my warriors kill them when they are midair and their weapons and corpses fall on my dwarves. I have legendary warriors that can easily defeat a dozen bat men without a scratch, but they are no match for the destructive power of a falling corpse.
I did not test it but I have an idea about shooting forgotten beast which is using webs. Webs are shot on the same level and marksdwarfs can shoot enemies up to 3 z-levels up or down. So instead of building fortification on the same level we keep an enemy, we should build a wall there and fortification one level above so marksdwarfs can walk on this wall and shoot from above. Does it make sense? What do you think about this idea?
Yeah this would work, one issue though is that Dwarves are less accurate when shooting at different z-levels, even though logically it should be the better to shoot from the highground.
Personally, I prefer to use cave-ins to cut off caverns from rest of the world. It requires some calculation to fit into form of cavern but it requires only one door and a miner to complete the task. z=0 of cave-in - is a floor. z+1 is a wall in form of cave floor. z+n is a wall in a height of the cave. z+n+1 is a flat floor. Once it digged - place door, and the ONLY tile that keeps this thing in the air should be a single tile before door. Step-by-step (pressing [.] key) you let dwarf to brake the seal and shut the door before dust took 'em to the flight. If all jobs done correctly, you'll see flat floor in a "bubble", and a cavern, protected with a stone wall. Completely safe and ok to live without walls and roofs like in a fantasy!
I had freaking amphibious worms, constantly attacking my fort. Top that off they had Sheila's and spears they turned a legendary monster hunter into a shish kebab. And the other monster hunter, well let's say he could breath easy.
What to do when your caverns are literally overrun with molemarians... 300+ and they keep spawning seemingly, whenever I unlock the entrances to the cavern my fps drops to 5-10...
Pump magma from the depths to flood the area from a hole you'll make above the main mass of Molemarians. Or capture a bronze colossus or similar and release it into the caverns (not sure if they would fight or not, but there's a good chance). Lastly, arm 50 dwarves with shields, iron armor, and steel weapons and send in the army. If they have decent training you should win. Kill everything, atom smash the bodies and either do regular purges or completely seal the outer edges of the caverns using walls. It'll be rough and time consuming. Probably best to either keep it sealed or start a new fort with a plan in case a similar problem arises.
1 masterwork ballista + 1 Siege Operator who is at least Skilled level + a few dozen copper ballista bolts(3 metal bars per bolt) = infinite dead squishies
We are talking about a world War Z environment down there, a few FB strolled on in only to get absolutely ganked by an invisible horde in seconds, I'm slowly building a sustainable gauntlet to wittle them down but the 5-10 fps (which I'm assuming is the game trying to path 300+ entities) is a buzz killer to say the least... magma sea as last resort wish me luck
@Supa creator would sealing the entire caverns edges work? At the moment they're just burrowing through the rock layer here and there, even coming out from under the cavern into my fortress (the parts that I let them have)
Caverns are broken. I get constant onslaught of cavern dwellers. At one time when I closed access to third level for a month it became hilarious. There was at least 200 of various things that spawned. I killed them all closed again and same broken ass thing happened again. And again. And then again. Now I am fed up with it and just don't play that fort anymore.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Fun Fact: If the caverns are closer to your base than the surface traders will leave through them. If they get killed for making such a bad call their civilization will hold you responsible.
Makes sense
This is a useful fact to leverage if your surface is more dangerous than cavern layer 1. If you wall off map edges they used to be forced to enter here too, not tested recently
2:51 "I am the perfect monster hunter for your fortress, here is my petition!". "Approved. Here is your mop and bucket, good work!"
About time those monster hunters do something useful. Normally they just hang out in my tavern, drinking all my booze instead of hunting monsters.
That jobs lockout is gonna save hundreds of lives. You hero
A tip for web slingers is that they only shoot up/down/left/right, not diagonally. So you can fight them much more easily in a room with a chessboard pattern of walls/spaces.
Yup, I mentioned this in one of my other videos! Although right after that video I fought a forgotten beast who had a cone based web attack that was able to go diagonal. D:
one thing that helped me a lot was making seal-able tunnels to each cavern layer, with a bridge to lock them out at will. at the top where all the paths to the cavern connect I just have a bunch of cage traps. only thing that can get past it is forgotten beasts so far, though that too could be mitigated with webbed traps.
Great stuff! I'm up to 150 hours on this game and just learned we can assign labor from the character sheet. Now I can put all those free loaders to work!
"Your own dwarves are very very stupid". Yep, sounds about right! Thank you for teaching how to keep them alive for longer, great tutorial
Dwarf Fortress is a game about the player trying to outsmart your dwarves' stupidity.
I like having my cats roam the caverns before I have dedicated monster hunters because they act as an early surveillance system to scout out and spot cavern dwellers
Great guide-- didn't realize that magma casting the edge of an off-map lake would let you carve fortifications out to drain it!
tbh, not the best option.
I prefer to cave-in a wall, so I make safe surroundings and still have water refilling.
I started playing recently I just opened my first cavern; got the notice, paused the game to read the notice and to see where the cavern actually was, the instant moss on the ground all over the fortress didn't surprise me, but there were a lot of troglodytes not only in the cavern but already all over the fortress. Next time I'm going to be way more cautious I guess.
who i learned alot! am now ready to put on my headlight and explorse some caverns :)
That was very helpful. Thanks
In my current fort I started Around Z lvl 0, found 2 cavern layers initially but didn't breach them. I kept working my way down to Z lvl -105 where I found a volcano and a 3rd cavern layer. We had 3 forgotten beast breaches while setting up. Pretty much 75% done of moving the whole base setup down to the new mega forge, (every ore has its own smelter feeding 6 legendary Smiths.) sitting around 250 pop now with 6 full steel Legendary military squads that have now been conquering the local settlements after filling up the library of stolen artefacts in seasons past...
I just now finished off using around 750 granite blocks to secure our own large cavern area for farming/pasture and better entry.
I'm a new player and its only my 2nd real fort, this game's awesome ha!
Im am in a fortress where I get bat men invasions. The biggest danger they pose is when my warriors kill them when they are midair and their weapons and corpses fall on my dwarves. I have legendary warriors that can easily defeat a dozen bat men without a scratch, but they are no match for the destructive power of a falling corpse.
Very informative video - thanks!
Just curious, how long have you been playing DF?
I did not test it but I have an idea about shooting forgotten beast which is using webs. Webs are shot on the same level and marksdwarfs can shoot enemies up to 3 z-levels up or down. So instead of building fortification on the same level we keep an enemy, we should build a wall there and fortification one level above so marksdwarfs can walk on this wall and shoot from above. Does it make sense? What do you think about this idea?
Yeah this would work, one issue though is that Dwarves are less accurate when shooting at different z-levels, even though logically it should be the better to shoot from the highground.
Personally, I prefer to use cave-ins to cut off caverns from rest of the world. It requires some calculation to fit into form of cavern but it requires only one door and a miner to complete the task.
z=0 of cave-in - is a floor.
z+1 is a wall in form of cave floor.
z+n is a wall in a height of the cave.
z+n+1 is a flat floor.
Once it digged - place door, and the ONLY tile that keeps this thing in the air should be a single tile before door.
Step-by-step (pressing [.] key) you let dwarf to brake the seal and shut the door before dust took 'em to the flight.
If all jobs done correctly, you'll see flat floor in a "bubble", and a cavern, protected with a stone wall. Completely safe and ok to live without walls and roofs like in a fantasy!
You have a labor named "vacation" it has a green gem as it's symbol. How did you get that symbol? All I have are Roman numerals.
I'm using a mod that adds more symbols. It's called Work Detail Icons.
@@FurtherReadingTV What does vacation do? Assign them as craftdwarves to fulfill the "Craft Something" need?
Yup that is exactly it.
I love your vidoes
2:36 HOW did you assign that custom icon to your work detail omg mine just look like roman numerals
I'm using a mod that adds more symbols - It's called Work Detail Icons.
I had freaking amphibious worms, constantly attacking my fort. Top that off they had Sheila's and spears they turned a legendary monster hunter into a shish kebab. And the other monster hunter, well let's say he could breath easy.
What to do when your caverns are literally overrun with molemarians... 300+ and they keep spawning seemingly, whenever I unlock the entrances to the cavern my fps drops to 5-10...
Oof, at that point you probably need to use Dfhack to mass exterminate them!
Pump magma from the depths to flood the area from a hole you'll make above the main mass of Molemarians. Or capture a bronze colossus or similar and release it into the caverns (not sure if they would fight or not, but there's a good chance). Lastly, arm 50 dwarves with shields, iron armor, and steel weapons and send in the army. If they have decent training you should win. Kill everything, atom smash the bodies and either do regular purges or completely seal the outer edges of the caverns using walls.
It'll be rough and time consuming. Probably best to either keep it sealed or start a new fort with a plan in case a similar problem arises.
1 masterwork ballista + 1 Siege Operator who is at least Skilled level + a few dozen copper ballista bolts(3 metal bars per bolt) = infinite dead squishies
We are talking about a world War Z environment down there, a few FB strolled on in only to get absolutely ganked by an invisible horde in seconds, I'm slowly building a sustainable gauntlet to wittle them down but the 5-10 fps (which I'm assuming is the game trying to path 300+ entities) is a buzz killer to say the least... magma sea as last resort wish me luck
@Supa creator would sealing the entire caverns edges work? At the moment they're just burrowing through the rock layer here and there, even coming out from under the cavern into my fortress (the parts that I let them have)
genius with the monster hunter shit.....
!eek
Caverns are broken. I get constant onslaught of cavern dwellers. At one time when I closed access to third level for a month it became hilarious. There was at least 200 of various things that spawned. I killed them all closed again and same broken ass thing happened again. And again. And then again. Now I am fed up with it and just don't play that fort anymore.
Yeah I've noticed that aswell I had to turn them down in settings