Dwarf Fortress' Simpler, Prettier Cousin: Let's Play Gnomoria!

Dodging generates a combat log, though, and the trap would still be triggered - these traps seem to have been bypassed entirely, and remained not-triggered. I am confuse!

I'm not sure if the raps work in the corners or not, but I decide not to risk placing them there for now; so I just order sas many as I can make to be placed in the straight areas.



That's Skoob juggling traps around. I mostly ordered a bunch of blade traps.

Hey, remember that one missing mant?


He found a monitor lizard and killed it, but finally got spotted as a consequence. The Keepers march out:



The Keepers march back in again.

We now have a fair volume of purloined iron armor and weapons. Here's the new look military:



...and the Lurked Damages...



We have three iron one-hand weapons total - one of each. Thasero's the one with the axe above; you can see he also has one iron boot. I find all this mismatching of amor hilarious for some reason.



Due to a bug of some kind, malphigian is hanging out in the Great Hall doing nothing, and won't take on a task no matter what I do to him. He seems to be healthy and happy... just not taking on tasks. Hopefully it will pass, or maybe he'll reset when he needs to go eat or sleep, or maybe he'll have to be fixed in a patch. I'll keep an eye on him.

Meanwhile, goblins:



Copper? Really?

I check the combat logs to see how my traps did. An ogre triggered nearly all of them, getting various bleeding wounds but nothing major... but at the end this goblin apparently overtook the ogre, and right at the last trap:



Arm removal! You can actually see the arm in the screenshot. Bizarrely, though, losing an arm didn't cause the goblin to drop the weapon in his right hand (the sword he's holding there). Still, whatever, he's copper.



A second coppergob comes out and receives similarly dismissive treatment.



Next, pre-softened ogres! Let's see what all this stolen iron can really do.

Do traps autoreset, or does a brave gnome need to go and reset them all after they trigger?

It's a duty you can assign gnomes, who will reset them after they've been sprung.

This is so much like my real life it's uncanny.

New Model Army.

The ogres show up. And...

Man.

Wow.

I honestly thought you guys couldn't sicken me any more.

Seriously, wow.

The army go about their usual ogre mutilations, which I'm inured to by now. But then....

So, uh... Thasero has a legendary hand axe now, and, well:



...yeah.

He cut off the ogre's arm and leg, but it's still alive...

It hops, or scuttles, or crawls, off into the bedroom area, where Bram is the one to end it:


The results:



From left to right; ogre leg, ogre arm, rest of ogre.

Thasero and Bram are not done yet. The second ogre...



That's both arms.

Behold: the saddest ogre.



(How great is it that there's actually graphics for when you lop the arms off an ogre?)

You're still not done, and the trend toward ultraviolence is spreading:



Iron: it means your limbs.

Sheepherder puts a final end to the madness:



And thus ends the sickest piece of videogame brutality I have possibly ever been at least somewhat responsible for.

I had no clue Gnomoria could go so... Soldier of Fortune.

Ok question about the legendary weapons. Does giving the weapon a name increase its damage or anything? ie: Legendary Bronze Hand Axe does more damage than a normal Iron Hand Axe. If it doesn't affect damage, then does it at least increase the worth of the named item? Because sooner or later you might have to retire those legendary weapons to keep your military up to snuff. If so, I suggest figuring out how to display them in the great hall/throne room.

I'm going to guess yes, because nobody else's weapons are lopping off limbs repeatedly. I want to say that it was in a patch note somewhere sometime that weapon quality would play a bigger role in its usefulness in combat, but I'm uncertain. Let's just say the Clapping Hand Axe is the god damned Mjolnir of this Gnomoria LP.

As of the patch... two or three weeks ago? Legendary weapons do indeed do more damage than regular weapons of the same metal. I think it's like +80% to the effectiveness versus a "normal" weapon of the same metal.

Whether this means a legendary bronze weapon is directly better than a normal iron one, I'm not sure precisely... but for the moment I don't have enough iron weapons to be able to make the choice.

malphigian seems to have reset himself by falling asleep. Good thing, because the patch this week (probably the last patch of the year) didn't fix any idle-all-the-time bugs.

And speaking of bugs...



MANTPOCALYPSE

This turns out to be eleven mants, which marks the first time my military has had to fight even numbers. Since one mant is roughly a match for a bronze wielding-gnome, this is a worry. Also a worry is that half the military lives underground....

Battle is joined. Can we hold out against eleven mants without casualties?



Yes.

No-one even gets so much as a bloody nose.

Nevertheless I am troubled. The mant numbers have been increasing steadily. Mant numbers are based on Kingdom Worth, but you also get extra ones for having large stockpiles of food and drink. At this point I have about 4k of each and it just keeps rising. I don't need all that stockpiled... but I have no real way of getting rid of it until a merchant shows up, which won't happen until day 5 of fall. It's day 11 of summer right now (there's 12 days in summer, unlike every other season which has 10, for some reason). So I need to hold on for six more days and hope I don;t get a yet larger mant attack.



Meanwhile I've been steadily digging a stairway down to the lower depths. I decide to stop at level -59 for some exploratory mining. I'm here in search of iron, but I'll take gold. kerzain and JRave are first to hit the gold seam...



...but quickly all my miners get involved. You can see that I'm being a little paranoid with torches here. I'm definitely concerned and what kind of beasts might spawn at this level.



Yes, like iron-wielding skeletons with zombie backup, exactly.



The military are quickly on their way, but it is a long way down to -59 from their training camp at -19...



..and meanwhile half the miners scarper while others get wedged into corners. That's kerzain and AaronSofaer at the top, stuck with the iron skeleton and one zombie (not visible, he's stacked with the skeleton); and then Schadenfreude is battling the other zombie in the other corner.



Oh damnit.

I may be winnign battles of iron versus bronze, but iron versus leather is another matter, to kerzain 's regret. He gets knocked to the ground, and then:



Ow. Ow. A crippled lung is very bad news - that means that his curiass is destroyed, and another lung blow like that means instant suffocation death. Kerzain needs to get out of here, fast.



He manages to cripple the skeleton, which'll aid his escape. Then:



Aiieee. Thanks to the distraction AaronSofaer provides, the blinded, lung-collapsed kerzain manages to stumble to the stairs, presumably by memory.



Fortunately he's only bleeding from the lung wound, because it's a long way up to the bandages.



He makes it!



The blindness will need medical attention, though, and there ain't no cure for the zombie virus.



...

Meanwhile in the other fight, Schadenfreude is just about holding his own.



But we still urgently need some professionals up in here. Gryff ?

]

Thanks.

The military have arrived. In fact, because I panicked a bit and hit the Attack button, the militia's here as well, although they're super confused, being under orders both to attack and avoid the enemies. This leads to a large number of them just oscillating by the stairs. It's moral support I guess.

One or two do get involved, with mixed results:



Fishbreath remains the king of improvised combat, while Fargull is added to the troubling, lengthy list of those who will be a security risk in the event of their death.

Zombies aren't as toughly armored as ogres, but they are even more able to absorb punishment, as nothing short of a head-mangling wound stops them. This makes them quite fun to fight, in the manner of smashing up an over-ripe pumpkin.





The skeleton, on the other hand, is heavily armored and just scary. Fortunately, that one foot wound kerzain managed is keeping it out of the battle thus far; it's spent the whole fight with the zombies limping slowly towards the action.



By the time it makes it, the Lurked Damages are here in force.


One zombie down. Then Darkluna deals with the real threat:



A big beefy sharp iron weapon, it nearly did for kerzain. But now its safely on the floor.

The other zombie?


Looks like Schadenfreude had it covered.



Everyone surrounds the skellie.

Clearly, *clearly* at this point I've earned real armor, right? <.<

Darkluna has him covered, though. Nobody's stealing this kill.

I mean, re-kill. Dis-undeadening?



Whatever. The bits have stopped moving, that's a win.

I keep mining out this level. The terrain this deep undergound is deeply crevassed and fissured, though. It's possible to floor over the cracks to prevent things coming up, but an equal problem is stuff coming down from unlit squares further up.



Like that.

Remember what I said a while back about dirt golems being trivial but stone golems being rather tougher? Yeah, that.



Fortunately the difficult terrain seems to have them confused, and they don;t easily fall on the various miners and builders scuttling around. Everyone manages to keep their distance as the golems stumble toward the stairs, hopefully there to be intercepted by the descending Lurked Damages.



DAMMNIT Amaranthine !

Fortunately, having stumbled into trouble, Amaranthine proves resourceful:



And that gives enoguh of a breathing space for Gryff and the other Damages to make it down the stairs:



Stone golems prove easier fodder than I recalled:


Nevertheless, it's clear the security situation down there is going to need constant attention until I can get the whole area better lit and sealed. So, I designate a guard area and assign the Lurked Damages to it. It's time for them to lurk much deeper.

In fact, I'm going to establish an entire secondary base at this level. The stairs are where those dead blue-coloured golems are; the crack at the top of the screen is where most of the foes are stemming from at present. I'm thinking of it as the Hellmouth.



I establish a dining room with spare tables and chairs I had kicking around, and a small food and drinks stockpile. Gnomes will use the closest dining room, so this'll hopefully keep my soldiers on guard for longer. I'm establishing a new training ground down here as well to keep their skills sharp. I also order a stonecutter built down here, so I can embark on more ambitious construction with the rocks at the local depth.

Fall has fallen upon us, and with a new season, new gnomads!



And here they aren't!



Wasn't that fascinating?

Looks like my current population of 40 gnome is as many as I can expect at the current level of Kingdom Worth.



And given that I feel like I'm only just keeping my nose in front of the enemies at present, I'm in no hurry to work on deliberately boosting that number. Having 41 gnomes is no good if the price is enemies equipped in steel or something.



With the stonecutter up and running, I decide to make use of a nearby stratum of lapis lazuli, which is just that one notch ritzier than other rocks. I'm going to construct incredibly fancy bedrooms down here for the Lurked Damages and the miners. Once this is all done, they shouldn't need to head to the surface for anything, which means well guarded miners and much more efficient mining.

The training ground completes, and I let the Lurked Damages return to their usual training regimen in what is to be their new home.



Here comes a housewarming party! The Damages march into the Hellmouth to stop the problem at its source.



Precipitous! I'll have to watch for that, actually; you can get knocked off ledges (or dodge oneself off them) during combat, and I'd hate for a gnome to end up stranded.

Now the Damages are close enough to be first responders, these golems worry me a lot less.



Blunt weapons seem to work best, hence Darkluna's success.

The death of a monitor lizard alerts me that they're having three-ways out there again.


They actually stumble right up to my door, fighting each other.



One less for me to kill.



Even with a goblin clad in full iron, this battle isn't much of a struggle.


The frequency and mass of attacks is starting to get me down, though.



Hmm, that's more zombies than I've seen at once before.



Errr... a lot more.



One way or another, this should be fun...

IT is, indeed, entertaining. Thasero and the Clapping Hand Axe is basically a lawnmower for limbs.



Nerys is in on the act too:



The fight is squelchy, bloody and all one way.



The limbs start to pile up.




Four down, three to go. And then:



Adds!

We got them all. The sheer mass of foes being killed on a daily basis means that providing every kill shot is becoming impractical, so they're not all there, but rest assured, they all got de-animated.



Quite the corpse pile!

Meanwhile on the surface:



I've got a much larger number of traps up and running now. Mostly they inflict bleeding wounds that aren't too crucial, but every so often one scores a bigger hit:



Legless!



HOP AT ME BRO

The traps + labyrinth do have an additional useful effect - they seems to slow down and break up the attacking forces, such that they end up stmbling in ina drizzle rather than a crushing wave. This is pretty helpful.



The legless goblin dies, as do all his friends. We reap a useful harvest of iron armor and weapons, plus some iron bars (fragments of breastplates) which I'm forging into steel, slowly. I will make a quick note of Titumperrywizzin, usually a mild-mannered farmer, killing an ogre somehow:



Ogreslaying quickly became a lot less of a badge of honour. Now it's scarcely even a Boy Scout Merit Badge.

FTFY.

More golems emerge from the Hellmouth. Spoiler: they don't win.



Golems are generlaly not proving anywhere near as much of a threat as I feared. Far more foreemost in my mind is the next mant attack.

I mentioned before about the extra mants from large stockpiles of food and drink. Since I last talked about it those piles have only gotten more towering.



Given that I got eleven mants on the last major attack when I had about 3000 less food than this, this is very definitely troubling.

Fortunately, our saviour has arrived.



Merchants are, as far as I know, the only way to destroy items in bulk. Usually I use this for getting rid of dirt and rocks; but this time I'm going to reduce those stockpiles.

I take literally everything of any use that the merchant has, but even then this trade ends up being well over the odds from my end. No matter.



I get rid of 3,400 emu eggs, 4,000 units of yak milk, and 1,000 strawberries. Plus a load of animal bones and skulls.

I suppose I ought to suspend my farms, but as the numbers above suggest, the large proportion of my excessive food stockpiles is simply due to the absurd numbers of animals I have kicking around. Seriously, several thousand emu eggs and yak milks. I'm pretty sure no-one is eating the eggs at all, given that sandwiches are more satisfying and available in quantity these days; and milk is mostly avoided in favour of strawberry wine - so there's no sink for these quantities, and the animals just squirt them out without needing anything as raw materials other than space and practically nothing in terms of labour. Hence: egg mountain, milk lake.

Perhaps I should butcher them all as a security risk, or at least seriously reduce their max populations. But somehow I can't bear to, and I do like that the high birthrate means that I can manufacture a lot of sausages (and thereby sandwiches). So there we are. Hopefully offloading the excess onto merchants will keep the mantpocalypse at bay for now, until I can rank up my defensive tech yet more.



Speaking of defensive tech, I order the construction of some windmills (for powering mechanisms) and a new training camp (for gun practice!) on the ridge above the Keepers' bedrooms, beside the labyrinth. I'm not certain precisely what mechanisms I'm going to build, but whatever they are they'll need power. I'm thinking about an automated door (using mechanical walls), some sort of crushing trap (mechanical walls again), or perhaps trying to create some sort of pitfall (using a hatch and pressure plates). Whatever I decide, it'll be fun!



Looks like I sold that food at just the right time. This mant detachment is only about eight or so; entirely manageable.



These traps do piercing and slicing damage, which isn't much use against mants, who are most vulnerable to crushing damage. Still useful for breaking htem up, though.



The Keepers engage as they emerge.

The mants are massacred. I'll let you imagine the details.



That night, a strange omen:



A perverse mass movement of emus. Are they migrating south for winter? Are they mad at me for selling all their eggs? I check but I haven't changed anything, and they seem to all be drawn back to the pasture after a few minutes. I dismiss it as one of those quirks of a game still in alpha.

But perhaps it was a sign.

That night, a bear dies, interdicted by some goblins. While my attention is elsewhere, Tyjenks , under standing orders to butcher all corpses as the Puke's sole butcher-gnome, heads out to retrieve the bear corpse. She has it almost all the way back to the front door when the perpetrators fall on him.



Troops emerge in her defence, but by mischance they end up fighting the iron-clad goblins on the left of the above shot, while Tyjenks ends up fending off an ogre and a bronze-clad goblin, on her own.



Not so bad. I've had lesser gnomes survive worse than that before.



Okay, problem - that's her chest armour crushed. Hopefully she'll be able to retreat, or someone will intercept, or she can dodge...



Okay, bad, very bad. But kerzain lived against a skeleton with iron weapons and a similar injury. She just needs someone, anyone, to provide a distraction so she can get away.



Anyone?



....



...

..

.

So when does the gnome zombie apocalypse happen? I'm looking forward to it.

Poor Ty! That last screenshot is almost poetic.

... I still liked the post <<.

It's all my fault.

I was arrogant. I figured the goblins could no longer touch us. I had stopped fearing the world outside the walls.

I was thoughtless. I've had spare bronze armour (and spare bronze) piling up; why hadn't I given the vulnerable noncombatants some metal armor too?

I was lazy. I was eager to exploit new automation features, happy to let sweet, innocent Tyjenks sweep up corpses on autopilot, with no consideration to her safety.

I can fix the last one, at least:



It's the ultimate in empty gestures: with Tyjenks dead, I no longer even have a a gnome assigned to butchery, but when I do assign one, I damn well won't be sending them out to scoop bodies blindly.

Meanwhile, there's still a battle to fight, and a debt to be paid.



What!?

No. No. Bram 's breastplate? That was no yak leather vest, that was true metal armor, Puke-forged bronze. It's never failed me yet.

Bram is wounded, but like kerzain before her, she can get patched up, and unlike Tyjenks she's not isolated; she's among a squad of well trained soldiers.



SuperJay and Sheepherder dispatch the iron bearing goblins. Like Bram, I catch my breath. The danger's blunted now - Bram can sneak off for some medical attention.



...

I..

No.

No.

The Keepers and the Damages together are stunned to see one of their number fall, to see their armour fail them. These same ogres that have been little more than toys to them - how, how could they cause the fall of one of their own? Tyjenks, perhaps, was merely unlucky and out of place, but Bram was a soldier, veteran of battles, trained and grizzled.

Hard questions will need to be asked; there will need to be a time for reflection, for sober reassessment of strategy. That time will be later. Now?

Now there is only revenge.



The slayer of two gnomes falls to @Blackadar's sword, but all the Puke is behind the blade, and all the Slitted Shadow's snot-skinned servitors must suffer. One goblin and one ogre remain.



NO! I WILL NOT LOSE ANOTHER SOLDIER!

Nerys actually does retreat, leaking vital fluids, all the way back to the bandage pile; such is her fury, though, that she returns to the fray, the shreds of her breastplate torn off and forgotten.



That thick red trail? All Nerys' blood.

Bandaged up or not, I'm not keen for this fight to continue with Nerys in it; with no breastplate, she's a target. Fortunately Sheepherder and Gryff are equally keen to see an end.


With that, the worst battle the Puke has yet seen comes to a close.

Bram, Tyjenks: you shall not be forgotten.

It's not too late to join the miserable pile of emu droppings, is it?

I'd suggest honouring our fallen by committing unspeakable atrocities against goblinkind; but we're already savagely hacking them apart and making them into sausage.

...and in a dark corner whispers... BRAINS...

Quite how bandages repair crippled lungs I've no idea, but I'm grateful for whatever absurdities of gnome medicine mean that I don't have to see three gnomes dead today.

The battlefield is stripped of useful goods; the armor that failed Bram at the last removed and returned to the general stockpile.



SuperJay becomes the first gnome in the Puke to obtain a full set of iron armor. (No, I have no idea what if anything can go in the "back" slot.)



The bedrooms on floor -59 are nearing completion. The Lurked Damages, returning to that floor after the surface battle, interdict a squad of undead that have emerged from a darkened corner. One skeleton does bear iron, but this is still a relatively easy battle, and the Damages relish the opportunity for a little rage-induced vengeance.



Hand axes: bad good for limbs.

At the end, Mirriam of the Keepers comes down to help out:



She is rewarded for her trouble:

Woo! Congrats Mirriam !

"Armored! Sharpened! And RARING TO GO!!"

Judging from Dwarf Fortress: six capes.

That's... an excellent name! Mirriam lucked out on the randomiser there.



It actually looks even more ominous abbreviated like that.

In any case, it is time for the reflection I mentioned earlier. Our enemies have become tougher, our circumstances more dangerous; what is needed is better armor for everyone, to hopefully give any future luckless Tyjenks a fighting chance of making it out alive.

I assess my stocks of metal armor. (Everyone already has leather.)



Well, I have enough to fully kit out 15 gnomes, but ten of those are spoken for by my existing military, and some of the rest are made of copper which is scarcely much better than the leather it's be replacing. I can certainly order everyone to wear whatever offcuts they can scrounge, but it's only a half-measure.

I am however sitting on a stockpile of nearly 300 bronze bars. So what's needed is industry on an epic scale.



Taking into account the iron armor I have already, that's enough suits of bronze to fully deck out 40 gnomes (although with the recent deaths, I only actually have thirty-eight gnomes still living). We'll run out of bronze before that all gets done, but I'll just reopen the mines on floors -9 to -19 and get some more tin located. ALL SHALL HAVE BRONZE!



I have an ulterior motive for ordering ridiculous amounts of bronze armor to be made. Thus far the relatively modest amounts made, plus the relatively modest starting skills of my existing armorcrafters, have meant that no-one's really all that good at making armor. In fact. Poe remains the best armorer-gnome in the Puke, despite having been here less time than ostensible main-smith clethra, and despite him being responsible for only a fraction of the armor thus far.

Since skill in armorcrafting thereby seems tough to build up, I decide to take the step of making Poe our dedicated armor crafter. He'll hopefully learn something while cranking out all those bronze pauldrons, which means that when the time comes to make steel he'll be better skilled and won't waste time and steel on making crappier stuff.



I decide to do something similar with weapon crafting. Although I'm swimming in bronze weapons for the moment, so I won't actually get Alice anything much to practice on until I have a surplus of bronze to use for the purpose.

Now, the problem of replacing the fallen Tyjenks. No-one has anywhere near to equal his skill at animal handling, leatherworking and butchery. He will be sorely missed, but we'll have to make do as best we can. That proves to be:



Skoob as the new butcher..



Dan Lawrence as leatherworker (although I doubt there'll be much leatherworking to do any more, if everyone's going to be wearing metal armor)...



...and Fishbreath as animal handler guy, although Poe still helps with that part-time (i.e. whenever he isn't bent over an anvil).

I switch things around in the Uniform military menu and thereby give the order for everyone to wear the best armor they can find. This leads to much mass shedding of leather, and then the strange sight of people farming in full plate:



The Terrible Puke: now 100% more metal.

Why is anyone farming? You have a bajillion food.

Let the bestiality jokes commence!

From the screenshots and discussion this really does look like a carbon copy of Dwarf Fortress, except with graphics. Wow.

Well, it's a couple of things. Laziness is a factor, I've just never bothered cancelling them. Secondly, much of my food surplus is actually eggs and milk - I do still want strawberries for wine and wheat for bread, which are more satisfying forms of food. Thirdly, winter's coming up and they'll shut down then anyway. But yeah, I should probably shut them down next year, at least for a while.