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

Cosmological upheaval! The Great Gnomish Gods have decreed a... Patch... which has led to what historians shall call the Time of Downloads, culminating in the mystic Installer Maelstrom.

Once the dust settles, the world is... changed. Flaws have been healed. New knowledge has come into the world. Numbers have been incremented.



Like now I can do this. This should mean that the furnace now burn logs until there's 20 coal on hand, then stops, but will resume burning logs whenever there's less than 20 available.

I set up similar orders all over, making sure there's always 30 planks, 50 bandages, etcetera.

Another new feature:


Rather than having to give manual orders for tree planting and felling, the new "Grove" designation automates the process.



I don't need all that much to be made out of wood any more, but I am chewing through it as a fuel source like nobody's business, so this will help make that more efficient.

All across the land dawns a brand new morn
This comes to pass
When

I've been lucky with my last coupla yak genders; this is another female.



She's a frisky customer, in fact, and makes a break for the exit. (Newborn yaks are no respecters of the rectangle of designated pasture, until shown it by the firm ministering hands of a rancher)



Tyjenks soon gets her in hand, when I tell her to stop baking bread and do her proper job.

We've made bronze!


That's right, this Puke is finally leaping into the.. uh.... Minus Third Century?



Breastplates for all! For all in the Starry Keepers, that is.



Looks like this Grove business does work. At te edge of that shot you can see I've embarked on some earthworks - I'm extending the main room out a bit so I can have more forges, the better for getting metal made all the more quickly. Thinking of it, I should knock a hole in the wall so logs can be dragged into my hungry furnaces all the quicker.

On the subject of earthworks, I embark on another plan I've had for a while:


Taking out these earth ramps turns this hill into a cliff on the side beyond our walls. Then I can install ramp on the other side, and thus allow my gnomes to safely stand on the hill without being able to be attacked from outside. Slowly but surely, the Terrible Puke expands.

(Ewww.)

The designated mining is two thirds done on -19. I've exposed a large amount of tin and a smaller vein of coper, plus chunks of coal here and there. And rock in like, six different colours (lapis lazuli, marble, serpentine, granite, basalt and sandstone).

Exactly 16 spaces between torches in a grid formation lights up the entire area using the minimum number of torches. I think.



The Iron Kingdom's merchant departs. Before he went I did remember to give him like, 1000 piles of dirt as a leaving present. The Terrible Puke is now a good deal cleaner.



Bronze breastplates made! Don't we look spiffing, chaps?



That ghostly ramp will soon be an actual ramp, giving me free access to the hill. If we ever manage to invent ranged weaponry, this'll be a useful place to shoot from. Maybe I'll build an absurd watchtower on top of it. Actually, let's definitely do that.



I.... just thought this shot was pretty. It serves no narrative purpose. Oh! I guess it means we finished the mining down here. For now. Yeah, let's go with that.



Looks like at some point I had a helmet made. All the Starry Keepers ought to now be packing at least a helmet and a breastplate....



...and just in time!



These guys seem a tad more prepared than the last two jokers. This guy has a hammer, sword, helmet and breastplate, and his friend:



HIGHLANDER

The nice thing about the door is that if the foes are stuck behind it, the Keepers can burst out and get their first strikes in. Mirriam, Flixilber, Blackadar and Sheepherder do just that. (SuperJay's asleep, maybe?)

Mirriam go!



Good start!

Flixilber go!



Bleeding and crippled, nice.

Blackadar go! With uh, your shield for some reason:



CRUSHED BONE. And with a shield no less! This gobbo (pretty sure this one is Highlander) is now thoroughly legless. Time for something more fatal? Sheepherder go!



Right lung gone!

Mirriam gets to go with her shield now:



... how does that even work? Maybe with the edge? Anyway this is basically just brutality at this point.

Blackadar gets to use his actual weapon:


Even if we can't get another lung, he's prone and bleeding out from several wounds, so...



...or, yep, the other lung.

That guy was just an amuse bouche, though. Time for the dual weapon entrée!

Combat with rubbishy weapons but reasonable armor features a good deal of ineffective flailing and "smashing" (read: bouncing off) of one another's armor pieces, so I've tried to cut out just the highlights here.

Early on, Mirriam scores a nifty disarm:



This still leaves Dual Weapon with his sword in his right hand, however, to Sheepherder's regret:



Okay, bleeding is bad, but it's just a foot, and it didn';t open an artery and he's still able to walk to the bandage pile.



...scratch all of that.

Still, anything a goblin can do, Blackadar can do better:



Okay, but it's the right hand he's got the sword in, guys.



RIGHT HAND! Are you listening to me?



There we go.

Sheepherder stumbles to his feet and manages to stumble to the bandage pile.



Crisis over for Sheepherder. He even rejoins the fight, although in his haste he leaves his hammer behind. Never mind, Blackadar seems to have the now prone and disarmed goblin well in hand:


Yes indeed, looks like another win for...



... okay but he's still unarmed...



...god damnit, he JUST bandaged the other leg!

If anyone asks, just say you fell into the door.

This is one tenacious goblin.

Still, he's not getting away:



Maybe he can't walk but he could hop. See to that other leg!



Very good!

(Wait, why is Alice here? He must have been hauling in logs from outside and got caught in the battle.)

Mirriam's also go that sword hand covered:



By my count, that's arteries opened in a leg and an arm AND a mangled arm.



...and a bleeding right leg. This goblin's still not down, though.

Flixilber takes out the breastplate:



...and the goblin seizes a fragment of it and uses it as a weapon.

Meanwhile, Sheepherder 's left a trail of blood as he crawled back to the bandage pile, strapped himself up, and then waded BACK into the fight, although he left his weapon behind. Does this guy have a death wish or something?



The undying goblin still only has eyes for him:



..but a blow to the unprotected skull notwithstanding, it looks like Sheepherder's decided this is personal.



I guess he wanted to finish it with his bare hands.

AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING!

Sheepherder's legs must be entirely bandage and scar tissue by now, which reminds me to sort him out with some armor. A quick adjustment to the squad's formation:



No more two handed madness, alas, but at this point these soldiers are too grizzled and veteran to risk unarmored. And I nearly have enough bronze and scavenged pieces for helms and breastplates for the whole squad:



I've never had a whole military squad survive this far intact before. You guys are made of tough stuff!

(maybe a patch made combat easier mumble mumble)

Badassed!

You do realize the battles were shorter with just pine logs. Copper weapons.. sheesh. Nothing says loving like a good solid tree in the face.

Wow, did I just sit out that entire battle??

Ah well, glad to see you chaps are up to the rigors of combat in my absence. I can't carry this squad all the time, you know.

*ducks*

*throws log*

Mirriam throws a log at the SuperJay,
hitting the head, smashing the skin,
parting the hair, and smashing the bone.

SuperJay's head is bleeding, an artery
has been struck, and falls on the ground.

So the Starry Keepers seem to have holding the gate well in hand. Right now it looks like the most likely way for me to lose a gnome is when one goes outside the walls and gets caught by mischance:



Eeep.



Alice seems to panic and runs back and forth between two squares for the next ten minutes. The honey badger.... wanders off.

The breastplates and helms are all fetched and distributed. Presenting the new look Starry Keepers:

They pose as team, because shit has become yet realer.

Bronze manufacture is now going so well, in fact, that I have enough to manufacture armor pieces with strange names!



Where do pauldrons even go? I'm momentarily concerned I'm making the equivalent of... cups for my gnomes.

Shoulders. They go on the shoulders.

Bronze production has now hit a snag, though:



Basically, I need to be feeding logs into furnaces at a higher rate. I tackle this threefold. One:



Crank up the priority of the log stockpile. Everyone with nothing better to do, which is about half the population right this moment, gets to work shipping in the remaining cut logs from the east.

Two:



Shake there is sitting at my new second furnace. Earthworks have been steadily put in motion toexpand my workshop area out this far, and now I have two furnaces and four forges to crank out metal quick-sharp.

Three:



This doorway will speed up the transport of logs from the pine grove into the ever-hungry bowels of my new molten nightmare. I also give orders to have all those lovely newgrown pines felled.

One final bit of business:



... I have no idea what this does. I guess it's a motive force for mechanisms? If I was making any. At the moment all my metal is reserved for arms and armor.

I'm sure I'll be grateful for it in the end. And hey, Marcin got his credit this time.

Note that the game omits describing exactly how Marcin invented the hand crank.

Or what his hand was cranking.

(I'm so sorry)

Poor Dual Weapon was totally tsundere for Sheepherder. Or rather yandere.

It's almost like the goblins are intentionally sending their dumbest fighters to the Terrible Puke first, in some misguided attempt to bar open the gates with the corpses of their fallen, sending the better armed and trained warriors in after to barge through the unguarded portal and overwhelm the gnomish troops.

If they knew what we were doing with all the bodies they'd probably rethink that strategy.

Shield strikes depend on the construction of the shield and what you're trying to do. Edge strikes concentrate the force, hitting with the flat spreads the force. A good strike with the flat of a shield will ideally imbalance or topple the guy over, a good strike with the edge might rupture a kidney or shatter a rib. Edge strikes carry more risk of the shield sliding and unbalancing the wielder, it's easier for the target to counterbalance a more concentrated hit by shifting their stance and bending, and turning your shield for an edge strike leaves you wide open to an attack if your opponent has the same weapon hand as you do. A lot of shields have a large central boss, which creates a more concentrated blow when you strike with the flat of the shield and somewhat represents a best of both worlds approach.

Codpiece.

Bronze production, fuelled by a new influx of twice-burned logs, kicks into gear once again. I cue up armor for even less-significant bodyparts.

(You need ten of things like greaves and pauldrons for a squad of five because it is one for each arm/leg.)



The armor may not be of any quality, but it does exist, made of genuine Terrible-Puke-forged bronze. Accept no substitutes! (There aren't any.)
no more than 20% of copper and tin ore used in manufacture of Terrible Puke bronze is imported from the Iron Kingdom



Gauntlets only take two bronze bars each. At this rate, I'll have the Keepers clad top-to-toe!

Or not:


Yup, run out of copper ore. Time to extend the mining operations!



Still dodging caverns at this point. I live in fear of the moment when I burst into a deep natural cave and a hoard of beetles or undead burst out to greet me.



Yaks remain as fertile as ever. My general farm animal strategy is to keep two males and as many females as my pasture allows, and then butcher any spare males (or overpopulating females) for the meat and leather.

A quick look at the overall Kingdom screenL



That "Total Worth" number is key both to the number of gnomads that show up at the start of each new season and to how numerous and ferocious greenskin raiding parties are. It's for this reason that I have thus far been circumspect about plonking statues around, or indeed making anything valuable that I didn't immediately offload on a merchant. Nevertheless the number creeps up steadily just from standard gnomish activity (the Starry Keepers are probably now wandering around in a fair amount of value by themselves), and I am pretty sure that 10k worth represents some kind of trigger point for something. I await the new season with trepidation.

For indeed this long summer is reaching its end. Here's a zoomed out look at the Puke at evening on the 11th and penultimate day of summer:



SO MANY STRAWBERRIES. My 800+ food stockpile is like 95% strawberries. This concerns me, because much like when you go picnicking, large piles of food items attract ants. Except that in this game the ants are mants, and they come in force with weaponry to ruin your shit. This is part of why I was so willing to load the merchant down with strawberries.

You can also see above where I have been pushing the walls out to extend the main room. This is mostly just my obsession with symmetry.

The view to the east:



Now picked clean of lumber, although gnomes are still venturing out dangerously to grab those tree cuttings that are scattered about to help plant the pine grove.

But all told, the Terrible Puke is running altogether swimmingly. We're pretty much ready to accept an increase in manpower, in particular a bunch of miners would be nice to speed up extraction operations. Our doors are open!



Shit. Better shut them again.

I JUST HAD THAT DOOR FIXED YOU BASTARDS

Fine, whatever. One guy with an axe, versus four of the Starry Keepers, newly armored in mostly bronze.. We can take him.


( Sheepherder 's sleeping this one out.)

Oh wait, two goblins:


Fine, I'm still not stressed. They have two handed weapons but they're not even armored. We'll be fine.



Three. Three goblins. This one has dual weapons and a copper breastplate.

...

My finger hovers over the button that would summon the (unarmored) militia, The Bolted Dancers of Brunch.

But no.

I think we've still got it.

LET BATTLE BE JOINED.

Again, I'm presenting highlights here. There's much chaotic clattering of copper on bronze. And then the first actual wounds:


And then a patented Starry Keepers lung one-two:



...wait, flatsinki ? You're not a soldier, why are you even here?

I determine he was here to pick up a previous broken marble door and install it somewhere. On his way he's come across the fight and... decided to merrily throw in a lung crushing kick. As you do.



Suffocation remains as fatal as ever. These unarmored goblins are now going down pretty easy.

We'll be singing
When we're winning
We'll be singing



I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never gonna keep me down







Shields in eyes seem to be popular. And those greaves prove their worth.

So one gobbo (unarmored with a huge hammer) down. Next up, a naked one with a huge battleaxe.



flatsinki with the disarm.



Flixilber and Mirriam set about some legs.



Poking the skull? You would think a poked skull would be fatal. Apparently not.

Kicks are ineffective on bronze breastplates. Mirriam takes out the other leg, but the goblin still manages to re-arm:



I check, but that "cutting" doesn't seem to have destroyed the breastplate. A powerful blow, though, so I am glad Blackadar was wearing one.

Blackadar's return shot?


"Piercing" seems to be rather more, uh, intrusive than mere "poking". One lung down.



flatsinki disarms again! Proving handy in a fight that gnome. Bereft of weapons, the gobbo can only somehow manage to kung fu kick both of SuperJay 's armored shoulders.



Damnit, Blackadar, poke somewhere more fatal. It's getting tedious watching you guys eventually get around to crippling both lungs so our enemies asphixiate. We need a more dramatic finishing move.



....holy shit

I'm just gonna reiterate that on its own.



flatsinki punched through a goblin's ribs and punctured and crushed his heart. With her BARE HANDS. While unarmored.

In passing, on her way to fix a door.

Punched through the heart,
He's not ok,
He gave goblin fighters a bad name.

That leaves only Breastplate. But the patented Starry Keepers lung crush is difficult to execute through copper, so my troops are forced to improvise.

Blackadar knocks him to the floor:



SuperJay scores the disarm:



The Keepers gather around the prone and unarmed goblin. What follows is basically a snuff film.



Seriously, decent people should avert their eyes. Apparently frustrated that he's placed his vital organs inside a copper canister, the Keepers just go to TOWN on the extremities.



That's arteries opened in every limb, I think, and one mangled eye.

But they're only getting warmed up.

Ever hear the one about the goblin with one eye, one arm and one leg? flatsinki is still here with her bone crushing unarmed combat. She's one hardcore gnome.



The Keepers actualy confiscate the goblin's weapons, abandoning all pretence that they aren't now just drawing this out for the fun of it.



I didn't even think it was possible to mangle the mouth. You're one sick puppy, SuperJay.



That's both eyes, both legs, one arm and his mouth all now beyond use. Flatsinki continues to rack up her "significant organs mangled with my own bare limbs" count, here utilising the lesser known "eye mangling roundhouse" technique. It's all in how you point the toes.



Both arms. The goblin is now quadriplegic. I don't think he can even bite back at this point.



SuperJay FINALLY makes the breakthrough, crushing the breastplate. From there, the goriest kill in Terrible Puke history is now a formality:



...he lost his eyes, his arms, his legs and his mouth, but it is asphyxiation that finally kills him.

Man.

You are all terrible people.

I couldn't be more proud.

I'm glad this game just has descriptions and no "lifelike graphics"... I'm not sure I could stomach that amount of gory detail!

I think Flatsinki needs to become a honorary member of the Keepers, she certainly fights like one of them :D

I'll take a moment here for a few messages.

• Thank you all for your reading, commentary and likes!
• How are people feeling about the combat logs? My thought is they're starting to get a bit repetitive. I'm already editing them down to just the attacks that actually cause consequential purple text, but even that is starting to feel long winded. Then again people seem to enjoy reading about the soldier's exploits. Would you be okay with me doing a few less shots of the logs? There's no chance I'll ever stop reporting badass heart-crushing killing blows, but some of the more routine artery openings, non-critical manglings and disarming blows might fall by the wayside. (It's no particular effort to screenshot them, my only concern is whether it's interesting to read or not.)
• It's almost time for a new wave of immigrants! I don't know how many there will be yet, but from previous comments I have the following list of prospective new gnomes:
  1. @Thasero
  2. @McKnight
  3. @Skoob
  4. @Jaquelle
  5. @malphigian
  6. @JRave
  7. @Darkluna
  8. @Poe
  9. @AaronSofaer
  10. @Nerys
  11. @Linoleum
  12. @Gryff
  13. @Minardii
  14. @xanomon
  15. @BuckTheStar
  16. @Bram

I know there's some other serial readers/likers out there. (confidential to Darkluna, AaronSofaer, Minardii, malphigian, Jacquelle, Poe, Nerys, Nate and any others that I missed - thanks, and wanna be a gnome?)

I don't wanna use your names without permission. Anyone else who wants to be gnomified in the next wave, please either like this post or comment below.

Also if you'd like to know more about what your gnomesake is up to these days, lemme know and I'll be happy to follow them around for a bit and update you. (Non-soldiers tend to get a lot less spotlight time, I know.)

I may not be a soldier, but I'm doing my damned best to find a cavern over-flowing with beetles.

I like reading the combat logs, they are very funny. But they do seem to take over a large portion of the Let's Play, so I can understand if you want to focus more on the crafting and building as well.

It is very strange to be tagged on a thread you stopped reading after the first page. Not because it's bad or anything! I just forgot to watch the thread and missed the updates.

I'm fine with being a gnome, though I don't have time to catch up on this thread at the moment so I may not comment on the adventures of gnome!me.

Hee, no worries Jaquelle. I can not tag you if you like; I know the notifications can be annoying. That goes for everyone, in fact, let me know if I am tagging you in a way you find annoying and I'll cut it out.

Oh, no, it's perfectly fine; just odd. I don't mind. I'll make catching up on this thread a priority so I can find out what gnome!me is up to.

I guess I'm fine with you robbing the Starry Keepers of further glory by letting our heroic exploits go unheralded. If nothing else, gnomish bards will preserve the history of our legendary prowess in song and tale for generations.

Meserach; everything reads fine to me, but if you want to parse down the combat that works. I like getting an overview of the Puke though and the why and wherefor of design.

Although the logs are humorous, yes they can get repetitive. I still enjoy seeing certain ones or the sake of knowing what sort of injuries players are sustaining, but they aren't the best part of the combat dialogs/blow-by-blows you've been delivering. The best part about the combat at the moment is seeing your own insights and observations, and snarky comments, about what is transpiring. It's one thing to include a screenshot showing somebody picking up a log and braining goblins to death, and it's another to see the humorous narration of yours that such an act inspires.

So, even if the game's combat dialogue can get a bit repetitive in and of itself, it can still serve a degree of purpose when used as a sort of inspiration for your insights and observations about what has been going on in game; such as one particular gnome constantly relying on wooden logs (or doors or something) as weapons, or the least combat oriented gnome of the bunch being the one to kick all kinds of ass etc.

I'm sure that by this point they could use some pruning (after having seen so many combat cycles take place, and knowing there will be many more), but I don't think they're all complete spam just yet.

I've started to gloss over some of the combat screens and just read your response to it. I suspect you'll need to start doing quick summaries of the fights once you get more than 3 enemies at a time anyway. Might be a good time to work out how you will handle things now when it is easier to manage. Otherwise things have been fine, although I think a quick overview of things would be nice now and again.

I'm up for being a gnome as well.

You go <little-cross-gendered-gnome-me>!

In my mind I picture her plodding along in a blinding rage induced from having to go deal with the door and upon finding gobbo's lets it all out on them.

I'm really enjoying this LP Meserach. It inspired me to finally try the game myself... though my gnomes have not done near so well :)

I enjoy reading the combat logs but I would tend to agree that it should get limited to just the highlights of interesting bits so they don't overwhelm all the other shenanigans.

If possible, I'd like to see what my gnomesakes stats are these days... I'm curious where the sudden burst of Kano-fu came from.

I'm totally happy to be a Gnome.

Ditto on the overall consensus to trim down the battle logs. So far your judgment on which bits are "interesting" has been stellar, so I have no concerns that the awesome parts (serial mangling, heart crushing from random passers-by) will get omitted. :D

Is there a point where you run out of tinkering? GnomeMe can't keep cranking this hand crank forever, you know.

You'll eventually run out the tech tree, but there's a ways to go yet, and more stuff might well be added in patches. But right now I am mostly waiting for you guys to invent something directly lethal.

Wahaha, I've been found! Sure, i'd like to be a gnome~.

Yeah, I love the snarky comments and "What?" commentary.. I too agree with trimming down the battle logs, in favor of following more gnomes and seeing what they're up to. Watching them wander off and wonder why in the gnomishgod's name they're doing something is part of the fun!

This little shopping list represents the conclusion of my efforts to completely embronze the Starry Keepers. I'll need about another fifty bars of bronze to get that done.



The last day of summer sees a rash of animal lust. Well, we've all been there.



This yak had the grim misfortune to be born male, however. two males is sufficient for my cattle insemination needs, another is surplus to our beef-sex requirements.



I actually don't know which of the male yaks this is, since you can't name them or differentiate them in any way. Which is probably for the best.



I fiddled with the mining orders to prioritise digging out these little tunnels into the rockside. This allows me to lay out the torches early in the perfect configuration. Because I'm obsessive compulsive that way.



Those animals just keep rutting. In fact Tyjenks can't keep up, so this newborn emu gets up to hijinks:



She's on the roof! That crazy free spirit. Perhaps she can teach a cautious, square guy how to loosen up and also the meaning of love, to a painfully indie soundtrack.



Tyjenks has been a little distracted making delicious yak sausage. But there's some side products to this process which also need disposal.



The hides go in a pile to one to side. I could get Tyjenks to make these into some leathery armor. I probably will.



There's also bones. I can't make these into any kind of armor, sadly. I can't even use them to make artefacts that menace with spikes of yak bone. Maybe I'll think of something.