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

GETTING PRETTY AUTUMNAL ABOUT NOW



As it is fall, the leaves are off the trees.

Except these are pine trees, so they shouldn't be losing leaves at all. Hrm.

Oh right, they've just had clippings cut from them. This apparently denudes the tree of all foliage.

Tree planting is going pretty slowly at the moment. When the new migrants show up I will task a bunch more people onto tree planting. I need a local renewable source of lumber, I'm not keen to send the gnomes miles beyond the walls to get it instead.

Also in this shot: the Manic pixie dream emu (dreamu?), still yet to be tied down by like, the man.

The Man in this case is actually a woman, Tyjenks, who isn't coralling newborn emus because she's too busy making yak sausage.


Delicious yak sausage. I'd love to use the bread I'm also making to make these into sandwiches, but the sausages get eaten so quickly I never get the chance. I guess everyone is sick of strawberries.

Yak butchery and sausage making complete, Tyjenks gets back to animal tending, leading this newborn yak to pasture.


Poor yaks. So trusting. Little do they know that only a lack of a Y chromosome stands between them and a meat grinder.



The Terrible Puke Brain Trust is still at it. Dan Lawrence has proved to be the most dedicated secondary tinkerer, because he's the most useless for anything else. @Marcin's still the main boss of this effort, though. His TInkering skill is reaching absurd levels:



Tinkering has now resource requirements beyond simply sitting there at the bench, and as such you skill up in much faster than with any other skill, where you're always needing ingredients to be able to practice on. Compare clethra 's skill at smithing trades:



They've all gone up a bit, but still less than stratospheric. I clearly need to scale up my mining operations a great deal. Just need more cheap, unsuspecting labour!



And here it is!



Five is rather less than I'd hoped for, but then I have been deliberately avoiding creating anything valuable to avoid attracting undue interest from foes, which has the additional effect of not attracting much interest from friends, either. Still, a few more hands to the pump isn't to be sneezed at.

This time they're come from what I'm thinking of as the "west" which means they have a lengthy trip around the walls. Here's hoping they don't get eaten too much.



The fifth immigrant splits off from the others and tries to head around the southern route. I trust she won't bring this independence of spirit to her new role toiling in my mines.

Our new cast! We're really excited about this new fall season, we're going to really be shaking things up with these zany characters. It's a non-stop laugh riot! Join us for The Terrible Puke, at 8pm (7pm central), only on FOX.



Jacquelle is my first redheaded female gnome, I think, so I expect she'll be turning heads. Her talents include freckling, nimbleness, burning up in the sun and cutting down trees. It's also at this point I realise I have misspelled her name in-game. Sorry Jacquelle, I'll fix it!



Skoob is the independent-minded one who chose to take a detour. She brings a reasonable set of engineering, medical and construction skills to the mix. I accordingly appoint her as a general "fixit". Assuming she doesn't get eaten by a bear because she chose the scenic route.



Thasero brings an important resource to the Puke: muttonchops! Seriously, we could dine out for a whole winter on those things. He also has an axe skill of 30, so he's immediately for the army.



malphigian 's goatee of course identifies him as an evil twin, but we'll forgive him that as he turns out to be the only new gnomad with any skill at mining. That's what he'll be doing just as soon as I can get a pick in his hand. He's also a passably good engineer; it seems as if rumors have been going out that there's a lot of engineering to be done at the Terrible Puke. There isn't. Maybe this is some kind of baroque revenge from that Iron Kingdom merchant, just because I loaded him down with strawberries and and ten tons of worthless dirt.



McKnight by rights ought to be a knight, with a high sword and armor skill, right? But of course he'll end up with some other amusing haphazard mix of skills instead.

...nope, wait, that's exactly what he ended up with. Sword, armor, almost nothing else.

...to the army with him, then.



The main group climbs the northern ridge while Skoob belatedly realises that she can;t just walk straight through the fricking wall. She makes to catch up with her colleagues.



My shiny, marble, repeatedly-smashed-in-by-goblins doors swing open to welcome the new arrivals.



Skoob does make it in the end.



The new entrants marvel at the Great Hall. Yes, wooden furniture and a dirt floor. No expense was spared considered.

Boring new gnome stats post?



Boring new gnome stats post.

While I'm at it, I juggle around everyone's profession assignments. Some things aren't getting done as quick as I'd like (tree planting especially), so I allow a bunch of gnomes to pick up jobs here and there where life has bestowed them with an above average skill in something.

Nearly all my non-soldier gnomes thus end up with "Custom" as their profession, but that seems boring, so I end up renaming "Custom" for each gnome to something reflective of what they actually do. Soon the profession assignment screen resembles a character sheet from second edition AD&D, with each gnome in jobs either full of slashes (Miner/Planter/Smith etc.) or with absurd portmanteaus I cook up on the spur of the moment:



It's also time to expand the military. The Starry Keepers are doing well holding down the entrance, but if I'm going to be able to expand my mining efforts less cautiously I need a subterranean squad to be the first responders should beasties emerge from the gloom.

The random name generator gives me this:



Perfect.



The two newest soldiers get inducted into this squad. I want to keep them down at the mining levels as much as possible so they'll be close when monsters arrive, so to this end, I put a training ground down there:



Why Tyjenks is down here thinking about meat I don't know. For one thing, she's the only source of meat in the whole Puke.

I'll need some dedicated bedrooms down here and maybe a place for them to eat too, in the fullness of time. But meanwhile, only two soldiers isn't the full squad I was hoping for. Maybe I should induct the miners themselves into a militia squad so they can help out.

Random name generator?


I swear, that's what came out first time.



It turns out all the miners have at least a little skill with one melee weapon, so I make them a uniform allowing them to grab any spare weapon to hand. I'll also make them the first beneficiaries of any leather armor I make.



Lovely.



The effects of assigning nearly everyone to treeplanting duty: here's Jacquelle and Marcin in a red-haired conspiracy. This is the first time Marcin's left his tinker desk other than to eat or sleep in a while. He hasn't seen the sun all summer.



The Lurked Damages assemble some equipment and .... lurk, waiting to do damage.

I cue up some felling axes and a new pickaxe at the Blacksmith, just made out of copper. (I don't actually know if the metal used makes mining more efficient, but I'll be damned if I am spending bronze on it anyway.) malphigian quickly claims his prize and goes to join his fellow Stretching Candies of Bunch.


There, that's... 25% faster mining secured. Or thereabouts.

Tin deposits remain nevertheless elusive. It may be time to open up mining on another floor.

That's actually a good question, I have no idea if higher quality pickaxes mine things faster. I'm guessing they're worth more, though.

...who is actually a man.

If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times and it has been proven over and over again, everyone loves Tyjenks' sausage.

By the way, this continues to be awesome, Thanks Meserach.

Depth -18, one floor above my current mining operations. I also set orders for digging out the floor below. Hopefully I'll hit tin on both levels. Carving out huge areas of rock like this in a more cavalier way will be my new watchword - I will stick torches down as I go but I'm feeling confident in my military, so I won't be trying quite so hard to avoid underground incident. In any case, I need to go quicker or I'll never get metals. The risk of being overwhelmed my nightmarish undead is manageable.

Just as problematic as my ore shortage is my wood shortage. Planting has sped up a bit with all my new multiclassed horticulturists, but a significant drag on their time is that they're now increasingly have to venture far outside the walls to grab clippings.Since they do this one clipping at a time its all grossly inefficient, and puts them at risk of being mobbed by invaders to boot.

I begin to hatch a plan.



Step one: designate a nearby chunk of pine forest for clipping.



An army of amateur tree surgeons answers the call. No leaves shall go untrimmed.



The hillside quickly begins to resemble the aftermath of a meteor impact, but clippings are being made in great quantities. I begin step two:



Make a few bags. I designate a tiny stockpile (three squares) right in the centre of all these clippings, and order the bags to be "built" in it. I then crank up the priority of this stockpile to the max.



Amaranthine brings over the bags, and Alice gets earnestly to filling them with clippings.



The area is soon a bare moonscape. Step three: remove the stockpile designation and order bags built back at the main clippings pile at the base. As such the full bags of clippings will be dragged back all in one go by a builder gnome, hauling 32 clippings in one haul. Massively more efficient!

All I have to worry about is while all these guys are out on the hill they're undefen...

Nope, even if comparably vulnerable targets were available, those greenskins just can't resist the siren call of knocking down my marble doors.

This chancer has a breastplate AND a shield, so I fear another three thousand line combat; but for once the Starry Keepers are brutally efficient, instead of just brutal:



Okay, but that still leaves the breastplate... and wait, what's she doing there?



The lady holding the recently smashed-down marble door is Fargull. She was comign back from the clipping operation with a clipping in hand, but sighting the combat she picked up the door, then did this:



After that the Keepers' lung-crushing instincts kick in:



Yes, SuperJay elected to use a copper bar from the recently destroyed breastplate to kill the goblin with.



Fargulldrops the door and carries right on hauling her tree clipping as if nothing happened.



Fishbreath carries back the last bagful of clippings. Plan: SUCCESS.

After all that excitement, how are the miners doing?



That's a vein of tin, some coal, and what looks like some raw sapphires. Good show!

And sure enough, the armorer work list is moving again:



So close to full bronze armor I can taste it.

HA, I love that I have a perfectly good copper hammer, but the bar is just too tempting to ignore. We've got some strange priorities here in the Starry Keepers. (BTW, what happens when an armed gnome picks up an object weapon like that? Did I drop my hammer, or stash it somehwere? Do we gets pocketses, precious?)

BTW, I think Fargull wins the prize in that battle, that was a righteous blow with the marble door.

No weapons or armor? Kid, why did you even bother.

This one was spotted by Alice, who just happened to be walking past inside the walls at vantage which allowed her to spot this one creeping along the northern ridge. Alice needn't get involved, but he seems to be as disgusted as I am that this is what the Slitted Shadow have to offer, and decides to sort it himself, assisted by only one of the proper military. Results?



Right, that is altogether enough of these puny goblins. I order the door rebuilt.



Thanks to my placing them into a militia squad (The Stretching Candies of Bunch, lest we forget), Schadenfrude and Midnight Voyager are now packign weapons in their non-mining hands:



Ready for whatever might leap out of the rock.

Fantastic news:


Finally, something enticing to make. And Marcin scores credit, mostly rightfully. To get any of this into physical reality I'll need some new workshops - a Machine Shop and an Engineer.

But aside from the precious 10 metal bars I'll need just to get these up and running, there's another problem:



Copletely out of wood. No making workshops without planks.

As much as my tree planting has been accelerated, I can't make them grow any faster. It's time to bite the felling axe and send out the lumberjacks, whatever the risks:



Much of the hillside I had clipped the day before is promptly felled at speed. Six woodcutters is probably too many, but hey, may as well get it done fast when it needs doing. The major time sink will be hauling the logs back, unless I do a similar trick to the one with the clippings. For that I'll need to free up some crates

But just as I am pondering how to do this:



Oh crap.

I've never seen the undead before - they were added to the game only relatively recently. They spawn from darkened tiles - they're what the torch placement was hoping to avoid. But evidently there was still a corner left shrouded somewhere.

Fortunate that I did manage to get some defenders down here before this happened.



Well, Thasero , no-one said this was going to be easy. Time to prove your worth.

QUESTIONS AND IGNORANCE, PART 4?

I am pretty sure in this instance that SuperJay didn't have a shield for whatever reason ( I think we only have three, actually. I should probably fix that.) As such, he picked up the copper bar in his off hand.

So happy to be a Gnome! This has been an awesome LP to read, you do the game a lot of credit Meserach. The combat comments are just too funny :)

Sweet. I didn't even know I'd taken the Dual-Wielding perk. Also, I love that the Puke's contribution to military science is our patented one-two Lung Punch technique.

I assess the new opponents. The skeletons don't seem to tough (the second one has similar stats.) The zombie is somewhat more troubling.



He's unarmed and unarmored, but that fighting score is uncomfortably high. Plus, having literally never seen the undead before, I don;t know what other difficult aspects there might be to fighting them. Weighing it up, I decide that I can;t leave Thasero (and McKnight, if he returns to duty) to face this alone.

I make a decision.



Later, I will realise this was my first mistake.

What follows is by far the most chaotic battle yet. I will try my best to do it justice, but the logs are in multiple parts and very, very long. This is for a couple of reasons.

The first is that ALL my squads are set to respond to the attack order. That's the professional, bronzed Starry Keepers and the raw but skilled Lurked Damages (Thasero and McKnight), but also the mostly raw, untutored, unarmed and unarmored militia squads. That by itself wouldn't be a problem - with a professional core to steady them, the militia should be able to just add contributory attacks. But then as battle is joined, this happens:



Okay, so both of the Lurked Damages are bleeding, but that's an occupational hazard, especially with no armor. But then I realise: they're under orders to retreat when they bleed, to get bandaged up.

And the only bandages are 20 floors up, on the surface, by the gates.

What follows is largely chaos. The fleeing Lurked Damages rush up the stairs trailing blood, while everyone else in any kind of squad rushes down. Because they were underground anyway, that means the miners are some of the first to arrive.



Midnight Voyager makes contact. She's far from vulnerable, but she's no proper soldier either. There's some flailing to not much effect, while unarmed combat specialist flatsinki , who appears to have been nearby, shows up in support. Then:



Zombie virus what

flatsinki gets himself bleeding into the bargain, although from a skeleton. Hence they both retreat as well.



Blood is getting spread all over the stairs. And... what the hell is clethra doing here? She's not in any militia. She must have been gathering ore for smithing operations.



And the undead are circling around the stairs...

Excitement!

ZOMBIE VIRUS

Shit is about to get real.

There's a button you can bind under controls in order to highlight any squares that are vulnerable to monster spawns.

And as builder I just want to make it known that I'm considering placing walls around Midnight Voyager while he's sleeping and/or performing a menial but specific task somewhere.

zombie virus... this is getting scary!

ALL OF YOUR BRAINS SHALL BE MINE!

On the surface things are unsettled. Blood is trailing from Midnight Voyager and flatsinki as they head for the bandage pile. Meanwhile the Starry Keepers have finally formed up for a charge down the stairs. Midnight Voyager status?



That's... troubling. I hope our bandage panaceas can sort out viruses!

The undead... have elected to meander around at level -19. Perhaps they can't figure out stairs?

Another militia member makes it down the stairs in this endless game of zombie virus relay: Leriel .



It finally occurs to me to worry that there's nothing to injure on a skeleton. They're certainly not going to bleed to death, and there's no lungs to crush. Still, they can at least be knocked down, which is more than anyone else has managed up to this point.



Midnight Voyager bandages her wounds. The bleeding and the head injury get fixed, but the virus remains. What now?



Finally some professional soldiers make it into the fray. This is Mirriam, and Blackadar's on the same tile.



Well if we can't kill it we can at least cripple it.



The second skeleton is hanging out by the far wall, holding a lump of lapis lazuli. It's bizarre, but I'm grateful for it.



The zombie, on the other hand, seems to be circling back around. Damnit, guys, kill the skeleton already!

Hooray for Sheepherder!

Only... that rib crushing blow still doesn't kill the skeleton. I mean, it doesn't kill it again. Make it, uh... re... undead? Basically a mangled upper body is scarcely even an inconvenience to this dude.



Still, he has been disarmed and the Keepers are here in force now. I'm feeling a little less worried.



The other two are still keeping their distance. Good. Let's work out how this anti-back-reverse-non-undeadening process works.



Hey, Thasero made it back down. Between them all the military mangle every limb the skeleton has. Given that she (and it is she, apparently - how we worked that out I don't know. Someone had time to take an anatomy class?) is now perpetually dazed and lacks any functioning limbs, I am not sure why we're still beating on it at this point.



Hey, we found something else to mangle! On a living target a neck mangling would be instant suffocation and death. Here... nope.

With seemingly all other options exhausted, everyone takes turns striking the head, over and over. There's several pages of this:



But weapons prove repeatedly useless, until finally:



Yes, Leriel finally stoves the skull in with a lump of rock.

It seems the secret is to destroy the head.



We know the secret now.



WAR.

CHARRRRRRRGE.



Shit.



HAH! Yes, we know your weakness, zombie scum! Get ready to have that head made into pulp you....



....

..

.

..
.

:(

Whoops. from acceptance to a grave in no time flat.

.. Maybe you'll get to become a zombie!

Note to self: get a gorget forged.

Yay! I'm a gnome!

...In a place which seems to be crawling with undead.

Hope the keepers can handle it without any more deaths. I'd hate to see any other Gnomish warriors bite the dust.

Laughing so hard right now.

Note to gnome!self: consider inventing head-height traps, STAT.

McKnight is dead.

There is only revenge.

The Starry Keepers lay down the law.



I think that's our first official limb-severing from Blackadar (as opposed to limb mangling).

flatsinki is a frankly terrifying unarmed combatant. Check this out:



He BIT the ZOMBIE in the EYE, and then kicked him so hard it crushed his heart.

...but the zombie is still fighting back. Hearts are apparently not a vital zombie organ.



Lungs either.



Arms definitely not. There's only one way to kill the undead: remove the head, or destroy the brain.



That's destroy the brain, guys.



I said destroy.



You see what happens when you don't destroy the brain?



Oh fer crissakes.



Dan Lawrence is now on the floor, bleeding from multiple locations and is infected with this zombie virus. It's a long crawl to the bandage pile....



Finally.

I doesn't look it there, but Dan Lawrence is on the floor, bleeding out. The zombie is standing on the finally disanimated skeleton. More visually on the floor is the corpse of the late, lamented McKnight.



Fortunately for him, Dan finds his feet.

Leaking vital fluids as he goes, he makes tracks for the exit:



How much blood does one gnome contain? I guess we'll find out.

The Keepers continue to exhaust all the possibilities for non-vital zombie organs:



In the end it's newcomer malphigian who has to show them how it's done, with @McKnight's scavenged sword:



Everyone immediately returns to thinking about booze.



I'll choose to interpret that as a wake for McKnight.



follow the claret red road
follow the claret red road
follow follow follow



follow the claret red road



Man, I hope he makes it to the bandages. I suspect that if anyone dies while infected they rise as a zombie.



Good night, sweet prince. We hardly knew ye.

Dunno about you guys but I'm hungry for some goblin brain sausage.

Did I say brain? Hah ha hah.

Guys.... guys. We're all gnome friends here. What are you doing with that axe?

I am proud to be the first casualty of what I'm sure will be many! At least I went down fighting

*Takes off hat for the deceased McKnight*

I just got the game, and am guiding myself mainly by this thread (which is, by the way, awesomesauce). My first world was destroyed by a couple of goblins, and in the second I ran out of drinks... and since my well was placed on a single square of water, it was useless. RIP, Beefoundation.

What's the kingdom value report right now?

We're up to 15k of total worth.

Can the gnomes give McKnight a proper burial? Seems like he deserves it.

That's actually extremely low.

Yeah, I've been playing it very safe due to all the horror stories about armies of all-conquering mants. I certainly don't mind people dying, but I'd rather avoid a full-on fort wipe on first mant contact.

I suggest some extra value for the sleeping quarters of the soldiers so they stay up more. I can put in some nice decorative marble floors and walls!