[00:00:00] Kristin: This podcast is of the highest quality. [00:00:15] Drew: You know it. [00:00:19] Kristin: Hello and welcome to A Strange Mood, the Couples Dwarf Fortress podcast. I'm Kristin. [00:00:24] Drew: And I'm Drew. [00:00:25] Kristin: And we are a couple playing Dwarf Fortress. [00:00:27] Drew: Yes, we are, Kristin. Yes, we are. Mmm. Hey, Kristin. Yeah? [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [interjection] Drew: [growling monster noises] [00:00:35] Kristin: Yeah, we need to talk about that. [00:00:38] Drew: Well, you know, I kind of agree, and I'm getting a little tired of it. Uh-huh. So I think I'm just going to open the door and let it run on out. [00:00:45] Kristin: I don't really like that idea. [00:00:47] Drew: Yeah, well, I guess I'll give it a try here. Give me one second. Okay. [00:00:52] Drew: It did not go great. Uh-oh, what happened? A lot of people died. [00:00:56] Kristin: Oh no, I'm glad I was up here. Why were there so many people in our house? All right, so. Yeah, so, uh, there's a forgotten beast in our basement. Oh, it's not in our basement anymore. [00:01:08] Drew: Yeah, well, I mean in my basement. [interjection] Kristin: It's not. [interjection] Drew: Yeah, because we're back to our individual forts this week. [00:01:14] Kristin: Yeah, it's been so long since we talked about them that I kind of forget how. Not really. I don't think we have any housekeeping this week, do we? [00:01:23] Drew: I don't think so. We've got some interesting stuff going on in the Discord. People have been having some good conversations there. Yeah. But yeah, we can just jump right in. [00:01:32] Kristin: Jump right in. Well, um, let me tell you a little about my new fort. I think I talked about it a tiny bit, mostly that it existed when we talked about our shared fort, Grovinks, but this one is called Bellblade. Ooh. Bellblade. It's, um, it's cool. It's, um, [interjection] Drew: Ugh. [interjection] Kristin: I managed to pick a really great location by accident. I tunneled directly into a hill from two sides and we have a stream that I was going to make a waterfall, but it turns out the stream dries up in the winter. Yeah, so I'm going to have to figure that out. But, um, I started that and chose a location on an island continent. So we are across an ocean from our civilization. [00:02:17] Drew: So by island continent, do you mean like Australia or do you mean like more of an island? [00:02:23] Kristin: More like Australia. [interjection] Drew: Okay. [interjection] Kristin: Yeah, it's fairly big. It's just not the size of the main continent. I gotcha. I was trying to think of another comparable, but I don't think it's worth the mental effort since we're recording in the morning instead of the evening. It's lucky I even know my name. But it's also in a savage location, so tougher wildlife, presumably. I haven't seen a lot of outdoor wildlife, I will say. I've seen lots of subterranean wildlife. [00:02:51] Drew: Well, maybe it's like Australia and it's all just big forms of little things. [00:02:55] Kristin: Ooh, it could be, yeah. But I was a little bit worried about being on an island because I was worried we weren't going to get a lot of merchants or migrants. We get both, it's been fine. [00:03:08] Drew: They must come by ship. [00:03:10] Kristin: They must. I don't know. Or maybe there's a secret bridge I don't know about. [00:03:14] Drew: Yep, or a tunnel. So we can at least have a counter clerk in our tunnels (*laughs*). [00:03:15] Kristin: I'm going to pretend it's a tunnel. That's very dwarfish. Yep. So I think that we've only seen merchants from our civilization though so far. We haven't had like elves or humans or anything like that. Maybe you're a secret settlement. [00:03:28] Kristin: Well, that might be because there weren't very many of us. So I got down to the caverns pretty quickly. Everything was looking really good. You know, I had caverns. We got there really fast. We were well-established with farming. And then there was one of those obsidian pillars in the cavern, in the second cavern layer. Now I've opened those up a few times and it's been fine. I've just gotten some obsidian. This time it was not fine. But there was a gecko demon in there by the name of Sneaked Guys. [00:04:05] Drew: Oh boy. [00:04:06] Kristin: Yeah, it was extremely fast. [00:04:10] Drew: Yeah. [00:04:11] Kristin: It left demonic ooze around, which is gross and persists. Like, it's still there, I think. At this point, it was still year one. We had, I think, maybe 24 dwarves-ish. 10 of them died. Yeah, we lost just so many dwarves. Eventually, they did manage to kill it, but it was wild. I've never had such a massacre happen so quickly. [00:04:39] Drew: Those demons are fast when they show up. [interjection] Kristin: Bye. [00:04:42] Kristin: Yeah, it was unbelievable. As my first demon, it was pretty fun. It was a large, hairy gecko twisted into humanoid form. It undulates rhythmically. Its cream hair is patchy. Beware its poisonous gas. I didn't even realize that there was gas. Oh wait, no, I remember that now. It just also happened so fast it was kind of a blur. [00:05:04] Drew: Yeah, I mean the gas maybe doesn't matter so much when it's just running around quickly, especially when it's also spewing ooze. [00:05:11] Kristin: It's so gross. So that was a problem. It was still year one. No real military to speak of. Then a blind cave ogre meandered in, and this was while I was still trying to wall in our cavern access. And yeah, he took out all but five remaining adult dwarves and seven children, seven. So heroic drains the blind cave ogre just about finished off my fort. I think this was in the summer of year one. We had no migrants. I was pretty convinced that I was gonna lose this fort. But why don't you give us an update on your fort? I know that Copper Streams was, last we saw it, thriving. [interjection] Drew: Yes, well, it's, I guess, good to cut over to it at this point because things are not going awesome at Copper Streams. Oh no! But I love Copper Streams so much that I'm going to continue on with it. Mm-hmm. You remember Copper Streams is named so because of the all-copper waterfall, an artificial waterfall we set up in the front. That's been going good and does tend to keep people happy. Oh, good! To remind you of our cast of characters, we have Vukar Theaterbar, our expedition leader originally, Meng Tong Passion, and... And... Drew: Meng Tong Passion, who is our Baron. Was our Duke, now our Baron? Wait, no, Baron now Duke. And Lorbem Worthgild, who has been elected Mayor in place of Vukar. Kristin: Alright. Drew: They've been having not a great time of it. Even though Copper Streams was able to create over 600,000 Dorfbox and tradable goods. Wow. Kristin: Wow, that's impressive. Drew: Remember last time we talked about release squirts? The valuable piano-type thing with the bells? 600 bells or something like that? Bells. Kristin: Has. Drew: Oh. Two recently created things are Worth Blunt, a 37,000 dwarf buck copper ring with images of Forgotten Beast and Green Zurkon, an almond tree in Star Ruby, and the death of Melra Ravenspires the goblin as she was killed by Kemsa Bittenholds. Interestingly, Melra Ravenspires the goblin in Star Ruby, a 37,000 dwarf buck copper ring with images of Forgotten Beast and Green Zurkon. [00:07:50] Kristin: It's an important mythological-type figure, except not mythological, historical. [00:07:55] Drew: Yeah, historical, about 15 years back. I think it must have been important to several of the initial seven who settled. Oh, okay. That was made by Delir Gordshield, a follower of Anon. Nothing super exciting about him other than he's greedy and self-important. And then a 30,000 dwarf buck green glass chain called Riddlefrey, which is encrusted with point-cut almandines and bryolite-cut green glass gems. That is actually sitting in Risky Calm, our open-to-all-comers general copper temple in the center of our court. Yeah. [00:08:35] Drew: So I think it looks nice there piled on an altar. [00:08:38] Kristin: Ooh, pretty. [00:08:39] Drew: You know, green glass in a copper temple. [00:08:41] Kristin: Yeah, that sounds really nice. I'd hang out there. [00:08:45] Kristin: And meditate on rainbows. [00:08:47] Drew: Always meditating on rainbows. But Copperstreams has not had all good luck such as the creation of artifacts. In fact, we've had a string of forgotten beast attacks. Now the first of them, Oza Rumortalens, the Punches of Dying, a towering three-eyed sauropod with large mandibles who undulates rhythmically and breathes fire, demolished the scene by strangling this shot with sea grass. [00:09:10] Kristin: Yikes. [00:09:11] Drew: Here we were able to capture [him] into kind of a corridor. Blocking with doors, since door breaking doesn't exist in this version currently. Thankfully, I had originally carved out a sort of fortification corridor to try to trap him in and then have people shoot and kill him. But I hadn't realized that he breathed fire. Yeah, so the doors that [we went] to try to do that were breathed fire upon. Incinerated, yes, and all burned up quite quickly. Oh. So instead, [we had] to go, we just, you know, kind of walled off the area and left him be. [interjection] Kristin: Oh, so [way to go]. [00:09:49] Drew: Until about three months later, a second forgotten beast arrived. Sizir, a huge ankylosauroid with lidless eyes, short trunk, small bronze scales, and poisonous vapors. We were able to kind of funnel [him] to go by the fortifications where we had Azza captured. [00:10:11] Drew: And Aza breathed fire on Sazir, who then got angry and kept kind of banging at the fortifications trying to get his poison vapors in. And Aza actually made relatively quick work of Sazir. Oh, wow. So that was positive. [00:10:25] Kristin: It's good to have a pet forgotten beast sometimes. [00:10:27] Drew: Exactly. Then, one month after that, Rayuva whispered depths the midnights of vaults. A hairy small snail with thin wings of stretched skin, and I could just not get [them] to kind of get in the same region. [00:10:50] Drew: So I decided to take a risk, and with 120 people, I thought I would be okay. [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [interjection] Drew: I opened the door to Azra Rumor Towns and let him out while blocking off the other doors that would keep him from getting to Ruvah, the hairy small snail. [00:11:12] Kristin: All right. [00:11:13] Drew: I have to say, [00:11:13] Kristin: This doesn't sound very threatening. No. It's a small snail. [00:11:16] Drew: But the deadly dust. [00:11:17] Kristin: Well, yeah. Hard to fight dust. [00:11:19] Drew: Well, what happened was an epic kaiju battle, actually. Yeah. [00:11:24] Kristin: Yes, it was amazing. [00:11:25] Drew: It was quite fun and it's up on YouTube if you want to watch it. Yes. Where Azza charged through the corridors, killing the dwarf who opened the door for him. [00:11:35] Kristin: Oh yeah, that was a sacrifice you knew you were gonna have to make. [00:11:38] Drew: And then began just wailing on Ruava. Whisper Depths. I'm just gonna call them Whisper Depths from now on. Started wailing on Whisper Depths. And that fight actually went on for a fairly long period of time, but eventually the fire-breathing nature of Azza won out, and everything was on fire down in the caverns. All of the moss was being burned, and Azza just massacred Whisper Depths. [00:12:15] Kristin: Well, that's good. I did look over there at one point and there was a lot of fire. [00:12:20] Drew: The fire just kept burning all through that whole connected section of the caverns. [00:12:27] Drew: So after that, Azza was wounded so I thought I would go and kind of finish him off. So I sent all of our squads in at once and yeah, he really beat the crap out of our squads. And we rapidly, before I was able to do anything to recover the situation, went from 120 people to 85 with a lot of those wounded. We did eventually kill Azza, rumored Talons, but he took some killing. And then, as he was dead and we were hauling people back to the hospital, the fourth Forgotten Beast arrived. [00:13:06] Kristin: Oh my gosh. You are a forgotten beast magnet. [00:13:11] Drew: And this was a huge mammoth twisted into human form with lidless eyes. Its body was bloated and had long gray hair. [00:13:17] Kristin: That's really unpleasant. [00:13:19] Drew: It as well had deadly dust. [00:13:21] Kristin: Oh no. [00:13:23] Drew: And because I hadn't been paying attention, I had left some of the doors open and he was able to get into the main fort. [00:13:31] Drew: I assigned everyone to attack him, but a lot of them were wounded and we went from 85 down to 47. [00:13:40] Kristin: They're probably not very happy either, huh? [00:13:42] Drew: No, so it's a bad situation there. [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [00:13:47] Kristin: Well, let's take a minute and talk about that because I was also left with a bad situation with my five dwarves and seven children. So I actually turned to our listeners in the Discord and got some good advice, and I really didn't want to give up this fort and was like, if I lose it, I'm still going to go reclaim it because I really like this location. So I went through and turned off all the work orders, except I think... We had a lot of drinks, we had a lot of food, so I didn't even have a work order going there. I think I might have left gem cutting going because we have a legendary gem cutter, and I was like, well, eventually we will get a merchant and I can spend gems and get some migrants. And it went pretty well, actually. I also made sure to finish walling off our caverns so that nothing else could come in because at some point we did have two giant olms wander in as I was walling us off, and [interjection] Drew: Mm. [interjection] Kristin: nothing really bad happened. They did eventually kill them, but somehow in that, in the walling off, we lost another expedition leader. I have no idea how he died. I'm assuming he must have gotten walled out or was secretly killed by a giant olm, but I think I would have gotten a notification about that. I just got the pop-up that he had been missing for a week. So I kind of just let the fort run for a while. We eventually did get merchants. They didn't have very much good stuff, but I just bought all of it in the hopes of getting some migrants. [00:15:27] Kristin: It took another half a year before migrants showed up. [00:15:31] Drew: Oh boy. [00:15:31] Kristin: Yeah. Oh yeah, and that's another fun aside. We had a child dying down in the hallway into the caverns, and no one was helping her. So I finally just made a hospital zone, and they took her there, and our militia commander was there. And we didn't have any doctors because no one's skilled in that. And so they were just suffering in the hospital. Finally, migrants showed up. So what are you doing to try to preserve copper streams? [00:15:57] Drew: So I took some of the advice from the Discord as well and canceled all my work orders except for some of the more key ones. I think it's important to have some work available for the dwarves so that they can... You know, it's important to them that they have work. Work therapy. [00:16:12] Kristin: Make some crafts, you know. [00:16:14] Drew: But I canceled the various labors and all of that. Everything except hauling, essentially, because at this point, with the body situation, I just want to get people in the ground. [00:16:27] Kristin: Yeah, yeah, that is important because they get really upset at the decay of a friend or a parent or a child. [interjection] Drew: It's important. [00:16:34] Drew: Yeah, exactly, and I'm gonna have to deal with some of that. And again, the waterfall is kind of helping things slowly climb back up, but I do have some pretty unhappy dwarves at this stage, and I'm just working on recovering that, making [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [interjection] Drew: sure everybody's got enough time in the temple and all of the rest of it. [00:16:51] Kristin: Yeah, well, fingers crossed because. [00:16:55] Kristin: That's a pretty cool fort you got there. [00:16:56] Drew: Yeah, no. I've blocked off the caverns to just kind of ignore any more forgotten beasts or anything that shows up for the moment. And I think things are settling down. I've moved from five very unhappies down to three. And then everybody else is in the moderate categories. [00:17:19] Kristin: Okay, that's not too bad. No. I, yeah, I mostly was like, we just gotta hang on, stay alive until migrants come. And thankfully, they have. [00:17:29] Drew: Yeah, because that was... I did not think you were going to be able to recover from it with five children. [00:17:34] Kristin: Yeah, I really didn't think so, and some of the children were pretty unhappy. Well, I mean the one who was left for dead in the caverns. She's still pretty unhappy. [00:17:43] Drew: So did you ever find out what she needed to be doing better, or did she just eventually get better? [00:17:47] Kristin: When I checked on her today, she was out of the hospital. She was there a lot longer than our militia commander whose hand had like exploded. And she, the child, had had crushed ribs, I think, so she just needed longer in the hospital. But when our migrants showed up, there were a couple of proficient doctors. So now we have a chief medical dwarf, a bone doctor, and a surgeon. They treated both the child and the militia commander, and both of them have now been released from the hospital, doing pretty well. I'm going to keep an eye on those four adults, as well as the child who was left for dead. So we have the angry militia commander who is Azum Glazed Inches. She is in the 7 out of 7 dreadful mood. She is extremely angry. She's not in the hospital anymore. I retired her from being militia commander while she was so injured. I'm not sure what to do with her now. I'd rather not have to banish her because I would like to hang on to those original four dwarves. So I'm going to look into her interests and stuff and see if we can't cheer her up. We have Logam Tongue Spear. [00:19:06] Kristin: Which is a pretty funny name. He's our third expedition leader. So he's pretty far down the rank of those original seven. But he was our gem cutter and he was allowed to keep cutting gems during the great waiting period of waiting. He's actually quite happy. [00:19:26] Drew: I was going to say, well, with a name like Tongue Spears, Tongue Spear, I was going to say that we should ask our listeners to suggest a sort of group nickname for all of them so that we can keep track of them in the future. [00:19:38] Kristin: Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, I'll post those and we can give them nicknames. And we have Lemel Controlropes, who was the mother of five of those seven children. Wow. Yeah. She seems to be a single mom. I don't know when her partner died or if he was even there. But she has an unbreakable will, which I will say, you probably need to have five children. [00:20:05] Drew: Yeah, especially after that sort of disastrous line of death. [00:20:09] Kristin: Yeah, she's doing okay, probably because all five of her children survived the massacre. There's Aerith Leded, the... oh, apparently I didn't get his English name. Whoops. [interjection] Drew: Huh? [interjection] Kristin: The child who was left for dead down in the hallway by the caverns is Ruth Guildhunders. Both of her parents are dead. [00:20:40] Drew: Paul was. [00:20:41] Kristin: Yeah, and she's the one who was hospitalized with the crushed ribs. And she's at six out of seven. She's pretty angry, but that has actually ticked up one. She was at seven out of seven. [00:20:51] Drew: Yeah, probably because she was able to leave the hospital. [00:20:55] Kristin: I thought she was still in the hospital, and I was looking this morning just to get her info sheet, and she was out playing pretend in a staircase, so hopefully she'll start to recover. [00:21:05] Drew: Just a sad little dwarf child with her wrapped ribs playing for ten minutes. [00:21:10] Kristin: Yeah, a little dwarf orphan. You should make sure of that. [00:21:16] Kristin: Yeah, that's a good call on the toys. I'll make sure she's got some good stuff. Yeah, I'm gonna look into all of their interests, likes, and dislikes and see if I can cheer them up. [00:21:26] Drew: So do you have any future plans for uh... [00:21:29] Kristin: for Bill Blades. [00:21:30] Drew: Do you have any future plans for bell blades? [00:21:34] Kristin: Um, well, I really wanted to get that waterfall going to keep everyone happy, but with the stream freezing, I'm not sure. Like, I started channeling a deep pond to maybe hold on to some of that water. Like, maybe if I get it deep enough, um, it won't freeze or, um, thaw. [00:21:54] Drew: There are some weird rules about that, like if it's ever touched the outside, I think, or if there's one square that can see the outside. So I don't know about that. But if you set it up in sort of a closed environment and then do the circular pump thing, that might keep it moving enough. [00:22:11] Kristin: Might keep it moving enough. Right, and I chose a location with no aquifer because I just didn't want to deal with it. And when I did a search and allowed Savage, there are a lot, a lot of places that embark locations with no aquifer. And I'm like, maybe I just don't want to deal with that. There's nothing wrong with that if I still have a ton of really [interjection] Drew: Nice. [interjection] Kristin: good locations in the world. [00:22:33] Drew: No, a lot of the big streamers and stuff all say that they use that mod to just... Just turn them off and work. [00:22:38] Kristin: Just turn them off in world generation. It's something to think about, and I do feel a little bit like it's a challenge that I need to learn to handle, but also like it's a game, you know? I'm here to have fun. Right, and if I don't wanna deal with water in that way, then I don't have to, but with the stream drying up in the winter, yeah, I don't know. So I'm gonna figure that out maybe. The other thing that I'm gonna start doing is building just a bunch of cage traps, because I've already caught a couple of other cavern creatures in those, and I'm not really sure what to do with them once I have them caged, so I just sort of put them outside. Yeah. Good luck. [00:23:19] Drew: That's a good start. You can also try to train some of them and domesticate them. [00:23:24] Kristin: I think this was a bug bat, or maybe it was, no, it's a giant rat. [00:23:28] Drew: You might actually be able to domesticate giant rats. OK, well. Sure. [00:23:30] Kristin: Okay, well, I mean, it's still sitting out there, so. [00:23:34] Drew: I'm guessing the bug bats you can't. [00:23:36] Kristin: Yeah, so I think that my focus is just going to be getting really defensible. So we're gonna make traps and various things at the entrance. And then I would like to start going into the caverns again, so I'm going to do traps there and maybe some other kind of fortification. [00:23:54] Drew: I think that makes sense. I think that's a good plan. [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [00:23:56] Kristin: We haven't gotten to magma yet, so there's gonna have to be more digging. [00:24:00] Drew: I can't believe that you hit one of those obsidian spires that actually had the demon in it already. Yeah, in the sea. Yeah, back in the sea. [00:24:07] Kristin: Without, yeah, in the second cavern layer, not the third. [00:24:10] Drew: Well, I know that the obsidian spires can jut up through different cavern layers, but I didn't think that the demons would be that high. [00:24:18] Kristin: Actually, there's another obsidian pillar accessible in my walled-in part, and I dug that out, and only one tile of it, and no demon there, so. [00:24:35] Drew: Worth a shot. [00:24:36] Kristin: Fingers crossed. Yeah. I don't really know what I was expecting to get other than a little obsidian because it's not like there were any gems in it. [00:24:43] Drew: Well, you can frequently find gems or adamantine in there. Oh, see, that would be nice. [00:24:47] Kristin: So I need to figure out... Elemental. Hmm. I need to figure out, other than defenses, what else I'm going to do. We've had a couple of fun new-to-me creatures. We have a pond grabber, a small creature that lives in watery ditches deep underground. It has a sharp beak and four tentacles with claws at the end. [00:25:08] Kristin: And it's blue and it's kinda cute. And we have the aforementioned bug bat, which is a small bat-like creature with the head of an insect. There's not much to it. I guess her hair is dark violet, which is fun. And I saw my first plump helmet man, woman, and she's very cute. [00:25:26] Drew: Aw, well that's cute. [00:25:27] Kristin: Yeah. Well, that's cute. So she hasn't wandered over to us. What I don't know is if my cavern dwellers in this one are going to be plump helmet people. Will they attack me, or are they just sort of peaceful and wander around being fungacy? [00:25:40] Drew: I'm pretty sure they're relatively peaceful. Okay. Again, I'm not 100% certain on that, but I think as long as you don't do stuff to anger them, you're probably okay. [00:25:50] Kristin: Okay, well, I'll find out. So what else is happening at Copper Streams? Anything? [00:25:56] Drew: Oh, well, since we've had that drop in population from basically 110, 120 to like 47, well, Copper Streams has gone downhill. Oh, yeah. [00:26:07] Kristin: Yeah. [00:26:08] Drew: Dogs and goats are running through the temples willy-nilly. [00:26:13] Drew: Bodies are stacked like cordwood on the stairs and floors. [00:26:16] Kristin: Oh, that's grim. [00:26:18] Drew: But Kristin, we have drink, we have mist, and somewhat unimportantly, we have food. And so, Meng, our Baron Duke, I forget, whichever one's the higher one, he has declared a holiday from work. [00:26:36] Drew: And we're going to try to take basically the better part of a year with all the labors turned off except hauling and all of the jobs turned off except the ones that will make them happy. [00:26:49] Drew: And try to get everybody buried or memorialized and all of that and see if we can't start Copper Streams again. Copper Streams 2.0. [00:27:01] Drew: But our three main characters, Volcar, Meng, Lorbem, well, they have a lot of issues going on. [00:27:12] Drew: Volcar, who was originally our expedition leader, now is our chief medical dwarf, and who did an excellent job healing those people who could be healed after the fight. Oh, that's good. It really ranked him up in the skill tree for that. [00:27:27] Drew: Now he avoids excitement and stress after seeing the decay of a friend after the kaiju battle. [00:27:35] Kristin: Yeah. [00:27:36] Drew: And he has now moved to Mercy after starting a new relationship. [00:27:41] Drew: Which was with Attis Ship Puzzled, who was our loneliest dwarf back when this all started. [00:27:48] Drew: Unfortunately, she was burned to nothing by the great fire beast. Aw, [expletive]. Burned to nothing, leaving behind only a rose gold ring. [interjection] Kristin: That's not [expletive]. Hahaha. [00:28:00] Kristin: Aww, it's so sad and poetic in a maudlin sort of way. [00:28:03] Drew: I don't think we've ever done that. [00:28:07] Kristin: I don't think we've ever quoted Buffy on here before. There's gotta be a first time. [00:28:11] Drew: And, uh, Volcar has not yet realized that she is gone. Oh no! [00:28:16] Kristin: No! [00:28:17] Drew: Also, another blow to Volcar is that he is a kindred spirit to Caten NecroShield. [00:28:23] Kristin: And is Cat in NecroShield still alive? [00:28:26] Drew: No, you'll remember last time I talked about copper bars. [interjection] Kristin: You'll remember last time I told you. [interjection] Drew: Yeah. Streams? Copper streams. Meng Tong Passion had a lover whose name was Cat in NecroShield, who he had not noticed had died. Huh. [00:28:44] Kristin: Oh, man. [00:28:46] Drew: So with her being a kindred spirit to Volcar, [interjection] Kristin: That's tough. [interjection] Drew: Yeah, it is. [00:28:53] Drew: you know, they had quite an interesting little relationship going on among the five, kind of five of the initial dwarves. [00:29:01] Drew: Um... [00:29:02] Drew: But Meng is a kindred spirit to Volcar. Even though I don't think Volcar is a kindred spirit to Meng. Aw. Ha ha ha ha. You're my best friend. You're one of my friends. So they have each other to bond over their grief. OK. [00:29:19] Kristin: That's good. [00:29:20] Drew: And then we have Lorbem Worthgild, our mayor, who replaced Volcar because Lorbem was able to have many, many more passing acquaintances amongst the 110 dwarves we had at our height here. Whereas Volcar stayed very insular with the starting seven. Lorbem is a high master glassmaker who hates vows and obligations but is conflicted about it and never feels hatred towards anyone or anything. [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [interjection] Drew: Yeah, that's pretty conflicted. [00:29:56] Kristin: Weird combination of things, of feelings. [00:30:00] Drew: But those three main characters, because all of their lovers are dead. [00:30:06] Drew: They are going to be the nucleus of Copper Streams 2.0 as we attempt to recover. [00:30:14] Kristin: Excellent. [00:30:15] Drew: Yeah, so that's where Copper Streams is at. My main goal again is to just ride out this kind of year of no work. We've got a lot of wealthy things built up to trade, and we will be able to, I think, get everybody into the ground and hopefully keep from dropping into a complete anger spiral. This, Kristin, this is what comes of opening up caverns. [00:30:39] Kristin: Yep. [00:30:40] Kristin: Which brings us to our topic for the week. [00:30:43] Drew: Our educational topic. [00:30:44] Kristin: Yes, you may have noticed that the title of this episode is Just Keep Digging. And we say that a lot. And it's time to talk about why. Because we've noticed some friends and listeners who are just not getting to the caverns. Like, they're in high levels, there's not a lot of danger, they just stay put. [00:31:06] Drew: Well, first off, because the whole point of Dwarf Fortress is to have fun in capital letters, which means to have bad things happen to good dwarves. [00:31:16] Kristin: Oh, yes. So we're not gonna poo-poo anyone's play style, and if you want to build a castle on the ground, that's fine, you big weirdo. [00:31:23] Drew: Yeah, what are you, an elf? [00:31:24] Kristin: So, let's delve greedily and deeply into what is a cavern and why you want to be there. [00:31:33] Drew: Alright, so you did some research for this from the Dwarf Fortress Wiki. I did. I was going to only read the entry on caverns, and then I got into exploratory mining, and then into strange moods, and I was up later than I meant to be. But there are typically three layers of caverns. I think that we've mentioned that briefly. And usually, they have a type of moss in them, which is, you know, where you grow plump helmets or other dwarven crops. Those crops want to be grown underground. That's actually really important. Plump helmets won't grow outside. [00:32:11] Drew: That's right. And, plump helmets, though, those of you who have played a little bit of Dwarf Fortress probably know that you can start the plump helmets just as soon as you dig under one layer. Right. [interjection] Kristin: playing in the background. [interjection] Drew: But you'll have noticed that it says, "These prefer to grow in cavern soil." Yes. And that is not cavern soil. [00:32:30] Kristin: You can also keep your animals on that mossy, grassy stuff in the caverns so that you don't have to leave them out to get attacked by giant geese or whatever. [00:32:39] Kristin: Um... [00:32:40] Drew: Or random goblin attacks. [00:32:42] Kristin: Freshwater in them. Deep freshwater. You can fish in that. You can do other things. [00:32:53] Drew: And trees. [interjection] Kristin: That is. [00:33:01] Drew: As far as I know. Yeah, as far as I know, my understanding, that will let you get as much wood as you need. Yes. [00:33:10] Kristin: Colorful wood too. It's always pretty cool-looking. [00:33:12] Drew: Yeah, yeah, the fungi wood, the nethercaps, all of those sorts of things. And it's important to get down there because, again, in some embark locations, again, usually you know you're a more advanced player before you do this, but in some embark locations like icy biomes and that sort of thing, this is the only place you will find water and wood. [00:33:35] Kristin: Water, wood, tillable soil. Exactly, all of it. Yeah. [00:33:37] Drew: Although sometimes it can be hard to find them because if you dig down, there are still sections of a cavern that are solid rock. [00:33:56] Drew: RAWR! [00:33:57] Kristin: Yeah, it's possible to dig through solid rock and never encounter the cavern. It doesn't mean the cavern's not there, it's just that you haven't opened into it. [00:34:06] Kristin: Let's take a beat here and talk a little bit about how to find them. Exploratory Mining. [00:34:13] Kristin: The internet has all kinds of efficient patterns to dig out and ways to create usable rooms while also still having safety because caverns are also where you find cavern dwellers. They're where forgotten beasts will come from, and all kinds of crazy wildlife that will murder you. So how do you like to go about trying to find them if you're struggling to access the caverns? [00:34:37] Drew: So I generally just try to get down to where I think it should be height-wise, though it varies wildly. Oh, it does, yeah. Because it's kind of calculated at world generation, like where the layer is, and then the rest of the world is kind of layered on top of that. Yeah. So especially if you're in kind of a hilly area, it can be a little bit more difficult. [00:35:00] Kristin: Yeah, if you're starting at a high Z level, then you might have to dig a long time. [00:35:04] Drew: But... Usually, then you're digging through soil, so it'll go pretty fast. Yes, but I generally just cut out in a straight line, you know, like from four corners or something like that. You know, the four compass rows or something like that, and dig in a straight line until we break out into something. Yeah. And then after some period of time, if we haven't hit anything, I dig, you know, go down another 20 Z levels and try again. [00:35:32] Kristin: I think that I typically will just dig straight down to a certain level, and if I'm not finding them, then I will start to dig spurs in the four cardinal directions, just exploratory mine shafts to see if we open up into the caverns. And that way, I have narrow passageways that I can wall off easily if I need to. [00:35:51] Drew: Yeah, I think that's the right strategy to take. When doing that, one thing to also keep in mind is to make sure that when you decide to do your exploratory shafts, that you do it on a layer where you don't have super-duper hard material like granite. [00:36:04] Kristin: Granite? Oh, yeah. I didn't even think of that. [00:36:06] Drew: Yeah, if you can find something lighter like shale or... [00:36:09] Kristin: Okay, that's a really good tip. [00:36:11] Drew: Yeah, no, it's helpful. Sometimes you just don't have that option. Right. [00:36:14] Kristin: Right, yeah. Oh, that's the other important resource that you will get from caverns and digging deeper is just the better ores and gems. [00:36:24] Drew: Yeah, and it's the only place that you can really find gems, and gems are so valuable. [interjection] Kristin: Okay. [interjection] Drew: To Dwarven mood and trade. [00:36:33] Kristin: It really, really helps a lot to have access to a lot of gems. And the deeper you go, the more you'll find. And if you go deep enough, if you go deep enough, if you go deep enough, you will find magma. Magma is a very, very, very valuable resource because it enables you to smelt and forge without using wood. [00:36:53] Drew: And do your glasswork. Yeah. [00:36:56] Kristin: Yeah, all the furnaces. [00:36:58] Drew: Yeah, with that, all the furnaces and all the kilns, you can just not have to deal with wood and making charcoal. Basically at all, you still have to do some ashery work in order to be able to make lye, soap, and those sorts of cleaning things. Potash. [00:37:14] Kristin: That's true, right? [00:37:15] Drew: Yeah, to get potash and that, but you can make green glass just with it. [00:37:20] Kristin: Just with the, okay. [00:37:21] Drew: Yeah, just with magma. [00:37:22] Kristin: Yeah. So with regard to cavern safety, I have been in the past really bad about just leaving it open and then having waves and waves and waves of cavern dwellers, which I think they're actually fixing so that it doesn't increase exponentially. [00:37:37] Kristin: So that you don't have 150 old men or whatever attacking you. [00:37:41] Drew: Yeah, I had one of those forts, and we were able to take care of it pretty well by setting up traps and stuff, but... [00:37:47] Kristin: They do die really easily as well. [00:37:49] Drew: It just wound up being a lot to deal with. Right. [00:37:53] Kristin: So now I try to wall off every point as soon as there is access. So even if I'm not on the cavern ground and I can see down into the cavern, flying creatures or climbing creatures can come up that wall and enter my fort that way. So I've been walling off really carefully. It's also important to, if you are in the cavern at the edge of your map, to still wall off that edge of the map because creatures will spawn at the edge of the map like forgotten beasts and wander in. [00:38:23] Drew: Exactly. So, and I think maybe some of them can even still spawn if you have the fortifications for like if you're doing a water drain. I think some water creatures can still spawn in there and sort of spew through, but I don't think forgotten beasts. I think there's a size limit. [00:38:43] Kristin: Okay, yeah, and then I remain a little unclear on this, but there is also wanting [interjection] Drew: Thank you. [interjection] Kristin: to wall all the way up to the ceiling at the edge of the map. I don't think I'm going to mess with that because I really haven't had too much trouble with flyers. So we'll see how that goes. [00:39:00] Drew: Yeah, I've never bothered with that too much. My main goal is always to just kind of make a beachhead where my stairs open into a cavern and making sure that I just get a floor over the top, [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [interjection] Drew: you know, a ceiling in there to stop fliers from being able to swoop down and come up into the [interjection] Kristin: Hey. [interjection] Drew: main fort that way. So especially again, while no creatures can bust down doors, it's relatively easy to do right now. [00:39:30] Kristin: Now. Yeah, yeah. Um, the way that I have it set up in my current fort, and again this is part of why I didn't want to give this one up because the location just got luckily good as well, I managed to have my main staircase almost completely come out through solid stone and then where I saw the cavern first was at the stairs but I was able to wall it off really quickly but where the cavern floor the stairs were still in solid stone so I tunneled out to the cavern floor and I have lined that hallway with cage traps now. [00:40:02] Drew: Yeah, I think that's a really good strategy. And once you get kind of a stable location like that, you can start to expand outward and build walls and keep yourself protected that way if you want to turtle a bit. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. And by getting down to the magma and easy access to the various metal ores and all that, you can really start pumping out a lot of tradable goods and really bring the value of your fort up and start to get yourself in a position to become the mountain home. [interjection] Kristin: Yep. [interjection] Drew: And this is, you know, sort of the way the game was meant to be played. Again, I feel bad saying this because, as we've talked about, Dwarf Fortress... [00:40:44] Drew: Is it a game? Sort of. Or is it just sort of a storytelling generation device? Right. And so if you want to have a story about, you know, being weirdo dwarves who build a giant castle in the middle of the... [00:40:58] Kristin: Like if you're watching Krugsmash's current series and he's building a giant bridge and that's kind of his fort, but he still does have an underground section of it. And that's important, we just don't see it as much in the videos. Also, he can break all the rules because he's awesome. [00:41:14] Drew: Yeah. Yeah, and so that's why digging down to the caverns is important. You can really start to see a lot more interesting things happen. And on Reddit, when you see people who talk about this game being kind of boring, it's frequently because they haven't pushed themselves and kept digging. [00:41:32] Kristin: Yeah, I think that if you want to see a forgotten beast, I'm pretty sure that's the only way. Like, you'll see the mega beast at the surface level. [00:41:42] Drew: Yeah, they'll wander through occasionally, but you might play, like, you know, you might play 10 years and see that once. Whereas Forgotten Beasts, when you get down there and you start digging out that ore, you're gonna see them show up. [00:41:55] Kristin: Yeah, for sure. [00:41:56] Drew: Plus, a lot of the sort of fun, weird creatures that you hear people talk about in Dwarf Fortress only show up in the caverns. There, you can find plump helmet men, bug bats, anti-traveler men. [00:42:10] Kristin: Yeah, all of the interesting men. [00:42:13] Drew: Show up in caverns. Amethyst men. [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [00:42:17] Kristin: I want to see an Amethyst man. [00:42:19] Drew: And then also, I think there are a couple of other types. Oh, I mean... [00:42:23] Kristin: Oh man, I have no doubt that there are so many cavern-dwelling types that we don't know about. [00:42:27] Drew: Yeah, so it's a good place to be, and it's a way to keep things interesting for yourself as you play Dwarf Fortress. The trick, though, is you have to plan ahead. You can't just plunge into it. [00:42:39] Kristin: Right, like I did for all of my other forts. It was really playing the shared fort that I was like, okay, I see how to kind of keep this safe and wall in quickly so that we don't have what I then had. Although I was in the process of walling us in when I unearthed that demon. So it was basically walled in with us. Yeah, you don't want that. Hey, Bogert, yeah. [00:43:02] Kristin: No, so once you've walled it in, be really, really cautious about how you're opening up obsidian pillars. [00:43:10] Drew: So what would you say is the most interesting thing you've found in the cave? [00:43:13] Kristin: I mean, Forgotten Beasts, for sure. I had started at the fort that I'm not at anymore. I had a level with magma and water on the same level, and I was going to start making obsidian gradually that way. So I think kind of an interesting project might be my favorite cavern thing so far. Find the plump helmet, man-woman. [00:43:35] Drew: For me, I think the most interesting cavern run was in Two Forts Back when I dug into one of those obsidian walls and I just was having a really good run of getting super valuable gems, super valuable metals, and then also a lot of divine artifacts. [00:43:57] Kristin: Oh, see, I haven't gotten any of those yet. [00:43:59] Drew: and a single divine artifact can be worth like fifty thousand dwarf bucks or more. [00:44:04] Kristin: So how do you dig into those safely with like being aware that a demon might pop out apparently even in the second cavern layer? [00:44:12] Drew: So the major way to do it again is to adopt an airlock strategy, either with doors or, in the previous version, where door busters were a thing, with lever-controlled bridges. [interjection] Kristin: Yeah. [interjection] Drew: So you can bring it up and down. And then you spend a lot of time channeling rather than mining. [interjection] Kristin: Ah yeah. [interjection] Drew: Because channeling is the way that you can kind of dig underneath where you're standing. You know, they're not breaking down a wall, basically, and then having a wall of lava. [00:44:51] Kristin: Having a wall with magma. [00:44:54] Drew: And so it doesn't help a whole lot with regard to the demons because the demons usually can fly or climb. They'll just climb right out or angels, you know, you can get angels too. They can come right out and climb right out and then start killing people. But if you do that and you have an airlock system, then you can kind of sadly shrug to the miners who are currently in there. Yeah. [00:45:16] Kristin: Sorry guys. Yeah. It's a risk we have to take. I wonder if a cage trap would have gotten my gecko demon. [00:45:23] Drew: I don't know because cage traps don't work on forgotten beasts, but then they're big, and I don't know how big a demon is. [00:45:31] Kristin: This guy was like a normal, dwarf-sized, basically. [00:45:35] Drew: Because the problem is, cage traps have varied in power throughout the different versions of the game. And the current one, I believe... [00:45:41] Kristin: It's really powerful. [00:45:42] Drew: You can capture a dragon in a kit. [00:45:47] Kristin: The staircase going up and continue digging into that obsidian pillar that's in my Walden Cavern area and find out. [00:45:55] Drew: I mean, that's a plan. And you just dig yourself a little side shaft around where the lock is and let people start working their way down further. [00:46:02] Kristin: Yeah, yeah, I think I'll try that. [00:46:04] Drew: No, I think it's a good strategy, and it's one more way to add fun to your playthrough. [00:46:08] Kristin: Right, I can't just leave it there and do nothing. I have to know. [00:46:13] Drew: Exactly. [00:46:14] Kristin: Well, does that cover our cavern discussion? [00:46:17] Drew: I think so. Yeah. [00:46:18] Kristin: We forgot, I think, a little bit of housekeeping in that we didn't talk about the patch that came out with the baby animals. [00:46:25] Drew: Yeah, the baby animal patch, that's pretty exciting. And also, of course, with that patch, they snuck in the return of Legends XML export. [00:46:36] Kristin: Yeah, that's really exciting. I haven't tried that much because mostly when I'm saying XML export, I'm just parroting words. [00:46:44] Drew: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I have done it. It works fine. I was able to sort of grep, which is the term, do find, find replace through it for some different bits of information, but it's definitely going to have to wait for the DFHack guys to update the Legends Mode viewer software that's out there before I think it'll be super readable to people. But using that, [interjection] Kristin: Okay. [interjection] Drew: I was able to find out stuff about the various gods that we have going on and all that sort of thing. And actually, it'd be pretty interesting to combine the information that comes from that with the information that our Discord member wrote. Oh, yeah. Right. He wrote that little [interjection] Kristin: Rote time. [interjection] Drew: script to pull out information using kind of a subsystem in DFHack online. I think the information that he pulled out with that is actually not in the accidental export. Oh, wow. All right. Or some of it is and some of it isn't from what I could see, but I need to investigate that further and see about maybe we can merge all this information together or do something like that. [00:47:53] Kristin: Sounds complicated. I'll let you guys do it. [00:47:55] Drew: Yep. The other housekeeping bit is, I hope to have transcriptions of these episodes up, probably within the next two weeks, before the next episode. I've got a work thing I've got to take care of. But it's come together pretty well, actually. Yeah. [00:48:10] Kristin: Yeah, it's really impressive, and that's just a nice little accessibility perk that we can add. [00:48:16] Drew: Yeah, and something that also allows us to see what we've covered previously. [00:48:21] Kristin: Yes, search so that we don't get too repetitive. It's probably good. Yeah, that's always it. [00:48:25] Drew: Yeah, that's always an important part of any sort of free-form podcast like this, I think. So, no, I think those are the highlights. We've got some exciting other work that's going to be coming out to you guys in the next couple of weeks. [00:48:41] Kristin: Yeah, and we can't even really tease some of it. No, no, no. [00:48:43] Drew: So, you know, you've heard us talk about some of it, and we'll have an episode about Against the Storm. [00:48:50] Kristin: Yep, and haven't picked a date for that yet, but as soon as I edit it, it'll be just sitting there waiting for me to pick that moment. [00:48:58] Drew: Exactly. And yeah, but there'll also be something even more exciting than that coming out soon. So, you know, stay tuned. Yeah, keep looking at your, keep hitting refresh on your podcast reader. [00:49:33] Drew: I think that's everything. So until next time. [00:49:36] Kristin: Just keep digging! [00:49:38] Kristin: And now you know why.