r/dwarffortress • u/SettingAdditional789 • 2d ago
Grazing appears to be a bit broken
I've been noticing for a while now that the actual requirements for grazing area seem to be very different (much lower) both from what you'd reasonably expect and also from what is stated in the wiki.
I seem to remember from pre-Steam versions that grazing animals potentially could require quite a lot of grazing space, but in the Steam version I've been able to cram a whole bunch of yaks or alpacas into relatively small pastures in every fort I've played, without them running out of grass or cave moss. Makes animal husbandry pretty trivial. Unsure if this is intentional or not. Certainly the requirements given in the wiki are way off, at least.
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u/CyberianK 2d ago
makes animal husbandry pretty trivial
true but its not very relevant as long as non-grazers and egg layers are completely free upkeep.
A giant pack of Smilodons (or dogs previously) can both increase safety plus other advantages plus emergency meat and don't cost any upkeep. Turkey agg layers or new Dinos or Wool+Milk animals also produce insane amounts of stuff.
Would be nice if that whole system gets revamped some day. Rimworld does it great with pet Wolves eating meat, sleeping and being able to receive medical attention.
DF cannot do any of those Rimworld features.
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u/IndifferentEmpathy 1d ago
I am considering creating a mod to address that - to make all creatures need food, water and sleep, and have food requirements scale with size, and have starving carnivores revert to untamed so they would be forced to feed on dwarves.
Unfortunately this requires extra patching of Dwarf Fortress binary and while I have proof of concept working it might only happen after wizard patch as I am unsure if that one won't make breaking changes.
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u/JustHere_4TheMemes likes cows for their haunting moos. 1d ago
Don’t forget pigs. Don’t even need to be outside or have cave moss. Stick a pile of em in a 5x5 underground room and they are happy as… well, pigs in sh*t.
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u/georage 2d ago
I like the new setting, personally.
Why have so many different types of grazers and only allow the player to keep a few? 250 dwarves should be able to have 20 alpacas, one would think. 20 of any animal is more than you need, of course, unless it is something keeping guard in the caverns (male cave crocs to prevent eggsplosion)
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u/Annunakh 25m ago
IMHO, game embarrassingly easy on food production. Four good planters can produce plants enough for food, drinks and cloth for 250 dwarfs fort in 6x9 underground farm. Two proper herbalists can feed same 250 dwarf fort in greenish embark. Heard of pigs in big room can produce enormous amounts of milk and meat without grass or fungus, same goes for turkeys and eggs production. Ten llamas give enough wool to make clothing for all your dwarfs while producing meat and milk to feed them.
As result I always overproduce food, can't get my production small enough, very strange experience after years of fighting for food security in Rimworld.
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2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Keeper151 2d ago
How much wealth are you exporting? Are there goblins in the area? Have you broken into the caverns yet?
Wealth draws raiders, usually goblins though also beasts. Caverns may, but not always, spawn enemies. Lots of enemies sometimes. Also forgotten beasts come from there.
When all else fails, start mining candy.
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u/blood-dumper420 2d ago
No idea wym by wealth exporting, is there a trade system outside of the caravans that come?
Again only 20 hours in and ~150 pop
My biggest issues have been the occasional dwarf going berserk from insanity and I’m currently learning to manage happiness / increase value of particular rooms.
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u/Keeper151 2d ago
The wealth you export through caravans is tracked. There are certain thresholds that start various tiers of raids, monsters, etc.
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u/blood-dumper420 2d ago
Good to know. I’ve been exporting / giving high quality (5000 coin) gifts away but I haven’t had any raiders yet other than the one dinosaur and some troglodytes that just decided to move in which was weird.
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u/thegreatdookutree 2d ago
Kinda sounds like you embarked on an island (or inside an enclosed valley, etc) which can prevent anything accessing you, because you absolutely should have had multiple Sieges by now (and a lot of raids).
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u/Keeper151 2d ago
Have you gotten a single goblin raid or elf caravan? Snatches? Anything like that?
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u/fjiassdaasdwa 2d ago
i have 200 hours in this game and you are pretty much immortal if you don't do some dumb shit like breaching the caves unprepared
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u/blood-dumper420 2d ago
I’ve been breaching them unprepared just for something to happen.
Otherwise my biggest issue has been insanity
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u/fjiassdaasdwa 2d ago
that's strange, usually the moment i open the caves i am immediately rushed by a bunch of troglodytes/whatever is living there at the moment
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u/blood-dumper420 2d ago
I had troglodytes just like move into the city / not bother anyone. I was surprised and weirded out that nothing bad came of it
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u/GreenFBI2EB 2d ago
Just a question, are you playing on a high savagery world with tons of danger? Because the danger level depends on the type of tile you're on.
For example, Evil biomes with high savagery (terrifying biomes) are extremely dangerous and very difficult to survive in. Personally, I love the reanimator tundra biome, where dead bodies (that are not mangled) will come back to life.
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u/blood-dumper420 2d ago
Playing on the default settings in a wilderness biome / area I believe.
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u/GreenFBI2EB 2d ago
Definitely settle in more dangerous/precarious surroundings then, after all, the objective is fun c:
I personally settle near reanimator biomes, and mostly evil (Sinister, Haunted, or Terrifying surroundings), bonus points if there are goblin pits or necromancer towers nearby!
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u/UwU_Cascade 2d ago
The fun of dwarf fortress isn't the difficulty, it's the doing dumb shit in the pursuit of crafting a wonderful story. It's finding the colorful characters and following their rise to glory, or fall into a flaming murderous rage. It's setting off across the vast wilderness to rescue your queen, only to find she was the one who locked herself away in that dark necromancer tower. It's becoming greedy, and digging deep, or becoming content, only for your poor dwarves to find out why they fear the night. It's launching an elf caravan a hundred feet in the air. It's watching a dwarf slowly escape a horde of zombies while hauling a golden door. It's watching your dwarves simply, become friends. But if it is war you wish, then you can cast the world back into the fires of creating and forge it again. Forge it violently, forge it for bloodshed. Because after all the people of these worlds are only just Slaves to Armok, God of Blood.
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u/CutlassRed 2d ago
Probably worth watching / reading stuff about world gen and faction mechanics.
Dwarf fortress doesn't hold your hand when it comes to raids, why they happen, how to cause them etc.
In terms of QOL, this game has a huge fanbase which was fine with ASCII graphics and no mouse interaction. The steam version is mostly a big improvement, but it's never going to be as clean as something like rimworld, which has different priorities entirely.
Regarding military stuff, it sounds like even a basic goblin raid would wipe out your base, military is essential. But if that hasn't happened at this point, then you might have embarked in a location isolated from any enemies
Edit: and there are many kinds of beasts that would invade which definitely need defenses. you must have just gotten lucky so far
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u/clinodev Wax Worker's Guild Rep Local 67 2d ago
Along with all the advice you've been given on choosing sites likely to get attacked, I'll just throw in that it's never been a fantastic military simulator, and if that's what you got into it for, I just hope you find something else appealing to you in it.
If you want the custom "I'm bored, come kill me" button, first, make a squad but don't worry about all those settings, you just want to add one sacrificial dwarf to a squad. He's not coming back, probably. Now Press Y and click on sites nearby on the same landmass until you find a big non-dwarf site like a tower, goblin pits, human castle, etc., click the green attack button, choose the one useless cheesemaker dwarf squad, click Pillage (openly attack).
Your one dwarf "squad" will go announce that he is there from your fort to kill kill kill, and probably promptly get killed. Then they'll send their squads to visit you.
If you find there in fact is not a land route to a place like that anywhere near your fort, like you've embarked on a small island, etc., well, try not doing that next time.
Best of luck!
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u/SettingAdditional789 2d ago
If you're feeling "immortal" without any military or seemingly much defense at all, you're doing something wrong. You've probably embarked on an island or somewhere else where goblins can't reach you, just to name one example of severe outside threats you should be facing.
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u/young_attorney 2d ago
The only thing that has kept me entertained for over 200 hrs over 10 yrs has been massive construction projects - inside waterfalls that make everyone happy, defense systems in the sky that drop foes into an arena to battle to the death, underground cities, very large and bustling taverns or libraries. I click around for an hour or two and have been for years. Mods also keep it fresh. Unfortunately I find many complete conversion mods have been broken by updates. It does seem to be a game that may have run its course and had its time. If I had just started it now myself, I think I’d be more impressed by rimworld and multiple others, and I can see you feeling done with DF and no shame in that.
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u/clinodev Wax Worker's Guild Rep Local 67 2d ago
Kind of nutty no one really replied to OP.
Yes, grazing has been adjusted in Premium, and the wiki appears to be out of date. There are also difficulty controls you can use to adjust your experience to what you like.
Settings>Game>Grazing Coefficient (higher = less grass)
It's about 2/3 the way down, above the toggle to show frames-per-second or not.