My most recent attempt at Dwarf Fortress is slowly unravelling. My fortress of 200 dwarves is in the beginning stages of an emo death spiral. Food production has been interrupted. Tantrums are resulting in assaults. Soap has run out and infections are claiming many of those wounded in the assaults or by some of the forgotten beasts roaming in the lower caverns.
Of course any DF player knows, “losing is fun”
It was one of my better attempts. I achieved a few firsts in this game: First fortress over 250; my max population was 270. First fortress to make use of adamantite. First fortress to see a dwarf elevated to nobility; we had a baroness for a short time. I built up five squads and defeated three ambushes in no time without losing a single troop, mostly this is due to my use of the military schedule and assigning patrol routes for the first time in a game.
With all the firsts and wild success over nearly 2 weeks of play you may think I’d be sad to see the inevitable end of Ralshashdon and yes I am a little sad. However, part of me is not unhappy to see this particular fortress fold up. For several days now I have been focused on clothing production and old clothing trading.
Hence the title of this post. I have legendary clothiers producing wonderful clothing and a cleaning team collecting old clothes to be sent to the depot. My trader pawns the old clothes off on the elves and human caravans and gets more leather and cloth. I haven’t got any organic cloth production apart from adamantite clothing. Next game I may swap out chickens for sheep in my embark load-out and see if I can keep a wool production line going.
So soon, probably over the next 3-4 days the once vibrant and proud city of Ralshashdon will degrade into a backwater ruin filled with a few hangers on and eventually a Forgotten Beast of a well armed squad of goblins will claim it for their own…
