The IRONY Of This Being One Of The Only Books They'll Put On A Fucken Shelf

Oh hi. Um. Just ignore me. I’m just gonna leave this here. Uh, enjoy at your leisure.

I’m willing to bet it won’t be long before there’s fanfic recreations of points 12 and 14.

Some trivia, Alex told on BigFest today:

The way the crew usual way of coming up with a story was to think of some normal situation and then add something magical and crazy. “Sock Opera” was used as the example: first they came up with an idea of Mabel trying to impress her puppet-obsessed crush with puppet show, and then they began brainstorming weird things that might happen. Some of the earlier ideas included Mabel getting super-knitting powers and making living sweaters, and puppets coming alive and attacking Mabel (Alex even made a drawing of that).

Soos never tasted alcohol in his life. As for Stan… Well, there’s the reason his nose is this color.

There will be more about Ford’s (mis)adventures beyond the portal in the Journal. Alex couldn’t talk about it much, but he gave a little teaser: Ford was thrown into a dimension, that was controlled by Bill (or his lackeys); there, his top priorities were: 1) learn to survive, 2) make a weapon capable of destroying Bill; on his journeys Ford made many friends and even more enemies and eventually became an interdimensional criminal. There will be a wanted poster for Ford in the upcoming Journal (and even more “Rick and Morty” references)

The journal will also have more info on Ford’s & McGucket’s adventures during their youth.

One of the chapters in the upcoming choose-your-own-adventure book will reveal something important about Bill’s dying message.

Giffany is still alive, she managed to import here code somewhere, before her disc was destroyed. Again, more on that in the Journal.

Originally, Soos was supposed to go by his full name (Jesus), but Disney advised against it, thinking that some people would accuse the show of blasphemy. But the decision to give Soos shortened name backfired, since many people thought his name was “Zeus”.

Originally Bill didn’t have a surname, but Disney again advised against it, since they were afraid that people behind the character “Mr. Bill” might sue them for copyright infringement. So Alex came up with the name “Bill Black”, he thought it sounded cool and mysterious, but it turned out there was a some real guy with that name, and Disney was afraid he might sue them. All the other names Alex came up with were rejected for the same reason. Eventually, one late night, Alex was coming up with ciphers for the upcoming episode and thought “What if I just name him Cipher?”. The rest is history.

There was a scene in “Sock Opera”, that had to be cut for time, where Bill claimed, he was behind many great minds of the history, like, for example, helping Isaac Newton discover gravity and helping Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing.

Bill can never go back to the place he came from. Alex also hinted that there may be more about his origins in the Journal, although not much, since Bill is the kind of character that benefits from being mysterious.

Dipper’s real name is NOT Michael, Alex, Mabel or Bill.

There was supposed to be a sub-plot in the finale, where clones #3 & 4 would try to kidnap Dipper and go back home with Mabel instead of him, but it was cut due to being too confusing.

Alex is talking with Disney about making some Gravity Falls comics, although nothing is concrete yet.

One of the ideas for the sixth “Mabel’s Guide” short was “Mabel’s Guide to Death”, in which her pet caterpillar gets eaten by a bird, and she talks about coping with death. The idea was rejected for being too morbid. The replacement idea - “Mabel’s Guide to Smiles” - was deemed offensive by Disney, since Mabel was going to visit local prison and try to teach inmates to smile. Although Alex might upload the storyboards for this rejected short online some day.

There is a post in r/dwarffortress I always think about from time to time, it shows a maze the poster made for a minotaur they caught. It's a neat project for your fortress, you can use it as a dungeon to throw any prisoners into it and watch them struggle to navigate until their inevitable demise, pretty fun stuff. The post also shows the Minotaur's attributes and skills, and she is described as a Grand Master Observer (which in Dwarf Fortress all Minotaurs are) and also "good with language" traits which often Scholars have. A comment suggested as a joke making some office space for her and supplying her with writing materials. Minotaurs can't write (not that I've checked myself), but the concept alone is hilarious can you imagine? being a fearsome minotaur, and going by your day smashing people's skulls and stuff and then writing in your little diary about it? or writing about your existence serving the sole purpose of killing people the little bearded men throw down there simply for entertainment, you know just a cow-girl doing cow-girl things. I swear Dwarf Fortress produces top-quality writing material sometimes

“When you’re about to sneeze, but don’t want to sneeze like a kitten in front of your crush”

INTRODUCING: DIPPER THE CUTE PATOOT

I can add a small bit of info on her. I believe she’s lived in my fort since 106-107, but I’m not exactly sure, I’ll try to crack open legends later to search for her & Kulet later. I’m pretty sure the 2 other older kids are also born in the fort?

As for the small potrait/fort sprites, in my experience DF Premium only generates a dwarf sprite for a creature if it visits one of your forts or is encountered in adventure mode. In my experience I can’t say I’ve seen a creature in adventure mode and then checked them in a fort without them being there, like a relative. As far as I know all my “living relatives” for my dwarfs that have sprites all migrate with them.

Ustuth has a few relatives and such that are historical figures without sprites, and I’ve never seen a creature in fort mode that wasn’t a historical figure, only in Adventure Mode have I encountered non-historical figures with sprites. Presumably because all figures at a Fort automatically get names in case you click them and therefore are saved as historical figures

Did you find your missing baby?

Not yet. Kulet is still missing. I admit my schedule has been rough for playing DF as of recent, and my most recent time has been spent on a new fort (The Sea Adventure, a Sinister Ocean/coastal embark). Kulet is from my 4th Fort (Idk the name it was too long). Short summary of my forts though:

1st Fort, Bustmoment: -Tutorial embark. Went fine initially, set up large bedroom complex, good dining hall, and food/alcohol production. Decent traps for surface entrance. Lack of understanding of how Fortifications work lead to bad usage of them, and ultimately made the surface defenses scary to operate. Meanwhile I breached the first cavern layer and only the first, and got involved in a nasty war on Olm people, that kept dragging my dwarves into the lake. Eventually after losing a major military engagement, I dropped the save and made a new world. (I didn't know about Retirement at the time)

2nd Fort, Steelfortress: -The infamous war on birds started here. Embark was a neutral badlands with high savagery & a light aquifer. Aquifer posed no challenge and I was within a year having settled with all three caverns pierced, and a decent magma forge set up. Traps and such were more aggressively deployed, and there were more than a few battles (Internally referred to as the "Great Cavern Wars" against Ant-People) to carve out certain areas underground for farming. Ultimately what drove me to abandon this fort was a 9 month long battle against giant flying agitated wildlife. During that I built up a decently large and armored military, which while incapable of fending off the birds, was apparently itching for World Domination. (More on that later. Though also on another post of mine)

3rd Fort, "Lake of Something" (Name forgotten again): -Having felt a High Savagery was too much & Light aquifers too easy, I searched for a heavy aquifer and got a lake location I liked. After starting the first year, and trying to dig down, I almost immediately hit the heavy aquifer and got stuck for over a year trying to get things stable, and set up a method to pierce the aquifer before beginning to build the fort proper. Unlike the previous forts which had surface trading depots, I decided to move this one underground. Like other forts before and after, I then began to quickly dig towards the bottom, and set up small areas within each cavern to work in, or blocked them off after discovering them. Ultimately nothing particularly notable happened that sticks out in memory, but the fort was ultimately abandoned due to the Cave Adaptation fix update rolling around. Knowing most dwarves had likely developed it in this fort, I decided to take a break from Fortress mode, and play some Adventure mode.

(Which I decided to retire my second fort, as my save of it was in the worst condition of the three, and I originally wanted to retire the fort by "Succumbing to internal invaders" or similar but a standard retirement was an option and I viewed as more desirable)

4th Fort, Desert Mines of Good (or something): -After playing around in Adventure Mode in the 2nd fort's world, I got an itch to start a new fort again, and was talking with my brother. We ultimately came to pick a fort in a Good and Neutral biome cross between "Desert?", badlands and Grasslands. Among world history, as it shares a previous fort, I decided to embark from that Civ again. Just to find out when the Liason came by, that 2 of my 3 dwarven neighbors were at war with me. Going through Legends mode further told me it was my Civ that seemed to have started the war, with all attacks coming from my prior fortress after I retired it. The whole time I was trying to rescue kidnapped children from Goblins in Adventure Mode, it turns out my fort was just attacking EVERYBODY. I played this one until around 1-2 weeks ago, when I began wanting to try messing with some mods for the first time.

4.5th fort, Some volcano Fort I think?: -I had a friend over and I was talking about DF, as you do, and he got curious about the game and wanted to see what it was like. So I booted the game up, showed world gen, we picked an embark, and then retired it to go to it in Adventure Mode. We then made an ideal character for him, and then foolishly rolled up a Worm Man with over 100 pet worms, and crashed the game. I haven't talked with said friend yet, and was gonna play in that world when talking with them.

5th Fort, The Sea Adventure: -That leaves us with our current fort. It's a sinister oceanic embark, and I brought a few adventurers there, including a Dwarf-me, a dwarf-version of my brother, and an anomalocaris (one of the mods) woman of one of my roommates (And their cat as a pet cat, who died to Goblins). Originally the plan was to grow Sliver Barbs & catch Precambrian Arthropods for an aquarium, but I don't know how to do the later half. The Roc attacks have been on this fort.

Got tagged by @noahwithaw (As seen above if you’re not blind)

Relationship Status: Has Girlfriend (As of October 1st, i.e. yesterday)

Favorite Colors: Colors along the blue green spectrum, to specifically name them, Cyan, Teal, and Turquoise.

Wake up time: Typically around 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. College is great for sleeping in.

Cats or Dogs: I prefer Cats to Dogs. There are a few breeds of Dog I really like (Yorkshire Terriers)

Coke or Pepsi: These two aren’t that different (I can typically tell the difference and really the only thing they affect is what other sodas come with them since Coke and Pepsi are a huge duopoly and such) though I personally prefer Pepsi, both for the other sodas that come with it, and just between Coke and Pepsi. Most Pepsi machines come with root beer (mug typically) so yeah, why am I going to drink Pepsi when rootbeer is an option?

Chapstick or Lipstick: What? Chapstick I guess? I mean why would I want to wear lipstick? I’m a guy. I barely even use chapstick (typically only when camping, and then I try to avoid using it because chapped lips are a sign of dehydration, which means if you drink enough water your lips don’t get chapped. So how I avoid using chapstick is by trying to drink more water. It works as long as water in is greater than water out).

Last Song I Listened To: Well I’ve typically got some music going on when I’m trying to focus on something so I had Lemon Demon’s “I Earn My Life” and at this point “Angry People” is playing and I’m having a hard time not laughing. “Evil Babies with guns. It’s completely normal.”

I’m not really planning on tagging anyone on this really. Most people I have that I follow/follow me, I either already know the answers to most of these, or they’ve just been asked by Noah, or, OR this is the one person I’m tagging, they’re @bumibomber.

Tagged by @k-omerebii aka my bae 
Rules: Tag 9-10 people you want to get to know better
 Relationship status: cuddling my pillow at night 
Favorite color(s): red, faded colours 
Wake up time: lol it rlly depends. School days = 6:45 am, weekends = 8+ am
Cats or dogs: dogs obviously but I rlly love kittens too
Coke or Pepsi: Pepsi 
Chapstick or lipstick: lipstick 
Last song you listened to: Here Comes a Thought from the show Steven Universe 💖

I tag: @hafizzzle @noahweidner and whoever wants to do this

Yes actually! That was part of 51.08 I think? It was a very recent change like 2-3 minor updates ago, I think it was 2 months now? It’s significantly more balanced, and I’ve got a 5 year fort and find it really isn’t that profitable to sell food anymore. Like the only meals that sell well are masterworks with huge serving numbers, and my cooks don’t make many of those. They make plenty of masterworks, and even use stuff like flour & cheese, which used to guarantee expensive meals, and my typical prepared food barrel is like 300-500 value. A far cry from the 3000-5000 days. I still make the meals and occasionally sell 1-2 of them, but you can no longer just buy out a caravan from meals alone. As much as it hurt my early game economy, it rewards diversifying your economy, and ironically I find it’s much easier to manage my forts when I can’t use food to explode the fort’s value for huge migrant waves. It took 5 years to grow to a duchy, and I still only have a population of 140 or so dwarves, and the goblin sieges are much smaller too. Granted I do get more titans and semi-mega beast attacks, but I feel a lot less strain on my military and fort. I still only really have one squad of half-competent axedwarves defending the fort, and they’re clad in a mishmash of junk. Too busy actually building the fort than having to focus on building a strong army to defend… fancy food.

It’s ironic how much I like that change despite having definitely abused the system historically. Nowadays I run like five different industries for my economy, chief among them a “distressed” clothing chain. I just really like setting up the whole tailoring and dyeing chains

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

Gabriel: If i put the word ‘Dark’ in front of that, will i still be able to transform?

Nooroo: …yes i suppose?

Gabriel: …Cool

This is so cute! If only this was how they’d done villagers in Minecraft, it’d be so adorable

Been in an equal minecraft and Animal Crossing mood so here’s some animal villagers designs for minecraft I thought would be fun!