Dwarf Fortress - Crossbows and Marksdwarves (Complete Guide/Tutorial)
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2024
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Dwarf Fortress - Crossbows and Marksdwarves (Complete Guide/Tutorial)
#dwarffortress #tutorial #crossbow - Ігри
Finally started focusing on these on the 100th+ fortress lol. Perfect timing
A whole new woorrrrrrlll
I've been using marksdwarves since the initial Steam release, somehow not running into the problems people had on those early versions that are fixed now. I've got a few observations to add.
1. The archery targets aren't actually necessary. They can shoot at a wall and still function just fine. That said, they're very cheap so there isn't a whole lot of reason not to use them unless you wanted to get fancy and have custom statues made and make the dwarves practice on them.
2. When building a pillbox/archery tower/what have you, you'll want to have the marksdwarves one z level above the plane of combat. Most people will do this intuitively, but for the wrong reason. This z level DOESN'T increase range, it actually decreases it slightly. That said, bolts are much more likely to be recoverable since they dropped a z-level. It's the same principle that makes the range design work.
I think it also helps protect better against return fire from ranged enemies, but I'm not as certain on that. It is possible to lose dwarves to a lucky enemy shot thru fortifications, but on the whole it's a lot safer than melee.
3. Blind dwarves ignore the crossbow direction on ranges! At least, so I've been told. I haven't ran into many blind dwarves, but it makes sense that they would make for poor shots.
4. I don't *think* material makes a big difference on crossbows unless your dwarves decide to use it as a club. I generally use copper for that reason. That said, I'm less sure on this one.
5. While somewhat ineffective against undead, crossbows are still good against undead experiments. Haven't tried them on clowns, though.
6. Use bait animals to bring enemies in range. Basically anything works. Otherwise sieges might wait on the edge of the map, too far away for crossbow bolts to hit them.
Hope this helps! Marksdwarves are the best way to thin down those massive goblin sieges that hit sometimes outside of some sort of stupid dwarven trick, like magma.
Things can only shoot through a fortification if they're directly next to it, unless they're legendary archers. So you just have to make sure enemies can't stand next to fortifications, and your crossbow dwarves can't _not_ stand next to them.
For bonus points, you make sure nothing can get los on any of your marksdwarves without placing itself in range of all of them. That way if a legendary archer does come along (an elf, for instance) he can't stand at extreme range and pick off your dwarves one by one through the fortifications. He gets mowed down in a hail of bolts before he can do much damage.
@@jeffjones7108 How does one achieve the last point? I guess a wall just within the range of the dwarves so that anyone who wants to shoot has to go inside it?
@@mironbarabakh5970 Sort of. A cavern, underground. One big murder room. In the middle of the cavern is a tower full of marksdwarves. It might help to give you a visual aid, since it is a little tricky to describe. Go to the video "Gandalf VS The Balrog (4K) EXTENDED : A Demon Of The Ancient World". Go to 1:31. Now imagine that they've just walked down a plain set of stairs direct to the surface. Or a 3-wide trade ramp to the surface. On the other side of the bridge is the fortress entrance.
And as they run out onto the bridge, imagine a tower rising out of the abyss, close but not connected. As soon as they emerge from the tunnel, everyone in the tower has clear los on them. There's no cover, and no way into the tower from the cavern. The tower is floor-to-ceiling, and the only way into it is from a room above the cavern.
That's the basic idea. There's a bottom to the cavern though -- the drop is 6 z-levels. Which is enough to hurt a bit but not to kill. That's where all the invaders end up, at which point it's just archery training. They have nowhere to hide. And when they're all dead, you open a little gate in the side of the cavern floor and your dwarves hurry out to clean up.
That's the basic idea. I've added a bunch of features to make it work better (eg the path winds around the tower instead of just going past it) but that's a never-ending process with Dwarf Fortress. I'm happy with the design though, and since it's made underground you can pretty much blueprint it. It needs solid rock, but other than that it doesn't need any favourable terrain.
And the coolest thing is that you can multi-purpose it. Dig your caverns entrances into the killing room floor, so anything that comes up from the caves has to run the gauntlet, just like an above-ground invader would. Though if you do that, I recommend a drawbridge that can seal off the above-ground passage. You probably don't want forgotten beasts roaming around above-ground. Or maybe you do? Also an option.
I have a fort where I found a ruin with kobolds and a lot of weapon traps. So I disassembled them and get a lot of mechanism, weapons and bows with arrows.
So I made a dwarf archer squad. Really cool.
There was also a room with lots of treasures. Didn´t know you could find all of that on your map.
Lucky! You settled on a kobold lair. Very cool.
I've been playing for about 10 years off and on and Marksdwarves have always been such a staple for me (as long as they're not broken by bugs). They're so effective when you put them together carefully that in many forts half or more of my military are Marksdwarves and they end up getting the vast majority of the kills. I love having a kill zone hallway at my entrance with Marksdwarves looking down from a couple z levels above (so enemy ranged fighters can't get right up to the fortifications, which would let them shoot in, only highly skilled ranged fighters can fire through a fortification without being right next to it) and just demolishing invaders. I'm so glad they fixed them because they've always been such a favorite part of fort defense for me, probably second only to lava.
Your commitment to material for this game is outstanding. I seem to have picked the most peaceful location possible for my first fort, and have yet to need any military. Yet here I am.
Im really new at the game and the trench in front of the target was huge.
Thank you very much for the video sir!
Very valuable and detailed guide. Thank you.
Thanks for the tutorial!
I've been fiddling with marksdwarves since my last fort had a fire beast that melee squads wouldn't even go near. I keep running into a few small issues, notably cancelation spam of "equipment mismatch". They seem quite helpful in general but expensive due to needing to replace ammo frequently.
Gunna be setting up more crossbow squads with this newest venture given our vulnerability to aerial invaders maybe they'll get lucky and shoot a forgotten beast so its wings break and it falls some dozen z levels to its death.
Dude thanks for making this!
I make a 1-tile wide corridor overlooking the 'bridge' that leads into my fort. The bridge is actually just a ribbon of land suspended over a 6 z-level drop. The only way into the corridor is from the room above, by stairs. So the marksdwarves can't enter melee combat. The most they can do is climb the stairs to safety. I make the whole corridor a bolt stockpile so the dwarves don't need to move to reload, and the room above the corridor is a huge bolts stockpile too. Just to be safe. The corridor is also a barracks, so when I want a squad to take up sentry duty guarding the entrance I assign them to train in that barracks. They don't spar in it iirc, but they do continue to do individual drills and demonstrations. And the second anything hostile steps into sight on the bridge they stop their training to immediately fill it with bolts.
The whole room is essentially a huge killing ground. The 'bridge' winds around the corridor (I think of it as a tower), with a gap of about 5 tiles. If a monster makes it all the way around the path, it finds itself in my main barracks with all my melee dwarves waiting for it. They never do though, since I have a line of super crappy weapon traps at the very end of the path. The traps make the invaders dodge onto the 6 z-level drop, which hurts them a little but doesn't kill them. They then have nowhere to go except up a long ramp on the side of the room, which takes them to the very start of the 'bridge'. So they have to run the gauntlet all over again. This whole time they've had no cover from my marksdwarves, who are shooting down at them from the tower. Since the tower is only 1 tile wide and completely surrounded by fortifications, the dwarves can shoot out both sides of it. So they have no down-time. Everywhere in the huge room is within their range and within their line of sight. But nothing can reach them. Not even flying creatures.
It's a bit awkward to explain. There's a lot more to it than I've covered, but this comment is long enough. It makes a lot more sense when you see a screenshot of it, but can't post screenshots here.
I forgot to mention that the entrance (including the bridge, chasm and tower) is all underground. All of the area around the tower is channeled out, except the bridge. It's basically a huge artificial cavern. So when I say the only way into the tower is via stairs from the room above, I'm talking about the room above the cavern ceiling. Which leads directly to my main dining hall, so my soldiers can get a quick bite to eat mid-siege if necessary.
Now crossbows dwarfs just seem to work! I set up in a savage wilds biome, and they proved extremely useful in scaring away the wildlife if I needed to do a quick blitz for lumber!
In my latest fort, which is about year 40 now, I started out having great success with marksdwarves. But somewhere along the line squads simply stopped picking up bolts. Im not sure if I've done something or its a bug. Even after disbanding and starting new squads, they just won't pick up bolts. Or they'll pick up a single bundle once, then never again.
Another issue that happened recently is the channel trick in front of the targets stopped working like that. The couple bolts they fire at targets always disappear. Again, worked when I started the fort!
I kind of feel like I need to retire this fort (for many reasons) but I just can't bring myself to do it! 😂
I just set it up as per your instructions, they fire all their bolts, but they completely ignore the stockpile when they need to refill. They may pick up a couple from the trench, but then run off to a workshop that has a stock of bolts in it. The stockpile in the archery range is the only one set to hold bolts.
I like to position the marksdwarves training area with an open roof and near my overworld entrance so they can take care of the eventual small flyer, works like a charm.
So whenever I chose soldiers, I always only based it on their bravery. Is there other factors I should look for?
i look for their strength because weak Dwarfs in Armor are soooo slow that i cant stand them falling behind wherever you send the Squad
There are plenty of factors but the main ones are strength and beliefs. You don't want dwarfs that value peace/tranquility or disdain sacrifice/prowess. A weak dwarf can be trained but their upper limit will be lower than anybody. So, average stat or higher are the best candidates.
@@DiamantDogma When you get them to sparring, which takes a while, strength goes up pretty quickly if i'm not mistaken.
@@ungeimpfterrusslandtroll7155 it's based on their skills. sparring causes their combat skills to increase more quickly than other forms of training which causes their strength/endurance etc to increase.
Depends on your needs. If you are being attacked and have to throw a squad together to hold the fortress, the best dwarves for the job are the ones who are already strong, have high endurance, have some sort of skill, etc.
On the long run it will pay more having military dwarves that have the right personality and atributes, even if they are currently weak. These atributes can be improved with training. Overall is very difficult to change a coward dwarf or a stress prone dwarf nature, and they will be the first ones to give you trouble after the first few battles.
What I like to do is after training a couple of dwarves, I check who was the one who improved the most, and have that dwarf be the militia's captain, and then if I want to create another squad, I promote one of the veterans of the 1st squad to be the new squad captain.
That tower design is quite lovely. I may yoink it for my bridge builders.
Do they always grab the highest value ammunition in the entire fort or just nearby ammo? I'm wondering if I can use cheaper ammo in a stockpile near the archery range and steel ammo near where it will be used militarily. If it was in the entire fort, it would also raise issues having multiple crossbow areas set up, so I'm guessing that's not it. If one area had a stack of steel bolts and another area only had iron, you'd have dwarves running halfway across the map to grab the steel bolts rather than the iron ones right there.
thanks for this
Np
6:50 my bolt drop 2 z levels, not stopping on the first floor they are supposed to stop. I floored the gorund also didnt work. is this a bug
I didn't quite follow the part about boots and toggling whether they swap clothes or not. Will someone please explain that?
Does it matter if the bolts are all in single stacks instead of stacks of 25? I kept getting issues with my dwarves not picking up ammo, wonder if this might be the cause
It does not matter, dwarves pick up ammo when its there and they need it. Make sure they are set to ready or they put down their ammo. Make sure ammo is close and assessable.
I wanted to set up a marksdwarf squad, only have 2 squads with random weapons now. The archery range with the trench looks sweet!
There is better way to order marksdwaves. Use burrows. You don't have to make their towers one tile wide that way and can order them fast to what to defend. I have multiple burrows around my fortress setup for them. All one tile wide.
My preferred method is to designate their firing stations as barracks where they have training enabled(without archery targets), that way they occupy their station with relatively high occupancy and do drills and demonstrations. Keeping dwarves on station, training to fill the time is an efficent use of dwarven time. When they arent on station with training they are helping out elsewhere in the fort or taking care of their needs.
I like to build towers, have a barracks at the top with my marksdwarves and then just always have a rotating squad training up there. Makes them great at spotting intruders and stops them from getting into too much trouble.
Question here, i have a squad of marks dwarfs they are in leather armor and have a bit of training on them, outside of a fortification they shoot their bolts inside though they dont ive looked at the items they are carrying and it does not show bolts like in this video. Any fix to this? My stocks show plenty of wood bolts,the only thing i could think of is a lack of leather backpacks. Also in the armour loadout page the icon for bolts go from green to yellow at times as do the quiver.
If you click on their inventory do you see bolts at all or is there no bolts in their inventory
@@BlindiRL no bolts at all. I thought it might be a bug so on several times I checked the integrity of my local files on steam and that says it's all good. My thoughts were some pathing issue or the dwarfs had not yet picked them up as sometimes they would go to the station area then run back for more of their gear, so I put them to ready at all times and made only one stock pile for bolts in a close area similar to your video. Thanks for replying love your content.
Just checking, but you know they need quivers, not backpacks, right? Quivers carry bolts/arrows, backpacks carry other gear/food/drink.
@@SolaAesir yeah they were the first thing I had ready for them. I ended up download df hack and it fixed itself after that
Great job! Thank you for your time! By the way, is there any way to assemble single bolts into a bundle. I read in comments below you said it is ok with singles, but.
Yeah that would be a really nice feature. Sadly it's not possible at the moment.
I just set up my range like you did and when my copper bolts fall down the hole they disappear. The only thing that's different from your's is I have flooring in the bottom of my hole, and it's facing south not west.
Any ideas why my bolts are getting destroyed but your's didn't?
*Edit: I destroyed the flooring in the hole down below and the bolts are still being destroyed.
What's below the floor at the bottom? I wonder if they are clipping to lower floors.
Shit. That would be my stone stockpile with tons of bolts just chilling in it.
I didn't even think to look down 2 floors.
What’s the best way to select dwarfs for the army. The gui dosnt give you trait details when your doing squad selection. Do you need to go through your dwarfs list and make note of names one by one?
I read the names when they come in via waves and add (army) in brackets to the name as future applications. Hopefully we'll get proper sorting soon. DF hack has some but it's not perfect.
thanks ya i hope Qol is the first thing the guys work on after adventure mode. event basic searching isnt there in vanilla
@@BlindiRL
I had an issue today where marksdwarf refused to use my steel bolts for practice after I'd dumped the wooden ones. I'm still not sure what went wrong. They practiced with wood bolts fine, but since I wanted them ready to fight at a moment's notice, I dumped the wood bolts. This somehow resulted in them refusing to train at all, but they wouldn't pick up the steel bolts and carry them either...
Thanks blind
Np
I find marksdorfs are easier to place when you have them defend a burrow instead of go to a rally point. I'm not sure if they'd restock on bolts in this case, though.
They do if bolts are available
thank you and good night.
Night 😴
Does it pay off to have Marksdwarves also work as hunters? I often just turn my hunters into marksdwarves.
why the shooting place should be 1 tile wide?
They shoot at the wall. The targets are considered a wall. The trench catches them.
@@BlindiRL ah no, I don't mean the practicing target, I meant the actual fighting corridor
but I got the info that it's because xbowers less than elite can't shoot trough fortifications
Training is the problem I'm facing since the update. They go training, shoot at the target until his stack of bolts runs out, grab back the bolts from the ditch like in the video, then they go away to the tavern or temple/etc to never return to training again.
They will train, but they take turns. Let them take their breaks and then continue training. Heck I even like to link the range to the tavern and the tavern goers hang out and watch while the dwarves take turns training.
I train any dwarf for combat. Danger had no preference, and a dwarf can either be a victim, or they can fight for their own survival.
Quiver is important for new players to know.
I thought they couldn't shoot at targets over a channeled area. Great to see that's not true anymore
When on earth was that true? No point in time that I remember at least.
@@BlindiRL Pre-steam. Back when you picked the archery target and then expanded out the room for each target. I'd channel behind the targets to collect arrows and only put a target every other block so they shoot past, hit the wall and fall.
Huh. They used to work with this exact setup for me. Odd I wonder what was wrong 🤔
@@BlindiRL not saying it wasn't fixed by v50
Might also be if you dig the channel after establishing the zone made it work. I'll have to load up an old game and play a bit
Either way I'm glad to see I'm not restricted (real or imagined)
:)
I haven't had much trouble yet finding dwarves who enjoy fighting. My current civilization has a strong culture oriented around fighting and feats of martial prowess. Some of my dwarves prefer war over peace and even "dream of bathing the world in chaos." Though, I don't suppose I can blame them since they came from a parent civilization that has since been wiped off the face of the earth. There is no royalty, no migrants, and no hope of salvation from the savagery that has killed every civilized creature over the course of 300 years. Despite that the world has progressed from an Age of Death to an Age of Dwarves to a (current) Golden Age.
A handy tutorial! A shame I can't see it
Goldstar
Thanks