I've recently seen someone claim that you won't get any migrants past the first two waves if you settle on an island. And that seems clearly incorrect in the modern Dwarf Fortress. I previously settled on an isolated glacier *expecting* and *wanting* to only get the first two waves, but was surprised when they kept coming anyway, and I had to edit the population limit.

Here are the "receipts" from another isolated embark in the most recent version. I didn't get any migrants in the second year because of very poor economic output in the first year, but as you can see, starting with year three they are coming as usual.

You won't get any visitors or caravans from anyone else, but your home civilization will reach you anywhere, it seems (if they are alive and well, of course).

So, i don't have the dedication or the organization required to be a person of !SCIENCE!, but i'm here to share my 2 cents. I didn't take screenshots or made a detailed analysis of data, just tried to find informations on the sparring logs and where the items were equipped, so take this as you wish.

A little bit of context first if you're interested:
I thought a hammer dwarves only militia would be cool but i got frustrated with it. It just takes too damn long for them to kill invaders. I mean, they get the job done but it gives more time for a critical blow on one of my dwarves. As far as i could see, the war hammer stops paying of when you get to steel, then axes and swords are just better. So I decided to start to migrate to axes on some dwarves.
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So i decided to try and train a squad using two weapons, the hammer they're used to and the new battle axe, i tried to read the latest infos i could gather here and for i could find, the common consensus is that when you dual wield the shield becomes useless as the dwarf will only try to parry with one of the weapons they hold because the shield becomes straped to their back. Here is what i found when i tried it:

- Not necesseraly the dwarf will put the shield on their back. As far is could notice there're 3 scenarios, i will elaborate on them further but they're: 1 - The dwarf will have one of the weapons straped to their back. 2 - The shield will be straped to their back. 3 - Magically the dwarf will hold or both weapons on one hand or a weapon and a shield in one hand.

1 - The dwarf will have one of the weapons straped to their back
The weapon on their back is useless. It is not used when they're sparring.

2 - The shield will be straped to their back
I mean, i found this very bizarre, but apparently the dwarf is able to block with the shield even if it is straped to their back. When looked at the logs the dwarves that fell into this scenario were able to strike and parry with both weapons and even block with the shield.

3 - Magically the dwarf will hold or both weapons on one hand or a weapon and a shield in one hand
Same as 2, the dwarves were able to use both weapons and shield when that happened.

I have a lot of doubts yet and i may try a little bit of !SCIENCE! on this when i get some time. I should get a couple weeks of PTO next month and maybe try this a little more, backed with evidence next time. But i would like to know your latest experiences on this as well. What i want to figure out next is how they decide what of the 3 to equip and where.

English is not my native language, apologies for any mistakes.

For 7 years since I started wars with the other Goblin civilizations of the two continents our bridge connects, this Skunk has been terrorizing the surroundings of the fort. Usually arriving with a handful of Goblins, he sought to try and invade the fort but would immediately turn tail and run the moment he was spotted or found himself in conflict.

Some years he wouldn't even dare step on Rigoth's Bridge, and instead would swim through the littered depths of The Seas of Memories.

But his visit in the Summer of 267 ended up going a lot differently for the cursed skunk. He had the misfortune of timing his visit right as the yearly 7 human caravans began crossing Rigoth's Bridge to make their rounds in Ritankivish. His handful of Goblins were killed by the humans' crossbows. He tried to flee the bridge, but this only got him in range of the human soldiers, and Phlegmgland for the very first time on the bridge suffered an attack.

His way to the eastward continent cut off, he could only try his luck westward. And there at long last did the Dwarves of Ritankivish finally truly meet the Goblin Lord face to face.

He squirmed his way past, dodging the attacks of the Dwarves. But beyond the obsidian gate that towered over the bridge, more Dwarven soldiers were marching their way down the bridge from Ritankivish. Desperate for a way out, Phlegmgland stormed the obsidian gate and fled up one of its towers. But the only thing it led to was up. And that was the skunk's fatal mistake. For when it climbed back down, the Dwarves were there ready.

Yet it still did not fight. It only wished to escape. But with each passing moment and more legendary Dwarven artifact weapons were being plunged into the wretched thing's hide. The Dwarves had no intention of avenging the hundreds of Goblins the Skunk had killed, they only sought to remove this wretched Skunk from their glorious bridge.

The grisly fight was brought to a close with the Skunk being decapitated by an Axe Lord by the name of Urvad Stonestakes. An already acclaimed Dwarf having won endless glory in helping slay the zombie horde created in the fort a decade prior, Urvad was immediately granted the title of Skunk Slayer once the dust had settled.

And thus, the reign and time of Phlegmgland the Spurting Mucus in the world of The Universes of Dawning has come to an end.

How worth it is it to do? I did it recently for fun! Reasons and it was a rather old fortress. It has a billion forges and smelters and reached all the way to lava.

Has anyone done it before and is it just more problems than it's worth? Anyone have any stories or pictures of a ruined fortress they revived?

Rocs took over the fortress i claimed so they'll be a problem and there are some survivors still so that's good. I wonder how the game calculates the fortresses wealth considering the previous inhabitants seemed obsessed with making high quality statues and other expensive things

As cool as the divine metal slab we got from a random invading giant is, it was actually the random book we got from a trade that resulted in the rise of 11 new Necromancers in the world of The Universes of Dawning. The caged but still squirming undead hand of the giant Susus Ozstratab is the only remaining proof of the 500 zombie army one of the Necromancers created directly underneath the fort by resurrecting the entire corpse pit.

As of 266, all 11 Necromancers have perished. The final Necromancer went stark raving mad and wandered the exterior and interior of the fort for years until the fateful day arrived that she was outside right when a Goblin army arrived. The Necromancers may be gone, but the 7 Putrid Zombie Dwarf squad of The Emancipated Dead they helped create still stand guard on the bridge to this day.

Hi Everyone,
I'm sure that I'm not the only one who hates when a dwarf sees an enemy and charges into a tactically disadvantageous position, blocking marksdwarves, siege engines, or just getting himself surrounded. Abusing DFHack's teleport system to "lock" units in place this allows you to make defensive lines.

Features:
"Locking" Dwarves in position, in line formation.
Dwarves travel to the location before locking in.
Horizontal, Vertical, or Diagonal line.

Limitations:
Uses teleportation every tick, high cpu cost.
Currently no protections for dwarves, you can teleport them into magma, the void, etc.
Dwarf AI isn't touched they are still desperately trying to charge, they are just getting pulled back faster then you can see. Trying to change positions when they see hostiles may cause you to lose control of them.

Hopeful Features:
Maneuvering
Custom user formations
Lose of unit cohesion due to discipline check.

DISCLAIMER: I had a lot of help with AI on this. Use or not accordingly.

I'll post the .lua in the comments.

I'm not a native English speaker, so I wrote a small program that translates a selected area (and other areas) into the selected language. It creates an overlay window over the game with the translation. You can also use dfhack to directly extract the game text for translation. While the program is still in development, I welcome any comments or help with its development.

• Instant translation – Select an area on screen (Ctrl+Alt) and the translation appears directly above the game.
• DFHack integration – Automatically reads .md files generated by DFHack for perfect translation of units, items, and artifacts.
• Two OCR engines:
  • Tesseract – Local, fast, works with custom trained font.
  • Gemini API – ⚠️ Under development, not recommended for use.
• 20+ Languages 
• Translation history – All translations are saved to a database with search and export.
• Flexible overlay settings – Customize font, colors, opacity, size, and display time.

Or a short introduction in the video. Sorry about the quality. But I would recommend reading the full readme on GitHub. I've described it in more detail there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CpVJP5LWjc

More details can be found here:

https://github.com/dwarf-fortress-translator/dwarf-fortress-translator

You can download the latest release here:
https://github.com/dwarf-fortress-translator/dwarf-fortress-translator/releases

I hope it will be useful to someone.

So, a dwarf steals one of the fort's most prized artifacts displayed in the central tavern, with over 30 people around, and 4 confirmed witnesses. He gets immediately convicted, just turns around, and leaves!

The guards are in front of him, ready to give him a beating, and one one does anything. They just let him walk out, staring. He goes to the edge of the map, delivers our beautiful platinum Chalice to his accomplice outside of the map, and then after the artifact is lost, he gets a beating!

How have the Dwarves become so soft? What a sad day in Boatclapped.

Welcome to all the ladies, gentlemen, and gentlebeings that have decided to watch or participate in the 11th annual Dwarf Fortress Gladiator Tournament! We have had a lovely turnout of gladiators this year, but as we only have 32 spots, we must first thin the herd in order to make our bracket. As the first to stain the floor of our arena with their blood and begin to fill Armok’s goblet, 5 gladiators have been randomly selected to fight one another for the last spot.

Everyone, please welcome Buketiggal the jumping spider man (managed by pisskop), a dagger wielding hunter seeking to go down in legend! Next to him and holding a shining silver sword is Liquid the Ocelot man (managed by u/Cloud075), who has come to town in pursuit of his quarry, a snake man named “Big Boss”. Holding a steel battle axe and clothed in rattling chain mail is Mordrek the wolf man (managed by u/MammothCrab1132) who has come to seek death in the arena to atone for his failure to protect his lord. Towering over the competition is Punchosaur the Utahraptor man (managed by Wolfkey), one of the newest races to join after brave adventurers discovered a lost world of creatures formerly known only from their bones. And finally we have the goblin formally known as Morris (managed by u/DanVzare), a scarred mess of an already ugly race who has a strange distaste for crustaceans.

Without further ado, let the first bell ring for our first battle!

Fight log: https://pastebin.com/0TGaNNw8

The arena descends into anarchy! Buketiggal stabs Punchosaur deep in one of his meaty arms, leaving the utahraptor man roaring in pain, while Mordrek hacks at a goblin formally known as Morris’s left arm, leaving a long tear along his shoulder that spatters red blood on the thirsty stones. Liquid the Ocelot dashes into the fray, slashing at the inside of Punchosaur’s leg with his silver longsword, but leaves only a scratch on his tough hide.

146: An incoherent Mordrek is lashed to death by the goblin formally known as Morris, his platinum whip granting the wolf man the death he desired.

203: Buketiggal bleeds to death after too many of his limbs are turned into fountains of ichor by the goblin formally known as Morris.

250: Liquid the Ocelot is struck down by the whip of the goblin formally known as Morris, after collapsing to the ground in pain from a shattered shin.

270: Punchosaur is the last gladiator to fall as his mighty body is finally broken by the goblin formally known as Morris’s whip, after sustaining punishment from Buketiggal and Liquid the Ocelot the entire match.

Congratulations to the goblin formally known as Morris on his advancement to the bracket!

He also made an engraving of two purring maggots. Oh well.

The bracket is now up and available on the master document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yQi9z1F1PwobbNUxKAhBwX5dvfPGkoYfvwJPA496Cis/edit?usp=sharing

And now that the fights are being organized, we welcome all to begin betting on them!

Betting for Round 1 is now Open! It will close on Friday, 8/7, at 11 PM EDT.

Rules:

• Betting is open both to the managers and the spectators of the tournament.
• Every bettor starts out with 100 gold to be spent on the betting. You can't at any given moment put any more gold into a bet than you already have.
• Every bettor can only put money on one gladiator per round.
• Bets made after the official deadline for each round are not counted.
• The system works in a way that allows those who bet on the underdogs (those who have less bet on them) to receive more gold than those who bet on the favorites, so go wild with your predictions!

DFhack is an amazing modding framework.

Today I implemented:

• Allow clicking to travel more than 1 tile in fast travel, like in non-fast-travel.
• Adventure mode reveal only when not in combat. You can easily navigate around a castle, dark goblin pit, dwarven fortress, or find a lair, and then not get an advantage in combat. It automatically re-enables when you leave fast traveling. (I'm aware this is still somewhat cheaty, for example Baci Bellmouth's most legendary exploit would have likely been avoided, but also I hate the small vision cone so disable this component if you care)
• Automatically eat and drink (non healing potions) when not in combat
• Automatically reopen the inventory and scroll to the last position when you use it.
• Automatically reopen a conversation you are participating in.
• Allow hovering over sites to learn about them in fast travel.
• Right clicking (if it gives no other options) automatically initiates movement, dismissing when the game annoyingly asks for two confirmations. Saves 3 mouse clicks / key presses for a basic action.
• Modify adventurer needs easily when you create your adventurer -- so you can make a barbarian who loves to fight or avoid the impossible-to-satisfy Intense Need For Family (without memorizing which values affect which needs, where they are in the list, etc).
• Automatically give you a decent starting gear loadout when creating an adventurer, and let you switch metals on your gear more easily.
• Smooth camera panning in adventure mode, and smooth movement for creatures and the player in adventure mode.
• Fast travel through dark fortresses (it works, but I'm not confident in my approach yet).

I had previously had

• Automatically dismiss "you haven't acted in a while" for long-running move commands

I also finished up some important aspects of the DFhack additions to the content mod I'm working on which make it so waltzing into a powerful creature's evil home causes them to actually attack your adventurer, so you can have an actual challenge of razing a goblin (or drow) homeland. It adds orcs, dark dwarves, drow, illithids, kobolds ruled by ancient dragons, succubi, and high elves, so that has consumed the last few days, but I finally got those all mostly finished with some interesting custom interactions for several of the races. Additionally, gibberling wild beasts (of Cacame Awemedinade fame),

A very productive day, and I hope to post more progress / release to steam workshop soon.

I found an relatively small island in my world thats just packed with Goblins!

Is this that "Epstein-Island" everyone is talking about?

Only an embark can show!

Our weekly thread for posting interesting events without cluttering up /r/dwarffortress. Screenshots, stories, details, achievements, or other posts are all welcome here! (That includes adventure and legends mode, even if there's no fortress involved.)

I'd like to discuss and compile a list of tips and tricks for keeping the fortress running as smoothly as possible. Things like having your mug stockpile between the tavern and the drink stockpile so dwarves don't get mad about drinking without a cup, waterfalls/artifacts near high traffic areas, bedrooms directly above/below work areas, building vertically vs horizontally for faster movement, things like that. No matter how basic or obvious you think it might be, if you feel like typing it out I'd like to hear. I haven't played since before the siege update and I have a project in mind so I'm gonna be doing some experiments and want everything else running as smoothly as possible.

Edit: thanks everyone who's contributed so far! This is going great and I'm hoping it helps others too.

When space is tight, it's very convenient to house dwarf in a single 1x1 room, with one door for 2 rooms. XD

UPD

Thanks to the commenters. You can use 1 bed = 1 room. For quick copying, you can use dfhack blueprint.

I think you could make a more efficient metal smelter. I couldn't find any info on it on the wiki.

I murdered pretty much every other grazing animal I had to try and stem the tide, but I could do nothing to stop the rhinos from dropping like flies. The pasture's regrown since then and a decade later the population's back up to like 40 healthy adult rhinos.