oblivioncubed 3Speak Podcast

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/hyzjennw I haven't set up OBS yet, so I'm uploading this first video without any commentary using the Steam video capture they've recently released. Apologies if anything is janky! So, I really want to get some new arms, legs, horns, or wings before I do much towards advancing our starting quests. I'm fairly familiar with both of the two initial quests, and this character is currently pretty weak on the attack and defense side of things. Most of their current skills and traits will shine more in the long run as passives that I don't need to acquire later. With that said what I really wanted to find was a lair or ruin so I could kill some low level enemies - hopefully not turtles because they have incredible armor and will wreck my face. The World Map is where you do a lot of your travel, and when you're moving around on here you will occasionally get prompts about ruins, lairs, and other various events/locations that you can stumble upon. As a brief aside, what I've generally found to be true so far is that when you're looking at the world map, everything on the left is 'beginner friendly', and the further to the right you go on the map the harder everything gets. Monsters in the deep jungle will one-hit you as a newbie without any trouble. But, anyhow, I decided that I'd take a step to the left and begin going up and down within the grasslands I start in and... wouldn't ya know it, I immediately found a lair of a legendary creature. Thankfully, this is a glowpad which by default isn't hostile to me, AND, even if they are hostile... they can't move! So this is a perfect chance to farm a bit of XP and see if we can't reach level 5. At level 5, I should get a new mutation and get to boost an existing mutation a few levels. Whatever I get will end up being a huge boon to my survivability in these early levels. I wander around Auto Exploring for a bit to fill in the map, and take out a few Prickler plants as I do so, which provides my first level, bringing Fiddler up to level 4. Then, it's time to farm some of the Glowpads that are just freaking littering this map; a half-dozen or so of those gives us the next level needed! And as predicted, that gives us a chance to snag a new Mutation! Horns, perfect! That's what we're going to pick for sure. I hadn't been aware that there were variations for the horn art - that's pretty cool. I go with the classic two-horn style, though now in retrospect I'm sad I missed the opportunity to be a unicorn of death. Next time! I picked Two Hearts to advance, as I was hoping I'd get more Toughness from it. I didn't, but that's okay. I do get to sprint further when I need it and that has value. And with that, we can finally path down the stairs and check out the lair itself. These can sometimes have great loot, and occasionally you can talk to the legendary creature... which we get lucky and are able to do. Since we can talk to it, we can also perform the Water Ritual, which shares some of my fresh water with them and gives us the chance to exchange secrets and skills. It's super useful when you can do it. I choose to ask it to share knowledge of a skill with me, as I can't see myself coming back here and I honestly don't need reputation with flowers that badly. Best to burn it immediately to get something useful. And with that done, it was time to clear the rest of the dungeon. The legendary creature fell to a beetle inside the cave not long after I got my skill, and I swept through the rest of the glowpads before turning around and heading back to town to generate a savepoint. With all of this done, we're in a pretty great place for trying the actual quest. I'd still like better weapons, but I'll try the quest first and see how it goes - if I die immediately, I'll find a den of Snapjaws and kill them to haul some loot back to town. My Ego is garbage so my trade value won't be great... but anything helps! Until next time friends, Happy Gaming!

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/oaqdxrup Today I'm looking at Over War - The Night Comes Down by Blackoath Entertainment (https://blackoathgames.com/) Sorry for the camera bounce folks, my stand was too close to my table and chaos ensued. Over War is a hex-crawl and battle simulator, wherein you play the role of a Commander leading a Unit (or several units) of rebels fighting for your homeland. In a lot of ways, I found that it really reminded me of a tabletop version of Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen (or Ogre Battle 64, which was a remake of the SNES version). It's a really fun game that I very much enjoyed playing, and will definitely be diving into further off-camera.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/lzmquwei Hey folks! Another Dwarf Fortress video today. It's been a few days, but I managed to sit down and make some safe space within the Cavern layer. We also do a bit of base cleanup in this episode and set up a butcher for processing meat. Once we have our butcher set up, we look at creating a zone for animal training - so that we can take trapped Draltha from the cavern layer, train them, and butcher them. An easy way to provide some meat for the fortress. As always, thanks for watching and Happy Gaming!

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/oadceeyf Woohoo! Today, we finally make it to the first Cavern Layer! This is a noteworthy accomplishment as it provides us new opportunities, and new dangers. First, and most crutially - the cavern layer is great for Fungiwood Trees, which can provide us logs for lumber even in maps where we might not have trees aboveground. For some embarkments, this is the first real chance a person has to start producing anything carpentry-related. It's also fairly good for farms (as the soil is better deeper), and if we have water in this level we can usually set up a Fisher's Workshop to start getting cavefish. It never hurts to have another source of food! On the flip side though, this does open us to danger in the form of invaders from the deep. Creatures live in the deep spots of the earth, and frog-folk, snakefolk, and other groups aren't even the worst of the potential denizens of this area. Megabeasts of various types and Demons can be found in the deep spots of the earth. If you're particularly unlucky I think it's possible to also encounter Angels and get absolutely wrecked by them too... but so far the worst I've fought is Demons. That said, it's not super common, and we definitely have time to prepare for those potential hazards. In this episode, we also set up some basic farm infrastructure - with an above-ground and slightly below-ground farm each. This allows us to grow surface crops like berry bushes, as well as underground food like mushrooms. These can all be used as food, drink, or as part of a manufacturing process for making clothes if we have a loom and a clothier. I pick a bunch of Hemp to make our first bolts of cloth with, because... I mean, I had the option so why not? Hemp is a great material. And finally, we get our first Fortress visitor - a Monster Hunter here to seek glory and death in the caverns. We're fine with that, and so we grant him the ability to stay. That's it for today. As always, thanks for watching and Happy Gaming!

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/ozilncte Hello my fellow gamers! Today we're back to complete the process we started a couple of days ago: it's time to ramp up our metal production and get to crafting ourselves some weapons and armor! There are a few steps to getting metal production up and going, but it's actually pretty simple as far as a production process goes. First, we need to get some charcoal, which means we need a simple furnace which we can use to turn logs into charcoal. We don't need much of that, because often, once you start down metal production you'll be running across enough coal-coke producing materials that you won't really use anything else. Next, we need a Smelter, and then we need a Metalsmith's workshop. Now, I like to make two smelters usually, as it ensures I can keep production up for both smelting the actual ores, and for creating coke for the smelter's fuel. We're not deep enough yet to use Magma Smelters which don't require fuel, so this is our best option. Once that is set up, because our squads are 10-Dwarf squads, I like to create some default Work Orders gearing them up. 10 of any weapon type, then 10 shields/bucklers, then 10 breastplates... you get the idea. Through until they're fully geared except for flasks and backpacks. (Which are super useful, and you should consider making them - but aren't strictly mandatory for your success). With this episode behind us, I would call this the end of the Brand New Beginner's section. If you've watched these 6 and followed along, you'll be doing well enough that you could survive for several years without worry I think! Next time, we'll dig a little deeper by... digging a little deeper, and finding the first Cavern layer. Until then, Happy Gaming!

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/kruunpvf Well, well, well. It's finally come to this. Our first invasion and we've been caught completely unprepared. Things we need to successfully fend off an invasion: Soldiers Weapons Armor Traps Hospital Doctor Things we don't have: Soldiers Weapons Armor Traps Hospital Doctor So, that's obviously a problem that we have to solve in a big way! Getting ourselves some soldiers is relatively easy, we just need to assign a new Administrator/Noble as our Militia Commander, which unlocks our ability to creat our first Squad! Getting armor and weapons... that one is a bit trickier and will take some additional workshop creation. It's not time we have right now, so I cross my fingers and hope that in our default supplies we've been sent a sword or two. Maybe a shield if we're lucky. Maybe, if we're really lucky, some kind of low-tier armor. It does turn out that we are slightly lucky. We have some T1 armor and weapons lying around in boxes from our Embarkment, so a couple of dwarves are able to suit up and with them charging in and the rest of the squad right behind to rain some punches, bites, and kicks on the zombies... we're able to push back this first, blessedly small, invasion. That could have gone a lot worse for us. Thankfully, this seemed to be more of an expeditionary force meant to test our capabilities. Five undead aren't much of a threat without their necromancer there to constantly bring them back. With the assault behind us, we ensure that a Chief Medical Dwarf has been assigned, and our Hosipital zoned and furnished, so that if we end up getting into future scraps that cause us wounds we can actually do something about them. Dwarves are surprisingly resilient, and can take quite the beating. You can have dwarves without legs just motoring around on crutches just fine, as an example. Things only get really problematic when they loose their ability to grasp, since then they can't change clothes, eat, or drink. Thankfully, we haven't had to deal with that so far! And that's going to be it for today. We covered a lot of ground fairly rapidly today. Next time we'll start trying to properly outfit our militia. As always, until next time my friends: Happy Gaming!

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/qwrzopaw Hey folks! Happy Monday. Today we're looking at another quick and easy way to keep our dwarves from getting depressed and angry - and that's by creating an undedicated Temple! Like Inns/Taverns, to build a temple we first need to zone for a regular Meeting Place, and then update that to become a Temple. When we do this, it gives us the option to make this a temple for a specific diety, or to leave it undedicated so that it's available for anyone to worship any of the dwarven gods. I generally go with this undedicated route, particularly early on in my Fortress playthroughs. Temples can be created quick and dirty by simply hollowing out a space, zoning it, and adding an Alter in the area... but if you want to get a bit of an extra boost to happiness, you could choose to make the walls out of fancy material, add a custom floor, and decorate with statues, pedestals to show off relics, and other neat stuff. That way, when the dwarves come into the Temple, they also spend time in a well designed space and that adds to their enjoyment. They'll recall being near well made items and well crafted areas, which provides them a mood boost. For today, we don't go too far into making our space fancy, but we do smooth the floor, and add some specially built walls. Eventually we will upgrade this, but for now it does the trick. The little bit of decoration we do accomplish is to add Engravings to the floor and a few specific walls. As soon as we've got our new space set up though... we also get a notification of our first Invasion! Remember how I said in Episode 1 that we were going to keep going with our Fortress despite the notification that we were close to a Necromancer who might invade early? Well, they definitely invaded early! We don't even have a militia yet! No commander, no barracks, and you can bet your buns we have no weapons. So, this could be a very interesting event... but it's also an event that we'll get to next time! Until then, as always, thanks for watching my friends and Happy Gaming!

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/vczusflx Hello gamers! I'm back with another actual play/tutorial episode for you. Yesterday, we completed our goal of getting our Beds and Booze situation sorted out. It's always important to have a half-decent place for our dwarves to rest their heads, and a social spot for them to drink. Today, we're going to look at improving the efficiency of our time as players, by setting up some Work Orders. Work Orders are a series of build tasks that you can assign to be completed as single-time actions, daily events, weekly events, or even more rare than that. These will help automate a lot of tasks for you, such as ensuring you always have 30+ Barrels of Booze (on the wall). To set up Work Orders, we need to start by adding a new dwarf to our nobility/administration team, and that is the Manager. For a Manager to do their job, they require at least a basic office. At this stage, that means they need a box with a table and a chair in it. As we get deeper into the game, your administators/nobility are going to make larger and larger demands... but for now, a simple room with a table fits the current requirements. With that built, they're able to sign off on new work orders, and your fortress is going to end up managing a lot of day-to-day production by itself. Some things I highly recommend you create Work Orders for (in no particular order) are: Barrels Bins Brewing Drinks (from Fruit AND from Plants - so two work orders for that one) Beds Doors Blocks (stone at the stonecrafter, and wood at the woodcrafter) Chests or Coffers By building these as Work Orders, it'll ensure that you always have some on hand for when you need them. You can set conditions up within your Work Order to ensure that you're not oversupplying too. By setting conditions such as "If Number of Empty Bins is Less Than 10" you can ensure that as soon as you've only got 9 empty bins left, your dwarves will jump into action to add to the supply. I honestly cannot overstate how important Work Orders are for your Fortress. If you plan to survive for any length of time at all, you're going to need to get a Manager and start setting up this automation within the first year. The next thing we tackle in this episode is our very first Trade! Like with Work Orders, we need a new Administrator/Noble to actually be able to make trades, and so we have to assign our second chosen administrator: the Broker. Brokers are the folks who make deals with travelling merchant caravans and sell your items at your Trade Depot. With these two tasks out of the way, it's time to take stock of our goods, and hunker in for a long cold winter, which will hopefully pass fairly uneventfully. As always, thanks for watching and Happy Gaming!

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/jidbkqto Good day folks! We're back with another beginner-friendly gameplay and tutorial video for you. Yesterday, we Embarked with our small clan of dwarves and did some initial setup: Creating a Pen/Pasture for our grazing animals Dug out a General Storage area to stack the stuff we brought and the stuff we will be creating Dug out a space below our Storage area to house some workshops that will make use of the close proximity to our raw goods Set up a Meeting Area so our Dwarves could socialize somewhere out of the wind and the rain Set up some gathering zones to collect fruit as we reach Summer In today's episode, we're going to deal with two more problems that I like to get handled really early in my Fortress plays: We need beds, so our dwarves aren't getting unhappy by sleeping on the ground We need to start crafting some booze We need a farm plot underground to plant some brewable mushrooms We need to set up a few crutial workshops And, finally, we need to make some mugs, and transform our Meeting Area into a dedicated Citizens-Only Tavern Now, I realize I said "we need to deal with two problems" and then listed five things, but in actuality Bedrooms and Booze are the top-level problems we're solving, and to do that, we need a bit of additional infrastructure. So, while it looks silly all typed out in a list, it is correctly only dealing with two problems. By handling these issues, we'll keep our dwarves relatively content, which will make our ability to thrive a little easier. Moody dwarves can cause problems, so solving those needs early is necessary for our future growth.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=oblivioncubed/juijmhbl Hey folks! I had mentioned a while back in a prior blog that I'd been thinking of creating a Dwarf Fortress tutorial for my fellow Hive users. A lot of folks I've talked to about DF have commented something along the lines of: "Isn't that the notoriously complex videogame that's been in development for like 20 years?!" and yes, it is. But, while it has a lot of nuance and depth, I don't think it's actually all that complicated. As such, I wanted to show off how I typically aproach a fortress in my gameplay. If you enjoy colony simulations and building things, this is a really fantastic game. It's a lot more accessible than I think folks realize, and while you can get into some absolutely crazy depth... you don't need go to wild to have a good time. Building cool forts, fighting off monsters and giant animals, and making a thriving civilization is achievable for anyone! In today's episode, I'm going to talk about: Some important notes for where to create your first civilization Some tasks you'll want to set up early to mange food, drink, and livestock My strategy for workshops and storage areas I hope you'll take some time and consider watching this series of Hive-User focused tutorials, and maybe snag the game and join me in seeing how far we can push our Dwarven civilization before we dig too greedily and too deeply! Until next time folks, happy gaming!