Haven't done one of these in awhile. What are you guys up to now?

Haven't done one of these in awhile. What's up, peeps?

On time as always, our monthly community post!

Spill it, boys. I know you can't stay away.

!

It was quite the battle.

!And it just gets worse

And it just gets worse. I tried to wait them out, but even when they left a few stayed behind, lurking in the treetops:

!Undead trees

I knocked over one tree with a ballista, and those creatures left voluntarily. I took about thirty casualties clearing out the second tree.

A year later, the horde returns, and right now I'm ignoring them because there's lots of work inside the fortress that needs done, and I've got a decent tree farm up and going. I'm thinking it's time for Operation FTW, but I'll have to wait until they leave to set up it for the inevitable third return.

Not sure why it wasn't before, to be honest, but at some point that setting got changed.

Tip: If you have visitors wandering around your base, you can go under the knowledge task to see what all books they've read in their lifetime and what kind of books they are. That way, you can search for somewhat unusual types like novels, chronicles, cultural histories, biographies, autobiographies, dictionaries, dialogues, and etc.

I really wish this functionality was on the written objects screen. Right now you just have to go off of the title. This work, unfortunately, wasn't written in my fortress and we don't have a copy of it, either. That said, I do have a pair of autobiographies and some cultural histories.

What I would like to do is figure out a way to reliably make dwarves produce biographies. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how. The only requirement that I know of for a dwarf to produce a biography is knowledge of the biography topic, which can be obtained either from them reading a book on the subject (easy) to discovering it themselves (very, very hard and random). After that, I don't know if they have to be assigned to a library or not to actually produce the biography.

That sounds simple, but the thing is that dwarves are practically-minded. They seem to prefer to write manuals and guides about topics they know than novels, biographies, and etc. What if you had a dwarf that knew only of biographies and of no other topics, though? They might write one guide on the subject of writing biographies, but will they stop writing guides after that and start writing biographies?

The problem is, once you have a big library, dwarves tend to swarm it and learn about all the topics. It's hard to pick and dwarf that's "unpolluted," so to speak, and I suspect that if they've avoided the library that much, they'll be poor biographers anyway.

One idea I've had is the Dwarven Monastery. We take kids that just turned 18, which haven't had a chance to read books yet, and slap them in a private, sealed off room with writing materials, food, and drink. Toss in a bookshelf and make a tiny library only they can access. Assign them as a scholar, and throw down a book on biographies as inspiration. Then, see what happens.

Note that what kind of books your dwarves write has literally no gameplay impact. This is just for Armok and maybe internet points. Damn it, I want my dwarves to have quality literature!

Looks interesting. It has more of a fantasy-focus than its inspiration. Right now it's on sale on Steam, so it could be worth checking out.

On time as always, it's time to ask: What Have You Been Playing?

On time as always, our monthly "What Are You Playing?" post! Whatcha all doing, fellow blockheads?

Curseforge

Atlauncher

Discord

From the creator of Brass and a couple other reasonably successful modpacks comes an entirely new experience: Rotary Skies!

You wake up and look at your floating rock of dirt. It seems so familiar, somehow, but then a massive meteor screams through the sky overhead. Welcome to Rotary Skies!

Rotary Skies is the authorized Rotarycraft-centered Skyblock modpack. The start seems similar enough, but as soon as you get steel, a whole world of engines, gearboxes, grinders, pumps, and centrifuges opens up!

Work through over eighty quests as you go from cobblestone generators to fusion reactors! The quests guide you but don’t hold your hand. They’ll tell you what you need to do next, but not exactly how. In Rotary Skies, the “how” is the fun part!

There is no sieving in this modpack! What are you, some kind of caveman? No, until our liquefaction machines and centrifuges are up and running, we hunt for ores in the nether, like men (or other strong, mighty genders)!

We also keep bees, and by “keep bees” I mean selectively-breed and genetically-modify bees in our quest for the uberbiene: the ultimate bee! We’ve also got trains and stuff, so that’s cool.

Eventually the day will come where we will obtain the elusive and mysterious Crystal, allowing us to escape from our Sky Island and into pocket dimensions of our own creation, full of resources and incredible creatures.

This mod caught my eye. It's similar to a plugin that was on a server I used to play on. Nice to see it as a proper mod instead of a plugin. It's pretty configurable and could be a good addition to the right modpack.

It's an authorized port, and it looks like most of the cart stuff has made it over.

Modrinth

Curseforge

From Civ to Centauri and the Aztec to the Second American Civil War, everyone is asking: What have you been playing lately?