Stupid dwarf trick
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A stupid dwarf trick is any project that that requires a large amount time and effort, for little or no practical benefit. They exist only as a challenge for experienced players.
[edit] Monumental Statue
Difficulty: Depends on how big you want the statue to be.
Usefulness: None.
[edit] Artificial Waterfall
To keep the waterfall going, you need a pump stack, preferably powered by a windmill or water wheel.
Difficulty: Moderate.
Usefulness: Dwarves love waterfalls. Putting a waterfall in your meeting hall will give your dwarves good thoughts, although it can significantly lower framerate.
[edit] Execution Tower
Just a tall tower to chuck your captives to their deaths.
Difficulty: Easy.
Usefulness: Lets you dispose of prisoners, and claim expensive silk, meltable iron, and (eventually) useful bones.
[edit] Bridge-a-pult
A bridge that opens outwards, to fling enemies away. Ideally, they land in a very nasty place.
Difficulty: The hard part is the nasty place they get flung to.
Usefulness: There are a lot more effective ways to defend a fortress, but not as entertaining.
[edit] Dam
Build a wall across a riverbed to stop the flow of water. Floodgates optional.
Difficulty: On a map that freezes in the winter, this is easy. Otherwise, very difficult.
Usefulness: Dubious.
[edit] Tower-cap Farm
You absolutely need to break into an underground river or lake. Make some muddy floors over a big area and wait.
Difficulty: Moderate.
Usefulness: Yes, if it's big enough.
[edit] Magma Pumping
It's a lot like pumping water, only more dangerous, and requires the pumps to use magma-proof pipes and screws in their construction.
Difficulty: The difficult part is making all those iron or steel pumps and bauxite floodgates. Very high risk.
Usefulness: Magma is fun, but impractical.
[edit] Booze Bomb
If you set barrels of booze on fire they explode. Can possibly be used as a complex trap. About the only way to start a fire on demand is magma. Possibly caged fire imps or magma men.
Difficulty: High.
Usefulness: There many easier ways to kill goblins, but few that set them on fire.
[edit] Greenhouse
A greenhouse is just a farm with the the ceiling channeled out from above. This lets you grow outdoor plants without venturing above ground. For the maximum style, build a glass roof to keep your farmers safe.
Difficulty: Low.
Usefulness: Surface plants are not so much more useful than underground crops. Rope reed can be grown year round.
[edit] Gladiator Arena
Difficulty: Moderate, but time consuming.
Usefulness: The most difficult way to dispose of prisoners. It does give your soldiers a little bit of experience.
[edit] Self Destruct Lever
Difficulty: Very high. Extremely dangerous.
Usefulness: None. By definition.
[edit] Flood the World
Difficulty: High danger. Will kill your frame rate.
Usefulness: Will prevent any sieges, at least. Or anything else.
[edit] Ballista Battery
Overlap a few ballistas to completely cover a narrow corridor. There is an unavoidable risk of your operators wandering into the line of fire.
Difficulty: Low. If you insist on highly-trained operators with high-quality ballistas, it gets harder.
Usefulness: A complicated and dangerous way to defend a single corridor.
[edit] Swimming pool
It's a reservoir that fills to 4/7 exactly. Station soldiers inside, lock them in, and fill. This way they gain swimming skill.
Difficulty: Low. It's just a pair of reservoirs.
Usefulness: The swimming skill is only slightly useful. This is most useful if the entrance to your fort has narrow walkways/moats surrounded by water, and you station your soldiers there.
[edit] Ice tower
Difficulty: Low. You need to be on a freezing map to pull it off.
Usefulness: None.
[edit] Obsidian factory
You need one reservoir of water, and one of magma. Mix, cool and mine.
Difficulty: Medium.
Usefulness: High.
[edit] Drowning Chamber
Difficulty: Moderate.
Usefulness: You can kill prisoners, useless peasants, irate nobles, hammerers, untrainable animals, or anything else.
[edit] Magma Chamber
Difficulty: Dangerous as any magma project.
Usefulness: It's like a drowning chamber, but you can't recover most of the victim's stuff.
[edit] Labyrinth
Difficulty: It's a lot of mining. Having a bridge drop invaders inside is more difficult, but more useful.
Usefulness: It makes a nice element of fortress defense, and you can dump your prisoners inside it.
[edit] Adventure Mode Fortress
Difficulty: The sky's the limit.
Usefulness: Not applicable.
[edit] Vomitorium
It's like the greenhouse, only instead of a farm, it's meeting hall. Prevents cave adaption.
Difficulty: Low.
Usefulness: Low.
[edit] Pit o' Doom
Combine with an Execution Tower for maximum z-level executions! Spike traps are a must.
Difficulty: Low. You want it nice and deep though.
Usefulness: Dispose of prisoners, execute nobles, gruesome fatal injuries, laugh maniacally.
[edit] Underground Perpetual Motion Power Plant
Combine with a use for the power and you either have an awesome setup, or a ticking time bomb.
Difficulty: High. Maintaining the correct water level is annoying difficult at times.
Usefulness: Depends on size of plant and what it's connected to. Also useful as a puzzle for adventurers.
[edit] Dwarfputer Complex
A big mess of fluid and/or machine logic full of hatches, floodgates, gears, pumps, etc. and powered by waterwheels, windmills, or useless idle dwarves. Hook it up to doors, bridges, and traps.
Difficulty: Medium to high, depending on what you want to build. You'll want to build for very high water flow if you have more than a few fluid gates.
Usefulness: Your mechanics and architects will level up very fast. Manual pumps give something for your haulers to do and makes them stronger. Try and make a clock to trigger different mechanisms in different seasons. See if enemies actually blunder into your intricate traps. Watch all hell break loose as water freezes.
