Useless skills

[psanni]

The only skills I use are the fighting skills: warrior, mage, archer. And then production skills: carpenter, smith and mining. One dwarf gets cook.

Everything else gets wiped with portion of obliterartion.

I'd rather build multiple forges, workbenches, labs and workshops and get everyone doing something useful.

[shadowwolftjc]

I personally make sure that each of my dwarves have just one combat-related skill, with everyone being a warrior, except for 2 or 3 dwarves that I keep as mages. Archers don't seem to kill enemies as quickly as warriors, which can still fight enemies, even from behind the safety of a door that said enemies are trying to break down.

As for the non-combat related skills, I try to make sure that every dwarf is also a miner, since that's what I frequently have all of them do throughout the game. as for that 3rd skill slot, I try to have 2 or 3 blacksmiths, 2 or 3 carpenters, and 2 cooks, since those are the crafting skills that I tend to practice the most. The remaining dwarves are made into loggers, since from the early game to even the late game, I've constantly found myself needing more wood.

As for the remaining skills, milling's useless to me because I don't need to produce alot of bread, and I frequently get alot of meat from hunting, or from culling the herds of domesticated animals that I have in my farm, anyways. Fishing's useless because I don't fish often. Hunting's useless since I only sporadically hunt when I need leather (and I don't need much leather), since I can get my meat from slaughtering some of the excess animals from my farms, and since I can quickly kill the animals that I hunt, even without the skill. Swimming's useless since water is rarely encountered as a significant obstacle, and when it is, they can be surmounted by either draining them of water, or building a bridge over them. Finally, climbing is useless since I tend to design my mines in a way that minimizes the chances of my dwarves slipping and falling down, and also minimizes any fall damage accumulated, by, for example, placing blocks in strategic places to prevent falls from happening, even if it means ordering my dwarves to replace blocks full of valuable ores. (While selecting a dirt block in your inventory, try clicking on a block that you'd normally want to mine out to instead replace it.)

[Viva]

Interesting observations. I was trying to figure out my combat load out when I came acroos this topic. With 10 pop, I was trying to figure out if I should have mages vs archers in the back. Mages hit fairly low in the beginning, but late game sees archers hitting harder with a much higher probability of missing with "better" bows. Mages seems to win out in the later game, but 2-3 mages seems low.

Even though I need wood through out the game, logging doesn't seem like a skill slot that needs to be wasted. Late game axes more than do the job. taking logging early only means losing the other skills aquired earlier (fighting skill, crafting.) Mining, Especially late game, is manditory. Rocks get harder to break to lower you go. A miner can start one shotting dirt at the higher areas while needing to hit dirt in the lower depths 5-6 times. A dwarf with a bad ax/no skill can sit there for what seems to be forever banging away.

On a side note, buying potions of obliteration is much cheaper that buying/finding the crystals. 3g vs x2 6g for the crystals. I was not paying attention when I made this mistake and burned nearly 100g trying to get everyone skilled up properly by buying ingredients and making the potion. :P