Goblin camp and late game monster wave problems

[FreelancerFL]

If you're having trouble with goblins or whatever camps are raiding your stockpiles go across your world once they've been delt with, break a block after every two blocks.

The camps need three adjacent blocks to spawn. I tried it out on one half of my world and the goblins haven't spawned on that side for at least five monster waves, they've only spawned on the other side of my camp.

Another fun tip, invest in plenty of scaffolding, build as many as possible when you can spare the resorces, dig a trench on one side of your base of opperation, when the monster waves start coming in on both sides (right now there are three portals one to my left two to the right) you'll only have to deal with the one side.

I advise depending on how deep you go if you stop where the wave can just attack blocks until it hits a shaft that leads to your base use brick walls to block it off.

I get by using 8 brick wall blocks as of now but last wave they got to my iron hatch, by then it was morning and the double portal side was taken care of. Watch out for the skeletons that build bone bridges, they can get around this so keep the explosion spell and 10 mana in reserve, mana potions are my best friend right now. About to see if the Tesla coil's are worth building in bulk soon, I've got a monster wave coming in 8 in game minutes so I'll edit soon.

[Dherian]

I second this: Scaffolding is "Da Chit!" it enables you to design inpenetrable defense and helps you a lot with stripmining. You are in charge of positioning and deleting it, so you can use it as a quick bridgte, if the dwarfs find unforseen gaps.

The Tesla coils level 3 are great, if you don´t know how to build L3 Teslas: Build a Tesla atop another Tesla - You can stack three of those.
Tesla Coils emphasize each other, so if you build em app. 3-4 tiles away from each other, they assist each other with chain lightning. I once had a chainlightning killing of a whole portal worth of mobs in a single lightning strike. Not quite sure what the needed circumstances are.

Also get used to work with the least portals possible, use rails and elevators, when they become available and build plenty of those. The Elevators close to your homebase and the rails connecting your Strip-mine.

Also: Strip-mine if you can, and do it a lot! A proper Stripmine built up proficiency very quickly and you get a lot of random loot from it. My stripmines follow this scheme:
Dig a tunnel, X long, dig down two stories, start another tunnel with one tile inbetween to the original one, Strip to the background level, and set lighting to the first tunnel, one torch like every 3 fields. Once finished, change to second level and strip away the floor you left, while starting a new level.

I did this one from the first layer down to the lava, where I rebuilt to keep the dragons from spamming me. It left me with a beautiful Starlit background in Red and green (slime-torches).

[FreelancerFL]

I found that if you can't build t3 tesla coils don't bother placing them, if there's a goblin camp near and you forget to close your door like I did (I'm an idiot and forgot they respawn if you don't kill the camp) they just rush the coils and destroy them, I think once I've geared my dwarfs with full myth weapons I'll think about building coils again.

Another thing, the santa suit is basically Mythril armor that you can get at any point in the game, it looks silly but the coat and hat have the same specs as myth armor and helm. Not sure if this is a bug or if it'll be patched out in January but it's still funny how I got it right as I was upgrading to gold armor and the guys in santa suits and hats don't need to upgrade unless I want my dwarfs wearing full mythril armor.

Another good tip, unless you're getting to the next tech tree don't use up all your coal, it's an extremely important resorce late game, sure you can make it but wood's a pain to farm. Grilled meat and fish use the least amout of coal and feed dwarfs the most, and beer makes for happy dwarfs, at one point I had two tables, one for food and one for beer.

[mikeydsc]

I want you to consider the problems with rails and elevators before you go giving advise that is going to kill you eventually specially building them close to your camp. This is coming from someone with over 400 hours in the game since it was launched in EA. DONT USE THEM CLOSE TO YOUR BASE - YOU WILL REGRET IT (unless you are in very easy mode). There is a bug that once they start to wait on the rail or elevator, anything that hits them will kill them because the AI does not cancel the wait and you just get creamed. Its very well documented if you care to search. If you play hard or NM mode you will understand what I mean :P.

Build sand walls up and a brick wall behind it, much more effective in stopping the waves. Sand, brick sand brick each one going up, works like a charm and I dont even need to use the arrow or tesla on normal mode.

Also waves will not dig any natural block placed the by the game in the beginning. But, if you mine and place one it is marked so the waves will attack it if it is closer to get inside your base.

Yea the teslas need to be 3rd tier to be effective, place them on log bridge so they can fire underneath themselves and place at least 2 blocks higher than the dwarf head otherwise they will get destroyed often.

Tables just put up 5 or 6 of them and fill them up. You only need to do it once after each wave this way instead of always going to look if they are empty. IMHO tea is better than beer since beer seems to make them eat more food.

Above all just have fun and play the way you want.

[Dherian]

Never had the issue on hard, with the waiting... then again, I usually build my bases in a way, that it takes a while until the mobs reach any dwarf whatsoever.
Also I found out for myself, that using the "Dwarf stay at home!" overrides any waiting or whatever they are busy about doing nothing.

[narf03]

In nightmare mode, goblin spawn during the night and sometimes during monster wave, they can ignore all spikes, cages, and walk pass unclosed door(others need to destroy the door), they are extremely dangerous, will chase and kill even into shelter.
In nightmare mode, scroll keeper can kill any dwarf in 2 hits with his sword, it doesnt matter what armor, a nicely placed wooden tower can take care of the scroll keeper in 10-15 mins, just leave it alone to finish the job, the keeper wont move(only tried once).
You can take over control of a dwarf to place something 2 tiles away, attack something that is surrounded by blocks in 4 directions(up down left and right), u can attack upper-left, upper-right, bottom-left, bottom-right, so u can kill them without they attacking you. Also controlling a mage, u can attack them far away even they are behind blocks. Doing these to scroll keeper, they will do the same to the mage.
To block/slow down beholder, and fat zombie, they are 2 tiles high, u can build something that only allow shorty pass.
Block off some sections of your mine where you dont want your dwarf wonder in it and keep themselves from falling.
Use magic collect if some of your dwarf got killed at scroll keeper for their equipment.(handy if higher difficulty, where each keeper can kill many dwarf b4 getting killed.)
Transform the surface of the world to dirt for more trees, kill snails to allow more neutral creatures, like sheeps to be spawn.
Build shelter high up in the sky, dont use ladder, but scaffolds, during a strong wave, withdraw your dwarf, and take away the scaffolds, wait till day time. Wont work for goblin, they can make their own ladder.

[FreelancerFL]

Thanks for the imput guys! Really helpfull, about elevators, they seemed like a bit of a waste of resorces honestly so I never bothered placing them, why use them when I can use the portal spell? Sure it costs mana but if you keep digging you'll have a decent amount of gold, enough to buy potions until you can make them.