Editing Masterwork:Orcish Quickstart guide

WARLOCKS don't always make good allies, due to their unstable ethics and dangerous relationship with magic.  Be warned, when visiting they are likely to attack other traders or diplomats!

Masterwork Settings which affect only the Dwarven entity or creature won't have an effect on Orc Fortress; this includes most of the Workshop settings, and Castes.  Masterwork settings which affect the World or non-Dwarf animals *will* impact Orc Fortress: this includes Harder Farming, Mining, Aquifers, Grazing, Weather, all Materials, all Creatures, all Cavern settings, etc.  Therapist also works fine with Orcs.   

The Orc Fortress custom workshops and reactions are generally balanced assumed Harder Farming and Harder Smithing being both ON.  Other than that most any combinations should work fine.  Orc fortress has it's own implementation of slag (only at the Molten pit) so you might want to turn off the Slag option, but either way is OK.

 

If enabled, Deep-drow, Chaos-dwarves, Human Bandits, and Ashland Elf rebels are potentially friendly and will have unique crates and blueprints to sell you, along with a nice selection of other goods.  Goblins, Wild Orcs and Frost Giants can be trade partners too, although they have less unique stuff.  Just like in dwarf mode, if you choose a lot of allies in a given world, the game will be a lot easier.

 

There are no particular recommended parameters for world gen, Masterwork Advanced world gens are great if you like them, but default or other custom world gens work fine as well.

Assuming your world has all of Dwarves, Humans, Elves and Drow enabled, your Orcish stronghold should prepare for serious attacks that could begin in the early part of Year Two!  At a bare minimum you should have some orcs prepared to join a warband, shields, and any fighting pets trained.  Some kind of palisade is useful even if it doesn't completely enclose your stronghold, to break the line of sight of enemy ranged units.  If your base is in the low ground beneath a hill or ridge, be sure that you have a plan to survive if elvish archers gain the high ground on you.

Get some decent weapons for your warchief and any other valuable orcs.  Besides the normal path of smelting and forging metal, you can get the '''tribal warcrafter''' (along with an '''ashery''' and '''tanner''') and make a few ironbone or bloodsteel weapons.  Uruks are strong enough to do damage even with a crude stone club, in a tight spot.  Shields and a bit of defensive skill are invaluable, so try to get your key warriors paired up and sparring a bit.

The '''fletcher''' workshop is also a good choice if you have some snaga, or other skilled archers.  This shop can make powerful composite bows and save on fuel by crafting arrows in batches.  Orcs have a variety of weapons that can be used in both a melee and a ranged mode.  Early on you can make some thrown weapons:  Tomahawks (with throwing tomahawks as ammo) or bola throwers (with bola).  These weapons are inferior to regular axes or bows, but give some flexibility in how you deploy a small warband.  They're good as melee sidearms too, for a civilian militia who might occasionally defend themselves from thieves or animals.

 

If you have some quality but wrong-sized gear, like Elven small mithril armor, use the '''Molten Pit''' to resize it into wearable makeshift mail.  This processing is very material efficient, but the makeshift gear doesn't provide 100% coverage so you might want to layer it with some other armor.  If you have weapons made from heavy but soft material like a gold dagger, you can also refit it into a maybe more useful flail.  The Molten Pit also gives options for batch smelting ore and destroying unwanted junk.  The molten pit wastes some material relative to Dwarven batch furnaces, but is still fuel-efficient and recovers some useable scrap too: rusty iron, malachite, and dolomite.

An '''Orcish Factory''' is useful for production once you have some metal or clay industry starting up.  Churn out great masses of blocks for above ground building, decent gear to arm and armor the grunts, or even masses of cheap weapons to use at the Raiders drydock.  The Factory can also support your growing metal industry too, by burning farmed or harvested tree saplings to charcoal.

Exchanging bounties at the Freelancer's guild is usually the best source of coins, but you might also mint coins from rusty iron bars you get from Molten Pit or Goblin trading partners.  If you are short on wood but have plenty of cloth and pulleys, consider sail-powered Xebecs instead of regular Longboats.  If you don't have junk weapons laying around, forge weapons with the smallest materials requirement like daggers, or save on materials by batch production at the Orcish Factory.  

The '''Raiders Drydock''' is an important building for a thriving Orcish base.  It is used not only to strike back at the Free Peoples and grab some loot, but also to round up goblin laborers, steal blueprints and codexes -- all things that unlock more powerful buildings or abilities for your Orcs.  To support the Drydock you'll need a source of rusty iron coins (usually from exchanging totems, booze, or other bounties at the '''Freelancers Guild'''), ballista parts from a '''Siege Workshop''', plenty of wood, and also weapons.

A good first mission for your Raiders is to Round up some Goblins.  These missions are cheap and have a high chance of success.  The goblin migrant will be stored as a "tool" until you're ready to deploy him as one of the Shanty workshops.

Once you have a few weapon kits, longboats, and coins saved up you can start hitting more dangerous targets.  The dwarves are a good choice, as from a successful raid you can score weapons grade metal, solid weapons, and other useful wargear.  Or raid merchant shipping to acquire gold and silver, caravanserai blueprints so that you can establish your own trade bazaars locally, and valuable captives.  Target different enemies for other various goods.

== Midgame Clanholding ==  

== Late Game Dark Citadel ==