No worries at all mate, cheers for the response. Have a good one!

@Argon
I am not actively working on this anymore, no, I apologize. In theory, it should work fully up this point, and if not anyone has my full permission to take it and run with it

@Myphicbowser Hey mate, just wondering if you're still working on this or not? I'm sure life isn't giving you all the time in the world to focus solely on this or anything like that, but just thought I'd ask for a small update on how things are progressing

They tend to be hostile with Elves, and neutral with Dwarves, but they DO show up as a Civ

Tbh I'm fine with the squids being less directly D&D inspired. Do they show up if you don't play as them, and do they tend to be hostile or friendly with certain civs?

As far as I'm aware, thats impossible to implement! Sorry Sylvanas

Do these squids have the brain-only dietary restriction you'd expect, or is that not implemented?

Woah now

All good mate, I appreciate you taking the time to get back to me regardless. I’ll be sure to give it a go, cheers again.

Sorry Argon, meant to get back to you, been REAL busy as of late! In theory, it'll work easily. But it won't have any headshot sprites, even the Psionic abilities can now be used in Adventure mode! Supposedly, I haven't had much time to dedicate to playing it, but nothing fundamentally changed, and the entire mod is self contained and doesn't touch any other code, so as far as I know it works fine! I hope if someone finds an issue they let me know

I'd love to see that more expanded version! I'm sure you can do it. I'd contribute if I had more knowledge of DF internals, but alas.

Elder Brain being a building makes a lot of sense really, just chilling out in its brine pool snacking on tadpoles. I've seen a few Rimworld mods have it as a similar kind of building where it helps advance research and/or produces the tadpoles itself.

In terms of money, might be best to set yourself up with a patreon or one of the countless others (if you haven't already) to help not only you do your work, but to help you commission others to assist you with the project.

Last question, is this playable with the current version of the game or are there a few bits of jank here and there? Looking forward to seeing how this mod advances in the future, keep up the solid work mate.

Once I get more free time and money, a pipe dream but one I hope to achieve, I plan on coming back at this mod and commissioning people to help me do the things I can't, I think I'm going to stick with my plan of the Elder Brain being a building, only because they aren't Rulers in the strictest sense, and they are a very static feature that passively buffs the illithid colony they reside in, I'll talk to others, get their opinions on it, but overall I do want this to be very true to sources such as Lords of Madness and the Illithiad, It'll be hard work, but nothing worth it was easy

Its POSSIBLE in Dwarf Fortress, just difficult

My original plan was to have an Elder Brain building, maybe limit it to an item you can only get on Embark, and have it have something you build to do special actions with, and one of them would release a gas named like "Tadpole swarm" and its just a gas that infects everyone with ceromorphosis.

It would require DF hack to make them citizens however, and would be kind of janky, I plan on revisiting this in the future, along with commissioning someone to fully do the graphics since I'm sure that I flubbed them up, I am bad at that code and some new graphics that also include body graphics would be neat, since illithid are weird little dudes

I still have plans for this, though these illithid are closer to 2e and 3e illithids, so they aren't a hivemind, you'll find they have PLENTY to complain about!

Welp, beat me to it. I was just playing Baldur's Gate and thought, "Man, Illithids would be really cool to have in Dwarf Fortress", and then I find this, remarkable. I gotta ask, since it's a great idea but probably hard to actually implement, do you infect other pawns with tadpoles or is that simply not doable in Dwarf Fortress?

Oh, neat.

@Smerg the Dargon

They are interactions! When an illithid is attacking something else they'll hit it with a mind attack that causes pain and confusion, and when they are BEING attacked they'll activate the Psionic Shield to protect themselves from damage! Though it also DOES slow them down a very little bit to compensate

This seems interesting - I'll give it a shot!
How exactly do their special skills like "mindattack" and "psionic shield" work?

The mod is good, but there are few graphics for them, while we are waiting for updates.
I advise you to make a more beautiful preview.

Happy to help :)
I would keep in mind that depending on how it's done, you might not be able to restrict "animal slaves" from being traded so in that case you might want to restrict them to being friendly with more evil aligned races, trading slaves with goblins wouldn't be weird but you might end up with dwarves elves and humans having slaves if they can trade with Illithids

"I would bare in mind that dwarf fortress isn't one of the games I mod so I'm only making guesses based on looking through all the mods for Dwarf Fortress on the workshop and playtesting the collection i'm building for my friends and I"

@Xenvar
Thanks for the suggestions! I was going to make a building to produce the gas, you'd just need to move the caged beings in there

I'll take a look into these mods, thank you so much for letting me know, they may just end up as weird squid monsters but that should work out! Illithidae are a thing!

there is also a demon civ mod that uses a gas to transform creatures and animals into essentially slave workers, not sure if either of those ideas would help but you could in theory make a building that emits a gas that causes the change. The demon mod uses a creature to emit the gas but that does cause some issues with caravans so depending on what you wanted to do you could do more of a building like the animal caretaker mod.

Hopefully one of those ideas helps you transform enemies into at least something similar to citizens :)


https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2916667265

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2909562855

The Succubi Dungeon mod has pets that can work and act as citizens, in theory you might be able to do something similar to have beast races or pets that look like other races as mind controlled slaves

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2950544248

@pops3s
Currently, no
Without DF Hack there is no way to do so, so I didn't bother coding the interaction yet but when I find a work around that will make transformed enemies into citizens, it will be added

is there currently a way to get more illithids without migrations?

@amywebbskii
When it comes to socialization, every typical illithid doesn't have much in the way of a preference for anything. The Culture however is much more cruel and sadistic, taking a look through the code you'd see they don't really care for anything else, putting Non-Illithid and Animals in the same bracket. I actually thought about tinkering with that by making a Dwarf Thrall race, but I decided for now to keep it simple.

But Illithids can butcher Sapients, and will also make trophies out of them.

In combat, Illithids are weaker than dwarves physically, but with a tentacle toxin and a mindblast they typically win, and they are a little bigger so they have the weight advantage, but none of the other natural advantages.

el squid

What a great idea! Always love seeing new civilizations added, and the illithid are iconic

Fantastic idea. One of my favourite races, along with beholders and demi-liches,
Will you tell us more about how a regular illithid performs in socialization and combat in comparison with dwarves?