A mod designed to improve FPS and difficulty as much as possible while staying as close to the spirit of vanilla DF. See "point of interest" for major changes you probably dont want to get surprised with. Have fun and report bug. Give feedback if you can, especially if you dont like this mod.



Features
+ Playable elf
+ Removal of a great deal of redundant gems, metals, alloys, stones, soils, crafts, plants, creatures, vermins and body parts.
+ Removal of civilian clothing managements. Every wearable equipments are now considered armors and shouldn't ever wear off over time. They are also never claimed by civilians.
+ Removal of miasma from conventional rots. Does not cover zombies. Flies are now in charge of rot annoyance.
+ Removal of physical stat decay and addition of nerve regeneration.
+ Siegers now clad in full armor. Incorporated many more dangerous enemies from the Fortress Defense mod.
+ Most creatures spawn more numerous, at more locations and are generally more wild with deadly venoms. Wildlife population greatly increased. A few more pet training options.
+ Combat-oriented companions are respected and cannot be eaten. They also demand extra attention. On the other hand, none of them need to eat grass.
+ Forging now use proper amount of bars. Made steel harder to obtain by changing iron/flux distribution. Added some convenient reactions, stone & gem transmutation.
+ Made trading mandatory for fortress survival. Booze now requre trade-only moldy stones as yeast. Some crucial anti-megabeast ammunitions are also trade-centric, from traders or from siegers.
+ A special kind of slade replaces adamantine where it usually is. This slade can used to make armor.
+ Adamantine can only be used to make weapons. It can be made from slade at kiln using gem setting, 1 slade stone + 5 value 60 gems = 1 adamantine stone.
+ More balanced weapons and traps. Oversized bows and arrows. Added a reaction at the smelter to make arrows.
+ Adjusted meat industry and farming to make trading more desirable and happiness harder to sustain
+ The kitchen can be a good place to look for treasures.
+ Dwarven nobles are more demanding and mandates are now harder to dodge. Dwarves are generally lazier, slower, less effective and hate nobles.
+ Added (expensive) combat training workshops, the 'D'anger room. Training spears removed.
+ A few creatures with special niches added.
+ UI improvements via more friendly naming convention, sorted lists and to-the-point reactions.
+ Phoebus tileset, Ironhand tileset, Mayday tileset compatible.



Specific features which may require changes in game plan
+ Never use the Play now! option since job access has been heavily tweaked. Refer here.
+ Yeasts are needed for wine making. They are scraped from moldy stones at kitchens using the plant processing labour. Moldy stones must be traded for and cannot be produced on site unless prayed for. Bring lots of them.
+ On-site elves cannot produce their own melee weapons and wooden armors.
+ Elves dont have initial access to picks or axes. Bring extra logs.
+ Some revered creatures cannot be butchered, including elephants.
+ Organs and fat are no longer edible although pets will still chow on them.
+ Plant has been heavily modified. Refer here
+ Iron can only be found in igneous extrusive (hematite) layers and flux restricted to sedimentary layers (dolomite, limstone). Flux grade stones are not used directly for steel production, instead you need to extract usable bits at the kiln. Each stone/block yield multiple pouches of flux (5 & 2).
+ Danger room has been eliminated. For safe training, try the new training workshops.
+ Fishing should now yield only turtles due to the removal of most vermin fishs. To compensate, fish "animals" are alot more abundant.
+ All dye-related plants are removed. Quarry Bush can be milled to make white veldspar dye for the sake of preferences.
+ Ore smelting was set to automatic by default. This can be toggled at 'o'ption -> 'w'orkshop -> 'S'melter.
+ The current version, 0.22, is not compatible with saves from prior versions.



How to install
1) Optional: If you want to play this mod with Phoebus/Ironhand/Mayday tilesets, install those first.
2) Either copy the provided folder or its content into your dwarf fortress folder. Fire up "Intensifying Mod Setup.bat" and follow its instruction. Gen new worlds and play.



.23 changes
+ Fixed auto smelter appearance
+ Fixed yeast generation for all graphic sets
+ Fixed Fix mining kit production to properly read material (it's used to brave the kitchen sink)
+ Further restrict planting months. Quarry bush is spring only and cave wheat / pig tail are summer only.
+ Yeast extraction now yield moldy blocks instead of moldy bars so they can be properly stockpiled.

.22 changes
+ Fixed a FD civ issue. Some FD civs now properly siege in the first winter or second spring.
+ Fixed an issue with kitchen sink reactions not spawning products properly
+ Added a custom furnace, the auto-smelter, taking over automatic smelting after magma has been discovered.
+ Fixed an issue with moldy stone dupping by introducing yeast and make moldy stones splitting into them beforehand directly.
+ Fixed an issue with cave wheat milling not spawning seeds
+ Fixed an issue with pod sweet milling spawning seeds
+ Made quarry bush the dye-bearing plant instead of plump helmet

.21 changes
+ Useless nobles (king, baron, etc) no longer issue mandates. They have lots of demands instead.
+ Ore are now automatically smelted by default. This can be toggled at 'o'ptions -> 'w'orkshop -> 'S'melter.
+ Hellfire imps no longer melt themselves.
+ Common stones are now 5x heavier to discourage stone furniture trading and improve catapult / stone traps.
+ Flies are back.
+ Improved installation batch file.

.20 changes
+ The kitchen is now a possible place to seek for treasures.
+ Adjusted pet availability. Some exotic creatures can only be utilized by the elves.
+ Many creatures are now more aggressive.
+ Doubled herbalism yield to encourage the activity.
+ Added plant specific brewing / milling reactions
+ Fixed abaddon being deadly
+ Adjusted tone generation reactions to never use valuable stones regardless of whether they are set to be non-economic.
+ Slightly adjusted stone occurence likelihood and disparity between graphics sets.
+ Removed the blood cleaning option. DFHack work better
+ Remove sugarcane billet reaction. It's no longer neccesary after the farming skill change.
+ Allowed training of bone crafting due to the bug causing the crafter workshop ALWAYS get cluttered with bones, greatly slowing down production rate.
+ Fixed an issue with masonry still trainable
+ Training Stick / sheet are combined into a single "training gears" item
+ Moldy stone value increased ten fold.

.19 changes
+ Adjusted plants. See here for details.
+ Adjusted civ access to jobs. See here for details.
+ Only human have access to some domestic pets such as dogs or cows.
+ Fixed ASCII support.
+ Fixed plant appearance in mayday and ironhand.
+ Fix sugarcane not correctly brewable.

.18 changes
+ Upgrade to .25
+ Remove new, unwanted .25 features (all of them!!)
+ Incorporate Fortress Defense mod
+ Remove soap workshop, incorporated soap making with kitchen
+ Added yeast (modly stones) requirement for booze cooking. Moldy stones can be prayed for, costing gold bars.
+ Fixed skill rate and civ access to jobs
+ Fixed kobold not showing up
+ Fixed fire elementals unable to swim in magma.
+ Fixed butterfly showing up as a cactus in ironhand graphics set

.17c changes
+ Reverted dwarven access to common pack animal, needed it for trading
+ Removed benign from abaddon
+ Removed [CAN_LEARN] from tigermen so elves dont get them as migrants.

0.17 changes
+ Removed elf access to engineering. Shouldnt have been there to begin with.
+ Removed elf access to picks. Shouldnt have been there to begin with.
+ fixed naming of gauntlets. Now unproducable gauntlets read as "exotic" properly.
+ Adjusted all mount pets, adding _exotic to many and removed mount capability from amphibious creatures.
+ Adjusted civ access to equipments. Non-controlled civs would be more likely to use better equipments now.
+ Made mountain goats wagon puller and pack animals, albeit a very inefficient one.
+ Removed dwarf's access to common wagon pullers. and pack animals
+ Made meat from turtles and special creatures (FB, FD creatures) safe to be consumed by elves.

0.16b changes
+ Reduced elf size to 65000 from 70000
+ Adjusted size of 2h weapons. Elves are now less likely to be able to hold a melee 2h with just one.

0.16 changes
+ Removed redundant tags on the fire elemental
+ Affixed names of foreign versions of some armor pieces with "exotic".
+ Altar renamed to Shrine
+ Removed the blood option from the setup, blood cleaning now need to be done manually.
+ Removed [MISCHIEVIOUS] from abaddon, This'd make it stop ambushing and be more straight up more aggressive.
+ Made elves a playable civ.
+ Added many jobs to elves so they can sustain themselves. Elves dont have access to jewelery, engineering, masonry, smithy and cannot improve mining, bone carving & leatherworking.
+ Added the exp leader for elves, the sylph. S/he can carry out all functions a noble should.
+ Applied chariot's graphics for elves.
+ Elves now get light food poisoning if fed with meat.
+ Elves got a reaction at the shrine: 5 inorganic objects + 1 wooden logs = 2 wooden logs.

0.15 changes
+ Fixed many noble bugs
+ Made nails always plurals
+ Removed dungeon master & exotic tag
+ Fixed barrel & bin reactions, now correctly use empty bins/barrels only
+ Made coal & lignite both sedimentaries as in vanilla again
+ Fixed soap production, now correctly use fat
+ Elf's size increased to human's
+ Fixed issues with some pet chows not properly stockpiled
+ Adjusted skill training rate: production skills decay faster, harvesting/immediate skills/social skills cannot be trained and kicking/punching/biting/misc obj. using almost never train.
+ Adjuted dwarf's personality Lazier, slower, angrier, hate nobles and friendlier.
+ Fire elemental -> phoenix. Phoenixes are equivalent to semi megabeasts, made of fire (duh) and can fly.
+ Added a blunt attack (slap) to all bears.
+ Merged the tempered column into the spiked ball
+ Buffed 2handed weapons, all except giant axes can beat their 1h+shield version.
+ Whip nerfed and is now a non lethal yet painful weapon
+ Flails are now 2handed and are a cross between mauls and pikes, having a blunt and an edged attack.
+ Dagger's size reduced and is now a crit-dependant stabby weapon.
+ Pommel strikes removed from all weapons except for dagger, on which speed was greatly reduced.
+ Bodkin arrows are now elf-only and have high penetration.
+ Added broadhead arrows and all races which had bodkin accesss in previous version except elves now use it instead. This is a cutting arrow.
+ Increased max edges of some metals: Copper (12500), Iron (12500) , Bronze (15000), steel (15000)
+ Reduced speed of edged attacks by 20%
+ Slade renamed to humming slade
+ Adamantine renamed to slade, is just as heavy and cannot be made into weapons or clothes. However it can be used directly and need no strand extraction.
+ Added a new adamantine which's basically adamantine but cannot be made into armor. Still need strand extraction.
+ Add a kiln reaction: 1 boulder of new slade + 5 value 60 gems -> 1 boulder of new adamantine.
+ Custom creatures are now properly rendered in ironhand and their description now read their color correctly.

0.14b Changes
+ Fixed sugarcane related reactions, now they use correct material. Sugarcane billet production is no longer super awkward.
+ Fixed arrow names, now display correctly as "large bodkin arrow" instead of "large bolt".
+ Added caste job names to display also display caste name i.e. hunchbacked miner, female axedwarf...

0.14 Changes
+ Roll function of sheriff and captain of the guard into exp leader and mayor respectively
+ exp leader & mayor now can lead a squad of his own just like the captain of the guards
+ Mayor no longer gives any mandates
+ Dungeon master can be appointed by exp leader, and has 5 mandates
+ Military leader now has 5 mandates
+ Chief medic & broker each has 3 mandates
+ Each captain & champion has 1 mandates
+ Adjusted animal requirements & updated their description to make it more clear.
+ Halved all traps's strength
+ Made picks 2 handed
+ Nerfed crossbows to be more on par with melee weapons.
+ Made bows 2handed & arrows heavier, expensive to make and very lethal.
+ Added an weak, sterile dwarven caste, the hunchbacks. They mature quick (6y) and have lifespan of 1-10 years.
+ Improved ironhand & mayday support

0.13 Changes
+ Reduced size of oceanic fish schools and make them spawn more often.
+ Cooking nerfed, now only have stew (1 ingredient) and roast (2 ingredients)
+ Fixed material erros in hippo and elk bird
+ Ramped up underground creature's hostility
+ Organs are now only pet-consumable and fat is inedible
+ Reduced dog's agility to slightly above kobold's and greatly increased cheetah's agility
+ Jabberers no longer breed and rutherer's babies remain small longer.
+ Hit farming industry with a sledgehammer
+ Make sieges and thieves come sooner
+ Increased trap cost

0.12 Changes
+ Inedible body parts and seeds will no longer rot.
+ Marked some components such as sinews or cartilages as meat. These new "meat"s can only be consumed by pets
+ Made large trainable creatures inedible and require a combination of meat consumption, alcohol consumtion, water and sleep depending on the creature.
+ Made ambush predators start out hidden.

0.11a Changes
+ Adjusted gem appearance

0.11 Changes
+ Added a .bat install helper
+ Adjusted ASCII graphics
+ Reduced all shrub's clustersize from 5 to 4
+ Removed dolomite and limestones from all other sedimentary layers

0.10 Changes
+ creature material overhauled
+ added reaction to make gem block at the kiln
+ added slime
+ added altar
+ removed tallow
+ adjusted equipment coverage
+ Changed or removed many booze-related crops to place more emphasis on booze variety requirement.

0.09 Changes
+ Revised forgotten beast body parts similar to that of normal creatures
+ Blood/fat/tallow/seed/pus now rot and hopefully would eventually dissappear
+ Add a blood splatter killer as optional file
+ Revised iron / silver / gold distribution
+ Revised megabeast growth rate. They now instantly grow to maturity.
+ Adjusted value of booze, crop and meat products.
+ Tweaked equipment stats and coverage
+ Walked around the armor bug, creatures now wear full armor
+ Elves & Goblins resized to large as a part of armor tweaking.
+ Adjusted abaddon's behavior. Less annoying or deadly.

0.08 Changes
+ Added worthless stone -> other worthless stone reactions
+ Tweaked grass trample
+ Fixed dwarven age
+ Buffed elves
+ Fixed Fortress defense mod sprites
+ Revised training-related items
+ Experimental Ironhand & Mayday support

0.07 Changes
+ Moved listing to major mod
+ Adjusted cluster size of curious creatures and glacier creatures
+ Adjusted turtle spawn & anatomy
+ Adjusted rib coverage
+ Adjusted anatomy of fortress defense creatures
+ Removed non-IE iron sources
+ Removed marbles. Add small clusters of dolomite/limestones in other SE stone layers
+ Added flux production reactions at the kiln using flux stones/blocks
+ Increased copper's weight in bronze production
+ Allowed making coal from some wooden furnitures at the smelter (bed bin barrel cage)
+ Add training workshops
+ Add reactions to product catalysts used in training workshop at the smelter
+ Improved object listing
+ Changed lignite & peat colors
+ Added elven diplomat (kind of)
+ Inje