Dwarf Fortress - How the hell do I play this silly thing?

[Cael]

OK. I have finally gotten around to messing around with Dwarf Fortress. I have heard terrifying things about it.

So, the one I got looks like an ASCII mess. Is there any packs or mods or things like that that I should download to make my life easier to tell what is a dwarf and what is a rampaging woolly mammoth? Any strategy/tips?

Also, do all fortresses eventually fall even without overseer shenannigans?

 

[Catacombs]

Is there any packs or mods or things like that that I should download to make my life easier

Yes. There's the Lazy Newb Pack, which includes dhhack, for tweaks and tilesets, to remove ASCII. It's available for all operating systems.

Any strategy/tips?

Losing is fun. There are tons of YouTube videos that'll walk you through the early game.

 

[Viata]

The best way to learn is to keep playing and dying.

 

[Fedora Master]

The difficulty of DF is overrated anyway, you will quickly discover ways to game the system (and that's fine).

Use the Lazy Noob Pack because that's what you are. Joking aside it comes with good tilesets and Dwarf Therapist, the latter is extremely useful.

The controls are for the most part perfectly understandable and labeled (except maybe the military). Start out in a place without an aquifer. You can theoretically start with 7 unskilled idiot dwarves but for beginners I recommend you bring
- Two guys with mining
- A carpenter
- A mason/building designer/mechanic
- Two growers, one with cooking, one with brewing
- Leader type with a bit of first aid skill and speaking

As equipment bring
- A cat
- A breeding pair of dogs
- A war axe for wood chopping
- Two picks
- A whole bunch of booze and food
- Purple helmet seeds

This will leave you breathing room for more stuff, you'll figure out what's useful and what isn't. That said, anvils and wood can be hard to come by in some situations.

Use Dwarf Therapist to set jobs for your dudes and especially to check migrants for their skills. Many will be useless eaters only good for hauling. It's best to activate their more obscure skills as needed.

Dig a starting base in the earth, set up a dormitory and rudimentary farming and go from there. Dig down into the first cavern layer and scout around, it's not too dangerous.

 

[asfasdf]

Bring an anvil.

 

[hello friend]

LazyNewb makes things easier.

Read the wiki like your life depended on it.

I know it's heresy but I like playing the game in Stonesense.

btw do you still get a shitton of free barrels by bringing along just 1 of many different types of food and drink?

 

[asfasdf]

Play in pure ASCII as god intended.

btw do you still get a shitton of free barrels by bringing along just 1 of many different types of food and drink?

Sounds pointless, you can craft a billion barrels/pots very quickly.

 

[Catacombs]

Play in pure ASCII as god intended.

Vanilla is fun and great when you just want to install the game and play it on your system, without the bells and whistles.

Do it, though, when you've had a couple playthroughs.

 

[Cael]

Thanks, guys.

I was trying to set tasks for the dwarves and can't seem to find the commands. Tried to make a burow to get them to dig into the ground, but no one seem to be digging, just wandering around. Two guys seem to be automatically assigned to picking things up, when I started, though.

Will look into the Lazy pack. Was just playing vanilla and the ASCII is driving me nuts. What I took to be a few villages turned out to be tree trunks when I examined them. Lime tree trunks were larger than 3 of my dwarves...

 

[Space Satan]

git gud

 

[Space Satan]

And make separate storages and plan rooms ahead, you will regret using single storage later.

 

[Cael]

git gud

You lazy cunt. Learn to code.

 

[Grimwulf]

Ever heard of Google?

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_guide

 

[rusty_shackleford]

easy
go to steam and buy rimworld

 

[Catacombs]

easy
go to steam and buy rimworld

Not challenging enough.

 

[Mortmal]

easy
go to steam and buy rimworld

Not challenging enough.

Dwarf fortress is not in any way harder, just less user friendly.At a certain age games stop to be challenging anyway .I'd advise oxygen not included too .

 

[Cael]

OK. How good is the vegetation setting? There is a place I'd like with no trees but thick other vegetation. Is that enough wood for me to run my industry on?

 

[Space Satan]

Caves always have trees.

 

[Haba]

The difficulty in DF comes apparent as you realise that your 200+ dorf fortress bogs down as the game puts more importance in simulating leaves than optimising path-finding.

 

[Cael]

The difficulty in DF comes apparent as you realise that your 200+ dorf fortress bogs down as the game puts more importance in simulating leaves than optimising path-finding.

I have a dream of a half-dozen squads of the happy little psychopaths clad head to toe in adamantium and wielding adamantium axes... :D

 

[Cael]

OK. So, I settled on a place with sand, deep soil, and all the metals. Conifer temperate forest. Supposed to have a stream.

What I got was cliffs on 2 sides, rocky desert on the other two sides, 2 stagnant pools of water and about a screen of green.

"OK, I can live with that," I thought. "Just have to dig in a lot more."

So, I had the miner dig a down stairway into the corner of the cliff face, and then an up stairway one level down plus a 1 tile wide corridor. He dug all that. Then I tried to add in side corridors. The stumpy little fella threw down his pick and ran off and now they are all clustered around the wagon for the last 30 mins...

 

[Incantatar]

easy
go to steam and buy rimworld

Not challenging enough.

Dwarf fortress is not in any way harder, just less user friendly.At a certain age games stop to be challenging anyway .I'd advise oxygen not included too .

It's at least harder in the sense that you eventually have an awful fight against fps death.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

easy
go to steam and buy rimworld

Not challenging enough.

I'm someone who is OK learning and playing games like dwarf fortress and various ASCII roguelikes. I'm also well aware that I'm in a tiny minority(even on RPG codex — while not so tiny — likely still a minority)
If they've never played either before, rimworld will be a much gentler introduction to the "genre"
plus it doesn't have transsexuals(with increasingly more every patch)

 

[RoBoBOBR]

What I got was cliffs on 2 sides, rocky desert on the other two sides, 2 stagnant pools of water and about a screen of green.

Embark screen lets you check all that - elevation, biomes, streams and rivers. Read up on that and get good.

 

[Cael]

I don't know why this happened, and I definitely don't know how to get the bastards out of my dining room...!

Seriously, man. WTF? I have fleas and crap all over the tables of Valhalla!