As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Dwarf Fortress: Fishing interrupted by carp
Mayday
Cutting edge goblin techRegistered User regular
Cutting edge goblin techRegistered User regular
Welcome to Dwarf Fortress!!
(stories of bloodshed and pressure plates)
Get it here: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
Extract the files from the zip into the folder of your choice, then run dwarfort.exe. Simple!
A tutorial is available here: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Your_first_fortress
And here's another: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Quickstart_guide
Welcome to the mountainhome of the dwarves! Starting out with a hardy band of seven pioneers, you will be beset on all sides by the threat of starvation, exposure, rampant idiocy, inexperience, tantrums, monkey attacks, hostile goblins, kleptomaniacal kobolds, accidental drownings, those goddamn hippy elves, being set on fire, upper class nobles that will make lives hell for your peasantry, and the mortal enemies of the dwarves, elephants. ELEPHANTS! OH GOD THEY'RE IN THE FORTRESS!
So what's Dwarf Fortress? It's a rather bizarre little roguelike/ fantasy world generator / colony management sim hybrid. With lots of dead dwarves guaranteed.
So you start out with a tiny band of 7 dwarves, a few wagons, mules, horses, and enough supplies to make sure you don't starve... maybe.
With a little luck (and if those goddamn monkeys dont steal all your food off the wagon again), your fortress will make it past the first winter. Or more likely it will collapse and you'll start up a new fortress, avoiding the mistakes of the first.
...before it all ends in a tide of blood and dwarf parts
And then you start AGAIN!
The ever helpful Dwarf Fortress wiki
The previous G&T DF thread
And the SA DF thread, the Goons have plenty of DF chatter too.
And of course THE EPIC SAGA OF BOATMURDERED which is a must-read.
FAQ
AAAAA LETTERS EVERYWHERE OH GOD HOW DO I DO STUFF?!
A few keys will come up a lot. Pressing these keys will bring up a yellow X cursor which you control using the arrow keys. PROTIP: use the keypad to move the cursor around- it's more comfortable.
Q - assigns orders at workshops and structures, or used to create rooms from a placed structure, like tables, beds, archery targets, etc, or to destroy them.
T - much like Q, but works for sTructures. Use this when you want to examine/destroy a structure that is not a workshop. Also useful for peeking at the contents of a workshop to see how cluttered it is.
V - Examines an individual dwarf, where you can look at their stats, gear, thoughts and alter their job list.
K - If you'd like to see if that U is an attacking Unicorn or a friendly hUman trader, this is the key you want. Pressing enter examines the object in greater detail (if any).
D - Designates an area for tasks. Hit enter to start dragging out a rectangle, enter to stop. Or hold down the mouse button and draw it in. Everything in this area will now be designated for whatever task you had selected, from Digging out rock, cutting down trees, or picking plants, or whatever else it might have been. Use this to dig out your dwarf-hole.
ALSO!
Z - Brings up your fortress report and tells you how depressingly low you are on food.
U - displays a list of all units on the map, along with current job. Useful for finding idlers and wild animals
< and > - Change the levevel displayed by one (up and down, respectively). Since you'll be using these a lot, it might be wise to remap the keys (I use / and * on the keypad). To do this, press ESC and use the "Key Bindings" option ("move/view cursor up (Z)" and "down (Z)" )
I built a bridge, but it looked ugly so I demolished it. The new one never gets built because of pathing errors!
Common mistake. Never cut off the fortress. The dwarf builders are trying to get to material/worksites on the other side of the river/chasm, but cant because there's no bridge anymore. Avoid this by always having spare bridges. If this has already happened, build stone blocks at your masonry workshop and use those to build your new bridge, ensuring that you're using accessible materials.
They sent a diplomat from the mountainhomes and he's killing all my dorfs! What kind of a diplomat is he?!
Aye, the outpost liaison who comes with the dwarven caravan is a delicate fellow. When he arrives, ensure that your outpost leader (use the N key to find him) has all jobs turned off, so that he has the time to meet the diplomat. Otherwise the poor guy will feel unaccepted and get miserable/insane/berserk.
It took me ages to figure out farming in the previous version. Now what?!
Now you can just farm to your heart's content over any soil/sand tile, with no need of irrigation. (To mine on rock tiles use the good old floodgate system).
How do I change the game resolution/settings/colours/etc?
In the data/init directory is init.txt, a well documented file which contains all sorts of DF settings.
Can I run this on a Mac?
User Sleep reports that Crossover works fine. I've no experience with this though.
I'd play this if only it had graphics
RARRRGH, but if you must, there's replacement tile and object graphics you can use along with install instructions on these pages:
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Tilesets
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Object_Tilesets
People are also sometimes interested in the tilesets I'm using. You can get a precompiled version here.
This game is running slooooooooow! I thought ASCII graphics don't need a fast PC?
Make sure your starting area is suitably small for your PC. If you're already in the middle of a game, it may also help to turn off weather and/or temperature in the data\init\init.txt file. There is also a possibility you have set an FPS_CAP in the very same file.
What happens if I do this?
Just try it first! It's no fun if we tell you that you would have doomed all your dwarves to a horrible agonizing death beforehand. No fun at all!
Besides, it just means you get to do it better next time.
How do I back up my save game?
A good idea, since the game is only in alpha, and does crash (rarely), but if it does, it can corrupt your entire world.
Make a copy of the data/save directory and keep it somewhere safe. To restore, delete your entire data/save directory and replace it with your copy. NOT DELETING IT FIRST WILL CAUSE ERRORS. For the backing up of save games, you can also go into the init.txt file (\data\init\init.txt) and set
[AUTOSAVE:NONE] to
[AUTOSAVE:SEASONAL]
and
[AUTOBACKUP:NO] to
[AUTOBACKUP:YES]
You can make the autosave yearly as well, and making autobackup set to yes will make each autosave a new save instead of overwriting your current one.
(This introduction was edited by SynthOr, Bahamut0 and MD.
(stories of bloodshed and pressure plates)
Get it here: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
Extract the files from the zip into the folder of your choice, then run dwarfort.exe. Simple!
A tutorial is available here: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Your_first_fortress
And here's another: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Quickstart_guide
Welcome to the mountainhome of the dwarves! Starting out with a hardy band of seven pioneers, you will be beset on all sides by the threat of starvation, exposure, rampant idiocy, inexperience, tantrums, monkey attacks, hostile goblins, kleptomaniacal kobolds, accidental drownings, those goddamn hippy elves, being set on fire, upper class nobles that will make lives hell for your peasantry, and the mortal enemies of the dwarves, elephants. ELEPHANTS! OH GOD THEY'RE IN THE FORTRESS!
So what's Dwarf Fortress? It's a rather bizarre little roguelike/ fantasy world generator / colony management sim hybrid. With lots of dead dwarves guaranteed.
So you start out with a tiny band of 7 dwarves, a few wagons, mules, horses, and enough supplies to make sure you don't starve... maybe.
With a little luck (and if those goddamn monkeys dont steal all your food off the wagon again), your fortress will make it past the first winter. Or more likely it will collapse and you'll start up a new fortress, avoiding the mistakes of the first.
...before it all ends in a tide of blood and dwarf parts
And then you start AGAIN!
The ever helpful Dwarf Fortress wiki
The previous G&T DF thread
And the SA DF thread, the Goons have plenty of DF chatter too.
And of course THE EPIC SAGA OF BOATMURDERED which is a must-read.
FAQ
AAAAA LETTERS EVERYWHERE OH GOD HOW DO I DO STUFF?!
A few keys will come up a lot. Pressing these keys will bring up a yellow X cursor which you control using the arrow keys. PROTIP: use the keypad to move the cursor around- it's more comfortable.
Q - assigns orders at workshops and structures, or used to create rooms from a placed structure, like tables, beds, archery targets, etc, or to destroy them.
T - much like Q, but works for sTructures. Use this when you want to examine/destroy a structure that is not a workshop. Also useful for peeking at the contents of a workshop to see how cluttered it is.
V - Examines an individual dwarf, where you can look at their stats, gear, thoughts and alter their job list.
K - If you'd like to see if that U is an attacking Unicorn or a friendly hUman trader, this is the key you want. Pressing enter examines the object in greater detail (if any).
D - Designates an area for tasks. Hit enter to start dragging out a rectangle, enter to stop. Or hold down the mouse button and draw it in. Everything in this area will now be designated for whatever task you had selected, from Digging out rock, cutting down trees, or picking plants, or whatever else it might have been. Use this to dig out your dwarf-hole.
ALSO!
Z - Brings up your fortress report and tells you how depressingly low you are on food.
U - displays a list of all units on the map, along with current job. Useful for finding idlers and wild animals
< and > - Change the levevel displayed by one (up and down, respectively). Since you'll be using these a lot, it might be wise to remap the keys (I use / and * on the keypad). To do this, press ESC and use the "Key Bindings" option ("move/view cursor up (Z)" and "down (Z)" )
I built a bridge, but it looked ugly so I demolished it. The new one never gets built because of pathing errors!
Common mistake. Never cut off the fortress. The dwarf builders are trying to get to material/worksites on the other side of the river/chasm, but cant because there's no bridge anymore. Avoid this by always having spare bridges. If this has already happened, build stone blocks at your masonry workshop and use those to build your new bridge, ensuring that you're using accessible materials.
They sent a diplomat from the mountainhomes and he's killing all my dorfs! What kind of a diplomat is he?!
Aye, the outpost liaison who comes with the dwarven caravan is a delicate fellow. When he arrives, ensure that your outpost leader (use the N key to find him) has all jobs turned off, so that he has the time to meet the diplomat. Otherwise the poor guy will feel unaccepted and get miserable/insane/berserk.
It took me ages to figure out farming in the previous version. Now what?!
Now you can just farm to your heart's content over any soil/sand tile, with no need of irrigation. (To mine on rock tiles use the good old floodgate system).
How do I change the game resolution/settings/colours/etc?
In the data/init directory is init.txt, a well documented file which contains all sorts of DF settings.
Can I run this on a Mac?
User Sleep reports that Crossover works fine. I've no experience with this though.
I'd play this if only it had graphics
RARRRGH, but if you must, there's replacement tile and object graphics you can use along with install instructions on these pages:
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Tilesets
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Object_Tilesets
People are also sometimes interested in the tilesets I'm using. You can get a precompiled version here.
This game is running slooooooooow! I thought ASCII graphics don't need a fast PC?
Make sure your starting area is suitably small for your PC. If you're already in the middle of a game, it may also help to turn off weather and/or temperature in the data\init\init.txt file. There is also a possibility you have set an FPS_CAP in the very same file.
What happens if I do this?
Just try it first! It's no fun if we tell you that you would have doomed all your dwarves to a horrible agonizing death beforehand. No fun at all!
Besides, it just means you get to do it better next time.
How do I back up my save game?
A good idea, since the game is only in alpha, and does crash (rarely), but if it does, it can corrupt your entire world.
Make a copy of the data/save directory and keep it somewhere safe. To restore, delete your entire data/save directory and replace it with your copy. NOT DELETING IT FIRST WILL CAUSE ERRORS. For the backing up of save games, you can also go into the init.txt file (\data\init\init.txt) and set
[AUTOSAVE:NONE] to
[AUTOSAVE:SEASONAL]
and
[AUTOBACKUP:NO] to
[AUTOBACKUP:YES]
You can make the autosave yearly as well, and making autobackup set to yes will make each autosave a new save instead of overwriting your current one.
(This introduction was edited by SynthOr, Bahamut0 and MD.
Mayday on
0
Posts
[AUTOSAVE:NONE] to
[AUTOSAVE:SEASONAL]
and
[AUTOBACKUP:NO] to
[AUTOBACKUP:YES]
You can make the autosave yearly as well, and making autobackup set to yes will make each autosave a new save instead of overwriting your current one.
Also, Valkun's guide seems kinda outdated now. Should I delete it?
Probably. Didn't a PA'er post a nice starting guide for the new version on the wiki? You already link to it near the top of the post. The rest of it looks very informative, though, nice OP.
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
Not sure I've ever used the T key, but it sounds pretty useful.
Not that I did this....
Oh my god, do children playfight? Because one of my children is a dabbling wrestler. Or do they join in the frenzy when everyone mobs the baby snatchers.
(As far as more constructive comments go, I notice that's also an old SA thread.)
In seconds, there's a red-splashed "k" surrounded by bits of refuse. Looking closely, I see (all in separate squares):
Jrochreerbis's left lower leg
Jrochreerbis's right lower leg
Jrochreerbis's left lower arm
Jrochreerbis's right lower arm
Jrochreerbis's head
With Jrochreerbis's corpse in the middle.
My dogs played a little too rough and ended up drawing and quartering the poor bastard. I know they steal stuff, but damn.
Destroy their meeting places.
Snow White being that single elephant across the river.
For parties you can try undesignating meeting areas (including the option on your main dining room).
So in Sinewlantern's second summer, a human caravan shows up. Sinewlantern was set up in an oversize, very craggy "heavily forested" area that turned out to have treeline problems. Therfore the settlement is way down in one corner for access to trees, so its trade depot is kind of tough to reach, and they showed up all the way in the other corner. The human mule traders get there easily enough, but they won't trade without the wagons, and the wagons aren't even a third of the way there before notice comes that the traders are packing up and ready to leave.
"Oh well," I think. Turning off the request for my mayor/broker to be at the depot, I take a look at him in passing and happen to notice he is ecstatic (and why not? I just finished fulfilling his new 50-pop noble requirements).
Within something like 5 dwarf days of the traders leaving he is miserable and throws a tantrum. The only new thought appears to be "unable to punish someone for a mistake", undoubtedly something to do with the failure of the humans and their juicy trade goods (that they didn't really need, but those shell crafts aren't doing anything else). He destroys the wood furnace, gets a jail sentence, and the captain of the guard drags him to a chain. The newly re-elected mayor is the single criminal in the history of Sinewlantern.
Oops, rope doesn't hold dwarves! After a little while he breaks free, increasing his jail sentence for destroying another building (the rope); the jail is immediately reorganized so it has only metal cages. He's ecstatic again - being free is a big positive thought - and for days happily harvests plants and dumps rock, while the captain of the guard, not Unbelievably Agile like the mayor, chases him but never quite catches up. Stopping to eat is his downfall, as the captain catches up and drags him to a cage.
By the beginning of autumn or so he's gone berserk. Time to decide how to kill him and pick a new mayor...
I'm going to extend the road the rest of the way to the spawn point, but it may take a few months since I'm quit busy hollowing out my mountain in search of Iron.
Wow. Good thing my Mayor is also Captain of the Guard. (Also, he's a Legendary Miner and a Legendary Record keeper, and the single most bad-ass dwarf in the fortress).
...
Kill him.
Steam BoardGameGeek Twitter
Roads only exist now to ensure a permanent, clear path for caravans to travel on, because new trees can't grow on them. They're only very important when you have heavily forested terrain that wagons have to weave back and forth through. Wagons don't move any faster on them, and they'll just take the shortest path.
Have also gone a full year without any immigrants.
I... I don't think I could. And I'm scared to try.
...right?
When I start in Terrifying areas, things generally leave me alone. When I start in calm areas, the horses and unicorns generally launch assaults.
Be advised.
It's still alive...barely.
Anyway, I'll edit it now.
And cutter- my tileset is currently on hold, I'm too busy playing the new DF (and the Witcher).
Are you kidding? That's the fun part! I've designed a uniform layout that can work for any fortress. Every floor has the same basic corridor map, and they line up vertically. Oh, and almost everything has to be symmetrical. Aesthetics are more important than efficiency in Earthenshield!
Added the info on how to avoid the liaison "bug".
:winky:
After getting the hang of things, it's kinda easy/boring now. Clearly, I need to be playing in a terrifying, freezing volcanic region. That's tomorrow's job! (rather than, say, schoolwork)
Is there a way to speed time up?
fixed
I start with aesthetics in mind, but it eventually goes out the window if I discover a Platinum seam or the like. My living quarters area is in two parts: one section is regimented rows of bedrooms; and the other section is a massive rough-edged hole.
My next fortress is going to be completely designed and marked out for mining before I start playing, with the exception of a shaft going one level down, curving around on that floor to give plenty of space for trap experimentation, and then plunging into the earth to find rock. As I then won't have to worry about security and designating just one path for anything, I'll have staircases everywhere.
Turn off weather and temperature in the data\init\init.txt file. You could try to fiddle with the FPS_CAP and G_FPS cap there as well. And (not that this is much help once you started a fort), if you minimize your starting area, you get major speed gains. I get 70 fps average with 30 dwarves on a 1 GHz laptop on a minimum size map with weather and temperature turned off. Adventure mode is almost unplayably slow on this laptop, but fortress mode with a minimal area runs like happy pants. I heard that full size maps with lots of height difference and dwarves can bring even a very fast machine to its knees.
Maybe Mayday could add these speedup tips to the OP, so new players with slow machines can play without having to start over once they hear about the starting area trick.