A: Because you haven't built anything yet. Go download the new version and report back. Strike the earth, and tell us what
find.
A: Some do. The most popular,
, currently uses 0.31.03.
. That's the full list - beware spoilers. You may want to try playing the game before reading the list.
. How can I give back to the legendary Toady One?
Q: My resolution hurts.
can help.
A: Try turning on partial print. Example: [PARTIAL_PRINT:YES:2]
Q: I'm water. What should I do?!?
.
For posterity, here's the First Post of the Old Version.
Welcome to Dwarf Fortress!!
(Histories of Flammability and Alcoholism)
Get it here: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
There is a video tutorial is located here:
Video Tutorial
An old-fashioned text tutorial is available here:
Your First Fortress (our own BahamutZERO wrote that! Originally. It's been thoroughly edited and made more awesome since then.)
Then there's also this text-based tutorial with pictures:
a very helpful Illustrated Fortress Mode Tutorial
Other useful links:
-
The ever helpful Dwarf Fortress wiki
-
And the Dwarf Fortress Map Archive
The First G&T DF thread - forever lost to the chaos of the intertubes
The Second G&T DF threadThe Third G&T DF threadThe Fourth G&T DF threadThe Fifth G&T DF threadThe Sixth G&T DF threadThe Seventh G&T DF threadThe Eighth G&T DF threadThe Ninth G&T DF threadThe Tenth G&T DF threadThe Eleventh G&T DF threadThe Twelfth G&T DF thread
And of course the epic sagas of
Boatmurdered and
Headshoots, both of which are a must-read.
Welcome to the mountainhomes 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: [strike]elephants[/strike] carp.
So what's Dwarf Fortress?
It's a rather bizarre [strike]little[/strike]
huge roguelike/ fantasy world generator / colony management sim hybrid. With lots of dead dwarves guaranteed.
You start out with a tiny band of 7 dwarves, a wagon, mules and a pair of cats that multiply without any restraint and flood your fortress with kittens.
With a little luck (and if those goddamn monkeys don't 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!
So what does it look like?
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 - Mainly useful for examining the contents of a building or structure, to see how cluttered a workshop is or what it's built out of.
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. It basically lets you examine the contents of a tile. Pressing enter examines objects in greater detail, if any is available.
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.
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, press K and go to the tiles where the inaccessible materials are, then Forbid the materials so the dwarves don't try to use them and build a new bridge.
They've 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 takes a fairly long time for him to lose it though.
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.
Also, heres a real usefull tool, it's a window size calculator, type in the resolution you want *window or full screen* and it gives you all the info you need at the bottom. Keep in mind there are two WINDOWEDX's and WINDOWEDY's you have to edit.
http://pkf.olivepeak.com/dwarfcalc.html
I'd play this if only it had graphics
There's replacement tile and object graphics you can use along with install instructions on these pages:
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Tilesetshttp://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/List_of_user_character_setshttp://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Graphics_sets
Then there's also this:
http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php
It makes the game look like this:
You also may want to take a gander at
Stonesense, a third party isometric visualizer. Keep in mind that it's a companion to, not a replacement of, the normal Dwarf Fortress interface.
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. It is also worth mentioning that if you have too many tasks going at once, it will slow your performance down dramatically.
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.
Also chronicled here is the stunning tale of a group of dwarves that chose the impossible,
they chose Oceanside...Now get out there and establish a new outpost for the glory of the Mountainhomes!
STRIKE THE EARTH!Important Note: Dwarf currency is to be called [strike]dimdums[/strike] [strike]dwarfbucks[/strike] dimdums, no exceptions.
(This introduction was edited by jdarksun, SynthOr, Bahamut0, J3p, Xtarath, and Mayday.)
As relevancy is attained, data will be promoted from obscurity.
Posts
Image of the well in question.
Edit: Oh boy! I embarked on a volcano and see what it turned out to be!
It's not only a magma pipe that reaches all the way to the surface, it reaches INTO THE SKY for a few z-levels. I can probably make some kind of defense mechanism out of that thing!
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
Does magma pour down the sides on the surface of the volcano? It would be hilarious if a caravan arrives and then a massive gob of magma falls from the sky right onto it.
You're going to have to build your fort atop the volcano, you know that right?
The pipe appears to be the exact same on every z-level as far as I can tell. No more variations in size across z-levels like in 40d.
Edit: I made a copy of my save, the site is just too awesome.
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
Couple of noob questions:
Is there a way to seporate useful economic corpses (things my hunter has killed) from worthless corpses (large roach corpses, rats) in my butcher shop's refuse pile?
I have an outpost liason just hanging out in my fortress. His caravan left a long time ago. He's never met with my broker... could I have messed up a setting somewhere? Is he going to go berserk and kill everyone?
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
Is your well room a mist room too? For some reason I never thought of combing the two, nice.
Yes, I was toying with ways to clean all the blood off of my heathen army of dwarfs, they love bathing in the stuff and dragging it down the long hallways and getting it all over everything.
...
...
War alligators?
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
You know, that's probably a bug. It's likely related to the bug with the tops of Dwarf cities extending a few levels above the ground, making them impossible to enter.
devil's rock is proof that volcanic rock wears away slower than the surrounding dirt :P
OKAY I ASKED IN THE LAST THREAD
why can't i assign a manager
my last manager may have died, he's gone anyway
but the only nobles i can assign are militia commander (filled), broker (filled) and militia captain (empty)
How many dwarves do you have? If it's a fairly young fortress, manager and bookkeeper might not be available yet (that's how it worked in the previous version anyway).
Do you have an expedition leader? There's a bug in the current version where if your expedition leader dies, no new nobles can be assigned.
for fuck's sake
if I just wait it out until I get a new noble at like 80 dwarves, will that fix it?
or do I have to start over? my expedition leader dropped a mountain on himself.
I think the problem goes away when you receive an immigrant noble, yes.
I suppose this means we can no longer kill our nobles with impunity.
Care to share?
Well, a Goblin Swordsman managed to kill the baby in the first two swings and wounded the commander with its last few before she killed it. Of course it wounded her because she decided to run into battle fully armored save for her helmet for some unknown reason but this is the same one who decided unarmored sparring with steel axes was a good way to start her career so I think her intelligence is questionable.
So the injury turned out to be superficial and she was released as soon as the Chief Medical Dwarf saw her, which was still a couple months later as he had a full hospital due to the ambush, a trog attack, a Troll mauling and the dwarf who jumped off a cliff to avoid an antman. First thing she does is go to "Seeking Infant", running through the fortress until she gets to the spot the baby had been killed, sadly stands there for a moment and then heads to the barracks to start training by herself (most of her squad is still in the hospital).
That brings the baby death/kidnapped count to three, one dying to thirst and starvation after its mother died (the one who jumped off the cliff), another kidnapped by goblins and then that one killed. There are another 2 crawling around the dinning room as their mothers are in the hospital which I do not have high hopes for. Of course, during this all another 2 were just born as well.
i'm about to come into magma and with it tons of obsidian and i'd like to use it for ... everything.
After defining the wall (or any construction), you can select the materials used. Wood, stone and metal are all valid.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
This time around I set up their schedules so they no scheduled orders every other month and train the rest of the months. Will that cure the unhappiness issues?
Also, what does the Civilian Alert mean?
Also also, Squad EQ / Indiv EQ on archery targets / weapons racks?
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Set up an armor rack or weapon rack, turn it into a barracks with (q) then (r) then (t) to set a squad to train there.
i have a room designated as a barracks
any time they're not actively ordered to stand around or to go kill something, they go back to other labors
Edit:
hit (s), then (a) to select your first squad, and set them to active with (t) I think it is, if that doesn't work set up a second barracks elsewhere and assign the squad to train there as well. They will still sometimes "switch back" but will continue on training anyhow in their chosen manner. My group of 10 axedwarfs like to do drills in groups even in their down time, its interesting to track.
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
As mentioned I have stockpiles for the animals, hell up until this bug I actually had 4 piles, 1 for cages, 1 for goblins and stuff, 1 for animals, and 1 for animal traps, when this happened I re-did my piles as I thought maybe something had glitched up. I'm guessing this is just a bug as it just all the sudden cropped up, I move all domestics to one cage now as to keep my cage clutter to a min and I have quite the large stockpile set up where the old cage piles were. Not really sure what the issue is, rather annoying as this is my first decent fort since the City of Metal and the first time I've had any bugs I could not solve right away (first the soap issue and now this). Only other issues I've had are the same as everyone else, plaster powder not going to the hospital, army hilarity due to their not wanting to listen to reason, etc.
Speaking of army hilarity for the first time in the almost 4 years my squad has been training they decided to do a sparring session, almost all of them are getting towards master armor/shield and legendary axe users, so I wasn't too concerned, till my commander wiped out half her squad, putting them all in the hospital with serious wounds. (They were all clad in full plate of superior quality, steel no less, with steel axes and shields.)
This is mostly due to pressure, startled me when I found out about it (the hard way) as well. You basically must make little holding tanks (a lot more effort but safer anyhow) for your magma usage.
This will save me like an hour per fort, jesus christ.