#How to get into Dwarf Fortress

[fuckyeahdwarffortress]

Can you tell me how to get started with dorf fortress? Like, how to get into it. I am thinking to try it but. I am bad at video games and i am worried it may be overwhelming given its complexity.

This ask came in on August the 8th, 2022, and I would first and foremost like to humbly and deeply apologise for my tardiness in getting around to answering you.

I've been asked this question a lot over the years. I had been going back and forward and umm-ing and ahh-ing at a few details - generating a brand new world, taking screenshots, being as to-the-point as I could. What you see above is about the tenth iteration of the work, and this will probably be the twelfth or so.

Here is the general setup for a successful Fortress:

Create a Small to Medium World.

Select Very Short to Short History.

High Civilizations are a must.

High to Very High Sites to keep things interesting.

Medium Number of Beasts so you won't starve.

Low to Very Low Natural Savagery so you don't get killed by Elephants.

Frequent to Everywhere Mineral Occurrence so you're never short on metals.

Settle in a Mountain tile.

In the preview, make sure you're next to a river.

Make sure when you examine the area, there's no Aquifier.

Check the Temperature, and make sure it's either "Warm" or "Hot".

[e]mbark!

Make sure you [d]esignate some Dwarfs to cu[t] down some trees.

[b]uild [w]orkshop fis[h]ery, two of them, next to your river.

[d]esignate a Dwarf to [d]ig up the stone to lay your foundations.

Every step I just listed is the quintessential "How to play Dwarf Fortress". In fact, if anybody wants to play Dwarf Fortress, this is all you need to follow - this, and the Wiki. You can reach it by going to the official Dwarf Fortress wiki, or use the In-Game Help menu by pressing [?] at any time during your gameplay to figure out the basics.

After writing all of this, I asked the community - mostly because I felt it was far too dry. This was pretty rough content, not at all interesting, and while helpful to most, it can be difficult to go into DF by rote instruction. Amongst them was my original suggestion: Watching Vargskelethor's Dwarf Fortress playthrough.

Some other suggestions from the wonderful community:

Use a "Lazy Newb" pack, such as PeridexisErrant's DF Starter Pack. These packs are tailor-made for newcomers into Dwarf Fortress, allowing for quick setup, texture packs, and a great deal of utilities.

Use the Dwarf Fortress Wiki's "Quickstart Guide". In fact, just use the Dwarf Fortress wiki in general! The whole wiki is tied to the game itself, so you can find it via the [?] Help! menu.

Use DFHack. DFHack, or Dwarf Fortress Hack, provides you with a console that runs detached from Dwarf Fotress, one that allows you to input commands to modify the game. It automates quite a fair few features for you, making the gameplay far easier.

Watch Let's Play's, Let's Learn's, or read some Dwarf Fortress stories. They're all excellent ways to learn the game - as mentioned previously, I personally figured it out watching Vargskelethor's Dwarf Fortress playthrough.

This covers basically everything you need to know. Everything relevant ends roughly here. This is the definitive, mechanical guide of starting Dwarf Fortress.

If you would not mind, however, I ask you to not leave yet. I have a story to tell you.

This is how to play Dwarf Fortress.

If you've made it to the end, this work was heavily inspired by what initially caused me to be interested in Dwarf Fortress: the Quantum Artefact known as Planepacked.

I came across this whilst looking for video game glitches to laugh at during a moment of deep depression in 2012. Shortly after reading about this ludicrous artefact, and all it's unique, inter-locking, self-referential stacks of history, I found the story of Boatmurdered, which made me laugh myself deep into the school nights.

This year marks my 10th year of playing Dwarf Fortress, and it also coincides with the premium release of Dwarf Fortress on Steam. I joined this little page after my endeavours with speedrunning Dwarf Fortress in 2016 came to a crashing halt after my ambitions got the better of me, and I wrongfully stepped out of line with another member in the speedrunning community.

I only contributed little commentary, but have been continually impressed and proud of the tumblr Dwarf Fortress community - from its incredible artworks I've always wanted to join in on, to the sheer volume of incredible Fortress Stories, to trying to help with complex and complicated problems I felt only I could solve.

This answer has taken a colossally long time to complete as I could not answer it with good faith until I felt all grounds had been absolutely covered, and all possibilities explored - not because Dwarf Fortress is a hard game to play, but it is very, very hard to get into, and get people into.

Thank you, if you've made it this far, for reading over my story, and checking out my guide.

Love, always,

Mod %

[crestiebestie]

Fuck me running it's so bad

I was tricked

This isn't a game

It's a hobby

[chickenmcnuggies]

now that im finished with this gay fates update i figured i’d show off the other modding project i’ve been working on, which is a dwarf fortress mod to add a lot of stock fantasy creatures i was disappointed weren’t in the game (or any other mods)

This isn’t all of them, but the sprites im most happy with

cockatrice male and female (megabeast, the snake head on the tail injects a venom that paralyzes their foes)

centaur male and female (sentient and similar to animal people)

peryton

various different ent caste

mogalls (a la fire emblem, shadows of velentia’s design specifically)

quetzalcoatl

wurm (megabeast, based on the wurm design from dungeon meshi)

wyverns (come in 4 different colors!)

phoenix (megabeast, skin made of stone and blood made of magma)

griffon and hippogriff (hippogriff are common domestics)

[soryualeksi]

... I convicted a human diplomat for murder (he confessed to some assassination wayyy, back lol) but he was never locked up, buuuuut now he's back as a normal diplomat, buuuuuuuuut now everyone is afraid of him and he's apparently in a combat state even tho he just wants a meeting. A meeting that isn't taking place because everyone hauls ass when he enters the room.

I guess it makes sense that nobody wants to hang with the Assassination Dude. :'D

[obsidiannebula]

I attempted Dwarf Fortress today. I have heard that it's pretty unforgiving, but I managed to get stuck in the tutorial for about 20 minutes. So. Yeah, I guess it is

[reformedmercymain]

officially started my pc journey. immediately lost my first qp game but we won a few team fights against broken heroes so that counts for something, right? 😭😭

Congrats! Welcome to the world of KB/M <3

[two-bit-socrates]

I bought myself two games for the switch: Inscryption and Buddy Simulator 1984. Next week we're getting Pentiment and the newer Dwarf Fortress and anything else on our wishlist that's on sale. Also I have several games I've yet to play.

Me right now: How long must I be confined to this bed before I can go back to setting up New Vegas?

[themortifyingordealofbeingme]

my deep desire to have fun in dwarf fortress stymied by my inability to build stairs

[prokopetz]

I know proposing inadvisable game-mechanical premises for hypothetical metroidvanias is kind of a thing on this blog, but one that I genuinely would be fun to see is a metroidvania with a really big map where the physics and world model are simple enough that you can just keep the entire world actively simulated in memory at all times. No "baddies can't cross screen transitions" bullshit – the monsters are all bumbling around according to their limited programming the whole time the global clock is running, and they can end up in very strange places if left to their own devices. A moving platform with an unobstructed straight shot ahead of it might cross dozens of screens and have a cycle duration measured in tens of minutes. Which parts of the map are underwater depends on how long it takes you to get there, because some rooms are "leaky" and their water level changes at a rate of meters per hour. We need to Dwarf Fortress this shit.

[headspace-hotel]

I've started playing dwarf fortress. Here's how it's going:

My dwarves keep dying of dehydration no matter what, even with my efforts to keep the stills running constantly.

One of them has turned into a ghost and is terrorizing everyone.

Basically most of my dwarves are miserable

There were a few stray dogs in my village, so I rounded them up into a pen, and now they have multiplied to the point that my village is absolutely overrun with stray dogs. I don't know how to stop them from breeding and I don't know how to kill them. They're everywhere.

my fisher dwarf has been trying to catch a live fish for the whole time i've had this save slot. i've designated a fishing location, set up the workshop next to a river/creek, but nothing happens. cm

Crop seeds keep showing up on chairs randomly. Not even just in the dining hall, in offices and shit.

One of the dwarves died violently at the very beginning of my save slot, leaving his corpse at the top of the mineshaft stairs. For some reason the corpse had an in-game description that was just "It is spattered with erith Diamondappeared's dwarf blood" like. 20 times.

There was a pool of blood at the top of the stairs where he died. Instead of going away or getting cleaned up somehow, the blood pool has spread to other tiles and expanded. My dog pen is like, a pond of blood. This guy died 3 in-game years ago. Where is all this blood even coming from.

Whenever something dies in the fortress THEIR remains are ALSO spattered with erith Diamondappeared's dwarf blood (x20)

[sexhaver]

everyone loves to laugh at how comically granular/detailed Dwarf Fortress is (and rightfully so!), but i feel like NetHack doesn't get enough attention because it is just as funny. for example, one of your most essential tools for surviving the early floors is to check the readme/wiki and notice that one of your, no joke, literally 134 keybinds is "engrave". pressing that button prompts you to write a word or phrase on a nearby surface, either by etching it with a dagger, blasting it with a wand, or just writing in the dust with your finger. if you write specifically the word "Elbereth" on a tile, you can stand there without most monsters being able to touch you.

the word "Elbereth" is not referenced or explained anywhere in-game. you are expected to know it from having read Lord of the Rings. you can really tell this game originally released in 1987 sometimes

[autistic-autumn]

Okay so I’m doing a quick test run of the new dwarf fortress to try familiarize myself with the controls and I do not like the way labour management is done.

Unless I’ve missed something (quite likely), it no long seems possible to manage all the labours on specific dwarfs. Rather it seems to have a set of professions that have to be added to a dwarf, with custom professions seeming to be the only way to get the list of profession as in the classic version. but custom professions seem to take up a whole item in the list of professions are seems more complex that necessary to add to specific dwarfs. 

It seems like a good fix for people who are new to the game, but as someone who likes to very carefully micromanage labours it’s extremely annoying. If someone knows something I’m missing please tell me because it’s driving me insane.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I think an interesting trick Dwarf Fortress pulls off is how, in Adventurer Mode, whenever you enter a site the game first populates it by pulling from the list of historical figures living there (note that for the purposes of Dwarf Fortress "historical figure" doesn't necessarily mean "important person", but "character that the game has chosen to keep track of as the world history progresses"), and then fills out the rest of the site population with random NPCs generated on the spot that you'll pretty much never see again because they're not saved anywhere and they'll despawn as soon as you leave and the site is offloaded.

HOWEVER, if you interact with any of those randos in a way that causes the game to generate a name for them, they'll be immediately marked as a historical figure, so the game will store them in memory and keep track of whatever happens to them from that point onward, ensuring that they can be reencountered at a later time.

That way, the game is able to keep the illusion of a consistent world while only having to keep track of the characters that the player is actually likely to remember.

Also that's one of the reasons I say Dwarf Fortress in Adventurer Mode is the closest you can currently get to playing a fantasy RPG with a human GM. Many of the ways the game reacts to your actions and choices (including this one) kinda resemble the thought process a GM would follow when running a game.

[stoned-rat]

The new steam version of dwarf fortress is amazing and I fucking love seeing how many people are enjoying these silly little guys and their misadventures. So here is a random collection of things I love about dwarf fortress, it's community, and it's history. (Plus some personal anecdotes)

-That one time fish became one of the games greatest threats

-That one mod that brings deadly carps back

-Training dwarven children with "danger rooms" filled with wooden spikes

-New training mechanics being added to prevent players from throwing all their children into spike pits

-When players posted their best mermaid genocide blueprints, and the creators had to patch the game AGAIN to stop their players from commiting outrageous war crimes

-bOATS and the lack there of

-The game is under halfway done according to it's creators. The game has been in development for 20 years.

-not only do you have gay, asexual, and bisexual dwarves, but animals too. Wondering why you arent getting any chicks? Sorry, your rooster likes cock.

-That one time I wasn't thinking and built a baracks next to a waterfall and my military kept throwing themselves to their deaths

-No race is actually "evil." Goblins and animal people can even join your fort and become valuable citizens.

-Elves are cannibals.

-The game being considered notoriously hard, but actually having extremely customizable difficulty settings. You will just get bored of everything going well.

-That one mod in the steam workshop that changes all the models to have giant tits

-The way dwarves will just refuse to do what you want them too

-Forts falling to their knees because cats kept adopting dwarves and having kittens until the game won't load anymore.

-The fact there are canonically no boats, but dwarves will continue to migrate to your haunted glacier year after year.

-When rain causes PTSD

-Guiding nobles under a bridge so you can lower it and they are literally crushed out of existence

-pangolins are invincible, and your hunters will pass out from exhaustion before killing one.

-The steam version coming out with a glitch that causes archers to not pick up crossbow bolts, but instead bash their enemies to death with their crossbows.

-Anyone's first attempt at redirecting a brook

-The game will always be available for free. The ASCII version will stay available for free download on Bay12, and will continue to be developed alongside the steam version. The premium/steam version was introduced to help the creators afford medical costs and thousands of people came out to buy a game that has been free for nearly two decades, and always will be.

-When asked what plans the creators had now that they were millionaires, they both said they had been more focused on the dwarves than the money and don't even know what they will do with all of it, beyond take care of themselves and keep working on the dwarves.

[catgirltoofies]

here's a few dwarf fortress adventure mode tips if you're struggling at all!

1. play a goblin. the mode is unfinished and there's no way to get food except what you start with, so play as a goblin so you don't have to deal with food and water (still need sleep tho). the downsides to playing a goblin, for the record: you're smaller and weaker than the other races. this can make it hard to wrestle things that are large, and makes you very frail under your armor - so don't fight big things without good armor.

2. don't bother with specific weapon skills at the start. my primary suggestions for skills to start with are Novice Reader, so you can read books and/or become a necromancer (if that's your groove) and, importantly, if you don't start out able to read, you can never learn to read. aside from that, my only suggestion is to take at least two levels in Observer. this will let you see how an opponent is attacking so you can counter effectively - you can't parry a dragon's fire breath, but you can block it. back to my initial point - the weapon you start with is not going to be a good weapon, and you should be seeking to replace it as soon as you can.

3. due to how combat works, your first medium-term priorities should be getting ahold of an iron chain shirt, an iron helm, two iron high boots, and two iron gauntlets. this will give you full coverage across your body. for embark, start with a copper chain shirt - cheap and plenty effective for early on, especially against animals. in addition, you want iron or silver weapons, or if your world is more developed, steel. this is why weapon skills don't matter on embark - you're not going to be able to put a ton of points into it anyways, and being a Proficient Swordsman won't help you when you find a masterwork silver whip in the hands of a random goblin.

4. NEVER sleep in the wilderness, if you can help it. you will be attacked and you will be killed. find a nearby civilization that isn't hostile to you, ask anyone in a building for permission to stay the night, and sleep there. you'll be safe from the boogeymen that way, but you're not necessarily safe from random attacks on the village you're staying in. those aren't your fault, though, and are totally random.

(boogeymen no longer attack outside of evil regions, but sleeping in the wilds still leaves you susceptible to predators - not nearly as dangerous, but still a potential threat.)

5. don't interact with elves unless you have a plan. starting in an elf civ has one big disadvantage and one huge potential advantage. elves don't use metal at all, so your only weapon and armor choices will be grown wood, which is an extremely ineffective weapon and armor material. even as ammo, wood is bad. however, if you start in an eleven civ, you have access to giant animal companions. your weapon doesn't matter when you have a giant lion on your side.

6. while in combat, don't be afraid to flee. sometimes you get in over your head. it's important to know when you're in trouble and getting out of dodge before it's too late. most importantly, if you're fighting something that gets cuts in through your armor, you need to leave. if its attacks are stronger than your armor, that means that you can get severed nerves, and those are permanent damage. when you go to the travel map and move a tile, all of your wounds are healed, except for permanent damage - it doesn't matter if you're bruised black and blue and your legs are broken, if you can get to the travel map, all of that goes away. but one single severed nerve in your ankle and you become permanently disabled and need a crutch to walk anywhere, severely hampering your ability to fight. even worse in the arm!

7. train! fight weak stuff before trying to take on strong stuff. run around the woods and chop the wings off of birds. wrestle crabs. get into fistfights with drunks. getting experience from things does not scale with difficulty, only repetition, so it's perfectly viable to pick up a rock and throw it at the floor for three hours and become a legendary thrower capable of splitting open a goblin skull with a hummingbird beak from 30 meters away, or fistfight drunken dwarves for weeks on end to become a legendary striker and punch a dragon's eyes out.

8. for early equipment, scout out camps. there tend to be some nearby any settlement, and the residents might not even be hostile to you! don't pick up everything, just things that are better than the stuff you have. it doesn't currently have an indicator, but carrying too much stuff WILL overencumber and slow you down, which can be deadly in a fight. i look for iron or silver equipment, especially whips. don't take the money, it's useless.

9. what's the best weapon? whips. due to the complex mechanics of combat, whips are basically able to totally ignore armor and simply break bones. secondarily, spear-type weapons are decent against armor, as they can punch through and cause bleeding, while blunt weapons like maces can break bones through the armor. swords and axes are not going to be useful. against unarmored things, though, swords and axes will be much, much stronger - a heavy sword swing can pretty handily sever limbs, which is an EXTREMELY effective tactic, if you can pull it off. blunt weapons will still be able to break bones, but it'll take quite a bit longer to kill an unarmored target with a war hammer than with a greataxe.

10. be patient! both in the game itself, and with the development process. this beta is very incomplete, missing extremely important content like crafting and trading, leaving you somewhat limited in what you can do. they're working on getting it finished, and what's currently available is still a whole lot! as for the game itself - sometimes it's good to take things slow. don't just wildly auto-attack things, sometimes taking a look at your attack options and potential "crits" can create an opening for you to turn a losing battle into a winning one. you can take a step to reassess and get a new accuracy roll if none of your options are good - just be careful not to leave yourself too open to counterattacks!

[shiyorin]

Hope I'm not too late for the NSFW request. I just want you to write about Guilliman's yearning, please. Maybe when he gets horny thinking about the reader but can only masturbate. We can't let the primarchs get everything they want anyway ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ͜⁠ʖ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

#Horny Guilliman in your area.

#Guilliman x F!Reader (Reader is Imperial Agent)

#All is just Guilliman's delulu so yeah, it still fine

#NSFW, Horny Heresy, Delulu, I don't have summary....

Guilliman sighed as he glowered over the latest rounds of logistical reports from the various Administratum functionaries. Honestly, the rank incompetence displayed in some of these projections and inventories was staggering. How in the Emperor's name had the Imperium managed to keep stumbling along for ten millennia with such crippling inefficiency?

But then, he supposed that was precisely why he resurrected, to restore some semblance of organization and purpose to the monumental bureaucracy and martial apparatus that had continued to decay in his absence. The task was utterly hopeless, of course... but he was a Primarch. It was his essence to struggle eternally against the inevitable ruin through sheer force of will.

Sighing, he sat back and ran a hand over his close-cropped hair, trying to massage away the tension knotting his brow. All around him, the echoing grandeur of the Fortress of Hera stood in mute testament to the folly of misplaced ambition writ cosmic in scale. A distillation of humanity's proclivity for turning inward upon itself, for laboring across eons and light-years towards ends that ultimately crumbled into irrelevance and waste.

Perhaps that was why one of the few true sources of light in his world had become the presence of you, the agent. An embodiment of lethal, peerless focus and self-possession... A being seemingly without flaw, ambiguity or irresolution to impair your duties. While everything else surrounding him seemed mired in grandiose failure, yours existed as a bladelike flensing of harsh efficiency amidst the futile sprawl of the Imperium he had reawakened to.

Guilliman shifted in his throne, tugging absently at the collar of his toga as he felt a familiar ache stirring in his loins. Despite himself, his thoughts had turned to the lithe, deadly form of you. Not for the first time, his mind's eye conjured vivid phantasms of your grace, that cool serenity masking a core of coiled menace...

A bead of sweat rolled down his brow as he squeezed his enormous cock. He stroked the heated, veined length slowly, dragging a groan from his lips as need lanced through him. But his calloused palm, slicked with oils, was a pale imitation of what he truly craved.

Your face swam before his mind's eye, delicate features hardened by an ever-present edge of danger, like a beautifully wrought blade. Those full lips slightly parted, smoky eyes heavy-lidded with rapture as you sank to your knees before the throne in supplication.  

"My lord..." You would murmur huskily, reaching out with hands far smaller than his own to grasp his pulsing girth. 

He groaned raggedly, hips jerking of the own accord as he imagined the satin caress of your fingers trailing up and down his throbbing length. Guilliman hungered to see your hands wrapped around his cock's furious girth, dwarfed and engulfed by his sheer immensity.

He stroked harder, revealing the slick, purpled head of his member. Pre-cum beaded at the tip, serving only to ease the passage of his fist along the red-hot steel of his erection. But even that scant wetness taunted him with thoughts of what your mouth would feel like, soft and searing and so perfectly snug around his achingly swollen prick.

A low growl of need rumbled up from his chest as he imagined you kneeling before him and looking up at him through heavy lashes with an expression of molten sensuality. He could see the tip of your tongue peeking out to wet those full lips in blatant invitation, all pretenses of innocence cast aside in the face of pure, ravenous hunger.

"Let me pleasure you, my lord," You would purr, reaching out to run your hands up the flexed columns of his thighs before boldly grasping the base of his member. Your gaze would smolder up at him with heavy-lidded lust as you leaned in close, planting feather-light kisses along his straining length. Your toned arms would likely ache within moments, struggling to contain his bulk, so absurdly outmatched in size yet persisting through sheer determination.

Muscles rippling and bunched with tension, Guilliman rutted into his encircling fist as the torrid fantasy played out in his mind's eye. He could practically hear your soft, panting breaths ghosting over his fevered flesh as you lavished worshipful kisses upon the blunt crown of his cock's head. A long, insistent lick up the underside of his shaft, finishing with a swirl of your devilish tongue into the weeping slit to savor his musky essence...

"Damn...." he growled through gritted teeth, redoubling his strokes and causing obscene, wet sounds to slap through the room. Your face contorted with determination as you finally parted those smoldering lips, your mouth stretching wide to accommodate his outrageous girth. Just the sight of your delicate features utterly overwhelmed by his flared cockhead, lips distended and clinging snugly to his pulsing, vein-wreathed length...

His other hand impacted the armrest of his throne hard enough to crack the stone, knuckles whitening as you began to take him deeper into that heavenly furnace of your mouth. Your breasts would sway enticingly as you bobbed along his slick, turgid length with agonizing slowness. The streaks of glistening spit and pre-cum would escape the corners of your cheeks, dribbling down to coat the flexed root of his cock. He longed to bury his fingers in your silken hair, yanking your head forward until your lush lips met the root of his cock so he might feel your throat convulse around his pistoning girth.

A hitched, guttural moan shuddered through him and Guilliman arched sharply, muscles cording as he worked his dick furiously with hand. Squeezed and stroked the base and main length, attended to the swollen cockhead with quick, frenzied twists and pulls of his thumb and forefinger around the sensitive crown. Slick, audible squelches of effort sounded through the room as his calloused palms glided with desperate urgency over the tumescent steel of his fleshy tower.

He was close, so punishingly close. Every nerve ending in his body screamed for release, demanding the blessed catharsis that only the ultimate climax could provide. He grunted harshly, abdominals clenching as his loins gathered themselves for that final, explosive eruption.

There kneeling before his throne, worshiping every pulsing inch of his cock with your mouth agape and gaze glazed with ecstasy. Your petite form is dwarfed by his bulk yet accepting of his sheer magnitude. Guilliman snarled incoherently as the fantasy reached its zenith, hips snapping forward to jackhammer his cockhead against your lush lips while your tiny hands...

"Nnnnngh ...!" he ground out in rapturous surrender, throwing his head back as the dam finally burst. His entire body went rigid, cords of muscle standing out in sharp relief and backlit by the guttering candlelight. Great plumes of steaming semen lanced from the flared tip of his cock, spattering out in his hand before him in whipping, gouting arcs of creamy seed. Pulse after pulse, driven by shuddering convulsions of his hips and loins until his very essence pooled in sloppy puddles. Only when the final pearlescent spurts dribbled over his fists did the tension gradually start to uncoil from his frame.

Panting harshly with exertion, Guilliman slumped forward, forearms draped over his quivering thighs as the hot, acrid musk of his release filled the chamber. He felt wrung out, hollowed, yet bearing a sense of fleeting peace in the aftermath of such feverish indulgence.

But despite the sweetness of release, pangs of shame were already taking root within him. The thought coiled in his loins like a slithering serpent, rebirthing his smoldering embers of desire into a rekindled flame, one eternally damned to burn even when physically spent.

The thought should disturb him, but it only makes his cock throb harder.