#How to play 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 %

[vasito-de-leche]

Arcana is so trans to me but not the mtf trans but like eldritch horror being realized that she likes to be perceived as a mortal woman

nonnie we are holding hands, we share the same vision, the same dream, the same eldritch transgenderism <3

there was a tweet recently (I think it was a tweet?) about a very specific type of character design--non sexualized, nude humanoids presented as otherwordly and entirely alien, off kilter, merging monstruous characteristics and that's exactly what I love and think about when it comes to the thing Arcana summons, the Guiding One's Creation

Arcana is so transgender to me in a very specific way of using the feminine figure as a way of both luring and keeping everyone at bay <33333

[paxcallow]

big guy. from a secret project i had to abandon because of job depression. maybe i continue it sometime. it's a good idea.

[whifferdills]

move over, maslow

[chickenmcnuggies]

sometimes I see you on my dash and I'm like "wow these posts are pretty good but I dont remember why I followed this person" and then I load up my dwarf fort with my beloved hippogryphs

YEAAAAH im glad you like them! the hippogriffs and griffons are two of my absolute favorite creatures, so im very biased to them :) (also glad that you can tolerate my other post lol)

i suppose on that topic, it gives me a good excuse to show off the last 6 beast/giant variants going into the mods since i already finished all their sprites.

first up is the stymphalian bird! it's a small bird with feathers composed of bronze. they're docile by nature but are capable of shooting out their metal feathers to attack their predators

...on the other hand there's the giant variant, which is vicious by extension of living in savage lands

speaking of giant variants, there's 5 other ones being added

(griffon, fae dragon, bicorn, warg (it's default sprite was changed and the old sprite repurposed), and chimera)

the other brand new creatures are:

owl bear, a large carnivore with claws capable of slashing through metal. inspired by the cool looking owl bears from baldur's gate 3 that i saw when a friend was streaming the game. can be war trained if tamed

basilisk and mandrake

the basilisk are aggressive carnivores which possess a gaze that can turn their prey to stone, similar to the gorgons. unlike the gorgon's stare though, supposing their victim doesn't die while in statue form, they will return to normal after an in game week (they dont require food/water/breathing while afflicted)

Mandrake are small plant creatures who live rarely in underground lakes, where they 'breed' by planting their seeds in the ground. upon death they drop their seeds which can be planted to make very potent ale. the ale has many beneficial effects, such as helping infection and stress relief, but also has a grocery list of rare (2-10% odds) of triggering multiple ill side effects, such as nausea and sending a person into a fit of rage. made entirely just to make taverns all the more FUN

something i didn't plan to add, but added based on request: a tressym! flying cats from forgotten realms (and also baldur's gate) that i thought looked cool and had interesting enough lore to make a good addition. I only actually finished their sprites earlier tonight, and their raws aren't made yet.

going off what i read about them, they were going to be the same size as a cat, capable of being 4 different colors/coat patters, and immune to poison. it also mentioned them being able to see invisible creatures, so i'd like to play around with them having extra vision/high stats to be able to detect ambushers, tho i'd need to test to make sure they dont completely trivialize it. Was planning to make them like the griffons and wargs, where they have the [PET] token, but not [COMMON_DOMESTIC], so there's a chance for dwarves and humans to tame them in world gen, but they would hopefully be very rare due to their spawn biome (taiga?) and frequency (was thinking around 7%)

last but not least, another mega beast, this time the Undead Dragon! an undead mega beast that's intended to be a similar difficulty to the bronze colossus. it lacks blood, and damaging organs or connections doesn't bother it. It is capable of raising corpses once a day, and breathing a cool breath that makes a target drowsy and nauseous. while it can of course be killed in the usual dwarven solutions (magma, crushing) it can also be killed instantly by being speared in the skull by a spear, or decapitated. it is not capable of flight due to it's body being too rotted.

[regallibellbright]

“I mean, children can haul dead bodies so I guess that’s good.”

Dwarf Fortress, everyone!

(Currently watching: GDQ Hotfix’s Dwarf Fortress showcase with Brossentia from a few weeks ago.)

[alienjaes]

WAIT YOU PLAY QUD TOO ???

nice.

Heh, nice.

But yeah! I haven't touched it in a while but I have very fond feelings towards it, it reminds me of some games from my childhood (Kingdoms of Kroz, anyone?) and I absolutely Adore the Lore. I should continue my last game soon

[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

[boyfeminism]

ive decided my current biggest dwarf fortress flaw is i love restarting

[two-bit-socrates]

I'm going to get back to setting up my laptop for Fallout New Vegas either today or tomorrow but like Pentiment and the newer Dwarf Fortress are Right There and Christmas is coming and we get paid on Thursday...

[deepseamuse]

I don’t know why Tumblr decided to show me Dwarf Fortress posts but I’m not complaining

[cicadaland]

dwarf fortress. it calls to me...

[squidult]

i spent pretty much the entirety of today playing dwarf fortress on the steam release and. im not gonna lie. i have no regrets

[themortifyingordealofbeingme]

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

[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)