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Amazingly enough the only threat I can find here for DF is over two years old.

So, any other players here? Any particularly physics annihilating stupid dwarven tricks you've pulled off?

I tried to get into it but I just don't... get it.

It's a sandbox game in the vein of something like simcity or minecraft. What you do with it is up to you.

Oh, I get that much. I just can't seem to get its control scheme.

Or... much else about actually playing it.

The graphics and controls are probably the worst. But it's ultimately a lot of fun.

I stopped playing it when farming got mucked up. Building a wet farm was far too much work early in the game when you needed it most.

Yeah, it really is. I've tried to get into it, but it's just so confusing, even to a veteran gamer used to things like MUDs and ASCII-driven games.

I wanted to get into it, it sounded like the funnest game ever (thanks TV tropes )

But...I couldnt do it





Perhaps if someone made a "User Friendly" version, I could. Much like how I love Dungeons of Dreadmoor, a user friendly Rogue-like game

Downloading the Lazy newb pack for dwarf fortress...I'd like to see this.

"I am a dwarf, and I'm digging a hole... Diggy diggy hole, I'm digging a hole..."

I love DF. It definitely takes a while to learn how to do anything, but once you do it feels so awesome. The first time I learned how to designate stuff to be dug out was mind-blowing for me.

Is there a let's play or tutorial video I can watch on youtube? I mean a good one, not a random one from some guy who talks like his face is actually his ass and he's wearing pants. I mean, the pants thing is good ,but the wearing them over his face, which is also his ass, is not, as it muffles and mumbles his voice.

Melissia wrote:Is there a let's play or tutorial video I can watch on youtube? I mean a good one, not a random one from some guy who talks like his face is actually his ass and he's wearing pants. I mean, the pants thing is good ,but the wearing them over his face, which is also his ass, is not, as it muffles and mumbles his voice.

Really, you need to read through the tutorial.

Embark somewhere, dig a hole, make some beds and furniture, set up a dining room and barracks, and figure out how to survive a season or two.

Then you'll get raided by some goblins, or run out of beer, or your dwarfs will get eaten by carp, or a variety of ailments will befall you.

So you embark somewhere else, figure out how to make a farm, or beer, or whatever, and you'll survive for a little longer. Then you'll die again.

Eventually you'll survive and some more dwarfs will show up and you can assign them to new tasks, like mining, making trinkets to trade, keeping your other dwarfs fed, and a variety of other useful tasks.

Then more dwarfs show up.

Then more. Soon you don't know what you're going to do with all of these dwarfs.

Eventually you get a noble and everything becomes dedicated to bowing to every absurd whim that those bastards can imagine. Oh, the king wants a ruby window in his room so he can look at his throne. And now he wants a gold cabinet encrusted with emeralds and obsidian...

Stupid nobles.

Dwarf Fortress is pretty amazing. The learning curve is more of a cliff than a curve (that cartoon nailed it). But, once you climb it, the game is really excellent.

It's also pretty easy once you figure out how to find the right embark spot. Farming becomes a joke if you have plenty of soil layers. Of course, half the fun is intentionally trying to play it on less than ideal embark spots...

biccat wrote:Embark somewhere, dig a hole, make some beds and furniture, set up a dining room and barracks, and figure out how to survive a season or two.

How do you embark? Or dig a hole? Or make... anything?

That's why I was hoping for a video-- seeing someone do it while they're talking about doing it is far more helpful...

I love and hate this game.

This game is not about succeeding. It's about the most epic failures.
Like a dead butterfly blocking your gate and this resulting in lava (designed to kill hostile attackers) pouring into your fortress and devastating your kingdom.
The description of dwarves is just awesome. A leader lady-dwarf who hates males, has a pet vulture, wears an aye patch and likes wooden weapon stands and glass?
The best way to learn in here is to fail miserably and then fail a bit less.
Grab some add ons like stonesense. Read this.

Dwarf Therapist is a MUST.

Melissia wrote:

biccat wrote:Embark somewhere, dig a hole, make some beds and furniture, set up a dining room and barracks, and figure out how to survive a season or two.

How do you embark? Or dig a hole? Or make... anything?

That's why I was hoping for a video-- seeing someone do it while they're talking about doing it is far more helpful...

Seeing someone do it won't help because you won't see the keyboard commands.

Here's a step-by-step guide for playing in a pre-generated world. Although I don't think it's as much fun, since you won't die right away.

Arrow keys to move, enter to select, space to pause/toggle options (although on some menus there will be different options, e.g. "e" to embark on the embarkation screen).

Well, that wiki tutorial helped (the first one, not the one with a pregenerated world)

And it led me to the amusing term "thermonuclear catsplosion", so I say the game is alright so far.

First off, the keystrokes are always annotated at the bottom of the menu. They're not terribly clear usually but they're there. The real issue is that it's not always consistant. Some menus let you use the arrow keys to scroll, some only work with +/-, some need Ukhm, or UKHM, it's byzantine to be wildly generous. I've been playing for a while and I still forget which menu responds to which keys sometimes.

Look at DF the way you would to an online FPS. Expect to die a lot just figuring things out. Once you get them figured out still expect to die a lot to random wierd gak. The way I learned, am learning the game is to start a fortress and just focus on getting one or two things figured out until the next disaster hits. Then I figure out how to survive that until the next thing kills me. Just keep repeating. If you're like me you'll hit the point where you'll have a self sufficent fortress that can survive most random bs long enough for you to be the cause of it's (forgotten beast) implosion (flooding), before (tainted water) too (flooding, again) long (magma oops).

For the ASCII issue I can't recommed the Lazy Newb Pack enough. You get the latest version of DF, an interface to help tweak the most common variables, along with several excellent tile sets and a whole host of useful utilities. I wouldn't say Dwarf Therapist is a must but working through the default interface, especially when you need to deal with 150+ dwarves, is agonizing. So use Dwarf Therapist, it's the second utility in the list in the LNP. The LNP also lets you turn invaders on or off, in case you want to figure out how to survive yourself before the game starts throwing goblins and forgotten beasts at you, turn off aquifers, set your population cap, and auto save. Lots of good stuff.

Also, make your life easy to begin with. Take the easy embarks. Start with a river, heavily forested, and moderate to deep soil. Clay is nice to have as well. During world gen you can also set savagery to low, beasts to low, and minerals to abundant which will make things easier. The game will kick your ass at first without making your life any tougher. Later on you can increase the difficulty and fun.

I'm using the Phoebus set for graphics. It's much better than the ASCII as far as stopping confusion-- almost akin to minecraft really.

No other mods just yet...

I haven't tried any other mods either. Dwarf Therapist is separate program. It doesn't modify anything. It allows you to set your dwarves labors, names, professions, etc. without having to do it through the stock interface.

Tyyr wrote:I haven't tried any other mods either. Dwarf Therapist is separate program. It doesn't modify anything. It allows you to set your dwarves labors, names, professions, etc. without having to do it through the stock interface.

It is worth downloading! Made the game much more enjoyable for me.

If you get the LNP you've got it. I use DT exhaustively because really, master potash maker in the first wave of immigrants? Are you kidding me?

My dwarves all wind up with custom professions. I can't imagine doing that through the stock UI.

lol, I kinda got confused about setting up farms, fisheries, etc and screwed everything up. Starved dwarves!

So I started new game and found this little gem of a starting area:



For amusement's sake, I'm gonna use it. I just need recommendations for a fortress name.

Melissia wrote:lol, I kinda got confused about setting up farms, fisheries, etc and screwed everything up. Starved dwarves!

So I started new game and found this little gem of a starting area:



For amusement's sake, I'm gonna use it. I just need recommendations for a fortress name.

That actually looks like a pretty decent starting location. Calm surroundings, deep soil, plenty of metals, and lots of trees to work with. Should be a great spot to take your time and focus on learning the game.

It also has clay, and, hopefully, sand. Also, you should have plenty of layers of sedimentary rock, so there should be plenty of coal and iron to work with. Do you know if it contains flux?

Be careful about the water freezing in the winter! Make sure to set up an indoor water supply for your soon to be injured dwarves.

It doesn't seem to have a flux stone. What're flux stones used for?

Melissia wrote:It doesn't seem to have a flux stone. What're flux stones used for?

Flux stones don't appear in the list on the embark screen. But, if you do a search of your world for regions, you can specify that it contains flux stone, and then pick from the spots it finds.

Flux stones are used in smelting operations to make Steel. The reactions are the following:
1 Iron Ore (Hematite, Magnetite, or Limonite) in a smelter with energy (either magma, 1 Charcoal, or 1 Coke) -> 1 Iron
1 Iron + 1 Flux Stone (Calcite, Chalk, Dolomite, Limestone, or Marble) + 1 Fuel (Charcoal or Coke) in a smelter with energy (either magma, 1 Charcoal, or 1 Coke) -> 1 Pig Iron
1 Iron + 1 Pig Iron + 1 Flux Stone (Calcite, Chalk, Dolomite, Limestone, or Marble) + 1 Fuel (Charcoal or Coke) in a smelter with energy (either magma, 1 Charcoal, or 1 Coke) -> 2 Steel

Charcoal is:
1 Wood in a Wood Furnace (no energy required) -> 1 Charcoal

Coke is:
1 Bituminous Coal in a smelter with energy (either magma, Charcoal, or Coke) -> 3 Coke (nets you 2 if you don't have a magma smelter)
OR
1 Ignite in a smelter with energy (either magma, Charcoal, or Coke) -> 2 Coke (nets you 1 if you don't have a magma smelter)


So to get 2 Steel Bars, you need:
2 of Hematite, Magnetite, or Limonite
2 of Calcite, Chalk, Dolomite, Limestone, or Marble
2 Wood or Ignite, or 1 Bituminous Coal
Either a magma smelter or 4 Wood or Ignite, or 2 Bituminous Coal


If you don't have flux stones (a common problem), you either have to stick with Iron for your weapons and armor, trade for flux stone (NOT blocks), or trade for Steel items and melt them down.


Also, I assume you haven't seen magma yet. Be careful with it, as magma is very fun!

Grakmar wrote:Flux stones don't appear in the list on the embark screen.

I recall seeing some say flux stones.

Either way, the search that found this area had flux stones set as yes.

Okay, it should have them. I'll look out for those.

Question though-- I know I found bronze and silver (I had to look up the item names and what they meant, but they were ores for those metals), what building would I use to smelt them?

I get smelter, but the menu's large and I keep missing it... what is its shortcut?

Grakmar wrote:Also, I assume you haven't seen magma yet. Be careful with it, as magma is very fun!

Actually I did in my previous (doomed) game. It was at the bottom of a massive natural cave system that seemed to have followed me from Minecraft.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, got a recommendation on the name?

It's probably too long, but I currently have...

Sedilnazush Geshud Nom
Angelblood, the Fortress of Gods

Melissia wrote:

Grakmar wrote:Flux stones don't appear in the list on the embark screen.

I recall seeing some say flux stones.

Either way, the search that found this area had flux stones set as yes.

Okay, it should have them. I'll look out for those.

Excellent!

A good thing to check right now is the Stone screen under Status (access with Z). Look through the list of stones. Anything in Green is considered non-economic and will be used by your dwarves whenever they want. Anything in Red is an economic stone and will only be used when you explicitly tell them to use that stone. By default, any "worthless" stone (meaning you can only use it to build stone constructions) will be non-economic and any useable stone (meaning it's flux or fuel or can be smelted) will be marked as economic. However, any layer stone (meaning it makes up the default stone of that layer, rather than just a mineral vein or cluster) will be non-economic, and some of the flux stones can make up layers.

So, go through that list now and see if any of the flux stones are non-economic. If one of them is, you'll have a ton of it and will have no problem with flux. If one of them isn't, your flux will be somewhat limited, meaning you may have to go exploring to find it, and you should be careful in what you make out of Steel.

Melissia wrote:Question though-- I know I found bronze and silver (I had to look up the item names and what they meant, but they were ores for those metals), what building would I use to smelt them?

I get smelter, but the menu's large and I keep missing it... what is its shortcut?

The smelter (or magma smelter) does all the smelting. Everything involved in making metal bars takes place here (other than making charcoal from wood, which takes a wood furnace). To build it, it's b (build) e (furnace) s (smelter), and you require 1 fire-safe material and a dwarf with Furnace Operator enabled.

To queue up jobs on the smelter, you hit q, then move the cursor onto the smelter. Or, if you appoint a manager in the nobles screen (shortcut n), you can automate this. Once he's appointed (and assigned an office), click j (jobs) m (manager) to see all the jobs the manager is handing out. If you hit q, you can add a new work order. Just start typing in the order you want to narrow it down. Then, enter the quantity you want made, and the manager will automatically assign it among all the various relevant workshops.

Example:
Hit j, m, q, type "coal" and then select Burn wood for coal or whatever it is, enter "30". Then hit q again, type magnetite and select Smelt Magnetite, then enter 30 again. Your manager will assign the tasks and your dwarves will go about producing 30 iron bars.

There are a few drawbacks to the manager. The reactions you can't perform because you lack the materials aren't automatically disabled, like selecting them in the actual workshop. And, the manager will keep assigning the tasks until they're complete, even if you run out of supplies, meaning you get a message saying "Urist McSmelter cancels job Smelt Magnetite: needs fuel" every few minutes or so until you get fuel or cancel the job in the manager menu. But, as your fortress grows, you get multiples of each workshop and you sometimes loose track of where the workshops are, the manager saves the day. Plus, once you have plenty of supplies, you can queue up a whole ton of different jobs for the same workshop and not have to go add more for quite a while.

Melissia wrote:

Grakmar wrote:Also, I assume you haven't seen magma yet. Be careful with it, as magma is very fun!

Actually I did in my previous (doomed) game. It was at the bottom of a massive natural cave system that seemed to have followed me from Minecraft.

Ah, you're a minecraft player! In that case, you'll climb the learning cliff faster than most. Just be prepared, it's hard to go back to minecraft after you've mastered Dwarf Fortress. It just isn't the same doing all that mining without having to deal with drunken, homicidal workers messing up your plans.

Melissia wrote:Also, got a recommendation on the name?

It's probably too long, but I currently have...

Sedilnazush Geshud Nom
Angelblood, the Fortress of Gods

Sadly, I'm not a very good at creating names. All my D&D characters have absolutely terrible names. I just use whatever Dwarf Fortress randomly generates (they are usually pretty funny).