Dwarf Fortress

[Raging Turtle]

Good writeup, Hrose

Are you totally screwed if you don't get trees?  I choose a 'heavily forested' area but all I see is grassland.  Blah. 

Still trying to work out how exactly to start farming since they only let you choose inside seeds to start with.  It may be a rough winter. 

Also I have no freakin' idea on how to get a forge started.  Or any kind of metal work, really.

Just have to dig down until you hit soil/clay/loam/silt then you can farm away.If you chose heavily forested and your not seeing trees scroll down a few levels,shift +>, and check the lower elevations for them.If you still don't find trees you can always request wood from the dwarven liason when the traders come in the fall.

I've dug down about 6 levels and the rock seems to get getting tougher. 

I'll let you know when the liquid hot magma floods my fort.

Edit:  I just had the bright idea that maybe you meant up instead of down, I'll try that after I piss off this caravan that's here. 

Edit the second:  I manage not to piss off the trader, all my guys move the few trade goods I have to the depot, and then my designated broker gets his foot torn off by a skeletal goat on the other side of the map and can't walk back to make the trade.  Hmm. 

[Jade Falcon]

I've always dug down and found some sand/clay but I guess it could be anywhere.Usually I just look for underground pools and see what soil is around them and go from there.Worst case scenario find an underground pool get a farm ready beside it and breach the pool and run :)

[Glazius]

For game exploration purposes, the most important menu is b, the build menu.

The second most important menu is b -> w, the workshop menu.

Your basic map shouldn't be in a glacier. Try to navigate to a place with trees and mountains. You shouldn't hit an aquifer your first time either (there's a blue wavy line on the screen describing the types of ground if there is one.) This means that if you dig deep enough you get stone. And you seem to get stone a lot more these days.

The designate menu, d, is useful for a couple of things. Most important among them -

- hit d again and select some solid rock or loam walls. Dwarves who can mine and have picks will start digging it out.
- hit t and select a stretch of wilderness. Dwarves with wood cutting and an axe will make with the chopping, producing one log from one tree.
- hit p and select a stretch of wilderness. Dwarves with plant gathering (herbalists) will run around scooping up bits from the bushes.
- the stairway keys are a bit odd. You can build a down stairway all the time, but you can only designate an up stairway or up/down stairway in a solid wall.
- enabling dwarven movement along the Z axis requires ramps or stairs on Z-adjacent squares.

You can quickly designate with the mouse - left-click designates the square under the mouse, right-click positions the cursor on the square. Enter starts the designate area, and enter finishes the designation as well. So right-click enter right-click enter on the corners of an area is fast and simple.

Anyway, there are two important things you can do with rocks. The mason's workshop b -> w -> m can turn them into rock blocks, which are slightly lighter and make smooth structures, and into all manner of rock furniture - doors, floodgates, coffins, thrones (rock chairs), coffers (rock chests), cabinets, et cetera. The mechanic's workshop b -> w -> t can turn them into mechanisms, which are used to remotely control all manner of fortress features. If you need some trade goods, one option is a craftsdwarf's workshop b -> w -> r making stone crafts, mugs, instruments, and toys.

If you're building on limestone or a similar white stone you may find your dwarves refusing to make things out of the rock - go to stones under the z menu, and deselect the stone if it appears in the list of "economic stones". These stones fulfill the "flux" reaction in making pig iron and steel, so in the old DF people saved them.

Stone can make any type of furniture your dwarven heart desires except for three important ones - beds, where dwarves sleep; barrels, which hold consumable items; and bins, which hold everything else. Wood is a good option for this.

A carpenter's workshop b -> w -> c will turn wood into various furniture items, but those three are the most important, since rock is generally so freely available.

If you want your nobles to work (the n menu shows who's assigned; you can freely change this) you need to build a chair, then look at the chair in the q menu, and choose r to make it an office. Assign the office to a noble and he'll get to work. Even starting out you'll have a manager, a broker, a bookkeeper, and a leader. The manager and bookkeeper need offices to queue up global jobs (press m on the job or unit screens) and count things, respectively. Settings on the bookkeeper will make him more precise, though be warned this takes a long time.

Making things out of metal is the ultimate dwarven pursuit, so here's how you do it.

First, you need some ore. Go digging around until you find something with the "pounds" symbol in a wall that comes out as an asterisk. That's metal ore.

Next, you need some fuel. You have two options - dig coal out of the wall, or cut down a tree and make it into charcoal. Wood furnaces are built with b -> e -> w, and need a stone block. Queueing up a job in the furnace you can turn one log into a bar of charcoal or ash. Ash has other uses in glassmaking and fertilizing farms, but charcoal is the fuel.

Next, you need a smelter, which you also build from the furnaces menu, b -> e. It needs a stone block. When it's built you can use it to smelt your ore into bars.

Finally, you need a forge, which is built from the workshop menu, b- > w. It's called a "metalsmith's forge" and needs a stone block and an anvil.

Now, you can make things at the forge!

Except the forge and smelter both consume 1 unit of fuel for every job, and that's one square of coal or one tree.

If you can find some magma, you can build magma versions of the smelter and forge which don't need fuel, working instead off geothermal energy. But unless your region has a red squiggle in it, indicating an exposed magma pipe, you've got a lot of digging before you can find some.

[Morat20]

WTB modern interface and graphics, plz.

Seriously, I want to love this game more than my wife. However, I'm fighting the interface and ASCII graphics to get to the love. And that was BEFORE it added a third dimension.

[Yegolev]

Speaking of the interface... I installed this at home and fired it up in fullscreen.  The Dwarves/Professions list was a bit off since apparently some of the icons (beardy type) are either black or missing.  I installed it on my laptop here at work today, picked windowed mode and the icons are all visible, furthermore they are the non-beardy type.  I don't know if it is important to have beardy icons, but it seems important to be able to see the icons, so... I should play windowed only?

EDIT:  It occured to me that those icons might just be dark purple and on my monitor at home (which needs replacing) they just were invisible.  I also cannot read "f13 brand green sarcasm text" on my home monitor.  So nevermind that.  What I want is a list of what icon means what.  Like ⌂, what does that mean?  I'm very interested in not borking my starting location.

[bhodi]

Is there any reason NOT to make the initial placement grid as large as possible?

[Jade Falcon]

Is there any reason NOT to make the initial placement grid as large as possible?

If your computer can handle the cycles make it as big as you like,but the bigger the area the more things your system has to track and bogs down the cpu cycles.the starting size is actually pretty huge when you take into consideration 16 levels up and down on average.

[Jade Falcon]

Speaking of the interface... I installed this at home and fired it up in fullscreen.  The Dwarves/Professions list was a bit off since apparently some of the icons (beardy type) are either black or missing.  I installed it on my laptop here at work today, picked windowed mode and the icons are all visible, furthermore they are the non-beardy type.  I don't know if it is important to have beardy icons, but it seems important to be able to see the icons, so... I should play windowed only?

EDIT:  It occured to me that those icons might just be dark purple and on my monitor at home (which needs replacing) they just were invisible.  I also cannot read "f13 brand green sarcasm text" on my home monitor.  So nevermind that.  What I want is a list of what icon means what.  Like ⌂, what does that mean?  I'm very interested in not borking my starting location.

This was the best I could find with a quick search.Scroll down a bit and there is a decent list of what each symbol means.

Pretty hard to bork your start location worse case they all die horribly you laugh and start over :)

Edit:New version up as of Nov 1 with some fixs.

[Raging Turtle]

That list is confusing.  The symbol you're wondering about, Yego, is a small mountain/foothill, sometimes made of rock and sometimes made of dirt or sand.  The terrain material types (on the same page that lists forest/tree level/calm-haunted) will tell you exactly what type.  I also think it's just a color issue on your computer - the dwarf symbols are different on the fullscreen/windowed modes, and some are quite dark.  I have a somewhat similar problem differentiating stone doors from the hallways since they're almost exactly the same color with a similar symbol.

I've figured out a trick about choosing a starting location: elevation matters when it comes to trees.  If you have the 'heavily forested' message but have a starting area of all fairly high elevation, you're never going to see a single tree, even if you scroll down to the lowest surface level. 

A few of my problems:  I HAVE SO MUCH STONE.  Seriously.  I have a pile of stone outside my fort that is at least half as big as my entire carved out fortress.  I can't trade it away, because the stupid caravan is already overloaded by 750 pounds when he shows up, so I have to buy the heaviest things I can if I want to trade anything at all.

This game has a learning curve of like 6-12 hours.     So it becomes a test of learning to play before you burn out from frustration.

[Teleku]

Ok, how the fuck to I build wells?  It keeps telling me I need "open space" even though I've got it set in a really open space.  It already took me longer to get the parts to build the well than I thought (since they added in that you also need chain and mechanisms on top of the blocks and bucket of the past), and now all the god damn water sources are frozen over.  I really need to dig this thing before all my dwarves die of thrist.

[Raging Turtle]

I haven't figured out how to get a fresh water source inside my fortress either - the official forums talk about channels and wells but I'm still working on getting my forge working (can't seem to find enough metal), so building the well parts is tough. 

But I did build a still, and the dwarves will use plump helmets to make dwarven wine, and since plump helmets grow inside anyway it works for winter.  Probably won't work long term though. 

*Also important: You can designate any dwarf to do just about any job, even if they don't have training, by hitting v and then p near/on the dwarf. 

[Teleku]

Well, in the past, all you had to do was have a block, a bucket, and then just tell your dwarfs to build a well at any given spot inside the fort.  And bingo, you had an infinate water source that didn't freeze (they also cause random .  I guess I should have figured with the z-axis comming into play, the wells wouldn't work like normal anymore though.

Looks like its time to wade through the official forums.  I really need to learn how all these new pumping, pipes, wind/water power mechanics work.

[Yegolev]

Yeah, don't worry about my monitor at home, it's old and the issue is mostly because I'm using a DVI->VGA converter and it's really dim.  I do find it incredibly ironic that Dwarf Fortress is the game that causes me to seriously consider buying a new one.

So, comedy time, I guess.  I got a great starting area, so no worries there.  I answered most of my own questions via experimentation just today.  I noticed right off that the river I settled next to is actually three levels below my wagon, and I mean it's a cliff to a river with no shoreline.  Should be fun to try digging down there and make a shore of some sort, but then I have ponds nearby and I'm cut off from creatures, such as a nasty minotaur.  I hope minotarus can't swim.

Also when I was customizing the party I decided, for some reason, to trade off both battleaxes and use the points on food and whatnot.  I guess I'm going to have to work on making a stone axe, or no wood for me.  I hope I can make things out of claystone.  Or not, if they all die I will get the new version. 

[Yegolev]

Only one of these dwarves wants to mine.  Fuckers.

[Jade Falcon]

Not sure how to make a well now,there was a crash bug with them so I was avoiding them for the time being.

If you can make it until the caravans start showing up you should be able to trade for wood or have your carpenter deconstruct the wagons they usually drop 3 wood each should be enough to make an axe.

You pretty much don't need water anyway unless you don't get a still up and running dwarves always prefer booze over water.Only time I think they actually want water is when they have to bring some to an injured one stuck in bed.

Edit:The newest version is compatible with the saves from the last version.

[Raging Turtle]

If you've only got one miner, change the preference of another dwarf (v, then p), and hightlight mining.

In my latest game, I've got a caravan guard that won't stop following one of my dwarves around.  Odd.
Also, it looked like I had baaaarely enough food and drink to get through the winter - and now 7 more dwarves just showed up. 

And again, I have huge fields of stone stockpiles outside my fortress.  Rarrg.

[Simond]

Well, in the past, all you had to do was have a block, a bucket, and then just tell your dwarfs to build a well at any given spot inside the fort.  And bingo, you had an infinate water source that didn't freeze (they also cause random .  I guess I should have figured with the z-axis comming into play, the wells wouldn't work like normal anymore though.

Looks like its time to wade through the official forums.  I really need to learn how all these new pumping, pipes, wind/water power mechanics work.

There needs to be a water source on the level below the well.

[Tairnyn]

And again, I have huge fields of stone stockpiles outside my fortress.  Rarrg.

In my last fort in the last version I usually turned a lot of my stone into blocks (at the mason's workshop) to use in building (workshops, bridges, roads, furniture, etc..) since blocks can be put into bins in lots of 10, saving a lot of space. Of course, that means you need to build a lot of bins, which uses wood. Also, if you build a mason's workshop near the stone you want to remove the dwarf will use the stone nearby first, giving you some control over what gets cleared. Finally, there's always the option of using stone stockpiles to make stylish designs via stockpile placement.

[Jade Falcon]

If you've only got one miner, change the preference of another dwarf (v, then p), and hightlight mining.

In my latest game, I've got a caravan guard that won't stop following one of my dwarves around.  Odd.
Also, it looked like I had baaaarely enough food and drink to get through the winter - and now 7 more dwarves just showed up. 

And again, I have huge fields of stone stockpiles outside my fortress.  Rarrg.

Is it a caravan guard or the liason? I had the liason follow my broker around for ages until he finally stayed put long enough to talk to him and make the trade arrangements for the following year.In the [N]oble screen you can designate nobles now from your dwarves or administrators like the broker.

One way a lot of folks have been getting rid of stone is to make a one tile dump then designate all the rock in an area to be sent to the dump and they pile it all on that one square.unfortunately you have to mark each stone individually to be dumped so not bad for single rooms but takes forever for a large area.

[Jade Falcon]

And again, I have huge fields of stone stockpiles outside my fortress.  Rarrg.

In my last fort in the last version I usually turned a lot of my stone into blocks (at the mason's workshop) to use in building (workshops, bridges, roads, furniture, etc..) since blocks can be put into bins in lots of 10, saving a lot of space. Of course, that means you need to build a lot of bins, which uses wood. Also, if you build a mason's workshop near the stone you want to remove the dwarf will use the stone nearby first, giving you some control over what gets cleared. Finally, there's always the option of using stone stockpiles to make stylish designs via stockpile placement.

Very nice job on that fort.I never seem to get away from straight hallways long corridors.

[HRose]

Well, in the past, all you had to do was have a block, a bucket, and then just tell your dwarfs to build a well at any given spot inside the fort.  And bingo, you had an infinate water source that didn't freeze (they also cause random .  I guess I should have figured with the z-axis comming into play, the wells wouldn't work like normal anymore though.

Looks like its time to wade through the official forums.  I really need to learn how all these new pumping, pipes, wind/water power mechanics work.

There needs to be a water source on the level below the well.

Yeah, the well isn't so useful right now. If you have water below you can just dig down. So much simpler.

If you still have problems finding drinks you should just try to pick bushes and then brew drinks from plants. Dwarfs drink booze, not water.

[Yegolev]

My stinking dwarves aren't hauling stone into the stockpile.  I have two and both are set to hold stone, one also set to hold blocks, but they just leave the rocks laying all over the place.  They move food around just fine.  I might not care except I'm suspicious that I can't use the stone unless it's in the stockpile?

The wiki needs help.

[Raging Turtle]

That could be a couple of things.

Hit Orders (o), and see if gather minerals is on. 
Check to see that the stockpile is actually the right kind of stockpile.
But the mason or whoever will go grab the closest stone when he needs one, stockpile or not.

I got pretty lucky in my latest starting location: trees right outside the entrance, and a half rock/half clay fortress that means I don't need to make mud to farm.

[HRose]

I'm done writing part 3 of this guide but I formatted it in a way that messed with bbcode, is there a way to disable it?

[Yegolev]

Hit Orders (o), and see if gather minerals is on. 

Well, I'll be damned if that wasn't it.

[JWIV]

I'm done writing part 3 of this guide but I formatted it in a way that messed with bbcode, is there a way to disable it?

Does it involve getting the friggin Millstone powered by a windmill?  Because if so that would be awesome.   I can't get that damn thing to work regardless of what I've tried (axels, gears, moving the millstone around).

[Teleku]

Was pretty easy for me.  First, build the windmill directly over the room you are going to be milling in.  Once done, build a gear assembly directly underneath the middle tile of the windmill.  Then just build a millstone on any side of the gear assembly which touches it.  Should work from there.  You may want to do it in that order, since I thought I read somewhere that building the gear assembly before the windmill makes it not work....

Also make sure after you build the windmill that it is actually active.  I tried building windmills at this one location once, but none of them would work.  I guess certain areas don't have any damned wind.

If you cant build the windmill directly over the spot to mill, you can try to chain it along using the various verticle and horizontal axles, along with gear assembly's, to get it to the spot.  I've never really tried this though, since I always managed to finagle it so I had the windmill right above.  Just remember that you always must first start the chain in the spot directly below the middle of the windmill.  You can't start out on the same level as it (though I hear you can build a platform outside and build the windmill on top of that if the ground below it is not usable for what ever reason.

[JWIV]

Was pretty easy for me.  First, build the windmill directly over the room you are going to be milling in.  Once done, build a gear assembly directly underneath the middle tile of the windmill.  Then just build a millstone on any side of the gear assembly which touches it.  Should work from there.  You may want to do it in that order, since I thought I read somewhere that building the gear assembly before the windmill makes it not work....

Also make sure after you build the windmill that it is actually active.  I tried building windmills at this one location once, but none of them would work.  I guess certain areas don't have any damned wind.

If you cant build the windmill directly over the spot to mill, you can try to chain it along using the various verticle and horizontal axles, along with gear assembly's, to get it to the spot.  I've never really tried this though, since I always managed to finagle it so I had the windmill right above.  Just remember that you always must first start the chain in the spot directly below the middle of the windmill.  You can't start out on the same level as it (though I hear you can build a platform outside and build the windmill on top of that if the ground below it is not usable for what ever reason.

Aahhaha @#$E#!$#21 room above . . . oh god damn this z-axis.

I was trying to build the millstone next to it on the x or y axis.  Never even thought about digging below it. 

[bhodi]

I'm done writing part 3 of this guide but I formatted it in a way that messed with bbcode, is there a way to disable it?

you can use a [ code ] block... I need more help! :D

My dwarves don't seem to plant seeds!

Is there any way to automate some of this stuff, beyond doing 'repeat' on things like the still? It's becoming hard to keep track of everything I need to do.

[Jade Falcon]

Should be able to que up 30 tasks at a  time in the manager tab

[bhodi]

I don't mean queueing stuff, I mean just have them do it as needed without queueing :) I mean, how many 'meals' should I queue up in the kitchen? Is that food going to waste? Who knows!

How do you get stuff to mill? Seeds for grain and such? How big does my farm need to be?

Also, my dwarves keep drowning. I'm not sure why. It always seems to happen offscreen. Maybe they are trying to fish with their bare hands? I generally build near a stream, so I can fish and also for the waterwheel which I want to build someday.

I can't really seem to get my dwarves to hunt; Is the best strategy to build a 'workshop' and queue it from there? Like, a fisher's shop to tell them to fish, and a butcher's shop to tell them to bring live animals?

I'm still experimenting with layouts, but I generally just dig downwards. I was thinking of separating by levels, have the 'tier 1' buildings on the first floor with the stockpile and the 'tier 2' stuff like gemcrafting and kilns on the floor below. I tend to pre-dig stairs down a few flights anyway... Is there any reason to have a 'doublewide' staircase/corridors? If not, I should probably stop making them I guess.

What a about ramps over stairs? I haven't actually lived to winter yet, but I don't know how that's going to affect my stuff. I'm not sure livestock can go down stairs.

Here's what I seem to do from start:

Find a place straddling a stream, Joyous Wilds if possible (I found one spot and I keep reusing it basically. I assume blue text = really good), with thick/heavily forrested, temperature temperate or warm with only one 'soft' type rock (peat/clay loam, etc.) until you get to useful rock (siltstone/shale/granite). No aquifer, not too steep in elevation

Make a temporary big custom storepile for people to offload outside
Designate a large area around your wagon / fortress entrance as gather plants and gather trees
Digging out rooms for Farms, mason's shop, butcher, fisher, woodworker, cook, with small storepiles nearby
Build those workshops, allocate storepiles, remove those storepiles' materials from the main custom one outside They will automatically move materials once you create a specific stockpile and then consider the custom one an 'overflow' -- this is perfect!
Queue up the tasks in the workshops (specifically hunt, fish, make some stuff(?), plant(??)
Start digging a few levels down look for some ore and some workable rock to craft stuff into (anything but loam/sand)
Build a still, mechanic's workshop, ??
Make some bins, a millstone(?) a few beds (?)
??


That's about as far as I've gotten.

[Merusk]

I can't speak for the newest version since I haven't messed with it. (Playing HL2, since I finally gave up on ignoring Steam)  However, my dwarves used to drown when they were trying to gather shit across the river and there was no bridge, OR they were getting a drink from the lake because I was out of alcohol/ didn't have a well.  (I always felt their deaths due to drinking from a lake were just weeding the idiots out of my fort.. there's always more dwarves than you want/ can manage in the spring!)

[Tairnyn]

I don't mean queueing stuff, I mean just have them do it as needed without queueing :) I mean, how many 'meals' should I queue up in the kitchen? Is that food going to waste? Who knows!

As long as the meals are being stored and not left out to rot there's no harm in making extra. In fact, meals serve a few functions: they save space by consolidating multiple food items into one dish, they contain multiple ingredients increasing the likelihood that the dwarves will eat something they like, and they leave no waste behind (bones, shells) once they are eaten saving the need for cleanup. Often I would set up a task at workshop and hit 'r' to make it repeat endlessly until my stockpiles were large enough to satisfy me.

How big does my farm need to be?

This depends on the skill of the farmer working the field. An expert farmer will yield more food per square planted, so less room is needed. In addition, it was also beneficial to make smaller plots (3x3 - 5x5) in the last version becuase when seasons change the crop needs to be completely harvested before a new type of plant can be planted on the plot. That may have changed, though.

Also, my dwarves keep drowning. I'm not sure why. It always seems to happen offscreen. Maybe they are trying to fish with their bare hands? I generally build near a stream, so I can fish and also for the waterwheel which I want to build someday.

This often occured when the water would swell in the spring killing dwarves that were fishing, drinking or were caught on the bridge. However, with the new z-axis and flows I don't think bridges are as much of a danger anymore.

Is there any reason to have a 'doublewide' staircase/corridors?

Any dwarves or animals that have to walk 'on top' of eachother get slowed down significantly, so it's a good idea to leave plenty of room for them to walk around each other, especially as your population of animals and dwarves gets bigger. Otherwise, you'll start to get bottlenecks at key locations.

[bhodi]

Still having trouble with hunting/capturing live animals/butching.

Could someone walk me through that process? I seem to build cages but when I try and 'capture live animal' from the butcher's workshop menu it cancels it. :/ My hunter/trapper is all idle...

Also, do I have to deal with making sure my hunter has a weapon equipped? Will the hunter automatically take it from stores? How's that work?

I hvae a racoon stealing food supplies from me :/ This is how I feel when I play this game: 

Still can't brew -- I have empty wooden barrels but it says it needs them and cancels.. grr. I don't get it!

[Raging Turtle]

Regarding farming:  I usually assign two dwarves just as planters.  In the job preference list, it's called Planting (fields) or something similar.  Make sure that is turned on, and more importantly, make sure all the endless hauling jobs are turned OFF so they only plant. 

I like to have my forts in rock, so I have a never ending group of dwarves dragging stones out of my fortress, but it's important to note that Stone Hauling seems to override most other commands.  So if your mason/planter/brewer has stone/wood/item whatever hauling turned on, he's going to do that instead of his main job.  And ALL dwarves start with it on, so you have to manually turn it off.  (Or hit 'o' for orders, then tell them to stop gathering minerals or whatever - I do this when I have a few quick jobs that need to be done quickly, like brewing when I'm low on drinks).

Hunting:  The Ambush skill seems to be the important one for hunting.  If you promote a dwarf's weapon skill beyond Novice when preparing to embark, he'll automatically get whatever weapon you give him.  So if you want a dwarf with a crossbow, promote marksdwarf (but remember he's going to run out of bolts quickly, and you probably won't be able to make them for a year or two).  Since you start off with two battle axes, I tend to make my hunter a novice axedwarf, which tears through most of the critters in the first year or two - but if you're starting off with sandy soil or in a non-mountain area, I'm not really sure you need a hunter to start with, as it's really easy to farm.

It's a bad idea to make your hunter a butcher as well, because he'll just drag the body to the butcher store, and then go off hunting again while the body rots.  I like making a peasent immigrant or even one of the starting guys a brewer/butcher/tanner - the odd jobs that don't take up much time, and otherwise he just hauls stuff.

To change weapons, hit 'v' near the dwarf, then 's' for soldiering - that will bring up a list of weapon options for you to choose from.  Of course, if you don't have the necessary weapon, it doesn't do anything.  And I don't really know how the trapping stuff works.

Anyone know how to order a soldier to kill a specific enemy?  I've had these troglodytes harassing my workers as they run across the map to get the belongings of a dead hunter.  But whenever I send the soldier near, the trogs just run a little bit away. 

We need a DF subforum.