Hey all, I've been playing DF for about 1 week and I'm already addicted. I haven't even stopped playing for that week and can't get enough of it. Anyways, I'd like to tell the take of how I was introduced to DF and how my few first fortresses went, and how much fun I've had.
If anyone wants to post their first experiences, or fort/sm go ahead!
Anyways, the way I heard about DF was at Uni, a guy had it on his laptop. He and his friend were in deep conversation about how they were going to plan this thing out. I walked up to them and asked, "What game is this?" Immediately I was set upon by the two Dwarf fanatics as they scrambled to explain to me every single situation, nuance, death trap, working and generally everything to know about it - All at once. The game game could track damage to eyelids for god sakes!
Fascinated by their enthusiasm, I delved deeper into the discussion, asking questions about things that interested me which went something along the lines of: "You can burn things with lava?!" - "Yeah, I'm building a lava waterfall!" - "OMG really?!" - "This one time, I built a fortress, and my dwarf went berserk and pulled all the levers which flooded my fortress!"
There was something bothering me though as I could not make any relation to what they were saying and the DF game I was seeing on the laptop. Eventually I uttered the well known noobs saying "wtf?" to which they just laughed.
Another thing I was worried about was if the laptop was going to blow up. The guy was generating a new world and it was taking FOR EVER. (about an hour) To bad I had an Accounting lecture, I decided not to go - this was way to fascinating and a bjillion times more interesting than accounting. Anyways, while the map was loading, I was continually bombarded with situations and things the other two had done/been in.
Once it finally loaded I was introduced for the first time to the Embark screen. This was especially confusing (As I didn't get the one square = the X to the right, or why the colorful square in the left box kept moving around maniacally when he pressed in a direction.), and I proceeded to say "Seriously WTF?"
Onto the Prepare Carefully Screen!
More confusion and intense discussion between the two friends as they decided what skills and items to bring.
Then he embarked. Wow. I didn't know WHAT the hell I was supposed to be looking at. WTF are all those arrows? "They are slopes to the next z level" - "What? This is top down isn't it? I don't get it..."
Anyways, as the two began to plan how they were going to tunnel into the side of a mountain. (In a highly complicated fashion I might add, now that I understand what was going on) So, with the designations set, my new friend unpaused the game and watched as his miners start digging. All of a sudden a see a big cloud errupt on the screen - like an explosion. "What the hell happened there?" Oh no! The poor dwarf had channeled around a section to make it unsupported (Or something, I can't remember what I was seeing when I didn't know wtf I was looking at.), The resulting smoke and blown the dorf of the side of a mountain.
The two laughed manically at this while I looked on in horror as the screen showed the dwarfs status being: Extreme Pain, Broken Left Lower Arm(Red), Broken Left wrist, Broken Broken left Upper Arm, Broken Right lower arm, Broken left hand, broken left upper arm, broken right leg, broken left leg, Damaged (Yellow) lower torso and ?(Blue) Pancreas. "Wtf? It shows the damage to the pancreas?
"
The guy quickly designates an area as hospital but the other points out nothing will really happen if there isn't a bed and so he abandons.
"What, whats it?" I say, dissapointed. "Yeah, the first 7 dwarfs are critical and losing one of them is not good when you first start." he explains.
Anyways, the helping friend then tells me if I want to play it just search Dwarf Fortress on google and you should be able to download it, It's only 40Mbs or something.
He also tells me too "DO THE TUTORIAL"
Ok, so as soon as I get home, I jump on the net and search for this DF, I find the wiki, the website and the forums! Yay! The wiki, I disregard, The tutorial will tell me all I need to know. So I download the tut with DF packaged with it and start to play through my first fort...
((I'll right more later. This is taking time away from precious DF playing))