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[the happy dwarf]

I'm trying DF for the first time. Here I am at the "Prepare for the Journey" screen, and I cannot figure out how to give skills to my dwarves. I can use the arrow keys to highlight different skills, but then what? The plus and minus keys do nothing. Nor do shift-plus or shift-minus. I tried adjusting numlock and screenlock -- nope. Tab just switches screens on me. Space bar -- nada.

Even worse, if I hit ? to enter the help screen, I get trapped there. Now the arrow keys don't move me around at all, nor do plus or minus. The only help I can view is "Text Viewers" and I can't get back to the game. Heck, I can't even quit the game, so I have to kill it with the task manager.

All the keys mentioned above (arrow keys, plus/minus) work fine with all the other software on my machine. The machine is a T43 laptop running XP Prof. I'm playing the game in windows mode.

Any help is appreciated.

[Neopergoss]

Are you using the plus/minus keys on the number pad on the right-hand side of the keyboard, or are you using the ones above the letters at the top?  I think you have to use the ones on the number pad, but I could be mistaken.  I hope that helps.

[the happy dwarf]

I am on a laptop and do not have a separate number pad. That's why I was trying 'numlock'.

[the happy dwarf]

The answer is here:
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Key_Bindings

But why not just have a laptop option in the game???

[Mephisto]

I thought most laptops came with a keypad integrated into the actual keyboard? Like I mentioned before, I play with the Fn key on mine nearly continuously held down.