Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JRHaggs]

I play until I learn something new, or, rather, I realize I've been doing it wrong. Then I shutter the fortress and start another. The perfect will always be the enemy of the good.

I've never built a magma forge or magma pump. I think that's next. Obviously I've never played with maximum !FUN!.

[TD1]

What keeps me playing is you never know what is going to happen next, or what brilliant story will come of it. You could have a FB wipe out a lot of your population before it's put down, and then a moody dwarf make a artifact shield from its bones which goes on to protect the fort.


Really, anything can happen, and that's why I love it. Even stuff that happens by my own command (Huzzah Werelizard military!)

[revara]

With inspiration from all the replies here, I have started a fortress above ground, building city blocks and currently constructing a moat and wall, complete with towers, marksdwarf posts and barracks under the ground. My mines have not yet hit the cave layer, and I am constructing buildings and furniture of Wood (to anger the elves). My walls and the yards of my city blocks are made of chert blocks, my roads are paved with chert blocks, and I generally enjoy myself.

I'd like to thank everyone (Again, I believe) for chiming in, and I hope you'll continue to share your stories, as I try to build my own, until I eventually find fun! - and have to start again.

[Urist McVoyager]

For me it's slowly modding the game and making it more . . . mine. Creating a race of cat centaurs who live above ground and survive more on love than war. (Natural Growth forts for the win.) Next I think I'll create a cave adaptation syndrome that debilitates them if they stay underground too long, so they need help. That'll force me to dig my tunnels differently, more like open trenches, or sets of fortified sunning holes to keep things from getting too bad.

[taptap]

minecarts and dwarfputing.

[davesoft]

Recently what keeps me playing is the newer world progression features.
It seems very easy to make a self sufficient fortress now, especially with 6 retired fortresses nearby allowing massive amounts of migrants with high skills.

Sadly the experiment has gone too well. War with the elves is rare and short lasting, goblins are complete gone from the local region... i need to expand the empire to reach new threats.
The lack of invasions has lead to the Age of Legends really quickly, the capital is worth over 6 million so all the overground legendary creatures came, saw and got chopped up.

Variety and interconnection, that's why I keep playing

[Robsoie]

The good thing is that when you're browsing the net, reading discussion boards, articles, etc... you can just let DF run in the background, and only check from time to time, so you can avoid some of the long waiting time before a specific task is completed (walls, floors, room smoothing, engraving, etc..) and avoid long boring uneventful time.

[Nyxalinth]

This very thread makes me want to pick it up again.  Really!

I go through a phase each winter where I play play play the circus tent out of it, then take a break for 4-6 months.  Usually after seeing an epic fort crumble (last year it was Crystalgears, the year before Firegears, this year it was a name I can't even recall) it's time to take a break.

Reading the stories of others usually brings me back, as well as a desire to see what goofy artifacts my dorfs create.   Am thinking of using the Nchardahrk mod for an epic Dwemer Fort soon.  My friends and I are big TES fans, especially Dwemer.  Too bad I can't rope them into doing DF with me.

[Rosewood]

Nothing KEEPS me playing Dwarf Fortress, but there's definitely a lot that keeps me coming back to it. 
The challenge of learning irrigation was the first.
The challenge of taking out those fucking spiders came second.
Then I came back for the challenge of making a self sustaining Fortress.
And once that was done, the joy of knowing I got to do it all over again once my Dwarves dug that hole I didn't realise I told them to dig and the goblin horde found a nice clean passage into my farmlands got me to come back again.

Fun times.

[Calidovi]

I think it's the tension. Knowing that anything could provide a lot of !!FUN!! forces me into it, keeping me up, watching my idiot beard-parsites and their hosts mill about drinking and lugging stone. Maybe that's a reason that I shouldn't play it, because everything I do screws something up.

And also wrestling rocs in adventure mode.

[Adragoor]

Because you never know what's going to happen... Like in my current fortress when a woodcutter killed two ettins in short succession. The first one killed two of her friends at which point she rushed out with her copper axe screaming something about revenge and killed him after a tremendous fight. The ettin didn't manage to land a single hit on her and she just kept hacking away until he was dead. The second one mangled her almost to death, but she killed him too and survived with horrible injuries. When the opportunity came I naturally appointed her baroness, so now she sits there, ruling the great halls of Chaosbreakfast completely oblivious to the fact that the FUN soon is to begin...

[Dunamisdeos]

The absurd detail with which I can build and manage a simulated world. Also, I like low magic fantasy genres.

EDIT: And frankly, the community is amazing.

[Innocent Dave]

I drift in and out of DF - I'll play it to death for a few months, then get distracted by shiny graphics or a new expansion for Crusader Kings.  Then after a few months, mainstream games stop satisfying me with their shallow systems and their crisp, accessible UIs that just won't give me the information I want.  Then, before you know it, I'm back on this forum, laughing at other people's stories and getting inspired to dive back in.

You sound like you might be struggling to find the Fun, so I'd advise-

- If you want more things to do, grab some mods.  There's tons of additions or total conversions for the last version of DF.  The Masterwork mod comes highly recommended for flooding you with different races to play and tons of new toys.

- If you want more fighting / hideous deathtrap use, try the last version, again possibly with mods.  I've not tried the new version yet (was stuck on a long-term fort from the previous version last I played), but it sounds to have a lot less invasions.  There's also mods, such as the Fortress Defense one, to add even more invading races.

- If efficient design is your thing - it's certainly one of the main uses of my time in DF - look into the manifold joys of minecarts.  Why have your dorfs carry things around like losers when you can have a hideously complex rail system set up, dropping everything exactly where it'll be needed next?  Why not automate everything except the actual loading of the carts?  (Disclaimer: May not actually increase efficiency.  May cause injury, dismemberment, and/or death.  May adsorb ungodly amounts of time.)

- Lastly, try to think like a dwarf.  Don't just put corridors because people need to get places - think about how it'll look, how it'll feel.  Make entrances and halls several levels high, line corridors with statues, aim for something that says "grandeur" as well as utilitarianism.  I find this helps me think of my forts as real, living places that I have a connection to, as well as giving me reasons to design things differently each time.

Hope that all helps