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[ProbablyRed]

Heyo, as you can probably tell, i'm a first time Dorf fortress player, i know some basic stuff but otherwise i cannot figure out what is happening in my fort 90% of the time. Any tips on how this game works would be appreciated.

[ProbablyRed]

Also, here's my current setup, if anyone is wondering.

[JEB Davis]

The 3 things that helped me most were 1) wiki was my constant companion, 2) youtube tutorials were my constant companion, 3) google was my constant companion for anything else, which usually led me to posts here or on reddit.

Some of my favorites:

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_guide

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:The_Non-Dwarf%27s_Guide_to_Rock

Have !!FUN!!

By the way, PeridexisErrant has a pre-release beta (alpha?) called CavEmp... for version 47.03 that works great, I've never had a crash. You get good graphics with it and Therapist that can be easier for beginning players.


(edited for grammar)

[Iduno]

Also, here's my current setup, if anyone is wondering.

You appear to have stuff inside, so that's good. Your entrance is huge, but that can be fixed by walls (to slow the flow of enemies into your fortress during an attack).

If I am seeing correctly, you have down staircases to the north. That helps with space, as fortress populations expand way too fast right now. I usually create a set of 5 floors of combination (X) staircases, then a small hallway, then another 5, then a floor full of whatever I need. Building on every 10th floor gets me to the magma portion of the map more quickly (but also the caverns), and allows for space for cisterns or other infrastructure to be built, strip mining when I find ore, or realizing I need more bedrooms and actually being able to add them near where they are needed.

Also, nickname your dwarves based on what you're using them for. That will keep you from drafting your only weaponsmith into the army to get killed, or making your brewer haul stone instead of keeping everyone alive.

[vjek]

Nothing wrong with what you've done so far, but there are consequences, some of which you may not be aware of, yet.
Every time a dorf takes a step, he's utilizing a pathfinding method.  It's expensive, in terms of CPU, FPS, etc.
The larger you make the fort, and the more animals, visitors, invaders, and dwarves you have, this starts to add up in a profoundly negative way.
Especially after you breach each cavern, which can add quite a lot of entities that just love to pathfind their way around.

My first tip would be: Keep your fort as small as possible.  Use one central staircase.  Build vertically, into the ground, almost exclusively.  Only dig out what you absolutely need, and once you're done with an area (it's mined out) wall it off to prevent pathfinding from "looking" there.  And doors help, too, especially those that are shut tightly to prevent vermin and animals from getting through them.

Second tip: Designate a meeting area.  Your dorfs will be there unless there is something for them to do.  That is the one thing I think most people generally don't do, and they end up with their dwarves wandering all over the map doing whatever.  Not ideal.  Once you've designated a meeting area, then you can build the fort around that, presuming unless they're sleeping or performing a task, they're in the meeting area.  Then you can place workshops and stockpiles in proximity to the meeting area, vertically.  Less than 10-20 steps, and they can do what they need to do.  Same goes for bedrooms.  A far cry from 100-200 steps before they even get near the task area, which is common in starting fortresses.

Third tip:  Try to get by without animals, if possible.  Farming is extremely effective (almost overpowered) and animals, comparatively, offer very little (maybe cheese? ) except, again, more pathfinding load.
Similarly, try to get by without breaching the caverns, if possible.

Fourth tip: Get used to using the aquifer as a well source.  As in, build your water well(s) on top of the aquifer.  Once you do that, your fresh water needs are addressed.  Despite there being some negative consequences for no alcohol, it's not as dire as you might imagine.  I've run forts on only water to drink (when no Brewable material was around) for many many in-game years, without issue.

Defense is a whole other topic, but a single doorway on or from the surface, with a well armed, fully armored, and ~constantly training military guarding that door? Extremely effective.
Of course, overall, you can do what you like, and fun is obviously the goal with any game.  These tips are there to keep the game in a state of high performance, if that should become an issue for you.

[Naryar]

I will strongly second on reading the wiki. It's a complicated game and reading the wiki works effectively as a tutorial. Back then when I started DF I was reading the wiki before the game.

Your first fort will likely fall to either the various threats DF throws your way, or you struggling with the UI. That is fine and totally expected, this is not an easy game to get into. My first fort died to thirst because I didn't know how to brew plants and I just drained my only source of water with careless digging. Besides, failing spectacularly is the only way to win this game.

You might want to use the Lazy Newb Pack. I'm not sure if it is updated for the latest version.

If you think tiles is hard to read, you might want to find a tileset you like and use it. It makes Dwarf Fortress look like a game instead of a screen of characters. I personally use Mayday's tileset.

Would agree about making your fortress more compact too, a more compact fort is more efficient. I'd suggest putting the still (I don't think you have one, you'll need one, and barrels or large pots too to brew alcohol) and food stockpile next to your farm plots.

Do you know how to build walls and doors ? That is very important. Wall up your fort and use doors, don't keep open entrances, or use a lever-operated bridge (that's a bit more advanced, you can go by with simple doors first.)

Third tip:  Try to get by without animals, if possible.  Farming is extremely effective (almost overpowered) and animals, comparatively, offer very little (maybe cheese? ) except, again, more pathfinding load.

I heavily disagree. Moody dwarves demand stacks of bones and/or non-plant cloth enough that I'd suggest having at least a few animals around, else you risk a berserk dwarf due to failed mood, or an important dwarf dying. ALSO - Dogs are very good as an easy source of meat, leather, bones, but also make for good makeshift defense against stuff like werebeasts, snatchers, and kobold thieves, and you can use them as sentries against bigger threats, and they breed pretty quickly so losing a few is no big deal. Sure they eat into your FPS but - a new player's issues are rarely FPS related. That comes later.

[anewaname]

Learn to lock your dwarfs inside with enough raw resources to produce everything they need.

Learn how to recognize what your dwarfs need, how to recognize what they want, and learn how to make both available to them.

You can do things the way you want in DF, but the most important when you are starting is to be able to lock the doors if the enemy arrives and to give dwarfs what they need.

[Cathar]

So ; tips for a complete noob :

Read the wiki. Play with the wiki open. Get familiar with the wiki until you're on first name basis with it.
The wiki is your friend, the only one you will ever have in the cold and desolate worlds of DF.

Second tip : get ready to lose. You will experience loss grief and you will, at times, wonder if it makes any sense playing the game. That's okay real life is not any better. DF will not brush you in the direction of the hair. It will mess you up with intent (but love).

Third tip : You will discover what savescumming is, at some point. Avoid doing it and instead learn from unfairness.

Edit : I don't think pathfinding, FPS and effisciency are the primary concern of a first time player. The fort will likely, LIKELY get destroyed before it ever becomes an issue. Learn to produce food, booze and a military in priority to delay the inevitable and get increasingly better. You'll tackle the issue of hardware limitation later.

[gchristopher]

(I second that new players shouldn't worry about FPS as much. )

You're taking a well-researched, methodical approach to the game, so I'd say don't be afraid to experiment and design your own disasters. My first time trying to build a cistern and accidentally diverting a river into the entire fort and (partially) recovering from that with desperate emergency pump construction is one of my fondest DF memories. When Kruggsmash recently published a youtube video featuring minecart accidents, I was crying with laughter remembering all the different cart-related tragedies I inflicted during my own learning process.

There's so many "right" ways to play this game, that your main risk will be over-limiting yourself because some online article or post said to do something a certain way. Almost always, there's a dozen other ways to Do the Thing that will also work great, and once you start to feel comfortable looking for those on your own, you'll start to discover the thousands of epic and hilarious ways to do it wrong.

I like the advice above that you learn enough online to get basic needs (food, booze, housing, any of the multitude of effective fortress defense/security tactics) met, enough that you have the freedom to experiment, but those are actually pretty easy following the online tutorials. Once that's taken care of, it's very much a make-your-own fun sort of game, where my favorite thing is overreacting to problems with vastly overcomplicated solutions.

Savescumming is just fine if you want to. If you want to reload an old save to try different ways of approaching a situation, that's absolutely okay. Play the game however you most enjoy it.

[TubaDragoness]

Agreed with the last couple posts. Dwarf Fortress is about learning from your failures. Keep the wiki handy for when you're stuck (it is an extremely valuable resource!), but do as much as you can on your own. It'll stick better that way, and you will learn more as you get farther into the game!

My general advice:
- Remember that you're living in a dangerous world. Think about how you're keeping your dwarves safe early, even if it's just having an entrance you can quickly wall or seal off. Your military may very well be outmatched or not set up the way you meant to when invaders come. Turtling may be boring, but it's effective and teaches you how to make sure your dwarves survive when your military isn't enough.

This is pretty typical in my early forts. Later when I have more labor, I can set up drawbridges to keep traders in the depot safe from invaders and even funnel those invaders through paths designed to make them take casualties from traps and hazards, but I have doors I can lock, space behind them to build walls if enemies that can break doors come along, and blocks stored nearby so dwarves can build them quickly even while the doors are being broken down.

Also remember to make a burrow (w) that covers only the area you can lock down! In the military screen (m), the alerts tab allows you to restrict all civilians to that burrow with just a few keystrokes, sending most of your vulnerable dwarves running for cover on their own. You can remove the restriction once the entrances are sealed to stop cancellation spam, but it saves you from having to manually cancel every job or forbid items that keep drawing your dwarves out of the safe area.

- Look (k) and (v) at everything! Eventually you'll recognize tiles/characters on sight, but there's no shame in having to look at first. There's a lot of different items and creatures to learn. Some people prefer to view their dwarves as disposable pawns, but I like knowing my citizens as individuals. I want to keep them all alive and happy. It makes taking care of them and protecting them feel more important. Notice characters that seem to have really bad luck... or really GOOD luck. Nickname them. Arrange nice bedrooms and noble positions for your favorites. Fill that dumb mandate so an innocent, unrelated dwarf doesn't get a beating.

- Basic animal care: Grazing animals need pasture zones (i > n) with grass, or they'll starve to death. Breaching the caverns can cause underground grass/moss to grow throughout your fortress, but also may expose your dwarves to the dangers lurking below ground. Non-grazing animals (cats, dogs, birds, pigs) can be pastured on rock or soil where they happily root up vermin to eat, allowing you to keep them safely underground without worrying about attacks taking out your food supply. Keep males and females in separate rooms if you don't want them to breed, and supply nestboxes if you want eggs from your birds. Pasture cats in food and refuse stockpiles to keep vermin under control! Non-grazing animals can be used as sentries to catch sneaking enemies before they get too far past your defenses. Named pets can be pastured and isolated that way, but they cannot be caged.

- Generally recognized challenges you may want to avoid until you have more experience: evil and highly savage biomes, known aquifer areas (though light aquifers mean that striking unexpected water isn't as much of a disaster as it seems), raws altering, and of course, digging too deep. But if you like challenges or just want to see why it's not recommended, go right ahead! The best part of Dwarf Fortress is what you as the player make of it all. Drawing facts and random occurrences together into stories is why the majority of us play, and why fortress stories like Boatmurdered and Cacame, Elf King of the Dwarves are so beloved.

[gchristopher]

I thought of one more: consider limiting your population caps in df_init.txt.

Fortresses that aren't completely failing tend to fill up extremely quickly with migrants. Limiting your population so you don't immediately end up with a 200 dwarf madhouse is definitely worth considering. Some kinds of threats are also triggered by your population. (typically >= 80)

I think a pop cap of 40, or even 20, makes for a much more enjoyable pace of game early on.

[DrCyano]

My number 1 recommendation is to open data/init/init_d.txt and set VARIED_GROUND_TILES to NO.

The ASCII art is pretty and easy to understand once you disable the ground noise.

I also recommend changing cursor up/down Z to Page Up/Down instead of > and < in interface.txt as that's more intuitive. For me, no other changes were needed to make the game payable (though learning how to use farms is unnecessarily complicated).

You could read Chapter 2 of my documented play-through for some guidance.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I thought of one more: consider limiting your population caps in df_init.txt.

Fortresses that aren't completely failing tend to fill up extremely quickly with migrants. Limiting your population so you don't immediately end up with a 200 dwarf madhouse is definitely worth considering. Some kinds of threats are also triggered by your population. (typically >= 80)

I think a pop cap of 40, or even 20, makes for a much more enjoyable pace of game early on.

Yeah, but it's not just "some kind of threats", it's "invasion by goblins". The one thing all new players of a fantasy dwarf game are expecting and building to prepare for, which then never show up. Leading them to wonder why, leading them to search forums and discover ancient posts on how sieges would stop showing or get lost, or require hundreds of embarks to get Just Right, in some old version of the game and quitting in disgust because the game is just boring.

So, yeah pop cap of 100 maybe, if 200 is slowing down your PC. (Not that you'll get an "instant population of 200" before anything Fun happens, generally).

[Sarmatian123]

As first time player, you dig into rock. Default learning path about cave adaptation.
Advice is to abandon surface and just move entirely into caves.
Watch up for forgotten beasts!
Wall everything. Even farming plots and pastures.
Enjoy your 5 first years, before first depressed psychos show up to ruin it.

For second play, you will try building on surface avoiding cave adaptation.
For your third play, you will try aquifer embark to experiment with water.
For your four play, you will try embark with lava or ice on surface.
For your five play, if you into playing a boring game, you can try advanced depression management with fortresses getting older then just 5 years.
For you six play, you will try to embark on map, there is no dwarven civilization present with embark on the top of failed mountainhome.
For your seven play, you will try lone island to see, if you can manage without migrants with your just first 7 dwarves and 2 first scripted waves of migrants.
For your next plays, you will look for high savagery, evil/saint biomes and strange effect fogs.

Then you will Adventure Mode.
Learn the true combat mechanics first hand.
Learn about recording and playing the DF macros, which are useful also in Dwarf Mode.
Have fun slaying with just finger scratching evil monsters (candy FUN! ones), whom your entire fortresses could not deal with and died to.

Then you will go to Twitch and stream your games to entire 5-10 viewers of this game, who keep watching despite the ASCII graphics.

Good luck!

[Sarmatian123]

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