Print

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

[zoutzakje]

howdy, I'm zout and I'm new to this game. I recently discovered DF when I read some people talking about it on another forum and I was kind of scared off by the whole ASCII bit at first. Until I realized I had played more games that lacked some of the better graphics, but instead had an extremely complex and interesting gameplay (like AI war). After reading the entire story of Boatmurdered I agreed that this would be such a game.
I didn't go for the lazy newb pack. I am a newb, but I'm not lazy. Figured I'd learn the game by searching on the wiki, asking experienced players for their advice, and learning from my mistakes.
The wiki has been extremely helpful so far. Really got me to learn a few of the basics pretty quick. It would have probably taken me a lot of time to figure out how to start mining for example, if there was no wiki.
But instead of using only the wiki I figured I'd introduce myself on the forums, become an active poster, and ask for experienced players opinions regularly as well.
My first fortress is still alive, which I am quite proud of (even though it's not even winter of the first year yet), but I could use some advice on what to do next. I don't care if I lose the fort though, that's all part of the Fun. Especially since I'm eager to try out reclaim the fortress as well.
I started with nearly the easiest settings possible when creating my new world. I've learned that it's a bad thing to underestimate the difficulty of games. Especially when we're talking about such complex games like DF.
On the starting lvl I got a trade depot, stockpile area for most things, temporary waiting room, 2 farms and a kennel. Outside I got a few massive pasture area's (water buffalo's seem to eat a lot of grass and I got 3 of em) and a refuse dump. 1 z-level lower i got 4 workshops: carpenter, mason, mechanic and juweler (including the appropiate stockpiles near each shop). So far I haven't had to use the latter 2. Garbage dump is also on this lvl. another z-level lower I got nothing and below that I started constructing massive space for bedrooms, an office and a huge dining room / dinner prep area. The Still has already been built because I ran out of drinks and I didn't want my (so far) loyal servants to die from thirst.
The reason I started massive room construction (enough to house at least twice my current population) is because I already got 2 waves of migrants and I'm still in my first year, bumping my population from 7 to 18.
Soon I'll have some sort of a stable fortress running. But what I'm worried about is any form of defence. It will be winter of my first year very soon, and I'm afraid I will get my first goblin raid or whatever next year. I do not know how much easy world creation settings influence the difficulty and frequency of enemy attacks, but having a set of defenses is never a bad thing. I do want to turn my dogs into war dogs, but I think I'm doing something wrong. Is kennel the right building for this? I think I assigned the right tasks to people and even set the dog up for war training, but nothing seems to be happening (or I'm just impatient and need to give it more time).
Also, what traps should I build early game? And I read somewhere that your own dwarves don't get killed by traps, unless they're unconscious or stunned, am i right?
I don't think it's a good time to start building military units yet, since I want my fortress up and running good first, and I need every dwarf for that. But knowing which kind of dwarfs I should recruit in the military once the time is right, could be useful to know already.
If any of you has any other advice, unrelated to my questions, feel free to tell me. Anything is welcome. Just keep it simple to understand for a newb like me. No complicated constructions yet. I will save those for my second fort.

Great game so far, looking forward to becoming the next DF freak (and hopefully pro as well in the future).

[TomiTapio]

A few pointers:
Complete Newby Play-along Tutorials http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=31928.0
Dwarf Fortress Video Tutorial *NEW DFLP2011* http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28477.0;topicseen

Basic defense: embark with three dogs, train them to war dogs. Enlist every dwarf except doctor to your first squad, they will axe and punch lesser foes.
Use traps (rock mechanism + boulder = stone fall trap) (rock mechanism + 10 weapons or wooden spikes = good weapon trap) at the entrance to your base. Traps will get clogged with enemy corpses, so make at least 3 traps (15 traps of 10 daggers each = defeat any Vanilla-DF siege.)

Cheap to build is 20 wooden crossbows + 20 stacks of 25 wooden bolts.(also need leather quivers for each xbow user)
I like to have a melee squad and a crossbow squad (Squad-A-Kill-List or Squad-B-Kill-Rectangle, later Squad-A-Ordercancel, Squad-A-Move)

Oh and easy way to victory is to "wall off the world" using wall, drawbridge, or a door. I don't do it myself, way too easy to wall off the world, undwarfy. Cripples with axes, that's more braided!

[Jelle]

Hey Zoutje, enjoy Dwarf Fortress!

As for military it's never to early to set one up in my mind, a well trained and well equiped military has so much more a fighting chance then an improvised one.
The military interface is a little daunting to get into, but you can set up a fairly effective squad with only presets.
In fact I don't think I've ever really used the advanced stuff regarding scheduling and guard duty myself, all squads can me manually directed in a moments notice form the squads menu.

For traps if you want to make things easy cage traps are pretty much the best there is in most cases. One use traps that will leave the opponent caged and ready to be put to a more productive use. Make a long hallway with a ton of those traps and your defenses are practicly impenetrable. Gets real close to cheating though in my eyes.
Apart from that weapon traps do well, I used to install lotsa serrated disks before I decided to forego traps to rely soly on military. (just for the sake of keeping gameplay interesting)

That ooor you could engineer your own traps. Lots of fun to be had with bridges, locking rooms, pumps and supports.
May or may not be as effecient as the regular traps depending on your engineering but hellofa lot of fun if it works as you had in mind. Especially when it involves magma.

I don't think war animals are generally very effective. Most seem to use them more of a distraction, disposable meatshields if you will. Or possibly to pin an opponent down.
Since most enemy soldiers you'll face will be clad in metal armor dog bites will hardly harm them. I don't use war animals at all in fact, some good metal on metal for me.
The thing with dogs though is they breed like crazy and require no upkeep. Keep a few dogs around, don't pay attention for a full year and you'll have a gigantic pack of canines you won't even know what to do with except use as goblin bait.

[jaxy15]

Here's an important tip. If you see a blue £ pillar, do NOT dig for it unless you have a big and very strong military. YOU WILL DIE.

[Wayward Device]

Welcome to the community Zoutzakje! Oh boy, you are in for a treat. Dwarf fortress is one hell of a game. TomiTapio already gave some good defense answers, so ill just throw in some things he didn't mention. You're exactly right about how traps work, only enemies and stunned/passed out dwarfs set them off. You can actually use this to make a "dwarf execution blender", where you make a setup that drops a dwarf you want to kill onto a weapon trap with x10 serrated steel disks. This is also why you NEVER want to have your soldiers fight on top of traps,  if an enemy gets a lucky hit and stuns them for a few seconds then they will set off the traps and you will have to recruit more soldiers.  IMPORTANT NOTE: Some monsters can avoid traps (I won't give away any spoilers, you may have a little knowledge of this already from the wiki but the best fun is always fun you haven't experienced yet). Just so you're aware that it can happen.

If your looking for the quickest and simplest defenses then I recommend and airlocked bridge-gate (two RAISING bridges linked to a lever with a space between them so you can let soldiers out of the fort without letting horrible things in.... unless you decide you want to...). This will give you effective invulnerability if you want it (you can just close the gate and anything outside it can't get in as raised bridges are indestructible). Then cage traps. Cage traps are really, really, overpowered. You can't go wrong. And if you've got any questions/problems with building RAISING bridges/linking stuff to levers etc, feel free to ask.     

[OMGTANGERINES]

A good idea is to assign a dwarf to be a mechanic, then set him to creating 10 or so mechanisms to make traps. The best weapons for traps are Large Serrated Discs, which can be made out of metal or glass (and possibly one or two other things). Do not actually use your military dwarves except if they are properly armed and armored, since without armor they will get summarily slaughtered. Also, keep in mind each dwarf only needs a bed to be happy; a four-space bedroom (door, bed, chair, cabinet) will keep every dwarf content.

[zoutzakje]

allright, thanks guys. Got some ideas to go with. Winter is almost over, but I finished (for now) my huge dining room and so far all the dwarves seem to enjoy it a lot. Construction of rooms is also making really good progress so now I got some time to focus on defense before I have to deal with the first enemies. I got one weapon trap ready and working, but I doubt that's gonna be able to stop massive hordes so I'm hoping I get more migrating dwarves so I can start building a military.
I want to keep things as simple as possible for now. I've seen some cool stuff in the Boatmurdered story with floodgates and bridges and destroying the entire area with lava, but I'll save all of that for later. First I want to make sure I really got the hang of the basics (designating areas, building items, setting up work orders for the workshops, placing the right stockpiles at the right locations, getting food productions to run smoothly, etc). Getting myself a decent military force also belongs in that category in my opinion, so I'll have to look into that some more. figuring out what kind of dwarfs I should best recruit into the military and such.
I'll be using this topic to ask any questions I might have with my very first fort.
when making rooms, I have been ordering the placement for beds, doors and chairs at the same time. Sometimes the bed and chair would get finished first and there was no problem. The door would get placed after and that was that. But if the dwarfs place the door first, they won't get working on the beds and chairs, just leaving the designated spots for them untouched. Is this intended behaviour or not? Does this mean I have to remove the door every time I want to build something in a room? Or (and probably most likely) am I missing something important?

also the blue £ pillar... I did read something about adamantium and digging into hell if I'm not careful. Is blue £ adamantium? Or are there more things out there that cause Fun?

[Trif]

The placement order isn't important. Building doors simply limits the size of the room, but dwarfs can still pass through them. Doors only block passage when you forbid the passage with (q), but that's not the default option. Your problem that objects in rooms aren't being placed was probably just a coincidence, dwarfs sometimes take more time than you'd expect.

War dogs can't be trained at the Kennels anymore, that was changed in the most recent release. You need an animal zone (i) for training and you can decide how they should be trained in the animal menu (z). War dogs aren't a reliable defense force, but they are more useful than untrained dogs.

When you start your military, pick dwarfs who are either unskilled workers or already skilled fighters (or both). Dwarfs with a high Teacher skill are very valuable, because they can train other dwarfs very fast. I recommend small squads, and every dwarf in a squad should use the same weapon as the rest of the squad. This leads to more sparring and faster skill gain.

And yes, the blue £ pillar is adamantine, the best metal in the game. It's not the only cause for Fun, but one of the biggest.

Other than that, if you don't know what to do, it's probably best to dig down. Good luck!

[jaxy15]

Yes, the cyan £ is adamantine. It's very VERY sharp and valuable but very light.

The demons in hell are all procedurally generated and they have a size of ten million, and so do titans and forgotten beasts.

[zoutzakje]

ahh I see, that makes sense. I'll keep tabs on the room issue for a while, see if they get them to place it right in due time. After all, my dwarves are kind of multitasking at the moment.

And good to know about the kennels, time to get an animal zone up then. So what is the current use for kennels? I have one build already anyway, might as well put it to whatever use it has.

[dree12]

ahh I see, that makes sense. I'll keep tabs on the room issue for a while, see if they get them to place it right in due time. After all, my dwarves are kind of multitasking at the moment.

And good to know about the kennels, time to get an animal zone up then. So what is the current use for kennels? I have one build already anyway, might as well put it to whatever use it has.

Taming vermin is probably the most important current use. Tame vermin, unfortuantely, do not serve much purpose.

[Kel]

Just to add something on the adamantine: Digging into it can be very !!FUN!!, as I believe you're aware... but should you take the risk and successfully mine some, then it is very good for armour and BLADED weapons. Do not make blunt weapons out of it. It is so light that getting hit with an adamantine hammer is the equivalent of being hit with a fluffy pillow.

[Corai]

Heres my tips.



Iron, dont bother with steel yet, smelt hemanite into iron and make mail/hammers and draft 2/3 waves of migrants into army, ignoring there skills. You got your army.

Channels, dig all around your base with D>H, 4 blocks wide, then have someone remove ramps

D>Z (I think) on your side, making it so they can go down, but not onto your side if you get sieged.

[MrWiggles]

One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us! One of Us!

[HiEv]

One thing a lot of old tutorials will miss is the newly restored importance of clothing.  Having worn out or, worse yet, missing clothing will make dwarves extremely unhappy and cause bad thoughts.

I highly recommend getting up a farm plot of pig tails (rope reed also works if you have above ground farm plots), a Farmer's Workshop with "Process plants" set on repeat to turn the plants into thread, a Loom which will automatically turn any thread into cloth, a Clothier's Shop to turn the cloth into clothes, and a stockpile just for clothing.  Of course, you'll also need dwarves with the appropriate skills for these tasks as well.

I also recommend making one single stockpile for clothing (or possibly one stockpile for each type of clothing) so it is easier to keep track of how much unowned clothing you have.  Dwarves need a bare minimum of 2 shoes, 2 socks, trousers, and an upper-body covering (shirt, dress, etc.).  This is important to get up and running before dwarven babies hit 1 year old and become children, so that the children will have something to wear.  Many new forts have suffered tantrum spirals due to gangs of angry naked children.

If you haven't grabbed it yet, I highly recommend using Dwarf Therapist.  It will let you manage your dwarves' labor settings, which gets quite tricky once you have lots of dwarves, and also lets you see how happy they are.  The splintermind clone of Dwarf Therapist also has the ability to suggest roles for dwarves.  Anyways, I highly recommend periodically checking the thoughts of your least happy dwarves so you can see what your fort may need.

Have fun!