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[Flying Fortress]

No tile sets because I love the vanilla look.  Only a few init file changes for FPS cap, pop cap, eliminating babies, and a few other init changes.  And the only 3rd party mod I use is DFhack, I only use that for mining veins (since designating 2 pieces of ore, then designating another 2, then another, etc... gets boring) and making sure my underground structures won't puncture a cavern using reveal.
So not 'pure' but only slightly 'dirtied.' 

[Nil Athelion]

My DF was a lot purer before I realized that the reason new forts were so much more exciting than old was because of the FPS.  If I'm running and watching the game at 20FPS, then I can watch the dwarves, and get to know them, and do everything perfectly.

Now I keep my games above 100 FPS, and I am no longer as precise.  Therapist helps a lot.


At this point I use Ironhand and Co.'s graphics pack, and in previous versions I mod things a bit - mostly for bugfixes, sometimes for modding in my own fantasy races (because if I'm making a dwarf analogue PC race in DnD, why not stick it into DF?).

(Also my modding rule is that I have to be making it harder.  Leads to interesting discoveries.  Like how hard it is to play a civ that believes in two-handed weapons over shields.)

[khearn]

I'm very "impure" in my interfaces, but "pure" in the sense that I don't usually make any changes to the core "rules".

I use Therapist and love it. I really can't  understand why some people don't like it, but if they don't, then they don't. Some people prefer EMACS instead of vim. There's no accounting for taste.

I also use some dfhack features:
* I'm using workflow more and more. It doesn't do anything I couldn't do manually, it just lets me skip all the tedious micromanagement. It's nice not having to queue up endless "smelt 30 limonite", "make 30 charcoal", "make 15 pig iron", "make 15 steel". Instead I just queue up repeat orders for each task and tell workflow to keep 10 iron, 10 charcoal, 10 pig iron and 30 steel on hand, and let it deal with suspending and unsuspending the orders as needed. I could do the exact same thing manually, but it would be tedious (and I don't think tedium is dwarfy). I just need to make sure to keep mining out ore and chopping down trees.
* Ditto for autobutcher. Not having to watch for a message telling me a Yak calf has grown into a bull so I know to butcher it is nice, but not exactly game changing.
* I use digv to avoid having to keep a constant eye on my miners the entire time they are digging out ore. I suppose that does give me some info I wouldn't have normally, but it's info I'd find in the process of micromanaging the digging anyway. Toady has said he's planning on adding similar functionality to the game anyway.
I tried autolabor, but found that after a couple of years, when I would normally have a legendary mason (as an example), I was instead having a bunch of low skill masons who took forever to make stuff. It seemed quicker to have one skilled mason who cranked stuff out quickly and occasionally have to wait for him to drink or sleep, rather than having masons always available to work, but so unskilled that they would take forever to get the work done. But maybe the autolabor algorithm has gotten better since then?
But I don't use reveal or any other dfhack features that provide info I wouldn't have access to via the DF interface, nor any that let me do things I wouldn't be able to do manually, like autodump, fastdwarf, or changevein. Oh, I have used drybuckets and cleanowned in the past to work around bugs, and would use similar functionality in the future as needed. If working around pain in the butt bugs is impure, then count me as impure.

I make various init and d_init tweaks like pop caps, FPS display, autosave, varied ground tiles, flow amounts, and pet burial. I wouldn't consider those to be "impure", since Toady clearly intended them to be changed as the player prefers. I also change the colors to a pallet that is a little more visible, so I can actually read text in dark blue on black. I also use a 16x16 ASCII font so my square rooms are actually square. But I came to dfhack from roguelikes (rogue, hack, larn, moria, angband, nethack), so ASCII works just fine for me.

I also usually modify announcement.txt to get rid of the damn pause and zoom every time a baby is born. I don't care when someone is born. But I'd pay Toady to add announcements when a dwarf starts starving or being dehydrated so I could pause and zoom to them to deal with it. I do care when someone is about to die. It's not like it would give me info I couldn't get by looking at the z->Health screen every few minutes. I also wouldn't mind an announcement for when a child becomes an adult so I can assign him/her some useful labors.

I'm not doing this in my current world, but I have played around with removing all the spamimal men so I could actually see an occasional animal. That would definitely qualify as changing the rules.

I can get by with the "pure" interface if I have to, but I see no reason to do so. I will play the first game year or so with it when a new release comes out, and by then DT and dfhack are usually updated. If they ever go away, I can live without them. But I see no reason to live without them now, just because they might go away at some point in the future. By that logic, I should not play DF, because Toady might quit working on it at some point. Ditto for computers in general, electricity, soda and potato chips. Not using something that makes things easier or more enjoyable, just because you might not be able to use it in the future just seems silly to me.

[Bouchart]

Largely pure, except I remove the dwarves' age flag from the raws.  I don't want them dying of old age, which has happened to some annoying key dwarves in the past.

[Loud Whispers]

Largely pure, except I remove the dwarves' age flag from the raws.  I don't want them dying of old age, which has happened to some annoying key dwarves in the past.

One of my biggest fortress goals has been and still is to have a Dwarf die from old age.

[nopil3os]

well lets see..
no pause on damp/warm stone
graphics:VBO gives me a handfull of fps more
a slightly modified colors.txt (the dark blue is a bit too dark)
weather and temperature off (for performance on eeepc)
and some general options (no intro, no music, engravings obscured, no pet coffins)
i find tilesets highly confusing

One of my biggest fortress goals has been and still is to have a Dwarf die from old age.

still trying to achieve that one too.

edit: oh yeah. dfhack. to reintroduce elven diplomats and sometimes correct an engineering mistake

[nopil3os]

edit: double post. sorry.

[krenshala]

Largely pure, except I remove the dwarves' age flag from the raws.  I don't want them dying of old age, which has happened to some annoying key dwarves in the past.

One of my biggest fortress goals has been and still is to have a Dwarf die from old age.

Same here.  I'm a fan of the Starting Seven + Forced Migrant Waves, then growing through internal breeding only (not that I've been able to actually pull that off since I don't wall everyone in).

[Corai]

I use DFhack, I always give every civ (Kobolds, layer linked, and elves excluded) cities. I give animalpeople & kobolds sieging abilities. I also increase elven & kobold learning ability, so they are dangerous.

[Jake]

Never used Dwarf Therapist, mods or tilesets in all the years I've been playing.
I think Toady's confusing interface better simulates the experience of a bunch of disorganised drunken dwarves running a fort.

Sigged.

[Rex_Nex]

Your sig be broke, mah man

[khearn]

Your sig be broke, mah man

Yeah, I'm guessing that's intentional. That way it better simulates...

[Tabbyman]

Never used therapist (or any other utility). Can't say I don't like it 'cause I've never tried it. But I'm still in the crowd who just picks professions and leaves it that way most of the time. I change the init files so they come with basically only hauling enabled and if I NEED any profession covered, they get it permanently. If I have extras, they go to the gym and/or haul.

If I end up needing something special later I can pick one of my blinky red body builders and rename his profession (or professions). End up with profession names like Minermason, Allsmith, Boozecook, Meatsmith (butcher tanner leatherworker), and I tag a (D) (for dwarf or drink) if they get thirsty and show themselves to be non-vampires. That way, my haulers are just (D) with no title. I add the title if I want them to have a profession. Those profession tags and nicknames are awesome. Why should I need to memorize what every dwarf does by their name? They have custom titles.

I find it's actually easier to manage larger numbers of dwarves. With less dwarves, you have to give certain dwarves more than one profession to make them operate efficiently, and yet make sure one profession doesn't prevent them from doing the other. Some dwarves are permanent non-haulers, permanent single-job, like the two miners that I use throughout the whole life of the fortress.

And when it comes to dwarves' happiness, I just rely on tantrum reports and pissed-off-dwarf-red-arrows-of-unhappiness to let me know I should have given them rooms... Now I've got them so happy there's no reason to check. Same goes for skills, I get everything done just fine without checking them for skills, stats, etc. Not worth looking. (Just fun to check once in a while to see a dwarf who's being bombarded by tragedy but is quite content or even ecstatic)

--

On topic: I was completely vanilla, except for init files, until one of the recent versions.

At first I just wanted to remove grazing (to make use of elephants and giraffes)... then I wanted to import whatever animals a civilization had access to by making them tameable (figured if I can catch and train them, they ought to have already done it too except for jabberers and such)... then I wanted to remove animal people to increase chances of finding actual animals (thanks whoever came up with that idea)... then I wanted to make cassiterite more common so I could actually use bronze (thanks again whoever that was)... Before I knew it, I was removing cats ability to choose owners.

I also screw around with the world files to increase savagery (for more interesting animals) and add lots of volcanos, make caverns 100% open, increase chances of water in caverns, influence taller candy spikes with layer level factors, and sometimes mess around with climate to get more of a specific biome (like a desert world with lots of mountains). But since those options are built into vanilla, I don't consider it any less vanilla to customize world generation.

I try to avoid cheating with mods. The worst I do is make metal and pets more available. Still can't afford a single GCS at embark with default points so it's not that bad. I don't even like maxing the embark points anymore, and there's TOO MANY PETS available so I may just go vanilla again. (except for inits of course... pop limit 20 or 40, no babies, screen size, no economy, no rent)

[Graknorke]

You know rent hasn't been in since 0.31?
Not much point disabling it, seeing as you'll get new inits for whichever version it comes back with.

[luppolo]

Exactly, which is why I don't bother with therapist. too much work.

setting work for a migrant wave with therapist takes MUCH less than going over every single migrant and toggle whatever you want, actually with therapist just everything takes less

the only bothersome things with therapist are that it doesn't come with df itself and doesn't autostart like dfhack