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[dakenho]

a fun little thread about how you learned to play dwarf fortress and stories of your first fortresses

I basically learned dwarf fortress by reading boat murdered (which helped me understand the tile set) tabbing to the wiki constantly and the avid use of the k key to see what something was.  I remember my first fortress I abandoned because I couldn't figure out how to dig and my dwarfs ate most of there food. 

on my second or third fortress I wanted to dig a channel for a moat and ended up selecting most of the area to be channeled, ended up flooding most of the surface actually.

it probably took me about a week before I got my first siege,  god I think that fortress was fed and ale completely on plump helmets, I remember having no defense at all, my fortress was just a set of downward stairs leading 1 z level down,  10 dwarfs crossbow dwarfs I had simply stood at the stairs and rained bolts on the enemy killing them just as they reached melee range.  I think I may have gotten close to 40 mm dwarfs in that game (or a game I played close to it).

[weenog]

I don't think I can really talk about learning to play dwarf fortress in the past tense.  I'm still learning it and will be for a while yet.  I learn through a mixture of reading the wiki, asking questions, and analyzing the how and why of my own screwups, mainly.

[expwnent]

A friend of mine told me about it, and I tried it out, but I couldn't get past the user interface, so I quit and didn't touch it again for another year.

I was bored so I stumbled around on the forums and found the mermaid thread, and I knew I'd found my home. Worked my way through the TinyPirate tutorial and I've been playing off and on ever since.

[Laurin]

I am a long time roguelike player (started with Moria back on the Amiga in ye goode olde days ...).

I stumbled over early versions of Dwarf Fortress every now and then. I read a lot of articles and always thought I should try that one day.

Finally the tutorials by TinyPirate and some other guys managed to get me into the game.
I was fascinated by the dazzling amount of detail.

My first fortresses all ended in a mess. You know - thirsty dwarves throwing tantrums, goblins stealing and slaughtering erverything, lost miners on disconnected stairs, and so on.
One day I got a dwarf injured because of a little cave-in. Some minor injuries and a broken arm I believe.
I wondered what to do and found the hospital at the wiki. Trying to set one up sent me on a rollercoaster drive figuring out how to do it und to get all the stuff you need just to get a hospital going.
That being amazing enough then the doctors came and diagnosed and treated my dwarf, he got fed and pampered, sutured and plastered.
After reading the medical history sheet I was even more amazed.

I am still blown away by the little details you can find in every little nook from depictions on furniture to personal histories of dwarves and sparkling bits and bobs like a dwarf liking cows for their haunting moos.

[i2amroy]

Having heard all of the terror stories from my friend the first time that I played DF I made sure to follow the wiki very closely. As a result my first fortress managed to last all of the way up to the very first goblin ambush, at which point they were all slaughtered. I believe it then took me about 3-5 more fortresses before I was finally able to beat that first goblin ambush through liberal use of traps.

[Viking]

Like Weenog said, I'm still in a process of learning but I guess I am pretty comfortable now. At first I leaned a lot on the TinyPirate tutorials, which on their own are still a lot to take in. I started to learn to love the wiki a lot. I'm sure I'd have progressed faster if I had signed up to these forums sooner too. The more I learned, the easier things got. I remember well the pain of the process and I'm highly sympathetic to the struggles of new players.

I'm sure I tried a few forts and abandoned quickly. I remember one early fort where my dwarves all died of thirst due to their water source freezing. That one had multiple entrances in the hillside and was pretty much defenseless, not that it mattered. A few forts later I figured out how to get an alcohol industry running smoothly and things got better. Its funny how so much of my current design priorities stem from failed forts.

[RanDomino]

All at once.

[h3lblad3]

I went plowing into it, pickaxe in hand. And couldn't do very much.
I ended up listening to captnduck on youtube in the background. Even watched some of it.
Tried not to rely too heavily on it an learn as much as I could on my own.
Lovin' that wiki, though.

[orius]

I followed some tutorials that were in the first post of the LNP thread, and dove headlong into building a fort.  Also made heavy use of the wiki.  The early attempts got abandoned as I learned to play better and felt the attempts were inefficient.

[gabandre]

one tutorial and losing a lot

[Guylock]

Watching a DF let's play by Jefmajor + sum tutorials by captnduck regarding certain things like making wells...

[Nightscar982]

Just playing and restarting lots of forts  I guess. One fort cant hold my interest long enough for it to really take off, and I cant get into the really deep end of things. Ive never experienced anything requiring 80 pop, so Ive learnt all the basics through trying and keeping on trying.

[weenog]

How the heck do you manage to abandon before 80 pop?  That's like... three migrant waves, two if you're doing well.

[Klitri]

I learnt all by myself. Couldent keep a straight face
I started with videos, but because I didnt want to watch all those videos I stopped watching them. Then their was a period were I just experimented on my own and got to my first 200 people (I actually take care of them )
Then their is 34...Thats when I joined bay12 and actually learnt how to play. Thanks to the help of fellow bay12'ers and the wiki I can kind of see myself as an expert now.

[Greiger]

First fortress.  Didn't figure out how to dig into the cliffside.  Everyone starved.

Second fortress.  I dug a hole into the cliffside!  Yay!  I made a little room where I made a bunch of very pretty stone blocks (or something equally useless, don't quite recall exactly).  Everyone starved.

Third fortress.  Made it to the old 2D cave river, and figured out how to use the mud from the river breach flood to make a small farm.  Didn't understand labors, and because the dwarf I designated as a farmer at embark was too busy making stone crafts instead, Everyone starved.

Fourth fortress, much the same as third.  Farmer embarked with only farmer skills though so I actually made it to winter.  Everyone starved.

Fifth Fortress, figured out that I can change dwarf labors in play.  Made it to the magma river.  Death by goblin siege somewhere around year 2.


And it continued like that until I got everything down.  Now everybody has wikis and video tutorials and stuff.... Zzzzzzz.... GET OFF MY LAWN!....Zzzzzz.... purring maggots....chasm red lining....HFS before adamantine....Zzzzzz....