Print

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

[Zalym]

Morning all,

As the title states I'm new to DF, I had heard about it previously but never gave it much of a look. I read an article about the game last night which lead me to the main page and got me thinking about giving this title a fair shake.  I've heard the stories about the learning curve being huge but it wouldn't be the first time I've sat down with a game I had to work at a while. I don't know a proper word to describe my feelings about the game, DF seems so different than anything I've ever played before.

Anyway, to the questions:

1. I've found some guides on the forums. As far as tutorials/let's plays go, is there a certain series which makes few to no assumptions about knowledge of the game, that you would promote to a completely new player like me(who has absolutely no idea what is going on) over another?

2. Would you recommend using mods for the UI (or anything else)? I've heard of a few that change things to sprites and even a isometric style 3D look, but would you suggest starting with those or should I get just learn the default UI first?  I don't think I want any other mod to change how the game itself is played unless you know of a mod that is truly necessary to fix a bug/problem.

3.) Once I read and learn some (a lot!), and then get into the game do you have any advice about specific pitfalls to avoid that are fairly common starting out?

Thanks for any help! I'm very interested to see how this game works and plays.

[zubb2]

Hi welcome to the fort.

I never really did a tutorial myself other than the wiki that explains the industrys.

Also the "< and >" keys change z level, that took a while for me.

Put your fort higher than watever water source you have on the map, or you will flood the fort trying to make a well, true story.

Don't dig too deep.

Plump helmets R awsum.

Don't feel bad about living in clay, it's quite nice.

About the mods, I use default graphics because the other packs I have tryd have alterd the keystrokes.

One made them too sensitive and another seemd to cut stuff out.

They also can be hard to fit to your screen size, in my experience they can be smaller than vanillia tile set and it annoys me.

Although I like the idea of square tiles instead of rectangular, I keep the default for the above reasons.

Have fun and die many times. 8)Loseing is Fun.

[Rydel]

For 1, I recommend the guide After Action Reporter did

For 2, Get the Lazy Newb Pack.  It has Phoebus graphics by default and can switch graphics for you.  It also comes with Dwarf Therapist, which makes managing jobs easier.  It also comes with some 3D visualizers

I've never seen the keystroke alterations zubb mentioned.

[fricy]

Guides: The wiki and TinyPirate's tutorial are good.

Graphics: Whatever fits you. If you like ASCII, go with it. Or choose one you like. Phoebeus and Ironhand are the most popular.

Get this Lazy Noob Pack - it has lot's of bugfixes and UI tweaks built in.
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7622

Don't be afraid of committing mistakes, it's part of the FUN. Make sure to come back to this forum and tell us about it.

And clay? What? Seriously? A REAL dwarf lives in stone.

[VerdantSF]

Welcome to DF!  Definitely learn about hospitals, soap, and wells for proper healthcare.  It's especially important for forts that don't use danger rooms, since your military dwarves can get some serious wounds on their way to Legendary status.  As long as your dwarves survive a battle, with a good hospital set-up, there's an excellent chance they'll be back in the fray within a season or two .

[ORCACommander]

I endorse ironman graphics. if you go to his thread there is a version on his post that is before minecarts were added and then there is a version toward the end of the thread that is a fan update that includes minecarts and is the current version of df.

use bridges to breach magma on volcanoes. its a bit of an exploit but it keeps your dorf from being roasted.

danger rooms are godly over powered.

his warning about the well can be true but to avoid that you just channel into the aquifer from the z level above and you will avoid flooding. but massive water projects on the other hand have the potential for many a flood

personally i like world gens greater than a thousand years. so load up your megabeasts if your doing worlds smaller than medium.


Get Dwarf Therepist or its more updated branch project.

[kingubu]

I used the quickstart from the wiki as a cookbook when I started http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Quickstart_guide
I have since discarded everything about fort design that I learned from that, but it was good for learning what the buttons do.

ASCII war incoming!!

(o)rders menu, beware the (o)rders menu.
You're going to die.  Alot.  Don't sweat it.  These days I do stuff like embark with 195 peacocks and a steel cap, but it took me a few months to figure out how to live past year 2 when I started.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Welcome, welcome! This game just might change your life

First, completely obligatory introduction:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With that out of the way, I would suggest ASCII. Why? I find it really ignites the imagination, and gets me deeper into the game.
At the same time, it's a pain to learn when just starting out

Wiki is your friend. Look everything up, as it's all there. Just avoid anything to do with Hidden Fun Stuff. Spoilers aren't fun

A few starting pointers:
- You can resize the screen

- Once within the game (already embarked, see below), you can use [TAB] to adjust the context menus

- When you are just starting a game, you get to choose your embark spot. This is very important. If possible, you want to have shallow metals, flux, deep metals and no aquifer. Press [TAB] for additional information. One list will have nearby factions, such as goblins/dwarves/humans/elves. If you see a Tower, avoid at all costs. That's a Necromancer tower, and it could really ruin your day.
--- Also, land has values for good/neutral/evil and calm/neutral/savage wildlife. This covers things like Calm, Wilderness, Haunted etc. Anything coloured in green and blue are good options.

- To be happy, a dwarf needs: a bedroom, alcohol, food and a dining room. Everything else can come after.

- There are only a handful of ways to interact with the world.
--- (d)esignate menu, for (d)igging, cutting down (t)rees and harvesting (p)lants
--- Stock(p)iles, where you select the type and then drag out the dimensions
--- (b)uild menu, which contains almost everything
----- Of note are (c)onstructions, (w)orkshops and furnac(e)s

- Doors are nigh-indestructable (as demonstrated in Lord of the Rings )

- Dwarves will only do labours that are enabled on them. Press (v)iew to interact with dwarves, and follow the hotkeys highlighted in the context menu. Dwarves also have personality traits that influence how they go about their tasks.

- Farming is the best source of food. Farms can exist above and below ground. Underground farms take more work, so I would suggest harvesting local plantlife, and then planting it. A lot more info here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Farming

To get a basic idea, embark in any spot near a mountain. You will see a flat terrain, interrupted by it going up. Press (d) and it will go to designations, which defaults to digging. Use your keyboard (enter, arrow keys to select area, enter) or your mouse (click, click, click...) to designate a small area inside that interruption

A dwarf will head to the location, and start digging. Hopefully, that is rock and you can use it. Press (k) to use the look-at-tile option, and examine the newly emptied ground. If you see things like Granite or Gneiss there, that's rock.

Then, use (b) -> (w) -> (m) to select Mason workshop. This will give you a square to position. Place that anywhere, ideally within the newly dug out area. This will take you to a screen to select material, and you should have some rock or wood to use. Select anything, press Enter. A dwarf will walk there, and build it.

Next, use (q)uery to have a room interaction tool and move the cursor to the new workshop. If it's not build, it will say so. Otherwise, you will see an empty queue with a few options. Use the context menus to build a door.


This should give you a feel for how things work.

Above all else, welcome (again) and have fun! Dwarf Fortress is great due to emerging gameplay. As in, as you get past the learning curve, the game captures your imagination and becomes something completely new. It also gives you immense freedom of action, so you CAN do almost anything. You just don't know what you want to do yet.


Finally, there WILL be a new version coming soon, which will change how the world works. The gameplay mechanics, however, will remain the same.

[slothen]

2. Would you recommend using mods for the UI (or anything else)? I've heard of a few that change things to sprites and even a isometric style 3D look, but would you suggest starting with those or should I get just learn the default UI first?  I don't think I want any other mod to change how the game itself is played unless you know of a mod that is truly necessary to fix a bug/problem.

3.) Once I read and learn some (a lot!), and then get into the game do you have any advice about specific pitfalls to avoid that are fairly common starting out?

don't mess with any isometric/3d stuff for awhile.  I'm not sure what the state of these are, but i think they're mostly for screenshots, and not for playing the game.  Regardless, don't learn the game this way.

Graphics packs with custom sprites are cool.  The most popular are phoebus, ironhand, and mayday, all packaged in with the lazy newb pack (which i recommend).  However, the point I want to make is taht graphics packs are NOT ui mods at all, they're just graphics mods, so you don't need to worry about learning the game wrong.  Some might say you won't be able to comprehend other people's screenshots, but personally I don't find this to be true.

Get your keybinds sorted ASAP.  I add spacebar as a secondary keybind to back out of menus in addition to the normal ESC, I find this allows me to traverse menus much faster, which will help.  I also change the the z-level keys to (  '  and  ]   ).  Also, watch out for the secondary selector keys, they can be trouble on laptops or other things.

I highly recommend Dwarf Therapist for anyone that likes to micromanage the labors of their dwarfs (and wants to have more than 30 dwarfs).  DT is a 3rd party application that allows you to view and manage your dwarves.  It lets you see all the skills and all the enabled labors of your dwarves at once, in a single screen.  You can also sort, turn on jobs, and assign nicknames from outside the game.  You can view 1,000 pieces of information at once and change anything with a single click, whereas in game you need lots of clicks to view or change a single piece of information.  Its a standalone application that does not modify the UI at all.

When learning the game, I advise choosing embarks with no aquifer, some surface soil, and surface plants/trees.

Defense:  Early early defense is a hole in the mountain/ground, with a few rock doors, war dogs, and moving your stuff inside.  After that, digging a ditch and removing the channels is a great way to claim some somewhat safe outside space.  Cage traps can be gotten up very quickly and are very useful.

Accomodations:  once you get the hang of the game, you will be getting lots of migrants.  Prepare for this by leaving room to extend your dining hall (small ones are #1 cause of tantrum spirals).  Use a dormitory until you feel like bothering with individual bedrooms (you won't need to for awhile probably).

Food:  Gather some surface plants early and start both surface and underground farms very soon, although the surface farms will need to wait until a dwarf actually eats a plant, leaving behind a seed.  A small plot or two of strawberries with a proficient grower (very helpful) can keep you and the first migrants drunk and fed for quite a bit.  Poultry eggs are ridiculously good but require cooking.  You can bring some poultry but don't spend much embark points.  Dogs are the best, really.  This should cover your food needs.  I don't like fishing and hunting as they're unreliable, not usually scalable, require processing, and occupy all of that dwarfs time when you need all your starting 7 to work.

Drink:  Drink is life.  Requires farming/plant gathering.  You can brew gathered surface plants to quickly get seeds for surface farms.  The biggest issue with drink is getting enough storage space via barrels and pots.  Make lots of barrels and pots.  When migrants come they will drink all your booze.  You can never have enough booze.

Water:  Interruptions in supply of barrels, injuries, winter freezing the water, invaders, migrants drinking all your booze.  These things happen.  Your first intermediate-level learning project should be to learn how to drain a surface pond down a few z-levels and provide underground access to the water to your fortress, without allowing enemies to get in from above.  It takes about 5 seconds to do and it WILL save lives, and possibly the whole fort.  You can do more advanced stuff with water later.  The starting stuff includes a bucket and rope, so you can build a well too, which are high-value buildings and make for great meeting halls, despite the fact taht dwarves won't even be using the wells to drink.  If you have no surface water, you can breach the caverns from above (this can be done pretty quickly), and install a well above some cavern water (wells reach down multiple z-levels).  Consider water access to be a strategic component of fortress defense.

People get upset about migrants making their game not fun and ruining their organization.  This is a common mental pitfall for new players and some experienced players (been there, done that).  Migrants need 4 things, a big enough meeting hall, a big enough dormitory, and enough booze and food.  If you've got these, then you're all good.  I would still recommend lowering the default pop cap while learning the game.

Don't forget to build a trade depot by Autumn.

- There are only a handful of ways to interact with the world.
--- (d)esignate menu, for (d)igging, lumb(e)r and (h)arvesting plants
--- Stockp(i)les, where you select the type and then drag out the dimensions
--- (b)uild menu, which contains almost everything
----- Of note are (c)onstructions, (w)orkshops and furnac(e)s

Designate menu - chopping tress is (t), harvesting plants is (p)
Stockpile menu is accessed by (p) from the main menu.
When on the main menu (i) is for zones.

[ORCACommander]

Another good reason to reduce dwarves from the default amount. late game all the pathfinding kills game speed. DF will gladly feast upon your CPU and leave nothing behind for other programs

[VerdantSF]

ORCACommander is right!  FPS death is one of the greatest threats to a fort!

[Zalym]

First off, wow! I didn't know what type of response to expect as some game forums are more friendly than others. Thanks for all of your quick and expansive responses:

zubb: Thanks for the welcome, I'll try to remember the < and > keys when I get going.

Rydel: I'll look into the LNP as you and others have called it, especially as it can make testing out different looks possible.

fricy: I saw TinyPirates tutorials haven't gotten a chance to look at them yet but I will. The way you wrote FUN makes it seem like the type of fun where when I come back to let you know how it is going you're going to laugh at me

VerdantSF: Thank you for the welcome - I'll look out for the hospitals and healthcare options, from fricy's "fun" comment it sounds like I'll be needing them! Thanks for your FPS death advice - pop cap control sounds essential along with Therapist.

ORCACommander: I'll take a look at the ironman graphics, thank you for the tips. I'll track down Dwarf Therapist as it seems to be a popular tip. Also, thank you for the advice on the pop cap and CPU drain.

kingubu: I will definitely check out the wiki and find out what the orders menu is all about.

CognnitiveDissonance: Thank you for the welcome, the picture was both hilarious and horrifying. I'll get the LNP and try it out, probably start with ASCII as it is how the developer made it and see if I can handle learning that and the game itself. Thank you for the many, many starting tips and the menu options. I'll keep an eye out for the update and try to change accordingly.

slothen: I'll leave off the 3d things then and just look at the graphic options in LNP as I get further into the game. I'll definitely try and figure out the key binds and Dwarf Therapist is looking to be all but essential so I'll find that one too. I'll look into lowering the population cap and ensure I figure out how to house the dwarves and get water to the fortress. Thanks for all of your input!

Again, thank you all very much!! 

[CognitiveDissonance]

- There are only a handful of ways to interact with the world.
--- (d)esignate menu, for (d)igging, lumb(e)r and (h)arvesting plants
--- Stockp(i)les, where you select the type and then drag out the dimensions
--- (b)uild menu, which contains almost everything
----- Of note are (c)onstructions, (w)orkshops and furnac(e)s

Designate menu - chopping tress is (t), harvesting plants is (p)
Stockpile menu is accessed by (p) from the main menu.
When on the main menu (i) is for zones.

Derp. That's what I get for having finger memory, not real memory. Thanks for the corrections.

[fricy]

Two Three more things:

1.The LNP includes Dwarf Therapist and the graphics packs, so you don't need to hunt down anything if you install it.

2. About TinyPirate's turorial: most of the info is good, but ignore the section about channeling above your entrance, and defining what is inside and outside your fort: that game mechanism is outdated since the introduction of the burrow/alert system.

3. And welcome of course!

[Zalym]

Two Three more things:

1.The LNP includes Dwarf Therapist and the graphics packs, so you don't need to hunt down anything if you install it.

2. About TinyPirate's turorial: most of the info is good, but ignore the section about channeling above your entrance, and defining what is inside and outside your fort: that game mechanism is outdated since the introduction of the burrow/alert system.

3. And welcome of course!

Thanks for that I'll keep it in mind! And of course for the welcome