Print

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

[TwistedTime]

Hi Everyone! I recently found Dwarf Fortress and decided to give it a shot. My first few attempts at a fortress each ended in tragedy, mostly because I was just trying to get used to the UI... and trying to figure out what each symbol were supposed to be... And I now believe I have a handle on the basics of the basics.

I like to explore and experiment on my own, but I decided to come here to ask all of you what are a few tips I should know about this world that is out to kill my dwarfs in unplesent ways. (  My last world had a kobold snatched a child, causing the mother to go on a murderous rage against her friends, which caused them to do so in turn...).

[epaga]

The main thing I'd advise you to do is to follow the Quickstart guide (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Quickstart_guide) to the letter for at least a couple of times. It really is excellent and should help greatly in getting a feel for the game.

[AutomataKittay]

It'll be difficult to advise on everything, but I can think of a few top advices;

1. Always have one farm plot farming plump helmet year-around and food stockpile for just it. It helps prevent accidental starvation, though you can ignore this if you've got good handle on food and drink supply.
2. Have dedicated farmers that does nothing but farm and haul food.
3. Give everyone in military shields, it improves survival hugely.
4. Use animals that don't graze and you don't mind losing a few to watch out for thieves and snatchers at the entrance.
5. Crossbows are cheap equipment ( wood, bone or metal can be used ) though importing or leather's necessary for quivers. Bone bolts works even against armored enemies because armor don't protects perfectly.
6. Large pots made of wood, glass or stone can store more than barrels when it comes to food and plant, they can be used for brewing. Clay pots need to be glazed first, though, to be usable for drink.
7. Turning stones into blocks multiplies amount of material by 4, important if you're doing a lot of construction. Blocks can't be used for anything else though.

I'll note one thing, Kobolds don't steals children, they does steal items, though. Children stealing's done by Goblins and indicates future of ambushes and eventually siege at 80 dwarves. If invaders are frustrating you too much, it can be turned off in /data/init/d_init.txt under INVADERS before starting up the game again.

Hopefully above aren't too much of tips, ask more if you need specific understandings

Oh one thing to consider for dwarven happiness, have oversized dining room so they can enjoy eating. Drinking doesn't uses dining room, though.

[Sutremaine]

3. Give everyone in military shields, it improves survival hugely.

5. Crossbows are cheap equipment ( wood, bone or metal can be used ) though importing or leather's necessary for quivers. Bone bolts works even against armored enemies because armor don't protects perfectly.

Dwarves who aren't military can be placed in squads, though any dwarves with Mining, Woodcutting, or Hunting enabled will eschew a military uniform in favour of their clothes plus a pick / axe / crossbow + leather armour. Keep them in their own squad for later use, but don't give them any uniform. The uniform items will be claimed, but not worn until none of those three labours are active or the dwarf is given a military order.

Once a dwarf is in a squad, they can carry a shield and crossbow just like your proper military, and will stand their ground and fire. Few things are more amusing than unpausing a thief or snatcher announcement to the sight of a few dozen bolts being launched simultaneously, but few things are more annoying than watching a dwarf fire fruitlessly on a s-l-o-w-l-y advancing undead.

Dwarves in squads can also carry waterskins, which are a major time-saver and make barrel management easier.

[sirdave79]

My advice would be thus,

Captain duck does some excellent youtube tutorial videos, with his commentary describing his key presses and his thinking as he constructs the elements of his fort. Even the old videos are highly worth watching for the beginner in my opinion.

Highest priority and most important single peice of advice to a new player is, make your fort sealable. There are too many ways of doing this to be specific but what I mean is, make the entrance to the underground/inside sealable with a bridge (requiring levers, links and mechanisms). This is so that you can seal your fort and effectively be immune from thieves, and sieges if you keep the bridge closed.
My current fort is a large walled off above ground piece of flatland (ive handpicked the embark location for) with 4 bridges, 1 in each wall opening to allow for incoming trade caravans (which is a bit more advanced/difficult/requiring of various considerations). However this could be a single 3 wide entrance into a hill with a single bridge (fully covering the entrance) "sealing" the fort. This is not foolproof against everything but to me is a basic and mandatory fort security step.

After that its all gravy. Im still learning after years of playing, and I still find new tricks that I wonder how I ever did without before. Some of the forums are I find, highly humourous and so you should maybe read back through the Q+A and fort mode boards as much as you can make yourself as youll pick up stuff from there, and some of the stuff you experience as you play will make more sense.

Good Luck

EDIT I meant to say above (some people will disagree but...) I advise a graphics pack. I play with mayday and I think it makes the game easier to play/saves a helluva lot of time.

Because, until youre confident with what is what when playing with no graphics only ascii, i would advise using the k key and the arrows to move the cursor to get a text description of everything. Ive never played a proper fort with ascii only and I think it makes it easier and more enjoyable to play with any given graphics pack enabled, but I still need the look "k" key a lot.

Graphics packs can potentially cause issues themselves but are easily turned off (hopefully temporarily) 

[Merari]

Apart from the advice already given, I found that bringing some chickens, a rooster and some nest boxes with me on embark made all the difference.
My first few forts barely made it out of their first winter before I found this steady egg supply.

A second tip is: Build more traps. You think you have enough traps? That means you probably need at least twice as much.

Another tip: Marksdwarves can fire at different elevations. It's easy to build some towers only accessible from underground that lead to some ramparts, so your dwarves can pelt bolts at helpless invaders. Be sure to check if the invaders are bowmen first though. They shoot back.

And lastly: Make sure to have as few entrances from the overworld to your fort as possible and make sure each of them can be sealed off with a retractable or upright bridge.

[PDF urist master]

if you dig down a little bit, you'll come across a cave. don't explore caves until you have a small military going. there are lots of nasties down there.

most of the creatures down there are non aggressive, but these are the few to watch for.

    the giant cave spider is the most powerful cavern creature. it spawns uncommonly in the 1st and 2nd layer. they can shoot webs, which is extremely overpowered and practically an insta-kill against melee. they also have no pain and no stun, which means they cannot be knocked unconscious. they also have a powerful venom that can completely paralyze its opponent. use traps or marksdwarves. i usually mod so that they're breedable because they are fucking useful on your side.

    troglodytes are an early problem. they spawn in the 1st and 2nd layer and are extremely common. each trog is strong enough to kill a dwarf, but a soldier is more than a match for it. they will charge for your fortress, so be careful. a squad of 10 should take care of them.

    cave crocodiles are nasty ambushers. they spawn in the 1st and 2nd layers. they are massive and will generally try to ambush your dwarves by staying in the water. they like to bite off limbs. these guys are incredibly valuable as tamed creatures since they are powerful and lay a crap-ton of eggs.

    blind ogres are powerful attackers bigger than a full grown elephant. they spawn in the 2nd and 3rd layers. their size makes them extremely formidable opponents. these guys like to strangle your dwarves and are a match for any dwarf. fight them using superior numbers.

[ShadowHammer]

few things are more annoying than watching a dwarf fire fruitlessly on a s-l-o-w-l-y advancing undead.

"Fire fruitlessly"? Any hit with a crossbow bolt, no matter where, will instantly kill any zombie. Are you referring to husks/thralls?

[Sutremaine]

Definitely not husks.

I recall that fortress had both giant animals and a resurrecting biome, and a particular problem with undead giant wrens. The crossbows were very useful when the dwarves were inside overlooking the non-evil entrance, and very dangerous when they were outside and trying to haul corpses to the atomsmasher before the next necromancer turned up.

That fortress eventually died to improper placement of a butchery processing a chitinous FB corpse, which saved it from slow strangulation by the lag from hundreds of undead and hundreds of fired bolts.

...Okay, maybe that's an extreme situation, but sometimes it's better to let dwarves run away, especially if enemies are slow but hard to stop.

[Merendel]

few things are more annoying than watching a dwarf fire fruitlessly on a s-l-o-w-l-y advancing undead.

"Fire fruitlessly"? Any hit with a crossbow bolt, no matter where, will instantly kill any zombie. Are you referring to husks/thralls?

a pack of untrained civies fireing at a zombie can burn through quite a few bolts before they manage to hit anything other than the far wall.  maybe thats what he means.

[ShadowHammer]

if you dig down a little bit, you'll come across a cave. don't explore caves until you have a small military going. there are lots of nasties down there.

most of the creatures down there are non aggressive, but these are the few to watch for.

    the giant cave spider is the most powerful cavern creature. it spawns uncommonly in the 1st and 2nd layer. they can shoot webs, which is extremely overpowered and practically an insta-kill against melee. they also have no pain and no stun, which means they cannot be knocked unconscious. they also have a powerful venom that can completely paralyze its opponent. use traps or marksdwarves. i usually mod so that they're breedable because they are fucking useful on your side.

    troglodytes are an early problem. they spawn in the 1st and 2nd layer and are extremely common. each trog is strong enough to kill a dwarf, but a soldier is more than a match for it. they will charge for your fortress, so be careful. a squad of 10 should take care of them.

    cave crocodiles are nasty ambushers. they spawn in the 1st and 2nd layers. they are massive and will generally try to ambush your dwarves by staying in the water. they like to bite off limbs. these guys are incredibly valuable as tamed creatures since they are powerful and lay a crap-ton of eggs.

    blind ogres are powerful attackers bigger than a full grown elephant. they spawn in the 2nd and 3rd layers. their size makes them extremely formidable opponents. these guys like to strangle your dwarves and are a match for any dwarf. fight them using superior numbers.

Seconded. Earlier this evening, actually, one of my axelords lost his leg to a pair of cave ogres before his friend could come help him out. More advice about ogres and other large cavern creatures: use piercing weapons, spears preferably, to fight them, because slicing weapons (axes and swords) kill by bisection/limb severing/beheading, and its pretty hard to bisect something that's like ten times thicker than you are.

If this advice is too specific/advanced at your stage of the game, here's the easy version: don't fight them. Use traps instead.

[TwistedTime]

Ok, so I shouldn't dig too far into the ground. When I am able to survive long enough for that to be a concern...(Haven't really made it long enough to have a real militia.) Which would be what the other tip would seem to be. Traps are my friends. Oh and thanks for the link. The wiki has answered quite a bit of my questions and enlightened me to the more complex systems that are running within the game that I wasn't entirely aware of. Tho it does bring up weird questions for me every now and then. Like why only certain animals need to feed/graze, but all the others doesn't need to, ect.

I have now started using the "prepare carefully" function, and I am surprised to see that I seem to have a bit more items/ect compared to "Play Now" Tho with so many items/skills to choose from, I don't know where to begin.

[AutomataKittay]

Ok, so I shouldn't dig too far into the ground. When I am able to survive long enough for that to be a concern...(Haven't really made it long enough to have a real militia.) Which would be what the other tip would seem to be. Traps are my friends. Oh and thanks for the link. The wiki has answered quite a bit of my questions and enlightened me to the more complex systems that are running within the game that I wasn't entirely aware of. Tho it does bring up weird questions for me every now and then. Like why only certain animals need to feed/graze, but all the others doesn't need to, ect.

I have now started using the "prepare carefully" function, and I am surprised to see that I seem to have a bit more items/ect compared to "Play Now" Tho with so many items/skills to choose from, I don't know where to begin.

Herbavores need grazing, carnivores and omnivores doesn't. Though that's more because Toady haven't worked out sasitfying system for them, and grazing's annoying so I wouldn't blame anyone for turning it off.

Most basic rule of thumb for preparing carefully is to have one pick, one axe, an anvil, a couple stones, some wood and some food. That'll keep your dwarves alive and working in most regions, as long as you avoids Tower influence and evil regions. There're not usually much hostile creature until you get third or fourth migration wave, short of gaggle of thieving critters. An anvil's important because it's one thing that you can't really create if you don't already have one, always build a forge ASAP if you suspect thieving critters around.

There're a lot of ways to prepare, it depends on your goal, really.

[Garath]

you forgot to mention to bring booze

on prepare carefully, if you want to save points scrap things like splint and ropes. Your dwarfs don't really need skills to start with, but most people consider one or two farmers the most beneficial. After that, opinions vary. The most useful I found for what to spend points on is egg layers, some extra dogs and lots of different kind of meat, different kinds of booze and the essentials for strange moods - different types of cloth, glass and such. Why the meat and booze? You can take 20 of 1 type of drink, or 5 of 4 types. Situation 1 gives a free barrel, situation 2 gives 4 free barrels. Similarly, different kinds of food give free barrels etc.

[AutomataKittay]

you forgot to mention to bring booze

on prepare carefully, if you want to save points scrap things like splint and ropes. Your dwarfs don't really need skills to start with, but most people consider one or two farmers the most beneficial. After that, opinions vary. The most useful I found for what to spend points on is egg layers, some extra dogs and lots of different kind of meat, different kinds of booze and the essentials for strange moods - different types of cloth, glass and such. Why the meat and booze? You can take 20 of 1 type of drink, or 5 of 4 types. Situation 1 gives a free barrel, situation 2 gives 4 free barrels. Similarly, different kinds of food give free barrels etc.

Nah, I makes large pots or barrels on-site and brew it from plump helmet, it's cheaper per point, even accounting for wood being imported along with it. It also protects from booze being frozen if I embarks somewhere with very cold winter or just frozen year-around.

4 points per plump helmet, and they can come up to 5 in a stack. One plump helmet makes 5 booze, which's around 10 points worth compared to around 7 for one log and plump helmet, plus seed so you don't have to buy any.

Mostly it's just easier for me to bring a pile of plump helmet since it's so useful for keeping dwarves alive, even if other supplies are cheaper