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[Merendel]

The main reason the wiki sugests the LNP is because its easy.   Its literaly as simple as unzip the thing to a folder and push play.  You'd be surprised at how many people out there cant handle installing a program thats more complicated than that.   Asside from that it comes with bugfixes and tools that help improve your ability to manipulate your fortress.  Agian those can be a tad complicated to get installed in the right place for someone who's not very computer savy.  Its name is very apt.  Its a pack for those that are either too lazy or too newbish to install all that on their own :p

That said even the games creator has admitted that the UI for the game is very much a WIP.  It's functional but you shouldn't assume that that is how he envisions the final product.  You can work without addons like Therapist its just going to take more effort on your part.  The whole Ascii vs tileset debate all comes down to personal preferance though.  There's no right answer to that one that anybody else can give you.  Tilesets are just a bit easier to deal with initialy as its a bit more obvious what something is when you see a picture of it vs some strange character that you have to look up the first few times you see it.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

You can work without addons like Therapist its just going to take more effort on your part.

Actually, I find Therapist more time consuming than the regular UI, but I think that is primarily due to the fact that I decided to do as the OP is wanting to, pure vanilla gameplay.  Time consuming and difficulty is not a very good benchmark, because everyone has their own playstyles that result in different levels of effort.  Although, I think it would be better to get used to vanilla DF UI, so that you can eek out a bit more framerate for your fort than what would be lost to utilities running in the background.

[FrankMcFuzz]

You can work without addons like Therapist its just going to take more effort on your part.

Actually, I find Therapist more time consuming than the regular UI, but I think that is primarily due to the fact that I decided to do as the OP is wanting to, pure vanilla gameplay.  Time consuming and difficulty is not a very good benchmark, because everyone has their own playstyles that result in different levels of effort.  Although, I think it would be better to get used to vanilla DF UI, so that you can eek out a bit more framerate for your fort than what would be lost to utilities running in the background.

Well, no matter who you are, we all agree that a tool that shows every single skill and its progression on the one screen is unbelievably useful if you need someone for a specific job and couldn't be bothered looking through 80-200 dwarves individually. You can just close it straight away after 2 changes if you're worried about performance. To say that this is more time consuming than individually monitoring dwarves and their skill progression... well...

The only thing I don't like about it is that is doesn't clearly show a dwarves physical capabilities, which actually make a huge difference, especially when it comes to combat. I still spend (waste?) a lot of time scrounging through character sheets to find the buff ones.

I used to play without it for about 2 years, then I started using it, and now I realized that there's no reason to torture myself when I can use these tools.

[NeonDarkness]

Ok, here comes possibly the most newbish question I can muster for all of you. Why exactly do I need to build a fortress? Yes, I understand the game is called dwarf fortress and all, but I have to be missing something since, from every video I've watched, all the info I've read and boatmurdered I've enjoyed (though not understanding it!) and on and on, it seems as though pretty much anything is possible in this game with its depth. Why exactly do I need a fortress if I can create an army of dwarfs and just travel the land? Even after about 3 years of knowing about this game, I still don't have an answer. Of course, this seems somewhat similar to adventure mode, but to be clear, I am NOT talking about adventure mode.

[Trif]

Well, no matter who you are, we all agree that a tool that shows every single skill and its progression on the one screen is unbelievably useful if you need someone for a specific job and couldn't be bothered looking through 80-200 dwarves individually. You can just close it straight away after 2 changes if you're worried about performance. To say that this is more time consuming than individually monitoring dwarves and their skill progression... well...

This probably doesn't apply to all players, but DT is more time consuming because it lets you monitor and compare every single skill and its progression. Dealing with that much information makes me much more unsure about labor assignments - I need someone for a job, but the guy who's most skilled in it usually has some other great skill that I don't need right now but might be useful later, or he has too much combat skill to be a whole-time craftsdwarf, or whatever; something always comes up that doesn't make the dwarf quite perfect for the job. Going through migrant waves was just such a chore, and after committing the job changes I was never happy about it.
So I stopped using Therapist, just to see what it's like without it.

And as it turns out, my playstyle changed quite a bit. If you have 50 dwarfs, a job that needs to be finished and no way of finding the dwarf with the highest suitable skill level, what do you do? I open up the units screen, pick any idler and give them the job. If they need to do it often, they'll become professional, if it's more of a once-every-season kind of job they'll idle again and pick up more jobs.
I know that I won't pick the optimal dwarf for the job like this, but the dwarf will become great at it over time, regardless of their initial skill level. After a few years, the result is the same regardless of which dwarf I picked - jobs get done, dwarfs get skilled. And I can save up some brain cycles for more important problems.

To summarize, I like to play without Dwarf Therapist because it limits my obsessive micro-managing.

[greycat]

Why exactly do I need to build a fortress?

Well, because it's fun.

Why exactly do I need a fortress if I can create an army of dwarfs and just travel the land?

You can't actually do that at the moment.  You can create an adventurer, and hire companions to travel with you, but that's not what I'd call an army.

Toady One has plans to introduce armies in the future, but we're not there yet.

[NeonDarkness]

Why exactly do I need to build a fortress?

Well, because it's fun.

Oh god there's that word...

[DarkArtemisFowl]

To answer your question with seriousness, a fortress is created so that your civilization can spread their economy, influence, and territory through your own creation. You're put in charge of a team of dwarves founding a brand new fortress, ripe for the picking.

"And have fun." -Gabe Newell and Toady the Great

[FrankMcFuzz]

Why exactly do I need to build a fortress?

One time, I made my dwarves live in a boat I built.

It didn't float.

Everyone died.

[WhimsyWink]

Ok, here comes possibly the most newbish question I can muster for all of you. Why exactly do I need to build a fortress? Yes, I understand the game is called dwarf fortress and all, but I have to be missing something since, from every video I've watched, all the info I've read and boatmurdered I've enjoyed (though not understanding it!) and on and on, it seems as though pretty much anything is possible in this game with its depth. Why exactly do I need a fortress if I can create an army of dwarfs and just travel the land? Even after about 3 years of knowing about this game, I still don't have an answer. Of course, this seems somewhat similar to adventure mode, but to be clear, I am NOT talking about adventure mode.

Well just to test the terminology:  a fortress is a defensive position.   If you are hung up on a fortress being above ground, then remember dwarfs are miners/crafters and the materials are underground  the mining of which creating uniquely defendable places to live and work.  Even if you can train dwarfs soon enough that you don't ever have to 'hole up', you are going to have non combative dwarfs that need a safe place.

[madmario]

I learned using no tileset, but switched to them because they are rather nifty.  You can follow the wiki quickstart fine without using the LNP.  Kick it up and go.  What's most important is start it up and lose a few times instead of theorycrafting more and more.


Why build a fortress? Well, first off, there's not much else to do in Fortress mode.  In Adventure mode, sure.  In Fortress mode--your seven are plopped into a limited space.  They can wander around that space and kill things but not much else.  Second, there are the basics--dwarfs want to eat cooked food and drink booze.  You don't need a fortress to cook food or brew booze--but bears or gnomes or whatever may come and eat your stuff and drink your booze if you leave it out in the open. And dwarves will want a roof over their head and a bed to sleep in, cuz it's going to rain and snow. Digging down is faster than building up so people tend to dig down.  Essentially, you build a fortress because the mechanics incentivize a certain playstyle without chaining you to it.


Also, if you play in a more challenging location, say a Terrifying biome with a tower nearby and nasty weather, your embark will fail if you don't get some security quickly. I've had embarks fail almost instantly.

[Vgray]

You should read the dev goals sometime.

[DarkArtemisFowl]

Wait what do the devgoals have to do with this conversation?

[Vgray]

Nothing in particular. Although it would inform you as to what's not in yet.