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[imlovinit]

I just lost my first fortress because i didn't get enough booze and one of my dwarfs went insane and next thing i knew my fortress became a tantrum spiral. So it got me thinking what was your first fortress like and/or how did you lose it?

[Beast Tamer]

My first fortress went something like this...

"Hey, how do I get rid of these ramps? Oh, I'll just dig one tile in because there doesn't seem to a way to do it any other way."

"Pfft! A still? I don't need a still, there's a brook right over there."

"Uh.... how do I scroll between Z levels? Forget it, I'll just go to the units screen and select a dwarf, zoom in, and hope I get lucky."

"How the hell do you farm?"

"Military? I'll do that once I get a few more men, it's not like anyone would send an army to crush a random outpost in the middle of nowhere."

"A possessed mood! Crap I do need a military! He's going to kill everyone- no he's just standing on a hill.... He'll get over it soon."

*Ambush!

"Crap, that doesn't sound good. Thankfully I mined away all the ramps to my fort and figured out how to raise the drawbridge!"

*Miner cancels Mood: gone bezerk

"That sounds bad."

*Miner has struck down Ambushing Goblin *6

"Hot damn I don't even need an army! I'll just lower the bridge so my new one man army doesn't get lonely out in the cold. Now I wonder how my engraver is doing on the other side of the map... oh he's dead."

Urist Farmer Cancels Make Farm Plot: intrupted by Miner.

"Huh? What's going on? Why is there blood everywhere!"

*Your fort has crumbled to its end.

It taught me many valuable lessons, like that a miner with a pick is the deadliest force in the universe.

[GrimDark_Majyyks]

I had a severe problem regarding the hoarding of animals. Prior to starting a fort, I had done a large quantity of research in order to avoid some of the more mundane means by which to bring your fort to an end. I didn't really understand how animals worked then so naturally my grazers died, but that was okay because I was able to make use of them anyways. However, the experience of their deaths caused me to become more endeared to my surviving critters which consisted largely of chickens.

I had a severe problem regarding the hoarding of animals.

The chickens multiplied, and I really didn't let the thought enter my mind that creature multiplication is multiplicative. To me every birth was precious, my dwarves would never want for a varied diet. Things progress well -- if dully -- for a while. I was still learning things, so I attended to doing the thing-learning and made sure to do everything the Let's Plays and guides told me to. At this time I also found myself tinkering around with fortress design so that I could find something that pleased me aesthetically while remaining functional. I noticed my fps dropping a little, but ignored it because I had been led to believe that that was normal over time (knowing what I know now it shouldn't have been that soon or that fast).

After a while I started noticing chicks in places they did not belong. I checked on the yard-fowl domicile that I had set up and largely forgotten about in favor of doing other things and found that there were an inordinately high number of chicks roaming around. I paused and looked into what the cause of this might be but I was much too late. Despite my attempted gendercide I was unable to curtail the growth of the chicken population and ultimately abandoned the fort as it was becoming increasingly unplayable due to a handful of very productive roosters doing a very good job of hiding from me. At the time I was unaware of removing constructions, and didn't really think to remove the nest boxes (making and placing several dozen was probably a bad idea) or I would have probably just done that.

I like to think of it as Chicken District 9, given how much like a trashy tenement the place looked with the little nest-box-shacks everywhere. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) my dwarves were unable to gain their strength by eating them, and were unable to destroy them fast enough to salvage my fps.

[Flare]

My first fortress was but a hole in the ground, and some rooms for stockpiles. I hit a wall at some point and I remember very clearly drowning everyone from a nearby water spurce. I also remember that I was so green I couldn't evven do that properly.

[Aslandus]

My first fortress was a very short one, I had heard that aquifers were a pain, and the world I generated was covered in them, so I found one that didn't have any aquifer... in the middle of a desert... It went like this:
"Finally, no aquifer!"
*embark*
"Wait, there's no wood here"
*abandon fortress*

[KingBacon]

First fortress must have been about two years ago. I was playing Minecraft and saw some mod tool thing which imported dwarf fortess worlds into minecraft, and I was like wth is this Dorf Fort thing?

Read the quickstart guide, downloaded LNP with Phobeus graphics and started a little fort (or dug out hole in the side of a cliff.) It was all on one z level since I had no idea what I was doing, I had no idea what Dwarf Therapist was so I was manually setting tasks for each dorf. I put some beds, tables and stockpiles down and set up a gem craft shop and started cutting gens. I also ran out of wood trying to build a wall around my outdoor depot and naturally nothing had doors on it.

Survived the first year without a farm or anything and traded gems for food and some stuff that I now know is junk. Then a Rhesus macaque got into my food stockpile and started interrupting everything. I then created a squad of dorfs and then waited, wondering why my military wouldn't kill the creature, for a while I thought the thing was invisible (since I had no idea what the citizens/creatures menu was and was just starting to get z levels.) It got so bad I had to abandon the fort and I abandoned DF until my computer died and I had to borrow one from the graduate school (which prohibited me from installing everything, so had to learn how to play dosbox games and DF.) NO DEATHS AT MY FIRST FORT THOUGH!!!

Second fort had lots of drowning and possessed mood resulting in floodgates. Lots of floodgates...

[SkyRender]

 My first fortress was lost to newfound knowledge, of all things.  It was back in the 42d days, but I didn't know the game had multiple Z levels.  I tried to play it like 2D Dwarf Fortress (all I knew was Boatmurdered), and while I survived just fine, I didn't seem to accomplish anything.  Then I read up on Z-levels and actually learned how they worked after a Dwarf appeared to enter a different plane of existence from his fellows, and realized that this was no longer the game I thought it was.

[McDonald]

I made a shitton of 1-tile farms because I didn't know that I could change the size of a farm and then flooded everything while trying to water them.

[☼!!Troll Fur Sock!!☼]

I lost my first fortress to wheelbarrows, I kid you not.

[Nyxalinth]

I had a severe problem regarding the hoarding of animals. Prior to starting a fort, I had done a large quantity of research in order to avoid some of the more mundane means by which to bring your fort to an end. I didn't really understand how animals worked then so naturally my grazers died, but that was okay because I was able to make use of them anyways. However, the experience of their deaths caused me to become more endeared to my surviving critters which consisted largely of chickens.

I had a severe problem regarding the hoarding of animals.

The chickens multiplied, and I really didn't let the thought enter my mind that creature multiplication is multiplicative. To me every birth was precious, my dwarves would never want for a varied diet. Things progress well -- if dully -- for a while. I was still learning things, so I attended to doing the thing-learning and made sure to do everything the Let's Plays and guides told me to. At this time I also found myself tinkering around with fortress design so that I could find something that pleased me aesthetically while remaining functional. I noticed my fps dropping a little, but ignored it because I had been led to believe that that was normal over time (knowing what I know now it shouldn't have been that soon or that fast).

After a while I started noticing chicks in places they did not belong. I checked on the yard-fowl domicile that I had set up and largely forgotten about in favor of doing other things and found that there were an inordinately high number of chicks roaming around. I paused and looked into what the cause of this might be but I was much too late. Despite my attempted gendercide I was unable to curtail the growth of the chicken population and ultimately abandoned the fort as it was becoming increasingly unplayable due to a handful of very productive roosters doing a very good job of hiding from me. At the time I was unaware of removing constructions, and didn't really think to remove the nest boxes (making and placing several dozen was probably a bad idea) or I would have probably just done that.

I like to think of it as Chicken District 9, given how much like a trashy tenement the place looked with the little nest-box-shacks everywhere. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) my dwarves were unable to gain their strength by eating them, and were unable to destroy them fast enough to salvage my fps.

My current issue is puppy and pigsplosion.  FPS is okay so far, but I either need to slaughter more or do quantumn caging and trade them to the elves to deal with.  My cats don't explosively breed.

Anyway...my first forts tended mostly to end due to not being able to figure out what to do and abandoning, but my first interesting fort loss happened after I got the hang of things.  Back in d40, I'd decided I was knowledgeable enough now to embark in a Sinister biome.  Between harpies and a troll, my fresh embark lasted ten minutes.

I lost my first fortress to wheelbarrows, I kid you not.

How did this happen?  there's a story there!

[☼!!Troll Fur Sock!!☼]

Well, it's not really a long story, and the moral is - restricting zones saves lifes.

On my first fortress I've made a lot of small mistakes, one of them was digging stone outside the fort and then hauling it to a giant storage space inside. I also liked water pumps a little too much, creating fountains and small pools in every single meeting area I could. There was a channel in my main hall, for cleaning/drinking in case of alcohol shortage.

Code: [Select]

                STONE STORAGE         
    /==============     =============\
   |                                 |
  E|                                 |
  N|   VVVVVVVVVVVV|   |VVVVVVVVVV   |H
  T|   VVVVVVVVVVVV|   |VVVVVVVVVV   |O   
  R|   VV                       VV    S   R
  A    --        TABLES         --    P A O
  N               AND                 I N O
  C    --         STUFF         --    T D M
  E|   VV                       VV    A   S
   |   VVVVVVVVVVVV|   |VVVVVVVVVV   |L
   |   VVVVVVVVVVVV|   |VVVVVVVVVV   |
   |                                 |
   \===============     =============/
                 WORKSHOPS
VV is 7/7 channel. Note the fact I didn't remove ramps.
I've been producing wheelbarrows like crazy, because hauling stones from outside was taking ages. However, to my surprise, I never had enuff of them. So I made some more just to be sure it is not AI playing jokes on me.
After some time I noticed that I have far less stone in my stockpile that was mined out - and I don't think ONE mason workshop would manage to turn it all into furniture that fast. Huh, strange.
Then a cat went missing. His owner was a miner.
Then said miner went missing.
Then several other miners and haulers.

I was pretty sure I got a wampire in my fort when 3 dwarves were left alive. I was checking their stats to detect the vampire. Then... Eureka. I noticed none of them had hauling or mining enabled (two were crafters meant to mass-produce stuff, not waste time hauling, third was chief medical dwarf). In sudden realization, I checked inside the water channel...
There was a pile of wheelbarrows, corpes, wheelbarrows, stones, wheelbarrows and pets.

Haulers took normal path to the stockpile, not even getting close to the channel. However, everyone with wheelbarrow decided to take a shortcut, and because I was mass-producing them, I first ran out of dwarves rather than wheelbarrows. When the channel was still half-filled (it was filled by manually operated pump) they just panicked, dropping the stone and getting out of the channel. However, when it was 7/7, they started drowning, not noticing the fact they were already skilled in swimming and they were standing on a goddamn ramp.

My first ragequit.

[David Holmes]

Not only did I run out of booze, it was winter and all my water froze.  My dwarves died of dehydration.  This was back before caverns existed so there really was no water on the map.

[KroganElite]

IIRC, my first fort crumbled due to a goblin attack. I survived the attack but the resulting tantrum spiral due to deaths was too much. My favourite loss had to be the tantrum spiral caused by a mooded dwarf that didn't get his shells.

[jhuizinga]

My first fortress was a very short one, I had heard that aquifers were a pain, and the world I generated was covered in them, so I found one that didn't have any aquifer... in the middle of a desert... It went like this:
"Finally, no aquifer!"
*embark*
"Wait, there's no wood here"
*abandon fortress*

I *hadn't* heard that aquifers were a pain, so I embarked on one. I dug about 3 tiles north before hitting wet stone. So I decided to abandon all further digging and set up shop outside. I managed to farm for a bit and construct seven beds before I learned what an "ambush" was.

[Skuggen]

My first fort was started with little research or preparation, so it stumbled along until the first goblin ambush came and killed everyone.