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[osunightfall]

Hi all,

As I do before I try every new release of Dwarf Fortress these days, I've come to the forums to ask if the game is currently in what you'd call "a playable state." With its massive scope, I find it's often the case that after a major release, Dwarf Fortress dwarf mode has so many game-breaking bugs that it's pretty unplayable. Well, whatever, I don't like it but I understand it. So, I'd like to ask a couple of questions if you all would be so kind.

1. Are there any severe bugs that I should watch out for in the current release, or that make some aspect of maintaining a fortress difficult or impossible? (Broken military, broken farming, broken minecarts, something like that.)

2. If there are many severe bugs currently, what was the most stable previous release of the game, would you say?

I'm not asking these questions to start a quarrel, but as I put it to a friend during 2014's release, "Dwarf Fortress is becoming a game that is defined not by your knowledge of its mechanics, but by your knowledge of how to work around its many bugs and broken systems."

I have my fingers crossed however, that maybe this time will be different.

[Mushroo]

Very stable! I have one successful fort going on 10 years.

My main complaint about dwarf mode these days is that it's much too easy.

[Pirate Bob]

I would say the current dwarf mode is as playable as it has ever been.  There are as always some new bugs, but many annoying old bugs were fixed (more than in any release I can remember).

Some improvements:
1) The new job priorities make the dwarves VASTLY more intelligent than before.  By and large, you don't have to micromanage dwarf labors (i.e. have dedicated haulers, unassign all labors to the broker, etc) as they will pick the most important jobs to do first.
2) Pathing and dwarf positioning for jobs (i.e. not digging themselves in a hole or walling themselves off from the fort) are also improved.
3) Most of the problems with trees have been fixed.

A few new annoying things:
1) Goblin invasions only occur if there are goblins nearby with large enough population.  This can make things less interesting.  There are a number of threads discussing how to ensure you get the goblins to come - I think the simplest is just to use a shortish world history.
2) FPS can be lower than previous versions.  Smaller world size and shorter history definitely help with this.  I run DF on an old laptop and have no problem.
3) Dwarves with decent combat skills assigned to military squads will prefer to train over doing work, even if the squad is inactive.  I believe this can be circumvented by not assigning the squad  any rooms for training, but then I don't know if they train at all.
4) Do not try to build anything on top of trees, as it can crash the game.

[utunnels]

4) Do not try to build anything on top of trees, as it can crash the game.

Furnitures are safe I can confirm. Constructions like walls and floors are not.

[osunightfall]

Thank you for the replies so far. Please keep them coming if there are any currently notorious bugs that have not been mentioned. I'm sad to hear that my dwarven treehouse will have to wait for another time!

[Echostatic]

1) Goblin invasions only occur if there are goblins nearby with large enough population.  This can make things less interesting.  There are a number of threads discussing how to ensure you get the goblins to come - I think the simplest is just to use a shortish world history.

I'm experimenting with this by removing the goblin creature token that makes multiple litters rare, and added one that gives them something like 10-20 goblins per birth. I also made them grow to adults in 2 years. Worldgen has seen all civs spread much faster, and I think it's because a lot of goblins are joining other races. My fortress is still new, but I'm hopeful that they should be able to quickly form large armies to throw at me.

[orbcontrolled]

Honestly, between the fast dev cycles, and the now obscenely powerful DFHack and it's community, I wouldn't be too worried about game-breaking bugs. If something really crippling or infuriating is found, the workaround for it will probably be part of the Lazy Newb Pack within a week, and the whole DF version obsolete in a month or two anyway. Like, I think the feeding timers glitch, and uncontrolled contaminant spread are still around, but the Lazy Newb Pack just fixes them by default, so I've never noticed them.

Still, go here, "reset filters" if necessary, then sort by severity. That will give you a good idea of whats going around.

[osunightfall]

Thanks, that's a good idea. I'm also concerned by how hard it apparently is to get sieged, so I'll look into that.

[Wheeljack]

Sieges are definitely hit or miss from one world to the next. I've had forts that had no sieges and others that were swimming in goblins. Armies now have to travel the world map, and they won't bother with you if you're too far away or there are closer targets to hit. The armies also rely on their civ's populations. If there are only twenty goblins left in a civ, they won't siege you (or anyone else for that matter) til their numbers get back to something more stable.

My suggestion to you would be to set down right on top of them to ensure you get sieges.

[Skullsploder]

If you don't mind the possibility of a ludicrously early and very powerful siege, setup next to a necromancer tower. They never run out of minions to throw at you and the minions they throw at you are individually equivalent to a slightly less than legendary dwarf soldier.

[Loci]

2) Pathing and dwarf positioning for jobs (i.e. not digging themselves in a hole or walling themselves off from the fort) are also improved.

Nope. Dwarves still dig themselves into pits (but they can now climb back out, which is an improvement). Dwarves walling themselves out of the fortress is actually more prevalent than it was in v0.34, a regression caused by the fix for dwarves standing on the construction site.  (In v0.34, dwarves would path from their initial location to the build site to determine where to stand, defaulting to the build site if no better tile was available on the path. In v0.40 they path from the location of the chosen material to the build site, so buildings constructed using materials outside the fortress will result in dwarves walling themselves out.) 

Still, go here, "reset filters" if necessary, then sort by severity. That will give you a good idea of whats going around.

The bugs on the tracker are not actively indexed by priority or severity.