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[Greiger]

Dwarf fortress.  I was watching an old video on a gaming site where one person mentioned that people have been playing Dwarf Fortress for years but few of even those people would call themselves masters.  It really hit me how truthful that is.  I have been playing DF for about 8 years and I would probably just laugh if somebody called me a master. 

There are so many things in the game that I know very little about how to do properly.  For example I've never successfully made Soap using lye.  I've always used a custom reaction that replaces the lye ingredient with a plant that I created back when lye was broken and no workarounds were figured out yet.  I have also never made a pumpstack or used a magma piston, I've never pierced an aquifer without surface magma, and I've never built a fortress on evil(or even good) biomes.  And I've never built a fortress without some access to water.   Also as an additional oddity caused by my personal modding I've never built an underground farm, flooding or no.  The custom race I made is incapable of underground farming.

I'm curious what other people have never done that prevents their graduation to Dwarf Fortress grand master.  Some people may just have super advanced stuff as the only things they've never done, others may have a few comparatively trivial things they have no idea how to do.  Lets see what y'all got!

[than402]

Because I don't know how minecarts and rail systems work. Or complex trap systems. Or pumping stuff. Or how to make a proper custom worldgen. Among many, many other things.

[NullForceOmega]

I've done nearly everything once, but I've never attempted (nor am I interested in) automating my fortress, nor have I actually beat hell.  I did just about exterminate a goblin civ through war once tho'.  I can bust aquifers, build pumpstacks and power them easily, part rivers, oceans, the magma sea, and aquifers, handle the undead (but not in an unlimited form.)  Almost everything else too, but I just consider myself a player.

[The Anus of Discontent]

Crap, now I feel like I should have read this before creating the thread "how long did it take/how hard was it for you to learn Dwarf Fortress?" I feel like we're both asking the same question, just different ways.

I'd say that I'm not a DF master (even though I've been playing for more than 6 years) because I never really got that much into fortress building.  I think it's because I get overwhelmed trying to manage 100 dwarves... It's easier to play for a couple hours as an adventurer, and I find it to be good short term fun. I've JUST started trying to do the fortress side again, and I'm having my most successful fort yet with enough beds, food and drink for everyone, which is a feat considering my previous attempts...

[Greiger]

You have a much more detailed OP, and it's slightly different.  I'm not so much trying to do many of the things I said on my list, I may eventually, but for example farming underground, I've never done it so I can't say that I've mastered that particular aspect. but it's not like I'm going to build a fort just to build some underground farms. It's not what keeps me coming back.

And now that I think of it I've never properly beaten hell myself either.  And while I've worked with minecarts and rails a few times I've never really set up a good automated minecart system.   Even if you count dwarves automatically pushing the carts back to the starting position, I still need to find some way to do it without pulping pets on it's way down so I don't have to go in and manually mark stuff for dumping and disable the system during cleanup.  It's nice to see what other people post and think about new things you can try.

[seaturtlehorsesnake]

i've never managed the super-complicated pumping things. i can do the basics, but the things that lead to magma cannons and fun like that? completely beyond me. and i honestly don't have the best spatial sense, so it's tough for me to build in a way that i can picture what it looks like in 3d.

[Max™]

Because everything I learn and know for playing fortress mode has been bent and twisted to do terrible things involving adventurer mode, hacking at pre-existing scripts, or just screwing things up with the gm-editor.

If I can figure out how to avoid the inevitable "get all geared up, set, figured out where I want to go, walk outside the fort and step in a puddle of flesh melting goop that makes me fall over, begin suffocating, and die slowly" stuff then I suppose I'd be a good chunk of the way closer, but then whatever enables me to survive that just encourages me to do something even stupider like fling myself at light speed towards a tree by mistake...

It's too fun to screw things up.

[c0mplex]

In my admittedly few years of playing DF, I have tried my hand in most aspects of the game. I usually play mods that make the game more complex so I've tried things in game that aren't even in the base game. I think, that while I have some experience with a bit of everything the game has to offer, what keeps me from being a master is how shallow my experience in some areas is. I have yet to successfully repel an invading army (but I have repelled ambushes); my exploration into the caverns are usually short lived and I have yet to encounter a forgotten beast; I have yet to create any traps more complex than the basic (constructed) stuff; my use of machinery is ironically primitive and rare since I never found much need or opportunity to do anything complex with them; I never had a fortress last long enough for my civ's leader to try and move in (though that is more due to my tendency to abandon forts at a whim, making them short lived); and quite frankly I could never handle fortresses with populations that go above a few dozen citizens (leading to the aforementioned short-lived forts). Also, yeah, while I did try messing with mine carts and tracks, I didn't get all that in depth with them.

I'm fairly experienced with most everything else (that happens in-game), but those aspects of the game are just too difficult for me to approach in a normal run with a fortress or I have little experience with because they are not things that I can mess with early on which keeps me from being able to better understand them.

Plus, outside of the game modes I'm also fairly inexperienced. Modding the game and messing with world-gen settings are things that I have done a bit of before, but nothing too in-depth.

[Vattic]

Haven't gone after HFS since 40d or evil biomes. Still not completely comfortable with minecarts.

[Cruxador]

I'm honestly a bit befuddled by a lot of the new systems implemented since the old days of 40d. Things like minecarts and hauling and the new military screen, I just never really bothered to get proficient with everything. I'm better with pointless things like beehives, actually.

I've never really done much with HFS.

Aquifers, although I know how to plug them, are still a PitA for me.

I barely use DFhack at all.

[Eric Blank]

I can't wrap my brain around logic clocks. Minecarts I find almost no use for. Never conquered the HFS, either. I never keep a fort going long enough to actually get these sorts of things done. I have DF-ADD.

[neblime]

minecarts... what are they?  how do you use them?  these things I do not know.
I would say I have a handle on pretty much everything else though.  I don't use DT so idk if people are optimizing their labours really hard or something but I generally have quite a few on any one dwarf

[Space Wizard]

Outside of dwarfputing and exotic weaponization I don't see any reason for minecarts and haven't gotten around to learning them.

I can bring magma up and get through aquifers, but my knowledge of pumping is limited to that.

I have yet to above-ground farm. I'd like to.

I've never made soap. I've never tanned leather. There are quite a few crafts and such I've never bothered to mess with.

I always make an OP hammerer squad but other than that I haven't messed with military.

I haven't messed with siege weaponry, or any kinds of complex traps or weaponry for that matter.

I tend to get rekt by Forgotten Beasts. I've found Adamantine but haven't done anything with it, nor have I investigated hidden fun stuff.

Never been visited by a noble, something always goes wrong before that happens.

I have no idea how to build in or go through water or magma. Don't even know where to start there. I dream of a castle in a lake/ocean though, so I'll probably figure it out.

I like to keep challenging myself to new stuff in Dwarf Fortress, but every time I learn something new I find out I need to learn two or three more things, this might be why nobody considers themselves a "master". The game is simply too dynamic.

[Revenant342]

I still need to work with candy and invade the circus.  Haven't worked with minecarts or fought humans or elves.  I've done pump stacks but never magma pistons, though I usually do my magma forges at magma sea level anyway.

I've trained militaries and killed FBs and Semi-megas in droves, but have never had a titan, colossus, or megabeast.  My goal has always been to capture and breed war Rocs. 

Done aboveground farming, underground tree farms and pastures, clothing, leather working, and soap industries, but have never made cheese.  Dine steel and glass a lot but never ceramics.

I still have a lot to do.

[NJW2000]

Ironically, while I've modded the game a bit and played in succession forts, I have never finished an above-ground construction... need to practice my megaprojects.