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[FallacyofUrist]

I can't bring myself to play DF more than Minecraft, or for that matter, going on these forums. I need some motivation to play Dwarf Fortress! How should I go about doing this?

[Arcvasti]

Mods. There are many mods. They are cool. Masterwork is neat, anything by Putnam is awesome and there's an entire subforum devoted to them.

[Moonshadow101]

Go play something else? Or read a book? Or anything else?

I don't understand why you'd want to force yourself to engage in a leisure activity that doesn't interest you at the moment.

[PrimusRibbus]

If you don't want to play, don't play. You'll just burn yourself out for when you're feeling it later.

[FallacyofUrist]

Ha. It interests me, it just feels slow compared to other options.

And mods... are pretty much not an option when I haven't even mastered the base game.

[Salmeuk]

Try reading a fantasy book then intertwining some of the story into a new fortress. It can be recreating a setting, a character or set of relationships, an object of focus or the plot itself.

I always think back to a novel I can't remember the name of, but a dragon invaded a dwarven fortress and murdered everyone inside. A later group came back and killed the dragon, reclaiming the fortress and turning the skin into an impenetrable shield of shimmering dragon scale. Recreating that would be pretty noteworthy, no? I still haven't, mostly due to dragons not always being as fearsome as tales suggest.

[Clatch]

Yeah, it's probably best if you just pass on it.  You'll just become hopelessly addicted like the rest of us and all other games will suddenly seem shallow and unfulfilling.  You'll spend several nights building a perfect fortress from some of the great youtube guides only to lose it to a failed engineering experiment.  You'll become frustrated and obsessed with next one... and the next one... and the next one...

[NW_Kohaku]

Mods generally don't exist to make the game harder (some do, but others are random junk like Touhou or My Little Pony fandom things) so that's not necessarily a reason not to mod.  Modding things yourself to your liking can be a decent pass-time, and help you understand the game better, as well.

In any event, what don't you understand about the vanilla game? 

Generally speaking, when there's something I don't understand that well, I make a fort just to test it out.  My last big fort was all minecarts all the time.  Before that, I took a deep detour into adventurer mode, and made some outpost fortresses just to supply adventurers.

[FallacyofUrist]

Military, deathtraps, and micromanagement. At least I managed to play yesterday.

And for adventure mode... I never figured out how to get out of the underground areas as a dwarf.

[NW_Kohaku]

Military, deathtraps, and micromanagement. At least I managed to play yesterday.

And for adventure mode... I never figured out how to get out of the underground areas as a dwarf.

Try playing as a hill dwarf/peasant, rather than a fortress dwarf, and just avoiding more vertical structures until you're more familiar with it. 

Military is challenging to learn, but there are some good guides for it.

"Deathtraps" and "Micromanagement" are too vague of terms to give a simple answer to, however.  What are you looking to do?

[FallacyofUrist]

I can use the manager pretty easily- but getting all my work done and carrying on all the separate chains of thought is something of a problem for me- I can do about three things at a time... sort of. Deathtraps are basic, garden variety traps... oh. That's not my problem, it's getting the trap components.

[NW_Kohaku]

I can use the manager pretty easily- but getting all my work done and carrying on all the separate chains of thought is something of a problem for me- I can do about three things at a time... sort of. Deathtraps are basic, garden variety traps... oh. That's not my problem, it's getting the trap components.

Well, if you want to build a better deathtrap, and the FBs will beat a path to your door what you really need is a basic understanding of mechanics.  There are really great deathtraps just floating around the wiki or forums that you can copy and modify to your heart's content, so long as you understand the basics of how mechanisms and such work. 

Again, I recommend just flat building a fortress to test things out so that you can grow more accustomed to what you're doing, and understand the principles the more complex things are built upon.  The wiki has great examples of basic mechanics.

To give an example, I'm currently using minecarts to stockpile wood from the surface in an underground segment of fort.  This means falling logs that might hurt my carpenters if they happen to be picking up some wood at the wrong moment.  So, I want a hatch over the last tile before the stockpile, itself.  The problem is, however, that a pressure plate one tile away from the stockpile will only send an "open" signal to a hatch when a dwarf stands upon it, not a "close" signal.  I need a signal inverter, or, as it's called in boolean logic, a not gate.  The Minecart Not Gate is an easy-to build feature that produces an inversion of a basic signal.  Hence, when my dwarves step on a pressure plate, a hatch overhead closes, preventing falling debris from hitting them, and it opens again ~120 ticks after they have left the stockpile.


As for trying to get trap components and industry working, I generally don't worry too much about it, myself.  I just order things when I need them, and then check in on them occasionally and randomly.  In general, my play strategy is to spend 2 hours designating a bajillion things, then let it run for a while.  (How long depending on current FPS - I'll let real FPS crashers running at 2 FPS run overnight, and check in on them once a day to give new orders.)

[Reelya]

Ha. It interests me, it just feels slow compared to other options.

And mods... are pretty much not an option when I haven't even mastered the base game.

Having a goal for each fortress can help interest a lot, and reducing the size of the map helps it not get repetitive. Big maps are cool but I find I play more sloppy and get bored with a big embark well before I've exploited even a tiny fraction of it.

Try sticking to nano-fortresses for a bit. 1x1 embark, mod down the number of vertical levels. It can be an interesting challenge to cram everything into the tiny space, and you won't get bogged down with designating and mining out huge levels, or needing to build 100+ level high pump stacks to play with magma. I'd recommend play these sorts of minimal set-ups to learn the game until you decide there's something you can only achieve on a bigger map.

[FallacyofUrist]

The annoying thing is that I can never get a smelter or forge running. You don't seem to understand how nooby I am.

[Loud Whispers]

The annoying thing is that I can never get a smelter or forge running. You don't seem to understand how nooby I am.

Don't worry, once you've learned it you can't unlearn it (depending on blood alcohol content), it's like riding a bike (also depending on blood alcohol content).
All you need is fuel and metal.
Fuel comes from:

• Magma
• Coke
• Charcoal <- Easiest fuel, just chop down trees, make elves cry and burn it in a wood furnace for easy fuel

Metal comes from:

• Dead goblins
• Trade
• Dead dwarves
• Dead humans
• Every ore ever
• Digging. Look out for magnetite, limonite and haematite - all ores of iron (very juicy). Tetrahedrite is also found just about everywhere (and is also juicy, giving both copper AND silver).

Alternatively, screw forges and smelters. Just use scavenged weapons/armour, or build a craftsdwarf's workshop. One of my first ever Fort's had my military running around in bone helms, bone breastplates, bone greaves, wielding obsidian rock swords - all made from the craftsdwarf's workshop. Feel like a true aztec Dorf, only using obsidian, wood and bones from animal butchering.

And if you don't want to play, don't play. The first time I played DF I quit for about 2 months, my interest was resparked and I was able to build on my first experiences to really get the most out of DF. Some time off helps, Fun should not be a chore :P