quote:
Originally posted by Patriot:
<STRONG>So I've started my first real dwarf fortress now and I have gotten all the essentials up and running, more or less. I have rooms with doors beds and cabinets for most my long-term dwarves and am working a barracks-style chamber for some of the immigrants who keep pouring in.I have food, booze and fairly ready access to water. I have a tower built upon the exit from my fortress and have quarrels but not crossbows to shoot from the tower at potential invaders. In lieu of actual soldiers, however, I have plenty of wardogs and stone-drop traps in place to keep any potential menaces at bay.</STRONG>
If you do nothing else, start training up dwarves in wrestling (unarmed combat) and crossbows. Good wrestling skills make a dwarf harder to hit. Any crossbow skill makes him deadly to goblins (if you supply crossbows and ammo).
quote:
<STRONG>What are some standard goals to strive for after achieving the basic food/housing goals?</STRONG>
Set up the other industries. Establish a military and fortress defences capable of withstanding seiges and even megabeasts. Dig deeper! Build something special, a fortress that "will forever stand as a monument to Dwarven bravery, inspiration, and unremitting toil".
quote:
<STRONG>When I don't have an obvious goal in sight, I tend to lose interest and so my fortress has been put on the back burner the last few days. So I'm looking for a bit of insight or advice on what to do next so that I can get to work, if for no other reason than that I could hurry up and lose.</STRONG>
DF is indeed the sort of game that needs you to supply a goal. This goal could be:
1. Build something creative, a monument to your mad genius. This could be anything from a statue to your dwarven leader's favorite god, a combat arena, a glass city, a pirate ship, or a dragon mosaic. People have done incredible, incredible things - and then posted them on the DF Map Archive.
2. Act out a story, role-playing your fortress and your dwarves towards a known culmination or unexpected doomsday. Even losing can be fun - because it's often very interesting.
quote:
<STRONG>I have a few ideas for what to do next, but no idea on how to go about making them happen. For instance, I'd like to start some sort of production that would let me make finer clothes for my peasants, but I don't know how to get the seeds I'd need to start a cloth-plant farm.</STRONG>
There are two ways you can work this. You can get some hints here, and learn the rest yorself, or you can read
the wiki on crops and the pages that link from it.
Hints:
You can gather plants or order seeds from traders. The Farmer's Workshop (Plant Processing labor, Threshing skill) threshes certain kinds of plants to thread, producing seeds which you can re-plant.
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<STRONG>I probably have around 30 dwarves now and I no longer feel I can successfully micromanage them effectively. Can someone point me to an article on dwarf wiki about effectively managing larger fortresses?</STRONG>
The most useful solution to this very real problem I know of is a utility called
Dwarf Foreman.. It is so useful for managing dwarven labor assignments that I actually delay upgrading my copy of DF until DF Foreman is updated to work with it.
quote:
<STRONG>I know I need metals and coal so that I can start getting an armorsmith smithing, but I'm not sure about the best way to go about that? Just dig down and start tunneling? How do I avoid tunnel collapse? Is there a good rule to know when a room is too large? Do I have to worry about stacking multiple unsupported rooms on top of each other? ie. hallow out 2 30x30 rooms on top of each other would make them more prone to collapse? </STRONG>
You do not have to worry about collapses, except if the area has *nothing* supporting it - no walls or floor. Even the largest dug out space will stay intact.
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<STRONG>Is there a good pattern to use to find minerals/ores while digging?</STRONG>
Yes. If you're looking for metal ore or coal in veins, you can quickly find most seams by digging parallel tunnels about 10 or 15 grids apart. If you're looking for gems, consider digging vertical shafts three grids apart - I call it "taking core samples".