Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DadDM]

So...once I spent a couple hours in tutorials on youtube to get the interface/ASCII stuff down, I started playing. Why is this game described as hard? Losing is fun? Then the game seems no fun so far, if that's the measure. I'm in my third year in the game, and one dwarf has died. Another was paralyzed in a cave-in, but I built a hospital and assigned a dr., and she is better now.

I unpause, and just watch the little ASCII characters scoot around the screen for periods on end. Once in a while I decide to dig out some unknown area to explore, but just find more of the same. I've had a few forgotten horrors or whatever rise up down in the caves...but monster hunters that have come take care of them. The merchant stuff was hard, until I saw how valuable spiked balls are and now I have an unlimited supply of anything I ever want. Why dig for iron and make iron when I can just buy it? Food shortage? None. Water or beer shortage? None. I have TOO much stuff, in fact.

Sometimes I can't figure out something, interface-wise or mechanic-wise, but I look at the wiki or ask here and it's solved.

I've dug down very deep and dropped a corpse in a "bottomless" pit...her skeleton is there now. I thought maybe a ghost would come and that'd be interesting, but...no.

I've got tons of gold, metals, etc. Tons of animals. Militia to stop any attacks, traps, and a bridge etc. too. So, now other than being a complicated game of Dig Dug, digging around to try to find something new...what now?

If losing is fun, the game isn't fun. I've TRIED losing...digging all over, down into water, letting monsters in. Heck, I eve dug out under a pit with rain water to make a fountain, figuring that would FOR SURE kill some more dwarfs. Nope. Now I have a rain-water-replenished, underwater reservoir.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Well...
You should probably read a little about the game first. On these forums, or the wiki, not in forums full of 'losing is fun!' "Dwarf Fortress is the hardest game ever!" Raves from people who don't actually play the game.

It's a fantasy world simulator. A procedurally generated story maker. Can be as Fun as you make it, or not at all.

Learn where to embark if you're looking for somewhere dangerous to build a fortress (one way to play the game). Or play the sandbox in any other way you like. Learn how it works, then tweak it to do what you want.

At some point there are going to be scenarios and such where you'll find an easier time to be guided to fun situations. But in this highly incomplete state, that's not what the game is right now (although several mods focus on making it so if that's what you're looking for).

After learning what the game is, decide if you want to dedicate some time to playing it. Or play something else. Or take up a new hobby. Life is short. Pointless to spend time in forums complaining to fans of a game that you don't like the game which they do.

[George_Chickens]

Where'd you embark and how'd you play the game? Of course it's going to be easy if you embark in a serene area away from war and aggression and close yourself into a mountain surrounded by miles of traps.

You very much choose your own difficulty in DF. If the game's too easy, make it harder. Embark in an evil wasteland and try to stave off the zombie apocalypse, make a military outpost near a goblin civilization to bring the war to them, create a dangerous aboveground megaproject to orbitally bombard your enemies, and so on. The choice is yours.

Actually, if you're so well off, you could probably start building up an enormous military and starting a raid economy. Maybe even ignite a war between civs.

[KittyTac]

The game isn't hard once you learn the interface. Mostly because it's a simulation.

[Shonai_Dweller]

The game isn't hard once you learn the interface. Mostly because it's a simulation.

My game is hard. Shifting the parameters of the simulation a little, I get to be invaded at pop 20 by dark Elf armies with hundreds of giant black mambas. My military are forced to meet their assault due to my refusal to close the drawbridge. Those who survive get sent off to provoke steel wielding minotaurs into war by stealing their goats.

Much Fun to be found in this game. Even if you don't tweak it at all. Embark somewhere dangerous, provoke the neighbors.

[George_Chickens]

I tend to prefer small worlds for this reason. It becomes much harder to hide from the locals, and you have to prepare very early and very quickly for your eventual invasion.

[KittyTac]

The game isn't hard once you learn the interface. Mostly because it's a simulation.

My game is hard. Shifting the parameters of the simulation a little, I get to be invaded at pop 20 by dark Elf armies with hundreds of giant black mambas. My military are forced to meet their assault due to my refusal to close the drawbridge. Those who survive get sent off to provoke steel wielding minotaurs into war by stealing their goats.

Much Fun to be found in this game. Even if you don't tweak it at all. Embark somewhere dangerous, provoke the neighbors.

I meant that it is quite easy to cheese by wallwallinging yourself off.

[Robsoie]

The game USED to be hard, fisherdwarves going to fish was close to a military expedition in enemy territory, animals in the wilderness were really more aggressive and dangerous and tantrum spirals within your fortress could happen regularly, invasions were more massives and featured enemy weaponmasters within troops, gobs invading on flying monsters, etc...

Now since several years the game only real difficulty is learning how to play.

And once you got through learning the terrible interface and then know how to play (and know how to work with the current systems, like the depressed dwarves) , the only challenge in the game will be if you make the challenge yourself : basically managing your fort and defense badly ... on purpose.
Because if you don't, it's going to be a very boring waste of your time.

In my opinion and for my taste in order to enjoy Dwarf Fortress for a challenge, i highly recommend to NOT play optimally or logically react to any problems that popup in your fortress, because it's too easy to deal with everything (as long as it's not one of the hundred of bugs of course), so let things slightly get out of hand and enjoy the actual fun of trying to keep your fortress alive.

I wish still the early versions difficulty would still be in.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Honestly I've never lost once and I still find the game to be lots of fun, just because of the narratives I create for myself with my fortresses.

Still, I understand that's not everyone's thing. You're totally free to walk away from this community if you don't like the game.

[DadDM]

I tend to prefer small worlds for this reason. It becomes much harder to hide from the locals, and you have to prepare very early and very quickly for your eventual invasion.

I am in a small world.

[h27kim]

My sense is that DF isn't "hard" in the sense of old Nintendo games.  Goblins are, after some stage, pushovers, even megabeasts are not that tough to kill once you get the hang of building up proper military, and so forth.  What makes DF fascinating is the wide open sandbox nature of the game, where you define various goals that you want to accomplish, then have to plan out how to go about doing them, and how the complexities in the game conspire to throw unexpected curveballs at you in course of your attempt at accomplishing those goals that you have to improvise to deal with.  Often, the "fun" comes from seeing how you wind up swinging and missing at these curveballs that lead to your "losing." 

[anewaname]

Compared to other games, DF is bursting with exploitable options that can allow you to overcome any obstacle.

Players challenge themselves in how they play their fortresses. There are forts that have been played for 400+ dwarf years, and created functioning numeric calculators using minecarts, and had huge magma-spewing shark statues, and I know I have not even seen them all.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

And then there's modding, which opens up an entirely new window of !!FUN!!

[tussock]

Oh, oh, no.

You haven't dug deep enough. No spoilers, but there is fun to be had, sir. Down in the negative depths, below sea level.

[Conor891]

Yeah it seems with the way armies are calculated on the map now or something that enemy invasions are far too in between.

It used to seem pretty linear and had a sort of scaling system.

You'd start out and things would be pretty quiet until around a year or less you'd start getting thieves and snatchers. Then after a bit it would be small ambushes. Finally you'd start getting sieges semi megabeasts and finally megabeasts would show up.

As soon as you started playing it was a pretty tight race against time. If you didn't get proper defenses up by the time ambushes happened you were likely screwed. Snatchers and thieves were an earlier warning sign if you hadn't at that time. At the same time you would have to focus on the other more peaceful aspects of your fortress and you could realize you forgot to make trade goods for the first caravan because you were too focused on defenses. Or you don't pay attention and find out you're out of food, or drinks and all your dwarve run out in the open to drink from a stream or dirty ponds and get killed by wildlife.

The world is way more dynamic now which is cool. I just wish there were as much enemies as there were then.