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[scourge728]

Considering the damage to my mental health, I don't know why I still play this...

because of the damage to your mental health

[Pvt. Pirate]

Considering the damage to my mental health, I don't know why I still play this...

because of the damage to your mental health

same here.
most times i told others about the game and what happened in my forts lately, they call me insane.

[Leonidas]

Freedom.

DF has no script, no end state with planned out waypoints. You can build megaprojects. You can role-play the LoTR story with the king who digs too deep, and too greedily. You can build your own vision of dwarven Utopia. You can breed an army of giant mosquitos. You can listen to the songs in the tavern and read carvings on the walls. You can dine in Hell. You can build complex machines with fluids or minecarts. And with the latest version, you can take over the world.

[Grand Sage]

^ YES! Because thats the real take-away from LOTR! The whole hobbit stroll to a volcano was just a side-quest, the mines of moria is were the real action happend!


Comeing to think of it. Dwarves from the LOTR univers might actually agree with me here...

[Sethatos]

I love the way it handles history and continuity. I haven’t written very much since college but DF inspired me to write it about it, which is very rewarding. Also, I have young kids so I like a game that I don’t have to be “playing” the whole time and I can walk away from while it’s still running.

[that_eye]

My first exposure to dwarf fortress was in 2009, right after freshmen year of college for me. I fancied things that were niche BECAUSE they were niche, and when searching for a new game to play, I came across the boatmurdered story.

Such ridiculousness, fancy, wonder, and horror, I doubted it could truly all be in a game. I downloaded DF, was swamped by the text, and deleted it.

Years passed. In 2013, I went on a spree where i tried to find the subreddit for every single thing I was interested in. A select very few managed to capture my attention, DF being one of them.

In the meantime, my tastes were changing, as they do. The arrival of black mirror had triggered a hunger deep within me for the most bleak of all possible fictions: I have no Mouth and I must Scream, Handmaid's Tale, etc. etc.

The Dwarf Fortress community showed me, time and time again, that this game was mind-blowing. Eventually, it became the only subreddit I browsed, and eventually the only reason I even went to reddit.

I decided to brute force my way into the game. My live-in partner thinks that al video games are a waste of time, so watching let's plays to learn the ropes were out. I started a fort, and it dehydrated. The supremely detailed personalities of the dwarfs made their suffering more pleasurable to me.

Eventually, I had lost enough times to have figured out the way the game works. That was earlier this year. I stopped playing to torture my people, and started loving them. Now we strive to survive.

It is rewarding in a way that no other video game ever will be. It is beautiful. It is terrifying. It was inevitable.

Praise the crafters.

[Bumber]

All the cool stuff you can do. For the near future, I want to find out if you can use nether cap to freeze milk so it can be turned into prepared meals. At some point I want to get around to building a minecart rail system that spans the world map.

Magic is going to add whole new level of things to do.

[anewaname]

While waiting during work cycles, my internet surfing found Boat Murdered and then other DF stories. Multiple players were telling different stories and their stories were not based on limited storylines within the game. There didn't seem to be any one storyline...

I decided to try it and my dwarfs starved. WTF was going on? I was well versed in rogue-like graphics, but playing DF at 100 FPS when you are randomly trying out menu controls.... Why is my bot army of dwarfs swarming around the wagon and how do I make them do things and what should I make them do? Where are my "unit" controls that all "unit" games have? If I focus on this one dwarf, how can I control him? What can I do about that vulture that all the alerts are screaming about! Can't I just build a farm building to produce food like in all the other real-time games.?

I humbled and tried a tutorial with the Mayday tileset, to learn to build the basics of a plump helmet farm, a simple common bedroom, and to make drinks... Success! My dwarfs survived until autumn, even though we missed the trade caravan.

DF does not demand that I follow trope questlines or kill a minimum of black-masked villains, and it doesn't force "game balance" on me. Units suffer realistic wounds and permanent health effects. Units get emotional and rebellious. They argue and fight with each other. Epic dwarfy axelords can get crushed into pulp even though they were my bedrock of emotion investment. DF has so much that other games do not have.

[Telgin]

All the cool stuff you can do. For the near future, I want to find out if you can use nether cap to freeze milk so it can be turned into prepared meals. At some point I want to get around to building a minecart rail system that spans the world map.

Magic is going to add whole new level of things to do.

I have to admit, I'm mighty curious now too if the freezing milk so it can be made into prepared meals thing works.

[Bumber]

I have to admit, I'm mighty curious now too if the freezing milk so it can be made into prepared meals thing works.

From what I've heard it works in cold climates, and the prepared ice cream can also melt into a puddle.

[RLS0812]

Simple answer: Dwarf Fortress .34 runs pretty well on my potato of a computer.
 Longer answer: I like building and management games.  Dungeon Keeper 1 ( 1997 ) and 2 ( 1999 ) was my introduction to this style of game play, and I loved it.
 By hours played, DF is my 3rd most played game, behind Factorio and MineCraft - it's more played than OpenTTD, SimCity 4, and Prison Architect. Also, the game's files are relatively easy to edit, making game customization great.

 I've been herding Dwarfs since 2012, and an still learning new stuff about the game. IE: I did not know that "H" could be used to set warp points for the camera.
 The biggest frustration is the lack of easy to navigate and logical controls.  I am able to play this game from muscle memory alone, and still have no clue how some of the controls actually work. IE: I still can not get military dwarfs to use specific weapons or armor - it's kind of amusing the little fellows will try to punch a legendary with their fists, instead of using all the shiny Axes I made them.
 I'm going to go and pick up the bits of my FUN experience, and maybe not have bleeding kitten syndrome this time.

[zeves]

I get tired of games easily, and this is one of the few games that keep me interested.
The building your own fort, training up an army of individuals with their own personalities is fun.
CSI:ARMOK and SCIENCE! is also very fun things to read and figure out.
If only i didnt get distracted and actually finished my wonders/megastructures.

[Rafatio]

#1 The dwarves and how alive they are. I've always been into site management games, ancient cities, amusement parks, hansa trading; doesn't matter, the setting is just window dressing. But these usually have really stupid, simplistic inhabitants. Every dwarf with a unique personality, their own ideas, doing whatever they want right now and only when it suits them maybe later what *I* want keeps me coming back to df. But it did ruin prewritten npcs in other games for me, so lifeless and predictable.

#2 The freedom. Cherrypicking the aspects of the game that are currently interesting to me. And so few hard "can't do"s. Everyone wearing socks from bisexual llamas is as worthy a goal as goblin killing contraptions.

#3 These forums. People plotting elaborate tortures or just routinely murdering elves and then clicking on the next thread to patiently teach yet another newbie how to build stairs. Cathedral modding, !!sciencing!! and civility without heavy moderation. This place is as special as its game.

[Dunamisdeos]

Of course, dropping elves down stairs is a national dwarven pastime.

[Pvt. Pirate]

Of course, dropping elves down stairs is a national dwarven pastime.

not only for dwarves - i did that all the time back then at school.