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[taarak]

I'm trying to play Dwarf Fortress for some time (a week or two, I think), but I have no idea of what to do!
There are people saying they're building lava pipes to feed industries and that stuff, and I'm like "What? Industries? Lava pipes?".
How can I learn how to play the game? There is just so many things to do, and I don't know what does what, and when I want to build something to know what it does my dwarves just ignore me and do their business instead.
I keep getting children from nowhere, my hunters always stop hunting because they don't have ammo, even though I have thousands of bolts, and after building a Still and a Farm Plot (because someone said to) I have no idea of what to do next.
Is there any tutorial (preferably in text) that could help me?

[Superdorf]

Welcome! 

The Dwarf Fortress wiki will take you far. Start with the tutorial and reference page, then search whatever topics you like as you play.

I spent my first month or two of play with the game up in one window and the wiki in another. It's a wonderful reference, even after you've learned the basics.

[TubaDragoness]

In a game as complicated and layered as this, no tutorial is going to cover everything at once. Start small: design and construct safe shelters. Get farms or other sources of food set up. Then think about what you're going to give the traders. Or what you need to train and equip a militia. Accept that you are going to fail miserably, more than once, and instead pay attention to what you learned NOT to do from the experience.

The wiki (http://dwarffortresswiki.org) is an invaluable reference, and I combed through it before I was ever brave enough to touch the actual game. The article structure allows you to look up details on a specific mechanic or process as you need it, instead of just hitting you with a flood of raw data. The more complicated construction projects often have additional explanations and blueprints as part of the information.

Other than that, find Let's Plays that start a new fortress and watch which industries (sets of related tasks, such as butchering/cooking/farming) they set up first.

[MobRules]

Yup, your first few forts will fail -- almost certainly for foolish-seeming reasons -- because you pretty much only learn this game by trial and error. The wiki is wonderful, but there is just too much information to absorb all at once.

My first fort, all the dwarves died of thirst less than a year in, because of some crucial steps I had neglected. Don't worry about feeling stupid, it's all part of the learning curve . You can't first learn the game and then play it, you need to figure it out as you go.

[anewaname]

Yes, the wiki.... you can even look up "industries" there.

Also, you do not need to do all the things that other players do, and you do not need to do things the same way as everyone else.

Hunters can run out of ammo when they are using it, and then will need to reload. That is what that message means.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Honestly I've been playing for over two years now and I still feel like a noob who's barely mastered the basics of the game (if even those). All part of the fun, though. DF is certainly one of the only video games I haven't gotten bored of after at most several weeks of play, and I feel like the difficulty curve and trial-and-error gameplay are a large part of that.

[Worblehat]

As previously mentioned, the wiki is a fantastic resource. The specific page you're asking for is the quickstart guide.

If you're playing with the Lazy Newb Pack, there are a bunch of useful options and tools available (so if you aren't using it, I'd recommend doing so). One of the big things that drove me away from DF ten years ago was the frequent and enormous immigrant waves. Rather than manually editing an init file, the LNP launcher lets you easily set the population cap to whatever you like. I find capping at 20 while the fort and player get on their feet works pretty well. In a first game, you might also consider setting Invaders to Off, so that there aren't goblins trying to kill your dwarves while you learn how the game works. I've found the Dwarf Therapist utility to be a great help, basically as a user-friendly UI for dwarven labor settings.

I can also give a qualified recommendation to PeridexisErrant's Walkthrough. The military section in Ch. 8 is misleading, but the rest was quite helpful. Consider it basically a worked example to read alongside the wiki Quickstart Guide.

[PatrikLundell]

I think the reputation of DF having a steep learning curve is misleading, repelling people who'd like it and attracting people who find it to be a waste of their time. It's not a matter of it being brutally hard, but rather having so many features that it takes years to master them all (if you bother with some of them at all), and the sheer volume is daunting to a beginner, as you don't know what's important, somewhat important, interesting to you, and completely optional to your play style.

[Tinnucorch]

Try to focus on learning things one at a time, and keep in mind that there are things that are easier than others (for example, farming is easier than hunting for food). Once you have learned to assign jobs, produce food and drinks, manage orders, etc. you can start to look at things like setting up a militia, a hospital, a well, elaborated traps... and so on until the lava pipes (if you are into that).

You'll be realizing what things seem interesting to you and what other things don't and you'll start to develop your playstyle. so you won't need to learn everything (after a couple of years playing, I still don't have any idea about working with lava, for example -never felt compelled to it). Almost everything is well covered in the wiki, so it's just a matter of tackling things with the right mindset.

[anewaname]

How can I learn how to play the game? There is just so many things to do, and I don't know what does what, and when I want to build something to know what it does my dwarves just ignore me and do their business instead.

About this problem... Sometimes the only dwarfs capable of doing something, are busy with something else. When I first started playing DF, I had problems, then found about Dwarf Therapist and used it heavily to asses why the dwarfs were not doing something, why I was receiving messages, etc... Currently, I rarely use it, but it helped a lot at first.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

I think the reputation of DF having a steep learning curve is misleading, repelling people who'd like it and attracting people who find it to be a waste of their time. It's not a matter of it being brutally hard, but rather having so many features that it takes years to master them all (if you bother with some of them at all), and the sheer volume is daunting to a beginner, as you don't know what's important, somewhat important, interesting to you, and completely optional to your play style.

Yeah that's a better way to describe it, I'll admit my post was misleading. It's not that any one thing is particularly hard to learn, just that there's so many different features.

[Starver]

(I hate it when I don't notice "When you were typing, N new replies have been posted." and move on prematurely. But I found this way back in my tab history after I rediscovered the interesting thread I thought I'd already posted to.)


DF is almost a Sandbox Game. The goals are what you set yourself (once you know what is possible) but everyone, from newb to veteran, still has to wrangle certain things (whether 'vanilla'wise or by maming changes outwith the game itself) before they can do certain other things.  There's no single walkthrough to a 'win', and wins on the way to other possible wins, and others beyond and beside them.

You (OP) have been shown the various resources to give you ideas of how to accomplish things you only until now knew about as possibly aspirational concepts, and I've not much to add to that. But you shape your own game, still. Each time can be an opportunity to redo the prior attempt differently or entirely a vastly different challenge. We've seen stories of new players encountering advanced game conditions in both Fortress and Adventurer settings and giving very good account of themselves in situations that are very much "fools rush in where angels fear to tread".

But even if it never becomes quite so exciting (and inadvertently rewarding) for you, that first time you encounter some minor trial or other may give you just as much a rush (succeeding or failing) as any other. And when you hone your game to respond to those things (while dodging/learning various other outcomes) you then get the satisfaction of nailing it. Until you realise you could do it totally differently.

The game is what you make it (I'm a bit wary of "tutorial accomplishments" as a planned Steam feature, though I'm not so against inbuilt tutorials themselves, so long as they're well designed and flexible and optional, which I'm sure they will be) and new players might need to move their head away from simple ideas of progression up a very visible ziggurat to a wider sense of personal accomplishments and achievements with many different end conditions.

And I hope you very much enjoy it. And these forums. Welcome to both.

[TKR101010]

I recommend checking out DasTactic's tutorial series on YouTube. It was extremely helpful to me getting into the game.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGB6RkFB7ZmNbSUujzXbgNjJi_-WHTTTD