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Author Topic: What version to start playing as a complete beginner?  (Read 1070 times)

gchk34

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What version to start playing as a complete beginner?
« on: August 07, 2023, 11:25:28 am »
Some time ago I saw dwarf fortress and after digging a bit more into it and watching a few videos regarding it I wanted to play it (the non-steam version).
I initially wanted to play just the latest version, but I saw about newb packs, and graphic sets and saw that nothing really supported the latest version (as of now it is 50.09) and support varied through packs and everything.

I want to have a more-or-less vanilla experience, and while I'm not that bothered about editing text files for example, while I would like to play with at least something more graphical, so my dilemma is that should I just go vanilla, textured, or with a newb pack, and if so, which one?


Apologies if this is the wrong board to post in.
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Blue_Dwarf

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Re: What version to start playing as a complete beginner?
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2023, 11:58:18 am »
Start with Lazy Newb Pack with a graphic set in an older version (I played with Phoebus). You'll be using the included Dwarf Therapist to manage labors.

After that you'll be able to decide what to do.
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mikekchar

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Re: What version to start playing as a complete beginner?
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2023, 06:01:56 pm »
My personal opinion is that premium 0.50 is the way to go.  It costs ~$30, but it's easily worth it.  It's both the easiest to start with, has the best graphics and provides the most polished vanilla experience. You don't need newb packs for premium (Steam, etc)

If you want to go with a free of charge version, then 0.47 using Lazy Newb Pack is the way to go.  As an experiment, I tried to use the 0.50 classic version (no graphics) the other day and I simply couldn't get it to work properly.  This may be due to me playing on Linux under Wine, however I do that on premium as well with no issues.  For a free of charge version, I can't currently recommend 0.50.

Having said all that, 0.47 is quite a different experience IMHO.  The UX is *completely* different and even some of the game play is quite different (especially setting up labors).  I *like* 0.47, personally, so I can happily recommend it.  However, for a new player 0.50 is much, much, much better IMHO.  If money is not a problem, then I highly recommend spending on the ~$30 for the premium (e.g. Steam) version and just going from there.
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Salmeuk

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Re: What version to start playing as a complete beginner?
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2023, 11:24:42 am »
Quote
while I would like to play with at least something more graphical,

go premium. no need to fuddle about with text files. though if you end up wanting to see all the beautiful ASCII let me know, I can walk you through the setup for most things.

until they properly implement custom tilesets and graphical packs in premium, which might be a loooong time, we are stuck with the nice-but-vanilla graphics.
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