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[TinyPirate]

I've got a lot of laughs from reading linkbacks from forums where guys are saying "I played this until 5am!".. and similar. Good stuff!

[Jucifer]

Thanks so much for the sweet tutorial!  I'm playing a game of it now.  I'm in summer 204 right now.  I've only been attacked by goblins twice now.  I have a bunch of defenses now and a bunch of good soldiers trained up.  Is there any way I can get them to attack me more?

I also accidentally tried trading something wooden to the elves.  They got mad and left.  Does this mean they are going to attack me now?

[TinyPirate]

Probably, yeah

And the area is fairly peaceful, so you'll probably have to wait a bit before the really big sieges turn up.

[Jackrabbit]

At the newbies whining about the game eating their entire weekend: shaddup, the game has just begun to eat your life, it gets worse! Oh, and welcome to the forum and all that.

And thats the best welcome you're gonna get. Hooray for the Pirate!

[Karadan]

Well, I can track my involvement in DF from when Penny Arcade linked to that set of tutorials, and I must say they were excelent.  A few small things missing, and a few things with too much detail (Nobles section was a bit long if I remember right) but anyway, have since then been able to move on to sustaining a fortress of over 100 dwarfs with generally less then 5 or so idlers.

I still refer to it from time to time as it is a handy resource on how to do some things that would otherwise require trawling through tons of threads.

I do suggest adding a section that involves pumps.  Pumps can be very difficult for new people to get from all the questions about them.  Maybe include things like a pump tower and creating artificial waterfalls (complete with perpetual motion power).

[TinyPirate]

Eeek! Pumps! I'm scared!

Thanks for the feedback. I want to hit sand/zones and world creation. Perhaps this weekend, I'll be in a hotel doing sweet F.A. so will have time to think about it.

[SirCannonFodder]

After reading some of the stories, I'd always wanted to get into DF, but the ASCII graphics and perceived complexities of the game turned me off. Now after reading your tutorials I've spent the last week staying up far longer than I should fiddling around with my dorfs' professions, stockpiles, getting soldiers to use their crossbows for shooting instead of clubbing, and a myriad of other Dwarfy things. I decided to give a paltry $10 to His Toadyness, and it has been money incredibly well spent. Thank you.

[Jurph]

I do suggest adding a section that involves pumps.  Pumps can be very difficult for new people to get from all the questions about them.  Maybe include things like a pump tower and creating artificial waterfalls (complete with perpetual motion power).

For what it's worth, I am on my (at least) tenth fort and only just had the nerve to try a cistern-and-perpetual-motion pumping design.  It's hard stuff!  I've got an internal (dug out) pump tower that spans eight floors, with optional outputs at the third and sixth floors for a tree farm and wells.  A pump elevator like that requires a screw pump placed correctly on each floor, adequate but not excessive channeling, and at least a double waterwheel that doesn't interfere with the pump below it.  Terrifying!

[Karadan]

Yeah, just tried doing something similar lately.  Tried making an artificial waterfall, but it seems that you can't pump through stairs (for some reason) so it didn't work out with the design I had.  Oh well, at least I got two wells made from masterwork components that are both about 8 z-levels deep, so yeay for indoor water supply.

-edit-

Is there any way to play that map that was marked out for the tutorial but pick your own settlers?  The map has an excelent mix of 1. lava 2. water 3. trees 4. flux 5. iron and I'd really like to get to use that under my own terms, instead of with the stuff pirate picked out (Which is great for your first time, but I have a very very very different play style when it comes to what I take to start out.)

[Jurph]

Is there any way to play that map that was marked out for the tutorial but pick your own settlers?

Sure.  Hit ESC from playing on that map and select "Export Local Image".  Pick a floor or two and export them.  There will be a file generated in your DF working directory that includes the worldgen parameters (just though recently created text files).  Back at the DF starting screen, select "Create New World from Parameters" and give it the map seeds from that worldgen.  You have now created the same world that TinyPirate created.  Finding the right starting location (out of all the possible locations on the world map) will be a bit harder, though.  The site-finder might be able to find it if you specify YES and NO in all the correct fields, e.g. Magma Pipe = YES, Magma Pool = NO, Flux Stone = YES, but that's a gamble. 

It's easier to make a copy of the folder your savegame is in (rename the folder "AbandonMe" or similar) and then load that game up, Abandon the Fortress, and try to start a new game in Reclaim mode.  Reclaiming will show you where the fortress is on the world map.  Use that information to go back to your newly-generated world and pick a starting location.  Now select the dwarves you want for your embark and get to work!  If there's a mix of dwarves and gear you really like, consider saving it as an embark profile.

[Karadan]

Thanks very much for that.  I already used the abandon/reclaim to figure out where it was, because I didn't realize the worlds where persistent and so I wouldn't be able to simply pick out the same area again to make a new go of it.

[TinyPirate]

Thanks for the tips! I might steal those for the blog, Jurph

[starwoof]

I found this tutorial through Penny Arcade and it really taught me how the heck to play. I've wanted to play DF since I found out about it but until I read this I couldn't even find my way through the interface. After getting bored of the tutorial I flooded the lower levels and started another fortress. Cheers, this really helped me.

My friends are getting kind of mad at me though, since all I ever talk about is DF and how they have to only play dwarfen characters in DnD from now on...

[Jackrabbit]

Man, been there except D&D confuses me. Kinda weird, considering.

[bombcar]

If you want to write further stuff, how about a introductory howto for different embark areas. For example, I embarked to a glacier for the first time last night, and have no idea what to expect or if building buildings out of water is a bad idea.