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[RandomNumberGenerator]

Alright, well I heard of Dwarf Fortress a while ago, though I never actually played it until yesterday. I was simply amazed at the depth of the game. After reading up some guides and poking around the wiki, I finally decided to give it a shot. I abandoned my first and second fortresses because I chose bad locations(first location had way to much soil. I actually had a lack of stone, which confused me because the wiki kept referring to ways to get rid of excess stone. Second fortress didn't have enough soil; I couldn't grow any crops or gather food). My third fortress is going pretty well however, and I just finished my first year. I do have a few problems though:

1) I can't seem to obtain enough bags. This led to a bunch of seeds lying around my fortress, instead of being in bags, in barrels, like they are supposed to. The food stockpile in general is just a mess as well, with things being in random locations, which makes it very time consuming to check food stockpiles. Any advice for getting everything nice and organized?

2) Speaking of food being disorganized, I can't seem to get food/booze production to flow smoothly. Despite having two growers and many plots of farmland, they only ever grew 1 plant - a plump h-thing. I'm really confused with this, especially the differences between tiles(I can't tell what is what). I built a still because I was low on booze. I had a lot of strawberries gathered so I wanted to make strawberry wine to get the seeds to plant, but the guy only make prickleberry wine(leading to the seed flooding I mentioned earlier)

3) The dwarven traders arrived in fall, which let me sell a ton of crafts and buy some meat and plants(for food), as well as leather and silk(to make bags, to put the seeds in). The trading went okay, I think I got the hang of it. However, I never got any liasion to talk to. Did I do something wrong?

4) I placed the foundation for a clothing workshop to I could make bags from the traded materials, but for some reason my mason won't build it. I checked the masons labor, he has both masonry and architecture enabled, so I don't get why it isn't being built. Am I missing some sort of requirement?\

Thanks in advance!

[Slogo]

Many workshops, including the clothier's workshop require someone with the appropriate skill enabled to create it. So you need a clothier to make the workshop rather than a mason. Select a dwarf and use the (p)reference -> (l)abor option to enable clothier.

As for your food problem make sure your planters don't have too many hauling activities enabled. If they're set to haul anything they may not spend much time planting. Also if you don't have any seeds of the type you specify they won't have anything to plant. Check the z status -> kitchen menu to see what seeds you have. Also make sure the plot is set to grow for the current season rather than just the season you built the farm in.

For brewing a certain type of drink again use the status -> kitchen menu to adjust what can be brewed and what can't.

Finally for bags you just need to have cloth or leather coming in, either via trading or growing pig tails and rope reed.

Also for general stock checking have your bookkeeper set to keep a medium (or higher) precision level then use the stocks screen (status -> stocks) to view what you have rather than try and count visually in the stock piles.

[Stargrasper]

1) You can make bags from pig tail cloth or leather, but since you're clearly new, you'll find it much easier just to buy them off traders.  Remember, if you buy seeds from traders, they come with their own bag.  As to food organization, your z-stocks menu will help.

2) Plump helmets are you favorite food.  They can be grown in any season, can be eaten raw, cooked, or brewed to booze.  Each 'tile' of plump helmets(or any other plant) you grow will product a number of product dependent upon the skill of the grower.  They'll be more skilled in time.  Save your plump helmets for food early on.  Grow and brew pig tails.  Aside from separating your food and booze products, they can be turned into thread, cloth, and eventually bags if you have enough booze around.  If booze is a problem, concentrate on food production and let your dwarves drink water for awhile.  They won't like it, but it'll work early on.

3) Assuming the liaison is alive, he or she should come.  Keep your eyes peeled.  Also remember that you can buy bags directly from traders.

4) Not entirely certain, but it's possible that workshop requires the clothesmaker to work on its construction...

You should know that eating raw and brewing return seeds, cooking doesn't.

[Quietust]

I abandoned my first and second fortresses because I chose bad locations(first location had way to much soil. I actually had a lack of stone, which confused me because the wiki kept referring to ways to get rid of excess stone.

Excess soil is actually a good thing, since it's quicker to dig and makes great stockpile space since there's no rocks left behind - when placing stockpiles in freshly dug stone rooms, the rocks on the floor will prevent certain types of items from being placed there (especially annoying with wood and furniture), and hauling all of the stone out of the way (preferably by dumping them into a single tile outside the room) can take a long time if you don't have lots of spare haulers. If you need stone, just dig further down and you'll have more than you'll ever need.

[Stargrasper]

I abandoned my first and second fortresses because I chose bad locations(first location had way to much soil. I actually had a lack of stone, which confused me because the wiki kept referring to ways to get rid of excess stone.

Excess soil is actually a good thing, since it's quicker to dig and makes great stockpile space since there's no rocks left behind - when placing stockpiles in freshly dug stone rooms, the rocks on the floor will prevent certain types of items from being placed there (especially annoying with wood and furniture), and hauling all of the stone out of the way (preferably by dumping them into a single tile outside the room) can take a long time if you don't have lots of spare haulers. If you need stone, just dig further down and you'll have more than you'll ever need.

Note that you can't smooth/engrave soil.  That makes it of limited use to you; things like farming, stockpiling, glassmaking...that sort of thing.  You don't want to use it for living areas, meeting areas, etc because you can't smooth/engrave, which is the standard way of raising room value to points where just being there makes dwarves happy.

[smjjames]

I abandoned my first and second fortresses because I chose bad locations(first location had way to much soil. I actually had a lack of stone, which confused me because the wiki kept referring to ways to get rid of excess stone.

Excess soil is actually a good thing, since it's quicker to dig and makes great stockpile space since there's no rocks left behind - when placing stockpiles in freshly dug stone rooms, the rocks on the floor will prevent certain types of items from being placed there (especially annoying with wood and furniture), and hauling all of the stone out of the way (preferably by dumping them into a single tile outside the room) can take a long time if you don't have lots of spare haulers. If you need stone, just dig further down and you'll have more than you'll ever need.

Note that you can't smooth/engrave soil.  That makes it of limited use to you; things like farming, stockpiling, glassmaking...that sort of thing.  You don't want to use it for living areas, meeting areas, etc because you can't smooth/engrave, which is the standard way of raising room value to points where just being there makes dwarves happy.

I just want to add a note here since this is newbie questions. You can only use 'sand', that is, the various coloured sands and generic sand for glassmaking. Other types such as sandy loam, loamy sand, and sandy clay can't be collected and so can't be used for glassmaking.

[meanjeans]

Alright, well I heard of Dwarf Fortress a while ago, though I never actually played it until yesterday. I was simply amazed at the depth of the game. After reading up some guides and poking around the wiki, I finally decided to give it a shot. I abandoned my first and second fortresses because I chose bad locations(first location had way to much soil. I actually had a lack of stone, which confused me because the wiki kept referring to ways to get rid of excess stone. Second fortress didn't have enough soil; I couldn't grow any crops or gather food). My third fortress is going pretty well however, and I just finished my first year. I do have a few problems though:

1) I can't seem to obtain enough bags. This led to a bunch of seeds lying around my fortress, instead of being in bags, in barrels, like they are supposed to. The food stockpile in general is just a mess as well, with things being in random locations, which makes it very time consuming to check food stockpiles. Any advice for getting everything nice and organized?

So I'm not sure exactly what the problem here is - unable to produce bags fast enough, or just not happy with how the dwarves don't put all the same food in the same tile? To get plenty of bags, just buy leather (either on embark or from the first caravan). It's really cheap to buy enough to make all the bags you'll possibly want.

For organization, you can make 3 custom stockpiles, and that should be all you really can do. One for food, one for bevs, and one for seeds. The seed one can be pretty small as they will put a lot of bags, each containing a lot of seeds, into one barrel.

Other than that, you might just have to not worry if it doesn't look too organized. Also keep in mind that in the early game when you don't have hordes of dedicated haulers, it'll take them a long time to get everything to it's proper stockpile bin/barrel.

2) Speaking of food being disorganized, I can't seem to get food/booze production to flow smoothly. Despite having two growers and many plots of farmland, they only ever grew 1 plant - a plump h-thing. I'm really confused with this, especially the differences between tiles(I can't tell what is what). I built a still because I was low on booze. I had a lot of strawberries gathered so I wanted to make strawberry wine to get the seeds to plant, but the guy only make prickleberry wine(leading to the seed flooding I mentioned earlier)

So you have 2 questions here I guess - how to get them to grow other plants and how to make them brew strawberries.

#1) Hit q, move over the farm plot, use the keys to select other seasons, move up and down and hit enter to select other plants. Make sure you have the seeds, otherwise they'll just waste that season.

#2) Hit z, select 'Kitchen' and hit enter. You can select what is allowed to be brewed by mousing over it and hitting b. Blue means they'll brew it, red means they won't, so mouse down over prickle berries, hit b, and they won't brew it anymore.

3) The dwarven traders arrived in fall, which let me sell a ton of crafts and buy some meat and plants(for food), as well as leather and silk(to make bags, to put the seeds in). The trading went okay, I think I got the hang of it. However, I never got any liasion to talk to. Did I do something wrong?

Unless he got killed by something, you got one. Odds are, your Mayor has too many other tasks on and just won't perform the meeting. I'd turn all tasks off your mayor/broker when the caravan arrives to make sure your mayor's available to trade and meet with the liason.

4) I placed the foundation for a clothing workshop to I could make bags from the traded materials, but for some reason my mason won't build it. I checked the masons labor, he has both masonry and architecture enabled, so I don't get why it isn't being built. Am I missing some sort of requirement?

Probably requires the clothesmaking labor to be enabled on some dwarf. Just hit q and mouse over the designated building and see what it says is required. If it only requires labors you have enabled, it's probably just because the dwarves aren't getting to it. Cancel some of their other jobs so they'll prioritize it. It may also have been suspended because the site is inacessible. Dwarves won't build something if they have to stand on top of another designation to build it, so you should try unsuspended it once (hit q, move cursor over building, and if it is suspended hit s to unsuspend), and then if it gets suspended again try cancelling the construction and building it somewhere else.

Also, think about using leatherworking not clothesmaking for bags. That way your leatherworker can practice their useful skill, so they'll make better armor.

[RandomNumberGenerator]

Thanks for the advice guys! Just a two more things:

1) Does anyone have some screenshots of several levels of one fortress, so I can get an idea for layout? I try to build hallways and rooms, yet everything still ends up cluttered. Reading tips from the wiki just isn't the same as seeing a working one.

2) I can't figure animals out. Specifically, how to train them(like guard dogs), how to station them(to catch thieves), and how to make dwarves take one as a pet.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I keep hearing mention of certain things dropping FPS, though the laptop I'm currently playing on has good specs and my gaming computer which should arrive in a couple days is even better. Is this something I need to worry about, or is it only for low-end computers?

[Stargrasper]

1) Check the Dwarf Fortress Map Archive for ideas.

2) To train, say, a war dog, you need to build a kennel and have animal training on somebody.  Lots of animals can be trained/tamed, but to tame some requires the dungeon master.  Don't worry about that for now.  To 'station' them, tie them down with restraints(rope or chain).  Or, alternately, assign them to a dwarf.  For pets, allow it to take a master from the z-stocks menu under Animals and it can be adopted as a pet.

[smjjames]

EDIT: Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I keep hearing mention of certain things dropping FPS, though the laptop I'm currently playing on has good specs and my gaming computer which should arrive in a couple days is even better. Is this something I need to worry about, or is it only for low-end computers?

There are many variables that affect FPS, but sounds like it's something you won't have to worry too much about.

[Albedo]

animals - read the wiki on "restraint" and "breeding"

fps - "low-end" is a relative term.  A near max-sized DF game can use massive amounts of processing power and bring non-elite graphics cards to their knees.  There are horror stories.  If your FPS drops below 30 or so (tho' even that is a subjective yardstick), then you know. 

Wiki on "fps", and "system requirements" for tech comments (also "discussion" pages behind those.)

[durt101]

I usually start out with 2 ropes and 2 war dogs in the beginning of the game, and chain them at my entrance using b -> v.
Note that you should have a 3 wide entranceway. This plus my dogs has never let a thief in so far.

[Malicus]

3) The dwarven traders arrived in fall, which let me sell a ton of crafts and buy some meat and plants(for food), as well as leather and silk(to make bags, to put the seeds in). The trading went okay, I think I got the hang of it. However, I never got any liasion to talk to. Did I do something wrong?

Unless he got killed by something, you got one. Odds are, your Mayor has too many other tasks on and just won't perform the meeting. I'd turn all tasks off your mayor/broker when the caravan arrives to make sure your mayor's available to trade and meet with the liason.

Actually, I -have- had a situation where the first dwarven caravan arrived without a liason.  I'm not sure what caused it, though.

[Mechanical Yeti]

I'm not sure why, but the liasion doesn't always arrive. Usually, yes, he does, but not always. I had a fortress where the liasion didn't arrive for 3 years, but did the 4th.

The same goes for the human guild rep.

[RandomNumberGenerator]

Alright, everything is going good. The liason arrived this time as well. Just a few more questions:

1) I'm trying to build a tower-area above the main fort, but the wall is split between columns and fortifications, and walls and fortifications. Any idea why it's doing this/how to fix it?


2) When I was trading goods, the trader said something along the lines of "With things as they are, I can't fathom you ending up with these goods" when I offered the trade the first two times. When I offered the trade the third time, he accepted. What does this message actually mean?

3) What should I try and focus on next? I was reading up on the Dwarven economy but that seems really far away. I still only have my original 7 dwarves. How long before I have to worry about military?

EDIT: Also, I just found out my dwarves are storing cooked food in my seed stockpile. The only thing allowed in the pile is seeds, but they're doing it anyway(fustrating because there are plenty of open spaces in the food stockpile)...