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[Dizzan]

Hey everyone,

I am a very new player, so new I haven't even downloaded the game yet. I am really afraid of jumping into this since it seems very difficult for a new player to jump in. I have downloaded the tutorial posted above in PDF, and will be reading it over tomorrow. I have also began watching the videos by captnduck, which are very helpful as well. I am hoping after reviewing both of those extensively, I will be ready to embark on my journey.

Was curious if anyone had any general tips for me, or a part of the forum where I can find out general newbie tips that will help me survive?

Thanks for any help!

Dizzan

[silhouette]

hmmm...
Well are you using ascii tileset or a graphical one?
Depends on ones playstyle.

Also try to get an army up by your second immigration, if not just two wrestlers, but continually increase it each new migration as your bound to have some useless ones.

Also play on a small sized map (like 2x2 tiles on the regional screen to 4x4 tiles on the regional screen)

Dont get a sherriff/fortress guard or justice system, prehaps not at all, as it can be annoying with nobles jailing your legendary guys for not making crap, and you can do basically what ever you want with your dwarves (ignoring mandates n that).

Dont make offerings to your home civ unless you want a king to come.

[FluffyToast J]

General Tip No. 1: Stay away from major rivers. Go for brooks. Carp live in them there rivers. Carp hurt.

General Tip No. 2: Booze! Lots of booze, all the time!

General Tip No. 3: Uh... Expect to have lots of Fun. (see: losing)

Thats about all I can say. Good luck, and dont let the magma men bite!

[Dizzan]

Thanks. Like I said...utter and total noob here, so I am not sure I really got what silhouette was talking about, but I appreciate the comment though! I am sure I will learn the lingo around here soon enough. I plan to have lots of fun. Like I said, I am mulling over the tutorials now, trying to grasp some sense out of everything but it is going to take a while, lol.

[ricree]

A couple bits of advice:

First and foremost, don't be afraid to fail.  Remember, "Losing is fun".  A lot of the best and most memorable stories involving this game are all about the mayhem as a fort crashed and burned.  Since the game generates a semi-persistent world for your forts, a failure is just another interesting place to go explore in adventure mode.

With that in mind:

The wiki will be your best friend for  a good long while.  It goes into deep detail on a lot of the more complex points of the game, and is a pretty fair source of strategies for both beginners and advanced players.  If you run into a mechanic that is confusing you, there will probably be a page somewhere on this wiki that explains it.

The two most likely failing points for your first fortress will likely be booze and food.  Your dwarves prefer to have a large stockpile of alcohol available, and will be slower and less happy without it.  Even worse, there are maps where your only good source of drink will be alcohol, so if you don't have enough you will lose dwarves to dehydration.  So early on, figure out what you need to produce food and booze, and you will have a much smoother run.


If you make it the first couple years, your next major threat will come from goblins.  They will come in either small hidden groups, or large visible sieges.  Either can kill you if you aren't careful.  While I consider a strong military to be the most fun way of dealing with them, it is also fairly complicated to get up and running.  Instead, look up the page on traps, and build a whole bunch at the entrance of your fort.  If you have enough, the goblins will take such heavy losses from them that they will retreat.

Once you're experienced enough to deal with these, you're probably be advanced enough to figure out the rest on your own.

[FluffyToast J]

Also, if you end up not liking the lategame, eg. managing 200 dwarves and the economy and all that, you can set a population cap. Its in the init.txt file, which can be found in one of the folders in the root directory (I forgot which one >_<;

Theres also other stuff in there, so have a quick look to see if theres anything else you want to change.

Of course, if you already know this, just ignore me.

[Amalgam]

TinyPirate's tutorials are excellent, I'm almost sorry I'd already learned a fair bit before they were created. Unless you speak ascii I *highly* recommend you grab a character set and a graphics set from the repository on the wiki, but I think TP's tutorial has a link to a setup that already has those. Since DF's learning curve is more like a 90 degree angle, the wiki will definitely be your friend.

[silhouette]

Sorry for that .
Youll understand when you look back.

Anwyay, your first few fortresses are basically getting the hand of things yourself.
The next few are getting your layout correct.
And the ones after that are getting the hang of other more difficult things..

And like people have said before, get into your head that losing is fun.

OH and also.
Once youve played for a bit and start to understand everything, you may want to change some ini.txt settings.
Such things like showing features on the map where you select your fortress location.
And things like changing the water to show how much units are in there instead of the graphics.

[Dizzan]

Thanks guys for all the help, I really appreciate it.

Was curious though, should I download the map and everything that the tutorial suggests? Is that a good idea?

[Urist Imiknorris]

One quick tip:

On embark, use turtle as your main food source. The shells will be practically needed for strange moods.

[Safe-Keeper]

Was curious though, should I download the map and everything that the tutorial suggests? Is that a good idea?

Yes. If you mean the afteractionreporter.com one, definitely. I utterly and completely failed to get into DF before that tutorial. Once I downloaded it, though, everything suddenly became far easier . Played the tutorial for a while, then started a "real" fort, then then came back and finished the tutorial. Still playing the tutorial fort, with a population of 86 (was 109 until last siege ).

[Dizzan]

The tutorial doesn't play the game for you though, right? I like to be helped but not hand-held through the entire thing. I am guessing at some point the tutorial will let you go?

[Cheddarius]

One excellent defense mechanism:

Build a very long entry hall (possibly a winding one). Fill it with massive drawbridges. Link them all to one lever, and lock someone into the room with the lever. Set the lever to be pulled on repeat. Anyone who enters will be crushed by the bridges.

It's great for fending off both goblins and filthy immigrants!

[Lord Urist]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all the tutorial map is is just a standard game of dwarf fortress, but with an already - created world and all the mayday graphics. So you can play in it like normal, or you can follow the tutorials in the pdf.

And an important tip, do you know about the dwarf fortress wiki?
www.dwarffortresswiki.net

And if you want to, you can go into data/init/init.txt and change settings, as someone mentioned above. You can turn of invasions and the like if you want, to get the hang of fortress building.

[Safe-Keeper]

The tutorial is just a DF save with illustrated step-by-step instructions, so you may deviate from it whenever you want.