Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[StrongAxe]

I'm still working on my first fortress and it seems to be going well.  It's been going on for four years and aside from a few wild animal encounters and fewer thieves I see no major risks.  This seems to be significantly different than what I was told Dwarf Fortress was like.  How long should I expect my first fortress to last?  Are there major threats I haven't encountered yet?

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

All depends on how challenging an environment you picked, among other things. At some point, once your fortress gets big enough, you should face goblin attacks, but there may be no goblin civilizations nearby.

[TKGP]

Well, you should start seeing ambushes and eventually sieges, which would certainly put a strain on your fort, but honestly DF is not usually the horrible bloodbath it's made out to be.

[smjjames]

It can last indefinitely if you wanted it to.

The primary killers of forts are FPS drain and boredom.

[NecroRebel]

Fortresses usually die because you made a mistake that you didn't know how to or didn't care to recover from. Depending on what you're trying to do and how safe it is, forts can last a long time; simple survival is very easy since farming can run by itself indefinately and you can, if needed, set your dwarves to just drink water from a river and not bother with booze.

So, I'd suggest that you do something dangerous. The best way to learn what not to do is to do what you shouldn't. Anything involving waterworks is something that takes great care; magma is even more hazardous. Sizable outdoor buildings can also be dangerous, especially if its something that requires scaffolding and deconstructing. So is digging out multilevel chambers underground for whatever reason, whether it be for a bigger cistern as part of a fluid project or just an aesthetic great hall for your own amusement. Relying not on traps but on melee-based military for defense, and not allowing yourself to simply seal the entrances and wait out ambushes and sieges, can also be tricky for new players.

Or, if danger isn't your thing, just try working with industries that you haven't before; many people ignore cloth initially, others butchery, almost everyone doesn't do large-scale glass and soap industries for a while, and even metalworks can be ignored for newer players. All of these are much more complicated and difficult to run than the simple food/drink, stone, and wood industries, so just try them out to see how they work.



DF is a sandbox, first and foremost. Your sandcastle might come crumbling down, but sometimes seeing how high you can build it before it crumbles is part of the Fun. 

[Sysice]

Yeah, first fortresses usually don't crumble. Unless you don't have a military. Or have a tantrum spiral.

This is mostly because they are usually really simple. Try setting up a magma defense. That'll get rid of at least a few if you're not very, very careful.

[qoonpooka]

My first ten or so fortresses ended because I abandoned after deciding I didn't like the layout. I didn't see my first siege until fortress #12 and I didn't get a tantrum spiral until a little while later.

If you want to trigger the bloodbath, by the way, start producing trade goods en masse.   The first thing this will do is trigger massive immigration, which is the #1 killer of my non-last-dwarves fortresses.  I expand slowly in all strategy and resource management games, not moving to step 2 until step 1 has been completed, refined, and maxed out.  This means I often suffer overcrowding and food shortages when I get multiple waves of 20+ dwarves every season.

[Jetsquirrel]

When you accidently hit the Clownchamber, if you have it on your map. or if you start screwing with magma IF you have it. Or sieges will tear apart your fortress.