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[oddly]

This is long so if you don't feel like reading an epic, skip down to the last two or three paragraphs.

Alright, I have had this game for about two weeks now, and I must say it is possibly one of the deepest games I have ever played. From its melodic guitar strings (which adds a certain "mood" to the game) to the random world which is created the first time you play.

I have played ADOM in the past, never getting all that far, usually dying before even completing one quest because I came unprepared and tried to dwell in a dungeon far too long. Before ADOM I came across Rogue, possibly one of the best RPGs created because of its sheer random quality and the fact that it played more of an arcade game than you'd like to think. Again, I have never beaten Rogue, nor do I think I ever will, for the deepest in the dungeon I ever ascended was level 16, whereupon I was slain by a Unicorn, which I probably should've ignored, but I needed something to eat.

When I first came across Dwarf Frotress by way of another forum, I didn't pay much heed to it until I saw the screenshots - and, lo! another Rogue-like! However, this one offered something different... instead of controlling just one person, I could control an encampment. I found the very concept a bit boggling at first, but being an experienced StarCraft veteran, I decided a Rogue-RTS wouldn't be all that hard to learn.

Boy, I was a bit baffled when I first came upon the interface. A large menu with branching menus that had menus with other menus ... if that makes any sense. Luckily, "?" didn't fail me, but yeilded a help screen. I read through the guide and learned some of the basics. I then checked back on the Bay12 DF homepage and came across the forum, which, in turn, led me to the wiki, where I found an article on how to survive the winter. I read it and followed the guide rather closely, as I didn't want to make my third try (by this point I had already screwed up twice) a huge failure.

As I read more of the forum and more of the help guides and anything else I could find, I began to understand the basics. Unfortunately, a few things still baffle me. For example, I have no idea how to create a bucket, as my dwarves are rather grumpy that I have yet to build a well. Also, I have been mining to the east a lot but have not come across any water in the mountains yet. And finally, I can't seem to figure out how to place a bed. Beforehand, I couldn't even figure out how to build one, but the Craftsman that I brought along wasn't for naught, as he built some rather quickly, but having built beds isn't much help if I cannot seem to place them.

Anything else I should know that someone could point out would be greatly appreciated. I don't expect my dwarves will survive long, and I figure I'll probably have to restart many a time, but if I can keep at it, with any luck my next fortress(es) may do better and only fail when I do something incredibly stupid - like flood my tunnels or something.

[Cerej]

You can build a bucket from a carpenter's workshop just like a bed.  The hotkey is 'e', but I think the option is on the first page of things to make there.  You'll also need blocks from a mason's workshop to build the well.

To place a bed you need to hit 'b' from the main interface to enter the "Site a Building" menu.  The hotkey for placing a bed is 'b.'  You then select a bed from the list and you get an X shaped cursor.  Move the cursor to an empty square inside the mountain and the cursor will turn light green.  Hit 'enter' to place the bed.  If you haven't hit the cave river yet, just keep digging east.  Eventually you'll find it, but it can be quite deep in the mountain.

[Mechanoid]

1) NEVER, EVER, EVER use the "Embark now!" in Dwarf Fortress mode. Always plan out your initial group of dwarves; the amount of food you start with is pathetic.

2) Dont worry about ores in your bedroom. It'll improve the quality of the room, and if the dwarf likes that material, the room will make him happier.

3) Farming is critical, but more importantly are the people that work the farms. The better the Field Farming skill (Grower) the more crops you'll get for every seed that farmer planted.

4) Plump helmets are godly. Always take 20 or more seeds with you. Every helmet that's eaten gives you about 1 or 2 seeds, which means 1 or 2 more plump helmets. They can be cooked (but wont give seeds; that's being worked on, fyi) and brewed, and can be eaten without preperation. The perfect dwarven food.

5) Make booze at the Still. Alcohol is critical to your dwarves' survival. Without it, your dwarves WILL work slower, and be unhappy. For the first year, yea, you can get away without booze... But when you get 50 dwarves, you'd better have some.

6) Tower Caps need to grow for 3 years before they can be cut down for wood... The larger the area you flood the earlier on, the sooner you can get a good supply of wood. Flooding these large areas also allow underground plants to grow, a form of secondary farming.

7) 7x7 Rooms collapse. Watch your designations and room sizes.

You'll end up clear-cutting the entire surface eventually, so you might as well get a start on it now.

9) Group buildings which work well, together. Dont build a tannery on one end of the fort and a leather works on the other. Dig a 6x6 room, and lay down the tannery and leather works next to one another, dedicating the rest of the space to a "Leather" stockpile. Do the same for the Loom and Cloth Workshop, and cloth pile.

10) If you're going to store things like bodies and bones underground, lock the refuse away behind a door, otherwise you'll get purple stink-clouds pissing off your entire dwarf population. And for the love of god, dont chasm it unless you have a good military or trap presence. Alot of creatures dont like getting shit dumped on them.  

Fun fact: As long as you have a mining pick and a healthy, skilled dwarf, a plump helmet, and a mug of beer, you're never out of the game. [In fact, it's entirely possible to start the game with only one pick, and survive just fine... But dont do this until you're really good.]

[ September 06, 2006: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

[RPB]

Wood is probably the single most important resource in the game, so save it. Don't build anything out of wood that you don't have to. Wood is necessary for:

-Beds
-Bins
-Charcoal (your only source of fuel early on)
-Ashes
-Lye (from ashes)
-Potash (from lye)
-Pearlash (from potash, plus takes charcoal)
-Clear/crystal glass (from pearlash, although this stuff is pretty crappy for how much wood you have to burn to make it)

Plus, early on it will be the only material you can make buckets and barrels from. You don't need more than a handful of buckets unless you're trying to producing tons of potash, but you need all the barrels you can. You can also build buckets and barrels from metal, but this is a bad idea early on since you'll use more wood (in the form of all the charcoal you have to burn) making metal barrels than you will making wooden barrels! You'll find better fuel if you dig deep enough into the mountain (and you do have to dig DEEP), then smithing everything you can out of metal becomes viable.

So, NEVER build anything out of wood except for buckets, barrels, bins, or beds. You can build everything else out of stone, which is hundreds of times more common.

If you're saving as much wood as possible, and playing on a pretty heavily wooded map, you should be able to get all the wood you need with just 1 woodcutter. This means you can pretty safely sell off 1 of your starting axes if you're at the "prepare carefully" menu in order to get a bunch of points to spend on more useful supplies...

Probably one of the most important parts of the game is micromanaging each dwarves' tasks. Actually you don't have to micromanage too much, which is good because having to micromanage a lot sucks. Anyways, hit [v] to get a cursor to look at units, then hit [p] to go to the preference menu for the unit you're hovering next to, then hit [l] to go to the labor preferences. Here you can toggle on/off which jobs they do. So say later on if you get a wave of immigrants joining your fortress and one of them is something crappy and useless like Jeweler, you can turn off their Jeweling job and turn on something useful like Farming (fields). Also, most importantly, you can turn on/off whether a certain dwarf does certain haul tasks. If you have someone with a certain vital job, TURN OFF ALL THEIR HAUL JOBS. You'll want your main miner to have hauling off until you have just about your entire fortress dug out. Early on you'll probably want your mason and carpenter to spend most of their time without haul jobs on, and once you get a farm plot going you should have your main farmer's haul jobs off. The good thing is usually you won't have to turn things on/off a lot, at least once you get going. Early on it pays off to micromanage since you have a lot to get done and only 7 dwarves, but once new dwarves start coming you can start specializing more dwarves and just keep them at a certain task all the time. Then you probably won't have to change tasks more than once or twice a year per dwarf, if that.

[ September 06, 2006: Message edited by: RPB ]

[Mechanoid]

You can also disassemble the starting wagons for 3 wood per wagon.

[Shador]

Be careful how you assign starting skills. For example, you probably don't want a Miner/Fisher. An active Fisherdwarf will devote all his time to it (and carrying back his catches), so he wouldn't make an effective Miner.
Also, if you can spare a dwarf for it, you might want to set up traps. Early on, rock-fall traps are cheap, and I hear they're quite effective at killing the occasional invading monsters. (In case you haven't read the wiki's Traps page, your dwarves won't trigger the traps, so you don't have to be careful with them.)
And don't forget to allocate some animals to being pets. Keeping dwarves happy is crucial. Finally, if you aren't already, follow the "What To Cook" and "What Not To Cook" lists on the wiki's Kitchen page. (You can control what gets cooked and brewed under 'z', "Kitchen". The "Animals" menu lets you assign non-cat tame animals to be available as pets.)

[ September 06, 2006: Message edited by: Shador ]

[oddly]

Thank you all very much! With your help, I won't lead my dwarves to their deaths quite yet. I can't garauntee anything of course, one invading monster could probably destroy my encampment right now, assuming it is strong and persistent enough.