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[kotekzot]

reading the wiki before playing was my biggest early mistake.

[Wastedlabor]

On a side note, as I've played both, I think that eve online is much tougher then dwarf fortress. They are equally as wacky and bug driven, sure. However eve is a pvp game and the opponent handle situations much better then your average skeletal whales

Man, EVE is just a brainless grinder compared with Allegiance. Allegiance is like DF Fortress Mode if you played the role of a dwarf and had to follow the orders of a psychopatic commander.

DF is more like a megalomaniac version of Sokoban; once you learn to solve the puzzles the learning curve becomes a plateau.

[Oglokoog]

reading the wiki before playing was my biggest early mistake.

Please elaborate.

If all else fails, remember one thing:  kittens are delicious, nutritious little goblin-baiters, cavern explorers, and ambush-finders.

Sigging this

[LoSboccacc]

Honestly speaking, DF's learning curve isn't that massive.  Yes, the game has a lot of functions, but when you get right down to it, all you really need to grasp to have your survive is farming and a firm understanding of effective design layout in general.  You need more than that to thrive, of course, but you can get by otherwise.

this is more evident now, but back in the day a mature fortress has also to cope with the economy, the crazy hammerdwarf, the guilds, and a plethora of nobles mandating stuff, requiring bedroom and keeping it overall very near the edge of a tantrum spiral.

as it is now, a legendary 10x10 meeting hall and a 10x20 engraved room full with overlapping bedrooms is quite enough to keep everyone happy no matter what.

[Dariush]

Honestly speaking, DF's learning curve isn't that massive.  Yes, the game has a lot of functions, but when you get right down to it, all you really need to grasp to have your survive is farming and a firm understanding of effective design layout in general.  You need more than that to thrive, of course, but you can get by otherwise.

this is more evident now, but back in the day a mature fortress has also to cope with the economy, the crazy hammerdwarf, the guilds, and a plethora of nobles mandating stuff, requiring bedroom and keeping it overall very near the edge of a tantrum spiral.

as it is now, a legendary 10x10 meeting hall and a 10x20 engraved room full with overlapping bedrooms is quite enough to keep everyone happy no matter what.

Most of the features you mentioned are simply bugged now, and anyway Toady will find more ways to make players suffer 

[LoSboccacc]

I hope no more trap avoid stuff, that seems a bit a cheap shot and a bit illogical too.

I mean, kobold thief, or flying stuff are one thing... but trapavoid titans??

[Pan]

Only time where I truly felt like I needed to pull out my hair is figuring out the DF2010 military. That was the only thing challenging. The others? Read the wiki and lurk the forums. But the military is something you must understand, since it's not a yes/no question, or something that can be simply explained.

[Oglokoog]

I hope no more trap avoid stuff, that seems a bit a cheap shot and a bit illogical too.

I mean, kobold thief, or flying stuff are one thing... but trapavoid titans??

Remove it from their entry in the raws if it bothers you
I've removed PET_EXOTIC from all animals that had it and put just PET instead, because dungeon master is broken... some would probably call it cheating, but what the hell.

[Ephemeriis]

DF is initially very intimidating.  It doesn't matter if you're looking at the pseudo-ASCII-GUI or a tileset...  It's overwhelming.  All the various designations and constructions and workshops and buildings...  Figuring out how it all fits together...  The first time I fired up DF it looked genuinely impenetrable.  Like I'd need a big ol' "For Dummies" book just to get started.

Once you get over that initial hurdle and start playing, however, it actually makes a good amount of sense.  It isn't really that complicated.

You can dig out a small fortress, farm/brew/whatever underground, and seal yourself in without too much trouble.  Sieges don't matter.  You can build a drawbridge if you really want to let migrants/traders in.  And you can just keep ticking away year after year...

But that gets kind of boring.

So then you get the brilliant idea to start playing.  Maybe I should build a military to deal with these invaders, rather than just closing the door...  Or maybe some fancy traps...  Maybe I should see what's in the caverns below...  How about using magma instead of coal?  Let's see how these pump things work...  And maybe I can trap and train some animals...

And that's when you hit the real learning curve.

Just getting a functioning fort isn't that hard, barring any early disasters and/or stupidity.

Getting a fort that's interesting enough to keep playing...  That's where the Fun comes in.  That's where you accidentally flood the place 12 times over when you're trying to build your first pump stack.  Or burn all your dwarves alive the first time you tap a magma pipe.  Or build your bridge backwards, or forget to link it to a lever, and somehow allow the invaders free reign of your fortress.  Or you dig a little too deep and suddenly you've breached a cavern you didn't know existed and you've got a forgotten beast eating your dwarves.

[zilpin]

I mean, kobold thief, or flying stuff are one thing... but trapavoid titans??

Not to worry, you can mod Titans to not be trapavoid... if you're willing to tinker.

[LoSboccacc]

I mean, kobold thief, or flying stuff are one thing... but trapavoid titans??

Not to worry, you can mod Titans to not be trapavoid... if you're willing to tinker.

too much updates for now to start playing a modded fortress. I was maintaining a list of small modification, like enabling all metals for weapons and armor and such, but it was really cumbersome.

I guess that when the update stream slows or when there is a sufficiently complete mid term release where I may be able to ignore updates for a bit I'll try the modders way

[ioi101]

I've been playing games for... 16 years now? Since I was 10. It's been many years since I've had a game that's been as interesting as this one, and the big reason for that is how much control you're given over how you want to do things. The learning curve is pretty steep, although I think just surviving is pretty easy, so long as you read the wiki which is pretty much a manual for the game.

The biggest problem is that there is no particular challenge - although that is to be expected of a rapidly developing alpha. To have a meaningful challenge, you need to have a balanced game, and to have that you have to have implemented most of the basic stuff you want, which aren't in yet. So right now the game is hard to learn, but with nothing to "master" as such. Hopefully that will change one day, but considering the development goals that will be a long time from now. The sad part is, even with all the limitations and problems, there is no other recent game I can point to that has this type of gameplay.

[Miko19]

The hardest thing in DF for me was LEARNING THE FUCKING CONTROLS!!!!!
But after I did, it's a piece of cake.
I kill my dwarves on purpose just so it won't get boring (seriously)

[tomas1297]

 I was overwhelmed at first,but I realized I just had to start small.Then you just start trying harder and harder things.

[Dryvnt]

I was overwhelmed at first,but I realized I just had to start small.Then you just start trying harder and harder things.

I got the controls figured out and I could probably keep a fortress running for a million years underground if I wanted to, but I constantly want to build big and I want to build big from the start. I want everything to be 100% effecient. Anything less is a waste of time.
For example, coal is, for me, a waste of perfectly good tree, which can be used to make beds in my symetrically aligned and effeciently planned bedrooms, when you can use magma instead.

But then I can't find a magma pipe in the first 10 minutes, so I start over, trying to find a biome with a volcano or the like.
Or even something as simple as the layout of my fort fucks me up. I try to plan everything ahead, but there is simply so much to plan it gets impossible to keep track of.

My biggest problem in Dwarf Fortress is myself.