Dwarf Fortress: Cobalt Edition
- Pre-Prologue -
The Beginnering
This is not an ordinary Dwarf Fortress. This is a fully charged, player driven experience of unparalleled die rolls, modifiers, and sometimes illustrations!
Do you want pounding, heart-wrenching combat with fully simulated body parts, blood loss, pain and long term infection?
Do you want variable day/night cycles, moon phases, weather and holidays?
Do you want hyper-realistic crafting scenarios where multiple factors affect the outcome?
Do you want a fully fluid world where you can leave your fort, walk for a month, and kill your own king in a knife fight?
Do you want to start your own religion, rebel and form your own kingdom, or invent steam-powered harpoon cannons?
Do you want to bold things for no particular emphasis?
If you answered YES to at least two of the above, then this is the Dwarf Fortress Game Simulation Game for you! Survive in familiar-yet-changed demon-scarred world, face off against foes old and new, and eat
Plump Helmets or maybe something else
equally delicious.
In this stage before the first stage, you learn about the very basics, so here's an outline of how
your character pre-embark works:
Name: What people call you.
Gender: Largely just flavour, but it might come into play.
Deity: Whether it's a god of jewels or a tentacle demon of depravity, they can grant you a helping hand in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Try not to annoy them.
Caste: A very powerful determination of your starting abilities. Castes are broad social roles and can cover almost every dwarf, from the lowly Peasant to the snooty Noble. Before you grab your pitchforks, this is a more 'Dungeon Master' type that has a role and hopefully doesn't get murdered by the rest of the team.
Skills: A collection of just about every useful skill in a society, broken into Production, Manufacturing, Service and Military subtypes. It's heavily based off existing DF skills, but many things have been recombined and rethought. For example,
Chemist combines Soaper, Potash Maker, Lye Maker and has further uses, and
Jeweler combines Cutting and Setting. There are also skills created from whole cloth too, such as
Priest,
Earthworker and
Explorer, which each have important roles. No more useless skills! No more useless skills!
Even more useless skills!
Traits: These are more subtle, passive abilities that aren't quite skills. Broken into Physical, Mental and Social, they include valuable things like
Dark Vision,
Super-Sane, and
Pro-Xeno. You start with a few positive ones, but over time you might pick up more positive or even negative effects.
Items: The dreaded items list, full of weird stuff that you don't really understand. Nonetheless, it's vital to bring enough supplies on your journey.
After the initial 7 have decided on their characters, off they go on a wild and fantastical adventure. What happens next?
I The dice You decide! Migrants come later, of course, but at first it's just you and your 6 -acquaintances- against the world.
Artifacts! Goblin raids! Volcanos! Dig it!