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[Devling]

Read the title.
I am ,of course, the noob. Other noobs may ask questions, and this is just a general thread for random tips and tricks.

First, how do I do massive dumping/actions

[Bererez]

d > b > d then select the area to be dumped.

Learn everything you can about food production and then move on from there.

Also, make a dodging pit trap. They are super easy. You just need a one tile wide, 20-40 tile long, natural bridge lined with weapon traps with some serrated disks or spiked balls (I use 3 per trap) over a 10 Z drop. Anything without trap avoid dodges the weapon trap and falls to it's doom. Yay!

[j0nas]

Make sure you have a good amount of beds(to keep dwarves happy and for injured dwarves to rest in), an large dining room with lots of tables and chairs(to keep dwarves happy), preferably with smoothed and engraved walls, and a few buckets and a well to tap water from(to keep resting injured dwarves from dying from dehydration and to keep your dwarves alive when you forget to produce booze).

Edit: Remember that water pressure works in DF.  A diagonal corner will leak water, but will 'reset' water pressure.  Magma is not pressurized.

[PainRack]

Learn how food, alcohol production works.

Labours can be turned on for everything. it isn't efficient to do so, but not having a skillset is not crippling.

Dig deep. You can make your "entrance" to the world short by simply setting up your fort deeper and then layering on defences..... Its hard to explain but instead of building a long hallway of  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fort, you can get very good security by simply going down z levels after 5 tiles. This gives you plenty of space to lay in traps and then expand on the defences by building on the first z layer of the entrance.

After 4 forts and cursing the slow rate of wood/plant gathering, I finally understood this. Now, to only master an internal fort layout:D

Seriously. Just Dig deep. The additional 5 or 6 steps your dwarves take to go deeper underground gives you lot of space in between to make moats, waterfalls generators, cistern/reservoirs and its much more forgiving on your initial fortress plan without scarificing too much efficiency.

You get more immigrants if you trade more stuff back to the mountainhomes. The easiest, cheapest way to get trade items is through craftsdwarf/stone carving.

Its easier to get a meat industry going through trade than through embark (well, except for dogs/cats industry.)

[brucemo]

At the start, watch a bunch of tutorials and do whatever.  Getting clobbered will either put you off the game or addict you.

There are lots of initial dwarf setups, but you can get away with one pick, one axe, a lot of food, and a lot of alcohol, and whatever skills you think are important.

There are lots of ways to play, but a sane way is to try to get underground quick.  Base your fort on 11x11 rooms (because shift-click movement makes this natural, and strangely this is a very convenient size for a variety of reasons).  Connect the rooms however you want.  You can use corridors (should be 2 tiles wide or so), or just put the rooms next to each other with a 2-tile wide hole in each wall connecting them.  Remember that a fort spread out over a large area involves more walking than one that's stacked up like an underground apartment building.

Underground, you need a food stockpile (one whole room to start) so your dwarves can unload the cart, and so your plant gatherer and farmer have a place to put stuff they collect/farm.  The idea here is that you don't want raccoons and pests of that ilk stealing your food.  Make a very small (a few tiles) weapon stockpile under there so these pests won't steal your picks and axes when your guys go off to drink.

Good initial money making guy is a stone crafter, set him to work making stone instruments or mugs.  Sell this junk to the caravan, which arrives in (late?) autumn.  Your food and alcohol will probably hold out until then if you stocked up.  Buy food, alcohol, other random junk such as ropes, barrels, and buckets, animals, bits of glass, seeds, and a variety of metal armor and weapons as you can afford.

You'll likely not get attacked for maybe a year and a half.  After that time you need to be walled in and have some traps and maybe a guy in armor, shield, and axe if you're ambitious.

You'll crash and burn anyway.  There's way too much to learn and huge chunks of essential information that I didn't even consider mentioning.  Learn from the disaster and try again.

[Erkki]

DF is not one of the games you have fun with once you've learned it. Its one of the games you have fun learning.

I like such games, though they are getting ever more rare...

[PainRack]

Good initial money making guy is a stone crafter, set him to work making stone instruments or mugs.  Sell this junk to the caravan, which arrives in (late?) autumn.  Your food and alcohol will probably hold out until then if you stocked up.  Buy food, alcohol, other random junk such as ropes, barrels, and buckets, animals, bits of glass, seeds, and a variety of metal armor and weapons as you can afford.

I keep reading this advice regarding bringing large food/alcohol stockpile but as a beginer, I never had tihs problem. If one embark in a  calm/wilderness environment with sufficient vegetation and trees, a herbalist/grower and a brewer and some axes to get wood, food doesn't seem to be a problem.
Hell, if one brought a cook along, one can easily go to a prepared food economy just in time for the autumn caravan to arrive. You won't get as much goodies when compared to a stonecrafter, but by the 2nd year, you're gold.

[Nameless Archon]

I keep reading this advice regarding bringing large food/alcohol stockpile but as a beginer, I never had tihs problem. If one embark in a  calm/wilderness environment with sufficient vegetation and trees, a herbalist/grower and a brewer and some axes to get wood, food doesn't seem to be a problem.
Hell, if one brought a cook along, one can easily go to a prepared food economy just in time for the autumn caravan to arrive. You won't get as much goodies when compared to a stonecrafter, but by the 2nd year, you're gold.

Usually this is true. However, wildlife can interfere (Urist McBerryPicker cancels FindMaterialForCrucialBooze; startled by own shadow) and starting herbalism "late" with dwarves who have no skill and are nearing hunger/soberness is not conducive to large stocks of alcohol/food!

Mostly the advice about "bring lots of food/drink" is just a stopgap to get you through to the first caravan. Oftentimes, I don't make my first trade until spring, because I've already got 'everything I need' at embark to reach that point.

[Major SNAFU]

d > b > d then select the area to be dumped.

Learn everything you can about food production and then move on from there.

Also, make a dodging pit trap. They are super easy. You just need a one tile wide, 20-40 tile long, natural bridge lined with weapon traps with some serrated disks or spiked balls (I use 3 per trap) over a 10 Z drop. Anything without trap avoid dodges the weapon trap and falls to it's doom. Yay!

So I received contradictory advice ( I think) telling me that you need to use the "i" to set a zone and then dump.

But I was seeking to make a stone dump that I could reclaim later.

Here is what I received after asking why no stone was being dumped into my stockpile using the dump command.


"That is not how it works.  You set a garbage dump with i(zone) not p(stockpile).  Select a rectangular area after pressing "i" then press "g" to set it as a garbage dump.  The dwarves will then haul it there."

Or am I making a total hash of this because I am confusing (still) to separate activities?

[Sutremaine]

Stockpiling and dumping are very different, and using the two terms interchangeably is unhelpful. If you're not sure which word to use, use a general English word to avoid confusion.

To dump:

1. Use the 'i' menu to set a zone. Make this zone active, and a garbage dump.
2. Order your dwarves to start dumping the stones, using d - b - d, the stocks screen, or mouse painting.

If this is the only dump zone you have active, then everything you order dumped will go in that one zone. If there are other zones active, then dwarves will take stones and any other garbage to the nearest zone if that zone is closer to the item being dumped.

To stockpile:

1. Create a stockpile using the 'p' menu.
2. Set what items it will take.
2. Wait.

That's a bit of a simplification, but the point is that stockpiling is semi-automatic whereas dumping has to be explicitly ordered. Dumping also allows for an infinite number of items one one tile.

[Nameless Archon]

"That is not how it works.  You set a garbage dump with i(zone) not p(stockpile).  Select a rectangular area after pressing "i" then press "g" to set it as a garbage dump.  The dwarves will then haul it there." Or am I making a total hash of this because I am confusing (still) to separate activities?

Sort of.

Zones are where certain things (getting drinking water, fishing, sand collection and garbage disposal) get done. When you create a zone (like a garbage dump zone) you're really saying "Urist, when you do Task X, do it in Zone Y".

d-b-d (dumping designation) is how you tell your dwarves WHAT to dump.
Garbage dump activity zones (i, place zone of type g) are how you tell them WHERE to dump it.

[martinuzz]

Hello and welcome to the forums!

Any aspiring noob will probably find useful info in these links:

- First of all: http://df.magmawiki.com/

- Also, there already is a thread for the same general purpose you made this one for (You'll be pleasantly surprised at how fast an answer is posted, usually): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=52208.0

- Tinypirates' Guide (although written for an earlier version, it can still help you get a feel for the game, plus, as an added bonus, it is almost as funny as a !!elf!!): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=31928.0

- captain_duck's video tutorials (are being re-made for the new version, quite a few are up to date already): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28477.0

Then, there is 'the Lazy Newb Pack'. Decent work, it provides you with a nice interface for tweaking things, plus a handful of useful utilities. Oh, and graphics tilesets, if you like those. (me<---ASCII purist): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0

- if you are uncomfortable with the military system, this guide might help you, by providing an alternative, simplistic method of training and commanding your military: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=75200.0

Have fun!

[Hans Lemurson]

d > b > d then select the area to be dumped.

Learn everything you can about food production and then move on from there.

Also, make a dodging pit trap. They are super easy. You just need a one tile wide, 20-40 tile long, natural bridge lined with weapon traps with some serrated disks or spiked balls (I use 3 per trap) over a 10 Z drop. Anything without trap avoid dodges the weapon trap and falls to it's doom. Yay!

So I received contradictory advice ( I think) telling me that you need to use the "i" to set a zone and then dump.

But I was seeking to make a stone dump that I could reclaim later.

Here is what I received after asking why no stone was being dumped into my stockpile using the dump command.


"That is not how it works.  You set a garbage dump with i(zone) not p(stockpile).  Select a rectangular area after pressing "i" then press "g" to set it as a garbage dump.  The dwarves will then haul it there."

Or am I making a total hash of this because I am confusing (still) to separate activities?

You've got it basicly right, I think.  Fear not about later re-use of dumped materials though.  Items that are dumped are marked as "forbidden", and can be mass-reclaimed with d-b-c.

[Devling]

wow such a big response...kewl
Hallos to you to!
Heres the rundown on why i started this thread, I had just had my semi succesful fortress, it was in a downward spiral, I thought I could do better, started thread, and the rest is history. I know most of the basics but now I know to dig under ground.  Silly me, not thinking like a dwarf.

[Jurph]

A good thing to do for your next fortress is make a priority list of your goals -- mini-projects that you want to accomplish.  You have a lot of dwarf-labor-hours during the first three seasons (before the first fall caravan) where you can really get a great head start if you take a little bit of time to accomplish it.  Some of the things people like to do early, while their miners set about digging out a massive fortress, are:

• Move their wagon goods into stockpiles
• Build a room with a table and chair for their bookkeeper
• Establish a supply of fresh drinking water
• Start a sustainable food & booze industry before your wagon supplies run out
• Fill a reasonably-sized stockpile with wooden logs for beds, barrels, bins, and buckets
• Establish a defensive perimeter (traps, a military, moats, or whatever you like)
• Establish some industry that can be used to trade with the first caravan and attract migrants
• Get access to magma

You'll spend a lot of the early game with idle dwarves; since you're unlikely to be attacked in the first year, that's the time when you have the most freedom of movement.  Since you have the lowest population count (barring disaster), it also means you can pay the most attention to micro-managing your dwarves during that first year.  Take advantage of the fact that you're able to dictate the tempo early without having to react to world events.