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[Dave1004]

>_>. 'Tis a sad, sad day. Five dwarves dead, four of dehydration, and one (probably? possible?) from undead. I have a small group left, but they don't seem to want to do anything. *sigh* I guess I should expect it, I didn't last quite a year x.x.

BUT with new knowledge, I think it'll work out. I -just- made a new save, in a place that had Shallow/deep metals and soil, all teh while being "calm" and "forested". Oh, and warm. First caravan came in, I'm doing great! Except my cook keeps turning the remaining booze into food (Dwarven rum biscuits? ew.)

So, I think I know how to build stairs now! I'll work on that, since I have an awesome area in the rock dug out, my dwarves are happy (I have a large river flanking my west, and to my north south AND east, I have a large mountain/rocky range, but I am running rapidly out of trees...) I managed to make IRON, which I don't know HOW the heck I did it. I just smelted "Hematite Ore" I believe, and got some iron. Thanks for telling me that Silver makes bad cutting weapons, it does make sense. Would be like using gold, any kind of "soft" metal is bad for weaponry...

I'mma disable that "Carry-food" thingiamajiggerabobber, so that's nice to know! My Militia Commander (And the only one with combat training) is pretty fancy, with a mixture of bronze and iron armor, and a fancy iron short sword! FEAR ME NOW, BEASTIES.

But, one thing. I started with a Copper Crossbow, 25 copper bolts and a "Hunter" type dwarf. He killed something, then went after AN ELEPHANT. Needless to say, that elephant was very very very unhappy. And, for some reason, I started with two Yaks...Male yaks. *sigh*. I bought some animals from the trader, but I can't find them! They were caged. Do I need to un-cage 'em?

Once I dig down into the earth, I hope to find more rare metals. My map is FLOODED with gold (EVERYWHERE. Seriously, I followed one vein that had about 80 ores, and I hit ANOTHER large vein. And the gems? Holy jeez, don't get me started!)

So, life is good. All my dwarvsies have rooms, a training hall, a dining hall and a meeting area. They work heartily, and generally listen to my commands...Generally. (Some migrants have arrived!) (Oh crap. Build beds! BUILD BEDS!)

The dwarves didn't build any beds...hiss. Ah, well, I got some fresh new useless dwarves. I just set 'em to mine and haul, it works. Also, is the Negotiation skill good? I started out with a broker with 2 or 3 points into Negotiation, and an Iron Pick was only 220 Dwarf Bucks! On my last map, it was 440 dwarf bucks!...Eer, gold. Whatever. What's the currency? Trout-heads? xD

Thank you again all. Once I descend into the bowels of the earth, NONE shall stop me! Except for hunger. But, I have plenty of food...

Also, I have one last question. Sorry x.x...But about farms. I brought 4-5 different kinds of seeds with me, and I had a highly skilled farmer, but when I went to plant, the only things I could plant was "Hide Roots" and "Prickle Berries"! What's this insanity? Where'd my seeds go >__>...

Much appreciated! Muchmuchmuch!

[Sutremaine]

Except my cook keeps turning the remaining booze into food (Dwarven rum biscuits? ew.)

z, go across to 'Kitchen', press Enter. This screen tells your brewers and cooks what they can and can't work with.

I bought some animals from the trader, but I can't find them! They were caged. Do I need to un-cage 'em?

Yes, especially if they're grazers. You can assign them to a pasture without having to do anything with the cages. To do that, create a pasture (i, draw the zone, then set its use. I don't know if you know this already) and assign the animals to it. If you unassign them, they'll just wander around instead of going back into the cages. Slaughter one of the yak bulls, they're kind of greedy and you don't need more than one spore source.

Also, is the Negotiation skill good? I started out with a broker with 2 or 3 points into Negotiation, and an Iron Pick was only 220 Dwarf Bucks! On my last map, it was 440 dwarf bucks!

Prices remain stable (unless you request goods), it's the amount of profit you need to give that changes. Decorations on things the traders turn up with can alter the price of a basic item, and are pretty useless to you. Hint: if you have a choice between an *iron pick* and an *<-iron pick->*, go for the first. On the second, it's only the decorations that are high quality. The pick itself is slightly better than base quality, but might be more expensive than the good pick if it's decorated with valuble items.

I brought 4-5 different kinds of seeds with me, and I had a highly skilled farmer, but when I went to plant, the only things I could plant was "Hide Roots" and "Prickle Berries"!

The seeds you bring with you need to be planted on Subterranean tiles. The stuff you collect above ground needs Above Ground tiles, although they can be inside (don't question it).

[Dave1004]

Sweet! Thanks, Sutre!

I didn't know that there was a difference in tools and stuff like that, much appreciated...So, those points into negotiation were a waste? *sigh*.

I'll -try- to make a farm inside a cave, but I really wouldn't know how. Do I just channel some water, and soak the ground? Sorry .

[dmurray]

Sweet! Thanks, Sutre!

I didn't know that there was a difference in tools and stuff like that, much appreciated...So, those points into negotiation were a waste? *sigh*.

I'll -try- to make a farm inside a cave, but I really wouldn't know how. Do I just channel some water, and soak the ground? Sorry .

Do you have clay rock there? You can mine that and build one.

Or, just (for an easy method): build a farm above ground, wall it off (with some sort of rock walls), build a stairway down, then use updown stairs, then stop when you're on the Z level with the rest of your fortress, then mine a path from the stairs to the main fortress.

[AdeleneDawner]

I didn't know that there was a difference in tools and stuff like that, much appreciated...So, those points into negotiation were a waste? *sigh*.

They weren't a waste, their effect just isn't displayed how you thought it was.

The base price of that pick was 220, but that doesn't mean that that's what you paid for it in practice. Traders always have to be offered more than the value of the items you want from them in order to accept the trade, and your dwarf's negotiation skill determines how much more.

So for example, if you're just buying that pick, with a novice negotiator you might have to offer 400 dwarfbucks of trade goods in order for them to take the offer - the base price is 220 but you actually pay 400. With an experienced negotiator, you might only have to offer 300 worth of goods, and a legendary negotiator might be able to talk them down to 250, though usually by the time a fortress has a legendary negotiator it also has so much junk lying around that you'll almost be willing to pay the traders just to haul it off for you.

[Bohandas]

Oh but the ASCII characters only immerse you further into the game. o_o

As for how to play, make extensive use of the Wiki.
Once you get the hang of the controls, this game will entertain you for... ever.

And ever. 0_0
And ever. ^_^

You get used to it.  I don't even see the code.  All I see is Blonde, Brunette, Redhead.... 
 

[Dave1004]

Hmm...I've had my third caravan come in (First was Dwarven, then Elven, and now Human), being in late august of my second year. I've made roughly 160,000 profits, mainly from my legendary rock and wood crafters (Every few moments I get one of those "Dwarf McDwarfDwarf has crafted an exceptional item!) or whatnot. I have a legendary chef too, and he regularly pumps out meals worth around 2,500-4,000...Mainly elephant. I have over 250 elephant meats, and that's just in the uncooked stuff!

But, one thing. No goblins. No raiders. Nothing. Don't I have enough wealth? I have a crack squad of trained soldiers, six of them. One uses a hammer, three use swords, one a crossbow and one a gigantic axe. All laid out in 3-5 pieces of iron armor, and I'm just waiting for the elfies to come back, to buy some Giant Scorpions. I'm not much of the combat type, but I really wanna test my dwarfsies out...*sigh*

Oh, and how do you get Thread and that powder stuff for hospitals? I have cloth, buckets, and the crutch-stuff etcs, but that's it...Meh. Things are going great, I have TONS of food, due to my two fishermen, farmers and Urist McLegendaryHunter... He's slain quite a few elephants in his time, and many other beasties!

I've got stairs down pat, for the main part. The only trouble I have now is pumping out enough darn beds and rooms for my dwarves! I just build a 3x3 space in the mountain, stick a bed and cabinet in there, and then put a door on the entrance. But, more and more dwarves are coming! I have 45 or so right now, and I fear that more are on the way. It's disturbing, and I'm quickly outgrowing the natural resources on my map, even on other z-levels!

Anybody know what to do? I have so many useless dwarves. 20-30 of them are idling 24/7 in my meeting place, and even if I remove it, they just idle by the caravan. My super-awesome-smith refuses to burn wood for charcoal, and won't smith anything! He idles, then will quickly run off, drink, eat, sleep, idle, repeat. It's getting quite silly. My only =working- dwarves are the fishermen, hunter, and sometimes those darn farmers...

Mini rant over, time for bed >_> thanks for the help all

[Lytha]

(Some migrants have arrived!) (Oh crap. Build beds! BUILD BEDS!)

I usually just construct 1 bed for the first couple of years, place it onto a random landing of my central ramps, make a "r"oom of it, and press "d" for "this is a dormitory. Stop sleeping where ever you get tired."

That is sufficient for the dwarves, and especially for any immigrants.


I will produce more beds for a hospital later on; but I feel that only married dwarf couples deserve a room of their own. So, the lousy dormitory remains the sleeping accomodation for the majority of my dwarves for years and years. I just feel that wood is too precious to waste as beds for some immigrants whom I don't even like.


This will give the dwarves negative thoughts ("Urist has slept without a proper room recently"), that is right. You can counter this easily by having a 1x1 meeting zone instead of a meeting hall or statue garden or zoo though (i - m). All idle dwarves will congregate around this single square, and the massively increased chance for social interaction will make them all ecstatic.

[AdeleneDawner]

You can counter this easily by having a 1x1 meeting zone instead of a meeting hall or statue garden or zoo though (i - m). All idle dwarves will congregate around this single square, and the massively increased chance for social interaction will make them all ecstatic.

There's a downside to this, though. Dwarves that socialize with each other are likely to become friends; dwarves who have a friend die get a major bad thought and are likely to have a temper tantrum. If all your dwarves are friends with each other, one death can set off a dozen tantrums, and any one of those can result in the tantruming dwarf accidentally killing another dwarf, or a pet, which can set off *more* tantrums, and before you know it everyone is running around killing each other instead of getting any work done. (This is called a tantrum spiral.)

So long as your dwarves are all safe and happy, having them be friends with each other is fine, but it's too easy to lose dwarves to accidents and strange moods for this to really be a good idea, especially for a newbie.

But, one thing. No goblins. No raiders. Nothing. Don't I have enough wealth? I have a crack squad of trained soldiers, six of them. One uses a hammer, three use swords, one a crossbow and one a gigantic axe. All laid out in 3-5 pieces of iron armor, and I'm just waiting for the elfies to come back, to buy some Giant Scorpions. I'm not much of the combat type, but I really wanna test my dwarfsies out...*sigh*

You'll probably see your first goblins come winter. The game does try to give you a chance to get everything set up before it starts inflicting things on you. You can send your military out to tangle with the elephants, though, if you like. It uses the same commands as sending them out to fight goblins or anything else.

Also: gigantic axe? You don't mean 'gigantic axe blade', do you? That's not a weapon, it's a trap component. How did you get your dwarf to wield that??

Oh, and how do you get Thread and that powder stuff for hospitals? I have cloth, buckets, and the crutch-stuff etcs, but that's it...Meh.

You can buy thread from the caravans (it's near the bottom of their list, under the plants) or grow fibrous plants (pig tails, underground, or rope reed above ground) and then process it in a farmer'w workshop to get thread, or keep sheep or llamas or alpacas and shear them at a farmer's workshop and spin the wool, or dig all the way down (anywhere from 10 to 100+ z-levels) to the caverns and harvest cave spider silk. Growing it is probably easiest if you can get the seeds. Try gathering plants outside, it works like cutting trees, and you're reasonably likely to get some rope reed plants that you can process.

Plaster is optional if you have splints. If you find gypsum, you can make it, but I've never bothered.

I've got stairs down pat, for the main part. The only trouble I have now is pumping out enough darn beds and rooms for my dwarves! I just build a 3x3 space in the mountain, stick a bed and cabinet in there, and then put a door on the entrance. But, more and more dwarves are coming! I have 45 or so right now, and I fear that more are on the way. It's disturbing, and I'm quickly outgrowing the natural resources on my map, even on other z-levels!

How many groups of immigrants have you gotten? If you got exactly two, you probably won't get any more, since it sounds like your civilization is dead. If you've gotten more than three groups, then they're coming from *somewhere* and are indeed likely to keep coming. Dormitories are a good idea until you can get proper rooms put together - a dormitory with 10 beds in it should keep almost any number of dwarves from sleeping on the bare stone.
 
Also, there are lots of z-levels. Most maps have about 150 of them. Only a few grow wood, but you shouldn't be in any danger of running out of space, or stone. You may or may not ever run out of ore, depending on the settings you used to generate your world, but if you've found ore on the first few levels there's probably more on the ones under you. (And even if you do have enough ore, you might want to dig down anyway - there's stuff to explore down there!)

Anybody know what to do? I have so many useless dwarves. 20-30 of them are idling 24/7 in my meeting place, and even if I remove it, they just idle by the caravan. My super-awesome-smith refuses to burn wood for charcoal, and won't smith anything! He idles, then will quickly run off, drink, eat, sleep, idle, repeat. It's getting quite silly. My only =working- dwarves are the fishermen, hunter, and sometimes those darn farmers...

The metalsmithing labors don't actually make a dwarf do smelting or wood burning - you need the furnace operator labor for smelting, and the wood burning labor (which is considered a farming job, oddly enough) to make charcoal from wood. Maybe you should have some of your idle dwarves do that, and your smith can focus on smithing? To change which labors a dwarf is set to do, press 'v', bring the cursor near a dwarf until he starts flashing, press 'p' for preferences and then 'l' for labors. You can turn any job on on any dwarf, they just won't be very good at it until they get some practice. It's better to have each dwarf focus on one or two things, though - a dwarf that just does masonry will get to be very good at masonry, but if you have five dwarves who all do masonry and mechanics and carpentry and stonecrafting and brewing, none of them will get to be very good at any of those.

Setting jobs for 45 dwarves will get tedious. There's a program to make it much quicker and easier, called Dwarf Therapist. I think it's already been recommended to you. You really do want to get it. (It also comes in the lazy newb pack that I recommended earlier.)

[Nameless Archon]

(It also comes in the lazy newb pack that I recommended earlier.)

So. Much. Love. For. Lazy. Newb. Pack. <3 <3 <3

[Lytha]

There's a downside to this, though. Dwarves that socialize with each other are likely to become friends; dwarves who have a friend die get a major bad thought and are likely to have a temper tantrum. If all your dwarves are friends with each other, one death can set off a dozen tantrums, and any one of those can result in the tantruming dwarf accidentally killing another dwarf, or a pet, which can set off *more* tantrums, and before you know it everyone is running around killing each other instead of getting any work done. (This is called a tantrum spiral.)

As long as the survivors can socialize and have a "decent" i.e. 7x7 barely furnitured rough walled dining hall, they should be too ecstatic to be bothered by the deaths of anyone.

I remove dwarf loving children from my population as soon as I can. These manage to make friends really fast and they have families. However, nobody was ever bothered when they had accidents, received no burial receptable but only an engraved slab. I really see no harm there.

[jaxy15]

If you wanna test your dwarves out, try digging into a cavern.
It has wild creatures you can kill, and butcher.
Like elk birds.

[Dave1004]

Hmm. Well, first things first. It's just an axe, but I thought it'd be better to label it as "A gigantic axe" rather than "An axe"...Meh.


Oh joy...I was attacked by my first goblin, a "snatcher". It said "Hide your children!"...My hunter killed him. Then, an Ettin came. I set my dwarves on it, but I forgot I had one recruit with a wooden training sword, lol. His lungs were crushed in the fight, and then he died due to suffocation...*sigh*. Game went on, no more baddies, on summer of second year. Another ettin comes, my guys whip up a can of whoop-ass, murder him. Nobody lost. Then, "Dwarf Fortress has stopped working"

Lost six hours of work, so I just deleted the save and left...And yeah, that Therapist looks nice, but I don't know how to use it. Anyways, there's a -MAJOR- problem with the Lazy Noob Pack.

Runesmith.

Darn thing is horrible. Whenever I launch the program (Tried three times), my entire computer freezes, for roughly 5 to 20 minutes. Then, "windows explorer has stopped working", and it shuts off. Was scary. Later, I tried copy-pasta'ing Lazy Noob Pack to a different folder, and it gave my computer a quick BSOD, and restarted. Was the RuneSmith, and I have a major problem now.

If I try and =move= the Runesmith folder, or delete it, or anything, my PC will crash. I don't know if it's something wrong with one of my drivers, or what. Not really cool...Ah, well, whatever.

Thanks for telling me how to make thread . And, those BLASTED MIGRANTS were so numerous. They bring so many children, and cats. Dude, I started with (0) cats, and then I had seven. SEVEN. And, I had over 65 rooms built, and 58 dwarves. My Legendary Hunter (With superb Archer and whatnot skills) got a nice, walled, floored room, as had all the "Important" people. I didn't know you could make "Dormitories", but that's OK. I like building rooms!

So, that save was lost (As is said!), and I now set the Lazy Noob Pack to auto-save. Will find a nice, slightly harder land to roam in.

But oh my gosh, those darn elves. They're ridiculous! I -tried- trading some wooden objects, and after that I couldn't buy nor sell anything! Even after I removed all current items, and only added some rock crafts and gems, they still wouldn't sell me any leopards, grr. They left 30 or 40 seconds after arriving, too. Heck, the second Dwarven Wagon overstayed their welcome, sitting in my base for days...

I still really appreciate the help guys, thank you. And, if you know why RuneSmith is doing this, please inform me. I'm too scared to go near it now!

(P.S: My super smithy had all the smithing skills, armor, metal, weaponry, and yes, furnace operating. Nobody would EVER burn me some charcoal, even though I had set 10 different, varied dwarves to the task...ugh)

Will see how my newest save works out, since I'm fully prepared with unlimited, vast knowledge of Dwarvish repertoire.

[obeliab]

(P.S: My super smithy had all the smithing skills, armor, metal, weaponry, and yes, furnace operating. Nobody would EVER burn me some charcoal, even though I had set 10 different, varied dwarves to the task...ugh)

Wood Burning is listed under Farming, and requires a Wood Furnace, which, by the way, is not the same as a Smelter.

[Dave1004]

(P.S: My super smithy had all the smithing skills, armor, metal, weaponry, and yes, furnace operating. Nobody would EVER burn me some charcoal, even though I had set 10 different, varied dwarves to the task...ugh)

Wood Burning is listed under Farming, and requires a Wood Furnace, which, by the way, is not the same as a Smelter.

Oh. I see...Derp lol. I always just did furnace operating >_>. Thanks man XD