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[Mdort Goblinsmiter]

Hello...

I'm working on a new how-to play Dwarf Fortress. This guide is mostly geared to people who have never heard of DF before. I intend to start very basic and work my way up in complexity over the course of maybe 6 or 7 videos.

I wanted to chronicle the videos here as I put them out:

#0 An Intro!  - Mostly to let my subscribers who are not familiar with Dwarf Fortress know what was coming.   
#1 Getting DF - Lazy Newb Pack - Obligatory, I feel. LNP is awesome.
#2 Creating A New World - I go over the basic options for creating a world, choosing an embark site, and preparing to embark.
#3 The First Spring - In this episode I cover some of the very basics of mining, building workshops and creating stockpiles.
#4 Getting Food Production Started - In this episode I discuss building farms and how to use them.
#5 Zones - Keeping those grazing animals alive and dealing with all that stone-clutter.
#6 Labors, Tasks and Dwarf Therapist
#7 Setting up some Basic Defenses
#8 The First Caravan - I never seem to be ready for the first caravan..
#9 Efficient Workspaces - An often overlooked topic.
#10 Dining Hall, Bedrooms and Room Value - An important way to keep dwarfs happy
#11 Starting Your Military and Basic Squad Commands
#12 I've got a strange feeling about this - Strange Moods
#13 The Basics of your Metal Industry
#14 Burrows and keeping your dwarfs out of harms way
#15 The proper care and feeding of nobles
#16 Building a Well - Backup water supply
#17 Outside farming, Inside
#18 Caverns and Starting your Underground Tree Farm
#19 Beekeeping

I've also created some miscellaneous videos about dwarf fortress:
* Pit Trap - Effective way to deal with larger attacks.
* Asmel Oceanworked - A Dwarf Fortress Tale

I'll post new episodes here as they are created.... unless I misjudged and this isn't the right place for this kinda thing.

[Mdort Goblinsmiter]

New episode out.

* The First Spring - In this episode I cover some of the very basics of mining, building workshops and creating stockpiles.

[sarus92]

This is soo helpful please man keep doing it into the more intermediate stuff like getting underground and getting caravans and metal working with lava and junk.


Again I appreciate it!!

[Mdort Goblinsmiter]

Thank you sarus92!

New episode out:

* Getting Food Production Started - In this episode I discuss building farms and how to use them.

[Mdort Goblinsmiter]

Part 5 is out now!  In this episode I talk a bit about Zones.

[Nyxalinth]

I had a look and left a comment.  You have a nice style, and it's clear and easy to follow.  Looking forward to the military lesson

[Saranis]

New DF videos are always nice, however if I might comment, there are a lot of videos out for the basic aspects of the game. You want to increase in complexity over 6-7 videos, I just don't feel thats long enough to get into much of the complexity of the game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to watching your videos, I just feel limiting yourself to 6-7 is really limiting just how deep you go with the game.

[JBlak]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use Phoebus tileset. Most of us non-geeks can't understand Mayday properly.

[hudders]

New DF videos are always nice, however if I might comment, there are a lot of videos out for the basic aspects of the game.

I have to agree with this. Every tutorial I read / watch is so excruciatingly basic, always starting with embarking. Anyone new to the game is going to find the starting point over saturated with tutorials and have nothing to guide them when they get past that. It's the equivalent of teaching a toddler to walk and then sending him off to the store by himself.

[ZeroSumHappiness]

So what do we actually want videos to cover?  Any requests?

[Starver]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use Phoebus tileset. Most of us non-geeks can't understand Mayday properly.

This possibly-geek generally has less difficulty with the default (ANSI-like) tileset than any of the fancier ones.  Not that I'm suggesting you should revert to Lowest Common Denominator, and if you're getting your raw recruits using LNP, et al, I suspect they're not going to be too familiar with the vanilla version.  Just thought I'd say, though.

[Mdort Goblinsmiter]

New DF videos are always nice, however if I might comment, there are a lot of videos out for the basic aspects of the game. You want to increase in complexity over 6-7 videos, I just don't feel thats long enough to get into much of the complexity of the game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to watching your videos, I just feel limiting yourself to 6-7 is really limiting just how deep you go with the game.

I agree, at this point it seems like 7 is just what it takes to cover the the basics.  After that I'm going to start getting into more advanced concepts... 

New DF videos are always nice, however if I might comment, there are a lot of videos out for the basic aspects of the game.

I have to agree with this. Every tutorial I read / watch is so excruciatingly basic, always starting with embarking. Anyone new to the game is going to find the starting point over saturated with tutorials and have nothing to guide them when they get past that. It's the equivalent of teaching a toddler to walk and then sending him off to the store by himself.

My subscribers are primary people who have never played dwarf fortress.  I have a few dozen people who are playing dwarf fortress now who have never played it before, or tried to play and gave up in frustration. Yes, I want to cover the more advanced aspects of the game, but I feel that until I've covered the basics I haven't earned that right.

So what do we actually want videos to cover?  Any requests?

I'm totally open to suggestions! Here's what I have so far:

- laying out efficient work-spaces
- starting a military
- setting up a danger-room
- developing a hospital
- mining for mineral veins Vs. mining for gems
- Building a pump-stack

I'm not an expert at any of these topics really, but that's part of preparing to create a tutorial - becoming an expert.  Or close enough to fake it.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use Phoebus tileset. Most of us non-geeks can't understand Mayday properly.

Yeah, I ....err... wait... did you just call me a geek?!?    Yeah, for now I don't want to change tile sets in the middle of the series (I like to avoid potential confusion-causing factors), but I'll keep it in mind. I recently switched to Phoebus for my save, I do sorta wish I had started with it for the tutorial series.

I did think about sticking with the vanilla version, but I felt that working with a tile-set would be more visually appealing and less confusing.

[Mdort Goblinsmiter]

Two more episodes have been uploaded:

#6 Labors, Tasks and Dwarf Therapist
#7 Setting up some Basic Defenses

[Hitty40]

Request on a video about how to capture/tame animals?

[Mdort Goblinsmiter]

Request on a video about how to capture/tame animals?

That's a good idea.

Side note:

#8 The First Caravan

Is now up.