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[Golfball]

Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude. I've just seen the same person complain about the interface over and over again in this thread, even going so far as to suggest that Toady has intentionally made the game difficult to use and that he has some obligation to make it easier, and I've seen so many people make the same complaint, as though they had paid good money for the game and felt entitled to an easier control system... The community has changed a lot over the years, a lot of newcomers have been drawn in as the game has developed more, and I feel like the general attitude on the forums is moving away from the former near-universal gratitude for this free gem of a game and more towards the mainstream judgement of the game as though it were a polished, finished product for which we had all paid good money.

I totally understand being frustrated with the learning curve of the game at times - I was a newbie once too. But when I see people "threatening" to stop playing altogether if it doesn't get easier and attacking Toady as though he were a bad developer, I get frustrated, and at the end of a crummy weekend I guess I just feel like that needs to be said.

What problem do people have with the interface?  It's not *that* difficult to use, they ought to try using vi.  Without arrow keys.  Everything is menu-ed, what more do the gripers want?

(I will admit, I do use Dwarf Therapist for job setting, means I can set jobs for everybody with fewer clicks/keypresses.)

(Also, for the record, I am a DF n00b.)

[proxn_punkd]

What problem do people have with the interface?  It's not *that* difficult to use, they ought to try using vi.  Without arrow keys.  Everything is menu-ed, what more do the gripers want?

(I will admit, I do use Dwarf Therapist for job setting, means I can set jobs for everybody with fewer clicks/keypresses.)

(Also, for the record, I am a DF n00b.)

Not a newb, but I quickly learned to love Therapist for being able to show me at a glance who's got what skills and whether they're active. That one beekeeper's been the only issue so far. Therapist also makes it way easier for me to reassign labors to heroes after every battle.

[murlocdummy]

To be frank, though, when I play this game, I tend to liken it not to nethack or those other ancient games, but to more modern ones like Minecraft.

This reminds me of Terry Pratchett being once told that his character Ponder Stibbons was a direct rip-off of Harry Potter.  But I don't know how many people know how ridiculous this idea is.  (There's another thread out there dealing with time-travel, won't go into it here.)


Not saying you're saying DF is a rip-off of MC, as you aren't, but just like there are some that say that, if anything, HP might[1] have been influenced by the niche popularity of DW, MC has been actually acknowledged[2] to be significantly inspired by DF, amongst others.


Also, Toady may be considered a control freak, because he doesn't want to hire anyone else.  It's his baby.  (OpenGL/whatever additions, aside) made by him.  This is part of the 'contract' we players have with him, in the unwritten sense at least.  You will probably find more people on these forums that are happy with this than are not (for obvious reasons... as the unhappy ones may not stick around).  As such, you may find a bit of a vehement opinion that "What Toady Does Is Right"[3], and arguing the contrary position isn't going to go down well.  So apologies in advance (and for past instances) for instances in which this gets brought home to you, insofar as it is in my power to apologise and not merely to be an apologist.

[1] Probably wasn't

[2] http://notch.tumblr.com/post/113252305/credits-due

Well, I was really comparing the development style, not the actual end-product.  Sure, it's Toady's baby and he doesn't want to let it go, but even though that's true, I still reserve my right to complain about how his baby's grown into something that looks more like an inbred, defect-ridden, mish-mash of coding Frankenstein.  Of course, it's less of an inbred, defect-ridden, mish mash of a coding Frankenstein now than it once was, but to say that there's room for improvement is quite an understatement.

In comparing it to Minecraft, Notch ended up letting go of his project to a development team fairly quickly, and let his game blossom.  With Dwarf Fortress, however, the limiting aspect seems to be Toady himself.  I can see the game and the millions of empty seats where players ought to be because he hasn't really relinquished control.  Either that, or the players are simply too conservative to begin making the major changes in earnest.  Then again, I haven't been playing this game for much more than a week or so, so in that respect I'm still a total noob, especially since I haven't been past my very first embark.  Despite that, I'll still continue playing.

Nobody is forcing me not to complain, so I won't.  I'll continue playing this game until it inevitably becomes unfun, and will continue making critiques of it.  There's fun things about this game, don't get me wrong, but there are just as many unfun things.  I've gone ahead and simply ignored most of them, but at some point, I just have to speak out and complain.  And the only thing that'll force me to stop complaining is if Toady decides to give me back the money I donated to him.  Either that, or whenever a player makes a workable menu system for the game.

Taking another look at the game, I just realized that Dwarf Therapist hasn't been updated since March.  No wonder why my beekeeper hasn't been doing anything.  That part of the coding is bugged in DT, and I've been relying on it for all of my job placements.  I guess nothing can be relied upon in this game.  I ended up having to research for about an hour to figure out that somebody modded Dwarf Therapist, only to find out that it, too, is all kinds of buggy.

[Sappho]

No one forced you to donate to a game you had almost no experience with. Why did you donate anyway, since you seem to have such a low opinion of the game? When you download an alpha release of anything, the last thing you should expect is a polished, finished product. In any case, I think you will find extremely few people on these forums who share your opinion of the current state of Dwarf Fortress. Most of us consider it to be excellent how it is, though naturally there still remains loads to be done.

As has been said already, this was never intended to be a professional product. It's a pet project, and Toady never had to let anyone play it in the first place. If you don't want to play, don't play. If you're having trouble, there's the wiki and loads of newbie guides, including a set of excellent YouTube videos, that ought to solve most of your problems and answer most of your questions.

You'll find that the community here is very helpful and supportive to all your difficulties, as long as you can be polite and respectful in return. I assure you that I'm not the only one who takes offense at your quite rude-sounding criticisms. Point out problems you see, by all means, but please do it in a respectful way or you might find people less and less willing to help you.

[murlocdummy]

No one forced you to donate to a game you had almost no experience with. Why did you donate anyway, since you seem to have such a low opinion of the game? When you download an alpha release of anything, the last thing you should expect is a polished, finished product. In any case, I think you will find extremely few people on these forums who share your opinion of the current state of Dwarf Fortress. Most of us consider it to be excellent how it is, though naturally there still remains loads to be done.

As has been said already, this was never intended to be a professional product. It's a pet project, and Toady never had to let anyone play it in the first place. If you don't want to play, don't play. If you're having trouble, there's the wiki and loads of newbie guides, including a set of excellent YouTube videos, that ought to solve most of your problems and answer most of your questions.

You'll find that the community here is very helpful and supportive to all your difficulties, as long as you can be polite and respectful in return. I assure you that I'm not the only one who takes offense at your quite rude-sounding criticisms. Point out problems you see, by all means, but please do it in a respectful way or you might find people less and less willing to help you.

I apologize for sounding more in-your-face than I should have.  I'm just used to receiving that kind of attitude, and have come to simply expect it from most communities.  I donated because the game's gotten popular for a reason, and it's because the product is good.  It's not as great as a project that has been in development this long could be, but it's good, nonetheless.  The coding for the nuts-and-bolts of the game is quite sound:  Equipment calculations, pathing and AI, and most of the complexities of individual industry management calculations.  There are bugs and errors, as are to be expected, but the major gripe is and will undoubtedly continue to be the interface.

I don't really care about the fact that the game's controls use up the entire keyboard or that the graphics are crappy ASCII art.  My main concern is that it's not intuitive in the least once you get to know your way around it.  The use of ±, arrow keys, and other basic menu scrolling controls I've already touched upon, but the major issues come once you enter into the stocks screen, unit menu, or Animals screen in the middle to later portions of the game.  Once you've got more than 50 animals or dwarves, or anything, really, those screens quickly become extremely cumbersome, and require either another method of finding what you want entirely, or grinding through the lists, reading each and every line in order to find what you're looking for.

Before I ever played Dwarf Fortress, I watched about 4 hours of tutorial videos and read up on as much about the game as I could.  I came in to DF expecting extremely crappy graphics and a control scheme that was going to be at least somewhat clunky and hard to learn.  I regularly use the wiki to try and find information, but am almost always finding it lacking.  Not that the wiki is useless, quite the opposite.  It's a useful tool, but it's not usually the endpoint of my search for information about how to solve various issues.

I started this thread for the sole purpose of providing a central location for filling in the blanks for my and other DF players' research.  I am probably one of the few players who seek to play this game and attempt to enjoy it despite its glaring flaws without simply throwing up my hands and saying "this game sucks ass!" or "this is not my game, I have absolutely no right to complain."

I appreciate replies that are in a similar critical sense as proxn_punkd.  I don't like things to be sugar-coated, and I prefer to get right down to the point.  It would be helpful to me, and to any new players of DF if this thread pointed out the game's problems, questions, and their solutions/workarounds without having too much "fluff."  11 pages is already kind of alot for any noob to go through, but as I continue to play the game, as well as other noobs, there will be more and more questions to be asked.  I think it would be prudent to summarize our findings at regular intervals so that noobs will have easy access to important information.

So, without too much more "fluff":

=================================

PREVIOUSLY ON NOOB GUIDE REQUESTED 1

The wiki is currently malfunctioning for some browsers, causing some links and search results to give the user a download link instead of loading up the page.  I've been able to work around this by using Chrome and simply spamming the offending link with clicks until it finally loads properly.

Cl.T means "Cluttered," and will cause your workshop to produce more slowly.  Other totally obscure abbreviations include the C, H, and S letters that appear on the left side of the screen periodically.  These letters have to do with combat reports.  More information about clutter and reports can be garnered from the wiki.

Dwarves will have trouble training if they are not given enough time to do so, as well as some other factors.  Dwarves should train properly if training is done at two consecutive month intervals.  Also, the "Train" order has a special Minimum parameter that will dictate the minimum number of dwarves available to train before training begins, and will need to be edited (e).  This number should be decreased to an amount that is below the number of available dwarves in the squadron to allow for dwarves to eat, drink, and sleep during training months.  Make sure to adjust this number following battles, as some dwarves will be in the hospital and unavailable for training.

A neat trick using the military screen is sticking every single one of your dwarves into squads and assigning them armor in order to armor up all of your civilians.  For effective use of this method, the following considerations need to be addressed:  Squads will, on default, be set to train year-round, so disable all orders for civilian squads.  By default, supplies (u) will be set to have the members of the squad carry around food and water.  It would be prudent to set civilians to stop carrying around food and water, as they will not go to your elaborately decorated meeting hall or equally elaborately decorated booze stockroom in order to consume food and drink so long as they are set to carry around food and drink in the military (m) supplies (u) menu.  It is also a good idea to set a specific Civilian Armor uniform that does not use the same armor as your actual military, unless you want your civilians squads competing with your soldier squads for the best armors.  It also wouldn't be that bad of an idea to equip civilians with leftover wooden and training weapons so that they have something to parry with in the very likely event that they are attacked.
Note:  Whenever you pick members of a squad, the list of candidates shows EVERY single dwarf that is capable of military duty, including dwarves that are already in other squads.  Excel will need to be used in order to properly organize the dwarves in the squads.

Dwarves will drink booze directly out of the container in the stockpile, and will not take the booze to a table to drink.  They will ALWAYS drink directly from the container regardless of where it is.

Various graphics packs will change not only the graphic tilesets, but the way that text is displayed, as well.  Common DF symbols including but not limited to ☼ or Γ may not show up properly or at all, depending on what graphics pack is used.  Essentially, anyone that isn't already familiar with DF's interface (all new players) should be extremely wary about using graphics packs in order to get started.

All bridges are set to "retract" by default.  This is an almost completely useless function if you intend to use the bridge as a gate for your fortress.  Forgetting to set the direction the bridge draws back to will probably result in needing to have the bridge demolished and reconstructed.

When embarking for the first time ever, make ABSOLUTELY sure that the embark site has the following materials/characteristics:  Clay, sand, iron, not freezing/desert.  Starting out at a temperate/warm beach with clay and iron would not be a bad idea for a starter's embark.  Power is also a significant consideration when embarking, as wind and/or water power will be extremely useful in helping out your dwarves.

Economy is important if you want to buy things that you don't have.  The easiest industry to take up at the beginning is one that focuses on stone items, since the ground is generally full of the stuff.  When actually selling to merchants, make note of the following:  Elves will be offended and will not trade if ANY item you offer to them is made of wood.  Ignore their hypocrisy in selling you wooden items.  When selling for the first time, the money indicator will not show if your broker has no Appraisal skill.  He will acquire the skill after making a trade, so trade an item, then return to the trade menu, and item values should appear.  In order for the trade deal to go through, the merchant must receive enough profit.  This value is generally a ratio of at least [1:1] for [profit:purchase value].  Keep this in mind when making a real trade for the first time.  In other words, if you wish to purchase 1000☼ worth of goods, the value of the items that you put on the table must be at least 2000☼, thus causing the Trader Profit portion of the screen to read at least 1000☼.  Traders also consider their own emotions, which fluctuate depending on how much profit they gathered and how often you offended them in making offers that they refused.  Paying a whole lot more for an item than it's worth will enable the [profit:purchase value] ratio to drop below [1:1].  How much it drops, I haven't a clue.

Also about trading, you can search for items in the transfer goods to/from depot menu with the (s) key.  This is the only menu in the game that allows you to do a search in this manner.  You can also sort items by distance or value.  Again, this is the only menu in the game that allows you to sort the things in it in such a standardized and easy manner.  Sorting by value is useful for getting rid of lower level furniture and items, as higher level items tend to make your dwarves happier.

When manufacturing items, make sure that you have enough resources to handle their storage.  A central stockpile is not an ideal storage situation.  Ideally, have trade goods moved into a single stockpile nearby the trade depot.  Finished goods can be packed into wooden bins.  Wooden bins are a vital item to have in any storage warehouse.  When segregating your stockpiles for trade goods, ensure that trade goods are disabled for all stockpiles except your trading stockpile.  When navigating the stockpile options, e/d will enable/disable whole categories, a/b will do the same thing, except it won't block your access to the subcategories, like e/d will, p/f will enable/disable individual subcategories, and pressing Enter on any item types within the subcategories will enable/disable them.  The main difficulty lies in finding which category, subcategory, and item type a particular item of interest is classified as, as they are not always obvious.

In order to have a proper water storage zone that won't cause all of your injured dwarves to die of infections, you must build a cistern that is made out of a material that is neither dirt nor is touching dirt.  In order to purify water that has touched dirt or touched water that has touched dirt, a pump must be used.  Other sources of water dirtying substances include raw stone, saltwater, stagnant water, already dirty water.  Clean water touching these becomes dirty, so do be careful when using a cistern, as the whole cistern can become contaminated without your knowledge, since you won't know if water's dirty until a dwarf actually drinks it and has an unpleasant thought about drinking dirty water or when your medical personnel use the dirty water on a dwarf and he dies of infection.

When collecting rainwater, the water level must be at least 2 in order to not evaporate immediately if you are in a temperate/warm biome.  This shouldn't be a problem if you have a river/ocean/aquifer available to you.

Burrows are an essential tool.  Period.  To use them, go into the Burrows menu (w) and add a new burrow (a).  You will need to go into the Define this burrow menu (Enter) in order to manipulate this burrow's size and shape.  Go into the Add citizens to this burrow (c) menu to add/remove dwarves from the burrow.  You will require a burrow that is specified only around your depot if you want your broker to ever go to the depot if he has any tasks enabled whatsoever.  After specifying the Depot as a burrow, and having your broker specified as its sole denizen, it will take some time and several spammed "Inaccessible" messages before he goes to the depot that you have specified.  Remember to remove him from the burrow's citizens (c) list once you're done trading.

Alerts are a use of burrows that causes all of your civilian dwarves and some animals to suddenly stop what they're doing and move into a specified burrow or burrows.  This is done through the military menu (m) under alerts (a).  When selecting the type of alert and which burrows you want your dwarves to hide in fear in, ensure that your various alerts have the right burrows assigned to them.  You don't want your dwarves gathering in the depot and starving when you want them to continue engaging in economic activities within your secured base during a siege.  Also note that any civilian squadrons that you have assigned will need to be individually assigned burrows.  Unlike civilians that have not been assigned squadrons, the civilians that you have assigned to squadrons will not do anything during an alert unless you select their squad and assign them a burrow.

This fact about farming is extremely important:  CROPS WILL INSTANTANEOUSLY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY DIE AT THE END OF EACH SEASON for a particular plot if the crop for the next season is different.  If the crop is set to fallow (z), then the crop will not die.

Beekeeping is currently bugged as of 0.31.25.  If you have more than one beekeeper, the hive installation system as well as the individual hives will be bugged, causing your dwarves to stand around and yell into the sky and curse their god, Toady for extended periods of time.  If there is ever more than one beekeeper at any given time, it may be necessary to destroy all hives, then rebuild them all once only 1 dwarf is specified as beekeeper.

Work profiles are quite useful, and having a manager isn't a bad idea.  When setting work profiles, ensure that the workshops have a minimum skill level set, or else any random dwarf with zero experience will walk up to the workshop and very slowly attempt to produce product.  It is useful to have a workshop with no minimum skill level set so that zero experience dwarves can train their skills, but know that these workshops will end up very slowly producing low quality goods.

Dwarf Therapist is God.  DwarfEngineer used to handle the program, but hasn't updated the thing in quite a while.  The last update by fans of the program was around October.  The program isn't just a useful tool, it's pretty much a necessity to prevent you from going totally insane from having to find each and every dwarf, read about them, then individually assign them labors.  Once you get past 50 dwarves, management of them all by the in-game menus becomes nigh impossible without either pulling out MS Excel or using Dwarf Therapist.  Note that the beekeeping portion of the program is bugged, so you may need to use in-game menus to handle it.  Remember to have some dwarves create a wall around you to prevent you from committing genocide when you go insane from using the in-game menus.

For a barony, note the following:  Pick out a baron/baroness BEFORE you are asked to pick one.  Once you're asked, you will NOT be able to go into the menus and figure out the various stats and activities of the various dwarves without Dwarf Therapist.  Pick a civilian dwarf that likes things that are easy to acquire and preferably a dwarf that isn't very skillful in anything.  It is also useful to have nobles have multiple noble positions in order to decrease the total number of nobles you have to maintain.  Place the baron in the position of bookkeeper and mayor, as the mayor is kind of useless most of the time, and the bookkeeper isn't capable of being useful most of the time.  The broker and manager can be the same person, as the broker's duties are limited to trading whenever caravans arrive and the manager needs to be free only when signing work orders.  Note that periodically, THE BARON WILL RANDOMLY ASSIGN A DWARF TO MAYOR.  You will need to regularly go into the nobles (n) screen and reassign your baron back to mayor.  It's suggested that this be done once each game year unless you want to deal with having another noble.  Also know that your mayor will meet with the outpost liaison to Conduct Meeting, but only if they're not doing anything else.  Best way to do this is to assign the mayor to a burrow for the duration of the meetings.  If the mayor is currently holding an item and is continuously spamming "Inaccessible" messages, you will need the mayor to drop the item he's holding.

When farming remember that you should have all the necessary mills, workshops, barrels, liquids, and other infrastructure available in order to process plants and produce seeds so that you may continue farming the particular crop.  Failure to do so will result in your farmers regularly running out of seeds and eventually stopping production of the crop altogether.  Also remember that cooking is the only processing that doesn't produce seeds.

Note that lye stored in water buckets is not considered lye anymore by your dwarves.  Consider making extremely large quantities of lye in order to overcome your dwarves tossing lye into water buckets.

To view the contents of a particular storage container in your stockpile, use (k) and press enter when selecting the container.  Use (t) when viewing containers outside of your stockpile.

When creating a depot, create it in a segregated area of your fort, away from everything else, preferably in an airlock with gates.  This will enable you to safely trade with the caravan during a siege, as well as safely disposing of the caravan during the siege.

Cage traps are your best friend.  Use them liberally.  When capturing enemies equipped with items, dump the cages into a garbage zone (press i, select the zone, then press g to assign as a garbage dump), then reclaim the dumped cages.  This will cause the cages to be retrieved, but all items inside of the cage will be removed from the creature and dumped into the garbage.  The items that were dumped from the cage can them be reclaimed later.

When assigning jobs, ASSIGN THEM ONE AT A TIME.  It is a bad idea to assign a particular dwarf too many jobs, as they will end up using up valuable workshop space and doing jobs that they aren't skilled at.  Miners, especially, shouldn't have much more than Mining enabled.

During a siege, take note of the Siege indicator on the top left side of the screen.  The siegers will eventually leave, but will not announce their departure, so you will need to watch the indicator to tell when they've left.

Did I mention that MS Excel is also your friend?  Because it is.  The Unit list is totally and completely unorganized in any real, meaningful manner.  Despite this, there is an arcane algorithm that determines a standardized order to sort dwarves by.  In order to find any particular dwarf and interact with them, it is necessary to enter ALL of their names into Excel in the order that they appear in the list.  The list can then be searchable and the relative position of the dwarf's name can be approximated and effectively found.  The same can also be done with animal lists.  This, however, is not possible with bridge lists, as they have a location variable that cannot be usefully accounted for in Excel.

That concludes the summary of Noob guide requested pages 1-10

=================================




Upon looking through the forums, I have just realized that Toady releases a "DF Talk" every now and then.  I will continue my research by listening to the latest one and reporting my findings afterwards.

[Loud Whispers]

It's lovely reading the efforts of someone new to DF, it's like a mirror of my past self, but with less bloodshed

[Brotato]

Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude. I've just seen the same person complain about the interface over and over again in this thread, even going so far as to suggest that Toady has intentionally made the game difficult to use and that he has some obligation to make it easier, and I've seen so many people make the same complaint, as though they had paid good money for the game and felt entitled to an easier control system... The community has changed a lot over the years, a lot of newcomers have been drawn in as the game has developed more, and I feel like the general attitude on the forums is moving away from the former near-universal gratitude for this free gem of a game and more towards the mainstream judgement of the game as though it were a polished, finished product for which we had all paid good money.

I totally understand being frustrated with the learning curve of the game at times - I was a newbie once too. But when I see people "threatening" to stop playing altogether if it doesn't get easier and attacking Toady as though he were a bad developer, I get frustrated, and at the end of a crummy weekend I guess I just feel like that needs to be said.

What problem do people have with the interface?  It's not *that* difficult to use, they ought to try using vi.  Without arrow keys.  Everything is menu-ed, what more do the gripers want?

(I will admit, I do use Dwarf Therapist for job setting, means I can set jobs for everybody with fewer clicks/keypresses.)

(Also, for the record, I am a DF n00b.)

Honestly since I started playing DF almost exactly one year ago to the day (Happy Birthday to me) I have never once touched DT, Dfhack or anything else to make the game easier to play; except for a Graphics Mod that the tutorial I was watching used. I honestly don't even know what the lazy newb pack does or why you would bother with it. Also, to the people who complain about Dwarf Fortress I'll tell you the same thing I told all the idiots (excuse my mouth) during the BF3 Beta, It's not a finished product! It's there to help the developer figure what's unbalanced, what are the bugs, and what glitches people are exploiting. It's not there to give you early access to finished, polished, product. It's there for the developer.

[Starver]

In the midst of the summary, one item swings out...

All bridges are set to "retract" by default.  This is an almost completely useless function if you intend to use the bridge as a gate for your fortress.  Forgetting to set the direction the bridge draws back to will probably result in needing to have the bridge demolished and reconstructed.

As a default, it's the best one you could have.  Raising can be in any one of four directions.  Even if it's a 1xN bridge it might well be being raised from either end, and there's still a possibility that you're wanting it to raise 'sideways' as a wall.

Granted, if the bridge is over an empty space except for a 1-tile width at one edge, then it's almost certainly going to be raised upon that side[1], so perhaps it's arguable that the single possible raising setting could be default, rather than the equally possible (though maybe only partially useful) retract.  Enough argument to make it better to change from the retract-default in (all/most/some) other cases to raise-default in this one?  Don't know.


At least you know that retract is always an option, and if you don't want it that way you can always change it.  Once you know, of course, and that's where the difficulty lies.



[1] Also, setting up bridges in this way prevents most accidental atom-smashing.  Putting a drawbridge so that it is over flat ground, outside, raising it once the military have charged out to do their stuff then lowering it when the military has triumphed and is milling about is a good way of losing some experienced soldiers.  But if you actually bridge a ditch (or across from the top of one wall to another built-up area, if you can't easily channel a ditch because of your fort level's layout on Z-1) prevents most accidents.

[Sappho]

Just remember that Toady's not only the sole developer, he's also the sole mod for these forums, so when you write something like this:

his baby's grown into something that looks more like an inbred, defect-ridden, mish-mash of coding Frankenstein.

Or this:

A good game is supposed to make you beat your head against the wall because you LOST, not because you have to scroll through endless lists of crap just to find a few things.  Really, the only reason why I'm still playing despite Toady intentionally making the interface completely fucked up is because I love Settlers style gameplay.  I'm starting to seriously consider quitting this game altogether and just playing Settlers...

You're not talking to anonymous forum or a faceless development company, you're talking directly to the person who has spent almost a full decade working on it so far. So please make your criticisms politely and good luck with your information gathering. You already seem to know more about some of the complicated parts of the game than I do and I've been around for five years, so maybe you should write your own comprehensive newbie guide and post it somewhere instead of keeping it all in a forum thread. And like many others, I've never used any of the utility programs, so I wouldn't say that any of them are necessary in order to enjoy the game.

[murlocdummy]

Just remember that Toady's not only the sole developer, he's also the sole mod for these forums, so when you write something like this:

his baby's grown into something that looks more like an inbred, defect-ridden, mish-mash of coding Frankenstein.

Or this:

A good game is supposed to make you beat your head against the wall because you LOST, not because you have to scroll through endless lists of crap just to find a few things.  Really, the only reason why I'm still playing despite Toady intentionally making the interface completely fucked up is because I love Settlers style gameplay.  I'm starting to seriously consider quitting this game altogether and just playing Settlers...

You're not talking to anonymous forum or a faceless development company, you're talking directly to the person who has spent almost a full decade working on it so far. So please make your criticisms politely and good luck with your information gathering. You already seem to know more about some of the complicated parts of the game than I do and I've been around for five years, so maybe you should write your own comprehensive newbie guide and post it somewhere instead of keeping it all in a forum thread. And like many others, I've never used any of the utility programs, so I wouldn't say that any of them are necessary in order to enjoy the game.

I know, and I understand that, and I truly hope that Toady reads this thread.  It shows the major complaints that any new player would have, but wouldn't have the wherewithal or tenacity to actually stick with the game, create a forum account, then post on the forums their concerns.  Frankly, the game PLAYS fine, but it looks and FEELS crappy.  It doesn't matter that the game looks cheap, but the way it plays makes the game SEEM worse than it actually is.  I know I've beaten this horse to death, but interface is the first thing that a player sees when they start the game, last thing they see when they exit, and what they see at every single point in between. 

Whenever I open a menu and have to manually scroll through the whole thing in order to find a particular bridge or dwarf or animal or something, I feel like I'm engaging in a tandem RPG battle in which I have to battle through a hundred boars worth 1xp and give me half a copper coin apiece.  It was interesting and novel the first time I encountered it, but now it fills me with dread every time I have to look for a particular item or dwarf using one of the in-game lists.  Every time I get a migrant wave, I cringe because I know that I'll have to go into the Unit list, rename each and every new migrant in accordance to the data I get from Dwarf Therapist, go into Microsoft Excel and then find, then insert each and every name into the spreadsheet, THEN I can go about and do the sundry tasks of assigning beds and jobs for the dwarves.

I somehow think that Toady left the various inconsistencies and problems in the menus there in order to weed out any new players that wouldn't have the tenacity to fight through it and find the game on the other end.  Frankly, the game plays alot more like

Slaves to Menu:  Demon of Data
Chapter II:  Organization Fortress
Tactical Spreadsheet Action

Battle evil minions
Create a Fortress
Grow your civilization

You will do none of those as you
PLAY THE ROLE OF BOOKKEEPER IN ORDER TO ENJOY THE GAME PROPERLY
©2011 Bay 12 Games


You know, I respect people that have played the game for years and know everything about it, but I don't appreciate the fact that, in order to actually pick up the game and play for the first time, you have to take a minimum 4 credit hours in Dwarf Fortress and get the textbook.  Personally, I like how Toady is still working on the game and packing it full of various gameplay elements, but despite the fact I respect that most of the remaining players don't care about how the game looks, I don't like the fact that they don't quite care how the game FEELS when you play it.  To me, it feels like I'm playing a real-life RPG in which I'm using my keyboard in order to battle an evil menace.  After the first few hours of wide-eyed awe at the novelty and entertainment garnered from said novelty, I rather rapidly figure out how to bore myself to death by knowing exactly where the annoying, grinding portions are, find out the best ways through them, and then realize that the best way through them is still considered long, boring grinding.

Something that I'll just have to live with I know, but it bugs me, and it's not going to stop bugging me, I'll admit that right now. And it sure as hell won't stop bugging new players, who have been and will continue to choose to simply stop playing the game.  According to Toady, he may not have wanted things to "strictly turn into a micromanagement situation"(DF Talk 17 41:26), but you have to in order to properly manage the dwarves and tell them to do basic things like equip armor or build constructions when they do normal things like equip the wrong armor or suspend constructions.  I would really prefer to have the game do most of that micromanagement work, not me.

In the end, I have to say this:  If you guys want to scare off most noobs and only boil them down to the hardcore fanbase that you guys are, then that's fine, I understand that, and I've been there.  It's all kinds of annoying to always have some grammar-challenged asshole complain in all caps every single day about things that you already know are a problem.  The main thing about that is that the presence of the grammar-challenged assholes complaining is just one of those indicators that something is wrong, kind of like your mayor continuously and unrelentingly spamming "Cancelled store item in stockpile:  Area Inaccessible" and irrevocably refusing to Conduct Meeting with the Outpost Liaison.  You can dump lava on the two, build a wall around them, or find out what's wrong and fix it. 

But, then again, that's just my opinion (Insert happy face with beard on it).

[murlocdummy]

Okay, enough ranting about gaming philosophy.  Back to the game itself.

I've figured out that it's extremely efficient to stick workshops INSIDE of stockpiles.  Just hollow out an area the exact size of the workshop in the middle of your stockpile and build the thing in there.  Wood furnace in the middle of a wood stockpile, masons and craftdwarf workshops next to reclaimed garbage stone piles, and pressers, cooks, and farmer's workshops in food stockpiles seems to work quite well.

It's also extremely useful to have a freakishly large dining hall in order to have space to stick your drinks stockpile so that they drink in there consistently.  You don't want your drinks to spill over into your general food stockpile.

One main issue that I've been having is the number of Animals I've been maintaining.  One of the tips the wiki tells you is to maintain a zoo, but I've found that the best thing you can do is DO NOT MAINTAIN A ZOO. 

What I really want to know is, what's the most efficient animal to keep in terms of ease of care and rate of production?

[Newbunkle]

What I really want to know is, what's the most efficient animal to keep in terms of ease of care and rate of production?

This is something I've been meaning to get around to experimenting with. I do know that goats are probably the best grazing animals if you want to keep your pastures small like I do. I don't know how well this translates into meat per pasture tile compared to other animals, but having more animals crammed into the same space sounds better for keeping a breeding stock.

I haven't even begun to think about how they compare to non-grazers. Birds are quite bad for meat and other butchery producst, but they can produce a lot of eggs for cooking.

I've been reluctant to experiment because I find managing the pastures to be tedious. I wish animal feed had been implemented at the same time as grazing.

[Starver]

Every time I get a migrant wave, I cringe because I know that I'll have to go into the Unit list, rename each and every new migrant in accordance to the data I get from Dwarf Therapist,

You know that you can set Nicknames from within DT, yes?

And what I do (given that I currently don't nickname all dwarves, but still like to keep track of pre-known and as yet unexamined migrant dwarves) is to disable something like Burial duties (except when I've got burials need to be done, which is rare for me) for all dwarves that I've assessed (for, for example, military capabilities).  Then I can sort by the appropriate hauling field and all new guys show up at the top.  It's just something that all immigrants have enabled and yet I feel I can unset at will.  Alternatively, Fish Dissection selection (used in reverse) might be a solution (except for the immigrant Fishery Workers, who I'd have to look out for.  But nicknaming them all as you see them is just as viable a method (I think there's even a sort-by-nickname option in DT).  Also, you know about the Init setting to show names as "Firstname 'Nickname' Lastname" instead of just "'Nickname' Lastname"?  Takes more room up on the Units screen, but then makes it easier to search for and distinguishing between "Urist 'Plank' Uristmedtob" the carpenter from "Medtob 'Greensleeves' Uristmedtob" the farmer when cross-comparing with DT's list, if you can see their given first names as well.


To slightly explain the above: At one point I used to 'code' nicknames for all dwarves.  Two-letter military code for their combat speciality (if any, and something like "XX" or "??"[1] if not specialised to any weapon but still militarily interesting because of Dodge, Leader, Student, etc. skills) and then one or three-letter codes for proficiencies (just "---" for peasants), and then tags for family/pet existences.  It made decorations regarding individuals in my fort looked crappy, though, so these days I tend to just use plucky nicknames for the military-types like "Sapper" for my mining expert, "Orion" for the hunter, "Warp" or "Weft" for a weaver.  Something pithy and distinct that's not too close to their profession, although I'd consider "Doc" as well as the likes of "Watson" and "Kildare" for a medic-cum-soldier.  (Those being top-wack diagnosers... if it's a surgery specialisation then "Sawbones" might be the name, or "Plastered" for cast-applying experts.)  I maintain separate units for married/attached military dwarves from the singletons without even a pet, so don't sully their nicknames with "~"s and things, any more.

[...]go into Microsoft Excel and then find, then insert each and every name into the spreadsheet, THEN I can go about and do the sundry tasks of assigning beds and jobs for the dwarves.

I've got some humungous spreadsheets.  Especially from before I started using DT, but no smaller since then.  Included quantifying all psychological issues and (in 0.31.x forts) their appearances, as well as qualifying their various likes and what they might hate.  Had columns for family members (useful when looking for military recruits, if I was excluding those with spouses, and especially children) and pets (or war/hunting dogs assigned/trained by them and following by default), dates of birth/childhood/adulthood where known (in 40d versions of DF, ages were not indicated in the psychology screen, as they are now) and of course possession (and quality) of Bedroom, Office, Dining Room, Tomb, with colour highlights to show which need them.  And while most Psych columns were static, the PTSD one contained (if relevant) details of the "has seen death/doesn't care any more" changeable field.

I also maintained lines for pets.  Especially in early .31 forts, while I was still looking at the various heritability issues.  Every time a new animal got born I'd usually be able to cross-compare its features with its dam (assuming crowding didn't cause confusion) but also see which male creature(s) might have sired it, given things like its ear-colour being different from the mother but the same as this particular male.  I was fairly thorough, if I say so myself, but I micromanaged far too much to get quick analyses on any such record-keeping efforts, especially when the new versions were coming out every other day (at that time).

PLAY THE ROLE OF BOOKKEEPER IN ORDER TO ENJOY THE GAME PROPERLY

I'm a self-described sufferer from CDO[3], but know that I don't need to keep things so recorded.  (My current fortress project (population, around 200, in its sixth year, not yet hit its limit as I have generally upped the pop-cap to 250) has been being run from maybe July time, not all micromanaged to a standstill, but also a lot of non-playing downtime.)  With DT to handle the fine detail

In the end, I have to say this:  If you guys want to scare off most noobs and only boil them down to the hardcore fanbase that you guys are, then that's fine, I understand that, and I've been there.  It's all kinds of annoying to always have some grammar-challenged asshole complain in all caps every single day about things that you already know are a problem.

Interesting thing you say that.  There tends to be quite a good feeling about the people who use these particular forums.  And one of the key reasons suggested is that 1337-wannabee n00bs "who's $%*&ing apostrophe's r in ur faec!" just don't get the game and thus don't tend to get onto the boards to mess them about (and take up Toady (and Threetoe's!) time modding them back to the stone-age).  I'm not saying we embrace the implied elitism, but it can be argued to be useful!  (That is being said somewhat in jest, in case you didn't get the intonation, via this textual medium.)

your mayor continuously and unrelentingly spamming "Cancelled store item in stockpile:  Area Inaccessible" and irrevocably refusing to Conduct Meeting with the Outpost Liaison.

I take it you Burrowed your mayor (as well as remove all other definable jobs) in order that he forget about everything else and get the meeting sorted, but he's got a stray sock or something that he urgently needs collecting?  Well, IIRC, the latest version actually will have better cancellation messages, so you can enburrow the location of the sock (assuming it isn't in the middle of an active battlefield), let him collect that and then talk to the liaison.  Generally, talking with the liaison isn't going to be a job you need to get done Now.  Trading is more urgent (when it says the Traders are about to leave, and you haven't yet done any), but Liaisons are far more patient.  Let the sock issue (or whatever it is) happen, and the rest will sort itself out.  (Though I think they still go mad after a few seasons, or is that a few seasons of not being able to leave the map, afterwards?)

But, then again, that's just my opinion (Insert happy face with beard on it).

Don't let us stop you having opinions.  Bear in mind that a lot of opinions, like suggestions, have already been put many times before and may have been answered (or countered, or told to wait and see) a correspondingly similar number of times, so you may get a bunch of both laconic and verbose replies (guess which mine are!) due to a certain weariness from repetition.  This is a symptom seen in any established community (well established before I first joined) that cannot be easily avoided, but it seems like you're dealing with it better than those 1337-wannabees would.  But this is hardly the most complimentary of compliments, I know.

Personally, insofar as forum behaviour, I currently consider my tendency to post vast tracts of text (being unable to edit my thoughts down, even to my own satisfaction) far more disruptive, and yet I find it hard to avoid TL;DR;-able posts, while still saying anything at all that I mean to.  Then someone comes along and makes an equivalent and summarised version of all I meant in their own post. 


Re: workshops within stockpiles.  Yes, a good trick.  I sometimes carve out multiple 3x3s in a larger stockpile for several such workshops (or even several different workshops for the same material, e.g. several masons and a couple of mechanics all have workshops within the given stone-pile).  You can also interleave stockpiles this way (new stockpile defined over a space with another stockpile with various chunks taken out), but when I do that it's either for aesthetic reasons or because I'm making optimal use of a rectangular room, being divided into equally-sized stockpiles whose sizes aren't themselves factors of the width or height of the room, but a multiple of a subset of the prime factors between the two.  You have to be there, I suppose.

Newbunkle, re: Pasture tedium: New-borns/hatched/immgrants of the animal world appear at the bottom (or one scroll up) of the Available Creatures list, and without any assignment symbols[4].  At the top are all currently-pastured-there creatures, regardless of where their normal location in other pastures' lists is.  If I pasture virtually every creature (or cage, or tie to ropes, for alternate uses, although those mostly best for non-grazers under the current system) then moving creatures between one pasture and another is easiest done by de-pasturing at their current location (i.e. all those, or the subset of those, shown at the top) and then on the new pasture scrolling through quickly looking for gaps, i.e. the ones without pasture/cage/rope symbols by them, and then making a quick sanity-check on creature-type.  Animal feed and mangers is something talked about, don't know if they're on the development list, right now.



[1] Question-marks being possible in DT, but not in DF itself, for the obvious interface reason that "?" always[2] goes to the relevant Help Screen

[2] Well, eventually not, if you've gone to extremes in testing this out.

[3] Very much like OCD, but ordered alphabetically!

[4] Can't remember it that's true about youngsters born to caged mothers.  But I think they'll be there but not assigned, and thus released by the next dwarf with an inkling to take that job.  I might be wrong about that, though.

[Golfball]

If you want bookkeeping hell, try The Campaign for North Africa wargame, published by SPI in 1978.

[krenshala]

Myself, I used to use Dwarf Therapist all the time to help me set who is working on what.  However, since I almost never boot into Windows anymore, and there isn't a linux port of TheRapist, I've gone back to using only the tools available in DF itself.  It takes me a bit longer to do stuff, but I feel I have more of a connection with my idiot dwarves that way.

For animals, there is a thread somewhere that detailed grazing needs versus meat output.  IIRC sheep and goats are close to the most efficient median between the two.  What do you find tedious about pastures?  All I have ever needed to do was to designated a pasture area (with grass in it), then select which animals go in the pasture.  If a pasture looks like it is running out of grass I find the biggest/oldest beastie assigned to it and turn it into leather and hamburger to try and resolve the issue.  I've had good luck with 11x11 pastures so far (i.e., i -> shift+arrow left -> shift+arrow down -> n -> N -> pick which animals are assigned there -> esc -> esc -> check something else).

For the dining hall I typically make a 6x7 (holds 10 tables/chair, one tile border) or 6x9 (holds 14) room with a second 6x9 room next to it.  that second room contains a still, kitchen and fishery with a 3x5 booze and 3x4 food stockpiles.  This has been more than adequate for my current fortress for the last 5 years in game (though, admittedly, I have a popcap of 32 and only 45 dwarves).