The Making Of Dwarf Fortress

[KazikluBey]

Furthermore, I've no idea how much stuff is still at my wagon site, and why it's still there.

You can use the "Set building tasks/prefs" mode ('q') over the wagon and set it to be disassembled. If you do that, any dwarfs with the hauling jobs enabled will carry the goods from the (former) wagon to empty stockpiles that accept the good in question.

Also, building up on the first issue, I've got no idea how to place traps and the like - by the way you talk, that's an important aspect of gameplay, but I've got no idea how to do something like that. In the same vain, manipulating water (haven't yet seen magma) is similarily cryptic - I'm not even sure how to build a well. Yes, I've read that guide, but it mentions just the basics - "build xyz, set storage xyz, plant seeds... you're on your own now".

Yes, it can be a little cryptic at first, but remember - losing is fun! The game doesn't end just because you made a mistake (unless, perhaps, it's of the flooding kind), so experimentation is the key. No one built all that high-tech stuff in their first fortress.

Now I'm trying to build bedrooms for each of my dwarves, but I don't know what they want (other than a bed, obviously).

A three square bedroom with a bed and a container (bag, coffer, etc) is enough for the common dwarfs.

Oh, and another big thing: no idea how to handle all the stone lying around. I had trouble with it the first time round, so in this game I figured I'd build all the main things in a section of soil - unfortunately, those walls can't be engraved (and I figure they'd want that ), so I dug down to rock to make the bedrooms - unfortunately, now I've got tons of stone lying around preventing me from further building. I've already made a huge stone stockpile, but there's still bunches and bunches of stone. I wish there was a way to move the stone from the bedrooms to another area (setting them to "dump" doesn't work) - and preferably without making a storage area, because I don't know how to remove a storage area afterwards.

To make the "dumping" work, you need to set up a "Zone" of at least one square set to "Garbage Dump" ('i'->Enter->Enter->'g') - that'll make dwarfs with the "Cleaning" (I think that's it, otherwise, stone hauling) job enabled dump "dump" stones there. There's no upper limit to the amount of garbage you can put on one garbage dump square that I know of.

In the end, it's an interesting enough game (evidenced by me being so eager to explain what I'm doing), but some of this stuff will keep me from playing it, and I'll just go back to Emperor: RotMK (at least there I know what's in my storages!).

I prefer Pharaoh among the games of that lineage.

BTW, it might be my computer, but saving a world/exiting a game takes so much time... other than that, I've had no troubles, even though my comp is below the reqs, CPU-wise.

Yes, it's a quite demanding game.

 

[KazikluBey]

Dont worry about the site too much, the caravan has always come to me no matter how inaccessible site i have chosen.

If you make your trade depot accessible to wagons (need 3 tile width, smooth way from entrance to depot) the merchants can carry a lot more goods. But as you say, there's no need to worry about that until one has all the basics down pat.

 

[Guest]

Kazik, I think the job for dumping is "refuse hauling" but otherwise what you said is pretty much all good.

 

[Prime Junta]

...there's no handy in-game help...stuff isn't clear at all...I've got no idea...I've no idea ...I've got no idea how...I've got no idea...I'm not even sure...I don't know...no idea...I had trouble ...

That's the single biggest problem of DF right there -- you're utterly, hopelessly, irredeemably confused for more hours than most people can handle. To start with.

However, there are answers to each and every one of your dilemmas. Should you choose to stick with it for a few more hours, they will become clear and you'll (probably) actually start to enjoy yourself... and then your soul is toast.

But, as everybody says, this isn't for everybody, and it is one forbidding game to get started with.

Now, gotta get back to building my production line...

 

[Guest]

PJ, show us screenies, yes?

 

[V7]

don't do stone stockpiling. its a waste of time.

You don't need to worry about it in the begining but a stock of stone outside your mason's shop will save him running all over the map looking for it, and if you have catapults you really really want to have a ready supply of amunition.

 

[V7]

HEck, I spent an hour just tooling around the map. The wiki does a crappy job of explaining site selection. I figure that I need to be in the mountains since we're talking dwarves and excavations, but I also need trees and vegetation, which don't grow in mountains. Then, it would seem that I've got two choices for the entrance--either a mine shaft down in the middle of a forest or a proper mine entrance into the side of a mountain. The former means caravan problems and the later entails a rather specific location. I think I might be making it overly difficult.

Personally I've far more picky about sites than I should be so I know where you're coming from but if you're just experimenting to begin I'd recomend looking for a site on the edge of a mountain range with forest and water (pick a mountain area somewhere in the middle so its not too hot or cold and move along the edge untill you find a site that straddles mountain and forest biomes - the different biomes can be viewed with the F keys), that'll give you pretty much everything you need for a nice little dwarven outpost.

 

[Guest]

All true, yes.

But still, the most important thing is to have fun and experiment.
Don't worry too much about trying to optimize everything and "powergame".

 

[VPeric]

Ah, thanks for the explanations about stone dumping, Zakhary and Kaziklu. All clear now (I was figuring it'd go in the refuse storage, but apparently not).

Re: Wagon - yes, I did dissasemble it, but I suppose stuff is still there because my indoor storages aren't big enough - just how big should they be?

Re: Pharaoh - I've had a lot of fun with it, yeah, but the newer installments in the series offer plenty of little things that make life easer (ie. after using roadblocks in Pharaoh, I'm sure you'd have lots of trouble adjusting to Caesar 3).

One thing I'm still not getting - why exactly do I need running water? If I'm farming in soil, I (apparently) don't need to irrigrate, and my dwarves drink alcohol anyway, so what am I supposed to use running water for?

 

[Guest]

Running water. Sick dwarves need to drink water. Water is usefull for traps and to power machines. (water wheels). You might wish to farm some subterranean crop later (or just farm deeper inside once you start getting attacks or other problems. Floodgates and switches = Love.
If the water is not running water (river, brook) it will eventually end.
You can create waterfalls and artificial lakes or dig rivers to make your fortress harder to reach to attackers. Some of these things are obviously optional but running water is common, rivers are everywhere, so it's not like it's hard or something to choose a spot with running water.

And most importantly: playing around with water is fun fun fun!

To construct a well you just need to dig a channel above an area that contains water (usually you need to do some digging yourself to channel water to an appropriate place) then place the well over the water in the open space that you have dug. Check out the wiki, it explains it quite well imo.

Fun fun fun fun! Urdim Cattenolil has grown to become a donkey. DONKEY!

 

[Prime Junta]

It's also teh hard and teh frustrating.

I found another site, this time with some steel-making materials, and started over with my armor factory.

And, of course, I had to have my indoor waterfall.

So: I had to raise water six levels up, from the brook at the other end of the map. I dug some channels between ponds, and made my patented multi-level waterwheel powered pump installations.

This took about a year on the game calendar.

Ten, during the winter, some of the pumps mysteriously self-destructed. Maybe they froze. There was no water in them, though, which was a bit odd.

So, come spring, I've finally got everything set up. I breach the last channels, letting the water run, the wheels spin, the pumps pump, the waterfall cascades, and there was much rejoicing.

Of course, I had forgotten to close my sewer access floodgate, which meant that the water ran right down my stairwell, into my foundry, down my magma smelters... and turned the magma below into basalt.

So: close the floodgate, demolish my smelters, dig out the basalt, rebuild them. Whew. By that time, one of my pumps had stopped because it couldn't pump out the water fast enough to keep the wheel turning. So I had to run a pipe down to my sewer entrance (which goes down to the Chasm.)

That made the water run too fast, so I had to enlarge my entry channels. Power up, and yay, we're off again. Waterfall!

Then I noticed that I had accidentally dug a tunnel right under my well. Which, of course, is fed by the waterfall.

Which meant that I flooded my mines.

At that very moment, a big honkin' party of migrants arrive, demanding more food, more beds, more rooms, more everything. AARGH!

Oh well, I plugged that hole, kinda. I'll fix it properly next winter when the brook freezes. If my pumps burst, I'm gonna have to try something else -- running the whole shebang underground.

This is fun. Frustrating and addictive, but fun. I think I need a bit of a break from it, though; I have a feeling that these damn dwarves are devouring my soul.

 

[V7]

Re: Wagon - yes, I did dissasemble it, but I suppose stuff is still there because my indoor storages aren't big enough - just how big should they be?

I generally build them 5x4 or 5x5 and leave room to add more as they fill up. If you've got the wood to spare you also want your carpenter to knock out a couple of dozen barrels and bins which will allow your dwarves to stack some items more efficiently (furnature and other objects are too big).

If youve still got stuff by the wagon you might not have a stockpile set up for that item yet, you also might not have enough free dwarves to shift everything if they're all busy with more important tasks.

 

[V7]

Starting out concentrate on getting food and booze production going, I generally skip the irrigation and build farms in a subsurface soil layer which gives you the underground plants without watering and is also easy to dig out for large store rooms. After farms and a still build a carpenters workshop for beds barrels and bins and a masons workshop for doors, chests (coffers when made of stone) and cabinets, then do the bedrooms (I make the basic ones 2x2 and give them a bed cabinet and chest but there's a pile of different designs that work) - the bedrooms should be at least 4 spaces from theworkshops to stop the dwarves getting upset by noise. With that finished you've got a basic self sustaining settlement and can start experimenting.

To answer the earlier querry about traps, you need to make rock mechanisms in a mechanic's workshop then [build]->[trap/leaver] and choose the type, stonefall traps don't need any more than a mechanism, cage traps need a cage (from the carpenter or metalsmith) and weapon traps use standard weapons or special trap wapons made by the carpenter (spiked balls and spikes) glassworks or forge.

 

[Guest]

This is fun. Frustrating and addictive, but fun. I think I need a bit of a break from it, though; I have a feeling that these damn dwarves are devouring my soul.

Frustrating? You're just too damn ambitious with your industrial fantasies
Break? Soul? Who cares about a soul? I lost mine when I shot an endangered small bird with an air gun as a kid.. and told nobody about it.

No.. it's your queen. I know you have one! you posted in the off topic forum!
The queen has given you a mandate to spend less time about with your computer.
No need to say it, man, I know how it works.

Just remember to start playing again when the new version comes out (which if I'm reading the website correctly is going to be quite soon) because I'm sure I'm gonna have many kilos of stupid questions again

 

[Prime Junta]

Re screenies: I might do; the trouble is that these hydraulic thingies are multi-level, so I'd need to take a lot of them. But we'll see later today.

Re the queen: there is that, too...

 

[Guest]

I have flooded an entire forest next to the mountain I'm living in/on with my pumps and a nice waterfall!

 

[Prime Junta]

I prefer chasms -- you can just dump the water there, tidily out of the way.

 

[Guest]

There's one thing I still haven't looked into....
Siege Engineering.

Anything cool & funny I could do with a ballista?
Or perhaps a catapult?

Could they be used as a trap of somekind?
Long 1-tile corridor + pressure plate + armed ballista = Love?
Would there be lots of blood & gore?
EXCESSIVE VIOLENCE!!!!!!11

 

[Prime Junta]

I think ballistae and catapults need operators; you can't automate them. I haven't done much with them because in earlier versions they were bugged -- the operators would run away at the first sign of danger, even if they were behind fortifications. I didn't know this, spent quite some time building a wonderfully defensible siege-engineered entrance to my fort, only to have the entire effort go completely to waste when a hydra showed up.

But give it a try and report back. I'm sure the violence will be excessive.

 

[Guest]

No automation? Disgusting! I'm gonna continue with spiked balls, serrated disks, weapon traps and stonefall traps.