Any Dwarf Fortress geeks here?

Actually it's "losing is fun". :)

Well, it is, strangely enough.

DF is really the NetHack of sim-games. Meaning, a big part of the appeal of NetHack was the wide variety of YASD's (Yet Another Stupid Death, for the uninitiated) in it. DF takes that to a whole new level -- you can YASD an entire tribe. :)

(I'm starting over once again. My dwarf king just died in a horrible magma engineering accident and I don't feel like continuing without the little bastard.)
 
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I tried and failed miserably.
There is a reason why I usually shy away from builder-type games. They... uh... are far too complicated for my taste. I was unable to play the Settlers for more than 30 minutes, and I'm far too thick for this one. I'm paid for staring at code and other strange stuff on a screen, and I just can't bring myself to do it in my time off as well.
 
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Yeah, well, it's definitely not a game for everyone. I suppose it's like stout porter -- takes a while to learn to like, but becomes increasingly addictive.
 
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I personaly think a Turorial would be a great asset to this game. I tried the "your first keep" tutorial on the DF-wiki page, but got turned off pretty quickly because of all the aspects that tutorial didn't bring up (on the map, what is what? Magma's supposed to be nice, but what is it, and what does it look like?).

It looks like the game I've been waiting for (I've been waiting for a really good sim for ages), but I'm afraid I won't be able to get into it :(. I'll give it another (more serious) go when I'm ready...

Übereil
 
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Übereil, don't get discouraged. The first 5-8 hours will be confusing as hell, but it gets a lot clearer from there on out -- or, rather, you're confused by things happening in the game rather than the way the game presents them.

The DF wiki is an a fantastic resource; there are a quite a few good tutorials there. Here's my dime's worth on getting started:

(1) Don't worry about fancy stuff like magma, steel, glass, clothing, trade, diplomacy, or war when you start your first fortress. Just concentrate on surviving the winter. For that, you need to figure out:

* Digging lodgings
* Basic comforts (beds, tables, chairs) => needs wood, carpenter's workshop, mason's workshop
* Irrigation (floodgates, levers, connecting the two, channeling water) => needs mason's workshop, mechanic's workshop
* Requirements for farming (muddy floor => getting water at a depth of 1 onto it)
* The kitchen (otherwise your produce will spoil)
* The still (otherwise your dwarves will have to drink water, which they don't like)

That's a quite a handful already, and, as stated, it took me about 6-8 hours to get my first farm going, the first three or four of which were spent in utter confusion.
 
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* Irrigation (floodgates, levers, connecting the two, channeling water) =>
needs mason's workshop, mechanic's workshop
* Requirements for farming (muddy floor => getting water at a depth of 1 onto it)

Floodgate farming is mostly obsolete now.
Sand or clay are the way to go, and at least in the current version you dont need to worry about irrigation with them.
 
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Seriously? No wonder I'm starving every winter. Gotta try that... so you don't need to irrigate at all with sand or clay? Just dig a room and plant your plump helmets, cave wheat, sweet pods, and quarry bushes?
 
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Seriously? No wonder I'm starving every winter. Gotta try that... so you don't need to irrigate at all with sand or clay? Just dig a room and plant your plump helmets, cave wheat, sweet pods, and quarry bushes?

Yup! It's that easy. I'm not sure if Toady did that to ease the learning curve or if there is something else behind that, but enjoy it while you can.

There is also a neat little trick you can do now: expose part of the farm to the sunlight by digging channels on the surface level, and you can grow outdoor crops inside next to your subterrean stuff. :)
 
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Cool, gotta try that. Outdoor crops are just so... un-dwarflike.
 
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I'm makeing slow progress. I have a way of starting over if I make some mistake (which I'll have to get rid off...), so I have so far started four or five new fortresses (with one world per fortress). I was going to really start seriously on the last one but I somehow managed to pick a spot where I started at the top of the mountain, three levels above the forest...

Übereil
 
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Übereil, I think starting over is a big part of the fun. I must've started a dozen fortresses by now, although the latest ones have lasted a bit longer as I figure out more of the basics (I think I finally understand how food works, for example).

However, being three levels up on a mountain is no problem -- just tunnel down and dig a passage to the trees. It's a good idea to add a door and some stone-fall traps to keep the wildlife from wandering in, though. Not to mention kobolds and goblins.
 
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Rightyo, I have survived my first year and received my first couple of immigrants. The interface is pretty nice, though click-and-drag would be quite a timesaver in some instances. I think I managed to find a nice starting area with a river and various kinds of rock/sand/clay ground, have so far found copper and aluminum. I think my greatest hurdle will be the whole "no victory conditions" thing, until I'm overrun by a bunch of goblins, of course, at which point I'll probably start anew with the goal of surviving my first invasion.
 
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I just had my first invasion... and it was bugged. Apparently as of the latest version, the invaders just stand around the edge of the map and do nothing. IOW, play v0.27.169.33b if you want sieges to work. I'm sure it'll be fixed real soon. I guess that's why they call it an alpha...

I'm freezing that game until the next version; it's actually the first fortress I've made that's gone beyond mere survival -- I had about 50 dwarves, a sheriff, a couple of military squads, a big food surplus, and a neat little metal industry. It's kinda amusing that the most expensive metal (other than adamantium) is... aluminum. With platinum.

Next time, I'll pick a spot with flux materials for steelmaking. Iron somehow seems so... primitive.
 
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I just had my first invasion... and it was bugged. Apparently as of the latest version, the invaders just stand around the edge of the map and do nothing. IOW, play v0.27.169.33b if you want sieges to work. I'm sure it'll be fixed real soon. I guess that's why they call it an alpha...

I'm freezing that game until the next version;

Actually, unless I'm mistaken, it has been bugged ever since 0.27.169.32a was released, because of the Z levels. So I think that if you want them to work you need to get the last january's release. And as the invaders will come sooner or later in any case, I dont see much point in saving that for later.

Edit: Apparently 33d released yesterday by the way.
 
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Well, I appologize in advance for a half-assed linkjob...but this guy has a lot of usefull info about dwarf fortress in his blog. He's the reason I got interested in it in the firtst place since I respect his opinions about games (one of the few reviewers who also hated deus ex:invisible war back when he wrote for gonegold.com).

You need to scroll down to September 7th (an inch or so from the bottom of the page) on this one and start from there:

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

He does a walkthrough/tutorial for the first part of the game over a few days, and there's plenty of posts with DF stories from various other people tossed in later...including some here (start almost at the bottom):

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html

and there's also this:

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2007/01/dwarf-fortress-interview.html

There's a 2nd part to that interview but I'm entirely too hungover and lazy to look for it and link it...if you care you can find it yourself. :p

I'd imagine some of the tutorial stuff he wrote is outdated since the game has been updated at least once (twice I think) since then (I haven't played it in awhile) but it still might be useful.
 
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