mbi learns to play Dwarf Fortress!

[MBI]

Intro
Welcome, one and all, to project doomed to failure. In this thread, I shall attempt to play Dwarf Fortress to the best of my abilities.

"Why should I care?", I hear you ask? Well, unlike other similar threads, the player behind this one has almost no clue what he is doing!
That is right! Beyond the basic controls, I have no idea what I am doing! That is right! I have no idea how liquids interact with the world! I have no clue as to how to stop a tantrum spiral! And God help me if as much as a butterfly approaches my fort, as my lifetime kill count on this game stands at one giant sparrow, which a dwarf killed of her own accord.

I ask of you to join me as I stumble through these hurdles, one bloody, quivering step at a time, to smirk at me as I proudly present the stone throne I created, and taunt me with your own tales of wealth and glory as I get slaughtered by goblins.

Will I succeed? Will my dwarves die horribly? Will anyone actually read this thread? No, yes and no.
Find out in posts coming soon!

Strike the earth!

FAQ:
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: Because I am masochistic. Also because I don't post on GitP often enough.

Q: This thread sucks.
A: That's not a question.

Q: Why do you use Georgia? It hurts my eyes!
A: Duly noted.

More coming soon (Maybe).

[RagingKrikkit]

Heh, I've got over a thousand kills in DF.

Although that was because of the rampages I go on in adventure mode, slaughtering one town after another...

Yeah, I'm more or less in the same boat as you.

And also, yes, someone will read your thread.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

This is gonna be fun. Subscribed.

[MBI]

World generation!
I'm planning on using this world for a while, so I think I'll stick things on "Bloody Massive" mode. http://i.imgur.com/5vpbw.png

World is generating... And damn..., If this ain't the most badass name a world can have, I don't know what is.
http://i.imgur.com/Lz6zX.png.


[Many minutes later]

Well, here we are! One Bloody Massive world:
http://i.imgur.com/8kUdz.png

As you can see, the world mainly consists of a single large continent, named...
http://i.imgur.com/REhsa.png.

...

It's going to be a fun journey.

[EternalMelon]

Awww man, I was going to do this... Oh well, now I don't actually have to do anything productive.... Or learn anything about how to play DF... HoHum.

So yes, I will be watching this, and counting down the time until you experience your first bout of Fun.

[MBI]

Awww man, I was going to do this... Oh well, now I don't actually have to do anything productive.... Or learn anything about how to play DF... HoHum.

So yes, I will be watching this, and counting down the time until you experience your first bout of Fun.

I think you should learn to play anyway. My previous two forts have been fun, despite the fact I abandoned the first one before the end of spring, and lost the second one's file mid-Autumn due to stupidity by me.
The single greatest thing that puts people off the game, in my opinion, is the fact that there's almost no help whatsoever. This is actually the 4th time I've attempted to learn how to play, this one being the only one I've made any progress in. Once you overcome the initial hurdle of learning how to do stuff, the game can be immensely fun. And I mean 'Fun' fun, not 'Boiling alive in lava' fun.

On a completely unrelated note, part of the dream I had last night was Dwarf Fortress related, and it was dreamt in ASCII! In the dream, the dwarves had built a fox farm, in which foxes grew from the trees. They were harvesting the foxes once they had grown, then carting them off to the butchers to get food for the fortress. And then evil Cartoon Network and Yoda was the resistance.

My dreams weird are like that.

[RagingKrikkit]

Too much cheese before bed. Or so they tell me.

[Telok]

If you want to play an easier version of DF (with a less lethal learning curve) the version 0.23.125.23a was the last 2D DF version.

[MBI]

If you want to play an easier version of DF (with a less lethal learning curve) the version 0.23.125.23a was the last 2D DF version.

Easier? 2D?
Will someone please escort this man out the thread? His words are most unFun.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Easier? 2D?
Will someone please escort this man out the thread? His words are most unFun.
I second this notion. All hail Fun! (and King Torg!)

Anyhow, The Continent of Incinerating is possibly the most Fun name I have ever seen.

[Weezer]

Looking forward to your adventures into the bloody and cat filled world of Dwarf Fortress. May your picks be sharp, your drawbridge sturdy and your artifacts useful.

[MBI]

Chapter Zero: Meta Choices
Ladies and gentlemen, the day has come to begin this journey. First of all, I searched the maps for the perfect place to build a fort. Naturally, I chose a swamp. (INSERT MONTY PYTHON JOKE)
http://i.imgur.com/xnwU5.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/Ec9Qt.png

Then, using advice from our friendly neighborhood kpenguin (Celebrity endorsement!), I taught my starting dwarves a variety of skills, then bought some supplies to keep the poor buggers alive until we get a fort set up.

http://i.imgur.com/JqrU2.png

At this point, there was only one thing left to do before I embarked. A name.
http://i.imgur.com/sp7Ig.png
Good to know that we're going to be steamed alive in those rare moments in which we aren't getting incinerated.

At last, our journey begins! Strike the earth!

Chapter One: Strike the earth!

1st Granite, Year 251
The first thing saw upon starting the game was that my caravan was parked on top of a hill for no bloody reason.
The second thing I saw was that none of my dwarves were near the caravan at all.
Apparently, my dwarves had pulled it to the top of the hill before buggering off to somewhere else. I found six of them huddled in a single space on top of a small hill, a small distance away. A real promising start, lads. Well done.
http://i.imgur.com/cqx9g.png

After examining the land some more, I found a disturbing lack of stream. Bloody travel agent lied to me... That's what I get for trusting an elf...
No time to worry about that though as my dwarves are starting to get cold. Did I mention all the frozen lakes? Because that's a thing. I set a few of the fellas out to start collecting lumber and plants, before searching for a place to dig... Wait... Is that...?
http://i.imgur.com/6Frlu.png?1
Clearly, this is an omen. I know where to dig.

And they're off! And I missed my chance to get a good picture! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIbYCOiETx0)

19th Granite, Year 251

This is most wonderful news. We had barely been at the site for a week, and already, the lakes have thawed. Progress on the fort is going well, despite the lack of indoors soil in which we can grow crops. Work on the storeroom is complete, and... Oh... Oh dear...
http://i.imgur.com/DwP2N.png
Is this one of those aquifiers I've heard so much about?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

This can only end in tears of joy.

[MBI]

This can only end in tears of joy.

I think that symbol means it's within one space of a water source, in this case, the lake lying directly above my storeroom which will almost definitely collapse and flood the fortress in the future.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit because the mean old mods won't let us double post bluh ect:

http://i.imgur.com/HnR3F.png
Oh come on! I want to place a workshop already! Just mine the bloody block!

Hmm?
http://i.imgur.com/Re2UT.png

...Well, this is an interesting development. I have no idea what this will do to me, but it sounds very potentially fun.

[kpenguin]

Nah, water above collapsing below isn't really a thing that happens unless you get dumb with digging.

[MBI]

Nah, water above collapsing below isn't really a thing that happens unless you get dumb with digging.

So, you're saying that water from above will collapse on me? :smalltongue:

EDIT:

http://i.imgur.com/AxPIy.png http://i.imgur.com/ng4px.png
Welp,

[RagingKrikkit]

Dig, let's find out!

[MBI]

Oh my god. Bins are confusing the ever loving hell out of me. It's almost Summer, and I've spent half of my time screwing around with storage. I don't even have beds set up yet!:smalleek:

[Wookieetank]

Could always use Elves for matresses and goblins for pillows.

[MBI]

Chapter Two: http://i.imgur.com/z1Yzo.png not good at this game

25th Malachite, Year 251

Joy is to be had! After the great bin crisis of Spring 251, my dwarves have finally learned how to be productive! However, all is not well just yet.
As you can see, the drinks supplies are beginning to run low.
http://i.imgur.com/wE3ep.png

Luckily, all is not lost, as work on my farm and still has begun. I'd even go as far as to say that we are making progress. I know! Crazy, isn't it?

http://i.imgur.com/sKpXl.png

As you can see, I now an office, plus enough beds for everyo- http://i.imgur.com/nuYpg.png
http://i.imgur.com/MH32H.png?1
Sigh...

[iyaerP]

Oh man, if you had trouble with BINS?

Well, let's just say that this is going to be interesting and !!FUN!!

If I have to give one bit of advice to a new dorf above all else: SECURITY. Military is part of that, but so is traps, dwarven atom-smashers, dwarven shotguns, defensive siege weapons, drowning chambers, danger rooms and magma cannons. I think you know what you need to do.

[RagingKrikkit]

I think you know what you need to do.

Look up the wiki! (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page)

[Shpadoinkle]

A small bit of unsolicited advice you're free to disregard or even choose to not look at concerning the housing/sleeping situation (spoilered just so you don't read it by accident):

Stick maybe a dozen beds in a single room, then hit 'q' and move the cursor over one of them. Then hit 'r' and use the + and - keys to adjust the size of the room so they're all covered by the blinking blue "aura," then hit Enter. THEN, with that bed still queried, hit 'd' to designate it as a dormitory. Your dwarves without assigned rooms will go sleep in there, as long as there's at least one unoccupied bed at the time. Also note that you only have to do this for ONE bed per dormitory, NOT all of them. Your dwarves will dislike not having a bed of their own, but it's a LOT better than letting them sleep in the dirt.

[Triaxx]

Actually, they'll sleep in the dorm if the beds are full. They'll sleep on the floor, but they won't complain about being outside,which is better than nothing.

@mbi: See those gold stock numbers? That means you need a bookkeeper. Press 'n' and you'll see the nobles screen. You can select a bookkeeper here and then press 's' to set them to highest accuracy. This more or less negates further need for one. Ensure whoever it is has an office. Best to make that same dorf also the manager.

[MBI]

Stick maybe a dozen beds in a single room, then hit 'q' and move the cursor over one of them. Then hit 'r' and use the + and - keys to adjust the size of the room so they're all covered by the blinking blue "aura," then hit Enter. THEN, with that bed still queried, hit 'd' to designate it as a dormitory. Your dwarves without assigned rooms will go sleep in there, as long as there's at least one unoccupied bed at the time. Also note that you only have to do this for ONE bed per dormitory, NOT all of them. Your dwarves will dislike not having a bed of their own, but it's a LOT better than letting them sleep in the dirt.

At the moment, I've just made each dwarf a bedroom of his/her own as I've heard somewhere that if they use a dormitory, they'll get unhappy thoughts.






@mbi: See those gold stock numbers? That means you need a bookkeeper. Press 'n' and you'll see the nobles screen. You can select a bookkeeper here and then press 's' to set them to highest accuracy. This more or less negates further need for one. Ensure whoever it is has an office. Best to make that same dorf also the manager.

Don't worry, for that screenshot was taken immediately after assigning a bookkeeper, a broker and a manager.

Right, that's two comments full of advice I've ignored! Keep them coming!

[BobVosh]

I need to do this sometime, maybe it will inspire me to actually learn the game. My brother is huge in the fandom so I know about all the crazy things that happen in it, but I treat it like I do eve. It is weird, complex, and people can do some incredibly complex things.

Good luck, and watch out for adamantine.

[Weezer]

Good luck, and watch out for adamantine.

Why? Who doesn't like clowns?

[RagingKrikkit]

Guise stahp teh spoilerz!

[MBI]

Guise stahp teh spoilerz!

Guys, it's kinda okay. TVTropes has already spoilt the clowns for me, I'm afraid.

Also, I'm totally going to get around to playing more of this soon! I swear!

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Well this is relevant to my interests. I played around with Dwarf Fortress a bit, but because I'm on Linux, there apparently isn't a Newbie Pack available, and it's been some twenty five years since last I played an ASCII based game. It also means I can't get the dwarf manager working either, which means I have to do everything from within the game. While this is indeed !!FUN!!!, it got to be too much Fun for me to handle. Enough so that I emulated my dwarven friends and went on a mad spiral of DELETED.

Perhaps I shall learn from your playing and see where I went wrong. I think I had problems starting at... umm... let's see... the menus.

[iyaerP]

You want to know the easiest way to prevent a tantrum spiral? Keep every dwarf busy 24/7 so that they never have any friends. That way the only people who tantrum are their immediate family if they die. If every dorf is a social misanthrope who doesn't even know the people that they work with, let alone have any friends, nobody CARES if some stupid miller got stabbed by goblins or crushed under a drawbridge. My most successful fort ever, the one in my sig? 250+ Dwarves, not one of whom other than the starting seven was even more than a passing aquaintance with anyone else. I'll grant that this was back before family migrants were a thing, so I didn't have to deal with that, but that fort only ever died the framerate death. I had ~5FPS when I gave up on it.


Other good ways to increase happyness: Spend the time and effort to carve out 3x3 rooms for every dwarf. Sure it isn't as space efficient as a dormitory or the 1x1 or 2x1 cellblock that lots of players favor, but when every dwarf is the owner of a noble-worthy bedroom with a cabinet, chest, statue and door, not only do they get super happy from it, but they also keep all their miscellaneous crap in it.(sometimes) If said bedrooms are also smoothed and then engraved? Even better. Unhappyness due to sleeping on the floor or in a dorm is the single easiest thing in dwarf fortress to prevent.

Now, not only does my advice give you a really easy source of happy thoughts, it does a few things that also concretely benefit your fort. It keeps all of your masons, engravers, and miners busy. Busy dwarves are happy dwarvs, and they also aren't making friends or running off to claim socks off the corpse of Urist McWalkedIntoABronzeCollossus. This also raises their skills, which is good for when you want some masterwork statues to decorate your royal mauseleum or grand hallway with. Even if you don't have any need for them? Export the overflow. With wagons working again, weight limits on the merchants really isn't a thing to worry about anymore.

There is another concrete benefit of this as well. Every single statue, engraving, door, bed, cabinet and coffer increases the value of your fort. A wealthier fort means more migrants. More migrants means a stronger military and a bigger workforce that can increase said wealth even further. This means you are also more likely to attract foes, but as my previous post mentioned, security is the single most important aspect of any fort. Between your massive population to draft into an army and the huge assortment of traps and fortifications you should have, this should rarely be an issue. Food and Booze is second, happyness a close third.

Third way to greatly increase dorf happyness? Have a waterfall in your dining room. This is the second best dorf happy thought giver, exceeded only by the creation of an artifact, and its value and DANGERFUN cannot be overstated. If you go about creating a waterfall in your dining room, make DAMN sure that it has plenty of drainage. Said drainage should probably come in the form of an automatic pump(or several) pointing at a tunnel that hits map edge with a fortification. Or in a closed loop system that goes back to the top of the waterfall. Regardless, make sure that all pump outputs are walled off from anywhere even remotely close to your main fort. Seriously. If you plan a waterfall, do your research beforehand, especially on such things as pressure and proper engineering, and don't say I didn't warn you if you flood yourself in the attempt.

Other really easy ways of having happy thoughts: Have both your cook and your brewer dedicated dwarves who only do that. All meals should be lavishly prepared in your kitchen. So long as you embarked with seeds and there is a soil layer, food/booze should never be an issue.This is a good rule in general, to have dedicated dwarves who are the best at something doing it, and not as useful dwarves just hauling the crap around. That goes for your planter as well. Make sure you have one to keep your kitchens and brewry stocked. Same rule applies with the aforementioned masons, although it is less important for them.

One last thing in this edit: Industries that should be runing nonstop 24/7

Things that are good for both the fort and Exporting:
Create Stone Mechanism
Create Rock Pots(if you are exporting food)
Create Wooden Bins(to haul stuff to the depot as much as anything)
Carve Bone Bolts
Prepare Lavish Meal
Brew Drink

Things good only for export:
Carve Totem
Create Stone Crafts(or mugs, either works)


Things of use only in the fort:
Carve Stone Blocks
Carve Stone Statues/Coffers/Cabinets/Doors/Coffins (Alternatively, use the manager for this. One mason shop can usually pump out enough to keep a fort running once it is started however, assuming you have constant immigration until you hit population cap)


Everything else can be done as needed.

[MBI]

Right, I'm both tired and ill. What better time to play this some more is there than right now? None, I tell you!


WORDS

Jeeze... I don't even have a dining room yet. Settle down there mate.

[iyaerP]

Dining rooms are important, but not much to worry about. Should have enoughtables and chairs to feed about 1/4 of your fort at any given time, and plan for the future with size. Any dining room large enough for that will be considered "legendary" and give a happy thought accordingly, but it doesn't hurt to smooth and engrave it. (If you DO mass engrave your fort like I do, then you should probably turn engraving visuals off to keep down screen clutter)

And look at it this way: with all this information, now you have something to work towards rather than just a vague idea of how to survive.

[Shpadoinkle]

MBI, relax. The game is huge and there's tons to do, and yes the sheer scope of it all can be overwhelming at first. However, I would recommend you focus on learning how to do one thing at a time, instead of trying to learn how to do everything at once.

Rough outline of my personally recommended order (again, this is just my opinion, feel free to do this stuff in whatever order you want. The earlier stuff is more crucial for survival though.)

- Digging

- Farming/brewing/cooking

- Placing furniture and building walls and floors
-- A subset of this is constructing a dining room, offices, and bedrooms. Individual bedrooms for the majority of your dwarves are far from necessary- they'll only get a minor negative thought from sleeping in a dormitory- but they DO help to stave off tantrum spirals. Only nobles will demand personal bedrooms.

- Trade

- Military (Trade is easier to figure out, which is why it's first, but military is more crucial to survival, but it's also a LOT more complicated. After you figure out how to trade that can help you with outfitting your militia, though.) This includes things like scheduling and outfitting, but also forging your own weapons and armor.
-- Generally a subset of the military, but not necessarily so: Dealing with wild animals, invaders, werecreatures, vampires, and forgotten beasts

- Improving dwarven moods and maintaining good ones (I've been playing for about three and a half years and I still struggle with this one)

- Managing hauling jobs vs. available haulers (there's a 'sweet spot' ratio between hauling producing tasks and haulers themselves, so you don't have too many idlers, that can be difficult to maintain)

[CarpeGuitarrem]

The thought suddenly occurs to me: there should be a game that crosses Dwarf Fortress with Rollercoaster Tycoon. Just sayin'.

[Leecros]

The thought suddenly occurs to me: there should be a game that crosses Dwarf Fortress with Rollercoaster Tycoon. Just sayin'.

You don't need a whole new game for that. All you need is Dwarf Fortress, Minecarts (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Minecarts), and a lot of time.

[Wookieetank]

You don't need a whole new game for that. All you need is Dwarf Fortress, Minecarts (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Minecarts), and a lot of time.

You can also make water slides through creative useage of tunnels and grates.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

And hey... at least it keeps your dwarves occupied so they don't do things like form friendships which start death spirals...

[RagingKrikkit]

Arrrgh, it's stuck in my head! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgAr6ErLAnc)

[Wookieetank]

mbi have the goblins made off with you? Or have you fallen prey to a forgotten beast, or worse clowns? :smalleek:

[MBI]

Sorry about my inactivity guys. I kinda chose to start playing this game in a time where a whole load of exams were coming up, so I haven't really had time to play lately. I'll play some more soon!