Why should I play Dwarf Fortress?
Because of the sheer number of awesome things you can do. Beyond the fact that the game creates a new world, with its own mythology, legends, and history generated uniquely each time, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff. Under seige? Flood the world, then fill it with magma to wipe out all life outside your gates. Too many wild animals roaming your halls? Capture them and butcher them for meat, or chain them to the entrance of your fortress to attack enemies. Got a dragon laying waste to your countryside? Send out a wrestler to kill it with suplexes and holds. Boring old dungeon? Fill it with engravings of tentacle demons killing dwarves, or puppies burning to death.
If the city/fort building sim isn't your thing, there's a roguelike 'Adventure Mode', which lets you set off on your own to battle pretty much anything. As you talk to people, you'll uncover the legends of the land, history behind locations, and can even explore the forts you've built. Combat is awesome, check the bottom of this post for some great combat screenshots.
Ascii art is lame, I want graphics!
There are graphical tilesets you can get for the game (I've got a screenshot of one towards the bottom of this post), but honestly once you sit down and start playing and getting used to the ascii artwork, you'll find that it's really not bad at all.
You can download it here :
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
A great wiki which explains nearly everything about the game is here :
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Main_Page
The game is complex, and that's saying the very least. There are tons of jobs for your dwarves to do, tons of things to do to prepare, and tons and tons of ways to die. In DF, death comes easily and often. But that's half the fun, rite?
A good newbie guide is here :
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So how do I play?Playing is as easy as creating nuclear fusion using only the power of your mind, much like any roguelike game, so I'll offer a brief overview of your beginning game so you have some idea how to play (although there is also a reasonably good documentation in-game.)
First off, the controls. Most of everything in the game is controlled by the +- keys, the enter key, the space keys, and the arrow keys. Usually, the +- keys will move around in the command menu, the enter key will select something, the space key will back out of whatever menu you are in, and the arrow keys will move you around in the real map; but it's not 100% consistent. Be prepared to experiment.
You start off creating a world. Since every world's features, civilizations, legends and so on are randomly generated, no one is playing the same world. On the other hand, world generation can take a long time to ensure that you have a world capable of including everything; I've seen results anywhere between 75 and 175 rejections before it generated something. It will also take some time to generate the actual world; the landscape is fast, but civilization building and unit building is fairly slow. Thankfully, you will not have to do this often; each world contains 50 spots for Fortresses, and a large, large number of things to kill in Adventurer Mode.
Once you've done this, you can start a new game. There are three modes: Dwarf Fortress is the meat of the game, the city-building sim where you command dwarves. Adventurer Mode is the token roguelike, which currently consists of wandering through the world with whatever weapons you have until you get killed by monsters, or talking to people to find out the legends of the world, which then show up in Legends mode, which is basically an overview of what all has happened in your world (including a lot of stuff that only happened in the world gen portion); however, it's all secret at the start, so you have to find out about it in Adventurer Mode for it to show up.
Dwarf Fortress mode starts you out in the preparation screen. You can either select to Play Now!, which gives you a reasonable set of skills and equipment at a random starting spot, or prepare for the journey, which allows you to pick out all of this yourself with a pool of 200 points.
First you work out your dwarves. You won't need every skill at first, but you want people who can mine, chop wood and make wooden things, cut stone to make stone things, farm fields, fish, possibly hunt (but if you do take someone who can hunt, make sure to give him a weapon skill, ideally Marksdwarf.) However, any dwarf can learn anything if he's assigned the job, and their skills will increase as they use them, so don't feel the need to buy every skill in the list.
Next you'll need supplies. I myself have never been quite clear on what kinds of supplies are best; I usually increase my food supply by a bit and add in the other two types of seeds to ensure I can plant anything I might want later on, rather than having to rely on finding the seeds. You may also want to add in another pick, axe; or possibly weaponry, depending on how dangerous your starting area is. (Picks are the tool for mining, axes are the tool for wood chopping.)
Finally, you select your area. This costs no points, so pick a reasonably temperate area with good forestation, vegetation, and not too many things trying to kill you. You can pick a more dangerous area for greater challenge, but you run the risk of getting killed or not having enough resources, or countless other problems.
So, assuming you've done all this, all that remains is to hit e to embark and send your dwarves on their merry little way.
Not Dying in a variety of colorful ways
http://66.90.96.17/images/df3ccc.jpg
So, you're in front of a cliff face with a bunch of faces milling around a nine square of brown blocks (your wagon.) Time to start! First hit space to pause, so nothing stupid happens while you're telling your dwarves what to do. Then, hit TAB a few times to make the interface less annoying; you'll probably want to keep the command list up for now, but the world map is unimportant.Next hit d. This will bring up your Designations list, for things like telling your dwarves what parts of the mountain to hollow out. Your cursor should be a yellow block; move it over to the mountain and pick a spot connecting with the outside, and designate an entrance to your soon-to-be fortress of evil. While you're at it, designate some trees for your carpenter to chop down in the same way, but don't designate too many; you want him to also have some free time to make stuff from those trees.
Now, exit out of that. Now hit p. This will bring up your stockpile designation list, which tells your dwarves where to put all the various trash that they find. Since it's only a designation, no one has to build these; they just pop into existence. Put down a Food, Wood, Stone, and Refuse designation at the bare minimum. Your stone designation should be a good size, as well, since you'll be pulling out a LOT of rock from your mining efforts.
Now, exit out of that and unpause. Your dwarves should get to work, moving stuff around, digging, and chopping trees. Watch them work uncomplainingly at back-breaking labor for no pay. Possibly giggle evilly. Once you've got some rocks, though, pause again and hit b. This will be one of your most visited windows; this is where you place things.
For now, you don't have most of the things to place, so find Workshops (or hit w from within this menu). Select a Mason's Workshop; it should go to a list of rock types you have. Probably short right now, but later this will be massive. Hit enter to pick any random type (use rocks, and not wood; wood is harder to come by, and you want to save it for other projects.)
Now you should have a 3x3 square of green Xs. The light green Xs indicate parts of the workshop that will be passable once it's complete, while the dark green Xs indicate parts that will be solid. For now, place it outside somewhere. Your mason dwarf should pick up a rock and lug it over to the workshop, and it should get finished.
Repeat the above process with a Carpenter's workshop now. You should note however that this will probably not finish anytime soon, since your carpenter has to build it, and he's probably busy cutting his wrist down trees. The various types of buildings take various skills to make; usually, whatever profession will be using the workshop is needed to build it.
Let's take a quick look at how you give dwarves new jobs. Go back to the main menu and hit v. This should give you a cursor, and your window should become an examination of whatever dwarf is closest to that cursor. You can hit various buttons within this, such as g to see general stats, i to see inventory, p to see his settings, and w to see his condition. Go to his settings for now.
There, you should be able to hit l for Labor, and a list of job types will pop up. You can scroll through it with + and -, and hit enter to select/deselect any jobs you want; he will then do or not do those jobs. These jobs include just about every task a dwarf could need to do, from refuse hauling to metalworking.
Now, you should have at least a Mason's Workshop done, so it's time to do something. Go back to the overview and hit q, which should bring up a cursor and change the window to the build orders for whatever building is closest. Find your Mason's Workshop, and hit a. This will bring up a list of things he can build. Right now, you want to add Stone Blocks first. You'll need other things, too; right now, you need tables and thrones (which are basically rock chairs.)
Build one throne per dwarf you have, and a table for each one (each table can have up to four thrones at it, but if you push them next to each other to make one long table then that'll go down.)
Next, dig out another room, at least 3x5. You'll put the finished tables and thrones in here, and it will become your dining room. Dwarves dislike eating without sitting down, and that will become an unhappy thought, which in turn pushes them closer to being unhappy, which is bad on many levels.
Now wait. Your dwarves should cheerfully go about their work. Once your Carpenter's Workshop is done, queue up a bucket and one bed per dwarf you have, then dig out another room at least 3x4 to put the beds in. Later on you'll need to build a room for each dwarf, but early on they're willing to sleep barracks style.
Once your beds, bucket and blocks, or tables/thrones are done, hit b again. You can place everything, not just buildings, from this menu. If your tables are done, plop them down in whatever room you made your dining room, in a pattern such that the thrones are next to the tables. If your beds are done, plop them down in your barracks. Finally, if your blocks/bucket are done, pick out Well from the building menu and put it in an open room with lots of access, since your dwarves will come here regularly.
Once all of these are done, you should have a basic fortress which won't die within five minutes from berserk dwarves, and where you go from there is up to you. I'll give you two more important things to do, however.
The first is a Craftsdwarf's Workshop. Here is where you will build all kinds of useful and neat things, primarily trade goods. These will go in a Finished Goods pile. They're important because anything you didn't start with the ability to produce, and a lot of things you did, you'll want to get from the rest of the world (for which you'll need a trade depot, and also a road for trading with non-dwarven traders.) In fact, if you're clever and have been reading the text in the game, you'll have noted that a supply caravan is supposed to arrive in the fall; but their goods aren't free, so you'd better have some stuff to trade back to them if you want their supplies.
The second part is farming. This is complex and confusing and important, so it gets special mention. You see, you farm in-cave; apparently you farm mushrooms or some other plant that doesn't require sunlight. To do this, however, you'll need to find your first in-cave river. Make a long, 1xlots dig designation into the depths of the mountain. You should find one after a few screens; in fact, your dwarf will probably have to run for his life from the flooding after you hit the river. Once the flooding recedes, however, you can open up holes to the river more or less safely.
This is important, since your dwarves farm with river mud. Dig open a spot next to the river; keep it separate from the rest of the cave, accessible only by a one square entry, where you'll put a door (build it from the Mason's Workshop.) Now, dig open one or two squares to the river. Nothing should flood at this point.
Now, you'll need to dig out a small adjunct room next to the door to the river-access room, which we'll call the control room. Once the door is between the access room and the control room, hit q and you should be able to set up the door. Keep it closed, but not locked.
Now, for the next trick, you will need to build a floodgate from your mason's workshop, and a mechanics workshop, from which you'll need three mechanisms. Make one of your dwarves work at Mechanics if you don't already have one.
Put your floodgate at the spot in the access room where the room meets the river. Next, build a Lever from b; this will take one mechanism and will be under Traps/Levers. Once the lever is built, hit q again and you should be able to set it up. Add the task "Hook up to a floodgate; it should give a list of floodgates, and there's probably only the one, so select it. Then it'll need two mechanisms; one for the gate, and another one for the lever.
EDIT: There've been some problems with water pathing recently, warranting an edit here: It may be necessary to install a second floodgate in front of your first one to convince the water to enter your access room, and some have suggested using a door and a second lever at the junction between access and control rooms, for additional safety. Note that every floodgate you hook up will require two mechanisms (one at the gate, one at the lever), and levers require one mechanism to construct.
Once all of this is set up, go back to the lever's menu and add the task "Pull the lever." One of your dwarves should come up to the lever soon and pull it, at which point the access room will be flooded (and the control room as well if you didn't set the door to be closed at all times.) Pull the lever again, and the water will recede.
But wait... the rocks in the access room are now brown with river mud! You can now build Farm Plots on it from the building menu. Once the plot is built, you can access it's menu the same way as with any building, and select what you want planted there; plump helmets are a good start, since they're a normal food item.
Every season you'll need to re-indicate what you want planted there, and the mud will harden in the winter, so you can't plant then; you'll need to re-flood the room in the spring, as well.
However, this is your primary food source by far; hunting is slow and unreliable, especially since the hunt target code is RETARDED (Well there's a deer right in front of the fortress, but let's go to THE END OF THE MAP and kill there instead!), and fishing only provides one fish/use and takes time; it also demands the full attention of the fisher, whereas one farmer can fill up a small plot on his own and get 3 plump helmets per spot.
So what else is there?
Increasing Social Dynamics!
Your dwarves live in an egalitarian, communist society at first; everyone has a few personal possessions, but everything is shared between people and whatever is needed is a tool "for the people." However, as your fortress expands, nobles will move in; they demand a lot, but in return, they expand your prestige and social dynamic. For example, the Manager allows you to dictate orders of things you need built, rather than queuing things at each workshop; with him comes the Sheriff, and criminal justice. Later on once you start making money, you can even have an internal economy.Wars and Monsters!
Those military skills aren't just for deer. Monsters will sometimes show up in your fortress, both from outside and from inside. You'll need military dwarves to defend you from frogmen using your dwarves as farm creatures and raiding you from your cave river, and also to keep jealous goblin, human, or elven kingdoms from outside from entering your base and killing your mans. This is especially true if you live near Evil regions, special parts of the map which are corrupted by evil (think the area around Mt. Doom from LOTR. Nothing good or friendly lives there.)
FAQ :
How do I cancel construction of a bridge, or delete an exisiting bridge?
When accessing a building or object, you can always access them with either q or t.
My dwarf has some weird mood, what's going on?
He's trying to make a legendary item. Let him take over a workshop, give him his demands ('rough color' is usually some kind of glass), and you'll get a legendary item out of it.
My mine is caving in, what do I do?
Any unsupported 7 x 7 area will collapse, eventually. Either build a support, or don't mine out the entire area. A 6x7 area is fine, a 6x100 area is fine, but a single 7x7 area will collapse.
How do I know where to start my first fortress?
Here's a good guide to deciding starting locations : http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Creatures#Threat_Matrix
Finally, some images!
Too many immigrants putting a strain on your food supply? No problem! Just put 'em in a room and flood it! Problem solved!
An EXTREMELY zoomed-out view of a late-game fortress
An example of the graphical tilesets.
And some examples of Adventure Mode!
You can use anything you can pick up as a weapon. How many other games do you know of where you can fight a polar bear with a severed wolf's head?
Fighting (And dying from) a hydra. It reads like a movie script.
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And coming in at #1 is nem-x with "Reply." I'm Casey Casem.
This game would be great... if I were BBSing
You know you want to. BBS games are simple, yet awesome.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
The valley fills up quickly.
Not much you can do in many cases, but if you happen to have dug deep enough into the mountain to find the magma river, and made a channel of that to the outside, you can do this...
Generally, not a good thing to do if any dwarves were outside stranded on bridges or something.
It pretty much rapes the land, covering it with ash. Somehow, trees usually survive (Thank god - wood is very, very valuable in this game). If you've made contact with an elven nation, this also pisses them off, as they find out how much you've trashed nature.
And any survivors tend to be fairly scarred by the whole ordeal. If any of those survivors are engravers, then they may be inspired to engrave the events on the walls of your fortress, giving any visitors a disturbing introduction to the local history.
Khyron fucked around with this message on 02-16-2007 at 02:39 PM.
If it wasn't for Moria, I might have lasted longer in college. Well, that, and the fact calculus eluded me.
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Tarquinn painfully thought these words up:
That game seems to have alot "depth", with better graphics this could be a hit.
I don't think it would take a lot of effort to make even an 8-Bit version, which alone would be a vast leap in improvement. ASCII games give me headaches, unless it's just ASCII art every couple of actions like Legend of the Red Dragon. But playing with ASCII characters is just ugh. Skaw fucked around with this message on 02-16-2007 at 08:50 PM.
(Also, screw Nethack, ADOM rules it!)
Not only did I mess up the layout of my fortress (1 square wide hallways, oops); but it didn't give a choice of where on the map to place it, so I'm surrounded by frozen tundra.
The thing which caused me to give up at the time was the fact I couldn't figure out how to pick up and place stuff like, beds.
Also, when you're speccing out the dwarves at the beginning, is it best to have each dwarf be a specialist - one maxed miner/mason, another maxed wood/cutter, or is is better to give each a variety of novice skills?
And why is it written in OpenGL and need 3d acceleration to show text-based graphics?
Still, this could be mad fun if I was short 3800 gold still for my epic flyer in WoW 
quote:
Mightion Defensor had this to say about Duck Tales:
I played with it for an hour earlier today beofre leaving for work...Not only did I mess up the layout of my fortress (1 square wide hallways, oops); but it didn't give a choice of where on the map to place it, so I'm surrounded by frozen tundra.
The thing which caused me to give up at the time was the fact I couldn't figure out how to pick up and place stuff like, beds.
Also, when you're speccing out the dwarves at the beginning, is it best to have each dwarf be a specialist - one maxed miner/mason, another maxed wood/cutter, or is is better to give each a variety of novice skills?
And why is it written in OpenGL and need 3d acceleration to show text-based graphics?
Still, this could be mad fun if I was short 3800 gold still for my epic flyer in WoW
1 square hallways work, but they cause traffic jams. Here's what I suggest.
First, when starting out, use Space and prepare carefully. For your 7 dwarves, make the first two miners (Just plain miner, not competent or skilled or anything - as they work at it they'll get better), make the third a carpenter and woodcutter, make the fourth a mason and building designer, make the fifth a mechanic and something else (Brewer is a really good idea here) and the sixth and seventh should be growers.
Hit tab, and go to your item screen. You only need 1 battle axe, not 2. Take 30 plump helmet spawn, and 10 cave wheat, pig tail, and sweet pod seeds. Take 30 total alcohol (I usually do 10 beer, 10 ale, 10 rum) and take 30 food (With at least 10 turtles - you can use the bones and shells to make items later on).
Take 2 dogs and 2 cats.
Hit tab again, and you can select your starting point. You'll probably want a warm or temperate area, make sure it's got good woodlands (Wood is really important), and make sure the local wildlife isn't too tough.
Once you've found a good spot, press e to set out.
When you get there, dig straight into the mountain until you reach the river. While your miners are digging out an area, build a mechanic workshop and masonry workshop. You'll want at least one door, two floodgates, and five mechanisms ready for your farming. I like to bridge the river first, and set up farming and rooms for my dwarves on the far side of the river.
Once you've set up a farm, build some rooms for your dwarves (Doesn't need to be very big) and put a bed in each room (Build the bed with 'b' in the build room menu). If you want to move a bed, hit t and remove it first, then build it again somewhere else.
It's written in OpenGL because Toady (The creator) included support for graphical tilesets, but hasn't created any himself yet. It's an option you can get (See the screenshot above for an example of a tileset that uses graphics) if you download a tileset from the Wiki.
When I get home I'll see if can make a new world in less than 90 rejects.
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How.... Mightion Defensor.... uughhhhhh:
Yeah, I chose to manually prepare for the journey, but after speccing my dorfs I never hit tab to choose where to place it or to choose supplies...When I get home I'll see if can make a new world in less than 90 rejects.
Each world has easily 50+ spots to make a fortress, you don't need to create a new one. Just abandon your existing fortress and make a new one (Choose Dwarf Fortress, not Reclaim Fortress).
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Maradon! wrote:
the learning curve is a sheer cliff face covered in ice.
But at least the interface is like climbing gloves made out of Scotch tape.
http://home.comcast.net/~khyron2k/MyFort.jpg
I made a 3-tile wide entrance that I am going to widen to 5 tiles wide if things get really busy.
Outside is the trash dump and my secondary stone stockpile. The main storerooms are the first things you'll come to above the hallway (Cloth, Finished Items, Weapons, Furniture, gems, wood, and ore). To the right of the main stockpile are my workshops (Masonry, Craftsman, Mechanic, Carpentry, Metalworks, Loom, Jewelcrafting, and Clothesmaking).
Below is my smelting area. I've got a farmer's workshop for making threads from plants, a secondary masonry workshop, wood furnace for making charcoal for my metalworking, and a smelter to prepare the ores. Eventually that's also where I'm going to put the glassworks. To the right of the smelting area is the primary stone stockpile.
Across the cave river is my farm with a seed storehouse next it (Custom 'food' stockpile that has ONLY seeds selected). Above that is the kitchen, still, and butcher. To the left of the kitchen is a drink-only storehouse, and to the right is a food storehouse. Below the butchery is the main dining hall, which seats 16. To the right of the dining hall is the soon-to-be barracks.
Below the farm is the living quarters, which currently has 20 rooms (Beds are the 0 signs, the AE things are coffers) and will have 45 once that living area is completed. To the right is the meeting hall and the well.
I'm sorely tempted to start digging east until I can come to the magma river, as creating metal goods is really taxing my supplies of wood. The only bad thing is, I haven't got any soldiers yet, so if any chasm/magma monsters show up, I'd be fucked. Then again, if any river monsters like snakemen or frogmen show up, I'm fucked anyways.
Oh, and FYI - once you start digging east of the magma flow, you'll come to demon-filled pits. If you manage to survive those, and keep digging east, you'll come to adamantite ore - the best ore in the game, but dig up too much and it'll end the game by saying you've dug too far and awoken a greater demon.
Also, keep in mind that ANY dwarf can do ANY job, by changing their labor preferences. Go to a dwarf, hit v to select them, hit p for preferences, then l for labor. Select the jobs you want them to do from the list. You can make dwarves do every job, but they'll be horrible at them and slow. Any goods created will take ages and end up being horrible quality.
An expert miner can clear away a block in about 1 second, meaning they mine almost as fast as other dwarves move. Two of them is all you'll ever need. An expert farmer can get enough food from a 3x3 farming plot to feed 30 dwarves through the winter (Well, maybe not from 3x3, but the crops they plant grow fast as hell and they can harvest like, 5 items per crop). An expert craftsman will make trade goods that trade for insane amounts of items, and an expert mason will make doors and tables so fancy that everyone in your fortress will constantly be cheerful just to be surrounded by such splendors. Khyron fucked around with this message on 02-17-2007 at 11:57 PM.
I'm also very pissed that I just lost an expert miner to elephants. Took me forever to find his body. He just...wandered across to the other side of the river and harassed them, I guess. I can't stop my dwarves from occassionally going to loot his body, and for the life of me I can't get the worthless mason to work on the bridge across (which is his only task atm). So I lose a ton of productivity as 4 dwarves march 10 screens across to his body and bring his stuff back.
Also, I really wish I could queue items on the ground to be moved. Currently construction is halted on two workshops due to rocks in the way that no one will move, and I'm dreading spring since someone left a rock in the door to my farming room and no one will move that, either.
quote:
Tegadil had this to say about Knight Rider:
My only major gripe with this is that while you can tell certain dwarves what to do, you can't tell them what order to do it in or give priority to any specific task. It's very taxing on my sanity. For example, I was carving out a room but didn't notice I'd made it over 7x7. The cave started to rumble. I queued up a support, suspended the cave bridge my nearby mason was working on, and hoped he would build the support in time. Instead, he decided that he would eat, drink, then go to sleep with the support untouched. I set a few other dwarves to architecture and stopped their current jobs, but none of them could be bothered before the room caved in.I'm also very pissed that I just lost an expert miner to elephants. Took me forever to find his body. He just...wandered across to the other side of the river and harassed them, I guess. I can't stop my dwarves from occassionally going to loot his body, and for the life of me I can't get the worthless mason to work on the bridge across (which is his only task atm). So I lose a ton of productivity as 4 dwarves march 10 screens across to his body and bring his stuff back.
Also, I really wish I could queue items on the ground to be moved. Currently construction is halted on two workshops due to rocks in the way that no one will move, and I'm dreading spring since someone left a rock in the door to my farming room and no one will move that, either.
Usually if stones are not being moved, it's because there's not enough room in your stockpile, or because you (like me) turned off stone hauling for many of your dwarves in an effort to get them to do other jobs first.
EDIT - One thing you can try is build stockpiles under other stones that are waiting to be moved, removing them from the queue entirely. I eventually got to the point where I had enough dwarves that I set a few of them to be nothing but haulers (Even gave them a custom profession title).
From what I hear, job priorities are going to be implimented in the future, but its anyone's guess WHEN that's coming. It's strange to think of this game as an alpha, but it really is one. The creator really updates frequently, though, and he's been quite good so far at keeping interest. I doubt he's going to drop the project anytime soon. Khyron fucked around with this message on 02-18-2007 at 04:19 AM.
I've been trying the square tilesets (http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Tilesets At the bottom, 16x16 square tilesets) and I'm starting to like those better as it helps me gauge when a room is too big more easily than the rectangular Ascii stuff.
EDIT - Also, a preview of the next big update : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/local_map3.png Khyron fucked around with this message on 02-19-2007 at 01:18 PM.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
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Karnaj had this to say about Cuba:
Maradon had it right. That game is haaaaaard. On the upshot, I reinstalled DK2 and got it working on XP, so I can satisfy my lust for pure evil.
"Your dungeon is full of mistresses... They have a name for people like you."
The death of Bullfrog and Dungeon Keeper is sad. 
Some fairly awesome forts (First two are endgame). Linked for size.
Unfinished fort, but extremely well laid out with multiple redundant moats and good defenses. Khyron fucked around with this message on 03-02-2007 at 08:29 AM.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
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Karnaj impressed everyone with:
See, I really like the idea, but I can't deal wih the graphics. The adventurer mode is pretty neat, though.
I recommend getting one of the tilesets, and one of the graphical sets.
I use this tileset and this graphical set together. It almost transforms the game to have an 8-bit feel to it. Definitely a lot more bearable than full ASCII.
Skaw fucked around with this message on 03-02-2007 at 09:06 AM.
quote:
Blindy. was listening to Cher while typing:
What if you don't hit a river?
Then you need to keep mining. There's 5 features that are in every map - the river, the chasm, the magma river, the glowing pits, and the Adamantine. The river is your primary source of farming and fishing, it exists, just keep digging. The Chasm is a good source of creatures to level up your military on. Later on in the game you get the ability to dump your trash in the chasm which provokes attacks by the chasm dwellers.
The Magma river will become your main work site for metal smelting and smithing. You need to create steel blocks to be able to build magma smelters and forges, but once you do then you can smelt stuff without using wood (Charcoal) or Coal (Coke) to produce items and metal bars (Steel bars take 5 fuel with a normal smelter, and 2 fuel with a magma smelter. All other bars do not take any fuel at all on a magma smelter. Most items require 1 fuel and several bars from a normal smithy, and a magma smithy requires no fuel at all)
The pits are glowing demon pits past the magma river. If you want to progress this way, then you'll need to build steel bridges to cross it. The pits summon demons which are incredibly powerful.
Past the pits is the adamantine. Adamantine is a super precious (Think mithril) metal that produces insanely high quality items, but if you mine too much, the game will end by saying you've dug too deep and woken a greater demon. Adamantine is great if you like adventure mode - you can mine it, turn it into weapons and shit, then come back as your adventurer and explore your fortress, find the adamantine weapons/armor, and equip them for the best stuff in the game.
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Skaw had this to say about Duck Tales:
I recommend getting one of the tilesets, and one of the graphical sets.I use this tileset and this graphical set together. It almost transforms the game to have an 8-bit feel to it. Definitely a lot more bearable than full ASCII.
Could you post your init.txt? I didn't realise you could use a custom object tileset and a custom tileset at the same time. Khyron fucked around with this message on 03-02-2007 at 10:26 AM.
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Blindy.'s fortune cookie read:
Why is only one of my miners mining?
Either A) you didn't bring enough iron picks and he can't mine with his bare hands, B) the other miner is eating/drinking/sleeping/on break, C) only 1 tile is accessible (Only 1 miner can mine a tile at a time), or C) your other miner has had mining turned off on his job preferences.
Check the miner's inventory for an iron pick by hitting v, then i for the inventory. To see if his mining is turned on, while in the unit menu (v), hit p, then l. Mining should be in white. You can turn jobs on and off in this menu (Anyone can do any job, but they'll suck at it until they've done it for a while) by using + and - to scroll through, and enter to activate/deactivate a job.
On the main menu you can check your dwarves job status with 'j'. If a dwarf is eating, on break, or drinking, then just give them a bit and they'll go back to work when they're done. If they're listed as 'No Job' then that means they can't reach a job site, or there's no job which they have the necessary skill to do.
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Blindy. enlisted the help of an infinite number of monkeys to write:
Son of a bitch why doesn't he have a mining pick
You didn't bring enough.
When you are preparing for the journey, hit tab to see the equipment screen. By default you'll start with 2 picks and 2 axes. If you remove a pick you gain an extra 100 points to distribute out, but lose half your mining capabilities. Eventually it won't matter - a single legendary miner can mine so fast you'll wonder why you bother having others at all - but getting there is a headache. Your single miner will need to be mining constantly for a full year or more to get that good.
Here's my standard starting layout :
2x Miner (Not Novice, skilled, proficient, just plain 'Miner)
1x Carpenter/WoodCutter
1x Mason/Building Designer
1x Mechanic/Brewer
2x Grower
2x Iron Pick
1x Iron Battle Axe
30x Plump Helmet Spawn
10x Cave Wheat Seeds
10x Pig Tail Seeds
10x Sweet Pod Seeds
16x Dwarven Ale
16x Dwarven Rum
16x Dwarven Beer
16x Turtle
16x Any 2-point Meat
2x dog
2x cat
Extra points can be pumped into more skilled miners or more food. Putting in 16x the alcohol gives me more barrels initially. Since I only have 1 carpenter/woodcutter I only need 1 axe, taking off the second gives me 100 extra points.
Taking turtles gives you a good source of bone and shell (Bone is essential - you'll need bone or wood bolts to get your marksdwarves to practice at the archery range). There's no reason to keep the plump helmets or take any other 4-point food with you. 1 spawn + 1 2-point meat is just as good, and costs 1 point less.
2 dogs is great because they'll breed like rabbits, and dogs can later be trained into War Dogs, which are an awesome early defense against seiges and shit. Cats are excellent pets and also kill vermin in the fortress which annoys your dwarves and makes them unhappy. Just be sure to have refuse hauling turned on for some dwarves, otherwise rotting vermin corpses will create miasma and make the dwarves unhappy anyways.
Mules are butcher fodder. They don't breed so you can't keep them around for a steady supply of meat/bones/fat. Horses are useless for anything other than breeding for a steady supply of butcher fodder. I like to keep two male and two female foals at all times, butcher any adult animals so long as I have enough foals, etc. These are going to be your main source of bones once your turtles run out.
Plump helmets can be eaten raw, but aren't very tasty. To make dwarves happier about their meals, you'll want to cook them. Be careful - cooking a raw plant destroys the plant's seeds, and if you do it too much you'll run out of seeds entirely and be unable to farm that plant anymore. Milling the seeds, brewing the plant into alcohol, or processing the plant into threads will generate 2 seeds - this way you can, over time, build up your seed stores. You can't have more than 200 seeds, so when you get close, start cooking seeds into meals. Cooking a meal requires 2, 3, or 4 components. IE : Seeds, Tallow (Processed fat), alcohol, meat, cleaned fish, milled flour/sugar, and syrup.
Brewing is absolutely vital. Dwarves who drink water and not alcohol will work more slowly, alcohol can be used as a cooking component. You'll want to make sure you have tons of available barrels and tons of brewing components, as brewing is one of the easiest ways to both make your dwarves happy, and generate seeds.
Once you've gotten established, you can destroy the wagons (t, then x over the wagon) to get 3 free wood per wagon. One of the reasons I take so much booze and food is so that I can get 3 wagons instead of just 1, which means 9 free wood per map instead of 3 free wood.
Lastly, always keep a peice of wood around for burning into charcoal, so you can get your metal economy up. you can't use magma until you get steel, and you can't get steel without 5 fuel. You can mine out coal, but your coal must be smelted into coke before it can be used, which will use one charcoal to make 2 coke. So one charcoal will be enough to get the metal economy up. Khyron fucked around with this message on 03-02-2007 at 02:37 PM.
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Khyron had this to say about Matthew Broderick:
Could you post your init.txt? I didn't realise you could use a custom object tileset and a custom tileset at the same time.
[WINDOWEDX:1066]
[WINDOWEDY:500]
[FONT:Graphical_1280x800.bmp]
[FULLSCREENX:1066]
[FULLSCREENY:500]
[FULLFONT:Graphical_1280x800.bmp]
[BLACK_SPACE:NO]
[GRAPHICS:YES]
[GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDX:1066]
[GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDY:500]
[GRAPHICS_FONT:Graphical_1280x800.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENX:1066]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENY:500]
[GRAPHICS_FULLFONT:Graphical_1280x800.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE:NO]
If it doesn't work, try loading DQ's set first, then switch back to the Graphical tileset(or whichever you're using.) If you notice, dqset.bmp is no where in my init, but it still loads. Like I told you in the PM, I got it to work, I just don't know how. Thats what I did to make it work.
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How.... Khyron.... uughhhhhh:
Plump helmets can be eaten raw, but aren't very tasty. To make dwarves happier about their meals, you'll want to cook them. Be careful - cooking a raw plant destroys the plant's seeds, and if you do it too much you'll run out of seeds entirely and be unable to farm that plant anymore. Milling the seeds, brewing the plant into alcohol, or processing the plant into threads will generate 2 seeds - this way you can, over time, build up your seed stores. You can't have more than 200 seeds, so when you get close, start cooking seeds into meals. Cooking a meal requires 2, 3, or 4 components. IE : Seeds, Tallow (Processed fat), alcohol, meat, cleaned fish, milled flour/sugar, and syrup.Brewing is absolutely vital. Dwarves who drink water and not alcohol will work more slowly, alcohol can be used as a cooking component. You'll want to make sure you have tons of available barrels and tons of brewing components, as brewing is one of the easiest ways to both make your dwarves happy, and generate seeds.
What I do is toggle my kitchen menu(Z for overall stats, then select Kitchen.) Every item(thats currently stocked) can have up to two kitchen options. Cook and Brew. Always leave cook for seeds off early on(I think it is by default,) and leaving one alcohol type uncookable makes sure you have some on hand for your dwarves to drink. I recommend leaving wine uncookable. It's made from Plump Helmets(which you should turn Cooking off for,) so you'll always have a large amount on hand for dwarves to drink. From what I've seen in the Personality menu, most dwarves seem to favor wine.
Breweing cave wheat and sweet pods will give you beer(wheat) and rum(pods.) You can alternate growing both of these throughout the year, since Pods can only be grown during the Spring and Summer, and Wheat can only be grown during Summer and Autumn. Alternately, you could grow Pig Tail instead of Cave Wheat to make Ale. These are also unedible when grown, and must be processed at a mill/farmers workshop, or brewed. If you process them, pig tail makes thread, where as Cave Wheat(mill) and Sweet Pods(f. workshop) make additional items for cooking.
It's pretty pointless to make cloth fiber from Pig Tail though, since a craftsdwarf can kick out a lot of silk, which not only weighs less(1/5 cloth,) but has twice the value of it as well(which makes your dwarves more happy.) It's also readily accessable everytime your river floods. What you should do is mine out the area around your river, so you can have more cave spider silk appear. The river counts as wall tiles, so you don't have to worry about the cieling collapsing if you mine too far away from the other side of your fortress. Even then, supports, or unmined 1x1 tiles will prevent this. I have a LARGE mined out area strictly to obtain silk. You can set collecting webs to automatically repeat using your orders menu, or at the loom. I'm not sure what happens if you set it globally, but if it's set at the workshop, the web automatically gets collected and spun in to silk thread. Skaw fucked around with this message on 03-02-2007 at 05:48 PM.
