It’s dropping at a very good time for me, as I won’t be working the last two weeks of the year. Lately I’ve just been too burned out mentally to absorb something like this, but having that downtime should make it possible. Fingers crossed!
Oh I’m very much tuned in to this thread because I’ve loved my time with rimworld. I’ll likely fall down the rabbit hole at some point soon.
But Master of Magic is a mere days away from launch and I’m not done with Ogre.
I can’t wait to give another fortress a go as soon as it releases on Steam.
I have played a few times over the years and managed to get successful fortresses with 50-150+ dwarves. I have been able to keep them mostly happy and successfully navigated through fell moods, but I never did get very far into military training with refined fighting forces ready to explore the dangers of the depths. I never did much with water nor magma although I did get magma forges up once. I also always tried with fairly easy starting positions and made sure important ores and materials were nearby, and never had any strong attacks from the outside. I would always lose interest at some point, but hoping to push a little further this time!
I am also curious how this version will handle certain things. I finally broke through with the Lazy Newb pack with custom tile sets and relying on Dwarf Therapist, which was crucial to me getting a handle on the game. I believe something similar is built in now, so will be interesting to see how it goes.
Quick question for those in the know - folks (a vocal minority) on the Steam forum seem upset that Adventure mode is coming later, but is Fortress mode not the main gameplay mode? What exactly is Adventure mode?
Fortress mode is the main game mode.
I know people do play adventure mode, but the whole “build a dwarf fortress” mode is the main one.
Adventure mode is a more classic RPG dungeon-delving experience where you can basically explore past fortresses or other environments. It’s definitely a side experience to the main fortress building gameplay.
i never played adventure mode a single time.
So then how is this a roguelike? Is there unlocks?
Adventure mode is the only reason I downloaded this back in the day. I just liked the idea of a super detailed world to explore. But I never got far at all. It was just too daunting to try and learn and I never tried too hard anyway. But while I’m really wanting to get into Adventure mode with the Steam version I’m going to try and actually learn the main game while waiting. Im hoping as many are that the Steam version is more accessible to my old and addled brain and much more limited patience than I once had.
I think it used to be more roguelike in the very early days, but pretty quickly expanded in scale and complexity to become something wholly different. And probably a lot of that original comparison was due to the ASCII art.
Teeeechnically, a roguelike is an RPG with procedural environments and permadeath, like Rogue itself. A rogueLITE has unlocks between runs that make you more successful at later runs. Dwarf Fortress’ fortress mode is a roguelike colony builder (basically invented the genre). Its adventure mode is a roguelike single-character RPG taking advantage of its elaborate world generation/history system.
Just what I was going to reply. Technically rogue-likes are like the game “rogue” which had no unlocks or anything. That is something newer rogue-likes do.
Anyway, it is very much a pure rogue-like in the fact that each re-start and seed is fresh, and it is ASCII art (like rogue) though the new steam release will have a UI.
I am so pumped for the steam release. it has been a couple years since I stuck into a DF run, have been waiting for this for a while.
Love Kruggsmash’s videos
To continue the hype, boatmurdered deserves a re-read
I’m very excited to play this for (virtually) the first time, although I wish I could’ve “finished” Cataclysm: DDA before getting into DF. I can’t have two infinite games in my life D:
I’m going to try going in without outside tutorials, to see if the new user experience is decent. If I can do that and not drown, I’ll be incredibly impressed!
Speaking of tutorials, wasn’t it a forum member that wrote the O’Reilly Dwarf Fortress book?
Edit: Wow, that came out 10 years ago
First review from PC Gamer is out. Got an 84% which is much lower than I was hoping to see. Most of the review sounded pretty positive though.
An 84% sounds reasonable for a game like DF that absolutely does not hold your hand or care if you ever learn its byzantine layers of systems. Achievements and a new UI is only going to go so far.
Yeah, that is super high for an iteration of DF that I still suspect is ultimately going to be hard to grok for new and even returning players.
Higher than I expected it might review at (not that I really care), but I fully expect DF to polarise players, such is the nature of it’s complexity and opaqueness.
Oh yeah! It was that book by Calistas that got me playing in the first place. Him and I played some Wurm Unlimited together not too many years ago, but haven’t seen him in a while.
For those that plan to start playing and may want some references to help, the last time I dug into a game earlier this year I leaned heavily on PeridexisErrant’s DF Walkthrough, the main Dwarf Fortress Wiki (which is excellent), and the Bay12 Forums. I tend to like to follow written material as opposed to videos/streams, so those may help others like me.
Do you think that games like Rimworld, and other DF-lite games have lessoned the learning curve a bit though over the years? I feel like adding a mouse and standardizing keyboard commands, coupled with a better general understanding of the gameplay loop is going to go a long way to making this accessible.