Absolutely. And in the next session it went even worse. I had realized the errors in my leadership, memorialized the ghostly ranger in our halls to satisfy his anger and instructed the dwarves to continue building coffins and tombs, and thought better days were ahead.
The dwarves began to make merry with questing warriors from abroad in our new tavern out in the valley, worshipped in our new subterranean shines to the divine polished to nearly match the finery our leaders’ quarters, met in the new guildhalls below the storerooms, and almost all were happier than the dwarves in my previous playthrough many years ago ever were.
That’s when the werezebra arrived at the tavern and two of my dwarves were bitten before he fell. The halls of the fortress now ring only with the howls of many werezebras, werelemurs, and restless undead and are painted with the blood of the last stand of the dwarves who did not flee into the mountains.
I’m not convinced I fully understand the military panels. It seems harder than ever to get the dwarves to go get equipped in an emergency. My necromancer mayor / commander / master crafter didn’t fare too well against rising werecreatures without his shield and mace since he’d been refining his latest creations at the time.
A review I posted on Steam:
The game and it’s new UI still have a lot of rough edges, but all of the amazing detail and madness of Dwarf Fortress is still there and it’s easier than ever to use. If you’re new to this game, you may think stories like these are at most 50% mechanically happening in the game and the rest is embellishment and reading between the lines, but in Dwarf Fortress it’s probably 80-90% part of the simulation and in how you interact with its mechanics.
However, the UI does still have a lot of problems. It’s more of a halfway step from where DF was in the past to where it should be. I do hope they continue to make significant improvements to the user experience as they work on new engine features. Maybe the workshop mods will help out with the UI, but I haven’t looked into those yet.
If you’re new, you should take a look at some of the many videos or more detailed let’s play writeups out there to determine if this kind of arcane but amazing fantasy simulation is a good fit for you. Despite the many games inspired by Dwarf Fortress over the 15 years I’ve dabbled at different versions of this game, none of them are really the same kind of experience.
