Dwarf Fortress: Very Ambitious Roguelike

[ooomalley]

We ponder selling the captured thieves to the humans, but they don’t offer very much for them, so instead we start on a dungeon. We buy some instruments for our temple (though we do not yet have a musician), more leather, cloth (expensive!), and some of their curious alcohol. They are willing enough to take our discarded clothes in exchange (in addition to our bone and stone trinkets), and we send some gems along as a gift.

This is new for us! We do kind of need the forge to finish armoring our expanded squad, though.

He keeps muttering “Erithsatneng Otensombith…”
He is done!

Sadly, whatever it was that possessed him has left entirely, as he seems no more skilled at weaponsmithing than before.

More migrants! Eight more, including a legendary fisherdwarf (and fishery worker), for whatever that’s worth, and a miner/weaponsmith.

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A tour of the fortress. Beginning at the surface, unchanged since the last update:

The first level:

Our training squad has grown to ten, and we’ve expanded the barracks and are in the process of filling out the armor stands and weapon racks. [I noticed the armor stand getting some use! That’s new since I last played.]
The top-right is the training area with the captured bluejay (no progress there) and a giant cave swallow. At the bottom, we’ve cordoned off the indoor dump from the wood stockpile and farm plot.

The second level, north:

Not much new, just expanded stockpiles.

The second level, south:

The tombs have expanded, sadly, but so have the bedrooms. The housing block continues to the south, but we have not yet produced all the doors and beds we need. We are crowded!

The third level, north:

The workshops. We’ve added a second mason’s shop and smelter to keep up wtih demand.

The third level, south:

The temple is immensely popular. We’ve expanded it and are adding some engravings.

The fourth level:

We are currently up-to-date with the memorial room (i.e. no ghosts). Next to it, we’ve designated the area for the dungeon (it will not be smoothed).

Bonus–the entryway to the caverns:

The cage traps have already netted us a gorlak and troll (on the surface), and a giant cave swallow (in training).

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And another migrant has come, as well:


She is completely naked and carrying nothing, and has only dabbling skills in the martial arts. We shall see what she discovers here…

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I’m going to be traveling for a week, so here are some issues to vote on.

How should we deal with the giant?

• Charge! She is no match for our training axes.
• Recall our dwarves underground–our traps will handle her.

What should we do with our artifact copper short sword?

• Display it in the temple, to beseech the gods for help.
• Display it in the barracks, to motivate our defenders.
• Assign it to the best member of our military. (I’ll need to figure this out.)
• Make it a symbol of our government. (Our leader will carry it.)

What should we next build?

• A library, to make our hold known for more than disaster.
• An inn, to attract visitors and rumors.
• An underground agriculture–a real farm, tree farm, and pasture in the caverns.

[Mr_PeaCH]

This YouTube video is a nice overview of Dwarf Fortress’ overall impact and staying power.

The Most Complex Game Ever Made

[ooomalley]

Oh, and I’m back from travels, so this is the last chance for everyone to get their votes in.

[ooomalley]

25th Sandstone, 102. Mid-Autumn

The attack of the giantess ends in something of an anticlimax:

A wooden cage. What shall we do with her?

For now, she resides in the dungeon, with the goblins:

We carve the floor of her spiral cell with images of her earlier rampages through human towns to warn any who would think to free her. (I didn’t know you could specify the subject of engravings!)

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Our artifact copper short sword, “Laborbleached the Russet Executioner” (kind of apt, I suppose copper could be described as “russet”), becomes a symbol of our leader. Iteb Peacepaddled wears it strapped to his back:

(Along with his three crowns. The, uh, Triple Crown of The Axe of Palisades, we call them.)

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Our third dwarven caravan arrives. For next year, we request leather (why not), a smattering of instruments, and rum (always rum). They offer 207% value for seeds next year, but honestly, it’s unlikely we’ll have a ton lying around. That said, we have plenty of backpacks right now, so who knows?

For this year, we buy logs, rope, cages, two instruments, seeds, cloth, leather, trap components, and rum (always rum). We sell backpacks, crafts, and a few gems, and gift some gems as well. All in all, a profitable exchange for everyone.

Another wave of migrants! Our population goes from 60 to 70. No particularly impressive skills, but we are falling behind in our hauling* tasks…

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We set to securing an area of the cavern for agriculture. Our monster hunters get to work:

Huthra is victorious, with his artifact mace Maturoldeth, but needs rescuing (“ability to stand lost”). Well, if he doesn’t make it back, there’s more where he came from. (He did)

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Something strange:

Here’s the area:

Perhaps our miners are speaking of the obsidian there? Well, we’ll take the diamonds, anyway.

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Here is the beginning of our underground area:

The ramp to the path to the rest of the fortress is at the very bottom left. We’ve walled off the left side and mined out a big open space. We opportunistically threw down some farms among the floor fungus, but don’t have an overall plan yet, and of course it is not fully secured.

Anyone have tips on underground agriculture? For example, how do I clear out the young trees that are blocking the farmland?

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*Big oops for me here–I had somehow turned off “Everybody does this” for hauling, so only the children were doing it. Well, that cleaned things up.

[Romalar]

@ooomalley

Perhaps our miners are speaking of the obsidian there? Well, we’ll take the diamonds, anyway.

You probably missed the moments when a small amount of lava came out of one tile of non-heated stone you were mining with some valuable gems. In this small of an amount, it spreads to a few tiles and cools into obsidian pretty quickly, but it still might hurt any miners who are right there at the time.

[ooomalley]

@Romalar

You probably missed the moments

Yes, I absolutely did! I’ll look around for more evidence.

[ooomalley]

10th Opal, 102. Midwinter.

[ed. note: sorry for the delay]

We are distracted from our work reshaping the caverns by another artifact!

I guess we won’t be able to do anything with it in public as it is a family heirloom. Oh well.

The cavern work, however, runs into a crocodile-sized snag:

We need to get the walls up ASAP… and where the hell are all our “monster hunters”? A weaponsmith and a peasant are sent to the hospital with hopefully minor wounds. (Rather obnoxiously, I have to “resume construction” on every tile in that damn wall.)

We have some “visitors”: goblin thieves!

One is trapped in a cage, and the other is pursued through the fortress by one of our war dogs. Tragically, the thief bests the war dog, but not before being disrobed (!?). We call our off-duty squad to battle, and they bludgeon the grievously wounded thief to death with their wooden training axes. (Probably time to promote them to the real thing.)

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New life! Children are a blessing in the face of the curses around us.

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We are trying to secure our farmland, which means making the land inside our cavern walls farmable. To that end, we flood it:

A pump stack! The bottom pump draws from the cavern waters:

One intermediate layer:

And the top pushes the water into our farmland.

We have then bored a hole through sixteen layers to the surface, where two windmills provide power.

It’s not the most elegant setup, but we had to drill through an aquifer, so we provided a outlet for that water to return to the cavern.

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We’ve accepted several monster hunters recently, but this latest one gives some members of our fortress pause:

Just last week we were assaulted by goblins, thieves in the night. Can we really welcome one in, now?

• Approve. Anyone who fights monsters is welcome; to overturn this policy now is blatant xenophobia.
• Deny. Goblins must not be allowed to scout our defenses!

[DrCrypt]

Back in the day there was, as I recall, a physical book about learning to play Dwarf Fortress. What’s the best written guide to learning this these days? In other words, please do not point me to a video.

[scharmers]

Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress

By our own Peter Tyson

I have it in my Google books, not sure if it’s still available

[vyshka]

Sadly no longer in print and it looks like you might not even be able to get it for Kindle. I guess I bought the ebook directly from Oreilly when they were still doing that back then.

[John_Many_Jars]

I guess this is the new, mouse-using version on Steam? Is it good? Is it still Dwarf Fortress?

[Kolbex]

Oh, it’s still DF, alright. It’s much more usable, but it still has plenty of quirks.

[ooomalley]

Yes, it absolutely is–unless you consider “interface that actively hinders your ability to play the game” a key part of Dwarf Fortress (which would be silly).

[Mr_PeaCH]

There’s a YouTube/Twitch guy goes by Blind or BlindIRL who does some very short guides on dozens of specific topics. Plus there are longer form “Let’s play” tutorials and he livestreams too.

(I know you said you didn’t want to be pointed to a video but his sites in particular have been invaluable to me in picking the game up again after years of rust.)

[wisefool]

It seems slower to use the mouse than the old keyboard commands. Maybe i’ll get used to it.

Before I could place down doors quickly now it’s 4 clicks

[Calelari]

It seems there’s hotkeys for about every button, so you should still be able to mostly keyboard your way through it. I have the Interface Tweaks mod installed to help since I’m not a long-time player with all that memorized.

[wisefool]

Does anyone know the hotkey to select the first door available? When I’m placing them down

edit:
looks like this adds hotkeys but you need to start a new world

Steam Workshop::Ergonomic Hotkeys (QWERTZ)

(okay the most popular mods are very useful. The one to add audible alerts for example.)

[Telefrog]

Dwarf Fortress devs on big Adventure mode plans: 'This is just gonna blow...

Now that Dwarf Fortress has launched on Steam, the Adams brothers are planning to give the mode a major update, beginning with its own UI and graphics overhaul. It’s a big project, one that will likely take 2023 to complete before Adventure makes its way to the Steam version of the game.

[anonymgeist]

in Fort mode, people out in the world can plot to heist your artifacts. And this is a multi-stage process where they literally have to send themselves or an agent to your fortress, turn one of your dwarves using like John le Carré spy techniques. There’s a thing called MICE (money ideology, compromise, and ego), counterintelligence stuff. [They use that] to flip a dwarf. And then the dwarf would go off and steal the artifact.

Wait–what? That’s incredible.

[wisefool]

evil genius but with traps that work