Can someone explain the basics of Dwarf Fortress?

[Baneat]

Um, you can sing the diggy hole song while you play it? It's this the one they say inspired Minecraft?

That was infinity miner

Still wondering *what* Dwarf Fortress is

The cruelty of 'Indie' games.

Notch calls himself indie as he rakes in millions while the actual indie games make nothing and actually update once in a blue moon.

No, calling yourself indie when you independently developed your game is correct. The worst part is his legion of adoring fans who believe he can do no wrong. 45M euros and less content than community modders? Blasphemy! he's *busy*! How dare you call him lazy for having a game that runs at 30fps on a 5870+Quad Core, for Reasons!

I'm not saying much about your point, but he has a whole crew now. a company. he whored himself out to ecksbawcks. he whored himself out to that one cell phone company. he has enough money to clone himself a goddamn dinosaur, quoting Jonathan Carter. and I couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic in the last sentence, but he constantly breaks his own game with every update. And, due to the new agreement that all modders had to... agree to, he can freely steal all their content and claim it as his own. (Pistons in the upcoming update.)

Don't get me wrong, I like Minecraft. it's just not to be considered indie any more. call me a hipster.

(and you're right about the fans.)

I wasn't being sarcastic. They're my system specs, and Crysis on extreme with no AA competes for frames per second with a GAME THAT HAS 16x16 TEXTURES AND IS COMPRISED ENTIRELY OF SIX SIDED OBJECTS. I raised this issue, got

"Shut the fuck up, it's playable on your settings and it's "Pre-release"" (Oh, so my money should be future money too, fucknugget)

That's some nasty agreement thing going there though.

Notch calls himself indie as he rakes in millions while the actual indie games make nothing and actually update once in a blue moon.

I don't think anyone could accuse Toady of laziness. The development log seems to be on fire at the moment.

Misquoted me

 

[Demitri Kamoraz]

Um, you can sing the diggy hole song while you play it? It's this the one they say inspired Minecraft?

That was infinity miner

Still wondering *what* Dwarf Fortress is

The cruelty of 'Indie' games.

Notch calls himself indie as he rakes in millions while the actual indie games make nothing and actually update once in a blue moon.

No, calling yourself indie when you independently developed your game is correct. The worst part is his legion of adoring fans who believe he can do no wrong. 45M euros and less content than community modders? Blasphemy! he's *busy*! How dare you call him lazy for having a game that runs at 30fps on a 5870+Quad Core, for Reasons!

I'm not saying much about your point, but he has a whole crew now. a company. he whored himself out to ecksbawcks. he whored himself out to that one cell phone company. he has enough money to clone himself a goddamn dinosaur, quoting Jonathan Carter. and I couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic in the last sentence, but he constantly breaks his own game with every update. And, due to the new agreement that all modders had to... agree to, he can freely steal all their content and claim it as his own. (Pistons in the upcoming update.)

Don't get me wrong, I like Minecraft. it's just not to be considered indie any more. call me a hipster.

(and you're right about the fans.)

I wasn't being sarcastic. They're my system specs, and Crysis on extreme with no AA competes for frames per second with a GAME THAT HAS 16x16 TEXTURES AND IS COMPRISED ENTIRELY OF SIX SIDED OBJECTS. I raised this issue, got

"Shut the fuck up, it's playable on your settings and it's "Pre-release"" (Oh, so my money should be future money too, fucknugget)

That's some nasty agreement thing going there though.

Well said.

 

[Demitri Kamoraz]

I've never had encounters with quarry bushes truthfully. I know they can be foraged, but I always stick to underground crops. call me a caveophile.

Quarry bushes are underground. They grow from rock nuts.

The real reason to grow them is that every leaf counts as an ingredient for cooking, and each bush produces several leaves (as well as a nut). It's not quite as silly as cooking with alcohol used to be, but I've definitely found it more efficient than most other crops for food production.

Notch calls himself indie as he rakes in millions while the actual indie games make nothing and actually update once in a blue moon.

I don't think anyone could accuse Toady of laziness. The development log seems to be on fire at the moment.

pertaining to the former, WTF? How have I never figured that out? I'm an idiot.

pertaining to the latter, sorry I said that wrong. I mean that Toady One updates more often than Notch in the fact that even if Toadyone updated once in a blue moon, he would be updating faster than Notch. He and the people behind Overgrowth are kind of my Indie Heroes right now.

 

[Aethren]

If you don't like the graphics, there are tons of tilesets on the market (ie: Google). I personally use Phoebus.

And while it's true that your Dwarves do enjoy their beer, do NOT overlook the benefits of giving them fresh water. Planting crops and brewing them is all well and good, but that'll usually take a season or so, and unless you've stocked up on a ton of booze before you embarked, you'll be screwed. When the booze runs out, your dwarves will get thirsty, and if you have no water, they'll die. They will drink from lakes and rivers if they're close enough, but unless you're wishing to feed the local Carp population, you'll need to set up a Well indoors or somewhere easily gotten to.

1. Locate a source of (fresh) water. (Rivers, brooks, streams, huge lakes or tiny ponds.)
2. Mine out a small room in your fortress, preferably near your dining hall. (D, M, and drag)
3. Designate one half of the room to be channeled. (D, H, and drag)
4. If you haven't already, build a Mechanic's Workshop, a Mason's Workshop, and a Carpenter's Workshop.
5. In these workshops, build a mechanism (from rock), a rock block, and a bucket (from wood).
6. Make sure to also have a spare rope or chain.
7. Now back to the future Well room. In the pit you've created in step 3, mine a tunnel to the water source you found in step 1, but stop 1 tile from breaching the side.
8. If this last tile is rock, designate it to be carved into a Fortification. If not, go ahead and mine it out, but make sure the miner has an escape route.
9. Now back to the Well room. Build a floor over the new pit, leaving one tile open. (B, shift + C, F)
10. Build a Well in the open tile not taken up by flooring from step 9.

Congrats, your dwarves won't die of thirst! Wells give your dwarves fresh water, which means no bad thoughts from drinking murky water. Hospitals also need fresh water, so put a hospital nearby, or even inside, the room.

(Oh, and make sure that your Well room is on the same Z-level as the surface of the water source, otherwise your fortress will flood. You can use a door in the room's entrance to stop this somewhat, but the room will be unusable.)

Also, if you get into this game, make sure you bookmark Magmawiki, the game's wiki. Unless you have a Masters in Geology or something, you'll be looking up every single bloody rock in this game to figure out wtf it's for.

 

[Terminal Blue]

pertaining to the latter, sorry I said that wrong. I mean that Toady One updates more often than Notch in the fact that even if Toadyone updated once in a blue moon, he would be updating faster than Notch. He and the people behind Overgrowth are kind of my Indie Heroes right now.

It's okay, I was agreeing with you.

Though unfortunately, dwarf fortress is still punishing to run. It may not look it at first, but beware the cats!

But still..

http://www.nzfortress.co.nz/forum/showthread.php?t=20768

Love.

 

[Internet Kraken]

Still wondering *what* Dwarf Fortress is

This [http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html]

In the most basic terms it's about leading a Dwarf settlement to greatness in unique procedurally generated worlds. Course that brief summary undermines the sheer complexity of the game.

A lot of good advice has already been given, certainly more than I ever got when I started playing. Just keep in mind that no matter how well-prepared you are it's going to be frustrating learning the basics. Getting into Dwarf Fortress requires a fair chunk of free time and dedication. You should always be using the wiki [http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page] since it's a great resource. More specific questions can be asked on the forums [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php], which are very newbie friendly, or here on the Escapist user group [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Dwarf-Fortress-Fans].

A few more things I think are worth mentioning;

-New players should probably make things easy on themselves by embarking on temperate forest covered mountains. Mountains are far easier to defend than other biomes, and temperate forests are full of trees and water pools. This will ensure that you won't suffer from the lack of important resources.

-Caverns are your friend. Underground farming is vital to a fortresses survival, however in order to use it you need to plant the seeds on muddy soil. This requires setting up an irrigation system. However, caverns have a permanent layer of mud so you can bypass all that hassle by using them for farming. Just keep in mind that some nasty critters can pop up down there. If a Forgotten Beast wanders in you might want to consider walling the caverns off until you can fight it.

-You're going to lose horribly no matter what you do. It's impossible to win this game after all. The only option is for your fortress to end at some point. For new players this is usually rather soon. If the starvation doesn't get you then the goblins will. Don't get discouraged if you get everyone killed, that's normal! Besides you can't fuck up as bad as I did and collapse the entire fort into the ocean.