Dwarf Fortress - Blog Posts

So I started a world in Dwarf Fortress.

I poked around legends mode and found that the world is quite accepting of the other races. There is a Dwaven civilization who has a goblin queen and a goblin civilization with a dwarf master. There is also a human eleven princess. Also, one of the old kings is currently a necromacer and he has a crow man apprentice.

Hey it’s me, Rufus! You may know me as rufuslol as that is my alias on some platforms, or as Niko oneshot on some other ones, as I have used that alias many times bc oneshot is a very good game :3

I use any/all pronouns, and I have autism and adhd, and I am just here to be fun and entertain! :3

I have many interests, including but not limited to dwarf fortress, deltarune, Halley labs, fallout, the works of people like Tony zaret and Dan hentschel, disco elysium, etc.

I am also learning coding, writing and pixel art, and I want to be an indie game developer when I’m older (expect the games I’m going to make to not even be released in early access for 5-20~ years, making story heavy games takes a long time and I’m still in college)

I may post sprites and concepts for the game I’m working on on here, but it’ll mostly be me ranting about shit I like/hate and/or shitposting

Cw: I swear a lot

Anyway have a wonderful day! :3

me at the migrants arriving to my fort

Yes actually! That was part of 51.08 I think? It was a very recent change like 2-3 minor updates ago, I think it was 2 months now? It’s significantly more balanced, and I’ve got a 5 year fort and find it really isn’t that profitable to sell food anymore. Like the only meals that sell well are masterworks with huge serving numbers, and my cooks don’t make many of those. They make plenty of masterworks, and even use stuff like flour & cheese, which used to guarantee expensive meals, and my typical prepared food barrel is like 300-500 value. A far cry from the 3000-5000 days. I still make the meals and occasionally sell 1-2 of them, but you can no longer just buy out a caravan from meals alone. As much as it hurt my early game economy, it rewards diversifying your economy, and ironically I find it’s much easier to manage my forts when I can’t use food to explode the fort’s value for huge migrant waves. It took 5 years to grow to a duchy, and I still only have a population of 140 or so dwarves, and the goblin sieges are much smaller too. Granted I do get more titans and semi-mega beast attacks, but I feel a lot less strain on my military and fort. I still only really have one squad of half-competent axedwarves defending the fort, and they’re clad in a mishmash of junk. Too busy actually building the fort than having to focus on building a strong army to defend… fancy food.

It’s ironic how much I like that change despite having definitely abused the system historically. Nowadays I run like five different industries for my economy, chief among them a “distressed” clothing chain. I just really like setting up the whole tailoring and dyeing chains

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

Yeah, I probably should have prefixed that the most important one to stop insane dwarves is a craftsdwarfshop, as for new players, that's going to be the majority of their artifacts. Likewise, the threshold at which dwarves start having the moods is 20 dwarves, though I think it can be changed in world settings? I personally find artifacts are really good for sprucing up rooms for either nobles or value requirements, at least when you're new to the game, but that does tend to invite thieves...

Forbidding certain materials during a strange mood is really nice. It took me a while to realize I could do that, but yeah, if I notice an armorer or weaponsmith is having a strange mood, I ban all bars except steel, to... encourage them to make a GOOD piece of equipment. I've had enough of "Zinc gauntlets" for my lifetime I think. Likewise, I tend to ban all iron ores during strange moods for similar reasons. (Yes, strange moods can result in dwarves making artifact items that are normally impossible to make, like non-wood beds, non-weaponsgrade metal weapons/armor, or other... interesting objects. I've seen jewelers make cages out of gemstones before, was actually pretty awesome, because I set it up as my monarch's terrarium in his throne room.)

I don't know if magma forges losing magma still results in insanity, but I did forget that. Weirdly though, they'll use an unpowered magma forge fine from what I've seen, I think it's only if it has magma, and then doesn't suddenly, that they have an issue.

Yeah, the tree thing is REALLY IMPORTANT. Pick big trees, especially if you have a low cutting count... My elves said 5 trees. Damn savage wilds. I still find trading with them worthwhile, but that's usually because I just sell them junk items like stone mugs & low quality pottery. But that's because I love DF's trading system a LOT. So I tend to make a ton of trade goods. I once had a fort that had like 3-4 caravans a season. Elves tend to get my lowest-quality goods, so long as they aren't clothes, animal or wood based. My trade with elves is more training for my broker & craftsdwarves than anything else. I love buying out an elven caravan for a hundred shitty bracelets, rings, & mugs.

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

I spent so long scouring the map looking for this dwarf... Turns out they got crushed by the trade post airlock bridges somehow... it was a ONE TILE BRIDGE. Explains why I couldn't find a corpse. I just decided to pretend they never existed for all dwarves that just disappear without a corpse after this. Just waiting to see if a ghost shows up to confirm they existed.

Responding to both the reblog above, and the tags from dwarvendiaries, I would like to note, I tried to *mostly* cover stuff for the first couple years that a less experienced player may be concerned with. I admit forgetting there's three different fabric types (technically 4, but dwarves never want metal cloth thankfully) was something that slipped my mind and is a good catch.

Yarn comes from animals, Cloth from plants & silk from spiders/monsters, and all three can be requested for moods and are NOT interchangeable with each other. As far as I can tell, this and value are the main differences between them use-wise. Production-wise which is easiest depends on what you have available. I personally find Silk usually the easiest to stockpile, but that is because I captured a Giant Cave Spider in one fort, and a Forgotten Beast in another... That is not necessarily an easy or safe idea, but if done offers a massive amount of silk for free. Likewise animals can be sheared for a large amount of wool fairly regularly. My textile industries personally tend to be capped by clothiers/dyers/dye rather than cloth usually.

As for moods, it is true that the type of workshop a dwarf uses can be semi-easily manipulated. My latest fort shows as much, where 4/6 artifacts made in the fort so far (summer of the 5th year) have all been metal. Part of it is luck (I've gotten lucky metalsmiths have gotten the pick so far), part of it is manipulation... (I've trained approximately 1/3rd of the fort by my estimate in some level of a metalsmithing skill. Mostly armorsmithing, metalsmith's were my second guild to form, forming about a month after farmers & a week before craftsdwarves)

Which I suppose brings up another topic, petitions for locations. *Generally they are always worth pursuing*. I can't think of a reason why you'd want to take the unhappiness hit for denying one, considering that a guild hall can: -Be restricted to only guild members (preventing training of undesired skills by new dwarfs) -Teaches dwarves skills without them needing to do labor -Are a nice and convenient source of happy thoughts

Meanwhile temples offer happy thoughts, and a new method of dwarves venting their issues & clearing their needs for prayer.

You should definitely consider setting up guilds for skills you value, especially a doctor's guild, as it offers a way to keep doctor's skills sharp without dwarven pain.

Also from a prior reblog, there was mention of how elves "could" send nobles to negotiate tree cutting limits. They still do do this, and they start once you have a baron/count/duke, i.e. when Humans typically begin sending their own nobles, and dwarves & humans send wagons. Following the limits results in a positive relationship with the elves, breaking them results in a negative relationship. Ultimately break it too many times and they go to war. Also notably important... they don't become more lenient if you chop down less trees. The number picked seems somewhat random in my experience, and is based off the skill of your mayor? (maybe the ruling noble?) as well as the wildness of the area you settled in... which will be a problem for me with my latest fort unfortunately...

Lastly, I do want to add there was a bit more I wanted to talk about (Like werecreatures) but I don't want to clutter this post up too much, but I do know if DF players enjoy one thing it's reading.

Werecreatures, necromancer experiments, necromancers, and vampires do not show up at worldgen. Certain events in worldgen need to occur to incite them into existing. For Werecreatures & Vampires, a civilization, usually dwarves or humans, need to build a monastery, and then a creature (usually an elf or human, but I just found out from a friend that dwarves can do it too, like as I was typing this. I'll write up what I got from that story elsewhere, but the funny news is your fort's dwarves can profane god too!) has to profane the temple, which is typically done by toppling the altar. Likewise, Necromancers require a race that has a set lifespan (humans or dwarves typically), and one of them needs to decide they fear death, and go on a search for a method to avoid it. This can result in them discovering the secrets of life and death (necromancy) and becoming a necromancer. Afterwards, they typically build a tower somewhere, and other necromancers are welcome to join them. They also may begin experimenting on creatures creating hybrid soldiers for their armies. Unlike the other 3 mentioned prior, necromancers tend to show up in around the first generation of humans or so, so a 100 year world will typically have necromancer towers beginning to sprout up.

The reason I wanted to talk about werecreatures, is werecreature infection containment, which is typically best done by securing the hospital in such a way you can lock down either the whole hospital, or an individual patient during a full moon, to see if an injured dwarf got infected. Since they *usually* are capable of breaking down doors, this requires either a drawbridge or a Cask of Amontillado solution.

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

Get boxed stupid idiots

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

First rule of ranged weapon safety is to have fun

Other tidbit is that even though dwarves are capable of forging steel, they’re only capable of that if they’re in a Dwarven civilization. Weirdly enough, a Goblin immigrant living in a Dwarven fort with full citizenship is completely capable of forging steel. As are Dwarven elves capable of felling trees. This isn’t exactly impossible to have them migrate into your fortress, but tends not to occur unless something odd has occurred in worldgen/history. The real strength of Dwarven soldiers in Goblin armies isn’t their size (the armor is interchangeable between goblins, elves and dwarves), but it is Martial Trances. Humans, Elves and Goblins in a siege do not worry me, but a Goblin Dwarf? They frighten me more than any other member of that group. The power of a martial trance is not to be ignored. I watched an axe dwarf with next to no armor enter a martial trance, and hack three goblin archers to pieces before the rest of the military could arrive from only a hallway away. He didn’t take a single blow

Thinking about kidnapped Dwarfs in Dwarf Fortress again.

Goblins can kidnap dwarvern children. It's not known why they do this, but they can.

What's stranger is that the goblins don't do anything nefarious with the children. They just appear to raise them.

Common theories range from amusing (they're saving the children from the horrors of Dwarf Fortresses) to reasonable (dwarfs are bigger and stronger than goblins on average, they can be used as metalssmiths or warriors)

What's probably most striking from the player's perspective is that adult dwarves that have been raised by goblin civilizations can join their raids and sieges of your fort.

Nothing appears to be forcing them to do this.

Imagine growing up with goblins, learning the goblin language, worshipping their gods and observing their customs.

You know you're different, the other children make that clear enough, but your belly is full in the summers and just as empty as anyone else's in the cold.

When you grow, you're a full two heads taller than anyone else. They try to put you to work in the forge, they think you should be good at it, you dont understand why. You're not. Your fingers fumble over the steel, you drop the tongs, you burn yourself on the flames.

You've let your family down, you're ashamed.

They put an axe in your hand, you start felling trees. It's easy for you. They send little hauling squads with you to collect the lumber, you free up half a dozen workers. Your family is proud of you, you're proud of yourself.

A set of armour is smithed for you, you don't need to put your name on it, no one else could wear it.

Suddenly, you're drilling, but it's no problem, people salute you in the hallways, you get choice rations with the other warriors. You're respected. It took you some time, but you've found a place in your home.

You keep shaving your beard out of habit.

Now your squad hauls back jewels, instruments, and armour that even you couldn't fit into.

One day you hit a hole in the ground. Defended by walls and traps your brethren fall to hidden blades and arrows. By the time you breach the dining hall, you've taken serious casualties.

In front of you is a hall of shrouded mirrors, they don't recognize you in your full helm, you don't even know what they are.

Your mother doesn't even recognize you as she cleaves your head in half.

You're laid to rest in the refuse pile, outside the fort with your brothers.

That sure is a .

Idenbebmal

Granite 15th, 500 We've arrived at Paddleglens to establish our outpost, and I'm... pleased with the surroundings. The hills are decent, as we've settled along the foothills of our home mountain range. We've got dolomite, chalk and mudstone exposed along the surface of our new home. In addition we've got a decent supply of trees along our northern area, though much of our new outpost lacks any greenery along the southern portion. It's all a rolling grass plain around the river. The river itself is a small thing, barely deep enough to provoke a risk of drowning. I'm happy to report one of the hills is decently large and tall to support our initial outpost and I've begun laying out our plans to delve into the hill to carve out our lodgings. I've already begun to plan how to carve secure entrances on the hill for access to the fort for ourselves, traders, and potential invaders. We look to have a bright future ahead of ourselves... though my cohorts have admitted their skills are... lackluster in many of the departments we will need. We have no miners, woodcutters, or farmers. Just 2 bards, a noble, a carpenter, a soldier, and a cook. One of the bards is a fisherdwarf at least, and before I could talk with them, they were already running to the river... As for the other bard, they have skill with thread, but in the meantime, I've set them to work with an axe. Our cook likewise has been given an axe and set to work, and the pickaxes were given to our noble and soldier.

Granite 17th, 500 First major incident in the fort... one of our bards got into a tussle with a kingsnake. Both seemed to have run away mostly fine, but I admit this is not a promising beginning.

Felsite 4th, 500 Wow, Slate just blew right past huh. We've begun to carve out our lodgings and such out for our initial home. We've established offices for our nobility, and I've begun work as a manager. Our lone soldier is operating as the town sheriff, and the last noble should be sitting down to count all our stocks any day now. Without a mason of any kind, we're relying on our carpenter for most of our furniture right now. Tables, chairs, beds, doors and blocks. I'd prefer stone blocks for our workshops, but we're going to have to make due with birch blocks. The little stone we have that isn't economic stone is going to have to be saved for building some furnaces and such, in case one of the other leaders needs them before we reach magma. Regardless, on this fine day, I'm optimistic for where we're heading.

Galena 3rd, 500 We got our first batch of immigrants in! Two miners, a glazer, an administrator, and 2 peasants. The miners and glazers are both ironically better administrators than the noble, so the glazer's got the job as our broker now, taking that responsibility off me. The miners will join those we'd been having mine prior. The peasants & admin are going to work our fields for now. As well we're putting one of them to work as our stonemason for the time being.

Limestone 1st, 500 Well Autumn has come, and I feel rather poor on the outpost's condition. We have an internal storage area, but so little has been carved out from what I planned, and the outpost liaison will be here soon. I fear we have little impressive here, and while I sent one of the miners off to begin an exploratory delve below us, we have yet to find much aside from a small amount of cassiterite.

Limestone 13th, 500 I don't know what the next leader is going to want, so I'm requesting imports of materials we either don't currently have, or may not have at all. A few stones, copper bars and ore, as well as some crops, as it might be a nice supplement. I don't care if they buy what I asked to import, but I will try to produce the exports asked, which are primarily amulets and scepters. For my remaining time as the head of our fort, I'm going to be trying to set up some manufacturing of those goods, so we might have something to sell next autumn.

Sandstone 20th, 500 Well we got our final migrant wave this year, I'm pleased about that. Trading could have gone better, and in the mean time, I've sent our miners to go prospecting for gems along the hillsides. Our cook has made his first masterpiece, and I don't know if I should be concerned or not. I think he got inspired by the rumor of planepacked, and decided to planeroast some apples. He's shoved so many different ingredients into his apple roast, I suspect he actually was just grabbing individual apples and shoving them in. He put in almost every piece of fruit we had lying around, considering he made 255 servings of the thing. Why he decided to do this AFTER the traders left, I'll never know. I guess he wanted to eat his roast all by himself, but I could have bought some real nice flour and dyes with that kind of money...

Granite 1st, 501 Well... the years over. I managed to delve deep enough to get us some gold with some prospective mining to the west. I smelted the gold and had a set of coins forged to celebrate our first year. 500 gold coins, minted by our cook funnily enough. He chose to put a rendition of The Tin Rock, a finely designed image of a jug on one side, and an image of a millstone on the back. I'd also set up connecting our trading depot by tunnel to our lodgings, and carving a more defensive entrance into our outpost. I'd used the rock we had from mining to get our mechanics to work making mechanisms and set out to build as many rock fall traps as I could on a zig-zagging little path. Likewise, I had a bowyer make us 10 crossbows to get us started defensively. I know metal would be superior, but we don't have any military grade metal to work with at the moment. I'd also managed to set up some production of trade goods like goblets and amulets. Hopefully whoever follows me can find some metal we can use to create a few weapons to wield, otherwise we're limited to the wooden crossbows, and a bronze sword I bought off the caravan...

Idenbebmal

Also known as Paddleglens.

Granite 1st, 500

It's a fort I've recently been put in charge of as the expedition leader. I've been instructed my leadership will reign until Granite 1st of 501. My family has a history of mine engineers and as such I've been given this opportunity to establish a new outpost. I was given a rough map of the region, and the chance to select our starting supplies as well. The location I chose, our prospectors had noted should contain fluxstone, iron as well as a few other metals & sand and clay, all of which were things I was looking for in my planning. They've also informed me of the nice benefit of a small river being in the locale.

With the location mapped, we've got to prepare for the journey. I've taken our budget and massively cut unnecessary expenses for more expensive goods. While I recognize the utility of bringing wooden tools like buckets, splints, crutches, wheelbarrows and the like with us, I trust our carpenter to be of sufficient skill to craft them upon our arrival. Plus the options the merchants offered were of too low quality. I was shocked to see that they kept suggesting I buy pigtail for our cloth, ropes & thread. Spidersilk is half the price! Being a fiscally minded dwarf, I demanded the Spidersilk I knew they had available. With most of the budget savings we've had from the various cuts, I've turned around and spent the money on buying us animals to help establish our outpost. Llamas, goats, and sheep were my priorities, as I know they'll provide our necessary cloth later on.

With our wagon loaded, and six other... unfortunates in tow with me, we've set out to strike the earth!

There is a post in r/dwarffortress I always think about from time to time, it shows a maze the poster made for a minotaur they caught. It's a neat project for your fortress, you can use it as a dungeon to throw any prisoners into it and watch them struggle to navigate until their inevitable demise, pretty fun stuff. The post also shows the Minotaur's attributes and skills, and she is described as a Grand Master Observer (which in Dwarf Fortress all Minotaurs are) and also "good with language" traits which often Scholars have. A comment suggested as a joke making some office space for her and supplying her with writing materials. Minotaurs can't write (not that I've checked myself), but the concept alone is hilarious can you imagine? being a fearsome minotaur, and going by your day smashing people's skulls and stuff and then writing in your little diary about it? or writing about your existence serving the sole purpose of killing people the little bearded men throw down there simply for entertainment, you know just a cow-girl doing cow-girl things. I swear Dwarf Fortress produces top-quality writing material sometimes

Dwarf Fortress is riduculous. a world I generated contains a manual on adhesives called "It Is Glue". it's 103 pages long and the game describes the writing as "completely serious, yes overflowing with sadness".

The pros of making your own alcohol:

-It’s fun

-You can make whatever you want

Cons:

-Expensive hobby to get into

-Not all ideas are good ideas

-Waste alcohol/fermentation biproducts

Like I like yeast as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to eat the fermentation sediments. I don’t like Marmite, so I don’t want to eat the DIY marmite. Anyways, the end result of this is a… product I’ve dubbed the “Sewer Brew” named in honor of Dwarf Fortress

It’s all the sediment and a small amount of mead, mixed with sediment from a ginger wine batch. It’s somehow still fermenting, so I have to regularly crack the lid, and it smells like straight alcohol.

I have no idea what to do with it. I don’t even know why I collected it in a jar in the first place.

I can add a small bit of info on her. I believe she’s lived in my fort since 106-107, but I’m not exactly sure, I’ll try to crack open legends later to search for her & Kulet later. I’m pretty sure the 2 other older kids are also born in the fort?

As for the small potrait/fort sprites, in my experience DF Premium only generates a dwarf sprite for a creature if it visits one of your forts or is encountered in adventure mode. In my experience I can’t say I’ve seen a creature in adventure mode and then checked them in a fort without them being there, like a relative. As far as I know all my “living relatives” for my dwarfs that have sprites all migrate with them.

Ustuth has a few relatives and such that are historical figures without sprites, and I’ve never seen a creature in fort mode that wasn’t a historical figure, only in Adventure Mode have I encountered non-historical figures with sprites. Presumably because all figures at a Fort automatically get names in case you click them and therefore are saved as historical figures

Did you find your missing baby?

Not yet. Kulet is still missing. I admit my schedule has been rough for playing DF as of recent, and my most recent time has been spent on a new fort (The Sea Adventure, a Sinister Ocean/coastal embark). Kulet is from my 4th Fort (Idk the name it was too long). Short summary of my forts though:

1st Fort, Bustmoment: -Tutorial embark. Went fine initially, set up large bedroom complex, good dining hall, and food/alcohol production. Decent traps for surface entrance. Lack of understanding of how Fortifications work lead to bad usage of them, and ultimately made the surface defenses scary to operate. Meanwhile I breached the first cavern layer and only the first, and got involved in a nasty war on Olm people, that kept dragging my dwarves into the lake. Eventually after losing a major military engagement, I dropped the save and made a new world. (I didn't know about Retirement at the time)

2nd Fort, Steelfortress: -The infamous war on birds started here. Embark was a neutral badlands with high savagery & a light aquifer. Aquifer posed no challenge and I was within a year having settled with all three caverns pierced, and a decent magma forge set up. Traps and such were more aggressively deployed, and there were more than a few battles (Internally referred to as the "Great Cavern Wars" against Ant-People) to carve out certain areas underground for farming. Ultimately what drove me to abandon this fort was a 9 month long battle against giant flying agitated wildlife. During that I built up a decently large and armored military, which while incapable of fending off the birds, was apparently itching for World Domination. (More on that later. Though also on another post of mine)

3rd Fort, "Lake of Something" (Name forgotten again): -Having felt a High Savagery was too much & Light aquifers too easy, I searched for a heavy aquifer and got a lake location I liked. After starting the first year, and trying to dig down, I almost immediately hit the heavy aquifer and got stuck for over a year trying to get things stable, and set up a method to pierce the aquifer before beginning to build the fort proper. Unlike the previous forts which had surface trading depots, I decided to move this one underground. Like other forts before and after, I then began to quickly dig towards the bottom, and set up small areas within each cavern to work in, or blocked them off after discovering them. Ultimately nothing particularly notable happened that sticks out in memory, but the fort was ultimately abandoned due to the Cave Adaptation fix update rolling around. Knowing most dwarves had likely developed it in this fort, I decided to take a break from Fortress mode, and play some Adventure mode.

(Which I decided to retire my second fort, as my save of it was in the worst condition of the three, and I originally wanted to retire the fort by "Succumbing to internal invaders" or similar but a standard retirement was an option and I viewed as more desirable)

4th Fort, Desert Mines of Good (or something): -After playing around in Adventure Mode in the 2nd fort's world, I got an itch to start a new fort again, and was talking with my brother. We ultimately came to pick a fort in a Good and Neutral biome cross between "Desert?", badlands and Grasslands. Among world history, as it shares a previous fort, I decided to embark from that Civ again. Just to find out when the Liason came by, that 2 of my 3 dwarven neighbors were at war with me. Going through Legends mode further told me it was my Civ that seemed to have started the war, with all attacks coming from my prior fortress after I retired it. The whole time I was trying to rescue kidnapped children from Goblins in Adventure Mode, it turns out my fort was just attacking EVERYBODY. I played this one until around 1-2 weeks ago, when I began wanting to try messing with some mods for the first time.

4.5th fort, Some volcano Fort I think?: -I had a friend over and I was talking about DF, as you do, and he got curious about the game and wanted to see what it was like. So I booted the game up, showed world gen, we picked an embark, and then retired it to go to it in Adventure Mode. We then made an ideal character for him, and then foolishly rolled up a Worm Man with over 100 pet worms, and crashed the game. I haven't talked with said friend yet, and was gonna play in that world when talking with them.

5th Fort, The Sea Adventure: -That leaves us with our current fort. It's a sinister oceanic embark, and I brought a few adventurers there, including a Dwarf-me, a dwarf-version of my brother, and an anomalocaris (one of the mods) woman of one of my roommates (And their cat as a pet cat, who died to Goblins). Originally the plan was to grow Sliver Barbs & catch Precambrian Arthropods for an aquarium, but I don't know how to do the later half. The Roc attacks have been on this fort.

Here she is, three of her kids are on the same tile as her. I remember reading your prior message, and thought it was smart. Unfortunately none of her kids show up on there. Everything lower is just water smears all over her body. I presume from a recent bath, as that's her most recent memory, and she's still holding the soap. Also of note, in the process of trying to find her again, I tried searching for Kulet by name in the citizen's menu, but she doesn't show up.

Like Kulet still has a name and image. So presumably she "Exists" within the fort?

Still, it and other things got me interested in looking over her personality and history and such.

I'm sorry about what happened at Steelfortress (100-105)

Did you find your missing baby?

Not yet. Kulet is still missing. I admit my schedule has been rough for playing DF as of recent, and my most recent time has been spent on a new fort (The Sea Adventure, a Sinister Ocean/coastal embark). Kulet is from my 4th Fort (Idk the name it was too long). Short summary of my forts though:

1st Fort, Bustmoment: -Tutorial embark. Went fine initially, set up large bedroom complex, good dining hall, and food/alcohol production. Decent traps for surface entrance. Lack of understanding of how Fortifications work lead to bad usage of them, and ultimately made the surface defenses scary to operate. Meanwhile I breached the first cavern layer and only the first, and got involved in a nasty war on Olm people, that kept dragging my dwarves into the lake. Eventually after losing a major military engagement, I dropped the save and made a new world. (I didn't know about Retirement at the time)

2nd Fort, Steelfortress: -The infamous war on birds started here. Embark was a neutral badlands with high savagery & a light aquifer. Aquifer posed no challenge and I was within a year having settled with all three caverns pierced, and a decent magma forge set up. Traps and such were more aggressively deployed, and there were more than a few battles (Internally referred to as the "Great Cavern Wars" against Ant-People) to carve out certain areas underground for farming. Ultimately what drove me to abandon this fort was a 9 month long battle against giant flying agitated wildlife. During that I built up a decently large and armored military, which while incapable of fending off the birds, was apparently itching for World Domination. (More on that later. Though also on another post of mine)

3rd Fort, "Lake of Something" (Name forgotten again): -Having felt a High Savagery was too much & Light aquifers too easy, I searched for a heavy aquifer and got a lake location I liked. After starting the first year, and trying to dig down, I almost immediately hit the heavy aquifer and got stuck for over a year trying to get things stable, and set up a method to pierce the aquifer before beginning to build the fort proper. Unlike the previous forts which had surface trading depots, I decided to move this one underground. Like other forts before and after, I then began to quickly dig towards the bottom, and set up small areas within each cavern to work in, or blocked them off after discovering them. Ultimately nothing particularly notable happened that sticks out in memory, but the fort was ultimately abandoned due to the Cave Adaptation fix update rolling around. Knowing most dwarves had likely developed it in this fort, I decided to take a break from Fortress mode, and play some Adventure mode.

(Which I decided to retire my second fort, as my save of it was in the worst condition of the three, and I originally wanted to retire the fort by "Succumbing to internal invaders" or similar but a standard retirement was an option and I viewed as more desirable)

4th Fort, Desert Mines of Good (or something): -After playing around in Adventure Mode in the 2nd fort's world, I got an itch to start a new fort again, and was talking with my brother. We ultimately came to pick a fort in a Good and Neutral biome cross between "Desert?", badlands and Grasslands. Among world history, as it shares a previous fort, I decided to embark from that Civ again. Just to find out when the Liason came by, that 2 of my 3 dwarven neighbors were at war with me. Going through Legends mode further told me it was my Civ that seemed to have started the war, with all attacks coming from my prior fortress after I retired it. The whole time I was trying to rescue kidnapped children from Goblins in Adventure Mode, it turns out my fort was just attacking EVERYBODY. I played this one until around 1-2 weeks ago, when I began wanting to try messing with some mods for the first time.

4.5th fort, Some volcano Fort I think?: -I had a friend over and I was talking about DF, as you do, and he got curious about the game and wanted to see what it was like. So I booted the game up, showed world gen, we picked an embark, and then retired it to go to it in Adventure Mode. We then made an ideal character for him, and then foolishly rolled up a Worm Man with over 100 pet worms, and crashed the game. I haven't talked with said friend yet, and was gonna play in that world when talking with them.

5th Fort, The Sea Adventure: -That leaves us with our current fort. It's a sinister oceanic embark, and I brought a few adventurers there, including a Dwarf-me, a dwarf-version of my brother, and an anomalocaris (one of the mods) woman of one of my roommates (And their cat as a pet cat, who died to Goblins). Originally the plan was to grow Sliver Barbs & catch Precambrian Arthropods for an aquarium, but I don't know how to do the later half. The Roc attacks have been on this fort.

OH!

I WAS WONDERING WHAT WAS CAUSING THIS. THANKS DFHACK FOR THE ANSWER

Did you find your missing baby?

Not yet. Kulet is still missing. I admit my schedule has been rough for playing DF as of recent, and my most recent time has been spent on a new fort (The Sea Adventure, a Sinister Ocean/coastal embark). Kulet is from my 4th Fort (Idk the name it was too long). Short summary of my forts though:

1st Fort, Bustmoment: -Tutorial embark. Went fine initially, set up large bedroom complex, good dining hall, and food/alcohol production. Decent traps for surface entrance. Lack of understanding of how Fortifications work lead to bad usage of them, and ultimately made the surface defenses scary to operate. Meanwhile I breached the first cavern layer and only the first, and got involved in a nasty war on Olm people, that kept dragging my dwarves into the lake. Eventually after losing a major military engagement, I dropped the save and made a new world. (I didn't know about Retirement at the time)

2nd Fort, Steelfortress: -The infamous war on birds started here. Embark was a neutral badlands with high savagery & a light aquifer. Aquifer posed no challenge and I was within a year having settled with all three caverns pierced, and a decent magma forge set up. Traps and such were more aggressively deployed, and there were more than a few battles (Internally referred to as the "Great Cavern Wars" against Ant-People) to carve out certain areas underground for farming. Ultimately what drove me to abandon this fort was a 9 month long battle against giant flying agitated wildlife. During that I built up a decently large and armored military, which while incapable of fending off the birds, was apparently itching for World Domination. (More on that later. Though also on another post of mine)

3rd Fort, "Lake of Something" (Name forgotten again): -Having felt a High Savagery was too much & Light aquifers too easy, I searched for a heavy aquifer and got a lake location I liked. After starting the first year, and trying to dig down, I almost immediately hit the heavy aquifer and got stuck for over a year trying to get things stable, and set up a method to pierce the aquifer before beginning to build the fort proper. Unlike the previous forts which had surface trading depots, I decided to move this one underground. Like other forts before and after, I then began to quickly dig towards the bottom, and set up small areas within each cavern to work in, or blocked them off after discovering them. Ultimately nothing particularly notable happened that sticks out in memory, but the fort was ultimately abandoned due to the Cave Adaptation fix update rolling around. Knowing most dwarves had likely developed it in this fort, I decided to take a break from Fortress mode, and play some Adventure mode.

(Which I decided to retire my second fort, as my save of it was in the worst condition of the three, and I originally wanted to retire the fort by "Succumbing to internal invaders" or similar but a standard retirement was an option and I viewed as more desirable)

4th Fort, Gooddesert the Fortress of Mines: -After playing around in Adventure Mode in the 2nd fort's world, I got an itch to start a new fort again, and was talking with my brother. We ultimately came to pick a fort in a Good and Neutral biome cross between "Desert?", badlands and Grasslands. Among world history, as it shares a previous fort, I decided to embark from that Civ again. Just to find out when the Liason came by, that 2 of my 3 dwarven neighbors were at war with me. Going through Legends mode further told me it was my Civ that seemed to have started the war, with all attacks coming from my prior fortress after I retired it. The whole time I was trying to rescue kidnapped children from Goblins in Adventure Mode, it turns out my fort was just attacking EVERYBODY. I played this one until around 1-2 weeks ago, when I began wanting to try messing with some mods for the first time.

4.5th fort, Some volcano Fort I think?: -I had a friend over and I was talking about DF, as you do, and he got curious about the game and wanted to see what it was like. So I booted the game up, showed world gen, we picked an embark, and then retired it to go to it in Adventure Mode. We then made an ideal character for him, and then foolishly rolled up a Worm Man with over 100 pet worms, and crashed the game. I haven't talked with said friend yet, and was gonna play in that world when talking with them.

5th Fort, The Sea Adventure: -That leaves us with our current fort. It's a sinister oceanic embark, and I brought a few adventurers there, including a Dwarf-me, a dwarf-version of my brother, and an anomalocaris (one of the mods) woman of one of my roommates (And their cat as a pet cat, who died to Goblins). Originally the plan was to grow Sliver Barbs & catch Precambrian Arthropods for an aquarium, but I don't know how to do the later half. The Roc attacks have been on this fort.

At least the Mayor cares about some people's medical needs. Though a crutch might be more helpful

Limb-destroying sock

Limb-destroying sock

GIRL. HOW MUCH SHIT CAN YOU OWN?!

Hey girl...maybe share some shit for the rest of us?

Hey girl...maybe share some shit for the rest of us?

Yeah, okay

YOU JUST GOT HERE AND YOU'RE ALREADY HORNY ON MAIN?!

i think everyone should be at least a little bit fixated on a niche video game that came out like 10 years ago and has never been relevant enough to discuss with people you know in real life. for your health

One of my dwarves died and I went to see what was going on and

dude you killed him???

YEAH I CAN TELL

I did something similar with a friend the other day while showing him the game. We set it to Adventure Mode, made him a mantis woman (Gelder of course) and set up all their skills and spent their money. We then turned around and made a worm man so we could spawn on the main continent, and while trying to pick equipment… we saw Pet Worm… and we had about 600 or so spare points. We spent them ALL ON WORMS. So a mantis woman and a worm man and his worms.

At this point I figured I’m probably just humoring him to even see if we can leave character creation like this. But the game loads, sticks us in an Elven retreat, and I check and we’ve got a fuckton of worms crawling on our worm man, who is stuck in a tree… after an impromptu climbing lesson, we’re out of the tree, and ready to travel to our Dwarven fort of choice to settle down for some Fortress mode shenanigans. So we open the travel menu and *then* the game crashes. But climbing a tree with 100 worms on my shoulders and head was fine lmfao

Trying out the Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode beta finally, I rolled up a black bear man with 40 pet turkeys. He's from the same civ as Fort Bowloar but on a different landmass, I guess it couldn't be selected because it's on a different continent from the rest of the civilization.

Having this many turkey followers seems to be a bit of an issue (for some reason), every step they're going prone and standing back up as they enter and exit each others' spaces, generating a message that needs to be clicked through.

I experienced a bug where I was up a tree after exiting the travel screen, and I could climb down but my 40 turkeys were stuck up there. Thankfully traveling again brought them down.

We found a goblin site but it was populated by neutral dwarves and goblins, for some reason. Maybe we conquered this site during world generation? Still couldn't travel or make a campfire until leaving. Also Bowloar mention!

After leaving the goblin site we were attacked by dingoes! Until this exact moment I had not realized that my turkeys have natural predators.

It's pretty gruesome. A quirk of mass combat in this engine when you're controlling a single unit is that things tend to move into adjacent spaces when they dodge attacks, which means they ping-pong around a bunch when being attacked by 40 turkeys simultaneously. It was very hard to get into melee range. I got two hits in on one dingo. (they were pretty good hits, though)

The turkeys won with three dead and a lot more grievously injured. Perhaps from this humble beginning there will emerge a scarred and battle-hardened uber-turkey who will be the perfect adventuring companion. Or, possibly the rest of them will bleed to death.

To honor the dead I must respond to this tragedy in accordance with the customs of my people.