Dwarf Fortress Wrapup
Right, time to wrap this bad boy up.
I had a good bit of fun with this project. It was hard to play and hard to write, but it was fun nonetheless.
This game is every bit the bastard I’d thought it was. Honestly, though, almost all of this game’s difficulties lie in its clunky wreck of an interface. Sometimes, even if you (very basically) know what you’re doing, it’s hard to tell why it is or is not working and what you can do about it. The in-game documentation is a joke, although there are quite a few good tutorials out there. Certainly, if I was playing this for my own enjoyment, I’d focus more on learning from those.
Speaking of which, that was something of a dilemma for me. On the one hand, floundering about without any idea of how to control my dorfs hardly seemed like a good read, but on the other hand, it wouldn’t be nearly as entertainingly bad if I followed a noobtorial. Heck, if you stick to most of those, you might actually make it a year or so before everyone starves to death or gets killed by wild animals.
Ultimately, I used a text walkthrough for the beginning stages, then (once I got a grip on the controls) started flying solo. You can spot the exact point where I went independent—it’s where any flimsy indication that I knew what I was doing vanished.
A few parting notes:
• I still don’t know what’s up with that damn farm.
• When Smiley went berserk, the game became extremely dull. Basically, none of the dorfs would move—those inside wouldn’t leave, because she was blocking the entrance (doing…I don’t actually know what, but she injured someone in the process), and those outside wouldn’t move either. Everyone just sort of paced around until they died. I think I went to the bathroom twice in the interim.
• Admittedly, I don’t really know what killed She-Wolf. I’m guessing it’s a monkey, since we found bloody monkey bits all over the place, but it’s possible she faked her own death and went to join up with a traveling minstrel troupe or something.
• I really should have loaded out with: a farmer, a carpenter of some sort.
• I didn’t need: pretty much anyone I actually did bring.
• I loaded up with an axe, but I’m not sure I ever properly equipped She-Wolf with it. So, she was just taking on monkeys with her bare hands. Fitting, I guess.
• It took me bloody ages to figure out how to dismantle the wagon.
• Never once were there enough beds.
• I kept getting messages asking what I wanted from the next caravan. You know what I want? A hot meal, some clean water, and a quick death. In that order.
• I couldn’t spare the manpower to make coffins, and dwarves won’t drag a body anywhere, so I was basically stuck with rotting corpses everywhere towards the end.
• There were actually a few other berserkers towards the end, but none so successful as Smiley.
• I like to think Kahdzbar was never seen again.
Also, here’s a screenshot of the final fortress:
I didn't get a shot of downstairs--all that's down there is some cleared off space that wasn't used for anything. Not pictured: the endless mounds of waste stone and corpses outside.
Actually, for future refernce, if you designate an area as a Graveyard your dorfs will haul bodies there, if you’re not in a position to make proper coffins. It helps, as they also move enemy bodies, meaning you can pick the sweet loot from their barely decayed carcass just before they’re interred.
Dismanteling the wagon and equipping things to my soldiers were long lessons to learn :S it’s just down to interface, really – once you find the right screen is a quick job, but until then, it’s very frustrating.
I my first load out I generally take Miner, Miner/Mason, Woodcutter/Odd Jobs, Carpenter, Farmer/Brewer, Mechanic/Broker and a Craftsdwarf.
I feel this is good because I can draft the miners and woodcutter for defense if I need to, the farmer takes car of food and drink, the carpenter makes wooden stuff all the time, the Mechanic hauls at first, but then starts to make very nasty traps and lovely floodgates. The craftsdwarf hauls and makes a lot of stone rubbish to sell to the caravan when it arrives. This is the setup that works best for me.
Now onto the farm 😀 when happened here was the floor that you built it on wasn’t muddy. Building a farm plot on top of stone or a bone-dry floor won’t yeild any crops. Usually you either have to start by building on outsite or just last on supplies until you can get some irrigation set up.
This usually consists of a couple of floor gates set up to let river/undergroundriver water into a room (note:be real careful – puttings doors on the room and locking it when you might put water in there is hella’ important) and then once the room has been filled, a different set to let it drain out. Then your farm plots are nicely muddy and you can start growing things!
On the other hand, you handled beserkers about as well as anyone could at this point 😀 having a LOT of alcohol will make your dorfs much more placid – I tend to make it constantly and even then buy what I can of it from the caravan. On the subject of that, I also tend to buy loads of food from them, seeds and meat. While I’ll happily grow food, hunting just tends to get my dorfs killed.
As I mentioned, I tend to have a craftsdwarf make stone rubbish all the time (things like stone mugs, toys and instruments) to trade – it usually works pretty well, get a good pile of those and you can buy most anything the caravan has to offer.
Wow, this turned into a long post 😐 I hope some of that was helpful/vaguely interesting 🙂 I’ve been playing DF for a couple of years now, but ny no means a master 😐 Never forget – losing is Fun!
And by “floor gates” I mean “flood gates”. It might not seem like much of an error to correct, but since DF allows you to make floor gates, trapdoors and floor grates, I figured it was worth clarifying!
Yeah, if there’s one thing that game needs improved, it’s the interface. Even basic mouse support would be effing amazing.
Pointers for the future (provided you don’t now hate the game with a passion):
-Designate an area as a graveyard under stockpiles–that’ll get your dorfs to remove any of their decomposing brethren to that location.
-Always start with beds. Dorfs get unhappy pretty fast if they don’t have anywhere to sleep. Make the seven required beds your first construction from the carpentry shop.
-Remember, when you select the items to take with you, removing the anvil will free up a huge amount of space. You’ll have to buy one from a caravan later, but metalcrafting is usually unimportant in the first year or so. Use the extra space for booze, livestock, and useful things like rope.
-I’m not sure if you did figure this out–you CAN assign different jobs to various dorfs. The “Peasants” are jobless, if you leave them alone they’ll sit around useless. You can assign tasks under preferences->labor on the view unit sidebar.
-MAKE ALL THE BOOZE YOU POSSIBLY CAN. Dorfs can live off the stuff in the winter after the water has frozen over and don’t actually require any other sustenance to survive. And they get superpissed when it runs out.
-If your map has a river or stream, dorfs prefer to drink out of that. Telling them to drink out of a standing pool will make them unhappy until you build a well over it.
I apologize if I was stating things you already knew–these are all things I had trouble with starting out. So, good luck in your future fortress endeavors. And I quite enjoyed reading about Khadzbar, short-lived though the series was.
If there’s one thing Dorfs love, it’s alcohol.
Farms either have to be on soil such as sand/loam/clay, or on stone that you’ve made muddy by putting water on it.
I actually accomplished this be designating a pond, which causes dwarves to grab buckets and dump water onto a tile 1 z-lever lower. I filled up a 1×4 pit this way and then used a dwarf-powered screw pump to spew it all over a little farm area.
It really helps to start out in a place where there’s a soil layer.
The interface Toady admits needs a lot of work and he has plans to overhaul it significantly in a future update, but only after he’s gotten lots of gameplay elements finished. No sense overhauling an interface only to change it again and again as he modifies the core gameplay.
I think the general consensus here is correct on the farms–you’re trying to build them where they can’t be built. As near as I can tell, you’re using the same tileset as me, and that dark grey color on the ground means its not soil. You can press ‘k’ and move the cursor over it to see exactly what kind of earth it is.
At least you were able to figure out the interface. I downloaded Dorf Fortress and was completely flabbergasted at what, exactly, I was supposed to push to do /stuff/. Bravo, good sir.
I actually don’t mind the interface too much – once you’ve been playing a while, it’s like anything – second nature. I actually rather like the “no-mouse” thing. On the other hand, the confusing arrays of menus is difficult to manuvere sometimes 😐
I certainly don’t want to see the ASCII changed 🙂
The farm, did you designate it to grow tower caps during all seasons? Did the farmer have any labour but farming enabled? Did you have the seeds? Was it inside? It pretty much needs all these conditions to work, except maybe the farmer not having other labours active.
Also: it’s impossible to make hunters use axes, they must use crossbows, and I assume she-wolf was designated as a hunter? a bit too lazy too go back in the archive and check.
The setup I most often use is:woodcutter, 2 miners, carpenter, mason, 2 growers. I also bring two cats and two dogs, two ropes and spend all the other points on booze and seeds. In order to accomplish all this I usually only bring one axe, since we only have one person who’s going to use it.
And you should embark on a site with a magma pipe, flux stone, a river(underground or not) and no aquifer unless you are trying some kind of challenge. Embarking in a non-small area without evil and low savagery helps too, but it can get a bit boring after a while.
She-Wolf was designated as a warrior, actually. She had no training in hunting.
I really have trouble finding an area in which all those things are present. So I usually settle for a river, low evil and low savegry. Since most forts get abondoned are destroyed in a few years, there’s not much long term I need from the other things
In a long term fortress, however, I also get magma. With that I can make all the bauxite I’ll need.
Aquifiers are only for those with a death wish 😛
I have nothing meaningful to add to this discussion, but may I ask why you all keep cycling through different names for the hairy half-pints? Dorfs, dwarfs, and dwarves all seem to have been used. Is there a reason?
Dwarfs = Humans suffering from Dwarfism.
Dwarves = Mythical race of mine-dwelling worker beings. The classic dwarf.
Dorfs = Affectionate term for the resilient little bastards what inhabit fortresses.
Is the singular of Dwarves Dwarf? o.O
Yeah. Just like the plural of leaf is leaves.
@Rutskarn: I don’t think you actually need a warrior until a year or two into the game, and then you could just recruit the hunters and woodcutters to do the job.
Actually I’ve heard that “dwarves” is incorrect. It was popularized when Tolkein used the term because he didn’t like “dwarfs”. I might be wrong. It’s just what the voices told me.
Galenloke: It’s Tolkein. He is the accepted authority on standardized fantasy terms.