The 2014 release of Dwarf Fortress came out recently. There's a launcher program with assorted mods called the Lazy Newb Pack that's always mentioned as a good starting point for beginners.

I've been getting in to this over the last few days and having a lot of fun, but it's a pain in the ass trying to figure stuff out. Any other players out there? I've been watching Zemalf's LP of the 2012 version and reading the wiki, but it's slow going.

I'm having trouble with farmers not sowing seeds in particular. Set up a a few 1x7 rows of crops outside, and they just sit fallow year after year, even though I have several farmers with the skill active and a ton of seeds. For each row I set the same crop for each season, think I tried alfalfa, spinach and something else I can't remember.

If I have the fortress inside a mountain with no nearby soil except outside, how do I go about setting up an underground farm? I read something about irrigation, but the tutorial made it seem like that was too complicated for a beginner.

Also, I'm having issues with stuff not getting moved to the proper stockpile and it just sits there, particularly gems that are far away from the stockpile (but near other activity) and animal corpses. Both stockpiles have room. Also, my wood and stone stockpiles aren't getting replenished after my first year.

I've played for months and got some pretty awesome fortresses that died to FPS lag in the end due to the size. After that I switched over to the Masterworks mod due to the way better size to FPS ratio.

The only real problem I have with the game ( and that stops me from playing again ) isn't the interface, as that just takes some memorization to get, but the military. Super detailed, super whatever you want, but for ****s sake they never do what you tell them. Imho a military overhaul would be the most important part right now. Make it easy to set up instead of having 56 menus and 546 different commands and trainign schedules and sleeping schedules and pooping schedules.

Other than that, the game is just awesome. The first time I had to set up a hospital was epic. My best miner creates a cave-in and falls down 3 levels, breaking both his feet ( and his toes lol ), and I never had serious injuries before. So i had to first set up a surgeon, who obviously didn't was his hands because I didn't know he had to and didn't set up a well. After that he slowly got sutured, splintered up and got a cast. Yay! And got the rot. So he died anyway. After clogging up my hospital for months. **** him. He infected others too. **** him twice.

Some other things are just ******ed too. Chrskskskthakfj the giant megabeast attacks you! He is 44456 years old and killed half a planet. And he get's stuck in a cage trap.

Once every while I like to read up on fortresses tho, the videos or summaries are always super fun.

Maybe one day we will get multi-core support and a decent interface. One can only dream of that day tho.

I also had most of the fun bug/features over the years. Catsplosions, ale explosions, carps that massacred over 50 dwarves on their own, lava accidents, carvan "accidents", lava caravan accidents, flooding of the entire fortress I had built over the last 5 days...

tried to play this twice with last attempt a week ago.
too many options and Im usually ok with low graphics,but come this is being nerd to be nerd here.
learning all the commands is just turning me off and im sad cause the game looks great.
Ive read a lot of reports and they are real epic and funny.
just cant get into learning that huge mountain of infos

Graphic packs esist for a reason

But yeah, I agree on the rest.

The game does set up some awesome Let's Play videos if the person is knowledgeable of the game. It's almost like watching a epic movie/story.

A couple of days later, and I'm still with the game and loving it

I started rewatching the Zemalf LP I linked above, but following along using his initial save file and the 0.34.11 2012 version of Dwarf Fortress, and I'm finally starting to get it. There are so many systems that you have to come to terms with, that fumbling around by yourself randomly consulting guides and wikis is (almost too) overwhelming. I found trying to emulate Zemalf's actions and to get the same results kept me on track and learning much faster. He does a great job dividing each episode in to a few tasks, and usually is able to remember to explain things as he goes. And using the Phoebus tileset helped a bit. The ASCII graphics weren't a problem for me aesthetically, but it can be hard to tell what some things are without having memorized the corresponding (and visually unrelated) character symbol.

At the end of my first year I even had a random event where a Weremonitor (Dwarf that turns into a giant lizard once a month) attacked my fortress, but I had already set up an interior burrow and used a military order to alert all the civilians to head inside, raised my drawbridge, and waited while the thing attacked a wild deer wandering nearby. They fought for a few days before the thing returned to Dwarf form and ran off

Outpost Nishdokish, or "Tradeferns" has made it through their first year despite a siege commanded by the human necromancer Aba Sculptednut of The Knights of Temptation. The dwarves were able to finish construction of a system of draw-bridges and moats to deny access to their fortress, leaving the undead to wander listlessly around the nearby fields outside.


Inside, the dwarves are mostly occupied with attending a party hosted by the dwarven child Olin Charcoalgem (the third in two seasons, they really need to stop humoring her) held in their legendary dining hall. Thankfully, booze and meals were in good supply, and the crops for the season had just been planted - these parties tend to last for many days and work comes to a halt.


Below, in the lavish living quarters which had recently been completed, a few other dwarves held their own party near a statue garden by the main stairwell (while Olin's sister sulked in her room, uninvited to the part above yet again).


Things are looking promising for the year ahead, with large stockpiles of booze, food and goods, though an expected wave of immigrants may have to brave the undead siege if it is not lifted soon, thus putting the fortress at risk as the drawbridge is lowered to let them in. If it comes to that, the undead will have to brave a long hallway of traps and cages and a small squad of marksdwarfs.

EDIT: yes, I'm aware of how nerdy a thing to do this is on a Saturday night :0

Dude, that is one hell of a fort for someone who just recently got into DF, very nice. Draw bridges, traps, trading post, good stockpiles, good layout, i sure as hell did much worse when i started

Thanks

Like I posted earlier, trying to follow and replicate Zemalf's tutorial video was incredibly helpful. I probably would have given up in frustration had I not happened on that method. There's still a metric ****-ton to learn, but just maintainingg a secure and self-reliant fortress is pretty easy now. I've looked at some other streamers like quill18 and CptnDuck and they don't come close to Zemalf at explaining things clearly and concisely. I suppose it's still a fairly small community, but it just shows how complicated games can be made nowadays while community guides, wikis, streams and videos can still bring someone up to speed quickly.

YouR_Doom, how do you manage your underground farming? I find myself spending way too much time looking at my seed and plant stocks in the stockpile screen checking that amounts aren't getting low, looking up what plants turn in to what seeds and how to do that (be it milling/cooking/brewing), and fiddling with the cooking orders of various plants. I never seen to be able to build up a big enough stock of anything, though that probably eases in time when my farmers get more skilled and I don't have to rely on plants as much for cooking and brewing.

Any mod or guide suggestions would be great, the wiki doesn't really consolidate any of this information in any way.

Tbh the last times I played I mostly focused on just planting Plump Helmets and letting them fill a room before moving on to other seeds. I pretty much mostly import stuff when I find I'm mising it. Trading is a huge part of the game, so from the get go i start to produce stuff I can sell later. Same for the cooking; just produce the easy stuff until it is coming out of your ears and then do some higher quality ( or just import it ).

As far as mods go, I like Masterworks. Way more variety but way less clutter and better FPS, as many items have been consolidated in one variety. Gone are the days where gobbos dropped a left sock made out of iron forged by hinkerbustle in tammerak. Now they just drop left wool socks ( or whatever material they wear ). So it's easier to identify and stack.

today

I saw the game is coming to Steam soon, and decided to watch some videos to try getting back in to it and came across a guy called Kruggsmash. He has a few long form series on different saves, and does a great job throwing in some RP, sound effects and drawings. It's not great for learning how to play, but they're pretty entertaining if you're in to this kind of thing. A great one to start with is Skullhorror, 6 episodes of about 30mins each.



The Lazy Newb Pack has been taken over by a new guy and it's called the Starter Pack, but I'm trying out another pack called Meph Tileset that is much more visually appealing. They both come with all the sounds, graphics mods and utilities set up and accessible from a launcher program.