Really enjoying my first playthrough of Dwarf Fortress

andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun to Games@lemmy.world – 351 points –

Until now I've avoided almost everything to do with combat so I guess this is my introduction.

36

You're gonna "the WHAT" on one of the most normal monsters in the game? Your head is gonna literally explode when you encounter one of the entirely RNG creatures. lol

My favorite I've personally ran into while playing was a demon made of smoke. Basically the fog monster from Lost. Except that it wasn't as terrifying as it sounded from its description because smoke is, you know, super easy to cut. He died basically by being wafted away by an infant.

I did say it's my first playthrough, lol. Thus far my biggest enemy has been myself, and a hungry mysterious vampire.

I also made this meme before I even attempted to fight, and once I did, was pretty relieved at how easy the fight was. But without any context it's an intimidating popup.

There's fun stuff you can do with that vampire if you ever figure out who it is. They make great slaves because they live forever and don't need to eat.

Figuring out who it is can be hard tho. You really have to watch the logs or build in ways that they can't feed without being witnessed.

And if you do want them alive, make sure your hammerer just has something weak because if you have the justice system set up, they usually will sentence a vamp to death. Adamantine makes a great non-lethal hammer. It's so light, blunt weapons become foam bats.

Yeah, and it's not helping me interrogate witnesses when the names in the justice tab don't match the names in the interrogation selector. I think I read there's an option for that but couldn't find it easily. The justice bit definitely has me a bit confused. I'm attempting to set guards up near the place it keeps happening in hopes someone will see something. Not sure if that's the play, or if I should just try to outpace the vampire's hunger and live with it lol.

You may not actually have the accused in custody to interrogate.

My understanding of the justice system may also be out of date. I have not put nearly as much time into the Steam version as I have the legacy versions preceding it.

Df is really hard to get the hang of. Keep at it and let the "fun" commence!

Don't forget to build your trade depot! (Outside)

How critical is outside? Mine is inside and it doesn't seem to have caused problems.

What others said, as long as the merchants can access it, it is fine. Merchants can't use stairs afaik so either outside or dig ramps.

I moved it outside and the big thing I noticed was that the weight limit goes way up, presumably since the cart is right there. Or my first few visits were unlucky, maybe.

Always remember: Losing is fun!

How far have you gotten yet?

I've made it to year 4, I think, and 120 dwarves. I think I have a vampire somewhere in my fortress because we keep finding dwarves dead, drained of blood. 😅 And I may have reloaded a save from year 2, to build a wall, because I sorta kinda mined through a frozen river which then flooded my base in late spring that year.

Vampires are wild. I caught the one I had, and he admitted it, and also admitted he was here under a false name. He got exiled from another dwarf civilization for embezzlement. My dwarves apparently didn’t care. After he was punished, they elected him mayor. :D

"Okay"

Yeah, they definitely didn't have my real reaction as an option. I thought this game was supposed to be deep and realistic, smh.

My favorite fortress fail was from a were-iguana. A visitor turned into a giant iguana in the middle of the dining hall and caused a minor ruckus before my militia dispatched it. 2/10 invasion, really not that special.

Then next full moon there were 7 of them, including my militia commander. Oops. Pay attention to combat logs when you fight a were-creature! Quarantine the bitten!

Lol welcome aboard the DF party ship!

I still remember my most recent fortress mode cyclops, even though its been almost half a year. I had 2 squads who I had been training using training spears, but forgot to change equipment before sending them to kill it, by some miracle, they dodged all of its attacks for about 20 attacks despite having no dodge skills at all, then one of them either punched or bashed the cyclops in the face and got lucky, knocking it out. What followed was around 20 in game days of a circle of 14 dwarves mercilessly beating a puddle of bruises that was once a cyclops, as training weapons do next to no damage, occasionally it would wake up, then immediately give in to the pain again, with the only non bruise damage coming from whenever a dwarf would decide to punch, kick, or bite instead of using their main weapon. It FINALLY ended when one of dwarves punched it in the head, tearing the brain through the skull, putting the poor thing out of its misery.

My dwarves went in competent speardwarves and came out around grand master level, all very dehydrated.

Download DFhack and go into the control panel (top left corner) and enable a bunch of the automation stuff while you're learning.

I had to watch videos on this game for weeks. I recommend Blind and Nookrium I'd you're looking for guides.

Edit: link to Blind's mega tutorial

Just lookup what you're stuck on you don't have to watch the whole 7 hours like me.

I've definitely been watching a few of those playalongs just to get ideas. And, you know, because hyperfocus.

Another thing to help you out is to learn to use macros.

Escape

Settings

Game

Keyboard cursor enabled Yes

Now you can select mining (be mindful of your priority and warm/wet stone settings) and you will see a box that is your keyboard cursor.

Press ctrl + r and design a room using the arrow keys and enter. Try to start the room at the door so you can better know where to place the cursor to print.

When you are done press ctrl + r again.

Now you can press ctrl + p to print that same room multiple times

Ctrl + s saves the blueprint currently active, ctrl + L brings up a list of your blueprints.

Using macros will help you build from scratch faster. The game is about losing, and macros let you get back up and running way faster after your inevitable downfall. and they are a big help keeping my base looking good to!

I personally have a "grand hall" blueprint i use for temples and bars, housing blueprints, and commerce blueprints.

Then you just connect the blueprints with hallways and BAM insta fortress! Again be mindful of your priorities when setting up blueprints.

The Cyclops

Athathi ÿivusaro Theÿise

That's the particular Cyclops' name

Right, I thought we were just saying parts of the monster alert.

See I thought maybe the reason you were WHATing was because you thought the whole name was a type of monster

TBH those giant humanoids are pretty tame compared to the beasts who start showing up in the Caverns.

Never explore the caverns. Got it.

If you find it and wall it off you get to watch the beasts massacre each other and the lizardmen, which is funny to me.