Well, as I said in my qubicle topic, I’ve recently gotten into a little game called Dwarf Fortress. This is a game all about building a fortress to inevitably have fun and having to start over. It is one of the games Stonehearth obviously takes a good amount of inspiration from, and a lot of other games are trying to at least somewhat replicate it. The game has been in development for a decade, and still has another 20 years to go before they even think they’ll be out of the Alpha.
The game is one of the most complex, difficult, and non-user friendly games ever designed. It’s horrible UI, ASCII graphics, and confusing controls seem daunting to most, but once you learn the ropes of the game, it is incredibly entertaining. However, you cannot ‘win’ Dwarf Fortress. You will always eventually be destroyed. Whether your kingdom within the extremely advanced world gen pissed off the local elves, or you stupidly settled close to a necromancers castle and you constantly get attacked by the reanimated dead, or, more likely, your dwarves will succumb to tantrums and begin to murder eachother, leading to everyone having tantrums and eventually every dwarf going berserk and butchering everything in sight, or flooding your fortress with magma.
So THIS thread is a place where I’d love if people would just get together and talk about this amazing game. Perhaps you’d like to tell a story? Ask questions? Figure out what the hell this game is?
The game is free for download here. OR get the Lazy Newb Pack which makes the game much easier to pick up and get running, especially if you want to use a Tile Set so the game is not in ASCII
So, I’m gunna kick this thread off with a story of my own. I’m fairly new to this game, so this was just my second fortress. I’d say I was doing fairly well, however, I noticed that my dwarves kept going missing. Why? There was a waterfall nearby, with a huge drop down to just a small river created gorge. Tons of dwarves kept dropping down there for some reason, and eventually I got a migrant wave. All ten of them just jumped down there and died.
Then one of my dwarves got possessed, and took over my craftdwarf’s workshop to make something, as I was trying to make plaques to memorialize the dwarves. I couldn’t get another built in time before all those dead dwarves became ghosts, and started scaring all of my workers. One ghost ended up killing about four other dwarves. Etc, etc.
Then I got a goblin ambush, but I couldn’t pull my drawbridge because ghosts scared everyone away from the lever. They got in, killed almost all of my dwarves until the brave Expedition leader grabbed the only sword and cut one of the goblins in half, and impaled the other two after taking a crossbow bolt to the chest. Then, after she finished off the goblins, a dwarf threw a tantrum and ran up behind her, punched her in the back of the head, knocked her unconscious, and kicked her to death before calming down. By that time, the second squad of goblins had made it inside and finished off the last of the dwarves. That was my batch of fun for the day!
Took me a few days, but you want to keep the wiki at your side at all times for a while. The control scheme is difficult and I often forget what some buttons do, but if you keep at it, you’ll eventually remember it all by heart.
Remember, don’t worry about losing. Losing is a gameplay mechanic, and each fort lost is just a tutorial of what went wrong.
I’m still not sure if I just don’t have the patience for the wiki or if I’m just afraid of having fun. :’(
Will start up a new game tomorrow morning. Will post stories of the results.
Ok, the game isn’t so difficult to pick up as i thought. The most confusing part is the graphics and the controls, after you get it (and with the use of a texture pack) its not so hard to understand what’s goin on.
Now the fun part begins, and while you are trying to design the dwarfs’ dorms, and rebuild the wall that you’ve just ruined, your animals are going crazy and kill each other
I actually funded Stonehearth because it felt like a child of DK and DF.
i have so many stories but i’d love to hear some from new players!
atm i’m playing MDF (a dwarf fortress mode that adds alot of FUN) and i’m having a blast!
recently i’ve built a temple for ARMOK which id basicly a giant tower the height of 200z with a pit below it to the center of my underground fortress where there’s an altar made of obsidian, i use the tower to throw my elven captives to their doom so that ARMOK might be pleased! when they hit the altar and splatter across my great hall! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
(it is well known that DF players are basically sociopaths)
Dwarf Fortress is a game that brings out my inner anger. Not at the game, because its a lot of fun, but I can’t help but hate all of my dwarves with a passion.
So, I’m also fairly new to the game too. My third fortress, and I’ve gotten hang of the game fairly well. I abandoned this fortress later, though, because it made me mad. I found my first cavern in this fortress, captured some of those big ol’ mushroom eating cow things, killed a troll (a baby my speardwarf brought with her punched it in the face, which was hilarious) without issue, killed some Antmen, caged a lot of naked mole dogs that kept running into my fortress (right into those cage traps).
However, soon after I had a goblin ambush. I thought, “no big deal! Everyone to the meeting hall, Steel Gryphons to the bridge. Let’s kick their asses!” A ton of dwarves ignored the order to go to their burrows, and just ran out to the river to fish and got beaten to death by goblins. That made me angry.
So I decided to leave them to their fates and wait out the goblin ambush. I ordered my soldiers behind the bridge, and unburrowed a few civilians in the hopes one would go pull the lever. All of them IGNORED my commands to pull the lever, ran out, and died repeatedly. When the goblins got to the gate, my military dwarves greeted them on the bridge for a fight. THEN a damn civilian pulled the lever, butchering ALL of my military dwarves instantly. Not only that, but they only killed one of the goblins. I was… mad, to say the least. This last goblin proceeds to hack everyone else outside to pieces, and my dwarves (and me) had a tantrum spiral. The end.
did you added all of your civis to the borrows?
i usually make a river that leads to a hollow under my fort so my dwarves would have a safe place to fish at.
and i have a patrol duty dwarf that is responsible for the lever room so no problem there.
i also have an OCD about the layout of the fort… and i enjoy too much time in designing my great hall…
I’ve always enjoyed dwarf fortress (but I haven’t played it for a while, and intend to KEEP IT that way), and one thing which amazes me is how many games it’s directly inspired:
[DwarfCorp (Kickstarter)][1]
[Gnomoria][2]
[A Game Of Dwarves (like Dwarf Fortress Lite)][3]
As well as inspiring countless other games (StoneHearth)… The reason why dwarf fortress isn’t more of a massive phenomenon is because the dev’s creating the game that HE wants to play, not the average gamer.
Also, get the Lazy Newb Pack, WITH Stonesense, which basically lets you see the game in 3D, like Gnomoria and such (pretty cool, I know).
[1]: DwarfCorp by Completely Fair Games, Ltd. —Kickstarter
[2]: http://gnomoria.com/
[3]: http://www.agameofdwarves.com/
Just had my first vampire incident. One body turned up drained of blood, so I carefully examined all of my dwarves. One dwarf had a lot of previous guild involvement, and a spouse and children not in the fortress. Obviously the vampire. I blockaded her in the caverns beneath my fortress, and she is now running about beating up flesh balls. After about thirty seconds of beating up these useless lumps of meat, she’s already a Grand Master Wrestler, Fighter, and gaining skill in Striker. All she’s doing is punching them. I can’t wait till she finds something more dangerous down there.
Alas, after killing four giant blind cave ogres and dozens of annoying little crundles, she has had her arms ripped off by a voracious cave crawler and bleed to death. Poor, poor Rakna.
but i’d love to hear some from new players!
