Dwarf Fortress you sick temptress, you!

Robear wrote:

And apparently you can dungeon delve old sites in a sort of adventure mode? Is that true?

Yes! Although I have 0 experience with that mode, and I don't know if it is part of the steam release.

Robear wrote:

And apparently you can dungeon delve old sites in a sort of adventure mode? Is that true?

You have been able to for a long time, but Adventure mode is not in the steam release. It will be "Soon". You'll be able to delve old AND current sites. Adventure mode can be fun. I once wrestled a minotaur. In most roguelike games that means pressing the arrow key against them a bunch. In this it was grappling his arms and legs and trying to choke him out. I must have lost because what I remember most is fighting him, not winning. This was at least 12 years ago.

I found my story from 2006 on like page 8 of this thread. SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

26 year old me wrote:

I just had a fight that was like something out of greek mythology. I made a new world and a new axeman. Seems that worlds created in newer builds make it tougher to find companions so I went out alone.

I found a minotaur's cave and wandered in, went deeper and deeper, killing frogmen and such until I found the horned bastard. Within the first few strikes of the fight, my axe is stuck inside the minotaur and he breaks my grip on it, which means there's no recovering it until the battle is over (I think), so its hand to hand time.

I try grappling with him in several places, I manage to sprain his wrist before he breaks the grip. He knocks me down and I break his knee, forcing him down. I pounced, went for the throat. I had a chokehold on him and strangled him till he passed out and finally died. Amazing.

Adventure mode will rule all once they add more features.

Edit: You can regain your weapon or steal their weapon if you grip it in 'wrestling' mode with your HAND (rather than your upper arm or something goofy like that) You get a successful grip, then press shift+I to attempt to gain possession.

I use adventure mode to play a special animal pyramid game. I make the toughest unarmed fighter I can, then find and beat up a small animal. Then I use that animal to fight a larger one and so on.

This is how I came to beat a camel to death with a monkey.

It's also the mode where I accidentally tried to trade someone their own arm.

BTW, the Official Discord Server for DF is great, and there is a DF channel on the Roguelike Discord that is also pretty good.

A_Unicycle wrote:

Hey folks, I'm very curious about this new Dwarf Fortress release. I've always read about this game but have found it impenetrable every time I tried to learn.

How's the new Steam release in terms of accessibility? I've heard there is a tutorial (which is great!) but it doesn't cover a lot of concepts (which is not so great). I'm still thinking this might be a game that I enjoy reading about more than playing, but the good press is urging me closer and closer to the big green purchase button.

In terms of similarly complex games I'm okay with:

I enjoy but have never finished Factorio

I've put 30 hours into Rimworld but still find it a bit too difficult to actually understand what I'm doing. I like it a lot, but struggle to feel like I'm ever on top of what I'm doing.

I admit I have a bit of a gut feeling that I should just stick with Rimworld because any additional complexity would be too much for me, but I can't deny my curiosity Thoughts?

Personally, I would go with that gut feeling. I have over a thousand hours in Rimworld pre and post Steam, yet was in a similar situation when it came to DF. So far, the steam release is far more accessible, in terms of controls and interface, but no less complex in underlying mechanics.

I would just worry that if you never felt truly in control in Rimworld, then it would be doubly or triple the feeling here, where there is far more complexity overall. The tutorial is helpful to get the very basics, but there is so much to the game that documenting it all in a tutorial would end up with a year's worth of playing just to complete the tutorial

That's not to say that if you stuck with and learned Rimworld, then in future you wouldn't be able to glide effortlessly into DF, but it'd be a bit like struggling to grow some carrots in your yard, so instead you go buy a farm.

omni wrote:
A_Unicycle wrote:

Hey folks, I'm very curious about this new Dwarf Fortress release. I've always read about this game but have found it impenetrable every time I tried to learn.

How's the new Steam release in terms of accessibility? I've heard there is a tutorial (which is great!) but it doesn't cover a lot of concepts (which is not so great). I'm still thinking this might be a game that I enjoy reading about more than playing, but the good press is urging me closer and closer to the big green purchase button.

In terms of similarly complex games I'm okay with:

I enjoy but have never finished Factorio

I've put 30 hours into Rimworld but still find it a bit too difficult to actually understand what I'm doing. I like it a lot, but struggle to feel like I'm ever on top of what I'm doing.

I admit I have a bit of a gut feeling that I should just stick with Rimworld because any additional complexity would be too much for me, but I can't deny my curiosity Thoughts?

Personally, I would go with that gut feeling. I have over a thousand hours in Rimworld pre and post Steam, yet was in a similar situation when it came to DF. So far, the steam release is far more accessible, in terms of controls and interface, but no less complex in underlying mechanics...

I'd advise the opposite, but only if you're OK with losing and learning. If you don't need to win and you are cool with losing and gaining knowledge from the loss, I'd say get it.

I tried DF ASCII mode version once and gave up immediately. I've watched a lot of it, but I didn't think it was for me and was just going to be a game that I prefer to watch over playing. When I saw the first images/vids of the Steam version, I had some hope I would get into it. It's a hard enough game to get into without the ASCII graphics, and with them it was too much for me. With the Steam graphics, I am going to enjoy this game for a while.

It is DEEP. There's so much to know if you want to be an expert, but you can enjoy the game while not being an expert - if you're OK with losing fairly quickly. Even if you are an expert, it seem you can lose quickly, too, but Losing Is Fun! I guess. I dunno, I haven't lost, yet. I've started over 5 times so far, though, because I didn't like how I started setting stuff up or didn't like the starting area after embarking and playing for a couple hours.

Watch some videos about how to start the game. here are a couple I recommend:

-BEP

I told an AI to write a quick story about Dwarf Fortress. It's here in the AI thread.

-BEP

Dwarf Fortress writes some pretty good stories itself.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/CO7G3.png)

What the hell kinda drug was that super-elf on?!

Pretty good fortress if it can be defended against a siege by one crazed elf…

His is quite the story. A year later a human army showed up with 870 men and Sealguard and 18 allies defeated them too, losing only three Elves for more than 300 kills as the humans fled.

A year after that Sealguard married in the summer and then as fall came the Dwarves came too, with a properly trained 800-strong army of their own.

Sealguard, his wife - Taviti Romanticwhisper - and all the residents of the new town he had formed ran to the defence, but they were slowly whittled down by the hard-bitten Dwarven soldiers and Sealguard saw his wife struck down in the fighting.

Eventually, Sealguard was the only defender remaining. He was hit by two crossbow bolts and then finished off by a Dwarf called Medtob Inkyurged.

You can see here that Sealguard was the last Elf standing.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/A3IX2.png)
Click for larger image

Because of this history the town that Sealguard founded became an important, almost religious, site for the Elves. Over the next few hundred years they would recapture it from various Human and Dwarven armies thirty three different times.

Mixolyde wrote:
Robear wrote:

And apparently you can dungeon delve old sites in a sort of adventure mode? Is that true?

Yes! Although I have 0 experience with that mode, and I don't know if it is part of the steam release.

Adventure mode is not in the Steam release yet. They say it's coming but there's a good chance it will be a long time before we see it. The Steam mode made a TON of changes in the backend from what I'm reading from the mod scene.

I played DF for probably 30ish hours back in the 40d days somewhere around 2008. I ultimately gave up and never spent the time to learn a newer version. With the Steam release and new UI I purchased it on opening weekend. I've played over 20 hours now.

The new interface does make it way more accessible but it's still a deep dive that takes commitment to learn how things work. The tutorial is bare bones and really only teaches you how to select the most basic needs from the menu and place them. I found the short tutorials from Blind here to be great since they are in the new Steam UI, they're short and they are specific to questions I have and can just bring up that tutorial when I need it.

At 20 hours I still feel like I've barely skimmed the surface. I've successfully fended of a small raid of goblins but mainly because I had an Inn open to the public and a few powerful mercenaries happened to be visiting. My biggest fortress is about 160 population in a very peaceful area. I haven't explored any really interesting builds yet, it has mostly been about keeping up with all of their needs and trying to keep (nearly) all of them happy.

At some point I want to figure out more complex stuff like pumping water, drawbridges and stuff like that but the immigrants just keep coming and I am constantly tweaking my work orders or building more rooms for them to just live in. My holdings expanded and my leader became a Baroness. I upgraded her rooms to accommodate but now we've been upgraded again to a County and she demands even better accommodations.

Rimtil Spoonsnuggles
Usa Showeredopened
Ithbi Spongyeagles
Usmen Holdbeers

Blind quick tutorials playlist:

Tutorial Let's Play Series

I haven't watched any of these, just posting to make it easier to find them.

Beginner friendly streams from Kitfox Games with different members of the community as guests. The first episode is with Tarn and Zach!

The first 2 episodes of Quill18's Let's Learn DF series I found incredibly helpful. After that, it kind of bogs down and there's stuff to learn, but the pacing is too slow for my taste. Catch the first episode here. If you like it, he's up to 7 or 8 episodes now.

Congrats on your success, MrWynd! In the past I have set the population cap lower so that I could keep my FPS a little higher and would have fewer demands to manage. Granted, I have never played a save long enough to reach that cap, but maybe I will stick with a game longer now.

Blind's tutorial let's play is pretty good.

What the long pole for frame rate in this game? RAM? CPU? Vidya card?

If by long pole you mean first bottleneck, it's CPU. If your framerate is bogging down you basically want to start getting rid of items by gifting them to traders, tossing them in lava (carefully) or putting them in an atom smasher. Every rock, leaf, sword, and dwarf is an entity. Dwarves are just a little more complex than a rock but you only have 7-200 of those dwarves, meanwhile you have thousands of rocks, meals, discarded socks, etc.

I've heard that turning off Temperature in the game settings can have a big impact.

Back in the day, pathfinding was a big bottleneck. If you made your hallways too narrow, the dwarves had to do rock/paper/scissors each time they wanted to move by one another. Not sure if that's still the case but something to consider. Create wide hallways from the start.

I've watched different folks' videos on the Steam DF and I think Nookrium's are the best for beginner videos. He talks a little fast, so slow it down in the YouTube player if it will help.

First one:

-BEP

I feel like this is the right time to post the video I made several years ago to say Thank You to Dimmerswitch for his Secret Santa gift (which are still in use in this house on a day-to-day basis.)

I'll be buying DF again.

"This video is private"

omni wrote:

"This video is private" :(

Fixed, thanks. YouTube sharing settings changed over the last decade. Who would have thought!

KoS made a "How not to play" Noob Fortress in her charming style.

Haakon7 wrote:

I feel like this is the right time to post the video I made several years ago to say Thank You to Dimmerswitch for his Secret Santa gift (which are still in use in this house on a day-to-day basis.)

I'll be buying DF again.

You've given me a huge and much needed smile this afternoon.

So very glad they found such a good home.

TIL that you can go through aquifers. I thought they were like a dead end.

You opened an aquifer? Why are you not dead?

Light aquifers are no big deal. You can brute force dig through them and construct walls to stop the flow. A good way to get over the fear is just dig out a 10x10 area in damp stone and wait. You'll see how slow the flow is.

They can be handy too, giving you the chance to make wells and helping to build underground farming. For example if you have a 10 tile long damp wall, dig out space before the dampness, then dig out the damp part and wait. The walls will drool a bit, enough to give you some mud on the ground, then you can wall up the damp part. Now you have a farm.

Heavy aquifer I haven't tangled with. I believe pumps are required.

I started a new fort and had to dig down through 5-6 layers of aquifer. You just take it one layer at a time:

1. dig stairs down
2. dig around the stairs
3. build walls around the stairs

Any wall will work. Since mine had the aquifer just below the surface I only had wood to use for walls.

It's my understanding that all aquifers used to be of the heavy variety so everyone just avoided them. Light aquifers aren't too bad and can actually be useful since it's easy to get fresh water to where you want it once you're ready.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/mKFYbll.png)

Well this was an interesting migration...