Dwarf Fortress - Why I play without DFHack and Therapist.

I wanted to make a video about this for awhile, I'm curious how you play dwarf fort and what are your preferred add-ons. I learned the game without and prefer it this way. As a side I also find it makes the game a lot less crashy.

Rad art is by @cooler_sk

Music is from Simon Swerwer and outro music is Pictonary for the NES.. Seriously.

thanks to the patrons for supporting this video.

Andrew M
Brent K
Cameron M
Nic Conroy
Petrolsky
Stoned_Hobo
Chilly
Kruggsmash
AxeZ0N
Sergaz
Belugg
Squigglythe3rd
zopeau
Nixumia
KibsNBritches
cyclone1001
Speedy
Amber H
Levi
SpecBotNah
Spitalier
Nrandir
Bamberboozler
adrian valles

[kruggsmash]

Perfectly put. I could never put my love of the vanilla experience into words but this is it right here.

[novikovPrinciple]

Dwarf Fortress is such a work of complexity that fans lovingly made a companion program - Dwarf Therapist - to make it easier to play.

Dwarf Therapist - which already simplifies the game at base - has a 16-page PDF manual for its deeper functions.

Let that sink in.

[gcook]

They are musts for me, but I play DF more as a city builder/colony management game than as a story/world simulation.

[michaelk-j]

I started playing DF around the time it was released to the public. I played the vanilla experience for a few years and then discovered Therapist and couldn't go back.
I never used a sprite sheet though, because I personally really love the aesthetic of the sprites and I had learned them already (that said I'm still keen for the steam release, it looks great).
I like to get to know the dwarves as well, and that's easy at the start, but it becomes harder to manage a functioning fort with vanilla job assignment method in any kind of timely manner whatsoever when you start getting migrant waves of 30+, and when you have more than 100 dwarves in the fort.
I tend to just focus on a couple of exceptional dwarves (exceptional for their skills, or maybe they did something that impressed me, have a funny name, whatever), and that dwarves closest circle.
Other than that I enjoy the macro story of a fortress rather than the micro story of every inhabitants individual life.

[moraus]

I play it without, and that totally doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I couldn't figure out how they worked when I first started.
But having checked them out I can say that I prefer playing without them, as you said the surprise and character really is a part of the game and without it I find the experience feeling a bit... Hollow.

[Robert-vkje]

I don't use therapist anymore, too, for similar reasons. But I enjoy DFHack too much for the "digv" command and workflow management.

[MisterUnlikely]

Dwarf Therapist is something of a must for me, just to keep track of large forts. If I find that mechanisms need to get made, I really don't like going through the unit list and checking each dwarf, one by one. It's more for my sanity than for theirs. The rest of the time, for the most part, I let them do what they do and watch the miasma flow where it may.

[matthewmorgan]

I played vanilla for almost a decade in college but now a days I prefer more control over when interesting things happen since I have limited time. Dfhack's cheatier scripts let me set up religious conflict, avoid waiting forever to get invaded, and try out different features and industries without having to roll the dice. It turns df into more of a god game than a management one.

[janxious]

Played for many years without, and I have no interest in managing jobs any more, so I'm an autolabor user now for any fort that is more than 30 dwarfs. For specifically smaller forts I will dig into everyone one-by-one. But for bigger forst I just do that for problem dwarfs and dwarfs who are notable in some way in big forts (made artifact, slew a monster, etc.). I do like to inspect visitors one-by-one, particularly troupes, just because they tend to have ineresting backgrounds.

You mention it as a learning curve, but I see it more as a time use thing for myself. I don't have much free gaming time, so if I spend an entire session managing a migrant wave, that won't be very fun for me. I'd rather be finishing off a mega-construction or raiding or what have you. You and others see the management of those things as a fun task, which I think is reasonable but not aligned with how I feel.

[polastarr]

I started playing a little while ago and while learning the basics, I looked for a tutorial that didn't use LNP, mostly because I thought that if I couldn't enjoy the vanilla game, no amount of modifications could make me enjoy it.
I started watching a tutorial, but once I got the hang of the basics, I started messing around with the options and looking up stuff in the wiki whenever I couldn't figure out something. It is a difficult process, but getting something done this way is very rewarding.
I did install DFHack briefly to get "unstuck", my dwarves did nothing for months no matter what I did, so I used the hack to auto assign their labors and then turned it off.
I also tried using LNP eventually, but I kinda got used to the vanilla game so, even though the utilities, tiles, sounds, etc. seemed very nice, I ended up going back to vanilla.
I'm still finding my optimal setup and I think that's part of the fun with Dwarf Fortress, given the multitude of options provided by the community, each player can fine tune their experience to their liking.

[baronvctim]

I use Dwarf Therapist to assign jobs myself seeing i find the ingame way to change their jobs a little fiddly, other than that i like to see who came in what wave and to see if they need clothing or not. for DF hack the only thing i use from there is the auto butcher and the enhanced gameplay for the human merchants and elven diplomats.
When I got the hang of the manager i stepped away from using DFhack's mechanism for automated jobs and the manager does a better job for it in my opinion.

Once again a great video keep up the work! We all have our own style and it's great to see you play in your way. :)

[RVGmetallicasaw]

I never cared for DFHack, but Therapist is a must for me. Not for learning about my dwarves, but rather just so I can assign them to jobs. Less fiddling about, and more playing the game. The way job assignment works in vanilla seems an arduous process by comparison.

[johuotar]

One might assume that therapist is mostly used by people who want efficiency but I think it is useful for any play style. What are the in game job menus if not spreadsheets that take longer time to read than the therapist screen? Probably no playstyle is about maximizing time spent on finding information about active jobs or the manual task of making changes to the jobs. Using therapist saves time that would be spent in those menus, which can then be spent on the interesting parts of the game, understanding the world and leaving your mark on it. Of course the more interested in efficient use of dwarf labor the player is, the more value therapist has, but every fort requires some amount of job management, and the larger the fort the more time it takes.

[zikriflanery]

I used to think that DF therapist was bothersome. I just let my dwarf do all the job (with some exceptions ofcourse). Because I found out that in most items, quality don't matter. I rather produce 10 of mediocore crafts with little management than pulling my hair out to produce 1 masterpiece. Even with that mindset. I still manage to produce masterpieces from time to time.
So I believe that's what the game was supposed to be played.

And I was right, they made the steam version exactly like my playstyle.

[TKR]

I used the Lazy Newb Pack (LNP) to play when I was starting out, and when I was I did use the DFHack in-game labors management screen a lot. I wish that was actually in the game. Because I used it so regularly I never got into using Dwarf Therapist just because I thought it was kind of redundant.

I stopped playing with the LNP the first time a new update came out and I realized I'd have to wait for the LNP and utilities I was using to update too before I could play the new version of Dwarf Fortress.

Once I got use to playing the vanilla game in ascii I just never saw a need to go back to using the LNP. I have customized Dwarf Fortress a bit though. The tileset I use is ascii but in PET-64 font, the font used on Commodore 64 computers, and my color scheme is inspired by the old green monochrome monitors.

[thelemmiebee]

I don’t use either, mainly for all of the reasons you’ve stated. This is a game to be enjoyed slowly over time, at least that’s the way I like to enjoy it.

[konstantinlogashenko]

Honestly, I started the game with no tools installed and really enjoyed it that way. Of course, my first few fortresses were a total failure, but I think it's way more fun that way.

[bot-man]

I use DFhack solely for the digv command since I don't wanna have to click back into the mines whenever the dwarves are done digging a single tile. Never used Dwarf Therapist and don't really intend to; I think the function for setting jobs is alright on its own.

[lynthecookiek]

I too play DF more as a story generator and I love to know my dwarves. I never used Therapist, but I use DFHack for two reasons: Dwarf Manipulator (to assign jobs more easily) and TWBT (so I can use bigger tilesets than my screen allows).

[usov]

I completely agree. The vanilla DF experience can be so mystifying (in a good way) and using DFHack and therapist takes a lot of the magic from the experience. If you can just predict how your dwarves will react to everything at all times, it reduces your dwarves to drones that you indirectly command around rather than actual individuals with their own personalities and traits, and I have a feeling Toady intended the player to view their dwarves and deal with them like that, as if they're individuals, rather than just a pawn.
If you play vanilla DF and experience and deal with things as they come at you and pay attention at how your dwarves react to it, you end up with all the amazing stories Kruggsmash tells in his channel. It really comes alive and takes a shape of its own, its a very organic experience, which is a feeling unique to DF.