10 TIPS FOR MILITARY - Dwarf Fortress Tutorial Guide Tricks

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00:00 - Intro
00:27 - 1. Ammo Preservation
01:31 - 2. How To Resolve Equipment Issues
03:12 - 3. The Therapy Squad
04:34 - 4. Weapon Types And Specialized Squads
06:05 - 5. How To Stop Your Archers From Melee
08:03 - 6. Easy Schedule Variations
09:37 - 7. Training Via Prisoners
11:00 - 8. Avoid Unarmed Training, Wear Helmets
12:01 - 9. Why Gear Quality Matters So Much
13:20 - 10. A Useful Uniform Template

This is a Beginners Guide Series for Dwarf Fortress, showing some Let's Play Playthrough Tutorial. This is the unmodded (Vanilla) Steam Release Version.

[seanstewart]

Another useful thing in the monthly orders: if you have sleeping quarters as part of your barracks, you need to assign your soldiers to sleep in them. You can do so by changing the "Sleep/room at will" to "Sleep/Barracks at will." Also, you can assign your dwarves to always wear equipment even when off duty by editing the "Off duty" settings to Equip/always.

[vincentsalcido]

To anyone wondering how much quality matters, or if he's exaggerating, he is most certainly not. I had a squad of speardwarves in iron armor, and one in particular was just getting piled on by the circus. She survived so much longer than I would've thought possible, thanks to her masterwork armor

[CptKennedy]

I think it's important to give archers a helm and breastplate to prevent lethal criticals from return fire. In the past importing face masks from the (humans/elves?) was important to provide coverage for the face. Nothing sucks more than your legendary marks dwarves getting one-shot through the fortifications by enemy goblins in late game sieges.

Cloth and leather armor can turn a 1 hit into a 2 hit kill and that's enough to retreat or be rescued.

[edwardgrin]

You also can make a gym for your squads. Put some screw pumps and assign your off duty dwarfs to pump the air. Soon enough they become a muscle machines with highly increased endurance. Just don't forget to stop manual pumping sometimes to prevent your dwarves exhausted too much.

[alefor]

7:18 Alternatively, create a one tile wide burrow alongside the fortifications line, and order the squad to guard that burrow.

[vonsch]

I always start my squads on unarmed training and haven't seen a single wrestling (or any) injury since Steam release. I think that is no longer an issue. Or maybe I just make large enough barracks that they never get thrown into anything. (For the record, that's in 800 hours of play since Steam release.) I don't like having my military dwarves become attached to crappy weapons. Once I can give them masterworks (which usually doesn't take all that long) I put them to training with weapons.

[nathanielfrance]

Popping all civilians in squads and training them for only one month sorted out their military/help others need. Had it staggered so always some were training in unarmed/no uniform. The young’uns would watch the demos and learn. A 7 year old one punched a Magma crab protecting the forges, whilst a snot nosed one (sorrowful about rain) took out half a sounder of pigs. Still pop toys in barracks but now wood hauling is off the chores list.

[rzu]

Speaking of quality.
Really was nice when a legendary armorsmith just shows up in a migrant wave.

Especially on a map with tons of iron and coal.

[charlylimph]

All of the civilians in my fort get trained. (2 months out of the year 5 at a time.) I am seriously considering giving all civilians steal shields.

[Zorro]

For a less micro-intensive training routine: you can just set a year-round schedule where you assign a number of troops to train and another number to patrol or whatever. They will take turns without you telling them to do so, but it might cause some of them to become more proficient than others.

As for an extreme budget uniform, if steel is being produced too slowly: steel chain shirt, steel cap, steel spear and wood buckler. This will provide good protection for your dwarves' organs that goblins can't pierce, while spears are great in general. Keep in mind that bucklers break with use but it's easy to just make more. Use the lightest wood possible, if you are in a good biome then use exclusively featherwood.

[akd]

To gain the benefits of layering civilian clothes under (most items) or over (cloaks) armor without the micromanagement of assigning every single item to the “replace” uniform, if you wait for you dwarves to fully equip themselves with a “uniform replaces” uniform then change the uniform to “worn over” (just that, no other change), they will run around and grab whatever civilians clothing items they want to wear that are compatible with their previous “replaces” uniform.

[TheJangodarkblade]

Only heavy armour (helm, breastplate, grieves, gauntlet, highboots) trains and uses the armour skill. With light armour (mail shirt, cap, leggings, lowboot) your dwarves will not have any armour penalty to their movement speed. So you can use metal instead of leather for your lightly armoured dwarfs. (no light hand armour other than leather though)

[rangergreen]

Boots are a pain in the butt because it'll always be yellow if they don't have a matching quality pair. Make extra boots to be certain you have matching sets of quality

[archaeologistify]

7:45 You can make a burrow thats 1xwide right in front of the fortification and they'll form a perfect line.

[TheDarkkilla]

Also, I wish to add a secondary note on the armor quality and its effectiveness. In areas where you might suffer getting actual metals to build your gear, is training your soldiers with dodging and their athleticism a good addition along with their shield training to allow maximum chances for your dwarf even without a high quality armor gear to keep them alive?

I know this might not be included as it doesn’t fully contextually make sense in that section, but it’s something to add to other people should they have some questions about that chapter in the video.

[Stickweasel]

If you had dwarves doing their wrestling training in a room made with Feather Wood walls and floor, I think it'd be *relatively* safe? Cuz Feather Wood is really, really soft. It'd be like wrestling on a sparring mat

[SuperHellasvr]

I usually put the channel in front of the archer targets so the bolts can go down 1 level, behind the archer target doesn't work for me idk
Btw if under the level where the bolts should go, they will go 1 lever down even if there is the floor
So usually I have these
Lever 3 archery range with channel in front of archer target
Level 2 where my dwarfs can collect bolts/arrows
Level 1 (directly under where the bolts should be) walls or not mined, so the bolts stays on level 2, where they should be

[OfficialSpartanGames]

I went on the situation on where the wooden shields breaks in middle combat. That's the only reason why I don't use them anymore.

[xiaomiredmi]

I noticed that all armor pieces when heaped into a bin will get worn and eventually mangled. Now I place them into a stockpile without bins.

[whozz]

My dwarves will refuse to wear high boots and gauntlets :(