STARTER BASE - Advanced Tutorial DWARF FORTRESS Guide Ep 01

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

[Cyhawkx]

Counterpoint to Child Chores:

Some chores are good, it helps prevent angry/destructive kids (in my experience so far)

I leave on Feed Livestock/Prisoners, Milking, Trade good hauling, Animal hauling, cleaning and lever operation. These are all low usage tasks that can keep them busy. On my second fort of over 20 years and haven't had more than a single angry kid since. Having them constantly haul stone for example also makes them angry hence off.

So far just my experience with kids in DF.

[ColonelSandersLite]

"This layer is bad. It will only lead to wet floors everywhere."

I always took that approach in the past but I ended up changing things up in my current fort because of an unexpected exceptionally deep and erratic aquifer. I ended up with a fairly long tunnel through a light aquifer. It's kind of a main traffic artery in my fort. And man... Let me tell you bud. There's some real advantages to that.

Hallway is 3 tiles wide. The center tile is a channel for drainage, covered by floor grates. The drainage channel dumps water onto a lake in the cavern layer below.

So what are the advantages? 3 main things -
Every dwarf that goes through there gets happy thoughts from waterfalls.
Every dwarf and every item they carry through there gets washed off. Free Fully automatic shower system!
Every dwarf that goes through there walks past several fine floor grates, giving even more happy thoughts all around.

The whole thing is a big boost to the overall health and happiness of my dwarves.

Not saying to go and do something crazy like building your dining room in a dripping wet aquifer or anything like that. Just saying that if you can work out the drainage problem, a busy passage through an aquifer can be really good. You do gotta be careful though. I had a close call with flooding when a nether cap just decided to grow in the drain.

[JS-mhuu]

Always start at least 2 z levels down because trees on the surface that are chopped down will leave a hole in the ceiling. You don't need a door to make an office, literally just a single square and a chair. Super important you remove corpses and refuse from your initial stocks so your stuff doesn't decay.

[kredonystus]

My first "successfull" fortress (I didn't beat the game before I retired but it never fell) I had so many oyster shells I made a massive trade of oyster shell jewelery. Made a fortune.

[benjamindover]

Thanks for sharing your architectural philosophy. Love a compact and efficient base. Looking forward to seeing how you do irrigation and security.

[JS-wpgs]

'The ravens here are pretty harmless'

I'm sure frank said something like that in 28 days later and we know how that went

[Huntanor]

I feel compelled to say managers do not need an office until 20ish population. There is no reason to ever not use work orders for anything you want to automate. The game will tell you when you need to add the office. It will tell you your manager needs an office on the approval stamp in the work order menu.

[westhamdd]

Great series, I really like it! One thing I do, when you are talking about designating each layer for one activity is that I like to skip a z-level for each activity. I only use all the odd z-levels or even as the case may be. The reason I do that is to have room if I have to move liquids around or have to avoid or go around areas.

[masaufuku]

An alternative to messing around with the cooking settings is to restrict your kitchen to take from specific stockpiles - this gives you far more control out of the gate since you don't have to wait for plants to grow before you can forbid them for cooking. There's nothing more frustrating than realizing your dwarves cooked your first crop of pig tails while you weren't paying attention.

[Zaph]

Here's a couple tips from a noob.

1. On embark when you bring a male and female animal pair, It's better to have one male to multiple females. As far as I know in breeding defects are not a thing in this game. So no worries lol.
2. I always have at least a male and two females put into a pasture of their own for husbandry. I also rename them to Breeder M or F (M for male F for Female) so that I don't accidentally butcher, neuter, or train them. Neuter all of the male offspring so you don't get over populated (unless you like butchering a bunch of baby animals 👿) If you want to stop the breeding then all you have to do is remove the females from that pasture. Don't neuter your male because then if for whatever reason that animal population gets too low the only way to get a new male is through migration or trading.
3. I used to make the mistake of giving my expedition leader skills for managing, brokering, and book keeping; in order to have my other dwarves get better skills. What I didn't realize is that each of these tasks actually do take time. So what ended up happening was my work orders were not being placed because the manager was too busy either counting stocks or trading or doing one of the many other things that all dwarves do, like drinking. Just make sure that you have a dedicated manager with as few other jobs as possible (Bookkeeping isn't that essential early on, so they're probably wouldn't be an issue with your bookkeeper also being your broker initially).
4. When it comes to stone workshops. Stone and ore are the heaviest things to carry and will slow down production and workflow if they had to be carried very far, also it ticks your dwarves off. One solution I found online was to build stoneworkers workshops in every layer that you are mining. This way the rocks don't have to be carried very far to be used. The other thing you can do is just make chain links of stockpiles. This is probably your best bet for dealing with metal ores since it's a little more impractical to build a smelter (which requires coal, and you won't be able to use a magma forge if that's your thing) on every other level, but you can.

[plutotheotaku]

I just started today and was super overwhelmed, thanks for the video and you gained a subscriber!

[MajinStrach]

This is so helpful to new players to the game and genre thank you for your service 🙏

[DeadSoul]

A managers office can be a single square in the open with throne (chair). You do not need to gration a room with a door. just need to switch from zone select to paint tool.

[rhueoflandorin]

staggering staircases to enable locking down floors from each other is a good idea, but you still design the rooms so your staircases aren't 1x1s, as that can slow things down as well.

[PiersCawley]

If memory serves, the 'all' stockpile option comes with a gotcha because it turns on the refuse group, which means that stuff placed in your initial pile will degrade over time, which isn't good.

[Oroberus]

I really don't like how much effort you're spending on not giving your dorfs the opportunity to get eaten by wild animals. Being eaten by a wild animal is probably one of the most, if not THE most important and life changing experience a dorf can make

[PapaSweetTNGaming]

Really loving your dwarf fortress videos.

I'm hoping to learn more stockpile tips for efficiency etc.

Keep up the great work

[Casey_W]

I'm enjoying your tutorials and have found them really helpful but I have a question about the comment you made @28:00 about farming on natural soil being far less efficient than on muddied stone. I haven't noticed that myself, I can't find anything in the wiki under farming/soil/fertilization that mentions that, and the farming yield mechanics in the wiki page don't show any impacts from soil type, only fertilization. Where are you getting this info and if it is correct perhaps you could add it to the wiki?

[AlgaeNymph]

Hm...I was expecting the fortress to be more planned out. Something else that'll be for the expert series?

[jimmyhernandez]

hey, Icon. Love your videos! Question; (maybe this is dumb but I cannot figure it out) How do you enable visible hotkeys on your buttons? I'm not sure if I am just missing the setting or maybe it's an addon. But my game icons do not display the related hotkey on my action bar. thanks in advance!