Dwarf Fortress: A Beginners Guide & Tutorial [Steam Edition]

The deepest, most intricate simulation of a world that's ever been created. The legendary Dwarf Fortress is now on Steam. Build a fortress and try to help your dwarves survive against a deeply generated world.

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#nookrium #indiegames #dwarffortress

[Nookrium]

A very important step I forgot: Go into the Labors menu (bottom left) "y" and Kitchen tab, mark Plump Helmets as not cooked and only brewed. If you cook your plump helmets, as default settings, you won't get seeds back and will run out.
• Here's a part 2 of this tutorial to expand on things like managing stocks, temples, trade: bit.ly/3iRpySb

If you’d rather see a full playthrough, here ya go:

[Varsocona]

The Opening Day Party: Took me two in game years to figure out how to properly set up a tavern, by which point it was over-supplied with a hundred barrels of alcohol. However, by the time The Deep Hole opened for business my dwarves were so pent up and frustrated that everyone (except a few critical workers) went there in a giant mob for one huge party. Considering the tense atmosphere in the fort due to the two years of difficult living (noob player) I expected a brawl or something to break out. Instead, the dwarves decided to drink the entire stockpile, as fast as dwarfenly possible. This resulted in what could only be called a 'tidal wave of vomit' that coated the entire tavern and most of the living quarters. The dwarves got so drunk that seven of them died from alcohol poisoning, right there in the tavern while the rest of the fort partied on top of their corpses. This overwhelmed my meager crypt, and I scrambled to build more tombs, but most of my dwarfs were unconscious or still drinking. Before I could get the last dead dwarf into his tomb, he came back as a ghost and immediately went into the kitchen and tried to punch the cook. This did no damage, of course, but the cook died of fright bringing the total death count of the Opening Day Party to eight.

From now on all parties in the fort (And all future ones) will be measured by the number of deaths they cause.

[Captain_Hindsight]

My woodcutter died during the tutorial, hit by a falling log. RNGeezus did not like him

[maaikevreugdemaker]

I love how the first personality starts with "impatient, loves fishing" L0L

[QuantumWaltz]

I have a hard time keeping forts alive long enough to have anything really interesting happen, but on my first really successful fort, I also got my first night creature warning, at which I proceeded to laugh my backside off for several minutes.
The Wereass had come.

Now, keep in mind, this was my FIRST reasonably functional fortress, and I hadn't started in on military or anything yet, so not only did I have no dwarves trained to fight it, but I had no clue of just how incredible, horrifyingly DANGEROUS hoofed animals are in DF.
That is, until the wereass cut off my laughter by kicking a fisherdwarf's head off his shoulders, leaving a blood trail across the map as it sailed away in an arc.

I learned quickly. Ho boy, did I learn. I learned how to create settings for a lockdown. I learned how to create a ragtag militia. I learned how to order them to kill something. And by the time the dwarves were all locked inside and my poorly-armed group of miners and woodcutters (actually applicable thanks to the strength earned by doing their jobs) wandered out to do their civic duty -

The moon phase had changed and the wereass was now an extremely nude, extremely embarrassed human.
I had no mercy. They ran him down and pummeled him to death over what would be an agonizing three days in real-time for the victim.

[ammygamer]

Beginner's Tip: When creating a stockpile, you can edit where and from it takes and gives items (the 2 buttons showing a stockpile w/ tiny green arrows below, within the edit stockpile window. hover over them for a description in the top right screen corner). So you can build a supply chain that takes things from the surface and delivers them further and further into the mountain, closer to where they are actually used. I tend to have a large stockpile in the surface to quickly store items, then sort them to other smaller stockpiles as they go down the supply chain.

[andrewa]

what hooked me into this game long ago was definitely the auto generated story, one of the coolest ones I made was when i made was a small map and apparently a dragon was wrecking everything to the point were it was called "The Draconic Age" and i thought that was the coolest thing ever lol

[_arman_]

The disdain with which you said "It's borderline elf" was hilarious

[MunitionsDudTester]

I've known about DF for about a year or two now (thanks Sseth) and have been patiently waiting for Steam release. This is the story of my first fortress....

My first fortress went really well for about a year and a half
we had plenty of food so the winters were EZ mode
then
a were-gopher showed up
killed a child and a dwarf lumberjack outside
my one dude assigned to militia duty dueled it and killed it but was maimed in the process
he was just lying there dying and his health tab said "lost ability to stand"
then after a couple days he got up and walked back in my fortress
at first I was like "oh good! Our savior is alive!"
then I was like "how is he walking if it says he lost the ability to stand?"
Next full moon
he turns into the were-gopher and proceeds to slaughter about 20 citizens
I am now stuck on a never-ending cycle of people coming to the fortress and getting slaughtered by or turning into were-gophers
cadavers are constantly exploding and releasing miasma
dwarfs dying horrible deaths and their spirits haunting the fortress
more people keep showing up
it's a never ending cycle of pain and misery
when will this madness end

[SingingSpock]

I’m still beginning, but something I’ve noticed that I’d like to point out is that adjacency works in three dimensions, not just two. Having a stockpile room connected to a craft room by a staircase is just as if not more efficient than connecting them with a doorway, because it takes no extra time to go up and down.

[j_atkinson]

Now with a nice layer of graphics, I might finally try this game. I just couldn't handle the old ASCII art because it was just too hard for me to decode.

[Groundpenguin]

I'm so excited to get back into DF! It has to be one of the greatest games ever made. So happy to see it come out on Steam, so it can get the recognition it really deserves.

[CarlosSuperBoss]

I haven't seen elaborated timestamps so I made some for myself, hopefully it's useful for others! (It's not complete yet, I'll complete it as I have enough time to follow the whole guide).

*Introduction*
00:40 - What is Dwarf Fortress?

*World building*
1:25 - World generation settings
2:33 - Taking a look at your world
3:02 - Game modes (Fortress/Adventure/Legends)
3:42 - Starting the game
4:22 - Things you should stay away from
4:38 - Finding a spot to Embark to
5:22 - Pre-game settings
6:46 - The wagon
6:55 - Dwarves
8:28 - Digging into a mountain
8:52 - Building a stockpile
9:20 - Assign tasks to a dwarf

*Getting started*

[Atrahasis]

Hope they add more art over time, maybe even variations for each dwarf depending on equipment. Mods will be insane.

[stephenchurch]

My favorite fort so far is Murkmire, founded by the Comedic Failure. When I saw that, I decided that someone in the mountain homes had it out for the expedition leader. Starting dwarves were specced for bookmaking/scholarly discussion and I limited myself to the surface. It's going about as well as you would expect but the dwarves, realizing that they were set up to fail, have begun bootlegging whiskey made in the secret stills under the library to the elves

[Whisky-Glass-Lass]

21:16 Dude, bunnies and adult rabbits most definitely do need to be pastured unless they have an owner to feed them, they are grazing animals. I know it's not a huge or important detail at all, but if you're making a guide it's good to fact-check your info.

[leesanction]

Can't wait to dive into this game. It's been on my radar for a long time. Hope the Steam release will give the game more attention and support.

[themasterkey]

First time playing and thanks to you, I survived my first fort and its still going strong after 5 years, although sloppily made. I quickly made a second fort and world to make a clean and neat fort. 1-2 years in and also surviving well. Your guides got me, a player who hasn't played this game nor any game like this before, to understanding all the basics. Just enough for a foundation and now I'm learning a lot on my own. Thank you. Its been fun.

[WOWOW_]

As someone who's never played Dwarf Fortress it's relieving to know it's similar to Rimworld(400hrs played), real excited to play.

[MauroC]

DF is one of those games that make impossible to watch passively a video (such as a tutorial) without feeling the urge to play