Elves in Dwarf Fortress are different. Back before the Steam version (may still be true now), elf ethics made them abhor people who harm nature while simultaneously considering cannibalism to be ok. To them, it's not ok to kill a boar and eat it's meat but it IS ok to kill and eat a dwarf, human or other sapient being.
yes, there's physics. Almost like our physics, hilariously different at key points. Cave ins are one such example. Combat is another: literally stealing the shirt off someone's back gets you a lethal weapon.
Excellent reaction to the enormous wooden corkscrew. Make it out of metal for a quick trade good.
dorms don't make dwarves as happy as personal bedrooms. There are times when the lack of privacy is actually an upside.
hah, humility is good in moderation. You qualify for "good intellect". There's higher tiers to that stat. Someone being able to play DF at all after studying the wiki is a sign of good intellect.
losing is fun, the mantra of the players after losing hours of work to the most ridiculous causes of fort death.
"crash out" once led to tantrum spirals which then invoked the cascading loyalty bug. Dwarf gets angry, gets violent, gets hit back. Now that other dwarf is an enemy of the people so they get hit. Oh no, there's more enemies of the people! The whole fort would spiral into compulsory violence.
"clay is soil", another moment of DF physics. You can farm crops up in mountains by splashing some water first.
vomit, you see it often. Could be from combat. A few in-game years later, dwarves who don't get sunlight will vomit upon touching grass.
romances happen, then babies. 12 years until they become productive.
how to get more people: advertising by selling lots to the caravans. The first two waves in year 1 are guaranteed. The rest is down to your trading.
raining repulsive sludge, huh the tutorial put you in an evil biome. Be glad that rain doesn't cause disease or undeath.
studying geology: there was a college fresher who found his geology class easy thanks to DF. Just read the names of the fancy rocks like in
can't put a child to work. Good instincts, you're tackling the puzzle of what to do with children. Some in the DF community settled on making them super soldiers: flash boil then quench to remove body fat, making them inflammable. Then have them fight animals until they're old enough to be recruited.
"how do I kill this one?" Look up Unfortunate Accident on the wiki. The easy options involve a lever filtered so only one specific dwarf can pull it.
where to build trade depot: somewhere a 3x3 box can path from the surface. They don't have to leave the same way. Underground is A-OK.
rock pots were a balance changing addition. Before, you really needed a lot of barrels to handle the vast logistical needs of a fort.
mountainhome is the name of the capital
dwarf women beards are a one line change to mod in.
wdym the dwarven children are right there!
making barrels is a legit way to train up carpenter skill so you make satisfying beds.
unhappy dwarves happen from an absence of happy thoughts. Put amazing furniture where dwarves will look at them.
stocking up on turtle shells may save a life. If a dwarf suddenly has a once in a lifetime epiphany for how to make an indestructible l, magma-proof flood gate with a turtle shell, you better have them on hand if you want that dwarf alive.
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ah, the wonder of seeing the cavern for the first time. Now dig deeper still.
made too much wine? No such thing. Dwarves get picky if they have the same thing for too long.
broker wanted at trade depot. Oh the many misadventures of a broker doing everything other than going to the depot while the caravan is about to leave.
prepared giant cave toad lung - welcome to DF cuisine. There are some truly absurd things like a "barrel of fruit fly brain"
wine counts as prepared meals after a dwarf cooks with it in the kitchen
sensory overload of items: welcome to DF
too much garbage. Maybe you figure out later in the stream. Did you perhaps make a stockpile that accepts everything including garbage? And it's underground? That will release miasma when it rots. This is bad for morale.
fear of not committing. Here I am, never having got back into DF myself (aside from a 5 hour game when the steam version released). Abstained from Minecraft, Rimworld, Factorio etc as any time spent there could be spent on DF. Did get back into Elin though when Elona's dev released that prequel.
30 minutes for a Space Station 13 run? Was 3 hours when I dabbled in that with the DF community.
you can bling out barrels (and plenty other items). The ultimate example is "Planepacked" (wiki it) though that bends a few rules. Why stop at a master crafted oak bed when you can decorate it with iron spikes, tin studs, hanging rings of penguin bone, emerald studs and orthoclase spikes?
in an emergency, build kitchen nearby, buy food from caravan, cook the food, sell the prepared meals right back to the caravan. Don't question how far the caravan had to travel just to pay for the live cooking experience.
sometimes the dreams of a dwarf must be denied for the fort's good. Someone has to do the hauling and the army needs conscripts.
outdoors water instantly freezes at the start of winter. This is fatal if anyone was swimming in it. Back then, you could then mine out the ice, construct walls with the ice, then watch the walls stay intact come spring when the ice melts. Not sure if that got fixed.
you can feed them anything but they won't like it. Variety is good and each dwarf has a favourite food.
letting the trader walk away with profit makes them more excited to bring more next year. Also for making them feel more generous this year: it's legit to butter them up with an early, generous deal before going for the big purchase order.
How much profit merchants want? For the first trade, about 100% - as in he walks away with twice the value he gave you. After he's in a good mood? Considerably less.
he risked his life to bring you a caravan and you field a vendor who doesn't know how to value the goods or negotiate. Yeah he's pissed at the terrible customer service. Be glad he's not an elf.
dwarves are notorious for wandering into danger. There's a reason why the community "invented" fire proof soldiers. Watch them build a wall to stop danger only to trap themselves outside with the danger.
I don't recall the cold ever harming something in DF (unless submerged in water when it freezes). One of those quirks of DF physics.
cats and dogs don't need to eat. They were a constant source of FPS loss due to all the pathing they did. So they were crammed into cages which have infinite capacity. Made for great chaff bombs when invaders came: trap tile triggers 50 angry dogs being unleashed.
the original dev regarded 2x2 as the standard room size, these 4x4 are decadent.
ah yes, the community spirit of treating the 7 founders differently.
cow died. If this was a reanimating biome, you would have been in a race to dispose of the body. When those biomes first got implemented, the undead forever reanimated. The solution was to butcher the corpse, tan the skin and spin the hair into thread. Because all of those could be reanimated. Undead skin and undead hair were considered too hilarious to fix that bug.
yes, dwarven children will drink your reserves. Never enough booze.
after a while, you make a stockpile that filters on quality of bed. Which feeds into a workshop that only decorates those beds.
wooden doors? Hope the elves never know of this. Not that the game makes them react, but it's the spirit of the thing.
hamster is a type of vermin. Cats will hint them down then bring them to their owner, making work for haulers as otherwise they rot and generate miasma. The dev is a cat lover, cats have special behaviour.
original DF was all about the keyboard, no mouse. So many buttons to switch which mode you were in.
WELCOME TO TRUE DWARF FORTRESS GRAPHICS
You get used to it. I don’t even see the ASCII. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head.
glorious ASCII outdoors
ASCII workshops: you remembered where you built them as you always went back to add jobs. There was no manager back then who does this for you.
witness the ASCII cavern
the return to tileset graphics
modern game graphics and "gamers" has been a gripe since before Minecraft was invented. The AAA industry was shocked such a low graphics game was the next billion dollar hit. Meantime DF players regard it as too much graphics, shackling the imagination.
innovation: if you've worked in finance (big banks, not fintech) or got to know those people, you learn that big money fears innovation while loving growth. They want predictable futures for steady profits. Big gambles are for nobodies with nothing to lose.
A fool? You? Society makes you feel that way as you don't share the majority's values. Many shallow people value power (e.g. money or combat prowess) or beauty (to gain clout or quick pleasure) far more than intellectual honour. Many people give up their sense of self to blend into groupthink: it makes them feel safer by belonging to a big group.
first fey mood, this is why we stockpile everything possibly needed and build every type of workshop around the time the first caravan leaves.
dead hamsters everywhere, the work of cats. What will you do about this? A luxurious option is to get a dwarf to catch those vermin instead, then sell hamsters or make them pets.
yes dwarves want furniture in their room. After a while they want to amass personal belongings like other clothes so a chest or wardrobe gets used. On that note, clothes need to be replaced every few years: they fall apart from wear and tear.
using a mouse for digging and designating bedrooms, feels so modern. In the old days, you recorded a keyboard macro to do this fast.
carve walls and floors to train engravers so they make good art. For floors, you can erase bad art by constructing a floor on top. Or applying magma.
to prevent the lake freezing over, bring magma under it. If fishing isn't the concern, can bring some of the water underground where it won't freeze. This matters for hospitals: they need water, not booze, to clean wounds.
planting is one of the vital skills for a growing fort. You pick out certain dwarves to never do menial labour so they train their important skills faster.
ah, thinking of building a puppy shower or some other contraption to apply trauma?
surface farming is generally done in a walled off garden. Enemies can climb over walls. See why pathing drains performance?
long ago trees occupied one tile. Now they are huge, multi-tile giants that inevitably leave holes somewhere awkward. I believe their roots grow over time too, making more holes.
ah yes, the fight against nature to keep a tidy floor.
surface farming by bringing the outdoors underground is intermediate play. If the sun has touched it once, it's an outdoors tile. Doesn't matter if you construct a roof over it.
fey mood fail, a life soon to end. Remember, this could happen if you don't have turtle shells. It's really awkward trying to get those in the winter or under siege.
in the old days, there was a counter showing how many dwarves were idle. The dwarves know to clock out for a break.
infinite work orders, mirrors reality: "make lots of this until I say otherwise. Hey why did you make 50? What do you mean I forgot to say otherwise?"
next fey mood, hope he's successful.
where are the guys? You can set the camera to follow a specific dwarf. On that note, I'm impressed you read their RNG names, I give them nicknames that are easier to track.
artifact splint from fey mood. Important point is whether the dwarf is now legendary in that skill. Some fey moods deny the EXP boost.
the artifact splint could be put in a display case, yes. I believe you can designate a museum from that. More likely it will get used by an injured dwarf who then beats something up with it.
they want chairs and mugs? That's code for "you haven't built a proper dining hall and tavern".
wood to charcoal is the basic source of fuel. Coal is the better if available. Magma is the high tech option.
a dead body is a ticking time bomb. Failure to respect the dead results in supernatural reminders.
you don't have to worry about where the corpse is, the dwarves want to give it a burial and will find it
good engravings make dwarves happy
hatch can be used as decorations, yes. Consider putting the good quality ones on stairs so dwarves constantly see them.
