Installation

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v50.15 · v0.47.05 This article is about the current version of DF. Note that some content may still need to be updated. More Info · V

Dwarf Fortress is available as Premium and Classic versions. The installation process depends on the game version.

The Premium version is published on the Steam and itch.io platforms. Once bought, the game will automatically add to your game library and will handle like any other game on the platform.

The Classic version is freely available directly from the developers, Bay 12 Games. Simply download the latest version, extract its contents, and play.

Classic Download

Download: Linux · Windows · all versions · starter packs

Dwarf Fortress Classic is freely available directly from the developers, Bay 12 Games. Simply find the version that matches your operating system and click the link. You may be prompted to save an archive file, or your browser may save it to its configured downloads folder, do so and follow the installation instructions bellow.

The download linked at the top of the main page is a 64-bit version for Windows. "All versions" links to a page with additional choices depending on version, possibly including 32-bit builds for all platforms, "small" builds for Windows (which lack sound files), and "legacy" builds for Windows. The SDL builds for Windows should be preferred, although the Legacy builds may be necessary on some very old computers.

Third-Party Packages

There are several packages which bundle the game with several utilities and graphics sets, usually configurable with an included launcher. These are listed on the Lazy Newb Pack page. The availability of these packages lags behind the release, often by weeks or months for major releases.

The Dwarf Fortress community often creates custom graphics sets, tilesets and color schemes. They're like graphical mods that make DF look prettier or just different. A lot of people pack the game folder with the tileset installed and everything already set up, so all you have to do is extract and play. Among the most popular of these are Ironhand's Graphics Set and Phoebus' Graphic Set. Most notable graphics sets are included in the packs mentioned above.

Classic Installation

Also see: System requirements

Windows

There is no installer for the game. Simply right-click the zip archive you downloaded and choose Extract All..., then choose a destination folder, and click Extract (or maybe Unzip or Next on older versions of Windows). By default Windows uses the name of the archive as the folder name, in the folder the archive is in, so something like C:\Users\yourusername\Downloads\df_50_12_win. You should change that to something like C:\Users\yourusername\Desktop\Dwarf Fortress or C:\games\Dwarf Fortress. After the files have been extracted, double-click the Dwarf Fortress.exe file within the folder you chose to start the game.

• Make sure to actually extract the archive; do not just double-click the archive and run the game from the window that appears. If you do this, then it may appear to work, but your save game data will get discarded - the cause of many "my saved games keep getting deleted" complaints.
• The game needs to be able to write to its own folder, choose a game folder your user has write access to without requiring administrator rights for example: your Downloads folder, Desktop, or C:\games\..; do not install it in C:\Program Files\.. unless you know how to set up the correct permissions.

Troubleshooting:

• If you have an error stating that MSVCP140.dll or MSVCP140_ATOMIC_WAIT.dll is missing, it can be obtained by downloading the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2022.
• If Windows is set to scale the display, you may need to disable that for DF. Right-click the Dwarf Fortress.exe icon, select Properties, select the Compatibility tab, and then activate the Disable display scaling on high DPI settings (or Override high DPI scaling behavior, scaling performed by: Application) check box.[1]

Creating shortcuts:

• Right-click the Dwarf Fortress.exe file and choose any of Pin to Start, Pin to taskbar, or Send To > Desktop (create shortcut). (The availability of these options may vary depending on the version of Windows.)

Linux

Dwarf Fortress for Linux is expected to be run from a terminal (command-line) interface, and so the instructions here will assume you know how to log in and get to a command prompt. By default, however, Dwarf Fortress is a graphical desktop program (an X client), so you should be in a terminal emulator (inside an X session) before starting the game. (See Installation#TEXT mode for an alternative.) Dwarf Fortress will create a new window outside of the terminal window by default, so don't worry about the size of the terminal.

Downloading: Either download it from the Dwarf Fortress Homepage with a web browser, or with the following terminal command, replacing "XX_YY" with the numbers in the desired Dwarf Fortress file version, found on the site:

wget http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_XX_YY_linux.tar.bz2

Unpacking: Dwarf Fortress is shipped as a (bzip2) compressed tar archive. Current builds will extract directly into the current directory, so create a new subdirectory in a suitable location (perhaps ~/games/df_linux), cd to it, and then run

tar -xjf /path/to/df_XX_YY_linux.tar.bz2

where /path/to/df_XX_YY_linux.tar.bz2 is the path and filename of the actual file you downloaded.

Running: First, change to the new directory

cd df_linux

then run the program.

./dwarfort

Now you need to ensure that the required dependencies are installed. If you try to run the game and get errors about missing SDL_image libraries (etc.) then you need to install them. Use your distribution's package manager for this - details will be extremely distribution-specific. You don't need the development versions of the packages with the headers (although that won't hurt) - you just need the runtime versions, with the actual shared libraries.

If you see any errors related to glibc when starting DF (for example, "version `GLIBC_2.34' not found"), your version of Linux is too old and will need to be upgraded (e.g. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is insufficient, but 22.04 LTS should work). Alternatively, you can try running the Windows version in Wine.

Documentation

Fortunately, the documentation on this wiki is very detailed and extensive. You may want to start out with:

• Tutorials
• Fortress Mode Quickstart Guide
• Adventure Mode Quickstart Guide

Then move on to:

• Fortress Mode reference
• Adventure Mode reference
• Searching the wiki

Getting Started

About - Installation - Tutorials - FAQ

Fortress Mode Quickstart Guide - Adventure Mode Quickstart Guide

Fortress Mode Reference - Adventurer Mode Reference ^{(Quick Reference)}

How do I get more help?