Editing 23a:Quickstart guide

Your dwarves need food, [[drink]] and a bed generally, so these will be your first objectives. However, when you start, your dwarves are on the wrong side of the mountain. Press {{k|d}} to open the designation panel, then {{k|d}} again for [[mining]]. Move your cursor to where one corner of your room will be, hit enter, then move your cursor to the far corner and hit enter again. Draw out a few rooms from 3x3 to 6x6 squares wide (7x7 or larger will result in a [[cave-in]] unless you add [[support]]s), and connect them to the outside. Hit space to resume play, and watch as your dwarf [[miner]] will get straight to work digging you out the start of your fortress!

All of your dwarves' possessions are on the wagons just outside of the mountain, including [[food]], [[seeds]], equipment and anything else you brought. Storing food inside is a good idea, so hit {{k|p}} to open the piles menu, then hit {{k|f}} for food. Move the keyboard over to the start corner of a big room, hit enter, then move to the other corner, hitting enter again will place the pile, and your dwarves should begin hauling food to it immediately.

You should also make a {{k|p}}{{k|w}} [[wood]] pile inside, and a [[refuse]] pile outside.

Next up: constructing buildings and objects. You can place many buildings (almost all 3x3) that carry out various tasks from making food to carving stone, [[smelting]] [[ore]] to cleaning [[fish]].

Hit {{k|b}}uild menu, and {{k|w}}orkshop. You'll be seeing the build menu often as you build and expand your fortress. Build a [[mason]]'s and a [[carpenter]]'s workshop, so that you can craft stone and wood that you collect. Your dwarves should begin construction reasonably quickly.

Building items: hit {{k|q}} to search buildings and move to the masons workshop. {{k|a}} will add a new task, and hit {{k|d}} for [[door]]. {{k|Space}} to un-pause, and the mason should grab a rock and set about building you a door. When he is done, you can place this via the {{k|b}}uild menu ({{k|d}}oor). Note that there are some buildings that {{k|q}} doesn't work with. Use {{k|t}} for these instead.

[[Bed]]s are constructed in the same way ({{k|b}} on the build menu), but can only be made from wood in the carpenters workshop.

Food is sometimes difficult to get right. There are many ways to provide food for your dwarves, be it [[butcher]]ing animals from [[hunting]] or slaughtering your own, [[farming]], [[fishing]], [[trading]] etc, but the most reliable way is to farm. Farming requires water from the [[cave river]] (but it can be done from the outside one), which is usually a screen to the right inside the mountain. There are many guides on farming, so i wont go into it here, but sufficed to say, you build it with {{k|b}}uild {{k|p}}lot on wet (brown) ground, place it, and once it is built by your farmers, select {{k|q}} and choose the seed type. [[Plump helmet]] is the best choice just now. As seeding is seasonal, you might want to choose ahead of time. {{k|a}}, {{k|b}}, and {{k|c}} chooses spring, summer, and autumn (you can't grow in winter). Just choose the seed type for each season.

Drink is created from the [[still]] with crops grown in the fields. Drink is good, as it increases dwarf efficiency. You can also build wells {{k|b}}uild wel{{k|l}} with blocks made from the masons, and a bucket from the carpenters workshop.

* Beware [[floodgate]]s. If you are farming using these, read the [[irrigation]] page carefully, or else you can flood the whole world. In a nutshell, don't let water that a floodgate releases touch any other water source, such as a river.