40d:Quickstart guide

Dwarf Fortress Starter Guide

Overview

This quick and cheerful guide aims to help those of you brave enough to tackle this game over the first few hurdles that it presents.

Before we start, I must stress that this game can get very complicated very fast, and you may get overwhelmed at multiple points. Don't give up, you'll get the hang of it eventually. Focus on getting food and shelter first, and you'll have plenty of time to take the rest of the game slowly.

Aim of the game

The basic premise of the game is to build, with the help of your starting seven dwarves and any children or immigrants, a successful, prosperous fortress. By keeping up with the needs of your dwarves, they will gladly do anything you ask and soon your fortress will be magnificent (if it all goes well).

Fundamentals

Your dwarves need food, drink and a bed generally, so these will be your first objectives. However, when you start, your dwarves are just sitting on the surface of your newly generated world, so we have to get them under the earth, where they belong. The new version of Dwarf Fortress implements a whole new way of digging, the Z-Axis. Using this, you can not only dig sideways, but downwards and upwards as well. Press [d] to open the designation panel, and you'll be greeted by a lot of possible designations. Firstly, choose "Downwards Stairway". Using your mouse, click somewhere on the screen to place it. Then, press Shift+. [>] Your view will then change, showing blackness, with periodic grey %,. signs. You just went down a z-level. Think of it as going one level down. You should see that underneath the downwards stairway you placed just a second ago, there will be a grey block. Go back into the [d] menu, and select "Upwards Stairway". Click in the grey block to place it, and the two stairways will link up. Press [<] (To go up a z-level) and then [Space] and your miner dwarf will run over and dig the stairways. Once the stairs are built, you can continue to build. Using [d] again, designate an area no larger than 7x7 squares away next to the stairs on your first -z level for mining. Make sure that the mining designation is connected to an open room or space, or else the dwarves will not be able to mine. The area you designated for mining should turn yellow, and when you hit [Space] again, your mining dwarf/s will hurry to mine out the selected area. This is the basic skill in Dwarf Fortress, being able to dig.

Storage

All of your dwarves' possessions are on the wagons on the surface, including food, seeds, equipment and anything else you brought. Storing food inside is a good idea, so hit [p] to open the stockpile menu, then hit [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 [p][w] wood and refuse pile outside.

Stone is dug out of the earth itself, while wood is collected from trees (usually outside). To designate trees to be cut, open the [d] menu, and select [t] for trees, then drag a box around the trees you want felled.

Construction

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 generating power.

Hit [b]uild menu, and then [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.

You may need to reassign dwarves to other jobs in order to get them to do something (build, work at certain workshop, move something etc). Hit [v] to view dwarves, and scroll until you find one. The [g]eneral panel will show name, skills and current actions. Change to [p]references and [l]abour. This is where you change what tasks the dwarf will carry out. Use the [+] and [-] keys to scroll down to masonry and enable it with the enter button, to allow this dwarf to use the masons workshop.

Building items: hit [q] to search buildings and move your cursor to the masons workshop. [a] will add a new task, and hit [d] for door. 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 [b]uild menu ([d]oor). Note that there are some buildings that [q] doesn't work with. Use [t] for these instead.

Beds are constructed in the same way ([b] on the build menu), but can only be made from wood in the carpenters workshop.

Food and drink

Food is sometimes difficult to get right. There are many ways to provide food for your dwarves, be it butchering animals from hunting or slaughtering your own, farming, fishing, trading etc, but the most reliable way is to farm. The new version of the game added the ability to farm certain plants/crops outside your fortress, aswell as inside. There are many guides on farming, so I won't go into it here, but sufficed to say, you build farm plots with [b]uild [p]lot on either soil (clay, loam, sand, etc) or rock that has been muddied by water, and once it is built by your farmers, select [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. [a], [b], [c] and [d] choose spring, summer, autumn and 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. Water is attained in a number of different ways. If your map has a river or brook on it, dwarves will automatically go to it to drink. If this is not the case, hope that there is a lake or pond on the surface of your map, or else it will be a while before you get access to water. I hope you brought lots of drink with you.

Well, that is the basics of Dwarf Fortress. What you want to do now is set up a steady supply of food, keep digging downwards and along, and make sure you are prepared for winter. Expect a trade caravan to come to your fortress just before winter, so make sure you build a trade depot. Oh, and you could get a group of 5-12 dwarves arriving before winter as well, so make sure you have enough food to feed everyone.

Good luck.

Other points of interest

• [z] will give you an overview of your fortress, and will allow you to select animals for slaughter (just hit enter when the word "Animals" at the top is highlighted).

• [v] gives you information on individual dwarves and their current tasks.

• You can use the mouse to designate areas (mine, trees, etc), and right-clicking gives a new scroll option.

• To exit the game, you must save first, and it will automatically move you to the start screen again.

• If you want to look at something, use [q], [t], [k], or [v]. [q] and [t] looks at buildings and other constructions, and depending on the structure, will let you change the build queue, look at the contents of the building, destroy the building, or let you toggle settings on doors and such.

• [k] will show individual items in a tile, and [v] shows individual dwarves and other creatures. In any combat you will find it easier to keep track on what's going on by pressing [v] to select creatures and [w] to look at their wounds.