Difference between revisions of "Tutorial:Powerplay Guide"

''This is a detailed reference guide for Adventurer Mode. For a tutorial see the [[Adventure mode quick start|Adventure Mode Quickstart Guide]].

:''See [[Adventure Mode quick reference]] to quickly look up key commands.

This guide focuses on powerplay, that is, building the most powerful combat-oriented character. Yet, fun is prioritised so glitch/bug abuse to get an advantage will not be used. For the most part, it is tailored towards players with some adventure mode experience, as there will be no explanation of hotkeys and basic gameplay elements, such as Fast [T]ravelling, [R]emoving an item, [W]earing an armour or [S]tanding up. Also, it is assumed that readers are familiar with the Fortress mode to the point of being able to make at least Steel weapons/armor, as there will be no explanation on this part either.

However, this does not mean, that less experienced players will not benefit from this guide. All the combat mechanics, decisions and picks will be explained most thoroughly without missing any of the steps. As long as one is familiar with hotkeys, he/she is all set for reading this. And don't forget about spoilers!

=Generating the world=

While, technically, every world is suitable for adventure mode, any player looking for a decent game should start in a world, that has at least the following features:

*A tower

*2 or 3 Dark fortresses

*A vault

*A desert

*An island no more than 2 blocks away from mainland

*A maze

You can check whether your world has a certain feature by starting the said world in Legends mode.

"Smaller" world size drastically reduces updating times, shortens the distance you will have to travel on foot and makes it more likely to explore more of the world. Don't get confused by the "Smaller" - even at this degree the generated world is much bigger than you would think, and is more than enough for a lengthy game while still preserving the features from bigger worlds.

*"Short" history setting will make the world 125 years old. This is done to ensure, that goblin settlements (a.k.a Dark Pits) are not too abundant. It also prevents a lot of  takeover wars, so it is less likely to end up with dead civilization(s) or human towns populated by elves (or what's more likely, goblins).

*"High" number of civilizations provides increased chances of Towers and Dark Fortresses appearing. Same applies to the "High" Number of Sites, only that it also influences the amount of creature lairs and encampments in the wild.

*Number of beasts determines how many megabeasts will roam the world. It is affected by the world size (e.g. Smaller), so it is left at default value. Same applies to Natural Savagery and Mineral occurence.

Example of the well-balanced world for an adventure game:

*'''Dwarves''' have the advantage of being able to go into a [[Martial trance|martial trance]] when fighting multiple foes at once. This gives them many combat bonuses, which aids their survival greatly. They are the only race which can start with steel weapons, but they wear "small" sized clothing (like goblins and elves) which means that they're unable to wear human clothing and armour found in shops. Goblin armor fits them, making Dark Fortresses (if your computer can handle them) and bandits a viable source of armor; if you're up for it, you could also just rob some dwarves. They can start with almost all of the same weapon skills as civilized humans. Many larger weapons must be wielded two-handed by dwarves, due to their size.

*'''Elves''' start with very weak wooden weapons and have a more limited list of weapon skills during character creation. They have the advantage that they have higher natural speed. Elves also have the AT_PEACE_WITH_NATURE tag. This makes all wildlife passive towards them. Like dwarves they wear small sized clothing and will have the same problem finding suitable armour.

*'''Kobolds''' can be played only if there are no other civilizations and there are kobolds. They are very small and weak in combat and a huge challenge compared to the other races. They wear even smaller armour than the other races and armour will be impossible to find for them, unless you are absurdly lucky and run into armoured kobolds.

 

*'''Intelligent Wilderness Creatures'''{{version|0.42.01}} can be played not only in varying conditions as above, but also as part of another parent civilization such as elves, humans, and dwarves. They come in various sizes, shapes and abilities, and as such a short description cannot be given.

 

If no civilization for a given race exists in a world you can only play as an outsider.

== Searching and Manipulating ==

| Interact with building, furniture, or mechanism

| Search the nearby area very carefully

The {{k|u}} key can be used to do stuff like pull levers in your abandoned forts. It is also used to lower and raise the bucket when standing right next to a well so you can get water to refill your waterskin with.

== Managing Equipment ==

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Press {{k|i}} to display a list of what you are currently carrying. Press {{k|-}} {{k|+}} {{k|*}} {{k|/}} to scroll the list. This list will show you if items are being worn, held in hands, stuck on your body, or are inside a container. Detailed information about an object can be viewed by pressing the key associated with the item.

You can {{k|d}}rop items in your inventory, as well as {{k|g}}et items on the ground on the same tile that you are standing on. If there is more than one item a menu will be listed. Press {{k|-}} {{k|+}} {{k|*}} {{k|/}} to scroll the list if the list is too long to fit on the screen. Note that getting something makes your adventurer pick something up with his or her hands. This often means that you have to use {{k|q}} to sheathe whatever you have in your hands before you pick something up. If you do not (and you do not have a backpack or some other way of storing the object, your adventurer will not pick the item up.

Items can be placed into containers with {{k|p}} and removed with {{k|r}}.

Items can be worn using {{k|w}} and removed using {{k|r}} (the same command used for removing from containers). If an item you want to wear does not show up as an option, then it means you are already wearing too many items in the location used by that item. Try {{K|r}}emoving items in that location and then wear them again in order of priority. You also must put on equipment in an order that makes sense,. for example a shirt first ''then'' the armor, not the other way around. Armour must also be put on in a sensible manner with flexible layers such as chainmail first then rigid plate armour second. After all, who, in real life, would wear chainmail over a hard plate?

''Note that "large" or "small" clothing items are too big / small for your race'' (e.g. a '''large''' giant cave spider silk sock). If you have that problem, try getting clothing from a different source.

There is no command for wielding items such as [[weapon]]s in specific hands. Instead, they are automatically equipped when you either {{k|g}}et them from the ground or {{k|r}}emove them from your [[backpack]] - provided the hand that would wield them is free. So in order to change [[weapon]]s or [[shield]]s you should drop items or place them into containers (such as your backpack) until your hands are free, then get items from the floor or remove them from containers which will place them in your hands. For example, put all items into backpack, remove sword from backpack, remove shield from backpack. The items will end up in the right and left hand. Simply remember the {{k|r}}emove command and the {{k|p}}ut into container command.

While normally one would only be able to equip one item in each hand, removing items from your inventory results in them being wielded regardless of whether one's hands are full. This is especially useful with shields, as every shield will contribute a block chance to each incoming attack.

It should be noted that Dwarf Fortress does not enforce one particular hand as dominant for everyone, so do not be surprised if your character holds the weapon and [[Armor#Shields and Bucklers|shield]] in hands you yourself would not hold them in.

=== Advanced Interaction ===

This command is particularly useful for getting water. When standing next to a well you press the {{k|u}} key to lower, then raise the bucket, yielding 10 units of water in the bucket. Then you can press the {{k|I}} key to fill your waterskin from the full bucket (alternatively you can press the {{k|e}} key to drink directly from the bucket).  

Advanced interactions can be used next to a campfire to heat things, such as any frozen liquids you have in your inventory (or snow lying on the ground) and need to drink. You can refill waterskins from a nearby liquid source as well

This is useful because you can't climb or wrestle with your hands unless your hands are free.

== Time and Weather ==

The game has a day/night cycle with time passing as various actions take place.

When using quick travel mode, the top line of the screen will indicate the position of the sun in the sky with a yellow "☼"; further to the right of the screen is earlier in the day and further to the left is later in the day.  

In local travel mode you'll have to use the {{k|W}} command to learn the position of the sun, when you're in a place where the sun is visible.

At night you won't be able to see nearly as well and you will be more vulnerable to ambush.

The game also has weather and temperature. The most common weather you'll experience is rain. Rain is shown as blue moving dots on the local travel screen and will unsurprisingly cause everything outside to become wet. Temperature is important because if it happens to drop below freezing while you're swimming through water, you'll instantly die from being encased in the ice.

Therefore you might want to keep an eye on the temperature while swimming, especially if it's getting cold.

Freezing weather can also freeze liquids in your inventory solid, making them undrinkable. If your water freezes and you are thirsty, make a campfire and {{k|I}}nteract with your waterskin to heat it over the fire and melt the ice.

Sleep does not necessarily have to coincide with night, but if you're traveling alone when night comes you'll be in danger of being attacked by [[Bogeyman|Bogeymen]].  To avoid this while traveling solo you need to make it to shelter before nightfall and sleep the night away inside a building or abandoned lair.  Enter a building, use {{K|k}} to talk to a human, and ask for permission to stay the night. Next press {{K|Z}} to sleep, {{K|d}} to sleep until dawn, then {{K|Enter}} to confirm. ('''NOTE''': If you stay the night in a castle, you have to sleep in the keep which houses the lord/lady of the castle.  Sleeping inside the castle but outside the keep still leaves you vulnerable to attack.) Sleeping on an ocean beach also prevents bogeymen from attacking. (If you'd rather not deal with bogeymen, you can disable them by generating a world using [[advanced world generation]] and setting "Number of Night creatures" to 0)

Though sleeping inside can be safe, it's also limiting: any quest site you want to go to has to be within a daytime's round-trip time of a safe habitation, and you have to make your way to there by hopping from one habitation to the next, sleeping at each along the way. A way to avoid this is to travel with companions.  If you have any companions with you then Bogeymen won't attack you. You'll still have to sleep at night, though, both to avoid sleep deprivation and because there's no visibility at night. You can still be ambushed at night by wildlife, but that's much less likely than being ambushed by Bogeymen when traveling alone. If you find yourself alone at night with nowhere safe to sleep, the safest bet is to keep traveling until dawn, even if that means running around in circles. You will eventually feel unwell from sleep deprivation, but this can take a considerable amount of time. You can make up for lost sleep once you've found your way to safety.

Note that sleeping in lairs, shrines, and labyrinths makes you safe from ambush, assuming that you or someone else has killed whatever was living there. If you have sufficient shrines/lairs/etc between you and your goal and they are either uninhabited or inhabited by things you are capable of killing then you can travel from lair to lair using each lair as a safe lodging. This is much safer than sleeping out in the open, day or night, even with companions.

If no other options are available, completely surrounding yourself with campfires will keep night marauders at bay as they cannot pass through the fires; the fires will go out after several hours and enable you to move on (you may also be able to jump over the fires). The bogeymen or other enemies may be outside your line of sight, which will prevent you from firing arrows or throwing things at them. In this case, you will have to stand up and lie down {{K|s}} repeatedly until the enemies wander into your range, the fires go out and the enemies can path to you, or dawn breaks.

To find water, you must find a river, stream, or well in a town and fill your waterskin from it, or drink from it directly. Water that may be covering you or your items will not be able to satisfy your thirst.

Make sure to eat or drink regularly even if you're not hungry or thirsty, as you can only eat or drink thrice at a time: after that you'll need to rest, or wait until you can consume another meal. If you find yourself in need of both food and hydration, make sure to take care of the most urgent problem first, as if you are moderately hungry but severely dehydrated and eat three times, you may die before you have another chance to drink.

If the temperature is low enough you might have trouble finding liquid water. Snow and ice can be heated into water by first making a campfire with {{k|g}} and then performing an advanced interaction with {{k|I}} on the ice or snow in your inventory to heat it. Advanced interactions with your waterskin can also be used to gather water from water sources, or snow from the ground.

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Hostile creatures can be attacked using a non-aimed attack by simply advancing towards your enemy using the arrow keys. Doing a non-aimed attack will also have a chance of freeing up any stuck weapon, though you are more likely to accomplish this by moving away from the enemy, or complexly interacting with the weapon.

Any creature can be attacked by standing next to it and pressing {{k|A}}. Attacking a friendly or unconscious creature (which includes wild animals for elves) will further require a confirmation, given using  {{k|alt}}+{{k|y}}.

After selecting (and maybe confirming) which creature you want to attack, {{k|a}} will allow you to make an '''aimed attack'''. You must first select the body part that you want to attack. Look at the difficulty rating for various possible attacks. Impossible attacks will be impossible to land and Easier attacks will be very easy to land. The difficulty rating for an attack does not change depending on your weapon skill. Based on player experiences, a Grand Master weapon user can almost always land a "Tricky" strike, while a Novice generally cannot. Attacks on various locations will also have limits on how "squarely" they can land (due to being out of reach, for example). Square and very square attacks will deal more damage.{{Verify}} Attacks which "can't land squarely" are generally still effective.

Aimed attacks are also especially helpful when fighting giant beasts. Some enemies like giant desert scorpions have lots of redundant body parts, and random attacks waste valuable time on low priority areas while the scorpion is busy injecting venom into the whole party. Lastly, aimed attacks allow you to grab trophies that are not available via butchering. For example, a minotaur's horns can be cut off during a fight, but since its a humanoid, most adventurers will refuse to butcher its corpse after the fight. However, in Dwarf Fortress 2014, all butcherable corpses are able to be butchered, as long as the corpse isn't too mangled.

There are several options below the hitting menu. Quick attacks are faster than regular attacks but weaker. Heavy attacks are slower but attack harder. Wild attacks are faster and hit harder but are inaccurate. Precise attacks are very slow but are much more likely to hit. Multi-attacks allow you to attack several times in a row at a great cost to the effectiveness of any one of the chosen attacks.

=== Ranged Attacks ===

To attack with a ranged weapon press the {{k|f}} key with a ranged weapon (bow, crossbow, etc.) equipped on one hand and select the square where you want to attack. Note that you need to have some sort of ammo, corresponding to the type of ranged weapon you are using (for example, bows use arrows, crossbows use bolts). Otherwise, a message stating "You have nothing left to fire." is displayed in brown. Similarly use the {{k|t}} key to throw any random object in the same manner. Random objects appear to make a random attack if they happen to have more than one possible type.{{Verify}} For example, if you throw a sword it may hit with a blunt impact, a stabbing impact, or a slicing impact. Throwing crossbow bolts with sufficient throwing skill and strength seems to have an effect similar to firing them, although less powerful. On the plus side, you will never lose ammo if you throw it.

It is not possible to aim for specific body parts with ranged or thrown attacks.

Throwing is generally a good skill to have for any adventurer, as it allows you to slow down fleeing foes, both on the ground and in the air without the need of equipping a (cross)bow. Just like {{k|l}}ooking, you can use throwing to view and hit enemies multiple Z levels away from you. If you're lucky, you can simply land a hit that causes the flying enemy to give in to pain, and then let gravity do the rest of the work. Even if the fall doesn't kill them, they will most likely be stunned long enough for you to run up and slaughter them.

=== Wrestling and Unarmed Attacks ===

:''Main article: [[Wrestling]]''

'''[[Wrestling]]''' (grappling) can be performed by selecting an enemy via {{k|A}} followed by {{k|b}} to wrestle. You can wrestle any enemy. Wrestling works somewhat like a targeted attack. Once you grab a creature by some body part, you may be able to make another wrestling attempt that will allow you to perform a throw or takedown.

For a detailed list of moves such as takedowns, throws, choke holds, etc., see [[Wrestling]].

It's also possible to punch, kick, and bite. These are not in the wrestling menu but are performed like normal targeted attacks with {{k|A}}.

[[Weapon]]s are basically divided into axe, sword, spear, pike, mace, whip, bow and hammer, with various versions of these taking up the gray area.

If you get wounded during combat, there's not much that you can do except perhaps run before you get more wounded. Your wounds will heal over time, so just travel around or sleep in a safe place. Some wounds however may never heal, leaving you permanently crippled. Obtaining a crutch may help with this. Or if you are not already a vampire, then you can get bitten by a werebeast during full moon, which will heal all injuries once per month.

If you have some bolts or arrows stuck in your body, they can be removed by using the complex interaction menu {{k|I}}. Select the stuck bolt or arrow from the list and then pull it out with {{k|a}} You'll probably start bleeding after you pull it out, but the bleeding is rarely anything to worry about.

**'''According to Opponent''' - The default setting. When set to this, charging happens more or less frequently, depending on the difference in size between you and the opponent. Bigger opponents get charged less, smaller more often. Can be very risky, since a random charge against a huge opponent is likely to get you knocked down and stunned. In the same vein, charging when close to obstacles or other environmental hazards is very dangerous, potentially fatal, if the enemy dodges you.

**'''Strike''' - This setting ensures that you never charge an opponent, but rather just swing your weapon at them. This carries less risk than the above, but you're never going to knock anyone down without hitting their legs or spine. Very preferable against large opponents.

**'''Charge''' - When set to this, you ALWAYS charge. When faced with numerous small enemies (Bogeymen in particular), this can be extremely useful, but remember to switch back when facing something bigger. Charging a large dragon is almost a certain death sentence.

**'''Close Combat''' - With this setting, all your auto-attacks are grapples. Generally not very useful, since the random nature of it tends to prevent you from actually doing any damage with it, but if you continually auto-attack a harmless creature with it your wrestling-skill will be legendary in no time.  

*'''{{k|d}}odge'''

**'''Move Around''' - This means you can jump away from attacks, physically moving in a random direction. While this lets you dodge attacks more often, it can also result in you jumping into a wall or down a lake. If you're fighting in really tight spaces, or areas with large pits, you might want to switch to the other option.

**'''Stand Ground''' - As can be expected, you stand your ground. No jumping around, which is useful in the above situation, but risky in the open. If you have room for jumping around, go with Move Around, but otherwise this could be a good idea.

*'''{{k|c}}harge Defense'''

**'''According to Opponent''' - Again, the default setting. You're more likely to stand still against small enemies charging, but will probably prefer moving away from larger ones. Somewhat risky, in that even a somewhat small enemy can stun you by charging.

**'''Dodge Away''' - With this, you'll dodge away from charging enemies, if you can. It's not a sure bet, but it's very much worth it against enemies who like to charge. This is probably the most preferable mode, since you're not losing a whole lot by dodging a small foe charging, but dodging an angry night beast can save you from a world of pain.

**'''Stand Ground''' - If you're certain of your physical superiority to the opponent, you can safely choose this. Standing your ground like a real man/woman might feel hardcore, but getting knocked down in a fight can be extremely dangerous. It probably has some use against bogeymen though, since they're quite small. If you really are much bigger than the enemy, you'll end up knocking THEM down. Most of the time though, charges heavily favor the attacker, so dodging away is probably preferable.

Using Combat Preferences properly can actually save your hide, so it's worth fiddling with. Just don't forget that you've fiddled with them, since a misplaced charge or dodge could end up killing you.

[[File:Advmode_conversation_DF2014.png|thumb|400px|Talking to someone in Adventurer mode.]]

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Now that you know how to kill people, you may also want to know how to talk to and otherwise interact with them in a less violent manner. While this is less entertaining, it can sometimes be useful.

To begin a conversation, press {{k|k}}. Unless someone else has already started a conversation with you (see below if someone has), you will get a cyan X that can be positioned over people you want to talk to with the normal directional keys. Use {{k|-}} and {{k|+}} to select who you want to talk to. Aside from individuals, you can also {{DFtext|Shout out to everybody}}, which will have you talking with everyone in earshot, or you can talk to your deity.

Whenever you want to advance the conversation, you have to press {{k|k}} again and choose the ongoing conversation you wish to continue. You will also see ongoing conversations from people who have started a conversation with you. If you want to talk to someone else during this time, simply {{DFtext|Start a new conversation}}.

* {{DFtext|Greet listener}} — Has you offering a greeting to someone, when you're initiating the conversation.

* {{DFtext|Bypass greeting (new menu)}} — Skips the greeting, taking you straight to the normal conversation menus.

* {{DFtext|Reply to greeting}} — If you aren't the one who started the conversation, this option will let you reply to someone's greeting. They will then talk about some trouble.

* {{DFtext|Refuse conversation}} — Causes you to explicitly refuse to talk to someone who started a conversation with you. Unknown if this has a different effect from simply not doing anything.{{Verify}}

* {{DFtext|Reply to greeting (impersonation)}} — Like {{DFtext|Reply to greeting}}, except you're impersonating a deity.

* {{DFtext|Nevermind}} — This has you back out of having a conversation.

When you start talking to someone,