v0.31:Bentgirder

Bentgirder is a Dwarf Fortress package for beginners. With it, you can skip the dull, time-consuming tasks of generating a world, finding an embark point, and preparing an expedition. Just unzip the Bentgirder package to the same directory as Dwarf Fortress, and play along with this tutorial.

You can get Bentgirder here: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2645

Lesson One: The Basics

Starting the game

At the main menu, choose to continue a game. It will ask you to pick a game region, but there should only be one choice: region0, the location of future outpost Matthob, aka Bentgirder.

[screen shot of continue game screen?]

Setting up the screen: tab, resize, zoom

The default screen setup is a little crowded. The actual game view is on the left hand side. You can use the tab key to hide the mini-map and the command menu. Just keep tapping tab to cycle through different configurations. You might want to keep the command menu visible for easy reference.

In the most recent versions of Dwarf Fortress, you can re-size the window with the mouse, and zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. Also, you can toggle the full-screen mode with F11, but that will make it harder to read this as you play.

You can use the arrow keys to scroll around the map. To move faster, use shift-arrow. If you get lost, press F1 to center the screen on the wagon.

Game Options: Escape

Esc brings up the game options menu, which includes things like volume control, and the quit & save option. Note there is no save & continue option. Dwarf Fortress is hardcore. If your fortress goes south, you don't go back to your last save, you have to struggle through, or abandon and start over. Remember, losing is Fun!

When in doubt, pause: space bar

The game starts paused. Use the space bar pause and unpause your game. It might be best to leave it paused for now. Without any orders from you, your dwarves will only mill around and eat.

Looking around: K

First, lets make sense of this jumble of characters that is the main screen. Press k to activate the look mode. The pauses the game, and puts a yellow X in the middle of the screen. That X is your cursor. Use the arrow keys or number pad to move it around. The right side of the screen will show a list of what is in the selected tile. It also shows that the ground below is made of.

The screen will be centered on a 3x3 brown square. That's the wagon full of supplies to get you through the year. Nearby, you will see your seven dwarves, a few animals, and lots of trees and shrubs. To the right, there's a brook. The dark blue patches that show up as "empty space" are ponds.

Opposite the brook is a hillside. You'll see that the green up-arrows are upward slopes, so your dwarves can walk up this hill easily. Beyond that is a silt loam wall. That's just a kind of dirt. It's called a wall because the whole tile is full of dirt.

Press Escape to end look mode.

[screen shot]

Z-levels: <, >

Dwarf Fortress is a three dimensional game. Anywhere you can use the arrow keys to move a cursor or the map, you can use < and > to move vertically. Each step is called a z-level. You can only see one z-level at a time, so hills are blacked out walls, and valleys show as empty space. In the bottom right of the screen, there's a display of the current z-level. The wagon is parked on level 146.

If you move the display up one step, (to 147) most of the map will appear as empty space, but the hill to the left now looks normal. Conversely, if you go down to 145, all you can see is the bottoms of the ponds and the brook. If you follow the brook south, there's a valley at the bottom edge of the map. From level 146 it appears as empty space, but on 145, it is normal terrain.

View creatures: V

K is good for looking at the map itself, but to get more information on creatures (including your dwarves) use v. This works a lot like k mode, but the right side menu now shows detailed info on the creature closest to the cursor. If you're between creatures, or if there's more than one in a tile, press v again to cycle between creatures.

There are four sub-sections here: general, inventory, preferences, and wounds. For your dwarves, general shows what skills that dwarf has. Inventory shows what the dwarf is carrying and wearing. Preferences shows what work the dwarf will do. (This will be important later.) Wounds shows the creature's injuries as color codes. Healthy body parts are shown as bright white.

Secondary selection keys: +, -

In many modes, you can scroll though the information in the right-hand menu with the secondary select keys, + and -. For example, scrolling through lists of skills when viewing a dwarf.

Unit List: U

Press u to bring up unit list. This shows every living thing on the map. That's your seven dwarves, two dogs, two cats, a donkey, and some wild deer. ("Stray" animals are tame, but not attached to any individual dwarf.)

There are several useful functions here. Use v to get more info on the highlighted creature. For the animals, this jumps straight to a description. For dwarves, there is an intermediate screen showing the dwarf's owned objects.

Use c to go back to the map, centered on the highlighted creature. For example, we could find out where those wild deer are hiding. This puts you into the view creature mode, just like the v command, above.

Fortress information: Z

Instead of scanning around the map, you can press z to get an overview of the whole fortress from the Template:L screen. This screen has a lot of information.

1. Current date -upper right corner
2. Dwarven population (center) and profession (military or otherwise) breakdown -on the right side
3. Food and drinks -lower left corner
4. Fortress wealth including imported and exported wealth - left side

Since your dwarfs don't know how much stuff is around (Template:L) and how much stuff is worth (Template:L), the food and wealth information is not helpful. (more on that later)

[SS: need appraisal]

Assign Nobles: N

Press escape to exit the overview screen. Press n to bring up the nobles and administrators screen. We need to assign a broker, so use the arrow keys to move the highlight to broker, and press enter. This brings up a list of dwarves. Fortunately, we have a dwarf with the Appraiser skill: Mörul Kibdakon. He is already our expedition leader, but that's OK.

Mörul also has medical skills, so you could set him up as chief medical dwarf.

Lesson Two: Meet Vabôk the Miner

[SS: vabok] She may not look tough, but Vabok is your only miner and that makes her very important.

Designation Menu: D

Enough looking around, let's get digging! Press d to bring up the designations menu. This gives us the cursor, and a list of options, each with a letter.

Let's go straight down, right next to the wagon. For that we need downward staircase. According to the window, that's j. Press j and downward staircase becomes highlighted.

The designation mode assumes that you want to mark a rectangular area. To make a designation, press enter to mark one corner, move the cursor to the opposite corner, and press enter again. You can also use the mouse, which is easier for small designations, like the one we're about to make.

Since we only need a small staircase, just click one square. The square is now marked with a > sign. As soon as we unpause, Vabok will walk to the tile, and carve a staircase into the dirt.

One problem, though. A designation doesn't cross z-levels. If you look at the level below, you'll see that the square below is exposed, but does not contain a staircase. We need to designate an upward staircase (u) in that square before we can dig any further.

Once that's taken care of, we can the regular mine designation to dig horizontally. We need some space for shelter and storage, so make a tunnel north or west, and then expand it into a big underground room.

Note that in designation mode, any tile that's next to water will blink blue. This is warn you against mining into water and flooding your fortress. If you dig north of the wagon, you might get a damp stone warning for no obvious reason. There are a few tiny ponds on this hill above, which triggers the damp stone warning, but isn't really a risk if you dig into it. Just don't try to dig upwards from there!

Removing designations

If you make a designation by accident, you can remove it from the designation mode. Choose remove designation, (x) and mark the tiles you want to un-designate. If Vabok has already mined it out, You'll need to construct a wall to fill it back in. More on that once we get to Meng the mason.

You have struck gypsum!

Soil just disappears as it is mined out, but stone is left behind in big chunks. There is an outcropping of stone nearby, north and west of the wagon. Gypsum is a type of stone that can be made into plaster powder. There is also some useful lignite nearby, and clusters of agates, a type of low-value gem.

You might want to avoid digging the ore and gems until Vabok is more experienced, or at least until you can take advantage of those resources.

Announcement list: A

Most of these discoveries will be announced by a message at the bottom of the screen

Press a to see previous announcements. As you fortress grows, these come up more and more often, so it's easy to miss them. Also note that you can zoom to the location of an announcement from here.

Other Designations: cutting trees, gathering plants

While we're waiting for Vabok to finish our new digs, (pardon the pun) we can put our other dwarves to work with other designations.

Choose the "chop down trees" designation, and mark a big swath around the wagon. Then do it again with "gather plants." Your dwarves will quickly go to work on these tasks.

[SS: working dwarves]

That's three out of seven dwarves hard at work. Not bad for just knowing one command! Try to keep Vabok busy expanding and exploring as you continue this lesson.

Lesson Three: Meet Stâkud the Carpenter

[SS: Stakud]

Building: B

To get any carpentry done, we need the appropriate workshop. Press b for the build menu. There are three pages of things that can be built here, and some of these entries lead to sub-menus. You can use the secondary select keys here, and each entry has a shortcut key as well. We are looking for workshops. Press w for the shortcut. The carpenter's workshop is on the first page here, with the shortcut c.

Now it's time to place the workshop where we want it. Since there's not much room underground, lets build it on the surface for now. It's trivial to break down a workshop and build a new one, so it doesn't have to be perfect.

The last step is choosing the materials to build it out of. Like most workshops, it can be built out of wood, metal, or stone, and it only takes one unit of materials. Our woodcutter has been hard at work, so there is some wood lying around, and there are a few tower-cap logs on the wagon, just in case. If Vabok has hit usable stone, that will appear here as well. Materials are sorted by distance, and they are all equally good, so just take the first one.

Stâkud will haul the selected building materials to the chosen location and start building his workshop.

Workshop Control: Q

Press q for the view room mode. This works a lot like view creature mode. Move the cursor near a room, and you'll get some options listed in the right panel. The only rooms so far are new carpenter's workshop and the wagon. The wagon's only option is to tear it down, but the workshop has the all important "add new task" option.

This brings up a list of things that can be built at this workshop. For now, lets build some beds. Our dwarves are going to get tired eventually, and beds can only be made from wood. Note that you can't specify what material to build the beds out of. Stâkud just grabs some nearby wood and starts working.

Stockpiles: P

Kubuk has been leaving cut-down trees all over the place. Why don't we move them all closer to the carpenter's workshop so Stakud doesn't have to drag them so far?

Press p for the stockpiles mode. Making a stockpile works just like a designation, but with no mouse control. We want a wood stockpile, so press w to highlight wood. Then mark the opposite corners of a small rectangular area near Stakud's workshop. The area is filled in with = signs. As soon as the game resumes, all your dwarves will run to fill the stockpile with logs.

Why stop there? The beds that Stakud is building are just cluttering up the workshop. Lets make a furniture stockpile on the opposite side. Note that there is some furniture on the wagon: an anvil, a bucket, and a few empty bags. (Empty bags and buckets are stored in the furniture stockpile.)

Vabok should be about done clearing space underground, and all these rats are making me nervous. Create a big food stockpile in the cleared space.

You can use k to look at the contents of your stockpiles. Take a look at your new beds, the enormous quantity of booze, and the barrels of revolting organ meats.

Eventually, you will want to move all your workshops and stockpiles underground. There are creatures that will steal your things. Moving everything underground is safer. Building them on the surface is just to get started quickly.

Quality symbols

Notice that your new creations have symbols around their names, like -pine bed- or +cedar bed+. These are quality indicators. Items with no symbols are minimum quality crap. As a general rule, more lines mean more quality, which means the item is worth more money.

-double value-

+triple+

*quadruple*

≡five times≡

¤twelve times¤

Placing Furniture (beds)

Dwarves can't sleep on a bed while it's in the stockpile. To set up a bed properly, use the build mode again. Bed is the second option, shortcut b. This is just like how we built the workshop, but instead of a log, the only component is a bed. If there isn't an unused bed in a stockpile (or the workshop itself) you get the cryptic message, "Need bed". Beds and other furniture needs to be constructed at a workshop before it can be built on the map.

Notice that a lot of the things you can build are pieces of furniture that can be built from your carpenter's workshop. Tables, chairs, doors, hatch covers, and so on.

Bins and Barrels

Two of the most important things a carpenter will make are bins and barrels. Barrels are used to hold food and drink. Bins are used to store nearly everything else. You will need lots of these to keep your stockpiles in order. Try to keep a few extras of each.

Meet Ïteb the Farmer

Ïteb has already been working on the surface, gathering useful plants, but his main function is to plant a farm.

Irrigation

All the seeds you have are for dwarven crops that grow underground. They don't grow in dirt, they only grow in mud. To get some mud in your new home, you need to dump some water. Doing so is a little counter-intuitive.

Dig an area for your farm, one z-level below the surface and near the brook or a pond. A three by three area will easily feed all your dwarves. Make it four-by-four if you want a big one.

Now go to the surface and channel one tile, right above your future farm. Channel (h on the designations menu.) digs a down into the ground. If the layer below is solid, this create a ramp down, but since you already dug out the area below, it just makes a hole.

Zones: I

To get your dwarves to dump water down this hole, you need to create a zone. Press i to enter zone mode. Like with designations and stockpiles, you use the arrow keys and enter to mark a rectangular area. Unlike those other modes, you choose a zone's settings after you mark the area.

Make a 3x3 zone around your new hole. Press p to make it a pit/pond zone. (Pit/pond is an awkward combo of a place to dump water and a place to dump animals.) Then Shift-P to open the pit/pond settings. Here there is a list of animals to drop into the pit, but more importantly, here you can press f to toggle "Is pit" and "Is pond" modes. Set this to "Is pond" to start watering your future farm.

As soon as you exit zone mode, your dwarves will start carrying buckets of water from the nearest source, and dumping them down the hole. This can take a while, but you can speed things up a little by making a few extra buckets. You can use K to see the progress of your irrigation efforts. Even a "dusting" of mud is enough to grow your crops. You might also see something like "Water [1/7]". The number indicates how much water is in the tile. Anything more than 1/7 is too much to build a farm in. Just wait a while for the water to spread out and evaporate. Once you've got enough mud, go back into zone mode, and turn off "Is pond." You're ready to make a farm plot.

Creating a farm plot

Now that you've got a nice muddy area, it's time to build a farm plot. It's in the build menu, and the shortcut is p. Changing the size of your plot with u,m,k, and h. u and k make it larger, hand m make it smaller. (This awkward method is used a very few places in Dwarf Fortress.) As soon as you exit build mode, Ïteb will build the new plot.

Once your plot is constructed, use q to view its settings. Here, you can use the secondary select to choose a crop to grow for the current season. You can also use a-d to plan other seasons of the year. What to grow first?

Plump Helmets: the staff of life

Plump helmets are the best thing to grow in a new fortress. They can be eaten raw, with no preparation required. They can also be brewed into dwarven wine, but more about that later. You have a bag of seeds for nearly every dwarven crop in your starting supplies, but none are as immediately useful as plump helmets. You can experiment with the other crops once you have more population.

Once you make your selection, Ïteb will start bringing seeds (called "spawn") to plant. If you made a big farm, you might get an alert that Ïteb is out of plump helmet spawn. Don't panic. That is just temporary. Every time a dwarf eats (or brews) a plump helmet, two spawn get spat onto the floor. Eventually, these seeds get gathered back into your food stockpile, with the rest of the seeds.

Meet Meng the Mason

A mason's workshop is very much like the carpenter's workshop, only it makes things out of stone. Since you will soon be neck deep in stone, it's a very attractive choice for building material. A mason can build a lot of the things that a carpenter can, plus a few that can only be made from stone.

What's in a name?

Some items have different names, depending on what material the item is made out of. Stone chairs are called "thrones" and stone chests are called "coffers". Don't get confused! They work exactly the same.

Build a trade depot

Your fortress is not isolated. Merchants will come to trade several times a year. This is a great failsafe. If you need more food or drink, if you need another pick or ax, if you need thread or cloth or even a bag of sand, you can trade for it. But the merchants will not stop if you don't have a trade depot.

Start one from the build menu, shortcut shift-D. Since merchants need to access it, I suggest building it on the surface. It's a big 5x5 room, and it takes three units of building materials. It's also one of the few buildings that need to be designed before being built. This means a building designer has to work on the area before the actual building process begins. Fortunately, Meng has this skill as well as masonry.

Make an office

All the question marks in the overview screen are annoying. Let's make Kubuk our bookkeeper, and set up an office for her so she can keep track of everything. All you really need is a chair for her to sit in. Adding a table is customary, but optional. Once we get some migrants, we can get some useless peasant to be the new bookkeeper, and transfer the office to him/her.

Assign a bookkeeper through the Nobles menu, just like we assigned a broker in lesson one.

If you want to make a nice, permanent office, dig out a 3x3 room with stone walls. If you're impatient, you can set up a temporary office anywhere. By now you should know how to construct and place a chair. Use q to view the chair. The only option will be "r: make throne room or study." Choose this option, and you'll get the option to choose the size of the "study" with the secondary select keys. Notice that it conforms to walls and doors. Press enter once you've got a nice size. The last step is to assign the chair to our new bookkeeper.

Note that any furniture in that area is considered part of the study, so if there's a bed there, it belongs to the bookkeeper now, and only she can sleep in it. If there's a chest or cabinet there, she might start keeping her things in it.

This is a common method in Dwarf Fortress, of placing a piece of furniture, and expanding a room around it. Chairs turn into offices, tables turn into dining rooms, beds turn into bedrooms, coffins turn into tombs, and nearly anything can be turned into a barracks.

Meet Mörul the Doctor/Trader/Brewer

Brewing

Brewing is essential to dwarven society as all dwarves need booze to get through the working day, as displayed in their profiles. Mörul, in addition to his other skills, is a brewer. The brewer's workshop is called a still. To make drinks, all he needs are some brewable plants and a barrel to store it in.

Your most common drink starting out, will be dwarven wine, which is made from brewing plump helmets. Always be sure to have a decent stock of plants to brew, as dwarves drink about three times as much as they eat. As a plus, brewing leaves the seeds of the crop behind, so your food can be brewed into drink while the seeds go right back into the ground.

Trading

Trading is also under Mörul's authority. He will be meeting merchants at your trade depot around three times a year, Spring for elves, Summer for the humans, and Autumn for the dwarves. Each item has a weight and value, and the better your trader, the better deals you'll be able to get. Additionally, since Mörul starts skilled as a broker, he will also be able to appraise the worth of items set for trade.

The general idea is that you want to craft trinkets that you don't need, such as instruments or toys, and make them as valuable as possible, then trade them for goods that you can use and need, such as wood, food, materials, and so on, although you can trade anything with a value except artifacts. One thing to look out for is that you also include some weighty materials as well while also giving a large number. Too much weight and you'll overload the pack animals (causing the trade to be impossible) and taking too many objects while giving very few, even valuable items, will annoy the trader as well. Traders will never trade at a loss, so keep your crafters going.

Meet Kûbuk the Axedwarf

We've seen Kûbuk atthe very beginning, chopping down trees, but she is also your fortress's first line of defense. As a trained axedwarf, she can put her ax to work against goblins and kobolds as easily as the trees.

Military screen: M

Open the military screen with m. First create create a new squad. When you create a squad, the game will prompt you to choose a uniform for the new squad. Choose anything other than archer. You can specify equipment later on, once you have some armor for her to wear.

The squad will be given a random name, and you can now add Kûbuk to it. This will make her the militia commander, as the first military dwarf of the fortress.

Exit the military screen. By default, squads are set as inactive, so Kûbuk will continue with her civilian woodcutting duties. If you have a barracks set up, she'll do some basic training in her free time.

Squad Command: S

You can give specific commands to your military through the squads command. Press s to enter squad control mode. Be aware that the game does not pause in this mode! You can pause and unpause with space, as normal.

Press a to select the first (and only) squad in the list. To post Kûbuk in a specific place, press m for the move command, and select the location with the arrow keys and enter. To send Kûbuk after a specific creature, press k for the attack/kill command. This lets you chose your victim with the cursor, or select one from a list.

Combat Reports: R

To get the details of what's happening in combat, press r for combat reports. This starts out blank, but once the first thief stumbles into your fortress, things can get pretty gory.

Meet the Migrants

Changing labor assignments Smoothing & Engraving Animal Trainer Appointing a Bookkeeper and Manager Boyer Bone Carving and Wood Crafting Food Industry: Cook, Miller, Thresher, Milker, Cheese maker Fishing Butcher Hunter Cloth Industry Metal Industry Gem Industry Glass Industry Leather Industry Soap Herbalist Useless skills: Trapper, Dissector, Animal Caretaker, Pump Operator

Future of the Fortress

Dealing with Nobles Individual Bedrooms Better Military Build a Castle Farming Above Ground Dig a Well Build a Prison Build a Statue Garden or Zoo The Dwarven Economy

Other Commands

Hot keys: H Points and Routes: shift-N Burrows: W Job Manager: J Items in Room: T Artifact List: L Options: O Trade Depot Access: shift-D Local Civilizations: C Artifact List: L Room List: R The (Questionable) Manual: ?

FAQ

What's with all the vomit? If your dwarves spend too much time underground without sunlight, they develop cave adaptation. This essentially means that sunlight makes them sick, and they'll get negative thoughts from this. The vomiting is caused by prolonged cave adaptation.

What's with the dead rats? Cats are vermin hunters - they kill vermin (rats and other small animals/insects) and leave the corpses wherever they want. If you have a refuse stockpile, they'll go there instead.

What is this purple stuff? That's miasma. It appears when something rots indoors. It gives your dwarves bad thoughts, but isn't otherwise harmful. Anything that can rot is refuse. Building an outdoors refuse stockpile should prevent any more miasma.

A dwarf just withdrew from society, got possessed, or was taken by a fey mood. This is GOOD. Your dwarf has taken a strange mood, and will eventually make an artifact - a very valuable item that cannot be traded. See the pages on strange moods and artifacts for more details. Also, there are two other moods that only happen when your dwarves are unhappy - fell and macabre moods. Just make sure you have all the materials they need for the artifact, or...

What is berserk / stark, raving mad / melancholy? ...that'll happen. If a dwarf fails a mood or suffers too much, they'll go insane. An insane dwarf is useless, as they will not do jobs or anything productive. Berserk dwarves, though, will attack anything and everything they can reach. Mad dwarves are harmless, and will simply run around naked. Melancholy dwarves will seek any possible passive means to end their miserable existence, usually by jumping off high platforms.

A dwarf just threw a tantrum This is a sign of extreme unhappiness. Invest some time in giving your dwarves good thoughts. If a dwarf stays unhappy long enough, he might go insane.

An animal stole my stuff! Yes, that happens. There are thieving raccoons in this area. Try to keep your stuff underground, and out of their reach. Try posting a guard near your stockpiles to scare them off. (See Kubuk the Axedwarf for more information.)

A thief or snatcher appeared! Read the section on Kubuk the Axedwarf, if you haven't already. If a thief gets away with something valuable, your fort will attract more and more thieves in the future.

A squad of goblins appeared! That's an ambush. Hopefully, by the time your fort is wealthy enough to attract ambushes, you will have some defenses set up. Ambushes often appear with a caravan, so hopefully you will have caravan guards helping you against the ambushers.

What's a vile force of darkness? Uh oh. That's a goblin siege. A siege only appears when you have a certain population or wealth.

A dragon/colossus/hydra/titan/forgotten beast appears!

You are about to have a lot of fun. A megabeast is a threat to even the most well-established fortresses. Good luck.