40d:Challenges

Part of this article was originally taken from the DF forums thread "Goal-Based Dwarf Fortress".

The general goal of Fortress Mode is to survive, acquire wealth, defend your stronghold, and become the capital of your civilization. However, many players find that fighting off repeated sieges, keeping their people alive, and expanding just aren't enough anymore. They begin to experiment with different sets of starting builds, arbitrary requirements and restrictions, and even feats of construction to appease Armok, in search of more difficulty and fun. These are some goals to attempt or use as inspiration.

Pre-Embark Build Ideas

Before you embark, you can optimize or sabotage your fortress from the very start, depending on how you distribute your points. After a few years, a well-developing fortress may or may not stabilize (depending on your idea of fun), leaving you to other challenges.

Minimalist/Survivalist build

• 1 anvil
• 2 copper ore

Nothing else. From that alone, forge your pick and axe. (Figure it out yourself, or see the Do it Yourself article for a step-by-step "how to".)

Diplomacy

• Six dwarves with only social skills
• One skilled dwarf

Six courtiers of the king's court made some ill-advised remarks within earshot of the king, and as a result have been ordered to go found an outpost. They've hired you to make sure they survive. The six nobles only have social skills and refuse to do any work that is beneath them.

Stranded Scout Squad

• Military skills
• Weapons, ammunition, armor, war dogs
• Picks are not weapons

Your civilian 'friends' promised a caravan in the fall as they left, laughing. Hopefully, you can survive until then with your forward scouts.

Peasantry

• Spend 0 Points on embark

This challenge is moderately to very difficult, depending on the wildlife and outdoor food sources. Note that the three logs from the wagon are just enough to build a trade depot.

Races

Pretend to be another race! You can mod the game or just pretend that Elves have hair. It doesn't matter what you look like, just what you build, with what materials, and what's for lunch after we build it.

Elves - The Ultimate Hippy Challenge

Peace, man.

• Don't gather plants except those you plant yourself.
• Don't gather wood nor trade for it with humans or dwarves.
• Trade for plants and wood only with the elves; they understand your environmental code.
• Don't burn any coal. Do you know what that does to the environment, man?
  • Magma-smelting is an option, but steel can't be had.
• Don't cause any creature's death, even in self-defense.
  • No military, induced submerging, or lethal implementation of corkscrews.
• Only use cage traps, and either tame the creatures you catch, or release them back into the wild.
• Hippies prefer sunlight and wooded areas, with minimal use of rock (digging and building).

For an extra challenge try this in an area with a cave.

Humans - Living Large and Standing Tall

Pretend you're a filthy above-ground dwelling humie.

• Build a town wall.
  • Only hovels and farms outside the town walls.
• House your dwarves in small town homes
  • 5-10 dwarves per house (they had pretty big families back in the day)
  • Upstairs bedrooms, small dining room, maybe a single level basement.
• House your workshops according to profession, not convenience.
• Build warehouses for stockpiles, and set guards outside them.
• Create a keep, with its own wall, barracks, treasury, etc.
  • House your nobles within the keep.
• Create a market square.
• Create a main street from the town wall to the market square and/or keep. Well-paved blocks, statues and decorative shubbery are a must.
• No underground connections between different areas.
• For obtaining stone, metal, etc. a mine may be built, but must have separate entrance from other buildings. It can be outside the fortress, but must not connect to the interior, or vice versa.
• BONUS: Miniproject: Build a large, multiple-z-level fountain complete with decorations.
• BONUS: Miniproject: Human Inn, containing your only booze stockpile and should be party-oriented.
• BONUS: Miniproject: Farm simulation, complete with crops and free-range livestock, etc.
• BONUS: Easy Play: Embark on top of a Human Town.
• BONUS: Advanced Play: Modify the raws and actually use humans to make the fort.
• MEGABONUS: Build your entire fortress as one huge arcology.
• MEGABONUS: Build your City in a giant, artifical cave.

Luddite

Shun technology and contraptions. Who can really trust them, with those gremlins around. This may be challenging, as it forbids easy isolation/defense from attacks, all traps and wells. Irrigation is reduced to solid elbow grease and maybe a bucket or two. This challenge may be even harder combined with another challenge.

• No mechanics or mechanisms
• No machines

Utter Dwarfiness

Need new ways to behave or new techniques to dip your toes into? Give any or all of your starting 7 some quirks to live up to. Want to try making your Boss a hell-bent, paranoid despot? Or establish a routine mass murder of small animals to provide your fort with raw meat by a vaguely intimidating, estranged butcher?

Bandit Camp

• Three or more Marksdwarves (perhaps with ambushing)
• Embark site featuring places to hide

Attack and loot every enemy sentient creature you can find, such as goblins & kobolds. Develop sneaky and even horrific methods of trapping and 'processing' friendly sentients (merchants, diplomats, and even migrants). Take no prisoners and leave no evidence of foul play.

Hermit

• Spend points ONLY on ONE Pick

A well known and popular challenge. Kill off 6 starting dwarves and any immigrants as they arrive, and try to make a living for the last dwarf. Turn away merchants. If they don't leave, kill them.

Variants To moderate difficulty, feel free to allow these exceptions:

• Keep your starting seven, but no immigrants.
• Selectively admit dwarves based on name, profession, etc.
• Embark with an anvil as well.

Monarch with a grudge

• Forbid any and all use of stone and metal
• No exposed tile may be labeled "Underground"
• Artifacts containing stone and metal are to be destroyed utterly (magma or the DAS

"Nay, no ponderous stone doors or shining silver arcades, not while I live!" The new king has decided rocks and metals can no longer be used in construction. He'll be overthrown shortly, but in the meantime construct your fortress without them.

Variants

• Embark with no construction materials, into an area devoid of trees.
• Construct a fortress made entirely out of glass. Try not using magma or limit yourself only to clear and crystal glass.
• Build with soap bars. Show those elven traders just how much you despise their philosophies by building with stuff derived from dead trees and dead animals. Cats are an excellent source of tallow.
• Choose one type of rock, one type of metal, one type of gem, one type of wood, and optionally one type of glass. All constructions can only use those types in their construction. An easy way to enforce this with stone is to mark all but your choice "Economical".

Master Of One

Pre-Embark:

• All starting dwarves must have only one skill

Post-Embark:

• No changes are allowed on any dwarf's labor screen, except to disable hauling labors (enabling hauling is forbidden)
• All immigrants must stay with the profession(s) they arrive with
• All peasants must be activated into the military

Hunting Party

• One Marksman+Ambusher
• One Cook+Farmer
• One Brewer+Farmer
• Four exclusively social dwarves
• Embark with no anvil, many hunting dogs, into a challenging biome (terrifying areas may have no supply of wood)

City-States

• All dwarves embark as peasants
• 7 or multiple of 7 of everything you bring (especially picks and axes)

At the start your dwarves split everything equally and move to 7 different locales that are not interconnected. They have to mine their own rooms, plant their own crops, use their own craft piles. This will probably require a bit of cross-fertilization until you get doors and can lock everyone in, but after that it is every dwarf for him/herself!

This challenge may be easier to perform after Burrows are implemented.

The Mad Butcher

_{(this requires a tiny amount of editing to the raws)}

• Edit Dwarf Fortress\Raw\object\Creature_Domestic.txt and remove the tag [BUTCHERABLE_NONSTANDARD] from cats and dogs
• One dedicated Butcher+Tanner
• Minimal supplies and skills, so you can bring...
• As many puppies and kittens you can afford
• All food-gathering skills (except your Butcher+Tanner and Brewing) are forbidden

Caging your animals will increase performance to prepare a suitable butchery. Construct a wide, deep shaft to be zoned as an animal pit. At the bottom, outfit an isolation chamber complete with food and alcohol stockpiles, a bed, a butchery and a tanner's workshop. An active well will prevent mishaps. You should include during the construction either an airlock chamber (to enable the butcher to pass on food) or a second pit where the butcher dumps his created food. After construction, seal your butcher+tanner inside and live only off of his work.

Immigration and customs enforcement

• One miner/mason/architect
• One woodcutter/carpenter/architect
• Five military dwarves
• Embark into a canyon or on a road
• Don't embark with an anvil

Spend the first year building fortifications to interdict traffic. Immigrants can build a town around you, but your original seven dwarves remain dedicated to their mission (purely military in purpose).

Equaland

• No embark requirements
• Construct a successful fortress
• All dwarves are given equal attention regarding quarters, dining, armament and burial
• One dwarf elected to be "The Leader" commands a lever system capable of killing a single dwarf of your choice in their room, however you wish
• Allow the Leader (your id) free reign on his power, enforcing impossible and unannounced criteria on your other dwarves with death being the only punishment

Stop, Hey, What's that Sound

• (Optionally) Generate a world with abundant cave systems
• Establish a fort near a very large cave
• Imitate the role of "Angband", leading small parties inside on military excursions
• No more than 3 dwarves can enter at a time
• Siege equipment and other weapons (or dangerous contraptions) that a dwarf can't carry on him is forbidden when cave-exploring

Variants

• Only solo adventurers are allowed to enter the dungeon
• Only use 'Thieves' to steal loot and create traps inside the dungeon

Noblesse requiro

• Construct a fortress only to please nobles (who, for the sake of this challenge, are all criminally psychotic)
• Criminals who deserve justice should be incarcerated, tortured, and executed for any offense. Use your imagination for every step of the process. Remember, there is no right to a fair and speedy trial in Armok's eyes.
• All Nobles must be treated to the highest quality living conditions
• All others must be treated to the bare minimum needed to physically keep them alive
• Elected nobles are to be treated as regular dwarves, but mandates hold equal sway regarding justice

Sitting on trees

• Construct a wooden "tree" or several, spanning many (a dozen or so) z-levels
• Establish a successful fortress not inside, but around, these constructed trees

Arbitrary Law

Rule your fortress with a Soapen Fist! Or see how far you get until a (voluntary) significant flaw sends you into an inevitable sadness spiral. Whatever it is, be sure to stick by it or you'll be meeting the Hammerer.

ASPCA

• Animals are forbidden from the fortress
• Animals following immigrants cannot enter the fortress
• Lethal traps forbidden, caged non-sentients must be immediately released
• Butchery is forbidden, but leatherworking is allowed

Rather than forbidding immigrant pets from entering, you can choose to deal with the owner of that pet instead for a more sadistic challenge.

Dieting Dwarves

• Exclusively dine on a food type of your choice (meat, fish, plants, alcohol)
• Optionally, forbid alcohol consumption to limit carbohydrate intake
  • Note: forbidding alcohol permanently is as good as accepting a slow but continuous fortress death

Hardcore Altruism

• Do not allow the death of any Dwarf

Though not viscerally entertaining, an incredible challenge. All strange moods must be given what they crave. All medical attention must be done ASAP. Mining, fishing and hunting must be done with much care. Sadness must be met with excellent social skills and quality furniture.

Industrial Plant

• Choose one industry that produces commercial goods
• No other industries permitted, only imported

Fort Geneva

• Lethal traps are forbidden
• Caged sentient creatures are to be considered prisoners of war and treated humanely

Suggested provisions for prisoners: a bed, a personal cell, a commons area, aboveground exercise yard, and the clothes the creature was wearing when captured. For more inspiration, go to: Geneva Conventions

Sexist Segregation

• Establish two functioning and stable fortress
• One must be entirely male, the other entirely female
• Married couples are to be processed

Couples only

• As soon as a married couple exists in your fortress:
  • Kill all single dwarves
  • Kill all incoming single dwarves
  • Try to save children, until they are adult and single

Fight for your name

• Before embarking, randomly generate a fortress name and be sure to know it's English translation
• Do the same with your group name
• Creatively designate a serious goal for your fortress, based on these names
• Fanatically reach your goal

This. Is. SPARTAAAA!

• At least half of your fortress population must be active in the military
• Crossbows and traps are forbidden
• Only spears, wrestling, and shields may be equipped by military and used to fight
• Civilian dwarves have all labors enabled
  • If ever activated, cannot use quality weapons or armor
• Maimed dwarves (perceived to be) incapable of being fully healed must be killed
• Devise methods of dropping Liaisons down pits during meetings
• Demand goods be turned over from all caravans
• Recreation is forbidden, as well as any 'improving' action, such as smoothing/engraving, or constructing things out of metals what can be done with rock and wood (besides spears and shields)

Note that the above suggestions are modeled on the popular movie 300, which was historically inaccurate. For a more "realistic dwarven Sparta", try reading the wiki article on the real Sparta

Commune

• After embarking, enable all labors on all dwarves (including immigrants)
• Beds can only be designated as barracks, and no dwarf can be assigned to a bed (even nobles)
• Coins are forbidden
• Be aware that nobles are just "optional" and can't feel pain

Government in Exile

• Only Military and Social skills can be purchased and enabled in your entire fortress

All dwarves are either nobles or in the military. The only useful dwarves you'll have will be your broker, manager, mayor, bookkeeper, and dungeon master. If you can survive until the sheriff arrives, transfer your entire military into the fortress guard. With a little luck, and a lot of exported roasts, you too can rule without proletarian interference.

Megaprojects

Instead of deliberately inhibiting yourself, create a wonder of the dwarven world that would make the Mountainhomes proud. Be sure to upload it to the http://mkv25.net/dfma/ Dwarf Fortress Map Archive when it's finished. More projects can be found where stupid dwarves try crazy tricks. Incredible feats of construction are usually very fun so you'll see many different (and probably similar) constructions across the Wiki. Use whatever ideas you think are ingenious.

Temple

Designing a temple to Armok. Aesthetics count - the god will be very angry if there are no stained-glass windows and domed ceilings carved with frescoes. To gain more favor, make regular sacrifices and keep the fountains and rivers red with blood.

The great brewery

Disaster has struck the kingdom. A strangely glowing ‼peasant‼ visited the greatest brewery of the empire, and as a result the whole thing exploded. No time for weeping — create its successor, a fort dedicated to alcohol production, and get the alcohol supplies flowing! Try to make the widest variety possible, and give or trade it to the dwarven caravan each year.

Castle

Build a castle, greater than anything built by human, elf or dwarf. This is highly time consuming if you want it to be a good castle. There must be floor indoors, and no underground constructions except for mining operations and cellars. For an even greater challenge, build a gigantic tower in the middle, where the nobles stay.

Wealth

The kingdom's coffers need lining, so hop to! Found a fort and start accumulating wealth as fast as possible. Attain as high a fortress value as possible, and make most of your wealth into coins for the vault. Try to beat your record for one year, two years, or five years.

Biodome

All material, seeds, food, tools, and dwarves must be in the fortress within one year. Then, seal up the entrance. Any new immigrants... well, they might be in trouble. Survive for as long as possible!

No chasms/underground rivers/magma vents allowed.

Underwater fortress

Encase your entire fortress in water! Your fortress should be watersealed: surrounded by water against all walls and the top of the fortress.

• Bonus: Build all water-touching walls/roof in clear glass!
• Bonus: Use magma instead of water!
• Bonus: Build it in the ocean or a non-freezing lake
• Bonus: Build large glass domes that encase the fortress. A dome 20 tiles wide should be 20 z-levels tall. Which may be hard to cover in water.
• Mod: Make your dwarves amphibious and include airlocks between the wet fortress and the dry.

Mountain audit/core sample

Start in a mountainous area and strip mine everything down, down, down to ground level. Stockpile everything, and calculate the mountain's composition. For kicks, try not excavating one tile on each z-level. You'll be left with one enormous core sample.

Santa Claus

Get ten thousand toys built and offered to caravans yearly. Optionally, build ten thousand toys, fetch them in adventure mode and deliver them to every single city of the world.

Graveyard Master

Ever dwarf deserves a decent resting place:

• Build a tomb for ever dwarf that dies, the more dwarves you manage to bury the better.
• Tombs must be rooms with exactly 5x5 of size and 1 of height, with only one entrance tile that must be closed by a door.
• Tombs must have all its surfaces engraved.
• Tomb must contain at least 4 statues.
• Once complete, the door must be locked and the tomb must not be ever entered again.

How high can you go?

Construction, construction, construction! Just how big a tower can you build? Out of glass maybe, clear glass? Steel? Pump water to the top? Make your tower a pinnacle of achievement and stun humans, elves and goblins alike - for they know nothing of construction and engineering like dwarves do!

Computing

Can your dwarves build the Antikythera mechanism? Can you program the fortress to play tic-tac-toe? More details at computing.

Doomsday Clock

Build a water or mechanical clock whose final state triggers the support which holds your fortress up or a megabeast out. See how much wealth you can achieve before the clock runs out.

• Bonus: Create something that resets itself, as well as purging the map, so that you can reuse the same fortress over and over.
• Super-Bonus: Create something that involves pressure plates and a small kitten, when the pressure plates are hit in the right order, your map ends. Toss the kitten in and hope for the best.

World Domination

Pretend you are an evil mastermind. Now come up with some device or machine to render the world (or at least your portion of the map) totally unliveable, aside from, of course, your hidden lair.

Suggestions:

• Flood the map with water/magma (may require building walls around the edge of the map)
• Build an "Earthquake Machine" (the entire map is supported by a single support, which is connected to a lever)
• Build an extensive holding cell network for "scientific purposes". Fill it with megabeasts and elephants in secret. Have a lever that lets everything free to feed on the general population.

Casting

Who needs to construct giant statues?! We need ours made from natural walls, however, we want it above ground level as well. For casting your goal is to create some giant structure out of natural obsidian walls through the use of an extremely elaborate scaffold of lava and water pools and screw pumps. When you are finished, just deconstruct the scaffolding and smooth/engrave the statue as you go. Just imagine the bridge over that chasm, now complete with two giant dwarf statues on either side to strike fear into all who enter and to show them the power of your fortress.

The Monolith

As the inevitability of a fortress-wide mental breakdown looms over every single fortress why not have something that alludes to that precipice of insanity. Like the book and feature film, 2001: A Space Odyssey you must have a Monolith. This has to be made from obsidian and have a completely smooth surface (You cannot build it from blocks) You can have it be any size as long as it is outside, at least 2 tiles thick to ensure there are no pillar tiles, and has about the same ratio of width to height as it does in the movie (1:4:9) to make it as close to the real thing as possible. It would be preferable to make it large so that it seems to be dominating the landscape and your dwarves' psyche. The bigger the better.

• If the rock obsidian strata isn't deep enough in parts to make a monolith feasible consider casting a monolith with a large rectangular block in the exact same dimensional criteria as above.

Ceremonial Sacrifices

Build an amazingly complex or spectacular killing device. A shaft that extends across the entire Z-plane is a good start. A constantly shifting maze of atomsmasher drawbridges is another. For the minimalist, a very confined space where you will drop a dwarf wrestler along with the gobbos once in a while. Perhaps a waterslide that carries your prisoner all the way down into a chasm? Whatever your idea, build it and dedicate your fort to the construction, maintenance and improvement of your device.

Do not kill any of your invaders. Capture them using cage traps, and them set them off in your device. Keep a record of the number of victims you drop into it.

Space Ship

Create a giant space ship fit for space travel. It should be able to hold about 100 dwarves for at least 2 years.

BONUS: Use exploding booze as ignitable fuel. BONUS: Make a removable ramp for boarding. BONUS: Make the water for the 2 years be on the ship using removable pumps. BONUS+: Make it totally self sufficient. (Make an internal system which pumps the water supply through a room every few years to muddy the floor. Plant seeds in the mud that's now on the floor. Manage your consumption to maintain self sufficiency.) BONUS+: Make it all out of steel. FUN: Let it be held by a single support, ignite the booze, remove the support an let it "fly". EVEN BETTER: Drop it down a chasm.

Aqueducts

For some reason, a noble was harmlessly pulling a lever when suddenly, magma flooded the river and exploded the booze! The king requires your band of seven to build a great aqueduct to bring water to the capital. Start with supports, and build up your aqueduct until it is 10 z-levels high!

BONUS: Start over a human town, build a wall around it, pump water through the aqueduct and into it!

Dwarf like an Egyptian

• Build a pyramid of epic proportion.

Build a legendary dwarven pyramid, with a corridor running to a central tomb for your favourite noble. Then construct lots of different traps in it to avoid grave robbery. Perhaps build it entirely out of glass? Or try to make the top twist in a bit of a swirl. Alternatively, make your entire fortress inside a pyramid, which stretches below the ground.

• Build rows of Obelisks

Build a double row of Obelisks before the Pyramid, and engrave the sides. Build ramps on the tops.

Skull collector

What proves the might of a civilization better than a hall full of skulls?

• Try to collect as many skulls as you can during your fortress life, and put then in a special skulls-only storage. The more skulls the better.

BONUS: Cover all the skulls in blood, and make the stockpile also a throne room. SUPERBONUS: Also fill the throneroom with kittens.

Moria

Build a huge hall - at least 3 z-levels high. Leave few pillars symmetrically placed in the hall (don't build them, carve them out). Smooth and possibly engrave everything (not only the lowest z-level!). Then build thin bridge (not the bridge building, just a thin piece of rock to walk on) above magma - support it with bauxite supports connected to a lever (bauxite mechanisms needed in support). Destroy stone holding it at the both ends and replace it with floor hatches (so when you pull the lever it all goes down). After that build a bridge above the chasm. When it's all done seal your dwarves deep inside in safe place and get invaded by goblins. At the same time dig out HFS. Lead the HFS across the both bridges and then collapse the second one when one of the champions clashes with it (it doesn't matter that the champion has killed the HFS with one hit).

Crematory Fortress

• Requires a magma pipe and bauxite.

Build a temple structure above a magma pipe and engrave every available surface. The temple should be as opulent as possible. In the temple, build a retracting bridge over a hole in the floor, and designate a coffin stockpile on it. Whenever a dwarf dies, build a bauxite or other magma-proof coffin for him, place it on the bridge, and retract it, committing his body to the fiery blood of the mountain.

Note: At the time of writing, the editor isn't sure if coffins falling off the bottom of the map count as being 'lost.' If they do, channel out a magma pool and put the temple above that to avoid tantrums.

Swiss Precision

Build a working clock. The clock should accurately track DF days, months, and years.

Bonus Points:

• If the clock has a mechanical effect in the fortress proper to announce new days
• If the clock creates seasonally appropriate effects at the change of months and/or seasons.
• If the clock is used to aid in the operation of the fortress in addition to its role as a clock (automatically controls farmland irrigation at particular times, automatically opens the blast doors floodgates in time for merchants, etc...).
• If the clock governs the schedule of a working rail station (which is always on time). (Definitions of 'working' and 'rail station' are subject to player imagination).

But don't worry about the bonus points, a precision time device should be hard enough.

The cube

Play a fort as usual, but emphasize catching goblins in cages to support and fill this construction: Construct a series of rooms in a symmetrical fashion, all connected to eachother with appropriate doors. Of course, enough rooms to make a maze-like structure, and if you feel like it, an exit that is hard to reach. Fill a bunch of the rooms with traps and pressureplates. Then fill one room with 4-6 goblins (preferably in cages, opened by an outside lever), release them and watch them randomly walk around the rooms dying to traps and whatnots.

• Bonus: Do multiple story maze (3d-maze)
• Bonus: Use pressureplates to open/close the exit randomly; otherwise, all the goblins will just follow the shortest route to the exit.

Land battleship

Turn your moutain into a huge battlestation, complete with crew quarters, decks, command centre, cantina, and a large collection of deadly weapons : Batteries of marksdwarves, ballista cannons, catapults, but also lava projector or remote explosive devices (ie cave-ins in a part of the map triggered by a lever). Make sure it ends up looking like a real battleship, with nothing but plains surrounding it (you could build it on an actual plain, or destroy a mountain, choice is yours). The battleship has to be autonomous, and dwarves shouldn't wander outside it.

• Bonus: The weaponry covers every tile of the map (ie, everything that enters the map can be shot)
• Bonus: Build several other ships, maybe dedicated to a specific product (food, ammo etc.)
• Bonus: Each crew member has a civil and military formation, and when the enemy arrives, stop every economic activity. All hands to quarters !
• Mega Bonus: After building your Ship(s), flood the surrounding countryside.

The Great Wall of Urist

Build a dwarven great wall of china that splits the map in half. Must be at least 10 tiles thick and reach the highest z-level.

• BONUS: Make it block the mongols goblins out of your half of the map.
• BONUS: Make it out of obsidian.
  • BONUS+: Embark on a map without obsidian.
• BONUS: Find a way to make it touch the boundaries.
• BONUS: Build one gate
• BONUS: Arm it with ballistas.

Collosseum

Build a pit, around it on steps lots of Thrones, make the whole thing a meeting area, train Gladiators, capture goblins, leave them their weapons and let them fight against your gladiators. If they win, let them go.