xTATTEREDx · +FINE+ · *SUPERIOR* · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡ · ☼MASTERWORK☼

v50.14 · v0.47.05

This article is about the current version of DF.
Note that some content may still need to be updated.

This is a detailed reference guide for Adventurer Mode. For a tutorial see the Adventure Mode Quickstart Guide.

See Adventure Mode quick reference to quickly look up key commands.

In Adventurer Mode (also called "adventure mode") you create a single adventurer (dwarf, human, or elf) who starts out somewhere in one of your generated worlds. You can receive quests, venture into the wilderness to find caves, shrines, lairs, abandoned towers, and other towns and settlements. You can even visit your abandoned fortresses and find whatever riches were left to be guarded by the creatures that sealed their fate.

Unlike Fortress mode, Adventurer Mode is a sort of advanced open world version of rogue or nethack taking place in the same procedurally generated worlds used for Fortress Mode, but you control a single character in a turn-based manner rather than manage a group of creatures acting in real time.

World Selection

You can play Adventurer mode in any world that has a civilization with the ADVENTURE_TIER token (which are elf, dwarf, and human in unmodded raws). Humans inhabit cities, towns, and the occasional above-ground fortress. Elves inhabit forest retreats. Dwarves are spread between "deep sites" which sometimes do not contain a direct connection to the surface, and "hill dwarves" which inhabit a loose collection of mounds built into hillsides. Human cities and towns are currently the only sites with shops and other places to officially buy goods.

If you have previously built a fort in the world that you select, your adventurer will be able to go visit it. If you have selected to "retire" the fortress rather than abandon it, you will likely be able to encounter all of the inhabitants from fortress mode. However, they will likely not have the same level of activity as they would in a bustling fortress-mode fort.

Character Creation

Race and Civilization

Any race with the ADVENTURE_TIER token is playable in adventure mode. In an unmodded game, this means Dwarves, Elves, and Humans. All three races can complete the same quests.

Humans Always originate from one of the villages in the world. begin with bronze or iron weapons and can use any of the items sold by shopkeepers (who, for the time being, are only found in human towns and only sell human-sized clothing/armor). They also start with the widest variety of weapon skills.

Human Outsiders Human Outsiders are humans that aren't from that world or any of its villages. They simply appear in the wilderness, a stranger to all. You may always play as an outsider, even if the world is otherwise completely uninhabited. Outsiders can only start with Spear User and Knife User as weapon skills, and they cannot start with Armor User or Shield User. They also start out literally naked with no clothing, but can wear any human-sized armor that they trade for, steal, or loot. "Outsiders" of other races can be played if you add the INDIV_CONTROLLABLE token to the race's entity definition.

Dwarves have the advantage of being able to go into a 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 kill some dwarves. They can start with almost all of the same weapon skills as civilized humans. Many larger 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.

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

Status

Determines the number of starting skill and attribute points, which does not change based on race:

Peasant: 15 attribute, 35 skill
Hero: 35 attribute, 95 skill
Demigod: 105 attribute, 161 skill

The number of skill points is less significant than the number of attribute points because the time it takes to go from Peasant to Demigod in skill terms is much less than what it would take to go from Peasant to Demigod in attribute terms.

Starting Attributes

Attributes are divided into Body and Soul attributes. This section provides some guidance for allocating attributes as it relates to adventurer mode.

Body

Strength: Alters the damage you inflict in melee regardless of weapon used. Increases muscle size. This increased muscular layer helps prevent damage, although this is a pretty minor effect. Increasing strength, at least in adventurers, increases movement speed (albeit not as much as agility) due to better carrying capacity.
Agility: This attribute is directly related to a character's Speed and is also used in combat skills. Agility is really, really important as being faster than the enemies allows you to get more hits in before they can fight back and lets you run away more easily.
Toughness: Reduces physical damage inflicted on you. Also relates to defensive combat skills.
Endurance: Reduces the rate at which the adventurer becomes exhausted. Becoming exhausted causes you to collapse, helpless and immobile and can cause you to pass out.
Recuperation: Increases the rate of wound healing. Not as important as Toughness. Recuperation isn't that useful in adventurer mode since you usually have as much time to rest as you need assuming you can escape a situation alive.
Disease Resistance: Seems to have some effect on vampirism infectivity; may have to do with infected wounds.

Soul

Some of these are useful for adventure-mode-applicable skills, but some are totally useless except as dump stats.

Analytical Ability: Useful only for Knapping; should be reduced to minimum.^[Verify]

Focus: Affects Archer, Ambusher, Observer.

Willpower: Affects Fighter, Crutch Walker and Swimmer. Willpower is really important as it governs how easily you'll pass out from extreme pain. Low willpower is a death sentence if you are seriously wounded, as you'll pass out and have your head caved in. Broken bones currently cause enough pain that even very high willpower usually won't keep you conscious. For non bone injuries however willpower can keep you going long enough to kill enemies, or at least get away from them.

Creativity: Useless at the moment.

Intuition: Only helps with Observer, which aids in spotting concealed enemies and ambushes. A useless skill since you rarely see these in adventure mode.

Patience: May have some effect on dealings with others as a result of the new conversation system.^[Verify]

Memory: Memory aids greatly in mapping out areas as the higher your memory the longer you'll remember an area. As you explore you'll forget previously explored areas, causing them to appear blank, as if you had never been there. If you have low enough memory you'll forget areas of large locations like underground catacombs while you're still in them, making finding your way very confusing, as things like the exit wont be visible anymore until you find it again. Best to have at least average memory.

Linguistic Ability: May have some effect on dealings with others as a result of the new conversation system.^[Verify]

Spatial Sense: Important. Affects combat skills, Ambusher, Crutch Walker, Swimmer, Observer, Knapping.

Musicality: Completely useless. Use this as a dump stat.

Kinaesthetic Sense: Affects most combat skills, walking with crutches and swimming.

Empathy: Might increase chance of persuading people to join you.^[Verify]

Social Awareness: Increases the number of followers you can have at a given "fame" level. Normally you start with a limit of two. Increasing this stat by one level raises that to three. Your fame still plays a bit part in whenever you can recruit followers or not.

Attribute Advancement Cap

Adventure mode attributes are capped at double the starting value or the starting value plus the racial average, whichever is greater. Humans, for example, have a racial average strength of 1,000. If a human adventurer starts with an above average strength of 1,100, then his strength will ultimately be capped at 2,200. Had this human started with a below average strength of 900, then his strength would be capped at 1,900 instead. For the purpose of maximizing final attributes, this makes it important to start with as many attributes in the superior range as possible (more attributes per point allocated), while avoiding taking any penalties to even remotely important attributes (big attribute deductions per point recovered). As a consequence of the attribute cap, demigod adventurers will always have a much higher potential for advancement than mere peasants and heroes.

Starting Skills

Not all races have the same sets of skills available at character creation time, but keep in mind that all starting skills, as well as ones not available at character creation, can be improved through use in game. Reader is an exception to this.

This section will specifically address starting skills as they relate to adventure mode. For a full description of combat skills see Combat skill. Other skills that you can't start with, but which can be increased in game (such as Butchery) are described elsewhere.

Weapon

The weapon you start out with will be based on which of these, plus the unarmed combat skills, is the highest. In other words, even if Swordsman is your highest weapon skill, you won't start with a sword if your Wrestler or Striker skills are better. Usually the best choice anyway is to specialize in just one melee weapon skill. Regardless of weapon skills, a large copper dagger will always be included in the starting equipment, which is handy for throwing at enemies that are just a step away or finishing off a foe pinned down by a stuck weapon.

Not all races/civilizations can start with all of these skills. (For example, Dwarves can't start with Bowman or Lasher).

Note that different races have different names for their weapon skills. Axegoblin, Axedwarf etc.

Crossbowman is an exception. Dwarves call this skill Marksdwarf, although bow skill is referred to as Bow Dwarf as you'd expect. Elite Axe and Hammer dwarves are referred to as Lords.

Axeman: allows characters to use axes, great axes, and halberds more effectively. Useful for cleaving off limbs.
Bowman: skill allows characters to use bows more effectively. Useful for taking down enemies at a distance.
Crossbowman: allows characters to use crossbows more effectively. Useful for taking down enemies at a distance.
Hammerman: allows characters to use crossbows in melee, mauls, and war hammers more effectively. Useful for breaking limbs.
Knife User - allows characters to use large daggers and knives more effectively. Useful for stabbing things.
Lasher - allows characters to use whips and scourges more effectively. Very deadly weapons.
Maceman - allows characters to use flails, maces, and morningstars more effectively. Similar to hammers.
Pikeman - allows characters to use pikes more effectively. Like spears, but much bigger.
Spearman - allows characters to use spears more effectively. Useful for stabbing things.
Swordsman - allows characters to use blowguns and bows in melee, long swords, scimitars, short swords, and two-handed swords more effectively. Useful for cutting, stabbing, and whacking, but less effective than more dedicated weapons.

General Combat

These two skills can be raised rather quickly in game and so you probably want to skip spending any points on them at the start.

Fighter - This increases with, and contributes to, melee combat whether armed or unarmed. It appears that the purpose of it is to allow melee experience to contribute to melee combat in general regardless of weapon. Repeatedly wrestling (grabbing and releasing) even a small creature will raise this skill.
Archer - This increases with, and contributes to, ranged combat including throwing. It works similarly to Fighter except for ranged attacks. It can be easily raised by repeatedly throwing rocks, making it advisable for archers to practice their marksmanship with rock throwing before using up the more finite and expensive forms of ammunition. Shooting at a wall with adjacent upward ramp one level below and picking back projectiles is also a good idea (such places often happen to be in castles). See the FAQ section on powerleveling for information on raising bowman/marksman skills.

Defensive

These skills are critical for survival. Starting out with good ability in one (especially Shield User or Armor User) if not all is strongly advised.

Shield User - Ability to block attacks with shields. Starting with even novice skill in this means that the adventurer will start with a shield. This is a no-brainer unless you're creating a two handed weapon user.
Armor User: A higher level of this skill reduces the encumbrance penalties of armour, allowing you to move faster when wearing it. It also affects how well armour protects you and this makes a huge difference. Unskilled armour users gain little protection. This is noticeable as you'll begin seeing far more combat reports about hits either striking you though armour, (you managed to use your armour to lessen the force of the blow) or being deflected by your armour (you used your amour to avoid the hit entirety) as your skill rises and you learn to actually use your armour to deflect hits. It is highly advised to train your armour skill before entering battle with it as the speed penalties of lower levels can be a serious handicap.
Dodger - Ability to dodge out of the way of attacks. Dodger is incredibly important and will allow you to avoid many, many hits that would have otherwise injured you. Especially important when you are fighting unarmoured and can't afford a battle axe in the chest. Boost this to talented or at least close to it.

Unarmed Combat and Improvised Weapons

While some of them come in handy at times, they can generally be raised fairly easily in game, especially Wrestler and Thrower.

Wrestler - Ability to grapple, restrain, take-down, throw opponents, etc. Higher skill means all of these moves succeed more often. See #Wrestling and Unarmed Attacks for details. Can be raised very easily in game.
Striker - Punching ability. Turns handy when weapons get stuck and there is no time to wrest them back.
Kicker - Kicking ability. Same as Striker. Kicks are slower but more deadly than punches; heavy kicks are particularly good at crushing and exploding heads.
Biter - Biting ability. Biting is surprisingly effective even with non animal races as after biting you can shake opponents around by your teeth, causing great damage and possibly ripping off body parts, although with sapient races this tends to lean more towards fingers or toes, perhaps the occasional hand or foot.
Thrower - Throwing any miscellaneous object including rocks, knives, axes, swords, heads, etc. Skill affects accuracy and damage caused.
Misc. Object User - Ability to beat things to death with anything that comes at hand, from bags to coins to their own severed body parts. Also somewhat more commonly used for shield bashing. This skill affects combat with any object, from a rock to a beehive. There are no separate skills for different items. Items actually intended to be weapons, like swords or axes, are unaffected by this skill.

Movement and Awareness

Observer - Helps one to notice things like ambushes, enemies who are "sneaking" (stealth movement), and traps. Detection range increases with skill, but up to a maximum of 3 tiles away. Hard to train. Adding some points here is advisable.
Swimmer - Allows movement through water without drowning. A Novice swimmer can swim but will revert to being unable to swim if stunned, which happens when falling even 1 z-level into the water, or possibly after an unfriendly encounter with a creature in the water. An Adequate swimmer can swim normally (not drown) while stunned. For this reason, starting out as an Adequate swimmer is advisable. If you don't, at least start as Novice and go get some swimming practice right away.
Ambusher - The skill of Sneaking around unobserved. This can be raised fairly easily by sneaking around while traveling from place to place when speed is not important. Enemies will have "sight ranges" from where they can detect a sneaking adventurer. The red zone of sight is where they will see you immediately and begin chasing you; the yellow is where they might see you. Staying out of sight will allow you to silently assassinate your foes, as they rarely seem to notice a knife in their back in time.
Climber - The skill of climbing up walls, into trees, and around the edges of gorges. Higher levels reduce the chance of falling and increase the speed of a climbing character.
Tracker - The skill of tracking your quarry, whether it be animals or goblins. Higher levels will let you spot more tracks and help you distinguish different tracks.

Crafting

These allow your character to create things. There is only one skill currently available in an unmodified game.

Knapper - The fine art of sharpening rocks by banging them together in a clever manner. The resulting rocks become sharp rocks which do more damage when thrown and can be used for things requiring a sharp edge like butchering. Easy to raise in game and doing so helps with Kinesthetic and Spatial Sense.

Other

Reader - Allows you to read books, signs, and writing in Adventurer mode. Novice level is required in order to become a Necromancer. There is no way to increase this skill. Adding more points is a waste, as novice allows you to read anything.
Butcher - The art of turning corpses into piles of delicious prepared brains and meat for food. You cannot allocate points here during character creation, but that's OK since skill doesn't really affect anything anyway.

Gameplay

Common UI Concepts

About key symbols

This wiki uses symbols that look like t or t to indicate what keys or interface buttons are used for an operation. Note that keys are case sensitive and to save space, Shift+t is shown as T. So t means "press the 't' key without the shift key" and T means "hold down shift and press the 't' key". Lowercase and uppercase keys will often perform different functions, so it is important to use the correct key. Sequences of keys will be in separate boxes, so abC means "press 'a', then press 'b', then hold shift and press 'c'"; while bT means "press 'b', then hold shift and press 'T'. A plus sign '+' between the boxes means to press them all together, so Shift+Enter means to hold shift and press 'Enter'. Other separators, such as ',' or '-', might be used but mean the same as no separator: to press the keys in sequence.

Keybindings can be seen and changed on the Keybindings tab in the Settings menu.

Menu navigation and selection

Esc or right mouse	Go back to the previous screen/menu
Mouse wheel	Scroll menu one line
Shift+mouse wheel	Scroll menu one page
Left mouse	Select menu option

Esc or right mouse will almost always return to the previous screen until you get to the top level of the UI, at which point Esc will display the options menu.

Moving Around

Local Movement

The local travel screen. The lower left shows a small overview map of the area. The upper right shows a small area 1 z-level above the adventurer in the middle. The adventurer is standing in front of the door to a house full of humans, and visibility behind the house is obscured. In the upper left is a small box showing the direction to various sites (which may be quite far away).

8 2 4 6 7 9 1 3	Move
↑ ↓ ← →	Move
Alt and a direction key	Move carefully / Deliberately enter dangerous terrain
< or Shift+5 (num lock off)	Ascend
> or Ctrl+5 (num lock off)	Descend
.	Wait for a step
s	Stand or lie down
S	Open Movement Speed/Sneak Menu

Unless your character is an outsider, you will start out in a human town or hamlet; in the standard tileset the @ sign is your character. In the lower left-hand corner of the screen is a mini-map, with the @ sign showing your relative location to other things in the town/hamlet. The ▐ symbols are small collections of buildings.

The directional keys allow movement. Diagonal movement is particularly important especially when chasing or running away from things.

Use Alt+direction to enter water, jump off of cliffs, or otherwise attempt to enter anything that you can't enter using normal movement commands. Note that when entering water it's best to enter the actual water and not the open space over the water as, in the later case, you will fall in causing you to become stunned which may lead to drowning.

If you hit j, you can jump. This is mostly useful for crossing gorges and crevices, where you have to get to the other side. Occasionally, you can manage to jump onto an opponent and tackle them, which typically causes them to go flying a short distance.

Hitting . allows you to stay in one place and wait for other things to move. , does the same but with a shorter waiting period.

Use s to sit/lie down. Moving while laying down (crawling) will let you move past NPCs which are standing in your way. Also note that you will frequently get knocked to the ground in combat, and if you don't hit s to stand back up then you will crawl slowly along the ground, giving your opponent a lot of opportunity to attack you.

Sneak will allow you to move around invisibly, limited by your Ambusher skill and the Observer skill of nearby creatures. Enemies will have "sight ranges" from where they can detect a sneaking adventurer. The red zone of sight is where they will see you immediately and begin chasing you; the yellow is where they might see you. Staying out of sight will allow you to silently assassinate your foes, as they rarely seem to notice a knife in their back in time.

If you hold onto a wall or tree, you can climb the wall or tree by using the movement keys. In towns and tamer parts of the countryside, this isn't particularly useful. However, in a combat situation, climbing a tree or wall can give you a height advantage, possibly allowing you to dive-tackle your opponents. Sometimes, mountains will be too steep to walk up the edge, or you will find a deep drop into a ravine. In these cases, you will have to climb up to reach the top, or perhaps jump or climb down one face, then climb up the other.

Fast Travel

Fast Travel screen. A fort is on the west side, and a town is on the east side of the map. The regional map is displayed on the far right.

T	Fast Travel
d	Exit fast travel mode

Entering Fast Travel mode will allow you to move large distances in a single keypress. Of course, the same amount of time will go by and you can also be interrupted (ambushed) while moving in fast travel mode.

Pressing m will put a fully zoomed-out map on the right side of the screen, with your current location marked by a blinking "X". When seeking out a quest, move in the direction of the quest site until the blinking "X" is on top of the symbols indicated in the Adventure Log (you can press Q at any time to look at it again).

Along the top of the map is a line showing the sky, and the position of the sun and/or moon from west to east. This primarily helps you determine how long you have before it gets dark at which point you won't be able to see very far and will be more vulnerable to attack.

While in the fast travel screen you can:

c - Display/hide clouds/weather
m - Display/hide the regional map on the right
Q - Display the Quest log
Z - Display the sleep menu

Other commands are not available until you exit fast travel with d.

Status and Information

l	Look around
Space	Advance/Clear Messages
a	View Announcements
z	Status

Looking Around

If you're not sure what a tile is, the look command will tell you. In addition to being useful for identifying tiles and creatures, you can also view creatures' equipment and what items are sitting on the ground in a given tile. If in doubt, try the look command.

Move the cursor to the tile you want to look at using direction keys and Shift+direction. It's possible to look up and down z-levels (assuming you have line of sight) using the < and > keys. This, for example, allows you to find out if any flying creatures are above you. Hit Esc to exit look mode and go back to movement mode.

Messages

The game makes frequent use of messages on the screen to tell you what is going on. If there are a lot of these you may need to use Space to display the rest of the messages that won't fit on the screen. You can always go back and view old messages by pressing a.

Status Screen

This screen shows your skills, attributes, wounded body parts, health (along with more detailed descriptions of your wounds), lets you view your description, and change your nickname if you want.

Saving the Game

Hit the Esc key at any time and select Save Game to save your game. You can then come back to it later by using the Continue Playing option in the main menu.

Searching and Manipulating

u	Interact with building, furniture, or mechanism
L	Search the nearby area very carefully

The 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.

L will perform a thorough search of the area that you're standing in, possibly revealing some small creatures.

Managing Equipment

i	Show Inventory
d	Drop an item
g	Get (pickup) an item off the ground
p	Put an item into a container
r	Remove an item you are wearing or from a container
w	Wear an item
I	Interact with an object in an advanced way. (unstick a weapon, refill waterskin etc.)
q	Sheath your weapons and shield. (Frees your hands for tasks such as climbing or grabbing)

Inventory

Press i to display a list of what you are currently carrying. Press - + 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.

Getting/Dropping Things

You can drop items in your inventory, as well as get 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 -