40d:Starting builds

Starting builds are different strategies that you can choose when starting a new game in fortress mode. This page gives advice on the different gameplay elements that vary the flow of your game based on your goals. These include; choosing a fortress site, possible starting builds- such as who and what to take with you, and challenge builds- starting builds aimed at providing new challenges that you can set for yourself if you're finding the game too easy.

Fortress Site

Each fortress site offers particular challenges and opportunities; the starting builds below should be adjusted depending on what sort of fortress you envision ... and what it will take to stay alive where you're going!

Mountains

Most dwarven fortresses are founded along the edges of mountain ranges on sites that combine abundant ore and access to the outside world. Magma and rare metals lure settlers here, but goblins, chasm dwellers, and even giant eagles are potent threats.

Trees and plants do not grow at high elevations, so you'll want to include non-mountainous areas to obtain lumber and food - or, failing this, to pack a lot of extra food and logs.

Other consideration is elevation range. The game allows access up to 15 levels above the highest peak and 15 levels below the deepest valley, so steeper slopes means much more diggable area. The downside is lag; more levels also means more CPU burden (this can cripple a fortress - be careful).

Be sure to include a stream on the map; running water is (almost) essential for any fortress. In Cold and Freezing climates streams and lakes will often be frozen year-round and your dwarves may quickly die of exposure. Choose Temperate or tropical zones for an easier game.

Wooded Plains (with trees and plants)

Flatlands with at least some trees and gatherable plants can also make for highly successful fortresses.

Advantages over mountain zones include abundant trees and plants, guaranteed agriculture both on the surface and underground, fewer hostile fortresses and caves, and (unless frozen) more abundant water. There are even (rare) magma vents.

The greatest disadvantage is lack of rock to mine. Fewer elevations means fewer exploitable z-levels. The first few levels below the surface are almost always soil, peat, loam, clay, or sand, none of which offers much (or any) gems, ore, or building material. An aquifer, if present, may bar all access to stone until you freeze, pump out, or find a way through the water.

Desert, Glaciers, and Barren (few or no trees and plants)

Treeless (or near-treeless) biomes are challenging sites for a fortress: you get most of the disadvantages of a flatland site without having access to nearly as many trees and plants. However, near-lifeless zones such as glaciers are wonderful for those with slower machines, as there's little to burden the CPU but your dwarves and livestock. Deserts and barren areas often have sand; with a sufficient source of energy (preferably magma), you can build almost anything out of unlimited glass.

Ocean Side

An interesting combination of a few of the above locations, beaches are often a mix of ease intermingled with bouts of extreme difficulty. Minerals and trees are often abundant, as well as farmland and sand, but there is often no drinking water unless the biome has a river. There is also a likelihood that the settlement will fall between two biomes, potentially hazardous if the player expects a peaceful oceanside meadow, without realizing the ocean is full of amphibious zombie whales.

Starting Builds

Many of the quantities suggested end in a "1" or a "6"; this is to maximize the number of barrels you start with, since most foodstuffs fit five to a barrel. More barrels will let you build a larger stockpile for your first winter and conserves the wood you harvest in the early game for beds and other necessities.

Basic

The first order of business is simply to survive. Here is a simple, somewhat paranoid, way to do this.

Dwarves & skills

On most (but not all) sites, you'll want to get food, brew drink, mine, make wood and stone items, and trade. Whatever additional skills you purchase, be sure to cover these. If you need more points to buy skills (and it's a good idea to buy lots of skills), remove a battle axe.

• 2 miners
• 1 mason/mechanic
• 1 carpenter/woodcutter
• 1 grower/brewer/cook. He's responsible for making prepared meals and drinks.
• either a herbalist/grower, or a fisherdwarf, or a hunter. The first gets you lots of brewable plants on maps with plants, the second gets you food and bones on maps with water (in maps with dangerous fish such as carp fishing is suicidal so be carefull), and the third gets you meat and bones on maps with animals. Herbalism is usually the safest of the three.
• 1 spare dwarf. You might make him the leader and broker; if so, give him at least novice appraiser skill so you know what stuff is worth. You might make him responsible for making trade goods, or turn him into your first soldier, or you might just give him some skills you want to experiment with.

Items

You want picks, food, and drink. Everything else is optional. The suggestions below assume you spent the maximum possible on skills. We'll pack lots just to be safe.

• 2 picks - 1 per miner
• 1 battle axe - so you can chop wood
• 1 Anvil - so you can make weapons, trade crafts, and such
• 20 units of drink: dwarven ale, dwarven beer, and dwarven rum are all good. dwarven wine you'll get through brewing.
• 30 plump helmets - They're good to eat and produce 5 units of booze for each one brewed at a still.
• 5 turtles - they get you bones and shells
• 20 plump helmet spawn - for planting.
• 2 dogs - to guard against thieves and help kill intruders.
• (optional) other kinds of seeds and rock nuts
• (optional) 1 of many different kinds of meats for extra barrels
• (optional) some cheap (5 point) leather to make quivers and bags and such

If the map is treeless, remove the battle axe and spend the freed points on more plump helmets and logs (you're going to run out however many you bring...).

If you're willing to wait a year or two to do any metalworking and you're sure traders will come, remove the anvil and spend the freed points on such things as skills, food and drink, wood, leather, or weapons.

Rapid Expansion

A plan for quick growth followed up by heavy immigration works well both as an early game strategy and as an assist for a late game foundation. Starting off with the anvil is also much less troublesome if you drop both battleaxes and make your own picks too. Don't worry though, you'll be digging out cavernous villas in no time, and cheaply too, with this build. Food and stone will be in abundance and you'll have excellent worker time utilization. And due to the early metalworking and spreaded skills your dwarves have, soon you'll have powerful steel-armored warrior workers that'll form the bedrock of a city guard.

Always build a Woodburning Furance, Smelter and Metalsmith shop first, and take apart that wagon for extra logs. Either burn those logs into charcoal, or smelt coal into fuel, and then make your tools.

Dwarves & skills

By dropping both picks and axes you'll be able to afford a lot of useful skills, and you'll be able to get a metalsmithing shop running within the first seconds of your game, so no precious time is lost. Your Dwarves are divided largely into two groups, your laborers (Butcher, Baker and candle--er, Brewer) and your craftsdwarves. Essentially a Bluecollar/Whitecollar divide to set up a nice class war later. Also, by having such wide assortments of skills, your dwarves will get lots of attribute bonuses and become extremely capable fighters by the time you need to worry about that.

Laborers are given mining and growing skills with some extra to cover food production. The Ranger is the oddball, but will spend his early days gathering plants and hauling items, so fits here. Your first order of business with them is to dig that top later out quickly and get some farms started and fully stocked. Then, as they grow, you can go back to digging out the rest of the base.

• The Baker: +5 Mining, +3 Cooking, +2 Growing.
• The Brewer: +5 Mining, +3 Brewing, +2 Growing.
• The Butcher: +5 Mining, +1 Butchering, +1 Leatherworking, +1 Tanning, +2 Growing. Make some bags for sand and the Quarry Bushes and a butcher's shop before the Ranger starts his hunts.

• The Ranger: +3 Woodcutter, +3 Carpenter, +2 Axedwarf, +1 Herbalist, +1 Ambusher. Be sure to assign a war dog or two to this guy, since he's the only one who needs to go outside. Once he gets an axe, he'll also be a competant fighter and hunter and will start with armor due to +1 ambusher.

Craftsdwarves focus on running shops, building trade goods, and making the outpost as profitable as possible in the first year, to attract additional immigrants that can be thrown into the mines or toil in the mushroom fields. They should have very broad skill bases, but the actual choice of leader is up to you.

• The Smithy: +1 Metalsmith, Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Furnace Operator, Wood Burner, Stone Crafting, Bone Carving. This guy will cover all of your rarely needed creation skills, and make your picks and axes. After this he usually ends up making scads of stone crafts for sale. Glassworking, gem cutting, and potash making are good as well, and even with novice in all areas you'll build fast enough for these rare items.
• The Foreman: +3 Building Design, +3 Mechanic, +1 Judge of Intent, Appraiser, Organizer, Record Keeper. Building design and mechanical work is extremely quick work, so instead give him nobleman skills to spend the rest of his workhours on. These are extremely useful in the long-term.
• The Freemason: +5 Masonry. It seems a bit silly to give him just one primary skill, but Masons are usually working 24 hours a day on all variety of stone doors, chairs and tables.

There's a variation if you want a more 'compact' design of those last two:

• The Construction Worker: +5 Masonry, +3 Mechanic, +2 Building Design.
• The Lazy Boss: +3 Fishing, +3 Fish Cleaning, +1 Judge of Intent, Appraiser, Organizer, Record Keeper.

This is not as useful or safe, as Fishing is a time-intensive skill, so it takes him away from his recordkeeping job for extended periods and a Carp might kill him. It also forces your Mason to get behind on Queues every time someone needs a trap build or a workshop set up. Halting book-keeping doesn't slow down any production, so the original stat-spread can work out better.

Items

The only thing you need is your anvil, a few stones and bars of metal, everything else is optional. A point of contention is the Iron Axe you'll be making, as some may prefer it to be steel. Steel Bars cost 150, which is three times the cost of iron, and only provide a small damage bonus and no chopping speed bonus. If you start in an area with Limestone or Chalk you'll soon be able to smelt Steel with your functioning metalsmith shop anyway. If you're on a map without trees, well, I suppose you don't need the axe at all. But in that case you'd be better off taking the picks, dropping the anvil, and buying a few hundred logs.

• 1 Anvil - this is what makes it all possible, and helps you get started faster.
• 3 Copper Bars - these cost 10 each, and will be your picks. Three for the price of one, literally.
• 1 Iron Bar - this costs 50, and will be your axe. The 40 extra is worth it for the damage increase you get over copper or bronze.
• 2 Bituminous Coal or Logs - you can smelt two coal into 4 fuel for the cost of 2 logs. Inexpesive at 3 each, one can afford to bring more.
• 4 cheap stone - any sort works, such as inexpensive granite. You'll use these to make your first three buildings.

That's what you need to get started, but this is a guide for the items on your list. This build does not require or recommend bringing plump helmets due to their cost. Instead, encourage your dwarves to eat the turtles and meat out of the barrels and cook wine biscuts. Your farms will be running amazingly quickly anyway, and for half the cost of a single helmet you can make feed several dwarves on baked beer. You'll get enough seeds from brewing the shrooms soon enough.

• 26 of Wine, Rum, Beer and Ale
• 36 of Rock Nuts, Plump Helmet Spawn and Pig Tail Seeds
• 11 Turtles - these hilarious little dudes are way better than the monkeymeat you usually set out with, what with all the bones they leave. I use these as 'before farming' rations and build up a good supply of bone bolts. Shells are also valuable to have around.
• 1 of each other 2 cost meat, for extra empty barrels.
• 2 Dogs - preferably war dogs or hunting dogs. Assign these to your Ranger. Bring a pair so you can make more dogs.
• 1 Horse - they're relatively inexpensive and will help you begin breeding horses faster, as you are nearly always getting a horse with your wagon. Livestock are a valuable commodity for meat and bones, and you want as many of these as possible 'emergency rations' on hand.
• 4 Leather - you need leather bags to process quarry bushes and to gather sand for glass. Four will be enough, and you can get it for only 20.

If you do it exactly as written, you will end up with a few points left over. Grab some extra food or upgrade one of your copper bars to an actual copper pick, if you want a faster start. These foodstuffs will last a very long time if managed properly, so get your farms going and start preparing for next year now.

Metalbashing/Glassworking

Heavy metalbashing and glassworking requires a site with 1) abundant fuel and 2) raw materials. Magma is ideal but large coal seams or a forest will also suffice. A site with either limestone or chalk means nearly unlimited steel. Any site with "sand" (not "loamy sand" or the like) will permit glassworking. Failing these, any place with lots of rock, trees, and preferably sand will work fine. Your biggest choice when setting up is whether to optimize for a fast start or long-term success.

Dwarves & skills

Unless you're trying a low-skills challenge, each dwarf should get the maximum possible number (currently 10) of skill boosts; remove a battle axe to free up needed points. Individual preferences can be mighty handy; if you have a dwarf who likes steel, clear glass, crossbows, siege engine parts, or something else equally interesting, he's an ideal candidate for matching skills.

• A carpenter/leader: Points into Carpenter, Wood Cutter, and a bunch of nobles' skills, including at least novice Negotiator and Appraiser. This dwarf should have good inter-personal thoughts/preferences.
• A Mason/Mechanic: Points into Mason, Building Designer, and Mechanic. Adding more points to Mason gets construction materials and furniture faster. More points to Mechanic allows faster trap-setting. Adding Appraiser and/or Negotiator skills gives you a back-up leader or broker. A boost to Wrestling gets you better on-call defense.
• A Farmer/Herbalist (assumes the site has at least some plants): This dwarf will gather the plant material you need to brew drinks. Points into Grower and Herbalist. Leftover skill raises should be invested in a valuable, hard to raise trade skill such as Metalsmith, Metal Crafter, or perhaps Glassworking.
• A Farmer/Brewer/Cook: This dwarf is responsible for keeping your community fed and liquored up. Points into Grower, Brewer, and (optionally) Cook. Leftover skill raises should be invested as for the Farmer/Herbalist.
• A Metalbasher: Points into whatever hard-to-raise skills you most want. Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Bowyer, Glassworker, and even Siege Engineer can all be good choices depending on your setup. Remember to spend a few points on Furnace Operator and perhaps also Wood Burning.
• 2 Miners/Soldiers: Points into both mining and military skills. The miners first get legendary and then become extremely powerful fighters. Remember that it's much easier to increase Mining skill than most of the military skills (especially Armor User), but also that you'll want capable miners immediately.

With this setup, you have several ways to make the trade goods you'll need to buy what you lack. Metal goblets, stone mugs, handwear, footwear, mechanisms, bone or wood crossbows, prepared meals, or bone and shell crafts are all solid choices.

Items (all starts)

• 2 picks
• 6 or 11 of each of dwarven ale, dwarven beer, and dwarven rum. With abundant brewable plants and lots of wood you don't actually need any starting booze, but it's nice to have a backup.
• at least 11 plump helmets. Bring a lot more if you anticipate problems with gathering brewable plants.
• at least 6 turtles. Not only are they good eating, they ensure you have the shells and bones needed to satisfy strange moods.
• 1 of every kind of meat that costs 2 or 4, as each type of meat will be packed in its own free barrel and cooking the meat will release that barrel for use. If you don't like this feature, bring more turtles or plump helmets instead.
• Unless the map is glacial, or you intend only outdoor agriculture, bring plenty of seeds as well. A minimum of 15 plump helmet spawn are essential for a quick start to underground agriculture; rock nuts, sweet pod seeds, pig tail seeds, and cave wheat seeds will diversify your meals and drinks and let you set up for clothes-making. Seeds are packed in bags.
• (optional) some cheap (5 point) leather to make quivers and bags and such

Items (fast start)

• 1 Anvil
• no battle axe ... as long as you're confident the site has either iron or copper.
• only a few logs (just enough to get started with), unless the map has no trees

Items (moderate start)

• no Anvil
• 1 battle axe (at present, steel is the only option)
• few or no logs, unless the map has no trees
• with the points you save by not bringing an anvil, buy logs and metal cages. Each cage can be melted into one metal bar, which is an easy way to ensure stocks of metals you expect your site to lack. That missing anvil will slow you down until you get one in trade (which normally takes about 6 or 7 seasons) and might even cost you a failed strange mood, but it means 50 extra metal bars or enough logs to make beds and barrels for all.

Items (slow start)

• no Anvil
• no battle axes
• lots of logs - at least 25 on a heavily forested map. You can survive without them, but it's a lot cheaper to buy logs to make barrels than to bring more drink.

Cheaper axes and/or picks, with a bit of work (and any other weapons you want)

Steel axes normally cost 300 points each. Instead of spending that much on them, you can make yourself iron or copper axes by bringing the resources needed instead, and having one dwarf make them for you. For comparison, you could bring 1 anvil and 2 steel axes for 1600 points. You could bring no anvil and 5 steel axes for 1500 points. Or, you could bring enough resources to make 18 iron axes for 1489 points, or 55 copper axes for 1498 points.

Replace the axes and anvil with:

• 1 Anvil (1000 points) (I'm only mentioning it here because you CANNOT do this without it, unless you're willing to not have axes until traders sell you an anvil)
• You need to bring three fire-safe stones in order to construct the necessary buildings. (9 points)
• 2 tower-cap logs (3 points each, total 6 points)
• N magnetite/limonite/hematite stones (for iron, 24 points each)
• For additional amounts of jewelry, bring 1 cassiterite and 1 copper ore, which combine to make 2 bronze bars. This is better than copper and takes no additional time. (6 points each)
• To save even more points you can skip the ores altogether if you are travelling to an area likely to have exposed magnetite veins.
• N-1 bituminous coal (3 points each)

To make your axes/picks/whatever: You'll want to build a wood burner, a smelter, and a metalsmith's forge. Burn both logs in the wood burner to get two charcoal. Smelt the coke in the smelter. Each will produce a net gain of 2 fuel (that is, coke/charcoal). Then smelt the magnetite/hematite/limonite, which will use one fuel per piece of ore. Finally you can make iron axes in the metalsmith's forge, using one iron bar and one fuel each. (See http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=11&t=001191 for more detail)

Free Equipment

Dwarves who start with the ambusher skill get some leather armor for free. Dwarves who start with only military skills get a weapon for free; for example, a dwarf with Ambusher, Marksdwarf, Armor Use, Shield Use, and Wrestler as initial skill choices will show up for your fortress wearing leather armor and carrying a crossbow and bolts. Dwarves with a mix of military and civilian skills can get the free armor from ambusher, but not the free weapons. Social skills count as civilian skills for this purpose.

Beginner's guide FAQ
Basic getting started guide
Where in the world should I settle?
What skills and items should I equip my dwarves with?
Where in my area should I build my fort?
What should I build first?
How do I assign tasks to specific dwarves?
How do I get more dwarves?
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Challenge builds

If repeatedly defending a besieged fortress isn't difficult enough for you, here are a few challenges you can set for yourself. You might also want to check out the List of goals for other ways to challenge yourself.

Hermit

• No skills
• One pick and no other supplies

A well known and popular challenge. Kill off the 6 starting dwarves and any immigrants as they arrive, and try to make a living for the last dwarf.

Outcast

• No skills
• One pick and no other supplies

Same as the hermit challenge, only with multiple hermits. Turn off immigrants or kill them.

Roughing it

• No picks

Don't dig or build at all. Bring no picks, and don't ask for them in trade. Watch as the more "weather-averse" dwarves slowly go mad.

Gone to the dogs

• One pick
• A ton of animals

Replace the starting equipment with an equal value in dogs or cats.

ASPCA

• No animals

Don't bring any pets. Furthermore, due to the possibility of animals being caught in them, don't build any traps, either. If immigrants bring pets, get rid of them somehow. (If you're a particularly rabid ASPCA member, you could get rid of the pet-bearing immigrants, too, but that's probably excessive.)

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.

Luddite

• No mechanics or mechanisms
• No machines

Traps and moving bridges are forbidden, farming must be accomplished by hand.

City-States

• No skills
• 7 or multiple of 7 of everything you bring

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!

Wooden Town

Start on any treeless map and make everything that can out of wood. Stone may only be used for crafts to trade and things which cannot be made from wood e.g. mechanisms. Metal can be smelted into bars but these bars must be traded away with no further refinement. This will mean your only defense will be marksdwarves with wooden bolts or traps Alternatively start on a map with an aquifer and do not tunnel beneath it but build all buildings from stone.

Dwarves on a Diet

Fishing Village

Give your dwarves only the fishing skill and other fishing related skills (like bonecrafting.) Try to survive off a fish only diet. Flood the river and build houses above it so the dwarves can fish through their floors. There will be an extra challenge if the river freezes in the winter.

Carnivore

• No plants or seeds

Only eat strays, pets, and animals you trap and hunt. No farming or plant gathering. Keep all your pets in cages and care for them as little as possible. Eat your dwarves' pets first for an extra challenge. If this upsets your dwarves, ridicule or ignore them. (If you are particularly heartless, you could cage those dwarves as well because anyone that empathizes with animals doesn't deserve any rights either.)

Vegetarian or vegan

• No meat or fish
• Vegans - no cheese, leather, silk, or shell

A fairly easy challenge. Take no meat and buy no meat. Butcher no animals. Gut no fish. To make your dwarves vegan, use no animal products like the elves.

IOGT / AA

• No alcohol

Quite possibly, this is the cruelest challenge that your dwarves can be given. Don't ever brew any alcohol. Build wells instead and watch your now teetotaller dwarves work slower and slower by the season.

Hunting Party

• One marksman/ambusher
• Two camp servants (e.g. one cook/brewer/herbalist, one butcher/tanner/leatherworker/woodcutter)
• Four clients, all dabbling in marksman/ambusher but with primarily civilian skills.

No anvil, lots of hunting dogs ... and a haunted wood. (In a terrifying wood, you may find all the trees & plants are dead, severely reducing long-term prospects.)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement

• One miner/mason/architect
• One woodcutter/carpenter/architect
• Five military dwarves

No anvil, lots of food, in a canyon - spend the first year building fortifications to interdict traffic. Immigrants can build a town around you, but your original dwarves remain dedicated to their mission.

Dwarf Siege

Start in the middle of a goblin fortress. See how long you can survive, and how many goblins you can kill.

Dwarfsicles

Select a map region in the northern extremities (or another very cold area), where water is frozen for much or all of the year. All construction that can be undertaken with stone must use ice, instead. Be sure to bring plenty of Plump Helmets for brewing drinks!

For an insane challenge, forbid yourself from digging in any material that can yield resources other than ice.

This. Is. SPARTAAAA

At least 50% of your dwarves should be military 100% of the time, and train in spears, shield use and wrestling. All other dwarves are 'helots' and shouldn't be given any skills - they can be pressed into the military during times of war, but given no equipment or at most a bare minimum of inferior weapons.

You should refuse trade with caravans, instead attacking them if possible. You should forbid the use of gold and silver; the making of crafts; and the smoothing of walls or any other task that make your fortress 'beautiful'.

You shouldn't create chainmail nor plate armour. You should only brew wine.

Any dwarf that drops his shield should be executed.

Read more about the real Sparta

The Mad Butcher

1. Start with a normal build except:

  * One dwarf should be a dedicated butcher/leather worker
  * buy minimal food
  * bring as many puppies or kittens as possible

2. Drop all your puppies or kittens into cages or into animal pits as soon as possible.
3. Dig a shaft 10 or more Z-levels deep, mark the top an animal pit.
4. At the bottom of the shaft set up a butcher shop, a tanner shop, a bedroom, and some food and leather stockpiles.
5. Set it all up so that the mad butcher cannot escape.
6. As you need food, begin selecting animals to be dropped into your deep pit, next to the butcher.
7. See how long a single butcher, butchering splattered kittens, can keep your fortress fed! Cooking and farming are cheating... raw meat for everyone!

Add your challenges!

Challenges are fun! Add some!