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40d:Starting builds

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Starting builds are different strategies that you can choose when starting a new game in fortress mode. The skills and items which you assign to your dwarves will have a large impact on life in your new fortress, especially in its first year.

This page gives advice on some of the many gameplay elements which influence the flow of your game based on your goals. These include: choosing a fortress site, the starting build itself - defined by who and what to take with you - as well as challenge builds aimed at providing new or unusual challenges to advanced players.

  • Your First Fortress?

Note: If you are a new player looking for a solid basis to survive the first couple of months or years, check out this guide. It includes a basic starting build similar to the one discussed below.


Components of a Starting Build

Skills

Each dwarf can learn any of a large number of skills. Dwarves with little experience in a skill will work slowly and ineffectively.

  • For example inexperienced herbalists will gather stacks of only one or two plants or even nothing, inexperienced farmers will often plant stacks of only one or two plants. This results in a small overall output which takes many containers to store in, less effective food preparation in the kitchen, and more space needed for stockpiles.
  • Inexperienced miners work very slowly. Mining can be levelled up quite quickly by mining soil, but taking two dwarves with at least some points in mining is recommended in many cases.
  • In nearly all workshops, inexperienced dwarves who create items will create low quality goods, and take a long time doing so. Skilled dwarves work quickly and produce high-quality items.

Dwarves improve their skills on a learning-by-doing-basis. Dwarves who have specific labors enabled will, after a while, progress to Dabbling users of their skill, and continue to learn from performing that labor. Overall, "levelling up" the dwarves' skills quickly is a good game goal to set. Doing so may result in your dwarves efficiently creating a magnificent fortress filled to the brim with valuable items and furniture. (Or it might not.)

Using and seeing high-quality items gives dwarves happy thoughts. This tends to decrease the incidences of tantrums, increasing a fortress's longevity.

Which do I need, really?

Most builds recommend:

Combining Skills

Some skills are highly time-consuming, and working at different jobs levels up specific attributes. One could level up a miner until hes becomes mighty and ultra-tough - and then turn him into a soldier. If you plan on doing so, it may not be a good idea to give this guy another critical job.

Since tasks will take place in specific areas, it makes sense to combine tasks into dwarves who will take care of a specific industry - so Combine (indoor) farming with cooking (not mining), for example.

Most builds recommend combinations such as:

  • Woodcutter/Carpenter. Add Axedwarf for added security.
  • Mason+ : In many fortresses, the Mason is a very busy dwarf. He could be a spare miner, have abilities that are only rarely needed, or do tasks that can be accomplished quickly.
  • Farmer/Cook, Farmer/Brewer. Basic two-person food team.
  • Farmer/Herbalist, Farmer/Brewer/Cook. One bold dwarf to farm and venture outside looking for wild plants, the other to keep busy in the still, kitchen, and indoor farms.
  • Boss: Novice Negotiator/Novice Judge of intent/Novice Appraiser. Combine this with a single time-intensive task such as Masonry and optionally turn off all hauling tasks right at the start of the game. This guy will be your Boss and Trader, make him record keeper too.
  • Craftsdwarf, depending on your strategy - e.g. glass maker, weaponsmith or armorsmith, sometimes combined with related tasks from that industry (furnace operating, wood burning). Typically an item hauler in the initial months of your fortress, this dwarf may become one of your most valuable dwarves later.

Items

Some basics are recommended for all builds. You definitely need to bring one pick for each miner, some food, and some alcohol. Everything else depends on your strategy and on how tough or leisurely a challenge you want the game to be.

Note: Many builds recommend that you bring many different cheap foods, with quantities ending 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.

Fortress Sites

Each fortress location offers particular challenges and opportunities. The starting builds below should be adjusted depending on the region your fort occupies, the specific vision you have of your fortress, 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 a 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.

Basic Build

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 careful), 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.

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, raw materials, 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 distributed 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 wood burning furnace, Smelter and Metalsmith's forge 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 Blue collar/White collar 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, +2 Growing, +3 Cooking.
  • The Brewer: +5 Mining, +2 Growing, +3 Brewing.
  • The Butcher: +5 Mining, +2 Growing, +1 Butchering, +1 Tanning, +1 Leatherworking. 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, +1 Herbalist, +1 Ambusher, +2 Axedwarf. 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 competent 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 Weaponsmith, Armorsmith, Metalsmith, 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. Glassmaking, 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 work hours 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 record keeping 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. Inexpensive 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 biscuits. 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 plump helmets 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 meat 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. Barrels cost 10, so getting any food below that can save you money.
  • 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 nearly always get a horse with your wagon. Livestock are a valuable commodity for meat and bones, and you want as many of these 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 Blacksmith, Metal Crafter, or perhaps Glassmaker or Clothier.
  • 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 Craftsdwarf: Points into whatever hard-to-raise skills you most want. Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Bowyer, Glassmaker, and even Siege Engineer, Clothier, or Gem Setter can all be good choices depending on your setup. If you plan to bash metal, remember to spend a few points on Furnace Operator and (if needed) 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.

Food and drink for the first few seasons are assured by first cooking all the meat to free up barrels, then brewing your plump helmets (and any gathered plants) to make booze.

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 - you'll save points by making it yourself.
  • only a few logs (just enough to get started with), unless the map has no trees

See Make Your Own Weapons for more details on what to bring and how to make the battle axes you need to chop wood.

Items (moderate start)

Warning: Going without an 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.

  • 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, bars of base metals you expect your site to lack, and (if needed) coal (for fuel and coke) and/or dolomite (for flux).
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.

Everybody Mines Build

One build that is actually very easy to use is to take no mining skills and 7 or more cheap picks. Then, pick a site with sand or dirt or clay, which is extremely easy to mine. Assign all of your dwarves except your woodcutter to mining, and dig out some big storage areas to begin with in the sand. By the time you have a basic fort laid out (less than a season) they will all have plenty of skill ups and will be able to go through regular rock quite quickly. Then you can turn them off mining, and turn any immigrants on mining and have them do the same skilling up on sand and dirt. This allows you to rapidly increase dwarf attributes, so they can later learn some other skill which aligns well with their attribute bonuses. Also, it makes them more dwarfy!


Free Equipment

Dwarves who start with the ambusher skill may get some leather armor, a crossbow and some bolts for free.

As of 27.176.38c, this appears to only be true if they have *only* military skills: ambusher/marksman/armor user/wrestler gets free gear, but replace any of those skills with something civilian and they show up in street clothes. (This has only been tested in cases where the civilian skill was their new highest skill; it might work to give them minor civilian skills, but that did not work in past versions.)

Challenge Builds

If you want a challenge try some Challenge_Builds.


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