v0.31: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 Dwarf Fortress Map Archive when it's finished. More projects can be found where Template:L. Template:L are usually very Template:L so you'll see many different (and probably similar) constructions across the Wiki. Use whatever ideas you think are ingenious.

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!

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.

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.

BONUS: Make the statues spit lava.

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.

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.

BONUS: Create a statue garden to memorialize your victims, with one statue per victim. Structure your fortress such that sacrificial victims have to pass through the garden on the way to their demise.

Computing

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

Colosseum

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.

Crematory Fortress

Requires a Template:L and Template:L.

Build a temple structure above a Template:L and Template:L every available surface. The temple should be as opulent as possible. In the temple, build a retracting Template:L over a hole in the floor, and designate a Template:L Template:L on it. Whenever a dwarf dies, build a Template:L or other Template:L Template:L for him, place it on the Template:L, and retract it, committing his body to the Template:L.

Note: Since coffins are unassigned and emptied when deconstructed and cannot be constructed on top of a bridge, this will not actually work. An alternative would be to place the coffins in individual chambers which can then be flooded with magma afterwards.

You could expose the magma pipe, build a one-tile wide floor span across it, and then above that build a support that holds up your temple floor on the z-level above. The temple floor would be separated from the walls of the temple and would be connected for walking access diagonally. The support holds it up. You would have to construct the coffins in the temple, then when someone gets buried you pull the lever attached to the support. You then rebuild the narrow span below, the temple floor, and the support, then link the lever to the new support.

You can do this without scaffolding if you build the temple floor access straight in, and then the span below and the support, then once the support is in place you destroy the straight temple access leaving only a diagonal temple access.

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. Alternatively, make the sequence quite unlikely, but add 2 kittens; breeding introduces a probability of doomsday that is a function of time (depending on the mechanisms involved)
Super-Bonus: Create the super-bonus above, but place the kitten on the lowest Z-level and never return to either look at it or see how many of the conditions for the doomsday device have been met. This way, the kitty mimicks Schrodinger's cat: we cannot observe the state of the kitty, but we can infer it from the state of the world (spin-pairs effectively).

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 Template:L 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.

Build the whole thing upside down.
- And then another one on the upside-down one.

When the time has come, or when your fortress is about to be destroyed by a siege etc perform the ceremony to translate the mortal form of the noble to the underworld. Give him a ritual death, and make sure you kill his servants as well. If the tomb is built for your king make every dwarf die but one, who inters everyone into their resting place. His final act will be to pull a lever that seals the tomb as well as kills him. Then enjoy going back and reclaiming your fortress to observe your efforts.

Graveyard Master

Every dwarf deserves a decent resting place:

Build a tomb for every 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!

Land battleship

Turn your mountain into a huge battle-station, complete with crew quarters, decks, command centre, cantina, and a large collection of deadly weapons : Batteries of marksdwarves, ballista cannons, catapults, boarding bridges and -teams, 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 (i.e., everything that enters the map can be shot)
Bonus: Build several other ships, maybe dedicated to a specific product (food, ammo etc.)
- Bonus: Find a way to let them fight each other in a naval battle
Bonus: Each crew member has a civil and military formation, and when the enemy arrives, stop every economic activity. All hands to quarters !
Bonus: Rebuild Noas Arc: Completely out of wood, with every animal twice, as well as one dwarven family with three sons on board. Flood everything around it AND LET EVERYTHING NOT ON THE ARC DIE!!! MUHAHAHA!!! FEAR THE WRATH OF ARMOK!!!!!
Mega Bonus: After building your Ship(s), flood the surrounding countryside.

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).

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.

Project Mayhem

You do not talk about project Mayhem
Build a series of towers, at least 10 z-levels high, of different size and shape. They must be supported by a series of supports linked to a lever.
Store all your riches in the towers : crafts, precious metal bars, gems, artifacts, everything. You may also want to house your nobles on top of the towers.
Pull the lever and watch the collapse of financial history.

Bonus : make the towers' walls out of glass!

Bonus : Make soap! And remember, human fat is ideal...

Extra Bonus: Make one large tower, and make it collapse onto a smaller tower, filled with all your artifacts/engravings. (Essentially, you only get the extra bonus if you've read the book)

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.

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 throne room with kittens.

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 Template:L as ignitable fuel.
BONUS: Make a removable Template:L for boarding.
BONUS: Make the Template:L for the 2 years be on the ship using removable pumps.
BONUS+: Make it totally self sufficient. (Make an internal system which pumps the Template:L supply through a room every few years to muddy the floor. Plant Template:L in the Template:L that's now on the floor. Manage your consumption to maintain self sufficiency.)
Modding BONUS: Mod the game so that merchants can fly their new wagonships into your docking bays. (If possible)
BONUS+: Make it all out of Template:L.
FUN: Let it be held by a single Template:L, ignite the Template:L, remove the support an let it "fly".
EVEN BETTER: Drop it down a chasm.
More FUN: Set up a mining operation on the surface and dig into the HFS. Watch the alien creatures take over your ship and hunt down your dwarves. Form a squad of heroes to overload the booze reactor to prevent the aliens from reaching earth. (See Dead Space and/or the Alien series)

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~~ Magma Channels 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).
If the clock takes measures to protect itself. "I can't let you do that, Urist."

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

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 Template:L.

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 each other 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.

The great brewery

Disaster has struck the kingdom. A strangely glowing Template:L 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 Template:L each year.

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.

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.

Statue of greatness

Build a giant statue, spanning 10-20 z-levels and make it in the shape of say, a dwarf you like or an animal you like.

Bonus: make it in the shape of a teapot that has a working boiling system and a spout that water can come out of.

Underwater fortress

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

Bonus: Build all water-touching walls/roof in clear glass!
Bonus: Use Template:L instead of water (warning: will almost certainly lead to fun)!
Bonus: Build it in the Template:L or a non-freezing lake
Bonus: Build large glass domes that encase the fortress. A dome 20 tiles wide should be 10 z-levels tall (creating a hemi-sphere). Which may be hard to cover in water.
Bonus: Have a mechanism for dropping your enemies into the water to drown! Or fill the water with carp.
Mod: Make your dwarves amphibious and include airlocks between the wet fortress and the dry.
Remake: Make Rapture city from Bioshock

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.

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 unlivable, aside from, of course, your hidden lair.

You will receive bonus points for making a more realistic World Domination setup. Some suggestions:

Make one dwarf the evil mastermind. The evil mastermind will have no empathy whatsoever, and they will hate all other races, and put no value on the lives of his minions. Protect him at all cost. If he should die, switch his position to his oldest child (who will avenge his father, because insanity is hereditary.) or the most insane, diabolical dwarf in your fort.
Impractical, overkill solutions to everyday problems ("Sir, the dungeon master wants a better room" "Well then turn his room into a tomb and flood it with magma, and do not bother me with such trivial matters again or I will have you shot.")
Give the evil mastermind a pet to obsess over. Give it a name like Mr. Bigglesworth or Snuggles.
Have a science lab. Use living creatures and people as test subjects.

Doomsday device suggestions:

Flood the map with water/magma (may require building walls around the edge of the map)
- BONUS: the water has carp in it.
  - BONUSMOD: Carp with laser beams attached to their heads.
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~~ ~~unicorns,~~ skeletal carp in secret. Have a lever that lets everything free to feed on the general population.
Embark in an evil area, and capture and tame all those undead animals ^{if possible} to create your own undead army
Bonus: Eliminate the dwarves who constructed your device before you set it off. They must not be allowed to warn the rest of the citizens.
Build an orbital weapons platform in space (which should be 12-15 stories above the ground, use your imagination), then arm it with magma bombs (droppable tank of magma) to glass the planet, rendering it uninhabitable for a few years.

The Grand Treasury

At first, have the king come to you. Then excavate a laaarge room and fill it with i.e.: Lots of coins, shiny gems, artifacts, golden statues, silver mugs, etc. pp. But the king is still not satisfied with his possessions, so he wants more and more shiny and sparky things. Of course sooner or later (probably sooner) those filthy kobolds and goblins will come and try to steal this enormous hoard. We must never tolerate this! Turn your treasury into a strongroom like the world has never seen before! Secret doors, traps in abundance, guards at every door, ballistae, guard dogs, the whole program. If anything gets lost, you have proven your incompetence, and the king will have your fortress abandoned and founded another to guard his treasures.

Bonus: Build up the treasury and raid it successfully in Adventure Mode

Heaven

Build a dwarven version of heaven. Every dwarf must want to come to you! Important pieces:

Streets paved with gold.
The mindless hordes are held back by pearly gates -- or at least a close equivalent. Marble doors with diamond encrustations.
No dwarves die (except for criminals). Heaven is everlasting.
All criminals must be cast into the fires of Hell. Ideally, this would either be HFS or the bottom of a magma pipe.
Nothing is ever stolen. St. Peter doesn't screw up.
After the King has arrived, any male children he has must be sent out to fight sieges alone.

BONUS: No dwarves are ever unhappy -- no tantrums and no insanity.
BONUS: When migrants arrive at the pearly gates, view their thoughts and preferences and only allow those with a similar/same Diety as your population.
BONUS: Make Heaven 10 stories above the ground
Mod: Make Angel dwarves and a godly being. (suggestions: Cacame, Morul, Ironblood.)
ULTRABONUS: Make Heaven in the air, an earthly society on the ground (a wooden town perhaps?), and carve the HFS place into Hell, complete with a lake of Magma/fire.Look up the character of every dwarf and send him to the appropriate place.
MEGABONUS-(Re)Make: The Seven Seals have been broken and the Apocalypse arrives.

The Sky darkens (an obsidian ceiling spanning over the map).
Meteors (opened lava tanks and cave-ins) devastate the earth.
All bodies of water turn bloody.
Dig into the HFS and have a battle between Heaven and Hell.

City of Ember

Show those filthy humans that when dwarves build a secret underground refuge, they build to last! In other words, recreate Ember from the film "City of Ember" (yes, everyone is aware there is a book), but do it right - none of these leaking pipes and crumbling buildings stuff, after only two and a half centuries underground!

Mine out a massive cavern multiple z-layers high , and build a human-style city underneath it instead of carving out various chambers.
You must seal it off. How long you wait to do this is up to you, but once it is sealed, you cannot unseal it for at least 200 years (if you decide to play that long). Ideally, use a utility to embark with a full set of dwarves (to represent the immigrating population) and seal the city off within one year of embarking.
Build individual houses with their own dining rooms and bedrooms. Multiple dwarves can live in one house, but usually only a single family will live in one house.
Build streets connecting all of the buildings, in the way that in the film, Ember didn't really have any space that wasn't either paved or built on until you got to the outskirts of the city.
Have a "greenhouse" out on the outskirts for farming.
You MUST have an underground river and use it for power.
You MUST have magma and use it for power.
Build City Hall, where the mayor has his office, with a nice fountain out front that actually works (probably involving water pressure, and as a testament to the fact that dwarves do it better, and their underground refuge isn't running desperately short of food, water, or power).
No military, because there is simply no need for one, but have a fortress guard (to function as police, basically).
After 200 or more years, unseal the city and colonize the surface.

BONUS: Instead of building your houses/other structures out of blocks or rocks, plan it all out beforehand and simply don't dig out the tiles that you want to be the walls of buildings, and smooth it all down so it looks the same, but your buildings are actually made out of solid natural rock.
BONUS: Actually cause some kind of catastrophe on the surface (flood it with magma or something) that makes it uninhabitable, to FORCE yourself to stay underground, but when you unseal the city after 200 years, the surface should have healed and be habitable again. So, don't do something permanent.