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.

Exiled Warlord

• Seven starting dwarves with no military skills
• All immigrants immediately activated into the military
• No killing them off on purpose!

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!

<insert material> Fort

Wooden

Start on any treeless map and make everything that you can out of wood. That means no underground forts, though you may destroy hills and such. You lose points for bringing wood at the start.

Dieting Dwarves

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.)

Vegan

• Obviously, no meat, fish, or dairy
• Also, no leather, silk, or shell
• In essence, construct an Elven Forest

A fairly easy challenge. Take no meat and buy no meat. Butcher no animals. Gut no fish. 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.

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 makes your fortress "beautiful."

You shouldn't create chainmail or plate armour. You should only brew wine.

Read more about the real Sparta

The Mad Butcher

_{(this requires a tiny amount of editing to the raws)}
1. Edit Dwarf Fortress\Raw\object\Creature_Domestic.txt. Remove the tag [BUTCHERABLE_NONSTANDARD] from cats and dogs.
2. 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

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