INFO
Dwarf fortress is an overhead real-time strategy that's mean to the player. You can either play
FORTRESS MODE, or
ADVENTURE MODE.
Link to wiki.
Image link to the HD version of Dwarf Fortress.
How to install texture packs like a pro
1. Find a texture pack you want.
2. put the png in data/art
3. go to data/init
4. click the init text file
5. change the font for both versions (windowed and full-screen) to the one you want.
Quickninja: This might break saves that use other texture packs (or the default curses font) before it.
Beginner's guide to DF.
This game is unforgiving but awesome. It's also been voted one of the most complex games of all time.
A few paragraphs about what it's like.
This game makes you think deeply about what kind of stuff dwarves have to put up with. No matter how loving safe your fortress is, you will always, ALWAYS have a grisly and borderline creepy death.
After securing stuff on a mountainside, I forgot to put a support to hold up a cave ceiling and it caves in and falls down the mountain side. The problem here is that it caught six other dwarves, including one loving child. It dragged them into the moat around the mountain, and pinned them there. I quickly sent a search party to recover the dwarves and only one made it out. That one was the one who fathered the child. He later jumped off of a bridge due to grief.
Yes, dwarves Self Delete. One failed fortress of mine ran out of rum, so all the dwarves gathered in the mess hall and preceded to constantly kill themselves. Everyone died that day.
Not to mention when you reach hell, and the demons are trapped, I accidentally forgot about one dwarf in the trapped tunnel, and I ordered him to dig a survival hole to get away from the demons. I tried to order another dwarf to dig a tunnel around the demons to reach the trapped dwarf, but before I could, lava killed the digging dwarf. The trapped dwarf just sat there until he died of starvation.
Then one of my fortresses didn't have a proper defense system yet, and it was raided by trolls. I had a mother lock herself and her two children including one baby in her quarters. The trolls got in her room and she immediately used her children as shields until she ran to the mines and tripped on something and fell off of a bridge over lava. The lava didn't kill her, she was pulled to this small little cavern where she was eaten alive by spiders.
Now, the most insane parts is that dwarves have special interestes. One time a dwarf was doing it with this other dwarf while holding AND using a lump of refined coal. What the forget?! What was he doing with that coal?!
Now you have this dwarf who lines her quarters with kittens all the time. Except that she kills them first. She actually lives and sleeps in the room filled with miasma and the stench of rotten kittens. They're not cats, they're kittens.
And lastly, you have the haunted table. This one dwarf took a fay mood, and built an iron table encrusted with emerald and gold spikes. He didn't want me messing with his loving table. After putting it in his room, he went off and died to a falling rock. Then I gave the table to this one dwarf who loves littering his place with logs (the whole room has logs everywhere). Afterwords the log guy trips on the table, breaks his knee and dies mysteriously.
I could have loving sworn something was moving that table, because after locking it in a room, it found itself a way out every time I moved my screen away from it.
And not to mention I would have these "Table sessions" where I unlock the door and the room fills with dwarves. The loving dwarves literally WORSHIPPED the table. Even to go so far as to make researcho of dwarves doing it on the table and then dying by the hands of a fish.
So about the whole 'encouraging words' thing. Yes, Dwarf fortress looks complicated, nonsensical and not worth your time. It's learning curve is unnerving and it's not player-friendly at all. Bear with me when I say, this is what makes the game so fun. There are so many options for so little things, and the game is made up of little things with many details. There is literally thousands of things to do in dwarf fortress, I guarantee once you figure it out, you will not tire of it in a day or two. This is one of
THE games. The kind of game you pick up and put effort into and it's fun and worth it and you can't just put it down.
This is the kind of game that means something in the long run. I would recommend this game. So pick it up on a weekend and play it when you have the time to, you won't regret it.
Edit:
A new patch was released. It fixes a bunch of bugs and has tweaks, but here's 2 major things:
1) captured animals that have been trained will eventually turn wild again. Your site and civ have independent meters on how much they know about training animals, and your civ will pick up some of yours when the dwarf caravan arrives.
2) clothes now decay unto destruction in refuse piles. Dwarves properly wear owned clothes, and I believe will throw out any worn-out articles.
