Dwarf Fortress - In other news, 0.40.13 is now released.

[SeventhSandwich]

What should I do now that I have a stable farming system, mote + drawbridge, and industry for my dwarves?

I have access to copper ore and rock and that's about it so far.

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[Tudoreleu]

If I remember correctly the "Now What?" point is where you start building absolutely ridiculous rooms in your forts like gigantic catacombs lined with gold with a 4x3 room for every coffin, also made of gold, and filled with golden statues and chests filled with gold coins. The catacombs are also laid out in shapes such as inverted crosses or Swastikas.

That's what I did at least.

That's the second Now What? phase - the first Now What? phase isn't because you're out of things to do, it's because you're out of things that you know HOW to do.

[Tokthree]

That's the second Now What? phase - the first Now What? phase isn't because you're out of things to do, it's because you're out of things that you know HOW to do.

I didn't have that phase, I just skipped straight to the second one

[Rigel]

Is there some sort of tutorial on how to get into this game?

Because jesus christ these stories and incidents you guys post make this game so fun, but I feel like I am so lost on the learning curve here.

Try adventure mode, that stuff can get pretty damn fun and intense at times.

I've reached the "Now What?" stage and I'm not sure what's left to do. My fortress seems pretty damn stable. I have a drawbridge so I can effectively hold back any goblin attack, I have hundreds of stocked surplus food and beverage, and I've already made some nice copper stuff.

Suggest me something to do.

Capture enemies and sacrifice them in front of the whole fortress to please Armok.

[AutoBahn]

What should I do now that I have a stable farming system, mote + drawbridge, and industry for my dwarves?

I have access to copper ore and rock and that's about it so far.

Do you have caverns access yet? You should probably poke around down there(once you get a trained army of some sort first, ofc).
I genned a small world with a huge amount of years on the clock, roughly 850 years, and tried it out. There's vampires everywhere, and despite drinking vamp blood repeatedly, I won't turn into one.
I also tried to spread out the towns a little more VIA advanced worldgen procedures and testing out how savagery n stuff works, but it doesn't seem to affect them unless I turn the savagery insanely high. I ended up removing all the other main races (goblins, dwarves, elves) and leaving humans to try and see if I could get them to spread out their towns a little more instead of clumping them up(it broke after that so I ended up having to reinstall a few times, oops), which broke the game in it's entirety.
Messing around with the raws is not my specialty, apparently. It'd be nice to have a world that has civilizations more spread out and easily identifiable, though.

[Doomonkey]

There's vampires everywhere, and despite drinking vamp blood repeatedly, I won't turn into one.

Having done that before, you don't really want to. The vampire route seems attractive because you don't get tired and get a boost to your stats., but blood drinking is a huge pain. You can't store it, so if it rains or you cross a river, you are immediately out of viable food. You may or may not ever find an animal suitable to drink from, but if you don't you will be forced to take your meal from humans. This means sneaking into a town at night and praying you don't get caught. In addition to guaranteeing your eventual exile from civilization, being a vampire makes long distance travel across uninhabited lands very difficult.

A better plan would be to become a necromancer. As a necromancer you get all of the creature of the night benefits, but no thirst. Additionally, in the current version, necromancers seem to be friendly, making it easy to pillage their towers for books.

[Tudoreleu]

I tried playing with Stonesense Overlay..

It doesn't really get any further than that.

[Rigel]

Could you stop typing like this?

[SeventhSandwich]

Do you have caverns access yet? You should probably poke around down there(once you get a trained army of some sort first, ofc).

How many people do I need in my militia and how do I know when they're trained enough?

[cooldawson3]

I'm currently at that first "Now what?" phase then.

Which isn't so bad.

Though Adventure mode's keybinds are very intimidating.

[Doomonkey]

I just started a new adventure mode and it appears I am part of a cult-like nation. I talked to a lasher to get him to join me and his greeting was "Long live the cause!" I talked to the lord and asked him about the local leader, he said, "I am lord. We are in the right in all matters."

Travel to the south and I find a bunch of elves taking over a city. They are friendly to me. I find a lone weaponsmith surrounded by 8 elf warriors, they have not attacked him but demand he yields. He calls them cowards.

[AutoBahn]

Having done that before, you don't really want to. The vampire route seems attractive because you don't get tired and get a boost to your stats., but blood drinking is a huge pain. You can't store it, so if it rains or you cross a river, you are immediately out of viable food. You may or may not ever find an animal suitable to drink from, but if you don't you will be forced to take your meal from humans. This means sneaking into a town at night and praying you don't get caught. In addition to guaranteeing your eventual exile from civilization, being a vampire makes long distance travel across uninhabited lands very difficult.

Actually, you can store blood in waterskins and drink from them later(or use the infinite bag storage glitch to move blood into the bag and harvest large amounts of blood), if you kill an enemy. Also, late-gen worlds(500+ years maybe?) seem to have bandits, vampires, and other weird-ass attackers roaming all over the place so the second bit's not a problem as long as I can run into an unfriendly group here and there(which seem to be common, also letting a bandit group harass a village and just killing the bandit parties they send instead of the campsite's inhabitants seems to supply an infinite number of free blood to drink).

A better plan would be to become a necromancer. As a necromancer you get all of the creature of the night benefits, but no thirst. Additionally, in the current version, necromancers seem to be friendly, making it easy to pillage their towers for books.

Uh, no thanks. Have you seen how hard it is to kill a single zombie? Not to mention that zombies currently have the bug where they'll turn on their masters for no real reason...

Though Adventure mode's keybinds are very intimidating.

There's always shift+? if you're ever confused!

How many people do I need in my militia and how do I know when they're trained enough?

Probably about five people at least, and if they don't run away as soon as they see an enemy of some sort, then they're trained. It is helpful to construct a makeshift danger room with wooden spikes and crap to train them(as long as you have some kind of armor), though.

[Doomonkey]

Uh, no thanks. Have you seen how hard it is to kill a single zombie?

I slaughter zombies all the time. All you need is to throw things until you get good enough with weapons to go into melee combat.

[SeventhSandwich]

Probably about five people at least, and if they don't run away as soon as they see an enemy of some sort, then they're trained. It is helpful to construct a makeshift danger room with wooden spikes and crap to train them(as long as you have some kind of armor), though.

how hard can I expect it to be to clear out a cave?

[SeventhSandwich]

Another question: I downloaded Dwarf Therapist and some of the rows for certain dwarves don't work. Like, I'll press some boxes to toggle jobs and it doesn't respond. Doesn't change the color of the box or nothing.

How do I fix this? What am I doing wrong?