Let's Play Dwarf Fortress

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Awesome. Keep up the work, this looks intriguing!

I really wish that atleast a half-decent graphic interface could be implemented or something. I'm a weakling and can't really stand ASCII anymore.

There are some graphical tilesets available. I have even linked, in the first post, to Mayday's graphical set which collects a few of them in one package.

See here for more http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/List_of_user_graphics_sets

Ahaha, no problem man! This is going along great. If I could make a suggestion, though, don't build your fortress straight down. While effective from a metagaming perspective, I think you might be able to convey information more easily if the large majority of your fort is above ground. This is for the newcomer's sake, who will probably have an easier time visualizing a fortress that is mostly on ground level.

Also, is that stray horse who I think it is? (!!!)

That's a very... lively LP.

You're especially optimistic about coins, which doomed many, many fortresses.

Anyway I checked out the tilesets and it's not a matter of cropping screenshots, the game will just look like this with 16x16 which is simply resized 12x8:



Bleh.

Mh, just try out the game if you want to see how it looks. The ASCII has its charm

But it can also look like this:

Brilliant work on this LP, asper. Best luck with your Master's thesis.

(Are Jakub and Nina still around?)

Great job! That's a good introduction for new players, I think. Looks like you're one of those players with a big, spaced-out fort. I'm obsessive about compact fortresses.

I suggest occasionally uploading the map here for us to look at: http://mkv25.net/dfma/

Here's my latest - haven't played in a while though. It uses the Mayday tileset. http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-3592-blockadeswam

Wow, that's a massive effort for a LP thread. Anyone who is not intrigued with DF at this point probably never will be.

Update two
First Year, Autumn to Early Winter



The first caravan to visit our Fortress approaches... Here it is seen crossing the river. It seems our Trading Depot is not too hard to find or inaccessible for the traders. If it would be, the caravan would miss the Fortress, which wouldn't be good.



Now that we know the caravan is approaching, we can start making arrangements for trading. This is our trade depot; we have to move all items we want to trade to it, and a trader needs to be present to conduct the negotiations.



This is the screen in which you select which goods are to be moved to (or from) the depot. Crafts are usually the no.1 good for trade, as they are not good for anything else. I've selected all crafts that we have made to be moved to the depot. I also tag some wood, barrels and gold nuggets, just to check their value. Those goods will probably be too heavy for the traders.



Gah! Unfortunately the dwarfs think that sleeping and constructing buildings is more important than hauling stuff asap to the depot, before the traders leave...



Another reason why the dwarfs delay hauling items to the depot is this: there are a lot of crops to be harvested from the fields.

I maniacally deselect other labors than item hauling for all dwarfs, so that they get on the job right now! There is also an option to forbid non-farmers to harvest plants from the farms.

After a while, all the items I have tagged are at the trade depot, and even Andhaira strolls leisurely to the depot to trade with the merchants.



The traders have arrived at the depot (that are all these random signs), and Andhaira is on his way to trade with them...



This is the trading screen. On the top you see the trader's reaction.. In this case it is favorable, so we can trade. The left pane shows the goods the traders have brought, and the right one is a list of our goods that we have brought to the depot.

The gold bars and the wood are indeed too heavy for the traders, so I've only tagged the crafts and some barrels with prepared food for trading. In return, I've chosen some cloth and rope.

Unfortunately, the traders have not brought an anvil with them. This is an item we really need, because without it we can do no metalworking at all, which means that we cannot create any weapons and tools. We will need to outfit a militia in the second year - defending a fortress with one axe and three copper picks is not something that I'm dying to do.

Another feature of these trading caravans is that you can order specific items from them. The probability that they will bring the item next year then increases, as does the price. However, to do this our fortress bureaucrat needs an office, to conduct the meeting with the merchant's envoy. Since we haven't built an office, the traders didn't even bother to send an envoy

Anyway, so much for the traders. Let's get on with our other duties.



The sleeping chambers have been carved out. Now we have to place beds in them, and designate them as the personal rooms of each dwarf.

Useless showing-off of the features of DF: you can choose which bed, that is, made from which kind of wood (there are a dozen or so) is placed where, and this influences the quality of the bedchamber

When the bed is installed we can designate bedrooms. The bed needs to be hauled from our storage room by a dwarf with furniture hauling enabled. This can take some time, depending on the other tasks of our dwarfs.



Enhancing the Fortress' defense with another two rows of stone traps. I've also designated some plants in front of the entrance to be gathered. Notice that some of the trees have become yellow, and then red. Slowly winter is coming, and the leaves are falling...



Digging out the gems which are lodged in the outside of the mountain. They occur in several places:



Here....



And here. Some bituminous coal is here as well. If we dig that out we can start making coke from it, and using the coke to smelt the gold we have found.



The traders are leaving! See you next year, dwarven brothers! We will get more traders after winter, but it will be a caravan from a different civilization.



The main dining hall has been carved out, so let's install some tables into it. As with beds, the tables need to be moved here from the storage room.



Defending the food storage room with stone-fall traps and doors. Actually, thieves bypass traps easily when they're not detected, so this is not really an useful defense (traps are more useful with full-scale attacks). But I'm.... *cough* roleplaying *puke* again.



These are the stockpile records and dwarf status of the Fortress. See those "?"? This means the number is not accurate. These numbers depend on our bookkeeper and his skill, and whether he has an office or not.



This screen shows the precision with which the stockpile stores are presented. As you can see, the bookkeeper does not have an office, which means that the numbers are very imprecise. So let's build him an office...



This will do. Andhaira will need at least a table and a chair in the office. The precision can then be increased by adding cabinets, coffers, statues and by smoothing or engraving the stone of the office.



We don't have any dwarf skilled in gem cutting, so I just enable the labors with Andhaira. He can then go cut the rough gems we have dug out of the mountain wall, since he hasn't anything better to do anyway. The jeweler's workshop hasn't been built yet: this has to be done by a dwarf with gem labors enabled.



At the now-finished jeweler's workshop, I order some of the white chalcedony's we have dug up to be cut.



I've enabled the "hunting" labor for Skyway the Ranger.. And he went on to hunt! Here he goes, accompanied by his trusty dogs.



And here he... WHOAH! He's chasing a GIANT EAGLE! On foot! With nothing but a copper axe! EPIC! Let's see if he survives... The Eagle seems to be fleeing, even though it has a good chance against our poorly equipped and unarmored dwarf...



WHAT THE! In the middle of the life-threatening chase, the dwarf simply drops on the ground and FALLS ASLEEP! (shown by the "Z" flickering on the dwarf) The Eagle is nowhere to be seen! His trusty dogs stand around him, confused!



OMG! IMMIGRANTS! They just pour out one after another at the top of the map, here you can see the first one, on his way to our Fortress' entrance...



Let's check out what skills they have... The easiest way to do this is to simply look at their profession in the unit list. The new dwarfs are of course the ones without Codex nicknames (which is the reason to give your starting squad custom names).

New dwarfs are a pain in the ass because we need to enable a lot of labors for many of them, otherwise they will just stand around doing nothing. New dwarfs arrive very specialized; they only have the labor tagged which they are skilled in, and if you don't need a milker, miller or gem setter, they will have nothing to do.

The immigrants just basically enter your fortress and assemble wherever you have designated a "meeting area"; and if you haven't, like me, they will just wander the halls.



Some beds have been installed in the sleeping quarters, and I have designated two more sleeping blocks to be dug out for the newly arrived dwarfs.



What will become the room is shown by the light "X"'s; this area can be enlarged or shrunk. After that, you can assign the room to one of the dwarfs.



The other chambers have been carved out, and I'm assigning bedrooms to the new dwarfs...



Huh? This room has two owners? Hmm, let's check the profile of one of those dwarfs...



Ah! The other dwarf is her husband, and they will be sharing this room together! Nice! Efficient!

Dwarf Fortress shows an radically egalitarian society when it comes to gender. However, when dwarfs get children, it is the female dwarf that suspends her duties to take care of the child. I hope this couple will breed, so I can show you this. It is quite nice



I've dug out a treasury to store gems and gold bars, some cut gems are already stored (I'm having boulderdash-dejavu now).



Protecting the treasury with stone-fall traps...



One of the new dwarfs went hunting, and now he is dragging a bloody mountain goat corpse through the hallways...



Some tables have been installed in the dining room.

NOTE: What I'm doing here is actually wrong. I am used to designate each table for the dwarfs separately, but this will mean that there will be overlapping "dining rooms". This boils down to the tables not being used by any dwarf... I haven't noticed this in my previous Fortresses!

I checked later, after playing, why my dwarfs aren't using the grand dining room on the DF forum (link):

So the correct way is to make the dining room an "activity zone" for meeting, and just putting some tables there. Another way is to use one table to designate a dining room, let is overlap the whole area, but not to assign that table to a specific dwarf (which is what I have been doing).



Anyway, this is how you can designate a dining room... Similar to making bedrooms. You can assign the room to a dwarf, but if there is an overlapping room just next to it (like I did in this game...), the table will not be used.



I'm enlarging the raw materials storeroom, to store coal here, which will be used in the smelter, one level below.



The stockpile settings have to be adjusted to only allow coal:



There! The dwarfs will now move the raw coal we have mined out to this pile.



Meanwhile, our Ranger Skyway (who has turned into a Herbalist because of all of this plant gathering I have had him do), is again hunting.. Here you can see his battle with two mountain goats! Skyway is not injured though, so there is little to worry about...



The bloody corpse of the goat is carried back to the fortress by the dwarf, to be butchered... The leaves on the trees are dark red, soon they will fall...



WINTER IS UPON US!

The stats of the fortress at this point:



The fortress at this point at the DF map archive, to be viewed interactively: http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-4294-declinebitch

@ Elwro: Thanks! (Jakub&Nina are still in Amsterdam)

@ Panthera: Thx! The DF map archive looks nifty

lollin at this.

good effort on this so far asp, hope you can keep it up for the tantrums, goblins & other real fun stuff to start

Couple of minor corrections...can't help myself ;p

You don't *need* an office to conduct a meeting with the liaison, your dwarf just get's an unhappy thought from conducting it in a non-office setting. (I didn't build my leader's office for a couple years but still got a liaison.) Making it rather odd that you didn't get a liaison at all...

The bookkeeper doesn't need elaborate decorations/etc. in order to be more detailed; all he needs is a table with a chair. (Mine is currently working in some random corner of my fort surrounded by stockpiles ;D Will be around eight years before I've built up to my eventual noble chambers ;p)

And children are definitely amusing...Female dwarves carrying a baby into battle and using'em as a living shield ;D

Looking forward to the next couple years of progress, as those are usually the most interesting imo...Between twenty and fifty dwarves is the sweet spot if you aren't doing a megaproject...

And I see you uploaded the map on the DFMA...I was wondering why that fort looked familiar ;p

Thanks, I didn't know that...! The traders really didn't send an envoy.. And neither did the Elven traders, which came in spring (I've played up until mid-spring or so....) Which is bad -- no anvil order

Yeah, I'm getting a bit worried though, no anvil, no weapons, and I would like to show some battles and not just close the front door

Try to produce some somewhat valuable items- I think that if you have a good GDP it will attract trader envoys and the like. Maybe you can cut some gems or something. Eventually once a dwarf wigs out and makes a semi-valuable artifact the problem should fix itself, I think.

Mechanisms are the way to go for quick cash.

Elves don't send an envoy (for trading at least). There is an elven diplomat, but it isn't related to trading.

No metal weapons for the second year isn't much of an issue...unless you happen to be in a fortress where you get ambushes starting with the second spring (Not terribly common, but it's happened to me). Even then, however, mass order/produce leather for basic armor/shields and get a mix of wrestlers and bone/wood crossbows. Not ideal, but you shouldn't have a problem with most early ambushes. I don't think I've ever had to close the front door...Even a modestly equipped, well skilled military can do well.

And yea, mechanisms are wonderful for mass production. Esp if you're sitting on obsidian or excess flux. I've never really bothered with gems when going for something of value.

Mechanisms have the added advantage that any race'll take'em. Don't have to worry about animal or plant materials somehow getting mixed in.

Edit: Oh, and for the battles, use the record feature and upload the movie to the DFMA ;D

Good hint for refuse stockpiles:

It is a good idea to have refuse rooms be sealed by two (!!) doors in a row, probably with 1 room of space between them.

The reason is the following: With only one door, the evil smell will be able to "escape" the room when the door is being opened by a dwarf. If there is a second door behind that one, this will not happen.

Congratulations! You have just discovered an airlock!
Well, it's indeed quite funny how realistic DF can get.

Indeed!

Update three
First and Second Years, Early Winter to Early Summer

Finally, update time! This is the first winter our fortress will go though... These are the fortress stats at the beginning of winter:



Okay, let's get cranking! Here's what I've been doing:



Elitz0r-izing the main dining room by smoothing the stone... Stone has to be smoothed, before it can be engraved. What I'm doing here is actually quite stupid, because to smooth such a large room takes a lot of time - the miners will be busy doing this, instead of attending to more pressing matters.



Anyway, I've ordered the masons to produce some cabinets, and they are ready. Let's place one in Andhaira's office... And while we're at it, let's check Andhaira's possesions...



Hmm, it is only a "meager office".. I order the office to be smoothed.. With a better office, the bureaucrat will be more precise in his stockpiling records.

Let's check up on Andhaira's psychological well-being...



All seems fine. Good!



These are some orders I gave at this point... Just useful stuff basically, but not things that will generate a lot of wealth.



Let's do some digging for minerals... Digging corridors separated by two spaces discloses the most stone with the least digging!



The raw materials stockpile is almost filled with coal! Which means we're ready to do a Very Imporant Thing -- make coke! Coke will be the fuel source for the metalsmith. Coke is made from bituminous coal, and to do it we need.... another fuel source :!: So we'll make charcoal from wood, in order to make coke from coal. We need just a little of charcoal to make coke, so it isn't like we have to chop down the whole forest, as would be the case if we'd fuel the metalforge directly with charcoal. Anyway, look it up on DwarfWiki... (no citations this time, sorry)



Here I'm ordering the wood burner to make some charcoal.

With the coke, we can smelt some of the gold ore into gold bars. Unfortunately somehow I didn't take a screenshot of the first gold bars we have melted, because I'm stupid

So even though the screens don't show it well, we have a nice gold-smelting operation going on.



Our winter harvest of Plump Helmets, and some dwarfs harvesting them... Ain't that a pretty sight!



It's time to create some recreational facilities for our staunt dwarfs! This room will be the sculpture garden... Where parties can be held!



The recreational room has been dug out, and I've placed some stone statues in it. A room with a statue in it can be designated to be a sculpture garden. Sculpture gardens are social meeting places - when you have designated one, all the wandering pets will gather there, as well as occasional dwarfs who are idling, on a break, etc.



Designating the sculpture garden!



Apart from the area being a sculpture garden, we can also create a social activity zone here. I don't exactly know what the difference is between a sculpture garden, and a social zone, and am too lazy at the moment to look it up on DwarfWiki. So this room will simply be both a social zone and a sculpture garden... Some mighty dwarven gangbanging will be going on here!



Designating a area to be dug out to build the kennels in... Some of our dogs have breeded, so there are a lot of stray dogs wandering around. We can put those dogs to use by training them at the kennels.



The social area is in use, and already swarmed by dogs, a mule and several dwarfs...! These party rooms are handy to get pesky stray animals out of the way, as they immediately go to a social area once it is designated

Andhaira is munching away on his dinner in his newly-built office... He choose not to use the common dining room... The kitchen, butcher and a dwarf working brewing a beverage in the still can also be seen here.



Enlarging the finished goods storage room, and mining more gold ore. Some gold bars can be seen in our treasury, next to the cut gems.



Spring has arrived! That's it, we have survived our first winter... Yeah, I know, it actually was not a challenge at all.



Whoah, the spring caravan arrives! This time it's the elves... And those pointy-eared treehuggers never bring anything useful!



Let's move some crap to the depot. The elves will probably only bring junk but what the hell.



Just look at this shit. Rope reed cloth. These hippies come with a caravan full of clothes! Oh well, we could expand our wardrobe a bit - the dwarfs have been walking around for almost a year in the same clothes, after all. Hey elves, how about some nice cut gems, crafts, barrels of splendid dwarven beer and delicious food in exchange for this CLOTH?



.... wha.... WHA.... WHAT THE... ?!?!?!!??! THEY'RE OFFENDED THAT WE'RE OFFERING THEM BARRELS MADE OF.... WOOD!!! Barrels filled with delicious prepared food, high quality dwarven beer, wine, and other delicatessen!.. Because it was "once a beautiful tree"!!!

SUCK MY DICK ELF! WE'LL CHOP DOWN THE WHOLE DAMN FOREST TO FUEL THE METAL FURNACE!

Needless to say, forget about trading, the treehuggers are packing their bags and leaving as fast as they can.



Fuck you too elves, never come back! (You can see their carts crossing one of our piles of stones here).



HOLY BLASTED HELL!!! A KOBOLD THIEF! :evil: (he is at the spot where the yellow "X" cursor is, since I wanted to see the thief's name) Fortunately he got spotted by this dwarf, just as we was entering our fortress! This Stubleelus guy will not get far...!

Note that neither our traps nor the doors stopped him. Actually, traps and doors offer only protection against invading armies. Thieves move by stealth, and can bypass them. They are only discovered by a dwarf or an animal, at which point they can be attacked or chased out. Here, the kobold fortunately was discovered before he could enter, and was quickly chased out. We will see more of these thieves in the future.



Meanwhile, the main dining room has been smoothed out. It took ages, but just look how beautiful it is... The next stage in eliteness will be to move out all the stones lying around in it, and engraving the walls...

Anyway, I've moved a lot of the tables out of the hall, since I've build eating halls elsewhere.. This room will serve a different purpose (perhaps as a mausoleum?)



Digging out some more sleeping quarters. We can expect new immigrants soon.



Yup, there they are.. Well, they cannot be seen on this screenshot, which I only took because of the message on the bottom. The migrants wander into the map from above.



WOW! Our community got large enough to support a sheriff That's some dope shit right there. The sheriff will capture and punish criminals!

(On this screenshot you can also see that none of the miners have gotten around the minerals excavation project, because they were busy smoothing the "dining hall"...)



This is the 'nobles' screen, where every bureaucrat of the fortress can be designated... You see, there is now a vacancy for the "sheriff"...



Thankfully, we don't have any criminals in the fortress yet... Note that the amount of cages and chains is listed at the top right of this screen



See how crowded it is in our party-room? Those are all the newly arrived immigrants, chillin' with a lot of animals in the sculpture garden. Also, I've ordered some of the dogs and puppies to be butchered, because there are just too darn many of them. Moreover, Andhaira's office has been smoothed and now looks pimpin' slick!



With a better office comes better work... We can increase Andhaira's precision in updating the stockpile records!

Since all of the new immigrants have arrived and have gathered in the fortress, let's check them out:





Mhmmm.. Well, it's hard to accommodate everyone in his or her profession - you hear that, you gem-setters, cheese makers, and threshers? - so I'll just undertake the mammoth task of micromanaging the labors of each one of these dwarfs. It's not made easier by the fact that usually the dwarfs only have the labor enabled which goes with their profession. This is one of the points in which the interface falls flat on its face - there is no way to efficiently and quickly manage dwarven labors and working orders. There is a third-party app for this though (Dwarf Foreman), but I don't use it.



YUCKKKK!!!!! A large miasma in the middle of the sculpture garden! That's what you get when a dozen animals scrounge around in one room for days on end...

Above our food storage I've build new communal dining rooms, in a much more efficient way than the bigass hall I've built and smoothed at first.



The area for the kennels has been carved out!



The kennels have been built, and we can order hunting dogs or war dogs to be trained! A dwarf with the appropriate skill will select the animals from the tame ones wandering around the fortress, bring them to the kennels and train them! I've also ordered that poor mule to be butchered, in order to free up the hallways a bit.



BLEERGH!!! Miasma's everywhere! In the kitchen, polluting our food... What could be the reason?



Here it is; I've forgotten to enlarge the refuse stockpile, and it is filled to the brim! All other carcasses and other shit was just lying around the fortress and rotting I quickly order this room to be enlarged...



The first animal to finish training at the kennels!



Foul miasma's in the storage room and the kitchen, a treasury filled with gold bars, and some room enlargements...

And yeah, IT IS SUMMER BABY!

The stats of the fortress at this point:



The fortress at this point on the DF map archives: http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-4581-declinebitch

Finally a new update. This thread is actually what motivated me to try the game out. Lots of fun, difficult interface though.

Sorry it took so long. Next one won't take a month, promise...

Heh, it's alright. It hasn't even been a month since my join date, I saw this LP thread (among other things) and decided to join.

Cool LP though, definitely useful that you explain a lot of it.

Jesus wept, this is a tremendous LP, asper. Amazing work. You've gotten me to stop shitting around and finally try this game.

Really sweet LP, almost makes me regret not touching DF until the next update.

Just a thing though, don't make a sculpture garden. Dwarves like partying so much that they end up doing almost nothing else - at least that's what I've noticed.



Also, for you guys playing this great game, DONATE TO THE TOAD FFS. He's living on our goodwill after all, and it would be nice for him to be able to afford luxuries like health insurance.