DF was the first community I actually commited to engage with. Always try to support as many channels that post about it reguarly and have been reading and enjoying the forum aswell. The community has its ups and downs but honestly one of the most heartwarming communities still left in gaming. Only place you can find dads with two boys ask for advice in creating his werebeast fortress and how to most efficiently surgically create werezebras. Such a blessed community, great video really glad you bring it to light
One thing I struggle with in Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress is that I am just completing tasks instead of actually watching a story. I start off with my first seven dwarves, decide I'm going to remember their names, then after I have a small base built a migrant wave hits and I have thirty dwarves and I'm carving out new rooms for them, increasing food production and creating new jobs, then the first threat arrives and I scramble an army together to fight it off and lose some dwarves. This has happened multiple times on runs I've done, the game seems like there isn't a story happening. Basically, maybe this sounds stupid, but I need a guide on how to play dwarf fortress and engage in the stories it is creating.
That is in itself, a story. - It's not a very personal story. But it is a story of a fortress that thrives in the face of adversity nonetheless. And I feel that is beautiful in its own way. But I love reading about infrastructure so I might just be built different.
you are certainly not alone, and i'm still trying to figure this out. I think a key here is to ironically forget about the basic needs of the dwarves and narrow your focus on the jobs themselves. For example if you need a hospital, look through your dwarves and see if you can find basic personality traits that would be fitting (or goofy) for a doctor. Take a look at your expedition leader and see if you can integrate their personality and traits into the fort itself. Maybe they are a compassionate leader with taste in art and history and you should focus on collecting books and making works of art. Maybe they are a complete scrooge and you want to purposefully not care if your dwarves are happy and make sure to pester your neighbors like pissing off some elves or flooding a kobold cave with water/lava cause you just felt like it. In essence you have to trick yourself into interacting with the dwarves by ignoring some of the actual gameplay. Maybe a dwarf is an over-eater so you decide to make them their own dining hall with a small stockpile of food and drink. Instead of making sure everyone has a specific bedroom and furniture you just make some basic collective spaces and focus instead on more niche aspects. If a fight breaks out, don't worry about whatever tasks you had and just give the combat logs a look, sometimes you'll witness some hilariously bizarre things like a dwarf repeatedly biting and latching on firmly or someone repeatedly beating their fist against a body part until it explodes. As you get familiar with it you can start to imagine some hilarious situations like a woodcutter trying to fell a giant like a tree while wardogs are latching onto its limbs like ornaments on a Christmas tree. You can then take that woodcutter and have him engrave some walls with a chance of that specific fight being catalogued. After a few hundred hours in this game the engagement and storytelling is only now starting to click more and more so dont feel left out!
When theres fighting, click on the notification and there should be a magnifying glass. Click it and it’ll tell you details of the battle and what exactly happened.
Descriptions of works of art tend to not just describe the materials, but the work itself, sometimes in good detail. Artifacts your dwarves make are especially notable for this
DF is a game, where the devs were concerned about the simulation first, and everything else second (or not at all). We didn't even have mouse control or graphics until lately. :D
nah. DF is a very bad "game", I would even argue it is literally unplayable. But it is a good inspiration and base for other actual good games. And I am saying it as a person who played DF for 10+ years.
@@dw_bh5009how is it unplayable? Like I couldn't get through the classic version with the weird UI and keyboard controls but the steam version I can build forts just fine. Still a lot I don't understand about the game but imo thats part of the fun
@@zwenkwiel816 try playing the game without spending 50% of your play-time on wiki (spoiler: you can't). And even then 95% of your play-time will be just constant fight with badly designed UI and menus (it got even worse with steam-version). Then try reaching 200-300 dwarfs in your fortress. And also try playing without at least 2 third-party tools (DFHack and DFTherapist), omg your gameplay will be a total misery. Then try to play one world for 3-5-7 different game sessions adventurer/fort. Then you will encounter 6 things: 1. Corrupted Saves 2. Crashes 3. 1 FPS because game is an unoptimised mess (for example, temperature checks on every severed part of every body that are splattered with elven blood, splattered with elven blood, splattered with elven blood, splattered with elven blood........). And noone CAN argue about "well it is understandeble because of simulation complexity and realism". No, it is not. DF is not that complex and realistic as everyone seems to be thinking - it is a myth, there are a lot of half-baked mechanics with VERY gamey and stupid obscure logic, and there are a lot of very badly / unrealisticly simulated things. And all of them are VERY unoptimised, there are a lot of things that can be heavily optimised, but they won't be. 4. There are no real depths in your worlds and no so-called "history" that everyone is talking about. It is just random stuff with no correlations. 5. The world and all other things that are praised as "top-notch simulation" and "deep mechanics" are actually all half-baked and empty, they only seem to be deeply simulated on a surface while in reality they are not. 2 examples that come to mind: - No creature in a game affected by low temperatures in any way, there are very small amount of situations where temperature at all affects anything (but your framerate will still be ruined by calculating it every frame) - You can't have more than 2 (or 3 don't remember) animal-types in your region at one time. Why? I don't know, they are just spawned that way, in 2-3 groups. Yeah by the way, they are SPAWNED (also goes for seiges and all other stuff) just like in minecraft. There are no such things as regions ecosystems and other things (even though everyone thinks there are ecosystem-simulation for some reason, but no, it is just randomly spawned mobs taken from a biome pool). And if you will look for them and see what are they usually doing you will see that even minecraft have a more complex AI-system for these mobs and their interactions between each-other. - And it goes for almost all other mechanics in the game. They are not "complex", just for some reason everyone think that they are complex, but you will check them for yourself you will find out that they aren't that complex / interesting. 6. There are a lot of bugs existing for 10 years straight. And to avoid them you specifically need to know what to do and what not to do with some already very obscured mechanics. And nowdays some of them just accepted as "features". So, if you play long enough - you will find out that IT IS unplayable and very half-baked. More like a demo version, not a full game. And you will find all its flaws by yourself if you try playing it for a long time. It is still a very great thing as a source of inspiration and a bunch of ideas put together, though. sorry for my english, btw, not my native language unfortunately.
@@dw_bh5009it’s not a bad game. I’m not sure where you’ve reached this conclusion considering you didn’t state any support. But anyways. DF is what you, as a player, make it. And so if it’s a bad game to you then maybe your mindset works better with linear games that include a clear objective and story line that every other player experiences. DF doesn’t give anyone the same experience. That’s just not the game it is. But that doesn’t result in being a bad game. Anyways. Care to explain?
These two devs and Concerned Ape from Stardew Valley are gifts to the gaming community. Endless updates and support, genuine care and passion, and not a paid micro transaction in sight.
Hoodie Hair is cool, in his regard he makes really entertaining, short videos. Would not call him the best DF UA-camr. Really Kruggsmash has such amazing Stories. Blindrl is the best covering news about DF and cool gameplay and livestreaming and also there are a few youtubers that make amazing tutorials and show great insights about the game.
I had this one dwarf that was insanely wreckless back when I was kinda new to the game. I had a little village at ground level surrounded mostly by a river and cliff. One way out was across a river bridge around the cliffs. I had locked door blocking it and archers to pick off anybody that got near. One time when some goblins attacked, one dwarf armed with only a shield insisted on climbing along edge of the cliff then the bridge, climbed up other side of the river and just started beating them senseless. He started by yanking one of their helmets off and beating them in the head with it. Moved to another one and just insta killed them with a shield bash to the face, next one he tried to rip their helmet off, failed and just started punching the goblin in the face till dead. I dont think he even got hit once that encounter... Archers picked the others off from the safety across the cliff with river at bottom. (his wreckless ways were the end of him soon after lol)
In my opinion the reason this game has so much magic is because it was made from sheer passion and love of the project, without corporate interference or market concerns. This is what drives us forward and sets the foundations of what gaming is, graphics be damned!
@@lrdhsy Cataclysm dark days ahead. Opensource game. Tons of mods. Over 4000 contributors to the code base. Multple updates per day. And it runs on potatoes just fine.
My fortress is ran by a mayor who is loved by the dwarves, and hss a near legendary warrior hammerer as her spouse How is she loved? She is a vampire. I decided to lock her up in a jailcell Her spouse keeps on leaving the cell door open and she gets to snack on kids who come to play with dice and spinners in her jail cell. In the same fortress a dude made a masterwork wardrobe out of his pet... Out of said pet's bones because he needed bones for the inspirated building And the mushroom grower guild just keeps on asking for more and more statues
I remember I tried fortress mode, but never got into it because of the difficulty. I still do love dwarf fortress cause of the history it makes. I wish Rimworld or other games used this history generator that dwarf fortress has but I haven't really found one. I love the dwarf, elves, humans and goblin are a thing in that universe with random demons and creatures that exist. It is probably just me or not, but I wish they modernized it a lot more.
This game is so much fun and every fortress can be different. One of my fortress started with a king right from the start and he wanted a royal throne room, royal bedroom, royal dinning room and a mausoleum right from the start 😅 what did he expected when the group arrived deep in the wilderness? 😂
Funny thing is I found your channel yesterday and I liked your videos about dwarf fortress and battle brothers so you gained one more subscriber today have a nice day 😁
Dont forget Baldurs gate 3. Larian Games studio gives us hope that the gaming industry isnt lost. There are still heroes out there who truly love to code some amazing masterpieces
My dwarfs created a marble statue, that described the coronation of an elven queen in year 1, Alala Summer Roar. I fought a big war with her civilisation in my previous fort. And when I abandon that fortress, I read about that Alala in legend mode. She loves to gambling with her subjects 🗿
The free version got a bunch of QoL upgrades after the stream release dropped including mouse control support. It's honestly not that difficult to play. But understanding the actual UI can be tricky. But also not really cause if you hover the mouse over an object it'll just tell you what it is. Fun game.
This game has been breaking down how I view traditional gameplay loops.. For a while I tended to run a fort like an amazon shipping warehouse, just give my dwarves tasks until they are so bogged down that they either stop working or I go afk and forget about them for a bit. This was boring and even if my fort had a lot of wealth and people I had no connection to it and didn't do anything cool with it. Now I run things like a small business, focusing on a few things at a time while I cater to the needs of the dwarves and give them jobs based off their talents and personality. Instead of spamming down workshops and making egregious work orders I'll tone things back to only make what I need and narrow my goals down to accomplish specific things. Also just by letting the world come to you without expectations helped me with some real life problems and perceptions as I tend to be over analytical and feel some despair in the lack of control in life. Dwarf Fortress helped me realize that a lack of control over circumstances and a world too complicated to fully understand is simply a fact of life and can be beautiful. The memories and adventures made along the way is the fruit of life itself, the beginnings and endings are simply just that. Yeah in words it makes sense on a basic level but this game helped me realize that on a deep enough level that its actually changed my whole perception on reality.
Everything said in this video is 100% true. I do think there will be even better emergent story games in the future though. I mean, look at Neofables. There is no contest to emergent story games than Dungeons and Dragons. As AI begins to fill the role of a dungeon master we will see unique adventures that we ourselves will go on or share with others. In the same way you have to look through the fuzz of DF, you have to look through the current AI driven experiences, but it's only as bad today as it will ever be and it's getting better all the time. DF is a pillar of gaming inspiration. It will unfortunately be left behind before it is widely truly appreciated. I do encourage everyone to go and play it now, as DF is getting better and better with the Steam version, and it's an experience you will never forget.
It's not that df is "undiscovered" it's that df is quite obtuse. It's a great story telling machine make no mistake but if you're not good at weaving the stories together and you're not good at coming up with projects you're not doing much in df. It also doesn't help that its offshoots, rimworld and minecraft are both much more reasonable experiences that do a better job accommodating the feedback of your actions to a player. They also have a certain progression meaning that if you're not a very creative mind you still have tangible objectives. I remember getting DF on steam and being completely disheartened that I couldn't make a magical weapons workshop. I just wanted to crank out high quality enchanted weapons and armor so I could attract adventurers and monster slayers. Lo and behold that's only feasible by very harsh rng where my dwarves need to have moods that specifically make them create weapons or armors. being entirely dependent on rng is absolutely not fun. It's the League of Legends effect. DotA is a much richer and complex system than League yet League being more accessible has made it a worldwide phenomenon whereas DotA is quite widespread but has a smaller audience by comparison.
@@lrdhsy It's honestly not just a reputation. It is hard to play. You need to assign everything properly and that's no easy task for a beginner and it's not fun as an advanced player. And like I said the visual feedback just isn't as interesting as in Rimworld or other colony sims. Back when the game came out on Steam every cc was on top of it. Until they watched their viewer count drop because watching DF isn't as engaging. DF is deep but also very obtuse. And like I said if you don't have a project in mind going in you're not going to make any use of the game's systems. A standard beginner colony is just not very interesting as you can just build everything and if you make a source of food and drink you're basically done. I'm reminded of my first colony that became a gem cutting outpost. I then went to another one and made a smithing workshop. I then made another with a library and had a necromancer join, did he do anything? no it's up to rng if he does anything. This level of depth isn't interesting to 90% of the players and expecting people to find fun in making outposts or large colonies to watch the in world time pass by only to then go check a log for interesting generated lore is, sorry to put it this way, like watching paint dry. It's great once you know what to do but like many people have already said on this platform it's not reasonable to ask of someone to bear with a game's systems for "100 hours" for a game to be "good". And make no mistake I play tons of very complicated games, Terra Invicta, X4 and Victoria 3 come to mind though I play many others but DF is probably the most "ant farm" of all the games, you are at the complete mercy of stuff happening when you're not engaged in a project. I like watching Hoodie Hair's videos but some of the projects require so much to "go right" that to me, and I feel many people, it would just feel like a massive waste of time. Sure DF is the papi and "the king" but if you're not Kruggsmash or creatively inclined then people will just want more reasonable experiences that give them more control. Rycon does top quality content stories for Rimworld and though RW's level of control is closer to a "doll house" it's definitely the more popular mainstream game within the colony sim genre.
@@ayuvir Numbers means nothing to define quality. Most players nowadays would not bypass first level of Contra 2. Back in the day, play a game, ANY game, needed you to LEARN a lot, and lost a lot; the process of learning was part of the thing, and it was always hard. Is the same for Dwarf Fortress. And you don't had need of be a great mind for it. As BlindIRL once said in one of his livestreams: "Dwarf Fortress isn't for super smart people. I'm not a super smart person, and I play Dwarf Fortress.", and I subscribe to this. Once you learn, Dwarf Fortress is easy to play, yet with the huge amount of variables and the absurdness of simulation. As for complexity: there's no need to know every details of the game. After almost ten years playing, only recently I had build my first soap and glass productions. As you said: if you have a home, you're done. DF is a State of The Art of a game (more a simulator than a game); it is what it is, and has no need to be loved by everyone, as not everyone wants to hear Mozart or read Dostoevsky: instead, people should be less lazy and better themselves to be capable of appreciate those masterpieces. Well, people just became lazy. Games like DF and Factorio are lights in the darkness. Dwarf Fortress, as for objectives, can be simple as Age of Empires. You create a world, you build your castle, you attack a neighbor and you start a war. The difference is that you can choose the place to build, the size, the form of your castle; you manage all the details of your production and you can twist the terrain to your favor. You can choose to attack or trade, or nothing. In Dwarf Fortress, you play as you live: there's a vast amount of objectives; you just don't have a sign pointing all of them.
@@madmax3655 Sure man I feel like you missed the point of my comments a little. If you'd read everything you would've noticed that I agree with you on most things you mention. However I didn't say that DF is only for smart people for one. Nor that DF is particularly hard. I also do appreciate DF for what it is. Where I disagree with what you're saying is that people "became lazy" and that they should "better themselves" in order to play and appreciate DF, and other games for that matter. Games are leisure, they are distractions meant to be fun, if you're not having a good time it's fine to just drop it and move on. I'll go back to my League/DotA comparison. I've been a fan of DotA for ever, I've always appreciated the mechanical depth and complexity of that game. But I never managed to get my friends to play that game since they like League and the few DotA matches they played they got completely wrecked. League brings the genre to the casual playerbase, it made many of the complex systems of DotA much more reasonable for someone to enjoy the genre. League is by extension the more popular of the two. I made a beast tamer colony in DF. Chose a forest biome and got to doing my thing. Would capture animals and train them. then sell them off. Had a fairly large colony with 100 dwarves and I wasn't having a good time. Building and getting the colony running isn't very fun to me. When the dwarves got to work doing their taming it was pretty uneventful and boring. Nothing major was happening. You'd figure I would have some cool artifacts but they never materialized, I believe I had a flute and that was it. Said flute did nothing, it was a display item. Eventually I made an arena and would toss in enemies and intruders. What I expected was that people would come visit my tavern around the arena and watch the show, I made a glass dome explicitly for this. People didn't and my colony wasn't far from human and dwarf settlements. I had good relations and good trade but there weren't many visitors. The halls were decorated and easy to access and the mine was safe with many beds, food and entertainment. When eventually there was a celebration, I missed it as I was planning a new set of rooms in the mine. And after looking for the reason of the celebration all I found was a bunch of lines saying people were carousing. I didn't have a good time, it felt like I was wasting my time waiting for something interesting to happen which I would only be able to enjoy through text. Rimworld provides a less expansive experience but the visual nature of the game as well as a lot of the qol makes for a more streamlined experience that gives me more satisfaction. I like watching my colony in RW grow, I like unlocking new tech and slowly upgrading my tools. Even when I'm waiting, there's likely going to be a raid or a new mission to keep me sharp. There's always engaging stuff happening merely by virtue of the game being a much more visual experience. It's not that colony sims are complicated and unpopular. There's a huge influx of upcoming colony sims as well as a fairly large audience for colony sims. The thing is that DF needs to be processed. Kruggsmash does this with his videos, he processes the events into engaging stories.
I have so many stories from dwarf fortress. The one that comes to mind right now is how i ended up with a sadistic elite guard. I had a quard unit who sat near the front entrance to guard against the untamed wilds, full steel kits. At some point, i started noticing that they stopped out right killing enemies. My first example was an ettin who came rampaging. My dwarfs liteeally hacked him to bits. First by the feet, then the legs, then the hands, and arms, then the ears and nose. It was absolutely savage. Several more monsters appeared in the future and each time they effortlessly butchered the beasts. They eventually started butchering the elves and goblins who came fighting in the same way.
Figured I'd share my favorite adventure mode find... I once came across a temple of dwarves and goblins who worshipped some death cult. As I went deeper I found entire rooms and halls full of dwarves and gobbos self harming to the point they were taking their own limbs off at times. So weird and creepy. And of course my only way through the mountains i needed to cross
Boatmurdered is pretty over-rated and starts to suck real hard after Stark Raving Mad's addition. If you want good Dwarf Fortress stories, go to any video about Dwarf Fortress. SsethTzeentach's review, IGN's Review, or any react video about either of those two. Potentially also videos about the history of the game. People will post their stories in the comments all the time and no one gives them any attention. They're amazing, if not a bit brief for the sake of brevity.
I think there's strong points to why DF isn't really as big as it is influential. Yeah, the game has good aspects to like about it, but there's reason to dislike the game that have been prominent throughout its lifetime - The UI, some of the building, etc - (Some) of the automation - The giant list of things that should be a little more streamlined - The lack of telling you the story of what's happening, instead relying on you as the player to look into it. (Note it's not to say there isn't depth, as DF basically treats NPCs like players, but it feels often this will still overlooked by most people, even though some people tell stories that are appreciated and read by many people, like in the steam reviews-- But as previously stated, influential? Yes, but not exactly popular) Although I rate DF a strong 8/10, I kind of imagine most people have a hard time getting into it even though they generally like the concept, maybe they would rate it 6 or 6 & a half, but the jank can really kill it for the typical newer generation of gamers. It really feels like a matter of patience too.
True, I know dwarf fortress isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s hard to learn and like I was saying in the vid it’s more like a tool than a game and some say the real players are the ones who watch the videos of it. But that being said, since the steam release, I think a lot more people can get into it (myself included)
Yeah my main issue with the game is the story part. Like I know it's there but I'm so overwhelmed by all the mechanics and new migrants arriving to even keep up with any potential story. Like few migrant waves in I can barely remember who's who XD
@@sketchiefello9002 I mean like the story you create by playing. like when I watch all these youtube videos they manage to tell great stories through gameplay and they can show all these cool relevant details in exactly the right menu's. meanwhile I'm too busy building bedrooms for all the migrants coming in, fixing various issues and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. like I'm sure there's some dwarves doing some epic stuff in my fortress I'm just too busy and overwhelmed to notice any of it. it's like watching ants on an ant hill XD
Perfect is a strong word. It has so many bad things. The whole interface is bad beyond all else . I feel sorry for all the fans who played it for years. And that's not hate. I like it even tho I only have 50 hrs. But man is the Interface bad. Especially if you want to check 150 dwarfs, their needs, skills , or even trying to make a militia based on real interest ...
Yeah the ui could do with some work but I haven’t found it getting in the way of me enjoying the game too much. Most of dwarfs have very similar needs and the outliers will be the unhappy ones so they’re usually easy to find
Dwarf Fortress was a great idea that was only truly realized by Rimworld. Dwarf Fortress itself has too many flaws. From ammo issues, alternative item nameing, uniform conflicts, crate inventory sorting, coveluted menue systems, I could complain for hours.
As comparable as those 2 games are, they are not the same at all. Rimworld is not a full simulation, it is just a well made and mostly polished colony game. It does those gameplay aspects better because there's nothing else outside of the player's field of view that needs to happen. If you get attacked in Rimworld, its because that was a scripted event even if there's still variables and randomness to it. If you get attacked in dwarf fortress, its because either a traveling visitor told somebody else about your riches and the game simulated actual events that led to that action, or if a beast wanders in its because that just happened to be where it was going. That beast has its own path and history and you can see where its been, who its killed, and possibly even its motives. When your dwarves worship a god you can find where that god/religion originated from and even see wars that happened related to it. Everything that happens is because the game simulated something that led to it, in this regard it does not share those similarities with anything any other game has achieved. And I'm not saying either of the 2 is better, they both have wildly different styles and accomplish things in entirely different ways.
Hot take: Most mid colony builder I've played. The devs are fantastic. The community is fun and welcoming. There's a _lot_ to do in the game, many options. I easily recommend the game to anyone who enjoys the genre. I just feel like it falls very short of it's direct counterpart, Rimworld, as a basic example. Style of the games put aside (everyone will have their own valid opinions on the looks of games)... It just doesn't feel like a 20 year in development project. At release it already felt dated, there doesn't really feel like there's direction in the game. There's literally no ending, you just play until you lose interest, or the colony dies. It's all just so... bland? For someone who doesn't tend to have much self motivation in sandbox games, I found myself playing very little, then quitting, because I was either bored, overwhelmed, somewhere in the middle, or just wanted to play something more driven. To go back to a past example, Rimworld strikes a great balance with this. The player has plenty of freedom to do what they want, they can pursue an ending, or endlessly build, but there's something for everyone. Same with Minecraft, even that has an ending, even if rather shallow. There's always a "Goal" you can go towards that you didn't come up with yourself. Dwarf Fortress to me feels exactly opposite of something like Baulders Gate 3. Where BG3 is a lovingly handcrafted experience where all the content in the game is well thought out, implemented, and has at least some depth to it, DF feels exactly like the saying "Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle", with no where to go. Any time I express my feelings on the game like this I tend to get crucified. But this _was_ one of the most anticipated games of it's genre that isn't even reaching half the peak player count of Rimworld, the game inspired directly by DF. So where are all the players? I just feel like many people hold the same or similar sentiments to myself. Like it's a good game. You wont really see poor reviews for it. It's just not... a _great_ game like so many people have hyped it up to be. Unfortunately, passion does not equal greatness, for if it did, this _would_ be the greatest game of all time.
I think dwarf fortress appeals to the type of player that enjoys coming up with their own stories and in a way is more like people watching than playing a game. You kind of have to make up a lot about them. So i completely get why you might not like the game as much because it does have a lot of jank. I did notice in adventure mode they’re working on a more story focussed start so maybe that’s something they’ll add to the fortress in the future. Thanks for commenting that though I find it really interesting to read everyone’s opinion on the game even if I don’t 100% agree.
I find it a bit ironic that you call a game that gives you a set of new randome "gods" every single new world that your dwarfs have the need to worship ...a " miracle"
@@lrdhsy It's missing adventure mod, which was by far one of the best features of old dwarf fortress. Without it, it feels like half the game it was IMHO. More than that, so much dev time has been spent working on the steam version and (now) getting the adventure mode working again, I feel like it's lost a great deal of momentum. No new additions like magic or alternate planes that Toady was planning to look forward to for so long- the game progress seems like it has just stagnated for years. Forums have almost emptied since I started playing too. Community seems spread to the winds. Still a great game, but it's not as great as it used too I think. Toady can turn it around maybe, but I think the steam version really hurt the game in many ways.
Oh hi
Ahah welcome, thanks for all the amazing tutorials :)
Blind in the comments?! ALL DWARVEN ALE IS ON ME TONIGHT, LADS
DF was the first community I actually commited to engage with. Always try to support as many channels that post about it reguarly and have been reading and enjoying the forum aswell. The community has its ups and downs but honestly one of the most heartwarming communities still left in gaming. Only place you can find dads with two boys ask for advice in creating his werebeast fortress and how to most efficiently surgically create werezebras. Such a blessed community, great video really glad you bring it to light
One thing I struggle with in Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress is that I am just completing tasks instead of actually watching a story. I start off with my first seven dwarves, decide I'm going to remember their names, then after I have a small base built a migrant wave hits and I have thirty dwarves and I'm carving out new rooms for them, increasing food production and creating new jobs, then the first threat arrives and I scramble an army together to fight it off and lose some dwarves. This has happened multiple times on runs I've done, the game seems like there isn't a story happening.
Basically, maybe this sounds stupid, but I need a guide on how to play dwarf fortress and engage in the stories it is creating.
That is in itself, a story. - It's not a very personal story. But it is a story of a fortress that thrives in the face of adversity nonetheless. And I feel that is beautiful in its own way.
But I love reading about infrastructure so I might just be built different.
you are certainly not alone, and i'm still trying to figure this out. I think a key here is to ironically forget about the basic needs of the dwarves and narrow your focus on the jobs themselves. For example if you need a hospital, look through your dwarves and see if you can find basic personality traits that would be fitting (or goofy) for a doctor. Take a look at your expedition leader and see if you can integrate their personality and traits into the fort itself. Maybe they are a compassionate leader with taste in art and history and you should focus on collecting books and making works of art. Maybe they are a complete scrooge and you want to purposefully not care if your dwarves are happy and make sure to pester your neighbors like pissing off some elves or flooding a kobold cave with water/lava cause you just felt like it. In essence you have to trick yourself into interacting with the dwarves by ignoring some of the actual gameplay. Maybe a dwarf is an over-eater so you decide to make them their own dining hall with a small stockpile of food and drink. Instead of making sure everyone has a specific bedroom and furniture you just make some basic collective spaces and focus instead on more niche aspects. If a fight breaks out, don't worry about whatever tasks you had and just give the combat logs a look, sometimes you'll witness some hilariously bizarre things like a dwarf repeatedly biting and latching on firmly or someone repeatedly beating their fist against a body part until it explodes. As you get familiar with it you can start to imagine some hilarious situations like a woodcutter trying to fell a giant like a tree while wardogs are latching onto its limbs like ornaments on a Christmas tree. You can then take that woodcutter and have him engrave some walls with a chance of that specific fight being catalogued. After a few hundred hours in this game the engagement and storytelling is only now starting to click more and more so dont feel left out!
When theres fighting, click on the notification and there should be a magnifying glass. Click it and it’ll tell you details of the battle and what exactly happened.
Descriptions of works of art tend to not just describe the materials, but the work itself, sometimes in good detail. Artifacts your dwarves make are especially notable for this
Gotta love to see Blind and Krugg shouted out.
Nookrium is a MUST RECCOMEND for anyone in this sphere
one thing that i think is crazy, is how everything is simulated in this game, down to the density of cactus's for example.
Yes hahaha I remember how baffled I was when I saw the exact amount of bees in the beehive
Good vid but you barely said anything about what makes it so great other than it’s so great.
DF is a game, where the devs were concerned about the simulation first, and everything else second (or not at all). We didn't even have mouse control or graphics until lately. :D
I wouldn't call myself an OG DF player, but I have to say mouse controls in this game still feels weird lol.
nah. DF is a very bad "game", I would even argue it is literally unplayable. But it is a good inspiration and base for other actual good games. And I am saying it as a person who played DF for 10+ years.
@@dw_bh5009how is it unplayable? Like I couldn't get through the classic version with the weird UI and keyboard controls but the steam version I can build forts just fine. Still a lot I don't understand about the game but imo thats part of the fun
@@zwenkwiel816 try playing the game without spending 50% of your play-time on wiki (spoiler: you can't). And even then 95% of your play-time will be just constant fight with badly designed UI and menus (it got even worse with steam-version). Then try reaching 200-300 dwarfs in your fortress. And also try playing without at least 2 third-party tools (DFHack and DFTherapist), omg your gameplay will be a total misery.
Then try to play one world for 3-5-7 different game sessions adventurer/fort. Then you will encounter 6 things:
1. Corrupted Saves
2. Crashes
3. 1 FPS because game is an unoptimised mess (for example, temperature checks on every severed part of every body that are splattered with elven blood, splattered with elven blood, splattered with elven blood, splattered with elven blood........). And noone CAN argue about "well it is understandeble because of simulation complexity and realism". No, it is not. DF is not that complex and realistic as everyone seems to be thinking - it is a myth, there are a lot of half-baked mechanics with VERY gamey and stupid obscure logic, and there are a lot of very badly / unrealisticly simulated things. And all of them are VERY unoptimised, there are a lot of things that can be heavily optimised, but they won't be.
4. There are no real depths in your worlds and no so-called "history" that everyone is talking about. It is just random stuff with no correlations.
5. The world and all other things that are praised as "top-notch simulation" and "deep mechanics" are actually all half-baked and empty, they only seem to be deeply simulated on a surface while in reality they are not. 2 examples that come to mind:
- No creature in a game affected by low temperatures in any way, there are very small amount of situations where temperature at all affects anything (but your framerate will still be ruined by calculating it every frame)
- You can't have more than 2 (or 3 don't remember) animal-types in your region at one time. Why? I don't know, they are just spawned that way, in 2-3 groups. Yeah by the way, they are SPAWNED (also goes for seiges and all other stuff) just like in minecraft. There are no such things as regions ecosystems and other things (even though everyone thinks there are ecosystem-simulation for some reason, but no, it is just randomly spawned mobs taken from a biome pool). And if you will look for them and see what are they usually doing you will see that even minecraft have a more complex AI-system for these mobs and their interactions between each-other.
- And it goes for almost all other mechanics in the game. They are not "complex", just for some reason everyone think that they are complex, but you will check them for yourself you will find out that they aren't that complex / interesting.
6. There are a lot of bugs existing for 10 years straight. And to avoid them you specifically need to know what to do and what not to do with some already very obscured mechanics. And nowdays some of them just accepted as "features".
So, if you play long enough -
you will find out that IT IS unplayable and very half-baked.
More like a demo version, not a full game. And you will find all its flaws by yourself if you try playing it for a long time. It is still a very great thing as a source of inspiration and a bunch of ideas put together, though.
sorry for my english, btw, not my native language unfortunately.
@@dw_bh5009it’s not a bad game. I’m not sure where you’ve reached this conclusion considering you didn’t state any support. But anyways. DF is what you, as a player, make it. And so if it’s a bad game to you then maybe your mindset works better with linear games that include a clear objective and story line that every other player experiences. DF doesn’t give anyone the same experience. That’s just not the game it is. But that doesn’t result in being a bad game. Anyways. Care to explain?
These two devs and Concerned Ape from Stardew Valley are gifts to the gaming community. Endless updates and support, genuine care and passion, and not a paid micro transaction in sight.
In my opinion hoodie hair is the best dwarf fortress UA-camr
I’ll check him out thanks for the suggestion
Hope yall heard of Kruggsmash, he draws EVERYTHING in his videos and his wife colors them. He's so cool.
Hoodie hair sucks 😭😅
Hoodie Hair is cool, in his regard he makes really entertaining, short videos. Would not call him the best DF UA-camr. Really Kruggsmash has such amazing Stories. Blindrl is the best covering news about DF and cool gameplay and livestreaming and also there are a few youtubers that make amazing tutorials and show great insights about the game.
@@boatoflol lol ik i’m just kidding
Great video! I've always wanted to get into Dwarf Fortress, it's always been sitting there, WAITING for me, so maybe I should give it a go!
Go for it it’s daunting but fun to learn and very much worth it.
You won't regret it!
I had this one dwarf that was insanely wreckless back when I was kinda new to the game. I had a little village at ground level surrounded mostly by a river and cliff. One way out was across a river bridge around the cliffs. I had locked door blocking it and archers to pick off anybody that got near. One time when some goblins attacked, one dwarf armed with only a shield insisted on climbing along edge of the cliff then the bridge, climbed up other side of the river and just started beating them senseless. He started by yanking one of their helmets off and beating them in the head with it. Moved to another one and just insta killed them with a shield bash to the face, next one he tried to rip their helmet off, failed and just started punching the goblin in the face till dead. I dont think he even got hit once that encounter... Archers picked the others off from the safety across the cliff with river at bottom. (his wreckless ways were the end of him soon after lol)
In my opinion the reason this game has so much magic is because it was made from sheer passion and love of the project, without corporate interference or market concerns. This is what drives us forward and sets the foundations of what gaming is, graphics be damned!
I am playing the game in its intended way for years now and really love the stories! Wonderful video!
@@dot1298 Watching videos of other peoples games 😉
I often refer to Dwarf Fortress as a "story telling medium"
Cdda is its only competition for me for my favorite complex game.
What’s cdda?
@@lrdhsy Cataclysm dark days ahead. Opensource game. Tons of mods. Over 4000 contributors to the code base. Multple updates per day. And it runs on potatoes just fine.
Ooo sounds good I’ll check it out
@@lrdhsy I like playing on experimental but you may want to start with the stable release
i think the music was a little too loud compared to your voice but this script is really good!
Sorry I love the soundtrack too much
My fortress is ran by a mayor who is loved by the dwarves, and hss a near legendary warrior hammerer as her spouse
How is she loved? She is a vampire.
I decided to lock her up in a jailcell
Her spouse keeps on leaving the cell door open and she gets to snack on kids who come to play with dice and spinners in her jail cell.
In the same fortress a dude made a masterwork wardrobe out of his pet... Out of said pet's bones because he needed bones for the inspirated building
And the mushroom grower guild just keeps on asking for more and more statues
This is why I love dwarf fortress
I remember I tried fortress mode, but never got into it because of the difficulty. I still do love dwarf fortress cause of the history it makes. I wish Rimworld or other games used this history generator that dwarf fortress has but I haven't really found one. I love the dwarf, elves, humans and goblin are a thing in that universe with random demons and creatures that exist. It is probably just me or not, but I wish they modernized it a lot more.
This game is so much fun and every fortress can be different. One of my fortress started with a king right from the start and he wanted a royal throne room, royal bedroom, royal dinning room and a mausoleum right from the start 😅 what did he expected when the group arrived deep in the wilderness? 😂
Funny thing is I found your channel yesterday and I liked your videos about dwarf fortress and battle brothers so you gained one more subscriber today have a nice day 😁
Thank you for subbing glad you enjoy the content :)
Dont forget Baldurs gate 3. Larian Games studio gives us hope that the gaming industry isnt lost. There are still heroes out there who truly love to code some amazing masterpieces
Definitely try dwarf fortress classic!
My dwarfs created a marble statue, that described the coronation of an elven queen in year 1, Alala Summer Roar. I fought a big war with her civilisation in my previous fort. And when I abandon that fortress, I read about that Alala in legend mode. She loves to gambling with her subjects 🗿
And now I want to play as adventurer and find that girl in my world, to meet her in one of her elven willages.
Twisted Logic is an veteran DF player who makes lots of experiments ingame: like stone cannon (using minecarts).
How tf do u do that
@@lrdhsymomentum from auto rails moves the cart at high velocity before stopping suddenly and launching the rocks at the poor tied up gobbo
The free version got a bunch of QoL upgrades after the stream release dropped including mouse control support. It's honestly not that difficult to play. But understanding the actual UI can be tricky. But also not really cause if you hover the mouse over an object it'll just tell you what it is. Fun game.
Thanks for your work, great video about a great game
Good video I recommend Hamlet Of Tyranny my favorite DF story.
You can make a world far longer than 500 years, with advanced world gen
Dwarf Fortress is more of a procedural fantasy world generator and simulation with gameplay elements tacked on than it is a traditional game.
This game has been breaking down how I view traditional gameplay loops.. For a while I tended to run a fort like an amazon shipping warehouse, just give my dwarves tasks until they are so bogged down that they either stop working or I go afk and forget about them for a bit. This was boring and even if my fort had a lot of wealth and people I had no connection to it and didn't do anything cool with it. Now I run things like a small business, focusing on a few things at a time while I cater to the needs of the dwarves and give them jobs based off their talents and personality. Instead of spamming down workshops and making egregious work orders I'll tone things back to only make what I need and narrow my goals down to accomplish specific things. Also just by letting the world come to you without expectations helped me with some real life problems and perceptions as I tend to be over analytical and feel some despair in the lack of control in life. Dwarf Fortress helped me realize that a lack of control over circumstances and a world too complicated to fully understand is simply a fact of life and can be beautiful. The memories and adventures made along the way is the fruit of life itself, the beginnings and endings are simply just that. Yeah in words it makes sense on a basic level but this game helped me realize that on a deep enough level that its actually changed my whole perception on reality.
Has anyone mentioned the Boat Murders stories? I friggin laughed so hard I herniated.
Everything said in this video is 100% true. I do think there will be even better emergent story games in the future though. I mean, look at Neofables. There is no contest to emergent story games than Dungeons and Dragons. As AI begins to fill the role of a dungeon master we will see unique adventures that we ourselves will go on or share with others. In the same way you have to look through the fuzz of DF, you have to look through the current AI driven experiences, but it's only as bad today as it will ever be and it's getting better all the time. DF is a pillar of gaming inspiration. It will unfortunately be left behind before it is widely truly appreciated. I do encourage everyone to go and play it now, as DF is getting better and better with the Steam version, and it's an experience you will never forget.
Very true. And I mean I think it’ll last the ages, it’s lasted 20 years and tarn and Zack are some of the most committed devs
Just here in the comments to shout out hoodyhair as best df story teller
It's not that df is "undiscovered" it's that df is quite obtuse. It's a great story telling machine make no mistake but if you're not good at weaving the stories together and you're not good at coming up with projects you're not doing much in df. It also doesn't help that its offshoots, rimworld and minecraft are both much more reasonable experiences that do a better job accommodating the feedback of your actions to a player. They also have a certain progression meaning that if you're not a very creative mind you still have tangible objectives.
I remember getting DF on steam and being completely disheartened that I couldn't make a magical weapons workshop. I just wanted to crank out high quality enchanted weapons and armor so I could attract adventurers and monster slayers. Lo and behold that's only feasible by very harsh rng where my dwarves need to have moods that specifically make them create weapons or armors. being entirely dependent on rng is absolutely not fun.
It's the League of Legends effect. DotA is a much richer and complex system than League yet League being more accessible has made it a worldwide phenomenon whereas DotA is quite widespread but has a smaller audience by comparison.
Yeah I guess it’s not undiscovered but I think a lot of people don’t even try learn it because of the reputation for being a ball ache to play
@@lrdhsy It's honestly not just a reputation. It is hard to play.
You need to assign everything properly and that's no easy task for a beginner and it's not fun as an advanced player.
And like I said the visual feedback just isn't as interesting as in Rimworld or other colony sims.
Back when the game came out on Steam every cc was on top of it. Until they watched their viewer count drop because watching DF isn't as engaging.
DF is deep but also very obtuse. And like I said if you don't have a project in mind going in you're not going to make any use of the game's systems. A standard beginner colony is just not very interesting as you can just build everything and if you make a source of food and drink you're basically done.
I'm reminded of my first colony that became a gem cutting outpost. I then went to another one and made a smithing workshop. I then made another with a library and had a necromancer join, did he do anything? no it's up to rng if he does anything.
This level of depth isn't interesting to 90% of the players and expecting people to find fun in making outposts or large colonies to watch the in world time pass by only to then go check a log for interesting generated lore is, sorry to put it this way, like watching paint dry.
It's great once you know what to do but like many people have already said on this platform it's not reasonable to ask of someone to bear with a game's systems for "100 hours" for a game to be "good".
And make no mistake I play tons of very complicated games, Terra Invicta, X4 and Victoria 3 come to mind though I play many others but DF is probably the most "ant farm" of all the games, you are at the complete mercy of stuff happening when you're not engaged in a project. I like watching Hoodie Hair's videos but some of the projects require so much to "go right" that to me, and I feel many people, it would just feel like a massive waste of time.
Sure DF is the papi and "the king" but if you're not Kruggsmash or creatively inclined then people will just want more reasonable experiences that give them more control. Rycon does top quality content stories for Rimworld and though RW's level of control is closer to a "doll house" it's definitely the more popular mainstream game within the colony sim genre.
Eh each to their own I guess, I find the gameplay fun but I can see why you wouldn’t
@@ayuvir Numbers means nothing to define quality. Most players nowadays would not bypass first level of Contra 2. Back in the day, play a game, ANY game, needed you to LEARN a lot, and lost a lot; the process of learning was part of the thing, and it was always hard. Is the same for Dwarf Fortress. And you don't had need of be a great mind for it. As BlindIRL once said in one of his livestreams: "Dwarf Fortress isn't for super smart people. I'm not a super smart person, and I play Dwarf Fortress.", and I subscribe to this. Once you learn, Dwarf Fortress is easy to play, yet with the huge amount of variables and the absurdness of simulation.
As for complexity: there's no need to know every details of the game. After almost ten years playing, only recently I had build my first soap and glass productions. As you said: if you have a home, you're done. DF is a State of The Art of a game (more a simulator than a game); it is what it is, and has no need to be loved by everyone, as not everyone wants to hear Mozart or read Dostoevsky: instead, people should be less lazy and better themselves to be capable of appreciate those masterpieces. Well, people just became lazy. Games like DF and Factorio are lights in the darkness.
Dwarf Fortress, as for objectives, can be simple as Age of Empires. You create a world, you build your castle, you attack a neighbor and you start a war. The difference is that you can choose the place to build, the size, the form of your castle; you manage all the details of your production and you can twist the terrain to your favor. You can choose to attack or trade, or nothing.
In Dwarf Fortress, you play as you live: there's a vast amount of objectives; you just don't have a sign pointing all of them.
@@madmax3655 Sure man I feel like you missed the point of my comments a little. If you'd read everything you would've noticed that I agree with you on most things you mention.
However I didn't say that DF is only for smart people for one. Nor that DF is particularly hard.
I also do appreciate DF for what it is.
Where I disagree with what you're saying is that people "became lazy" and that they should "better themselves" in order to play and appreciate DF, and other games for that matter.
Games are leisure, they are distractions meant to be fun, if you're not having a good time it's fine to just drop it and move on.
I'll go back to my League/DotA comparison. I've been a fan of DotA for ever, I've always appreciated the mechanical depth and complexity of that game. But I never managed to get my friends to play that game since they like League and the few DotA matches they played they got completely wrecked. League brings the genre to the casual playerbase, it made many of the complex systems of DotA much more reasonable for someone to enjoy the genre. League is by extension the more popular of the two.
I made a beast tamer colony in DF. Chose a forest biome and got to doing my thing. Would capture animals and train them. then sell them off. Had a fairly large colony with 100 dwarves and I wasn't having a good time. Building and getting the colony running isn't very fun to me. When the dwarves got to work doing their taming it was pretty uneventful and boring. Nothing major was happening. You'd figure I would have some cool artifacts but they never materialized, I believe I had a flute and that was it. Said flute did nothing, it was a display item.
Eventually I made an arena and would toss in enemies and intruders. What I expected was that people would come visit my tavern around the arena and watch the show, I made a glass dome explicitly for this. People didn't and my colony wasn't far from human and dwarf settlements. I had good relations and good trade but there weren't many visitors. The halls were decorated and easy to access and the mine was safe with many beds, food and entertainment. When eventually there was a celebration, I missed it as I was planning a new set of rooms in the mine. And after looking for the reason of the celebration all I found was a bunch of lines saying people were carousing. I didn't have a good time, it felt like I was wasting my time waiting for something interesting to happen which I would only be able to enjoy through text.
Rimworld provides a less expansive experience but the visual nature of the game as well as a lot of the qol makes for a more streamlined experience that gives me more satisfaction. I like watching my colony in RW grow, I like unlocking new tech and slowly upgrading my tools. Even when I'm waiting, there's likely going to be a raid or a new mission to keep me sharp. There's always engaging stuff happening merely by virtue of the game being a much more visual experience.
It's not that colony sims are complicated and unpopular. There's a huge influx of upcoming colony sims as well as a fairly large audience for colony sims. The thing is that DF needs to be processed. Kruggsmash does this with his videos, he processes the events into engaging stories.
Great video 👍👍
Thanks Oliver!
@@lrdhsy Likes and Views for the algorithm 😎😎
HELL YEAH
I have so many stories from dwarf fortress. The one that comes to mind right now is how i ended up with a sadistic elite guard.
I had a quard unit who sat near the front entrance to guard against the untamed wilds, full steel kits. At some point, i started noticing that they stopped out right killing enemies. My first example was an ettin who came rampaging. My dwarfs liteeally hacked him to bits. First by the feet, then the legs, then the hands, and arms, then the ears and nose. It was absolutely savage. Several more monsters appeared in the future and each time they effortlessly butchered the beasts. They eventually started butchering the elves and goblins who came fighting in the same way.
Figured I'd share my favorite adventure mode find... I once came across a temple of dwarves and goblins who worshipped some death cult. As I went deeper I found entire rooms and halls full of dwarves and gobbos self harming to the point they were taking their own limbs off at times. So weird and creepy. And of course my only way through the mountains i needed to cross
I'm a fan of crumpet sounds
Does the new version have all the mechanics and features of legacy?
Yeah I’m pretty sure it does but I could be wrong I’ve never played legacy
YOU ARE AWESOME! ❤❤❤
THANKS MIKE SO ARE YOU ❤️
@@lrdhsy 🥰
If you love stories about dwarf fortress games look up the story of boatmurdered
I’ll check it out
Boatmurdered is pretty over-rated and starts to suck real hard after Stark Raving Mad's addition. If you want good Dwarf Fortress stories, go to any video about Dwarf Fortress. SsethTzeentach's review, IGN's Review, or any react video about either of those two. Potentially also videos about the history of the game. People will post their stories in the comments all the time and no one gives them any attention. They're amazing, if not a bit brief for the sake of brevity.
meanwhile gta5 with 100 million lines of code
thank you
You're welcome
I tried the game, the Ui is a hug problem.
Btw some think DF was copied from RimWorld.
Does my head in
Normal
You copied by? Dwarf fortress came out first.
I think there's strong points to why DF isn't really as big as it is influential. Yeah, the game has good aspects to like about it, but there's reason to dislike the game that have been prominent throughout its lifetime
- The UI, some of the building, etc
- (Some) of the automation
- The giant list of things that should be a little more streamlined
- The lack of telling you the story of what's happening, instead relying on you as the player to look into it.
(Note it's not to say there isn't depth, as DF basically treats NPCs like players, but it feels often this will still overlooked by most people, even though some people tell stories that are appreciated and read by many people, like in the steam reviews-- But as previously stated, influential? Yes, but not exactly popular)
Although I rate DF a strong 8/10, I kind of imagine most people have a hard time getting into it even though they generally like the concept, maybe they would rate it 6 or 6 & a half, but the jank can really kill it for the typical newer generation of gamers. It really feels like a matter of patience too.
True, I know dwarf fortress isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s hard to learn and like I was saying in the vid it’s more like a tool than a game and some say the real players are the ones who watch the videos of it. But that being said, since the steam release, I think a lot more people can get into it (myself included)
I think an 8/10 is very fair considering all the jank and the learning curve
Yeah my main issue with the game is the story part. Like I know it's there but I'm so overwhelmed by all the mechanics and new migrants arriving to even keep up with any potential story. Like few migrant waves in I can barely remember who's who XD
@@zwenkwiel816 the lore is procedurally generated when the world is created
@@sketchiefello9002 I mean like the story you create by playing. like when I watch all these youtube videos they manage to tell great stories through gameplay and they can show all these cool relevant details in exactly the right menu's.
meanwhile I'm too busy building bedrooms for all the migrants coming in, fixing various issues and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. like I'm sure there's some dwarves doing some epic stuff in my fortress I'm just too busy and overwhelmed to notice any of it. it's like watching ants on an ant hill XD
Eh it’s only 700 kloc… it could be bigger.
Dorf.
5 to 500 years huh? I think that's a little off.
Is it?
Perfect is a strong word. It has so many bad things. The whole interface is bad beyond all else . I feel sorry for all the fans who played it for years.
And that's not hate. I like it even tho I only have 50 hrs. But man is the Interface bad. Especially if you want to check 150 dwarfs, their needs, skills , or even trying to make a militia based on real interest ...
Yeah the ui could do with some work but I haven’t found it getting in the way of me enjoying the game too much. Most of dwarfs have very similar needs and the outliers will be the unhappy ones so they’re usually easy to find
Dwarf fortress is a good gamebut it's too complex
I recommend play(keeper rl)
Was hoping something would be said
Dwarf Fortress was a great idea that was only truly realized by Rimworld.
Dwarf Fortress itself has too many flaws. From ammo issues, alternative item nameing, uniform conflicts, crate inventory sorting, coveluted menue systems, I could complain for hours.
As comparable as those 2 games are, they are not the same at all. Rimworld is not a full simulation, it is just a well made and mostly polished colony game. It does those gameplay aspects better because there's nothing else outside of the player's field of view that needs to happen. If you get attacked in Rimworld, its because that was a scripted event even if there's still variables and randomness to it. If you get attacked in dwarf fortress, its because either a traveling visitor told somebody else about your riches and the game simulated actual events that led to that action, or if a beast wanders in its because that just happened to be where it was going. That beast has its own path and history and you can see where its been, who its killed, and possibly even its motives. When your dwarves worship a god you can find where that god/religion originated from and even see wars that happened related to it. Everything that happens is because the game simulated something that led to it, in this regard it does not share those similarities with anything any other game has achieved.
And I'm not saying either of the 2 is better, they both have wildly different styles and accomplish things in entirely different ways.
@@BraveCat9927 All true. But all that simulation is of little worth in my eyes when not even the basic pieces of gameplay are functioning.
Hot take: Most mid colony builder I've played.
The devs are fantastic. The community is fun and welcoming. There's a _lot_ to do in the game, many options. I easily recommend the game to anyone who enjoys the genre.
I just feel like it falls very short of it's direct counterpart, Rimworld, as a basic example. Style of the games put aside (everyone will have their own valid opinions on the looks of games)...
It just doesn't feel like a 20 year in development project. At release it already felt dated, there doesn't really feel like there's direction in the game. There's literally no ending, you just play until you lose interest, or the colony dies. It's all just so... bland? For someone who doesn't tend to have much self motivation in sandbox games, I found myself playing very little, then quitting, because I was either bored, overwhelmed, somewhere in the middle, or just wanted to play something more driven. To go back to a past example, Rimworld strikes a great balance with this. The player has plenty of freedom to do what they want, they can pursue an ending, or endlessly build, but there's something for everyone. Same with Minecraft, even that has an ending, even if rather shallow. There's always a "Goal" you can go towards that you didn't come up with yourself.
Dwarf Fortress to me feels exactly opposite of something like Baulders Gate 3. Where BG3 is a lovingly handcrafted experience where all the content in the game is well thought out, implemented, and has at least some depth to it, DF feels exactly like the saying "Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle", with no where to go.
Any time I express my feelings on the game like this I tend to get crucified. But this _was_ one of the most anticipated games of it's genre that isn't even reaching half the peak player count of Rimworld, the game inspired directly by DF. So where are all the players? I just feel like many people hold the same or similar sentiments to myself.
Like it's a good game. You wont really see poor reviews for it. It's just not... a _great_ game like so many people have hyped it up to be. Unfortunately, passion does not equal greatness, for if it did, this _would_ be the greatest game of all time.
I think dwarf fortress appeals to the type of player that enjoys coming up with their own stories and in a way is more like people watching than playing a game. You kind of have to make up a lot about them. So i completely get why you might not like the game as much because it does have a lot of jank. I did notice in adventure mode they’re working on a more story focussed start so maybe that’s something they’ll add to the fortress in the future. Thanks for commenting that though I find it really interesting to read everyone’s opinion on the game even if I don’t 100% agree.
I find it a bit ironic that you call a game that gives you a set of new randome "gods" every single new world that your dwarfs have the need to worship ...a " miracle"
actually its buggy and it sucks cuz bugs
Dwarf Fortress was great, until it got put on steam
WHAT?!
Objectively wrong.
Wrong in all the ways
The UI was trash, it desperately needed a revamp of the UI
And I say it after playing for 2 years pre steam release
@@lrdhsy It's missing adventure mod, which was by far one of the best features of old dwarf fortress. Without it, it feels like half the game it was IMHO. More than that, so much dev time has been spent working on the steam version and (now) getting the adventure mode working again, I feel like it's lost a great deal of momentum. No new additions like magic or alternate planes that Toady was planning to look forward to for so long- the game progress seems like it has just stagnated for years. Forums have almost emptied since I started playing too. Community seems spread to the winds. Still a great game, but it's not as great as it used too I think. Toady can turn it around maybe, but I think the steam version really hurt the game in many ways.