Hope we manage to do a bit of justice to Dwarf Fortress - definitely one I'm still learning, but thanks to people in chat who are answering my questions as we go through the game. Mainly intended for total beginners, as there's still a lot I'm learning beyond the first two or so hours of gameplay in most forts - feel free to leave any tips for what to do and I'll read through them - thanks!
I recently started watching you, and I love your content. You made me, my mom, and my dad laugh. Much love AA, you make many days better for many people, myself included. God Bless 👍🏻
I'm streaming my tutorial fort playthrough whenever I play it. As for tips on what to do, I've got a bit of a list of things I intend to do in my game and I'm sure some of these things could be interesting for you, as well! - Go through your citizens and get to know them a bit. The personalities and traits and other stuff could be great info for your viewers, who may like certain dwarves and want to see them succeed or fail. (Looks like you're doing it a bit already!) - Try to think up engineering projects that will test your ability to manipulate the world. One of my thoughts is to take the sourced water brook in my map and eventually create an artificial waterfall or plumbing system to benefit the fort from it. Other options are traps, windmills and that sort of thing. Just don't be too ambitious and stick with stuff that has a low risk of killing dwarves. - Build for aesthetics. Making your fort look pretty for both the viewers and the dwarves is never a bad idea. - Make a good military force. It's kind of one of the default goals, but it's rare for most new players to get anywhere close to having a functional fighting force and having that could help with the next part. - Try to capture a dangerous beast. Imagine your fighting force knocks a hydra or something unconscious, then you pen it in somewhere and create a system to feed it and release it in an emergency. It's dumb and dangerous, but imagine the surprise of an invading force when a wall collapses and a giant ancient beast comes out and rips them apart. Can't think of much else at the moment, but hopefully some of these ideas help!
On planting just happening: dwarfs will tend to just pick up jobs they aren't assigned to if they have nothing to do. It's low priority, and I don't fully understand how it works, but they will sometimes just decide on their own to go do something. DF is meant to be less focused on micromanaging who does what unless you have a good reason (for example, if you want to make sure you get lots of masterwork crafts for trading). It doesn't punish you for having someone of low skill doing a job like rimworld does (no food poisoning, no failed crafting coding you resources). Skill does affect quality of things, and work speed, but starting off with completely unskilled dwarfs is not nearly as punishing as it would be in rimworld. On water: it is straight up fluid dynamics, although somewhat simplified. Tarn Adams has a PhD in math and has written some pretty intense simulation code in DF, with water being one of the heavier ones. Water spreads out, and even evaporates over time. Rain will collect in 'murky pools' (aka the small ponds you may find spread across the map), although Brooks, rivers, and aquifers are infinite sources. Tarn has gone on record saying some of the simulations in DF are more intense than what he wrote when doing aerospace engineering simulations. On stairways: once you mine out a cell, you can't tell them to mine out an up stairway, because there's no stone in that spot to mine any more. You can however construct new stone stairs with which to mine into the ceiling. Telling someone "dig some stairs going up" while pointing at an empty room doesn't make much sense. It's quite logical, but newer games tend to simplify things and just "do the right thing" instead. Dwarf fortress tales you at your word, it doesn't ever try to just "do the right thing" but instead tries to do exactly what you tell it.
DF is probably best described as "engaging." It has a fantastic gameplay loop that really grabs the human brain, but it's almost more like exercise then leisure.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth I can't say that's a bad thing considering not a lot of people that I run into have hobbies beyond playing games nowadays. Having the exercise of the mind is pretty healthy, even if it's not something you want every time you play a game.
@@emmyturner7385 | Rimworld requires a different kind of denial. You have to accept all the random bullshit they throw at you without explanation. Everything in DF happens for a reason because it's being powered by various understandable systems interacting, making failure always your own fault. Rimworld meanwhile will often just roll a dice and declare "hey dude here's a bunch of exploding rats! Why are they here? Cuz we said so!"
Probably my favourite Fort was called LoveMountain (I actually managed to get that in the randomised name generator), and it was a social experiment. 10 Dwarves were the soft-cap population (7 initial settlers, 3 migrants) with a hard cap of 200 - which I could only get to via multiple generations of children. The goal of the Fort was to create a multi-generational community, essentially. With the 10 starting Dwarves I managed to 'force' (via a bit of manipulation - locking two compatible Dwarves into a beautifully decorated room together for months on end so they formed a bond that often ended in romance since all they could do was "socialise"). Within a year I'd managed to create three couples who then got married - the remaining four were doomed to be single forever, unfortunately (I ended up with 6 male and 4 female dwarves, and one of the women was gay - yes, I used DFhack to check - and also one of the men was gay but the rest were straight). Within five years I had several children born into the Fort, and each Dwarf was treated with absolute luxury - big royal quality bedrooms, a magnificent dining room and tavern, a library where interested Dwarves were encouraged to write books (and they did - eventually) and read the many other books I bought from the traders. They were all also trained fighters, two months per year were dedicated purely to sparring and classes, and I had my Dwarves practice on the forges until they made wonderous quality armour and weapons. I gave the entire fort a two months holiday during the summer where they had zero duties to perform - just sing, dance, socialise and DRINK. The Fort slowly expanded to fit the new generation, never sprawling out like my usual Forts but rather being designed for a few dozen Dwarves at most to work during the months they weren't training or partying. Wealth in the fortress exploded with vast hoards of gold and silver inlaid with gemstones piled up in the treasury, and any food my Dwarves had a taste for would be imported if possible. A perfect life where every single Dwarf was some degree of happy, some in a state of constant bliss. Eventually after twenty years the younger generation matured and started to organically couple up too, and my initial goal was achieved - I had three definitive generations living here now. Main problem was convincing my Dwarves to discard their worn out clothing in exchange for master crafted silk garments - but after a lot of micromanagement I did that too. By year thirty the population had grown to almost 40 Dwarves. Artefacts were common - and due to my micromanagement of skills most of them were WEAPONS of all things. My little militia was equipped better then heroes of legend, and highly skilled to boot. Even if I was attacked I knew my fort would repel any invaders with ease. So I started digging downwards, deeper and deeper. I found *CANDY* and set up elaborate pumping systems to clear out lava to better mine it for ever better weapons and wealth. And then the first death happened. An accident. One of the Grandmothers of the fort fell into lava due to my own mistake and was gone forever - but her artefacts remained, burning forever under a sea of lava and completely out of reach or hope of ever being recovered, an eternal reminder of my failure. Her husband took it surprisingly well, an ancient Dwarf now reaching the end of his natural lifespan (about 130 years old!), merely being slightly sad for a while until his children, grand children and now great grandchildren comforted him (i.e. socialised in the tavern). I still have the vast family tree I created on paper in a notepad. It was getting very difficult keeping track of all of them, especially with who was related to who. I was rapidly approaching cousins marrying cousins as the only choice, with only three family branches to choose from - but I knew with selective arranged marriages I could keep it under control by forming distance branches that were only related three generations apart - which Dwarf Fortress doesn't record as being related at all (a limitation, but also a pretty realistic social commentary). I even managed to form a fourth branch with one of the now quite old single male original settlers marrying a much younger dwarf girl, though they only had two children compared to the massive eight or nine some of the other families were churning out. Eventually the Fort just... ended. Not because anything went wrong, but because a new version of the game came out with significant changes. So I retired the Fortress that had given me so much fulfilment and started fresh - though this time it was a more typical Fort. Love Mountain will always bring me a bit of joy when I remember it. A truly unique fort, a castle dug into the mountainside with essentially a family of royals living there.
That sounds so cool, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it. I will now strive to emulate Love Mountain to continue its legacy of luxury, and more importantly, love. Thank you for posting your story :)
Learning the visual language of the game is the easy part. what was actually hard is learning the ui and controls which the steam release makes significantly easier.
@@mercury5003 way back when I tried it. When it was a bunch of ascii symbols. It just gave me a headache trying to make sense of it. I couldn’t get above that hurtle.
There are a couple tile-packs for the "free" version, which replace the ASCII symbols with actual 2d graphics close to the steam-release. But I'm with Mercury, the most I'm looking for in the steam-release is the easy/lazy mouse controls :D
It's the new release! The developers have been working on this new version forever - as someone in the same boat as you (never would've learned the original), I'm pumped to actually get a a taste now.
"As we get further down we'll start to see, like you know um, metamorphic rocks and things like that. Very dense stuff. Amazing, right?" This line combined with the soft guitar music makes this sound like one of those old educational VHS tapes you'd see in school, I love it.
Once you break through a cavern layer, the fungus spores get released to all the exposed underground soil above them which automatically starts growing dwarven crops in case you lose all your plump helmets to restart your farm and there's no trade caravan that sells them.
@@ChargeQM ehh just found out myself... I received many monster slayers they delt with spiders and others weaker monsters. Then trolls started to pop up. I don't know what's down there.. but there were lots of bodies. And the clean up takes soo long
I'm watching the non-symmetrical stockpile area just not get fixed for about 20 minutes, rolling around on the floor vomiting & crying but he just won't fix it. Great stream so far!
For those wondering, Nookrium, as mentioned at the start of this video has a new Steam Version tutorial/beginner's guide up. ua-cam.com/video/zEt87BikHzA/v-deo.html
@@ambiguousamphibianvods quill18 has also started posting beginner videos for DF Steam Edition too. ua-cam.com/video/RPAC28yKsZY/v-deo.html He's historical had a lot of good DF content, so I expect a bunch of videos that will be beginner friendly.
Just makes me want Z-Levels in Rimworld too. I want to build the Glitterworld tower of my dreams. I love how you can have a single-floor tall hallway open up into a Cathedral of Stone in DF.
There was a mod a couple years ago that added "infinite" zlevels with simple buildable ladders that would generate a whole new rock layer under them. It greatly reduced the need to settle by rocking outcroppings as you could just mine down. Unfortunately that was the highest point of Rimworld's gameplay, and it's not returning :/
@@donaldpetersen2382 That mod I listed is from the ones I'm subbed to :D It works fine in 1.4, credit to Mlle for updating it. A little fiddly but then so was Z-levels beta. (Hey, it WAS named beta so we were warned!) And I enjoyed zlevels when it worked.
Digging straight down is actually perfectly fine if you start it off with a "U-Bend" (like in toilet plumbing) entrance with a floor hatch on the way back up. Basically you make a stairway first go down a few layers, then over one, then back up one (but not all the way to the surface again) as your fort entrance. Then make all your other expansions behind that entrance, including digging back up slightly to a soil layer for farming. This is because it allows you to make a floor hatch on the way back up, which can't be destroyed by building destroys, since they can't destroy things in a layer above them, only the same layer or if they're standing on the floor hatch. This works anywhere whenever you don't embark right next to a mountain, and it's a great way to get secure from the most things (including flyers) immediately and with few resources. Just make sure you get your wagon items under a roof and behind a door or hatch as soon as possible to prevent decay and wildlife stealing things.
"I think about the dark. I think about axes. I carry them with me. The axe is nothing without the hand, the hand is nothing without the mind. My mind is my axe. I am Dwarf enough to do that." - Reformer Dwarf in religious debate/combat with Traditionalist Dwarf about Dwarfishness, shortly before dodging an axe swing and headbutting him in the throat and breaking his trachea. - Thud, Terry Pratchett. (Reformer Dwarves are modern individuals, basically. Traditionalist dwarves are... well, very traditionalist...).
One very important tip for new expeditions. He mentioned that he ran out of mushroom seeds even though he is brewing them. When you brew mushrooms, you get the seeds, but if you cook mushrooms, you lose the seeds. So I recommend opening the kitchen section and unselecting "plump helmets" from the cook ingredient list.
@@xezzee I have no idea. Maybe it's such an old feature that he completely forgot lol. There are a lot of bug fixes and quality of life upgrades since the steam launch. I'm sure he will make this change eventually.
Hey, so I dunno if this comes up later in the video but the reason that your earlier fortress ran out of seeds is probably that your food stockpile filled up, making it impossible to harvest your plants, which then rot and die without giving off seeds. A simple solution to have a custom stockpile near each farm dedicated to the plant(s) that are farmed in that plot. Also a good idea to have another stockpile for the plant's seeds, so your planters don't have to run far to fetch them.
in case someone is in the mood for music Brothers of the mine rejoice! Swing, swing, swing with me Raise your pick and raise your voice! Sing, sing, sing with me Down and down into the deep Who knows what we'll find beneath? Diamonds, rubies, gold and more Hidden in the mountain store Born underground, suckled from a teat of stone Raised in the dark, the safety of our mountain home Skin made of iron, steel in our bones To dig and dig makes us free Come on brothers sing with me! I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole The sunlight will not reach this low Deep, deep in the mine Never seen the blue moon glow Dwarves won't fly so high Fill a glass and down some mead! Stuff your bellies at the feast! Stumble home and fall asleep Dreaming in our mountain keep Born underground, grown inside a rocky womb The earth is our cradle; the mountain shall become our tomb Face us on the battlefield; you will meet your doom We do not fear what lies beneath We can never dig too deep I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole Born underground, suckled from a teat of stone Raised in the dark, the safety of our mountain home Skin made of iron, steel in our bones To dig and dig makes us free Come on brothers sing with me! I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole...
The fortress weeps, the brothers cry For Enzer, slain beneath the sky. We hang our beards and bid goodbye, O mighty dwarven blade. Remember, brothers, with a smile, How Enzer slew the crocodile, And elves whose every breath is vile, That mighty dwarven blade. Now greenskins swarm like stinking flies - The death of Gemclod is their prize. The Axedwarf swung before their eyes, Her mighty dwarven blade. With Enzer gone we must forestall The goblins' plan to watch us fall We must protect our sturdy hall With mighty dwarven blades. That Enzer, when the battle clears, We might go out, we pioneers, To bury you in floods of tears, You mighty dwarven blade. Your weapon we shall not forget We dig your tomb with deep regret Your spirit will protect us yet O mighty dwarven blade.
Light Aquafiers are a good source of water that doesn't freeze over during winter, and you can fish from it. To dig through damp stone, just assign it to dig a stairway a second time in the same place and it'll go through with the task. Then dig around the stairway, and quickly build a wall all the way around the stairway to block the perpetual flooding.
Good luck, my friend. I've always had interest in this game since I heard about it like 5 years back. Never bought it because I don't want to immediately get frustrated to the point I don't want to learn it anymore. Looks like it could be an insanely good game by every measure.
@@mynameis8211 so you haven’t played it for 5 years because your afraid to learn it But you haven’t bought it to try to learn it because you’re afraid to buy and learn it Wut the fuck
The original game was so hard to learn the UI. I spent the whole time learning the keyboard and reading tool tips. Spent a few days like that and stopped. I’m glad they made this version. Now it’s a lot more accessible to more ppl!
The fricking dev who has slavishly devoted 20 years of his life to making this game is still learning about it lol. The "dead cats in taverns" story is the most DF thing ever, by far.
I learned to play Dwarf Fortress almost 12 years ago during a period of unemployment and almost terminal boredom. It's amazing seeing this game reach a whole new audience. Fluid Dynamics can cause incredible feats of Dwarven engineering and lead to lots of Fun.
Every time I hear dwarf fortress I think back to the Sseth review and have a good laugh. When I lived in Philadelphia there was a place where there didn't flavored beers and I had a blackberry one that was delicious it was almost dangerous
Just wait until you figure out screw pumps and water pressurization. There's nothing quite like hosing down a crowd of incoming goblins, knocking them off a bridge into the water reservoir that you're pumping from.
seriously the best game ever made. playing it badly isn't annoying, it's the point, and the old players absolutely love all of the fresh meat on the menu
I really enjoy the way you approach things. Your delivery and demeanor are so calm and ponderous and your vocabulary is very interesting and unique. I like to listen to your VODs like podcasts while doing things
I've loved Rimworld for a good few years now but always found Dwarf Fortress too inaccessible, so I'm really glad to see the full release that seems to be a little more accessible, and to see you playing it now so I can get a good look at it. Great stuff as always!
It's definitely not a full release, there will never be a full release, a full release is impossible, a full release is impossible because a full release would mean the brothers have simulated an entire universe down to the molecular level. It is a good release though. The best release
Its fun so far, though with an odd learning curve - the UI is different, the hotkeys are different, some of the mechanics are... different. Will take some adjusting to. But the game itself is wonderful. In a way I almost feel like I did myself a disservice getting so used to the original version - I keep finding myself tapping b, control-c, w and wondering what the hell I just did (rather then build a constructed wall).
Oh god, I was unaware of command changes, though I guess I should have suspected. Even when I'm not playing I can just envision, practically feel, pressing that order, or really any of them. Boy that's going to be some hard muscle memory to unlearn!
The seed issue: Work orders> Labor> Kitchen > Disabling the Cooking icon next to Plump Helmets Things made at a Still gives back seeds, but not Kitchens, so making Meals with your mushrooms can easily destroy your food production. Also seeds take up an entire tile unless you have bags which hold 100 seeds of one type each, and barrels can hold many bags.
what really helped me get a hold of how DF functions, is to understand it as a civ builder. it really is a lot like rimworld, except, instead of the focus being on an individual level between each one of your colonists, it takes on overbearing standpoint on the civ you run as a whole, and how efficient, effective, and happily you can run your newfound colony. anyways, time to watch the video! i love watching beginner perspective's on dwarf fortress because they ALWAYS teach me something new, and i'm more than glad to give you the +1 like. thank you
thank YOU for being such a fun watch, love dorf fort and i watch everyone i enjoy viewing when they play it, im glad i could be of help looking forward to other streams :)
So glad you're playing this finally. I tried on two separate occasions, couldn't get the hang of it but I'm super excited to watch you play! I had no idea Steam released it with a graphic update. I'll maybe give it a 3rd try!
It's probably worth waiting a few more years for the UI, bugs, and performance to get fixed. I know the veteran players will praise these issues as features, but in 2023 this release is backwards and convoluted. Definitely needs a lot more work.
First time player myself, and I get a strong space station 13 semblance from the game. Hell I have to pause so often to read what some of my dwarfs are doing, or wondering why there are 100 rotten salmon stacked ontop of eachother on the same tile. Its quite fun.
@@janefkrbtt Efforts to do so have been on going for the last decade. These have fallen apart on by one or are simply moving slowly through the process.
As a new person to Dwarf Fortress, literally found out about it when it released is that it reminds me of RimWorld and Caves of Qud if they had a baby. (Or however you say it.) I do know that Dwarf Fortress came out first though but y'know
There have been somewhat less advanced graphics packs for DF for years now, although installing and using them without the lazy newb pack was a little annoying.
All of the attributes you read off about the individual dwarf are actually parts of the simulation. They affect the way each individual resolves challenges, frustrations and conflicts. It's all transparent to the player and behind the scenes. To get a good sense of how deep the simulation is, look for the story about a patch day many years ago when players suddenly found vomit all over their fortresses and then discovered that all the cats were dead. I can't do it justice, so I won't spoil the story. I can see how it might look like fluff, but afaik everything in the character sheet for dwarfs (and elves, and humans, and animals, and demons and werebeasts, etc.) are all active parts of the sim.
This is awesome! I’m so glad you’re playing this game and I can’t wait to see what you do with adventure mode, whenever that comes out :) I love the challenges your characters have faced in other videos and wow, does an adventurer have challenges 😂
you can also learn a lot from Kruggsmash because he changes things up a lot and builds around map features and themes, builds around types of traps or challenges.
Tip for beginners: Cooking seed-bearing plants, such as plump helmets, destroys the seeds. Cooking seeds directly, also destroys the seeds. Disable cooking seeds. Disable cooking of seed-bearing plants. Otherwise you will run out of seeds.
Started a new fort on a woodland bordering a desert due to the abundance of gold and steel making materials. I haven't made it to winter or finished digging shelter when a herd of giant camels came through, killed all my animals and mutilated all of my dwarves. They're currently all bleeding out crawling to the beds with multiple broken bones. This game is FUN.
Most of my pain in this game is managing happiness and figuring out what to do next after the very basic setup. Only time I’ve had a fortress ending event is when weregecko’s started popping up
I'll say this because it was mentioned, whoever designed, coded, and set up the UI for crusader kings 3 were geniuses and they obviously played 4X and strategy games their entire career because it is THE most new and old player friendly UI literally being able to make pop up menus from pop up menus, no tabs or extra clicking required. I was never more confident in recommending friends play the game and one of them HATES 4X games, they put more hours into it than me after they got into it. Will forever recommend that game it's a masterpiece. Edit: his broker is a vampire no doubt. Good liar, and generally good at most social tasks. Make him stand under running water for a minute and see how he feels!
"Dwarf Fortress is such a square-y game, and I really do love squares." It's important to love yourself! Not finished your video yet, but excited to see a long form video from you; to see more of this game; and your thoughts on it. Haven't picked up the game yet, b/c I'm allowing friends the opportunity to get it for me for Christmas, but I'm vibrating with excitement for the day I get to play it.
I was mining out a mighty throne room in my game and I accidentally struck the edge of a river that was above me, causing my cavern to flood. In a rush to stop the chaos and seal the chamber, my pet cat was sealed inside and I had to watch it drown. 😭
So absolutely soothing. Suuuuper enjoyable. I essentially had it playing in the background so I technically only caught glimpses tabbing over occasionally, yet I’m totally thankful that you have the vod available. Great voice, and tone, and cadence. You seem to be a pro but I do hope you’ll take care with your voice all the same. I assume my throat would be on a gurney heading to the morgue if I talked this long!
I have a problem with "loser fort" dying is not losing - dying (at least interestingly) is playing the game. one might even say "dying is FUN!" i have a few hundred hours in the game (so still a newb). But so far this is everything i thought and AA playthrough would be. i have been waiting for the release, not just to get a prettied-up version of the game, but also just to watch AA play it. Time for coffee, AA, and DF!
Love Nookrium, he deserves so much more attention. I got into Ymir because of him and ClanHawkins’ vids on it, and I think Kenshi too. He’s also just an extremely genuine and sweet guy ❤
I had my fishing dwarf go fishing and forgot about him for 2 seasons, he only came into the fort for food, drink and sleep. When I scrolled to the right, I have just seen a graveyard of hundreds of turtles in various states of decay. It's safe to say he was enjoying him self.
Dealing with corpses, and preventing ghosts: Careful not to store or leave corpses underground or the rot creates a miasma cloud that drives everyone insane, they're fine to leave outside out of sight. When people die just make slabs at stoneworker workshop, then after those slabs are crafted use the stoneworker shop again to engrave a memorial on them with a specific name. Then place the memorial slab. Easier than dealing with coffins, because you can't always recover the body to bury.
So, after bouncing off the base version multiple times, the steam version finally gave me the opportunity to create my own little catastrophe masquerading as a fort. I created a world, selected a site far away from all hostile encampments, with only a human settlement nearby, with good resources and struck the earth. The first two years went without any major problems, and I started to feel pretty confident in my abilities, untill an alarm showed up "The vile forces of darkness have arrived" Huh? Did some Gobbos really make the two weeks trip just to remind me I really should have remembered to create some form of military? Okay, don't panic, get everyone inside and raise the drawbridge, I have enough food for a while, I'll be fine. Dig out a barracks, appoint a commander, produce a few weapons, train a couple of Dorfs up. Let's see what the Gobbos actually brought with them. Thats not a Goblin. That is an undead human Archer. And he brought quite a few friends... Oh my... Well, don't matter, the basic plan is still sound. Over the next few months my Crossbowdorfs train themself by taking potshots from behind my fortifications while the undead hordes entertained themselfs by chasing around the local wildlife untill most of the surface was covered in blood, vomit and body parts of various woodland critters. Then the dwarven caravan showed up and one of the attending axedwarves basically solo'd the army that had my whole 40-Dwarf fort hunkered up behind their defenses for the better part of a year. Yay, freedom! Ok, but seriously, where did those guys come from? Check the world map. The only settlement half a days march away is this human... tower... Oh my... That could be a problem. Back to my fort, produce bolts! Create defensive positions! Find out why my indoor farms aren't working! Rush out to the trade depot to buy seeds before the caravan leaves! Set training orders for my squad! Where is my squad? My squad is gone! It received orders to raid the necromancer tower and got themselves captured! Vile forces of darkness have arrived! ... Oh... My... Back into the burrow, you know the drill. And this time I even got all the livestock inside. But between the last siege and the missed harvests food is short, so lets eat some of the cows. The cows then file a formal complaint against their position in the food chain by having their skeletal remains headbutt my butcher and chief medical dorf into a nearby wall, breaking his spine and bruising the fat. It kind of detoriated from there, as all my remaining food was guarded by the butchered bovines, and my desperate attempt of just impressing everyone into the military and just rushing them went slightly less than stellar. While we did manage to put the cow skeletons back down, the smell of death and the screams of the dying filling the hallways around the kitchen/dining area put a bit of a damper on the mood of the survivors, which they tended to express first by refusing to prepare any more meals, and shortly thereafter by violently murdering their soon-to-be-ex-survivors. So, as soon as adventure mode is being released, I'll gonna take a look at this fort haunted by violent skeletons and pissed off ghosts some years down the road. My second fort sank into a swamp. I don't wanna talk about it. My third fort is actually doing pretty well, was just elevated to a barony and my military trains by bullying an etchin I keep in a hole in the basement, and I kinda can't wait to see what will go catastrophically wrong this time
You think dwarfs would only carve themselves? Oh you need to check out the descriptions of the carvings. You may see the occasional carving relating to your fort, but you'll also get everything from random musical instruments to abstract symbology to carvings relating to historical figures (which could be a goblin who overthrew a dwarven king and is now the king of your civilization, or a random dude distantly related to someone in your fort from ages ago who's only interesting act was being killed by a giant owl man or some shit). Dwarven art can get very wild.
I heard that if you lose you can replay on the same map either retrying your current set up or abandoning ur current failed civilization and then skipping into the future (making the failed one an ancient civilization) with a new civilization, is this true? Sounds like a really good idea for a play through where you keep populating the same world with a bunch of civilizations
Yes, the world goes on separately from your fort. You can even visit a retired or abandoned fort in Adventure Mode as your adventurer (coming to steam a bit later).
@@hatad321 adventure mode is one of the three gamemodes in dwarf fortress, the steam version is still being developed and it will be some time until it gets all the features The 3 gamemodes are Fortress mode: colony sim Adventure mode: Skyrim but it has a lot of depth and realistic and complex mechanics Legends mode: simulate the world, read about the things happening around the world
A lore for this game that is pretty loose and interesting would be so cool. I am still not even a player of this game, but wow.. I like watching it. I have a root cellar with a dirt floor and want to try this IRL.
Man, watching you plan that stockpile and enacting it out but not finishing its symmetry and THEN rubbing a bunch if it out was aaaaaaaauuuugggg!, it was AAAAARRRRRRFFFFFFF!
as much as the graphics make the game more immediately readable, having an actual UI is whats gonna make this so much more accessible and hopefully successful the original was only a few steps above having to manually enter the game code in yourself >
Hope we manage to do a bit of justice to Dwarf Fortress - definitely one I'm still learning, but thanks to people in chat who are answering my questions as we go through the game. Mainly intended for total beginners, as there's still a lot I'm learning beyond the first two or so hours of gameplay in most forts - feel free to leave any tips for what to do and I'll read through them - thanks!
I recently started watching you, and I love your content.
You made me, my mom, and my dad laugh.
Much love AA, you make many days better for many people, myself included.
God Bless
👍🏻
I have been playing this game for nearly 14 years and I'm very happy to see you find your way back to it.
This game kinda reminds me of Cataclysm Darkest Days Ahead… speaking of which have you ever considered giving it another go?
I'm streaming my tutorial fort playthrough whenever I play it. As for tips on what to do, I've got a bit of a list of things I intend to do in my game and I'm sure some of these things could be interesting for you, as well!
- Go through your citizens and get to know them a bit. The personalities and traits and other stuff could be great info for your viewers, who may like certain dwarves and want to see them succeed or fail. (Looks like you're doing it a bit already!)
- Try to think up engineering projects that will test your ability to manipulate the world. One of my thoughts is to take the sourced water brook in my map and eventually create an artificial waterfall or plumbing system to benefit the fort from it. Other options are traps, windmills and that sort of thing. Just don't be too ambitious and stick with stuff that has a low risk of killing dwarves.
- Build for aesthetics. Making your fort look pretty for both the viewers and the dwarves is never a bad idea.
- Make a good military force. It's kind of one of the default goals, but it's rare for most new players to get anywhere close to having a functional fighting force and having that could help with the next part.
- Try to capture a dangerous beast. Imagine your fighting force knocks a hydra or something unconscious, then you pen it in somewhere and create a system to feed it and release it in an emergency. It's dumb and dangerous, but imagine the surprise of an invading force when a wall collapses and a giant ancient beast comes out and rips them apart.
Can't think of much else at the moment, but hopefully some of these ideas help!
On planting just happening: dwarfs will tend to just pick up jobs they aren't assigned to if they have nothing to do. It's low priority, and I don't fully understand how it works, but they will sometimes just decide on their own to go do something.
DF is meant to be less focused on micromanaging who does what unless you have a good reason (for example, if you want to make sure you get lots of masterwork crafts for trading).
It doesn't punish you for having someone of low skill doing a job like rimworld does (no food poisoning, no failed crafting coding you resources). Skill does affect quality of things, and work speed, but starting off with completely unskilled dwarfs is not nearly as punishing as it would be in rimworld.
On water: it is straight up fluid dynamics, although somewhat simplified. Tarn Adams has a PhD in math and has written some pretty intense simulation code in DF, with water being one of the heavier ones. Water spreads out, and even evaporates over time. Rain will collect in 'murky pools' (aka the small ponds you may find spread across the map), although Brooks, rivers, and aquifers are infinite sources. Tarn has gone on record saying some of the simulations in DF are more intense than what he wrote when doing aerospace engineering simulations.
On stairways: once you mine out a cell, you can't tell them to mine out an up stairway, because there's no stone in that spot to mine any more. You can however construct new stone stairs with which to mine into the ceiling. Telling someone "dig some stairs going up" while pointing at an empty room doesn't make much sense. It's quite logical, but newer games tend to simplify things and just "do the right thing" instead. Dwarf fortress tales you at your word, it doesn't ever try to just "do the right thing" but instead tries to do exactly what you tell it.
You've seen "ate without a table" but have you heard about "not enough chairs?" The new hotness
Don't forget 'ate at crowded table', who knew eating was so involved!
@@EvileDik as someone with a horrible family and social anxiety that one I get. I get a positive mood buff for ate without a table tho.
"Drank my booze straight from the barrel without a mug", welp I guess it's time for carnage then
All the rage at my fort
@@1thevm1 I guess I'll just die
“I’m not having fun, I just have a brain that enjoys this” best way to describe dwarf fortress
At least RimWorld doesn't require denial to play longterm.
DF is probably best described as "engaging." It has a fantastic gameplay loop that really grabs the human brain, but it's almost more like exercise then leisure.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth I can't say that's a bad thing considering not a lot of people that I run into have hobbies beyond playing games nowadays. Having the exercise of the mind is pretty healthy, even if it's not something you want every time you play a game.
@@emmyturner7385 I can't play Rimworld longterm now matter how I lie to myself. And that's the difference.
@@emmyturner7385 | Rimworld requires a different kind of denial. You have to accept all the random bullshit they throw at you without explanation. Everything in DF happens for a reason because it's being powered by various understandable systems interacting, making failure always your own fault. Rimworld meanwhile will often just roll a dice and declare "hey dude here's a bunch of exploding rats! Why are they here? Cuz we said so!"
Probably my favourite Fort was called LoveMountain (I actually managed to get that in the randomised name generator), and it was a social experiment.
10 Dwarves were the soft-cap population (7 initial settlers, 3 migrants) with a hard cap of 200 - which I could only get to via multiple generations of children.
The goal of the Fort was to create a multi-generational community, essentially. With the 10 starting Dwarves I managed to 'force' (via a bit of manipulation - locking two compatible Dwarves into a beautifully decorated room together for months on end so they formed a bond that often ended in romance since all they could do was "socialise"). Within a year I'd managed to create three couples who then got married - the remaining four were doomed to be single forever, unfortunately (I ended up with 6 male and 4 female dwarves, and one of the women was gay - yes, I used DFhack to check - and also one of the men was gay but the rest were straight).
Within five years I had several children born into the Fort, and each Dwarf was treated with absolute luxury - big royal quality bedrooms, a magnificent dining room and tavern, a library where interested Dwarves were encouraged to write books (and they did - eventually) and read the many other books I bought from the traders. They were all also trained fighters, two months per year were dedicated purely to sparring and classes, and I had my Dwarves practice on the forges until they made wonderous quality armour and weapons. I gave the entire fort a two months holiday during the summer where they had zero duties to perform - just sing, dance, socialise and DRINK.
The Fort slowly expanded to fit the new generation, never sprawling out like my usual Forts but rather being designed for a few dozen Dwarves at most to work during the months they weren't training or partying. Wealth in the fortress exploded with vast hoards of gold and silver inlaid with gemstones piled up in the treasury, and any food my Dwarves had a taste for would be imported if possible. A perfect life where every single Dwarf was some degree of happy, some in a state of constant bliss.
Eventually after twenty years the younger generation matured and started to organically couple up too, and my initial goal was achieved - I had three definitive generations living here now. Main problem was convincing my Dwarves to discard their worn out clothing in exchange for master crafted silk garments - but after a lot of micromanagement I did that too.
By year thirty the population had grown to almost 40 Dwarves. Artefacts were common - and due to my micromanagement of skills most of them were WEAPONS of all things. My little militia was equipped better then heroes of legend, and highly skilled to boot. Even if I was attacked I knew my fort would repel any invaders with ease.
So I started digging downwards, deeper and deeper. I found *CANDY* and set up elaborate pumping systems to clear out lava to better mine it for ever better weapons and wealth.
And then the first death happened. An accident. One of the Grandmothers of the fort fell into lava due to my own mistake and was gone forever - but her artefacts remained, burning forever under a sea of lava and completely out of reach or hope of ever being recovered, an eternal reminder of my failure. Her husband took it surprisingly well, an ancient Dwarf now reaching the end of his natural lifespan (about 130 years old!), merely being slightly sad for a while until his children, grand children and now great grandchildren comforted him (i.e. socialised in the tavern).
I still have the vast family tree I created on paper in a notepad. It was getting very difficult keeping track of all of them, especially with who was related to who. I was rapidly approaching cousins marrying cousins as the only choice, with only three family branches to choose from - but I knew with selective arranged marriages I could keep it under control by forming distance branches that were only related three generations apart - which Dwarf Fortress doesn't record as being related at all (a limitation, but also a pretty realistic social commentary). I even managed to form a fourth branch with one of the now quite old single male original settlers marrying a much younger dwarf girl, though they only had two children compared to the massive eight or nine some of the other families were churning out.
Eventually the Fort just... ended. Not because anything went wrong, but because a new version of the game came out with significant changes. So I retired the Fortress that had given me so much fulfilment and started fresh - though this time it was a more typical Fort.
Love Mountain will always bring me a bit of joy when I remember it. A truly unique fort, a castle dug into the mountainside with essentially a family of royals living there.
bruh what the fuck
That sounds so cool, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it. I will now strive to emulate Love Mountain to continue its legacy of luxury, and more importantly, love. Thank you for posting your story :)
rip lava grandma lol - reddit-worthy post
Sounds like someone hit Great Dwarven King status. :)
Bro you made a utopia for those 40 dwarves
I didn’t know dwarf fortress could be this graphically detailed! Always wanted to get into it. But it was like trying to read the matrix code.
Learning the visual language of the game is the easy part. what was actually hard is learning the ui and controls which the steam release makes significantly easier.
That was always the reason I avoided it. This release finally sold me, and the reasons for it just make it even more compelling.
@@mercury5003 way back when I tried it. When it was a bunch of ascii symbols. It just gave me a headache trying to make sense of it. I couldn’t get above that hurtle.
There are a couple tile-packs for the "free" version, which replace the ASCII symbols with actual 2d graphics close to the steam-release. But I'm with Mercury, the most I'm looking for in the steam-release is the easy/lazy mouse controls :D
It's the new release! The developers have been working on this new version forever - as someone in the same boat as you (never would've learned the original), I'm pumped to actually get a a taste now.
"As we get further down we'll start to see, like you know um, metamorphic rocks and things like that. Very dense stuff. Amazing, right?"
This line combined with the soft guitar music makes this sound like one of those old educational VHS tapes you'd see in school, I love it.
Once you break through a cavern layer, the fungus spores get released to all the exposed underground soil above them which automatically starts growing dwarven crops in case you lose all your plump helmets to restart your farm and there's no trade caravan that sells them.
Thats awesome, great way to help out players while making sense realistically for a full simulation game
@@Sivanot you trade off safety for free food. There's many beasties in the caverns that can easily wreck an unprepared player.
@@ChargeQM ehh just found out myself... I received many monster slayers they delt with spiders and others weaker monsters. Then trolls started to pop up. I don't know what's down there.. but there were lots of bodies. And the clean up takes soo long
i cant play dwarf fortress with out thinking about lord of the rings when gimli makes the "And they called it a mine" quote i love that scene
"A MIIIIIINE"
In France it's even more of a meme lol. Search "une mine" if you Want to hear the french version.
I'm watching the non-symmetrical stockpile area just not get fixed for about 20 minutes, rolling around on the floor vomiting & crying but he just won't fix it. Great stream so far!
For those wondering, Nookrium, as mentioned at the start of this video has a new Steam Version tutorial/beginner's guide up. ua-cam.com/video/zEt87BikHzA/v-deo.html
Yes! He and Das are both back at it!
@@ambiguousamphibianvods quill18 has also started posting beginner videos for DF Steam Edition too. ua-cam.com/video/RPAC28yKsZY/v-deo.html
He's historical had a lot of good DF content, so I expect a bunch of videos that will be beginner friendly.
I wonder if Captain Duck will also make a return to the tutorial scene
Just makes me want Z-Levels in Rimworld too. I want to build the Glitterworld tower of my dreams. I love how you can have a single-floor tall hallway open up into a Cathedral of Stone in DF.
There was a mod a couple years ago that added "infinite" zlevels with simple buildable ladders that would generate a whole new rock layer under them. It greatly reduced the need to settle by rocking outcroppings as you could just mine down. Unfortunately that was the highest point of Rimworld's gameplay, and it's not returning :/
@@donaldpetersen2382 DeepRim (Continued) does what you seem to mean. Could that be the mod you mean?
@@archapmangcmg possibly I don't remember the name anymore. If it's updated I highly recommend trying any z level mod u can get working.
@@donaldpetersen2382 That mod I listed is from the ones I'm subbed to :D
It works fine in 1.4, credit to Mlle for updating it.
A little fiddly but then so was Z-levels beta. (Hey, it WAS named beta so we were warned!) And I enjoyed zlevels when it worked.
@@archapmangcmg Strike the Earth!
Digging straight down is actually perfectly fine if you start it off with a "U-Bend" (like in toilet plumbing) entrance with a floor hatch on the way back up. Basically you make a stairway first go down a few layers, then over one, then back up one (but not all the way to the surface again) as your fort entrance. Then make all your other expansions behind that entrance, including digging back up slightly to a soil layer for farming.
This is because it allows you to make a floor hatch on the way back up, which can't be destroyed by building destroys, since they can't destroy things in a layer above them, only the same layer or if they're standing on the floor hatch. This works anywhere whenever you don't embark right next to a mountain, and it's a great way to get secure from the most things (including flyers) immediately and with few resources. Just make sure you get your wagon items under a roof and behind a door or hatch as soon as possible to prevent decay and wildlife stealing things.
genius dude!
Your delivery keeps me coming back again and again. "Now we're flying with a Raven. What a wonderful game this is." D E D
@51:30 Being a dwarf isn't about the beard on your face, it's about the beard on your heart
"I think about the dark. I think about axes. I carry them with me. The axe is nothing without the hand, the hand is nothing without the mind. My mind is my axe. I am Dwarf enough to do that." - Reformer Dwarf in religious debate/combat with Traditionalist Dwarf about Dwarfishness, shortly before dodging an axe swing and headbutting him in the throat and breaking his trachea. - Thud, Terry Pratchett.
(Reformer Dwarves are modern individuals, basically. Traditionalist dwarves are... well, very traditionalist...).
One very important tip for new expeditions. He mentioned that he ran out of mushroom seeds even though he is brewing them. When you brew mushrooms, you get the seeds, but if you cook mushrooms, you lose the seeds. So I recommend opening the kitchen section and unselecting "plump helmets" from the cook ingredient list.
Why is it on by default? 🤔 seems like annoying to set it off every time you start the game.
@@xezzee I have no idea. Maybe it's such an old feature that he completely forgot lol.
There are a lot of bug fixes and quality of life upgrades since the steam launch. I'm sure he will make this change eventually.
Hey, so I dunno if this comes up later in the video but the reason that your earlier fortress ran out of seeds is probably that your food stockpile filled up, making it impossible to harvest your plants, which then rot and die without giving off seeds. A simple solution to have a custom stockpile near each farm dedicated to the plant(s) that are farmed in that plot. Also a good idea to have another stockpile for the plant's seeds, so your planters don't have to run far to fetch them.
Of all the people I was hyped to see Dwarf Fortress videos from, you are definitely at the top! Thank you for this blessed video!!!
blessed, yes thats it lmao
My tip, wider passageways! Takes more fluid to flood, better visibility of the traffic situation, and fighting in a 1x1 hallway can be a bit rough.
Yes please. Those giant staircases leading to tiny hallways are bugging me.
Doesn't it also slow them to try to pass one another in 1 wide spaces?
@@Nevir202 yes, they climb over each other
in case someone is in the mood for music
Brothers of the mine rejoice!
Swing, swing, swing with me
Raise your pick and raise your voice!
Sing, sing, sing with me
Down and down into the deep
Who knows what we'll find beneath?
Diamonds, rubies, gold and more
Hidden in the mountain store
Born underground, suckled from a teat of stone
Raised in the dark, the safety of our mountain home
Skin made of iron, steel in our bones
To dig and dig makes us free
Come on brothers sing with me!
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole
The sunlight will not reach this low
Deep, deep in the mine
Never seen the blue moon glow
Dwarves won't fly so high
Fill a glass and down some mead!
Stuff your bellies at the feast!
Stumble home and fall asleep
Dreaming in our mountain keep
Born underground, grown inside a rocky womb
The earth is our cradle; the mountain shall become our tomb
Face us on the battlefield; you will meet your doom
We do not fear what lies beneath
We can never dig too deep
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole
Born underground, suckled from a teat of stone
Raised in the dark, the safety of our mountain home
Skin made of iron, steel in our bones
To dig and dig makes us free
Come on brothers sing with me!
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole
I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole
Diggy, diggy hole, digging a hole...
The fortress weeps, the brothers cry
For Enzer, slain beneath the sky.
We hang our beards and bid goodbye,
O mighty dwarven blade.
Remember, brothers, with a smile,
How Enzer slew the crocodile,
And elves whose every breath is vile,
That mighty dwarven blade.
Now greenskins swarm like stinking flies -
The death of Gemclod is their prize.
The Axedwarf swung before their eyes,
Her mighty dwarven blade.
With Enzer gone we must forestall
The goblins' plan to watch us fall
We must protect our sturdy hall
With mighty dwarven blades.
That Enzer, when the battle clears,
We might go out, we pioneers,
To bury you in floods of tears,
You mighty dwarven blade.
Your weapon we shall not forget
We dig your tomb with deep regret
Your spirit will protect us yet
O mighty dwarven blade.
Light Aquafiers are a good source of water that doesn't freeze over during winter, and you can fish from it. To dig through damp stone, just assign it to dig a stairway a second time in the same place and it'll go through with the task. Then dig around the stairway, and quickly build a wall all the way around the stairway to block the perpetual flooding.
"All our offices look the same because we work in cubicles. We work for The Man." My brother in Abbathor, *YOU* are The Man.
One glaring benefit of dwarf fortress over rim world is digging into the mountain is required and not punished like the bugs in RimWorld.
So glad you got this released. Going to be watching you play through whilst I try and learn alongside!
Good luck, my friend.
I've always had interest in this game since I heard about it like 5 years back.
Never bought it because I don't want to immediately get frustrated to the point I don't want to learn it anymore.
Looks like it could be an insanely good game by every measure.
@@mynameis8211 so you haven’t played it for 5 years because your afraid to learn it
But you haven’t bought it to try to learn it because you’re afraid to buy and learn it
Wut the fuck
Oh god, this is it gentlemen. The very essence of content, the very heart of the valley. Ambi + Dwarf Fortress is the way.
The original game was so hard to learn the UI. I spent the whole time learning the keyboard and reading tool tips. Spent a few days like that and stopped. I’m glad they made this version. Now it’s a lot more accessible to more ppl!
"I have the guys in the chat who've played about 2000 hours and they still learning about the game" is the most DF sentence i've ever heard.
The fricking dev who has slavishly devoted 20 years of his life to making this game is still learning about it lol. The "dead cats in taverns" story is the most DF thing ever, by far.
I learned to play Dwarf Fortress almost 12 years ago during a period of unemployment and almost terminal boredom. It's amazing seeing this game reach a whole new audience.
Fluid Dynamics can cause incredible feats of Dwarven engineering and lead to lots of Fun.
Every time I hear dwarf fortress I think back to the Sseth review and have a good laugh. When I lived in Philadelphia there was a place where there didn't flavored beers and I had a blackberry one that was delicious it was almost dangerous
Just wait until you figure out screw pumps and water pressurization. There's nothing quite like hosing down a crowd of incoming goblins, knocking them off a bridge into the water reservoir that you're pumping from.
seriously the best game ever made. playing it badly isn't annoying, it's the point, and the old players absolutely love all of the fresh meat on the menu
Are you planning on doing some of your scripted story form videos with this game? That would be gold.
“It appears if you do not have a door, you cannot place a door. Very exciting, Quite amazing.”
Oh, fuck yes!
After 18 years in development, hopefully it will have been worth the wait.
I really enjoy the way you approach things. Your delivery and demeanor are so calm and ponderous and your vocabulary is very interesting and unique. I like to listen to your VODs like podcasts while doing things
Thanks again for the raid man.
A privilege to join you :)
I've loved Rimworld for a good few years now but always found Dwarf Fortress too inaccessible, so I'm really glad to see the full release that seems to be a little more accessible, and to see you playing it now so I can get a good look at it. Great stuff as always!
It's definitely not a full release, there will never be a full release, a full release is impossible, a full release is impossible because a full release would mean the brothers have simulated an entire universe down to the molecular level.
It is a good release though. The best release
Its fun so far, though with an odd learning curve - the UI is different, the hotkeys are different, some of the mechanics are... different. Will take some adjusting to.
But the game itself is wonderful. In a way I almost feel like I did myself a disservice getting so used to the original version - I keep finding myself tapping b, control-c, w and wondering what the hell I just did (rather then build a constructed wall).
Oh god, I was unaware of command changes, though I guess I should have suspected. Even when I'm not playing I can just envision, practically feel, pressing that order, or really any of them. Boy that's going to be some hard muscle memory to unlearn!
Tutorial dropped me at a place that had weird sludge raining from the sky. But the trees kept it off *most* of the ground xD
I feel like DF is a goldmine for philosophical ramblings.
The seed issue:
Work orders> Labor> Kitchen > Disabling the Cooking icon next to Plump Helmets
Things made at a Still gives back seeds, but not Kitchens, so making Meals with your mushrooms can easily destroy your food production.
Also seeds take up an entire tile unless you have bags which hold 100 seeds of one type each, and barrels can hold many bags.
what really helped me get a hold of how DF functions, is to understand it as a civ builder.
it really is a lot like rimworld, except, instead of the focus being on an individual level between each one of your colonists, it takes on overbearing standpoint on the civ you run as a whole, and how efficient, effective, and happily you can run your newfound colony.
anyways, time to watch the video! i love watching beginner perspective's on dwarf fortress because they ALWAYS teach me something new, and i'm more than glad to give you the +1 like. thank you
thank YOU for being such a fun watch, love dorf fort and i watch everyone i enjoy viewing when they play it, im glad i could be of help looking forward to other streams :)
So glad you're playing this finally. I tried on two separate occasions, couldn't get the hang of it but I'm super excited to watch you play!
I had no idea Steam released it with a graphic update. I'll maybe give it a 3rd try!
Its a lot kore than a graphics update thankfully, theres a small tutorial and much improved controls. The community is also helpful as ever
It's probably worth waiting a few more years for the UI, bugs, and performance to get fixed. I know the veteran players will praise these issues as features, but in 2023 this release is backwards and convoluted. Definitely needs a lot more work.
First time player myself, and I get a strong space station 13 semblance from the game. Hell I have to pause so often to read what some of my dwarfs are doing, or wondering why there are 100 rotten salmon stacked ontop of eachother on the same tile. Its quite fun.
if someone could translate ss13 mechanics into a game like this it would be placed in the hall of Fame alongside DF and rimworld
@@janefkrbtt Efforts to do so have been on going for the last decade. These have fallen apart on by one or are simply moving slowly through the process.
@@hunterg24 I raise my arms and grant my strength. to these talented autists, trying their hardest to translate a game made by other talented autists.
SS13 has been big on the Bay12 forums for ages. Makes sense that DF lovers would love SS13 as well
Don't undesignated temporarily, change it to blueprint mode. Less hustle and you won't forget what you planned.
I love how AA is so afraid to offend people. I know he was a teacher in his past life and it's so cute.
I was so excited to hear that this game dropped. I was overjoyed to see that you posted a VOD of your playtime
you have to specify plump helmets as something that is not cooked, from the kitchen tab. cooking them destroys the seeds
As a new person to Dwarf Fortress, literally found out about it when it released is that it reminds me of RimWorld and Caves of Qud if they had a baby. (Or however you say it.) I do know that Dwarf Fortress came out first though but y'know
welp, it's pretty clear which game is getting the next labor of love award
The controls and UI being simplified has lowered the barrier for entry by about 70% 😂
These two guys are so dedicated to their game. This game is so intricate. Imagine each NPC being AI Agent powered! Next level.
I don't think I've watched any VODs with you but this is something that I needed to see.
Yay! Can't wait for the full series. I was overwhelmed by the ascii graphics cause it was hard to discern between different things
There have been somewhat less advanced graphics packs for DF for years now, although installing and using them without the lazy newb pack was a little annoying.
Perfect, just in time for bed! Thanks AA
All of the attributes you read off about the individual dwarf are actually parts of the simulation. They affect the way each individual resolves challenges, frustrations and conflicts. It's all transparent to the player and behind the scenes.
To get a good sense of how deep the simulation is, look for the story about a patch day many years ago when players suddenly found vomit all over their fortresses and then discovered that all the cats were dead. I can't do it justice, so I won't spoil the story.
I can see how it might look like fluff, but afaik everything in the character sheet for dwarfs (and elves, and humans, and animals, and demons and werebeasts, etc.) are all active parts of the sim.
Watching this as my job is just shoving me into a corner except for every 2 hours when I need to grab water samples. . . This will keep me busy
This is awesome! I’m so glad you’re playing this game and I can’t wait to see what you do with adventure mode, whenever that comes out :) I love the challenges your characters have faced in other videos and wow, does an adventurer have challenges 😂
Having a fort that goes horribly wrong is like the main appeal of dwarf fortress
you can also learn a lot from Kruggsmash because he changes things up a lot and builds around map features and themes, builds around types of traps or challenges.
Tip for beginners: Cooking seed-bearing plants, such as plump helmets, destroys the seeds. Cooking seeds directly, also destroys the seeds.
Disable cooking seeds. Disable cooking of seed-bearing plants. Otherwise you will run out of seeds.
"Don't be cowardly, confidently make mistakes!"
such an underrated quote
Started a new fort on a woodland bordering a desert due to the abundance of gold and steel making materials. I haven't made it to winter or finished digging shelter when a herd of giant camels came through, killed all my animals and mutilated all of my dwarves. They're currently all bleeding out crawling to the beds with multiple broken bones. This game is FUN.
7:42 Simon Honeydew Yogscast shoutout xD
1:09:33 "Oh good, our doors are binging in our doors." xD
Most of my pain in this game is managing happiness and figuring out what to do next after the very basic setup.
Only time I’ve had a fortress ending event is when weregecko’s started popping up
7:41 - I love that crew. Would be a great crossover
I'll say this because it was mentioned, whoever designed, coded, and set up the UI for crusader kings 3 were geniuses and they obviously played 4X and strategy games their entire career because it is THE most new and old player friendly UI literally being able to make pop up menus from pop up menus, no tabs or extra clicking required. I was never more confident in recommending friends play the game and one of them HATES 4X games, they put more hours into it than me after they got into it. Will forever recommend that game it's a masterpiece.
Edit: his broker is a vampire no doubt. Good liar, and generally good at most social tasks. Make him stand under running water for a minute and see how he feels!
"Dwarf Fortress is such a square-y game, and I really do love squares."
It's important to love yourself!
Not finished your video yet, but excited to see a long form video from you; to see more of this game; and your thoughts on it.
Haven't picked up the game yet, b/c I'm allowing friends the opportunity to get it for me for Christmas, but I'm vibrating with excitement for the day I get to play it.
I was mining out a mighty throne room in my game and I accidentally struck the edge of a river that was above me, causing my cavern to flood. In a rush to stop the chaos and seal the chamber, my pet cat was sealed inside and I had to watch it drown. 😭
So absolutely soothing. Suuuuper enjoyable. I essentially had it playing in the background so I technically only caught glimpses tabbing over occasionally, yet I’m totally thankful that you have the vod available. Great voice, and tone, and cadence. You seem to be a pro but I do hope you’ll take care with your voice all the same. I assume my throat would be on a gurney heading to the morgue if I talked this long!
An over 2 hour video of dwarf fortress? *TIS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!*
Sweet thanks for drawing attention to the game. I've always liked this game and wish it had more updates
I have a problem with "loser fort" dying is not losing - dying (at least interestingly) is playing the game. one might even say "dying is FUN!"
i have a few hundred hours in the game (so still a newb). But so far this is everything i thought and AA playthrough would be. i have been waiting for the release, not just to get a prettied-up version of the game, but also just to watch AA play it. Time for coffee, AA, and DF!
I love watch people learn dwarf fortress for the first time. It's not a learning curve, it's a learning cliff
To solve your plump helmet issue, go to the Labor menu, the you can click on Kitchen. Forbid plump helmet and seed from being cooked.
Love Nookrium, he deserves so much more attention. I got into Ymir because of him and ClanHawkins’ vids on it, and I think Kenshi too. He’s also just an extremely genuine and sweet guy ❤
I wasn't prepared for the SOI reference in the description lol!
I had my fishing dwarf go fishing and forgot about him for 2 seasons, he only came into the fort for food, drink and sleep.
When I scrolled to the right, I have just seen a graveyard of hundreds of turtles in various states of decay. It's safe to say he was enjoying him self.
Dealing with corpses, and preventing ghosts:
Careful not to store or leave corpses underground or the rot creates a miasma cloud that drives everyone insane, they're fine to leave outside out of sight. When people die just make slabs at stoneworker workshop, then after those slabs are crafted use the stoneworker shop again to engrave a memorial on them with a specific name. Then place the memorial slab. Easier than dealing with coffins, because you can't always recover the body to bury.
Quick tip, switching to your secondary is always faster than reloading
That you for that quote in the description. Pay tribute to da legend
also the wikipedia is an important source of not only gameplay mechanic explanations, but also ideas. lots of things to do to play the game
So, after bouncing off the base version multiple times, the steam version finally gave me the opportunity to create my own little catastrophe masquerading as a fort.
I created a world, selected a site far away from all hostile encampments, with only a human settlement nearby, with good resources and struck the earth. The first two years went without any major problems, and I started to feel pretty confident in my abilities, untill an alarm showed up
"The vile forces of darkness have arrived"
Huh? Did some Gobbos really make the two weeks trip just to remind me I really should have remembered to create some form of military? Okay, don't panic, get everyone inside and raise the drawbridge, I have enough food for a while, I'll be fine.
Dig out a barracks, appoint a commander, produce a few weapons, train a couple of Dorfs up. Let's see what the Gobbos actually brought with them.
Thats not a Goblin. That is an undead human Archer. And he brought quite a few friends... Oh my...
Well, don't matter, the basic plan is still sound. Over the next few months my Crossbowdorfs train themself by taking potshots from behind my fortifications while the undead hordes entertained themselfs by chasing around the local wildlife untill most of the surface was covered in blood, vomit and body parts of various woodland critters. Then the dwarven caravan showed up and one of the attending axedwarves basically solo'd the army that had my whole 40-Dwarf fort hunkered up behind their defenses for the better part of a year.
Yay, freedom!
Ok, but seriously, where did those guys come from? Check the world map. The only settlement half a days march away is this human... tower... Oh my...
That could be a problem. Back to my fort, produce bolts! Create defensive positions! Find out why my indoor farms aren't working! Rush out to the trade depot to buy seeds before the caravan leaves! Set training orders for my squad! Where is my squad? My squad is gone! It received orders to raid the necromancer tower and got themselves captured! Vile forces of darkness have arrived!
...
Oh... My...
Back into the burrow, you know the drill. And this time I even got all the livestock inside. But between the last siege and the missed harvests food is short, so lets eat some of the cows.
The cows then file a formal complaint against their position in the food chain by having their skeletal remains headbutt my butcher and chief medical dorf into a nearby wall, breaking his spine and bruising the fat. It kind of detoriated from there, as all my remaining food was guarded by the butchered bovines, and my desperate attempt of just impressing everyone into the military and just rushing them went slightly less than stellar. While we did manage to put the cow skeletons back down, the smell of death and the screams of the dying filling the hallways around the kitchen/dining area put a bit of a damper on the mood of the survivors, which they tended to express first by refusing to prepare any more meals, and shortly thereafter by violently murdering their soon-to-be-ex-survivors.
So, as soon as adventure mode is being released, I'll gonna take a look at this fort haunted by violent skeletons and pissed off ghosts some years down the road.
My second fort sank into a swamp.
I don't wanna talk about it.
My third fort is actually doing pretty well, was just elevated to a barony and my military trains by bullying an etchin I keep in a hole in the basement, and I kinda can't wait to see what will go catastrophically wrong this time
You think dwarfs would only carve themselves? Oh you need to check out the descriptions of the carvings. You may see the occasional carving relating to your fort, but you'll also get everything from random musical instruments to abstract symbology to carvings relating to historical figures (which could be a goblin who overthrew a dwarven king and is now the king of your civilization, or a random dude distantly related to someone in your fort from ages ago who's only interesting act was being killed by a giant owl man or some shit). Dwarven art can get very wild.
I knew you were going to do SOMETHING with this release, can't wait to watch literally everything you put out for this game.
Ridin in a porche hoppin out the doors with my dwarves
Dwarf fortress is fun in that pet ant colony type of way.
1 Million years dwarf fortress! MORE CONTENT
I heard that if you lose you can replay on the same map either retrying your current set up or abandoning ur current failed civilization and then skipping into the future (making the failed one an ancient civilization) with a new civilization, is this true? Sounds like a really good idea for a play through where you keep populating the same world with a bunch of civilizations
Yes, the world goes on separately from your fort.
You can even visit a retired or abandoned fort in Adventure Mode as your adventurer (coming to steam a bit later).
@@hatad321 will that be dlc?
@@mogaming163 free update, it wasn't ready for release.
@@hatad321 adventure mode is one of the three gamemodes in dwarf fortress, the steam version is still being developed and it will be some time until it gets all the features
The 3 gamemodes are
Fortress mode: colony sim
Adventure mode: Skyrim but it has a lot of depth and realistic and complex mechanics
Legends mode: simulate the world, read about the things happening around the world
A lore for this game that is pretty loose and interesting would be so cool. I am still not even a player of this game, but wow.. I like watching it. I have a root cellar with a dirt floor and want to try this IRL.
Each game generates it's own world lore during map generation. can be funny
1:44:50 the dog didnt die he walked to the right, you couldnt see him under the task menu. he walks back in a few seconds later
Man, watching you plan that stockpile and enacting it out but not finishing its symmetry and THEN rubbing a bunch if it out was aaaaaaaauuuugggg!, it was AAAAARRRRRRFFFFFFF!
Im extrodinarily excited to watch how you learn
The game is so satisfying to watch. Please bring more content from him.
as much as the graphics make the game more immediately readable, having an actual UI is whats gonna make this so much more accessible and hopefully successful
the original was only a few steps above having to manually enter the game code in yourself >
I am so happy that one of my favorite youtubers has started streaming one of my favorite games :D
Strike the earth ambiguousamphibian!
1:32:00 - This poor dwarf has just been condemned to starve to death...
I saw this just released on steam and I wondered how quick you'd pump out a vod on it. Didn't take very long.
lmao nice yogscast reference, hope we see some dwarf fortress on your main channel when you gain a better understanding of the game :D