Anyone Play Dwarf Fortress? Free game

[rob86 2]

I stumbled upon a unique and apparently quite popular freeware multi-platform game called Dwarf Fortress. It seems to be an interesting RTS/City building type of game, though I haven't tried it very long. It looks like a lot of work has been put into it, it's been in development for years. There is one catch, it's user interface and graphics are quite atrocious. Look at screenshots. Out of the box, it's completely in ASCII graphics (though with great difficulty, you can install some tilesets with real images though this is a fairly confusing affair). I've played ASCII games before, more than a decade ago mind you, but never one that was so complex. There are so many weird ASCII characters moving around, it's a task just to figure out what it all means. For example, a pet dog is a letter "d". Like I said, this can be changed with optional graphics tilesets, but I'm not sure if that's the best route or not. A lot of people claim plain ASCII is better? There are a few things to do to make it more bearable, such as changing the tile colour schemes and using higher resolution windows. Is the game worth playing despite it's absolutely dreadful graphics? It might be, but it sure takes a lot of effort to learn. It's not for the casual arcade gamer. It's hard enough just installing graphics and tile sets to work together (they're all different resolutions and tile dimensions) I haven't given up on it because it really looks like a rewarding game to play once you get past the learning curve and get used to the horrible appearance and memorize some keystrokes. The general consensus I read on the web is that you forget the ugly graphics, because the game is fun and addictive. It's easy to get a first impression of "What is this garbage?" by seeing screenshots, but the game is really in depth. I haven't even scratched the surface of the basics and I've played it for 4 hours (not continously). It's frequently quoted official motto is "Losing is fun".

[inverse_bloom 0]

You know that could very well turn out to be a fun game, but could be a little hurtful on the eye's. Otherwise i'd definitely give it a try. I like these sorts of special games, usually if you start with your expectations very low it turns out really good.

Takes me back to memories like playing Rise of the Triads and Blood 1. Which were well dated by 98-99 by the time i played them, but had an engrossing feel about them. Another free game people may be interesting in is yoFrankie! I have never tried it as i dont think i'd have the hardware specs to play it adequately. Might work on some peoples though. Here is a screen shot -

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Here is the main site (download for the game is about 120 meg, not including "Blender 3D" install) -

https://apricot.blender.org/

It was built over Blender 3D's engine. Only im i little sceptical how many levels you get with it and it is more targeted towards kids.

Edited December 8, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

I think that this game comes short of what we're used to nowadays.

 

Reminds me of the days of MUDs. Used to delve into those every now and then at the library... this game would be an upgrade to the genre, since MUDs were text-based.

[rob86 2]

I played Dwarf Fortress a little bit last night without a tutorial (not that I don't need one, it just gets boring reading 10 pages of tutorials). I was starting to forget about the bad graphics and it became a little bit addictive. I didn't do much, my dwarves seemed to take forever to tunnel out their home in the mountain, maybe I was doing something wrong. Anyway, I built them a dining room, a barracks to sleep in, and gave them some booze (that's their water!)...I also cooked up some delicious kitten stew and hot dogs. Yes, they eat their pets. Times are tough. I'm breeding cats and dogs for food and companionship. They're telling me they'd rather have meat than strawberries to go with their strong dwarven ale and the the turtle sandwiches are getting old.In the end, when I when to bed, I was actually wanting to continue building my pitifully unimpressive fortress. I'm starting to see how ASCII mode might actually be preferable to having graphical sprites, because it's kind of hard to tell different units from another even with the graphics. What I found humorous is that on the game wiki, instead of the standard image or screens hot you see in the upper right, they have a picture of the letter that represents them in game. So you'll check out "wiki/dog" and it'll be like [d] < this is a dog! or [w] <- this is a werewolf. You really have to use your imagination..

[anwiii 17]

ok. you got me addicted to this dumb game. i got as far as creating a world and preparing my characters. i fooled around with building things but i cannot get used to these commands. i have figured out how to make a bed from wood and even move that bed. but gosh darnit! my bottom floor of the fortress started getting flooded with water when it started raining. i deleted 4 folders of my worlds i created because i always feel inclined to start over when i feel i'm making mistakes.

i have played this game for about 6 hours yetserday trying to figure things out and i still can't figure crap out with the keys even when you have a legend to help you

so thanks alot pal! i have better things to do with my time then getting addicted to some stupid game with ascii graphics.

i have a question though. i know you can pause the game but does the game pause when you quit the game or will it be updated according to the time you lost quiting the game?

also, it took me a half hour to try and figure out how to prepare my characters because my plus/minus keyes didn't work on my laptaop. so i assumed they were for a numeric pad. i had to edit two keys

eventually, i think i am gowing to draw out plans for a structure before i build one. i think that would be easier. everything is in 2d but i was researching a little and caught a glimps of a 3d visual for the game, i guess there are addons to this game as well

i have only tried the fortess part of the game so far. have you tried the adveturer or legend?(i believe it was called legend)

i c an see how some people wouldn't like this type of game because they are too used to others that do pretty much the same thing but with excellent graphics. i'm old school though. i still get a kick out of playing the older versions of ultima which you can only do through dos or a dos emulator

I played Dwarf Fortress a little bit last night without a tutorial (not that I don't need one, it just gets boring reading 10 pages of tutorials). I was starting to forget about the bad graphics and it became a little bit addictive. I didn't do much, my dwarves seemed to take forever to tunnel out their home in the mountain, maybe I was doing something wrong. Anyway, I built them a dining room, a barracks to sleep in, and gave them some booze (that's their water!).
..I also cooked up some delicious kitten stew and hot dogs. Yes, they eat their pets. Times are tough. I'm breeding cats and dogs for food and companionship. They're telling me they'd rather have meat than strawberries to go with their strong dwarven ale and the the turtle sandwiches are getting old.

In the end, when I when to bed, I was actually wanting to continue building my pitifully unimpressive fortress. I'm starting to see how ASCII mode might actually be preferable to having graphical sprites, because it's kind of hard to tell different units from another even with the graphics. What I found humorous is that on the game wiki, instead of the standard image or screens hot you see in the upper right, they have a picture of the letter that represents them in game. So you'll check out "wiki/dog" and it'll be like [d] < this is a dog! or [w] <- this is a werewolf. You really have to use your imagination..

[rob86 2]

As far as I know the game pauses when you quit it and you continue where you left off when you load it.

The keys seem to be one of the annoying parts of the game, I think you can rebind them but I haven't tried that. For example, my little + key won't work, but my - will. I have to use the num pad to navigate the menus which seems awkward, and to make it even awkward, some of the menus use the arrow keys. I read in a tutorial that you can supposedly use alt + arrow keys on the menus, but that didn't work for me. Perhaps you have to set them up this way yourself.

I think there are 3rd party visualizers that show you what your fortress looks like in 3D. If you look in the game, there's a hotkey for Visualize, which doesn't do anything - I imagine this must load some open of addon. There are also other utilities which I haven't tried, like Dwarf Foreman, Dwarf Therapist.

There are a whole bunch of tutorials out there, but I found this one was pretty informative. There are quite a few pages to it.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

If you haven't seen it yet, the http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Main_Page wiki is a must see webpage to understand what's going on.

I haven't tried adventure or legend mode.

[rob86 2]

Okay, I have to admit, Dwarf Fortress is a great game. It might look a bit crude, but I haven't liked a game this much for a long time. I'm overwhelmed by the depth of it, I've been playing it for hours over the last few days and I've barely scratched the surface of what you can do. I can't wait to get back to building my fortress, and to be honest, I'm cursing myself for discovering this game. It's eating up all my free time!It's true what they say about forgetting the bad graphics. I'm so immersed in the game that it all seems to come together in my mind. The User Interface, while admittedly still pretty non-intuitive, begins to make more sense with experience. For a game this good, I'll deal with the minor flaws.If anyone likes this type of city building game, they should definitely give this an honest try, with a tutorial and the wiki handy. I would dare say it's nearly impossible to learn without some kind of help. The game has it's flaws, mostly in the user-interface and menus being confusing. It's not always obvious where to find things. The graphics really aren't so deplorable once you get used to them, they aren't necessarily a fault. They are surprisingly refreshing after years of games made during the the high definition 3D gaming movement. I always complained about strategy games becoming too 3D and graphic intensive, with bigger and bigger units that fill the screen, making strategic gameplay nothing more than scrolling and rotating around trying to get a good view of the action. Dwarf Fortress might just be the answer to my wishing. It's hard to believe one person made this game. If you ignore the dated graphics, and you'll be able to, this game rivals even big brand name city building-type games in quality and I've played quite a few. This is no obscure game that nobody plays, there is a very active forum with ~200 users active when I visited. I asked a couple Newbie questions, and within seconds there were replies. Dedicated fans, for sure!

[anwiii 17]

no kidding it's a great game. the irony of it all is that. what you say is all true. i just wish other people would take the time to download it. i would love to see more feedback in this thread to talk about stuff....you know...newbies bantering and cursing the game back and forth. i don't think there will be a day where i master this game. it is VERY complex. yesterday, i actually watched 5 of those utube viideos by duck somethin' or other. he did a pretty good job in putting up a vid tut.

there i am on the computer a lot so i like running this thing in the background. this was the first day i haven't started over yet....BUT! i see it in my near future i had bought dogs at the beginning and now they are having puppies. the game has so so much to do, i haven't even found the time to train them yet. figured out why my farmland wasn't able to harvest too. that was pissing me off when i would locate somewhere and couldn't even use the area to grow food.

i haven't researched this yet, but while playing, i'm wondering when the game was created. the only reason why i like the game so much is it's complexity and the logic behind everything you do and the consequences of everthing you do. i think the game starts you out with a horse and a mule, but still, i haven't found a purpose to either yet. also, i have found that starting out with two highly skilled minors is your best bet since there is a lot of digging involved.

i find myself having to keep visiting the wiki site for help in understanding what things are and what they do

Okay, I have to admit, Dwarf Fortress is a great game. It might look a bit crude, but I haven't liked a game this much for a long time. I'm overwhelmed by the depth of it, I've been playing it for hours over the last few days and I've barely scratched the surface of what you can do. I can't wait to get back to building my fortress, and to be honest, I'm cursing myself for discovering this game. It's eating up all my free time!
It's true what they say about forgetting the bad graphics. I'm so immersed in the game that it all seems to come together in my mind. The User Interface, while admittedly still pretty non-intuitive, begins to make more sense with experience. For a game this good, I'll deal with the minor flaws.

If anyone likes this type of city building game, they should definitely give this an honest try, with a tutorial and the wiki handy. I would dare say it's nearly impossible to learn without some kind of help. The game has it's flaws, mostly in the user-interface and menus being confusing. It's not always obvious where to find things. The graphics really aren't so deplorable once you get used to them, they aren't necessarily a fault. They are surprisingly refreshing after years of games made during the the high definition 3D gaming movement. I always complained about strategy games becoming too 3D and graphic intensive, with bigger and bigger units that fill the screen, making strategic gameplay nothing more than scrolling and rotating around trying to get a good view of the action. Dwarf Fortress might just be the answer to my wishing.

It's hard to believe one person made this game. If you ignore the dated graphics, and you'll be able to, this game rivals even big brand name city building-type games in quality and I've played quite a few. This is no obscure game that nobody plays, there is a very active forum with ~200 users active when I visited. I asked a couple Newbie questions, and within seconds there were replies. Dedicated fans, for sure!

[rob86 2]

The animals are for eating! I think you can eat any animal. I'm not sure if they have other uses. You can use their bones and stuff to make crafts. I just breed cats for food. The dogs can be used for hunting and attacking thieves, the cats kill vermin in the fortress. All the animals can become pets and make a dwarf happy. Sometimes I don't understand my dwarves, there's a lot wrong with this situation that happened:A goat and a raccoon died on top of the dining tables (why are they in the dining room anyway), and even though I set the dwarves to dump the corpses in the garbage, everyone avoided it, even going so far as eating beside the corpses, until purple "miasma" was filling the room, and still nobody cleaned it. I eventually cooked something with the corpse in the kitchen.Don't forget your miners need picks.. I only brought one along and had two miners, I don't know what the second miner was using, his finger nails I guess. He became a legendary miner. I'm trying to do some real mining and smelting now, which is kind of hard when I don't know anything about geology. You have to dig around and find some ore, then make some charcoal, then smelt the ore into a bar, then forge the bars into something. As for where to find ore, I have no idea. It comes in either clumps or veins, at certain z- levels. I've done a few new things recently, traded some crafts for some stuff, pissed off the elves (don't trade them anything wooden), created a soldier, built an office for my noble and sheriff. I'm still on my first fortress, and I have a feeling the goblins are going to be invading soon to tear it down. I doubt my one soldier and couple war dogs will be able to fight them off, and I haven't figured out how to make traps. I'm not sure what happens when you create a military, maybe you can attack other civilizations. There is so much to do. Here's a tip, make a lot of crafts and bins (they hold the crafts) then you can trade them and get some new items. I got some new picks and weapons that way, and a wide variety of disgusting sounding food (Spider meat?) of course you need a trade depot and a broker noble dwarf. I think my dwarves appreciated it, they were just eating vegetables for the past few years. Check out the 'Dwarf Therapist' utility .. it lets you organize your dwarves jobs. Pretty useful. If you're on windows, you probably have more options for utilities than I do. I was lucky to find one that works on linux. I too wish other people would try it. I'd like to hear what other people think about the game itself and not the screen shots. By the way, it was started in 2002 and first released in 2006.

[inverse_bloom 0]

Im not sure... how are your eyes after an hours play? It sounds like the kind of complex open ended game ive been waiting for, for a very long time. Those ideas you mentioned would be great incorporated into a 3d game. The only game that i have played which comes close is "Gothic 2" or "Morrowind". Those two games are definitely in my top ten. Morrowind is such a worth while play for those who haven't played it, i should imagine it now retails for about 5 or so bucks in the U.S. Oblivion was just a dissapointment for me, no color, generally a flat experience in comparison to Morrowind.

Edited December 10, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[anwiii 17]

you're a lot further than i am...probably because i keep starting over trying to still learn the basics. if your people aren't dumping their garbage in the refuge pile, then maybe you need to limit the work of a couple workers. i can't see anything becoming contaminated unless it's within the food stockpile where food may go bad or something.

something strange happened to me when i logged on today. all the trees turned purple outside. what the heck does that mean haha! i also noticed splatters of blood outside. i don't have anybody set for hunting but it seems they are killing for meat when i still have a little cow meat from the beginning of the game because i notice the corpes in the dining area. now that my cats have breed, i plan on killing a few for meat. how do you go about collecting and saving bones though for crafts?

have you built an outdoor farm yet? i am curious about that. supposedly, you have to have someone collect bushes to eat the fruits from them. once they are eaten, you can keep the seeds to farm outdoors. do they store the seeds automatically?

had some traders come. i even had the trading post outside. i just didn't know how to trade. they just kept asking if i wanted to buy something and place an order for next year.

i think you have to dig deeper for rocks. i haven't noticed a huge amount on the first two levels except soft material. it would be nice to find a big supply of some sort of rock to build things other than from wood....

to organize jobs, you just have to hit the "j" for jobs and then "c", and then "l" for labor. once in there, you can set the individual duties. right now i have a jewler, but i have no resources for him so i set his task for dog training. i have two people with no skills at all so i just set their tasks for hard labor moving crap around for my piles.

you seem to be doing good in the game if you haven't started over yet. i'm wondering what your fortress looks like. mine is a mess and is only one level down. i know there has to be a better way to organize.

although i wonder what the game would look like in 3d, just because it has the most simple and basic ascii graphics, this game is FAR from simplistic! i think people get turned off by the graphics and don't learn to play it without ever knowing the complexity of this game. i think i am going to start over again during the weekend. i can accomplish in a day now that took me 3 days to learn. i still don't know how to trade crap though. can you trade food or wood? because i always had an abundance. can you trade something for an investment too? like get it, hold on to it, then trade it for something better or for a better price? those are just a few of my question. i have TONS but i don't feel like spending more of my time on another forum...part of the fun is learning as you go and the complished feeling you didn't ask for much help figuring out this stupid game haha

The animals are for eating! I think you can eat any animal. I'm not sure if they have other uses. You can use their bones and stuff to make crafts. I just breed cats for food. The dogs can be used for hunting and attacking thieves, the cats kill vermin in the fortress. All the animals can become pets and make a dwarf happy. Sometimes I don't understand my dwarves, there's a lot wrong with this situation that happened:
A goat and a raccoon died on top of the dining tables (why are they in the dining room anyway), and even though I set the dwarves to dump the corpses in the garbage, everyone avoided it, even going so far as eating beside the corpses, until purple "miasma" was filling the room, and still nobody cleaned it. I eventually cooked something with the corpse in the kitchen.

Don't forget your miners need picks.. I only brought one along and had two miners, I don't know what the second miner was using, his finger nails I guess. He became a legendary miner. I'm trying to do some real mining and smelting now, which is kind of hard when I don't know anything about geology. You have to dig around and find some ore, then make some charcoal, then smelt the ore into a bar, then forge the bars into something. As for where to find ore, I have no idea. It comes in either clumps or veins, at certain z- levels.

I've done a few new things recently, traded some crafts for some stuff, pissed off the elves (don't trade them anything wooden), created a soldier, built an office for my noble and sheriff. I'm still on my first fortress, and I have a feeling the goblins are going to be invading soon to tear it down. I doubt my one soldier and couple war dogs will be able to fight them off, and I haven't figured out how to make traps. I'm not sure what happens when you create a military, maybe you can attack other civilizations. There is so much to do. Here's a tip, make a lot of crafts and bins (they hold the crafts) then you can trade them and get some new items. I got some new picks and weapons that way, and a wide variety of disgusting sounding food (Spider meat?) of course you need a trade depot and a broker noble dwarf. I think my dwarves appreciated it, they were just eating vegetables for the past few years.

Check out the 'Dwarf Therapist' utility .. it lets you organize your dwarves jobs. Pretty useful. If you're on windows, you probably have more options for utilities than I do. I was lucky to find one that works on linux.

I too wish other people would try it. I'd like to hear what other people think about the game itself and not the screen shots. By the way, it was started in 2002 and first released in 2006.

[rob86 2]

Im not sure... how are your eyes after an hours play? It sounds like the kind of complex open ended game ive been waiting for, for a very long time. Those ideas you mentioned would be great incorporated into a 3d game. The only game that i have played which comes close is "Gothic 2" or "Morrowind". Those two games are definitely in my top ten.
Morrowind is such a worth while play for those who haven't played it, i should imagine it now retails for about 5 or so bucks in the U.S. Oblivion was just a dissapointment for me, no color, generally a flat experience in comparison to Morrowind.

It doesn't hurt my eyes even though the tiles are small, but people have made larger tilesets. The default I think is 8x10, most of the "best looking' tilesets are 16x16, and some come even bigger.

I liked Morrowind, I couldn't believe the game actually worked on my old computer. It's a nice looking game. DF is nothing like Morrowind though*. DF is hard to fit into a genre, it's a bit like a city building game reminiscent of Caesar, and architecture counts (dwarves like big rooms with nice materials, hate long walks etc) a bit of an RTS since you make food and drinks at workshops, to build an "army", bit like tactical strategy game or RPG because you can equip military squads with weapons and armor. It's a bit like Sims because you have to cater to the dwarves needs (some "upper class" dwarves like silver or gold, so you make their rooms silver) or some like raccoon meat, so you hunt raccoon for them. They have moods, they have love or hate relationships with other dwarves (though I don't think the relationships mean much) It's also kind of a puzzle game, because (I haven't done this yet, so I'm not sure) you build death traps - indiana jones movie style- to fight off invaders. You can divert lava or water, or put parts together to make things. It's also a mining game. There used to be a very old computer game that was relatively popular where you mine deep down and look for ore to sell and buy new equipment. It's like that, but instead of being the miner, you have teams of miners. The geology from what I can tell is quite realistic, at least I have to study geology on wiki just to understand what I'm doing.

There's a lot you can do, maybe I didn't even name it all.


*DF does have an Adventure mode that's RPG style, but I haven't tried it and it isn't the focus of the game, more of a bonus mode to read some randomly generated in-game legends and history.

[rob86 2]

I've never seen purple trees before. You could have "looked" at the blood with the 'k' key maybe? I can't remember what it is, but it might tells you what kind of blood it is. Hunting is a dangerous job, two of my hunters were hunting a unicorn, and getting wounded, I immediately disabled hunting in their job list, but they kept hunting and eventually were mortally wounded and bled to death. Stupid, why would they hunt a unicorn when they were wounded? I don't even know if they use weapons.I think when you slaughter or hunt an animal there are bones left over, they might go to the refuse stock pile. Not sure. I just know I have bone somewhere to make crafts out of. I haven't seen any large creatures yet, (except the deadly unicorn) like mythical creatures or elephants, but they're out there. The elephants apparently give you a lot of bone to work with. I do have a farm outdoors, but it isn't much different than a farm indoors. You just plant different things. I'm not sure where seeds come from, I just farm whatever I have. I think when you cook food, it kills the seeds, but when you brew it it saves the seeds. I _think_ you need seed bags to store seeds in, but I haven't really paid much attention to farming. When the traders come they ask what you want them to bring, you can move the little sliders (they look like |O|:0:0 or something, can't remember really) over to the right for high priority, but that raises the price. Then they tell you what they will pay a lot for. Trading is a bit hard at first but it makes sense once you do it a few times. First you have to have a trade depot and it needs to be reachable by wagon. That means 3 tile corridors (you can hit the 'D' key to show you if it will work). You should have a broker noble, you can set it in then noble window, he's the professional trader. Other dwarves can trade but they get ripped off. Then you go to the trade depot and query it and hit 'g' for goods, then you pick some goods you want the dwarves to transport to the depot. This is where bins come in handy, because instead of carrying 10 crafts back and forth, they can carry 1 bin with 10 crafts inside, saves time. When the goods arrive at the depot, and your broker/trader arrives (sometimes he's lazy and takes his time) you can hit 't' for trade, and then you just swap items.You can cheat too and deconstruct the trade depot when the caravan is unloaded, they won't get angry (bug?), you can keep everything they brought, but they won't want to trade with you much more other years because they don't make any money. I've been finding some silver nuggets which I wasted on making my sheriff's bedroom and office. I should have used it for weapons.. I can't make wooden swords.I was right about the goblins coming to attack, a squad of them arrived and murdered about 4 of my dwarves before my miners and sheriff took them out. I did survive the attack, but somehow seeing the bloodied corpses of my beloved dwarves seems like failure. I don't know why I'm not attracting more immigrants. I had about 24 at one time, one went insane because his masterpiece didn't turn out right, two died hunting, and the 4 died in the attack. It keeps saying my fortress failed to attract immigrants. My fortress looks like a mess, it's really unorganized and has miasma everywhere. I don't know where it's coming from. I look around for rotting things but there aren't any. A lot comes from the butchery, but I don't know why, so I just put it in a small room by itself. My fortress is maybe 5 levels deep but there aren't too many things on the levels. I'm just digging deep for ore. I'm surprised no big game company has picked this up and made it more modern in appearance. I think it would be a popular game, it can't be any worse than some games they put out. DF has a big community of artists and programmers, they have made 3D map visualizers and realistic terrain maps, and great user interfaces (in utilities like Dwarf Therapist, you can't help but wish the whole game looked that clean and organized), but it must be too complex to re-make the entire game with volunteers alone. Maybe it wouldn't even run well with 3d graphics, because on my computer my FPS drops quite a bit on a busy screen. There's a lot going on.As for trading, (again), you could sell wood and stone (the gneiss that's everywhere), but it wouldn't be worth it, it's better to make it into crafts. If you just trade big boulders they are heavy and the trading caravan won't be able to hold the weight. They'll go back to their home and say "This guys cheap, I'm not carrying any more valuable goods across the hostile lands for him!"Oh, and make sure the caravan isn't killed by anyone. I think you get blamed for it and the civilization sends an army to kill you.If you're trying to get rid of all the useless gneiss that's everywhere, you can either make a stone stock pile or a garbage dump (I think it's called a Zone). The dump can hold an infinite amount of the worthless stone. You have to go into the designate menu, and then look for the "Dump" option, then you just designate a boxed area over the stone you want dumped, but try not to dump the valuable stuff.

Edited December 10, 2009 by rob86 (see edit history)

[anwiii 17]

that's fine for stone. i've created a stone stockpile before. i haven't tried a zone yet. what's that do? my real problem is i would like to clean up my area indoors from all the sand. is there anyway to get rid of it all? is sand treated like stone? if glass can be made out of sand, there has to be a way to collect it but i don't see any options for stockpiling sand. the only option i thought of so far is to make floors? but i haven't tried doing this either. what would floors be made out of...wood or stone? i guess i will find out soon enough....but if you know how to collect sand, let me know . it's like my dwarfs are living in a sandbox haha.

there's a lot of things that would be interesting to find out too....like can a fortress collapse? i mean, the more you mine on one level, the more chances of it collapsing in real life, right? so i wonder if they take that in to account as my fortress on the second level is pretty big. and if it is possible...what happens....all the dwarfs die that were inside? i have most of them inside my fortress. not a lot of them go wondering around.

as far as workshops...right now i only have a carpenters, mason, still and kitchen. i need to learn more about the game soon. a lot of my dwarfs are just sitting around with no job. maybe they like it that way. i dunno. it was funny though. i viewed one of my immigrants that came over and it said she likes to drink to get through the day haha. they all like to drink as that's their primary food source it seems but i thought it was funny reading that part about one of my immigrants. it also said she hates to work haha.

one thing i have been trying to understand desperately though is my announcements are always talking about my cats that are injured. wtf! something about trading and something stopped because my cats were injured? the message makes no sense to me whatsoever and it's in big red letters all the time. i can't look at an announcement screen without looking at 10+ of those same messages.

also, i have always walked around with the "k" key and the trees were never purple before. i thought it might of had to do with the change of the seasons but the plants didn't turn purple. sometimes i hate the "k" key though because it pauses the game when you are in the looking around mode. i wish there was a way to look around without it pausing the game but i haven't seen that option and i like using it a lot so the game pauses for me a lot.

seems like we are still the only ones that are playing it even after bumping this thread all the time...what a shame....

I've never seen purple trees before. You could have "looked" at the blood with the 'k' key maybe? I can't remember what it is, but it might tells you what kind of blood it is. Hunting is a dangerous job, two of my hunters were hunting a unicorn, and getting wounded, I immediately disabled hunting in their job list, but they kept hunting and eventually were mortally wounded and bled to death. Stupid, why would they hunt a unicorn when they were wounded? I don't even know if they use weapons.
I think when you slaughter or hunt an animal there are bones left over, they might go to the refuse stock pile. Not sure. I just know I have bone somewhere to make crafts out of. I haven't seen any large creatures yet, (except the deadly unicorn) like mythical creatures or elephants, but they're out there. The elephants apparently give you a lot of bone to work with.

I do have a farm outdoors, but it isn't much different than a farm indoors. You just plant different things. I'm not sure where seeds come from, I just farm whatever I have. I think when you cook food, it kills the seeds, but when you brew it it saves the seeds. I _think_ you need seed bags to store seeds in, but I haven't really paid much attention to farming.

When the traders come they ask what you want them to bring, you can move the little sliders (they look like |O|:0:0 or something, can't remember really) over to the right for high priority, but that raises the price. Then they tell you what they will pay a lot for. Trading is a bit hard at first but it makes sense once you do it a few times. First you have to have a trade depot and it needs to be reachable by wagon. That means 3 tile corridors (you can hit the 'D' key to show you if it will work). You should have a broker noble, you can set it in then noble window, he's the professional trader. Other dwarves can trade but they get ripped off. Then you go to the trade depot and query it and hit 'g' for goods, then you pick some goods you want the dwarves to transport to the depot. This is where bins come in handy, because instead of carrying 10 crafts back and forth, they can carry 1 bin with 10 crafts inside, saves time. When the goods arrive at the depot, and your broker/trader arrives (sometimes he's lazy and takes his time) you can hit 't' for trade, and then you just swap items.

You can cheat too and deconstruct the trade depot when the caravan is unloaded, they won't get angry (bug?), you can keep everything they brought, but they won't want to trade with you much more other years because they don't make any money.

I've been finding some silver nuggets which I wasted on making my sheriff's bedroom and office. I should have used it for weapons.. I can't make wooden swords.

I was right about the goblins coming to attack, a squad of them arrived and murdered about 4 of my dwarves before my miners and sheriff took them out. I did survive the attack, but somehow seeing the bloodied corpses of my beloved dwarves seems like failure. I don't know why I'm not attracting more immigrants. I had about 24 at one time, one went insane because his masterpiece didn't turn out right, two died hunting, and the 4 died in the attack. It keeps saying my fortress failed to attract immigrants.

My fortress looks like a mess, it's really unorganized and has miasma everywhere. I don't know where it's coming from. I look around for rotting things but there aren't any. A lot comes from the butchery, but I don't know why, so I just put it in a small room by itself. My fortress is maybe 5 levels deep but there aren't too many things on the levels. I'm just digging deep for ore.

I'm surprised no big game company has picked this up and made it more modern in appearance. I think it would be a popular game, it can't be any worse than some games they put out. DF has a big community of artists and programmers, they have made 3D map visualizers and realistic terrain maps, and great user interfaces (in utilities like Dwarf Therapist, you can't help but wish the whole game looked that clean and organized), but it must be too complex to re-make the entire game with volunteers alone. Maybe it wouldn't even run well with 3d graphics, because on my computer my FPS drops quite a bit on a busy screen. There's a lot going on.

As for trading, (again), you could sell wood and stone (the gneiss that's everywhere), but it wouldn't be worth it, it's better to make it into crafts. If you just trade big boulders they are heavy and the trading caravan won't be able to hold the weight. They'll go back to their home and say "This guys cheap, I'm not carrying any more valuable goods across the hostile lands for him!"

Oh, and make sure the caravan isn't killed by anyone. I think you get blamed for it and the civilization sends an army to kill you.

If you're trying to get rid of all the useless gneiss that's everywhere, you can either make a stone stock pile or a garbage dump (I think it's called a Zone). The dump can hold an infinite amount of the worthless stone. You have to go into the designate menu, and then look for the "Dump" option, then you just designate a boxed area over the stone you want dumped, but try not to dump the valuable stuff.

[rob86 2]

I don't think there's too much to zones. You can make a garbage dump zone which is just an area where they dump things you tell them to. There's a fishing zone that tells them where to fish. There's a sand collecting zone too, which sounds like what you need. I haven't even seen any sand. I never experienced any flooding that you mentioned earlier either.

I read somewhere that there are cave-ins that kill the dwarves, but haven't seen this yet. Dwarves can also become sensitive to the light if they spend too much time inside.. when they go outside they apparently will be slow and weak. If you have a military you don't want to keep them inside all the time, I guess. The guy who made this game seems to have thought of everything!

I guess the dwarves must have kids sometime because I read somewhere that even their babies need a drink to get through the day. Dwarves like to drink even at a young age. Most of my dwarves have that message in their info. And I have no idea why a wounded cat would prevent trading from happening

I hate that it pauses the game all the time too..

You mentioned earlier that you were going to plan your fortress before you build it. I saw this utility that helps you do that.

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/Useury/DF_Designer/

I don't think I'll be using it, but you might like it. It has a 3D preview though it's not very fancy.