I'm about 60 hours in and I'm still learning mechanical stuff. Fun story events have happened, but I'm not, as of yet, looking for them. I want to get to a point where I feel comfortable with how the game works before I start digging for story. I'm getting there largely because of your videos, so thank you very much!

I'm currently ~120 hours in, and finally made it past year nine. I settled on a lone volcano in a plain surrounded by goblins, so much of my efforts have been figuring out how to work with magma. Well, there are two/three key events that define my story so far: 1) a child went fey and crafted a legendary toy hammer that he named after himself. It became our defacto mascot (someone else made a legendary crown for our monarch featuring that hammer on a hemp leaf) 2) a second toy hammer was made, called The Grim Song. I put it proudly on display right next to the first hammer. 3) An ettin attacked and nearly made it inside my fort when a 19 year old armed with only a buckler named Catten best it to death. I named him my eternal Champion on the spot. Well, I've been dealing with goblins and necromancers infiltrating my fort and trying to steal things. Our worst loss was The Grim Song. Everything I've done since then has been in an effort to find out who stole it and where it went. Catten has been venturing across most of the known world looking for rumours and my captain of the guard has been interrogating everyone with even a hint of suspicion around them. My main reason for digging deeper is to get the equipment we need to conquer each and every goblin settlement around us as we search for our missing toy hammer.

‘try again in a few years’ because the game will still be supported.

You learned this game when it was nearly impossible to learn, we got a UI a tutorial and pixels that represent what they are. We are not the same. Thank you for your efforts and knowledge.

I find so much fun in immersing myself in the emergent story. I sit down at the start and write a two-pager summarizing the history of my civilization and its notable figures/events. My current fort is the ONLY fortress of its civ. They were once fairly powerful and nearly eradicated the goblin pits around their mountain... but they dug too deep in their mountainhome and subsequently lost their other fortresses on the mountain (which is now contaminated by evil) to ancient evils and great beasts. They're a broken people living in exile in the hills around their own mountain. So an expedition heads east to a small serene mountain to found a new colony: a mountain of good in opposition to a mountain of evil. And that's the mindset of my playthrough: to delve a grand capital and recapture their old glory and dignity, so someday they might reclaim and purify their former home. And my expedition leader? He is ambitious, a would-be dwarf-lord with dreams of high station. He wants the best things in life, to have mansions, palaces, and grand halls. But he must prove himself as a worthy lord. And how? Well, the first king if these dwarves *personally* slew the lord of their long-time goblin enemies with an artifact sword. This event is the symbol of their fortress and the mold the leader seeks to fit. So he trains with his most elite squad of heavy infantry, hoping that will make him more lordly. And he toils in the forges, hoping through mastery to craft a sword worthy of the title of lordship. Will the queen recognize his efforts, grant him lordship over this mountain, and come to establish her throne in his halls? All of this in the backdrop of those old, empty pits refilling with goblins from the north. This game gives you an incredible canvas.

I've got a very similar experience. Late 2000s a friend told me about it, i tried it, had no idea what I was doing for the longest time. Slowly after multiple installs I'd start putting it together. I never really got frustrated as much as I got bored and had trouble finding my own fun. Then I found adventure mode and played a lot of that and started to understand the world a little more. That got me more interested in reading legends, which in turn got me back into making forts and crazy projects. I'm still not particularly good at the game, but I understand how to make a fort that runs smooth enough I get bored before it falls. It's the crazy stuff I don't fully understand how to do. The risky stuff you probably shouldn't do, and the massive ocean draining or forgotten beast auto farming stuff. When I have more time, I'm going to pick it up on steam and try to get back into it, and do some crazy stuff.

I was getting really frustrated with learning it but damn. Your voice and explanations helps so much. You calmed me down and renewed my focus. Subbed and will look through your videos. Thanks man.

Its great to hear Krugg and Das getting a call out. I, like your needed both of them to tutor me. I left for years and came back. Left again etc... I am just now preparing to buy the game as it deserves my money for the time I have played it for free. Now I am familiarising my Classic knowledge and getting back to game fitness before diving into Steam DF. Again watching DasTactic and yourself to learn the nuances of the new game are refreshing and I need to be in the mood to play and you guys help sway my mood. Great job Blind

I think DasTastic is still doing DF now and again. And Krugg is pretty fun. Totally on board with what you're saying here. My first foray into DF was in 2010, followed some of PeridexisErrant's tutorials, and 13 years later after long breaks in between, I have finally made my first minecart route for outdoor lumber hauling! xD Progress!

I too found you as a result of the Steam release. I've probably gone through 20 or so forts so far, adapting, learning and optimizing. Now that I have a solid handle on the basics, I've been expanding and tackling specific goals, like founding a volcano fortress and figuring how to play with magma. Naming my starting dwarves and following their story has greatly increased my enjoyment of the game. Thanks so much for your videos!

This game is a true sandbox. My fun is found in this being one of the only construction game that has the depth it does. Even minecraft lacks the water physics and etc. This is the one game you can make any kind of constuction you want. The game is also like a tiny ant farm, where you can treat it multiple ways. you can follow the fates of some dwarves and their journeys seem realistic and personal. But also you can have 200 dwarves that arent really unique to you besides being "that one expert at x" but can anytime look in the fine print and find unique tales and interactions. You can find those dozen heroes and eccentrics among them. The fun is unexpceted vampires working their way up the ranks of you fort, and an inhouse murder mystery. The fun is the travelers or new residents that carry dark secrets. The fun is seeing a forgetten beast made of smoke be killed by one swipe from your kitten the fun is a dwarf falling in a moat and becomming "missing" then a ghost that haunts his previous friends and enemies, only to be put to rest by a monument you put at the site of the bridge. the worlds themselves are unique and interesting. I had a world where up in the frozen terrifying biome, where there was a necromancer tower inhabited by an ice dragon who had been resurrected by the local necromancer. or one world where all factions where being crushed by one large goblin faction, even killing other goblins, lead by a "cream demon" You not only get to create your own stories or creations, but you are doing so parrellel to the unique story created by each world. you can do whatever you want, build a elven/goblin concentration camp, a settlement that breeds unique exotic animals like giant moles, giraffes, or giant alligators. You can build whatever you want, and it will be interacted with organically by this world. its not just a sandbox, its a living sandbox that moves and spins around your creations.

I'm a brazilian fan who discovered your channel because of this game. I've never played it before, but I was looking for a "long term game" to have some fun so I give DF a try. It took me 4-5 fortress that gone wrong to finding the fun and now I am enjoying the game as I've never enjoined before. What helped me was finding the "perfect beggining". What should I do in the beggining to start very well to then have a ligher expering later managing a 200 dwarves working? Because of your videos I found the steps for a great beggining so I started discovering new things and how they work and then now I am finally having a chance to enjoying the stories and focusing my actions through my dwarves personalities - and I am again discovering a whole new game. This game is really awesome and I'm very addicted to it. My tip for you who are struggling with the game is: build a solid beggining with the things that make your dwarves happy so you wont have to worry so much with the happines of your dwarves for a period of time and then you will have some time to figure out things and finding the fun with another constructions, new areas and adversities that the game will eventually showing you.

Great video, been playing DF for ages too and this very much mirrored my own experience learning it.

You deserve the success.

My 2nd fort was one I started after finding your Lets Play's and Quick Tutorials. I was progressing nicely then a Bronze Colossus showed up and decimated my fort killing nearly 100 dwarfs. It was both "fun" and frustrating but I stepped away from DF. About a week later I launched a new embark and started again with more knowledge and what I thought was a better start. Then I saw you BC idea and cage traps, so I opened up that old save and had a few dwarfs who were saved because the BC stormed back out to decimate the arriving trade elves, take that pointy ears! I was able to get some cage traps deployed on a side entrance and sure enough, Mr. OP ain't very OP against cage traps... I've started rebuilding that fort and it's going well so far. I've got a few forts that I bounce around to as they have slightly different biomes and "goals". I feel like I'm heavily invested in the DF rabbit hole now and grateful for your help with that.

Once again you are the reason I can play the game! All I learnt off you was the basics and I've had fun learning all the rest myself. This game is amazing and the endless stories I find is so fascinating! Thank you again

I Just got into the game when it was released, I have about 100hours and I feel I have barely done anything, although I've had nothing but fun, thanks so much for the guides, you've made it much easier to strike the earth, 10/10 best dwarf fortress channel,

true, I remember playing back when the tree is still a single tile, try fortress mode then got confused when my miner got stuck in the hole (i've no idea the concept of stairs and ramps) then try adventure mode and get instagibbed by boogeymen. few month later I read some story about some shared fortress (one fortress file played by several people ala boatmurdered) and try to play it again, little by little I got hooked and finally love the game after watching dastastic series

400+ hrs steam Dwarf Fortress, it was easy to learn because I drink booze and like digging holes so my brain is wired for this. I've seen lots of threads about bugs and stuff but in my 400+ hrs i've only seen 2 bugs, I should buy a lottery ticket. But to be honest other players like you Blind, Kruggsmash and many others helped teach me Dwarf Fortress over a decade of videos. I found my fun. Thanks. Glad your having fun also. See you around.

It sounds like you and I had a lot of similar experiences with DF. I remember my initial frustrations wtih not understanding what was going on, and working my way through some old Cap'nDuck videos (man did he have an accent!) and bapping my head against the wiki. I'm still learning things today - not just cause of updates, but older stuff, and I try to convey what I know to friends who want to give the game a poke. for me its a combination of the interesting stories and the whole aesthetics of the fort/outpost/whatever building itself. Im not the best interior decorator, you'd probab;ly hate most of my forts because of how square and boxy they are, but Im always trying new things in new places.. the first 5 years of a forts life are some of the most interesting for me as I explore the embark map, figure out where I want to put things, try a mix of "optimal" and "very not optimal" design choices and seeing what happens

Excellent video. I played DF during the ASCII days and got very frustrated with it, but then not too long later Rimworld hit the scene, and I thought this is going to be interesting. I played that for years, I would create stories around the pawns and their colony which I shared with my discord friends. When the steam version of DF came out I wanted to do the same but I've been struggling to tell the same kind of stories. You really hit the nail on the head I think. In RW you might have 10-20 pawns, easy enough to follow all of them. But in DF you can have 1-2 hundred dorfs. You simply can't follow them all. I am still learning how to follow who is interesting, but I think this will lead to me understanding the game better and also being able to tell great stories. Just like I have with Rimworld. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, they really resonated with me 💜

I'm kinda like this right now - enjoying consuming content, having trouble with my own playthroughs. I went through something extremely similar with Dark Souls - I had heard all the memes and cliches about it, finally sat down to play it and brute forced my way through my first playthrough, never really appreciating or understanding it. Eventually started watching others' playthroughs and lore content, and realized what I had missed and what I had stolen from myself by not taking the first playthrough seriously. After watching all of that, I played the game again - and it all clicked. I went into the subsequent games with a much more open mind and now From's library is amongst my favorites of all time. Hoping I can get there with Dwarf Fortress, and your videos have been helping greatly.

Just want to take a second to highlight that you're an excellent communicator of the concepts at the core of DF. All content creators bring their own zest to the table, but your content has been really essential for many players, including myself, making that jump from consuming the content of Kruggsmash and others to being an avid player. Already have 100 hours logged with many more to come.

So DF got me into writing again. I started a fortress in a new world and got really attached to the story of the clan of dwarves I had arbitrarily picked. They were a failing clan, fighting a losing war against a horde, lead by a forgotten beast who had slaughtered the clan's king and the entire royal family line, except for one daughter who was now Queen. As I built fortresses for them, I discovered Savage wilds. I fought in a fort on a volcano. Just before writing this, my new fort on an abandoned continent, has become both my first foray into cavern settlements, AND my first fort where I captured a Titan (He is now my silk factory). The fun of the game, is honestly in letting yourself get lost in the lore of your world you're in. Not looking at it like entities scurrying about on the screen, and identifying the hopes and aspirations of them. Which the game does mechanically channel you in that direction. If you want the best administrator... you need one that is smart, but also has a decent ability to talk to people. If you want the best trooper, you need someone who is a good teacher in the squad, so he can pass his legendary abilities onto the next generation of troopers.

The best way for me to enjoy games like this is to put the story over the fortress. After a few games, you get a pretty good idea of how a successful fortress is built, and with enough traps you're (usually) pretty safe. If you do just that over and over, build a fortress with the only reason to make it efficent and nothing more, it gets stale. But there's a reason why the motto of the game is Losing is Fun. Sometimes i do take some risks, sometimes i build the farms out in the caverns with no walls or defences, only the barracks nearby so the soldiers can come quickly if danger arises, sometimes i play a bit with magma, sometimes i just rush my military to the goblin siege instead of waiting for them to be crushed under my many drawbridges so i can loot the bodies. I don't want a fortress to be the safest place possible, i want it to be interesting, so that the events of my fortress will live on in the legends of the world. I still smile everytime i find an artifact or a legendary weapon in the game that belonged to one of my previous fortress, it feels like you're making a mark in the history of the world, no matter how long or succesful your fortress was.

Blind I really do appreciate the videos. You are succinct. I watched another tutorial video and the guy waited for a dwarf to finish a task before beginning the task the tutorial was about. To each their own but you take the time to avoid that.

In one of Your videos you recommended to start the justice system early. I’d always seen LPs of people who delayed it as long as possible, and even when they did set it up, they never really went into it’s menus on camera, it was just a thing they were doing (or ignoring) in the background. But when you went through it, i saw how valuable it is for fleshing out the going’s on in your fort and the dwarves and visitors history, secrets and values, as well as significant events in the overworld and interesting leads on stuff to look up in legends. I think that was the best advice I’ve gotten for finding the fun-because it’s a method of investigation that’s more diegetic and engaging than just reading your dwarves thoughts/preferences etc.

I picked up the game a few times over the years but never really got too far with it. I recently gave it another go with the steam release because I knew I would love it if I could get into it and had gotten more into complex games (space station 13) and games about corralling AI to do what you want (majesty) and now the game is all I think about. Great game, very fun.

Playing the game over a course of 4 playthroughs, once a year for four years, is how I learned. First time I had to learn the controls and I made farms and food but eventually gave up. Second time I still was learning the controls, and managed to trade tons of crafts and made a magma forge but didn't know how to make a metal industry. Third I finally made a metal industry but gave up on the military screen controls. Fourth I made a military and sent them out to fight invaders. Now I'm trying out making a goblin arena. The new Steam version eases things and I'm glad people are trying out Dwarf Fortress. It can be a slow process, but others don't need to wait months between playthroughs like in my case. People like Blind, DasTastic, Birdybot, and Krugg really helped and I'm glad they made the videos they did.

i remember i started playing DF like 3 or 4 years ago where I fell in love with the ASCII art, but I could never properly learn how to play. for the next few years I tried it on and off but it was only with the recent steam release where it finally clicked for me, and i started to learn incredibly fast. i think im at the stage now where I can do whatever I want with my forts and I dont have to worry about getting caught up on a strange issue i dont know how to solve

I'm actually very impressed with how you and krugg tell stories through dwarf fortress, that's a real skill.

Playing my second ever game of dwarf fortress. I generated a world for 500 years, and the world has a very populated northern region with all the races. There are tons of humans, elves, and dwarfs, and goblins everywhere up there. There is also a very heavily populated island to the south west. But the south eastern part of the continent is very sparsly populated. So I picked the 2nd strongest dwarf faction up north, That's completely surrounded. And sent my expedition off to the smaller mountains of the southeastern region. Right away we hit what seems like an absolutely absurd amount of iron and these mountain seem to be very resource rich, with tons of gems too. So the goal is to make a new southern settlement/ settlements to help bolster the faction in their war against the elves, humans and goblins. Or maybe we will discover exactly why no dwarfs have touched these mountains in 500 years.

I played a few forts but found that I was too quickly getting to the “here come the royalty to make this the seat of the empire”. Found out how to cap the population and am refusing to interface with the traders and having a more enjoyable growth of the fortress. I’m having lots of fun, but there are still a good deal of optimizations to the interface I am hoping they will get to in time. Thanks for your videos, they’ve been great in getting the “how” of the game figured out so I can focus on the fun.

Playing DF for me is like playing Lego in a childhood. You have a giant pile of blocks and pieces and make whatever the hell is coming from your mind.

Awesome video! Thanks.

I played around 50 hours before I took a break from gaming, but I did enjoy DF the entire time I played. I think my biggest frustration is that I would set out to do a particular type of fort (i.e. An extremist all military fort that imprisoned anything non-dwarven) and the game would send so many different things my way that I'd have to learn to adapt to each new scenario. By the time I figured out how to get my footing, my base turned into the same generic base I make every time I played (At least 1 of every building). I also would get frustrated over things I thought should be simpler like trying to assign a creature to a rope and chain (it only ever let me assign animals and I still don't know the solution to this). Trying to google how to fix each tiny resolution to these problems got annoying after a while. I guess my other complaint is that it always took 5 hours minimum for me to setup a decently functioning fort (especially due to waiting on migrants that never came so tasks get done quicker). I'd rather be able to have the barebones of a fort running already so I can take it in my own direction without needing to reset every time

My start was the same but within the last year. I played like an hour and left it alone for months. Then I was looking for a simple game for the steam deck and I returned. Defending against my first beast by with a fury of small dwarf fists as I frantically built a sword was my first "enjoyed" loss. I've been binging since

My first intro to DF was the IGN review for the steam release. It looked interesting so I watched a few videos from You, Dastactic, and Ic0n Gaming. Then I dove in and immediately lost fortress after fortress. But every time I learned something new, and it always made me laugh when my dwarves died in the most hilarious ways. I love tower defense games, and building a fortress that's safe and secure and can withstand assault after assault appeals to me for some reason. I love designing a new and unique fortress and then getting to the point where I can train a squad to take on the caverns or the dragon that decides to make a home in my valley. Training my first hammer lord brought a huge smile to my face. I'm now 485 hours in and loving every minute of it. And I agree that naming the first 7 dwarves helps immensely with keeping track of the story that's developing within your fortress.

I believe the first time i tried to play the game was back in 2012 as well. It’s crazy how a lot of us have the same story with this game. Play. Get frustrated. Delete. Rinse and repeat for a few years and then become addicted

I love your content, more power to you.

:) really awsome video. Thank you

That is such a good explanation Blind. Spot on.

My fortress is set in an untamed forest inhabited by werewolves. Early on I had two blue peafowls that gave their lives as chewtoys for a werewolf, allowing my inexperienced military to take it down without a scratch while it was preoccupied. I build two golden statues in their honor and told myself their spirits would be the guardians of my fortress. A year or so later, another werewolf attacked. By this time I had a front gate drawbridge right behind the statues, and while the werewolf was busy knocking over the peafowl statues, the drawbridge raised and squished the bugger up against the cliffside. Such a great game

What you're describing with getting into Dwarf Fortress reminds me of what I used to call the "Dark Souls cycle". It basically took me the same amount of times of picking it up, getting frustrated, then coming back some time later. Been loving the DF videos! At this point the Souls series aren't as hard to get into, maybe we'll get there with DF.

That's for the video! A mod to help track the 'main characters' would be kinda cool and help an optimizer like myself focus on the story more.

Hi blind I feel like I've learnt most of df mechanics rather quickly thanks to you and some other KZfaqrs, still learning to "find the fun" and it's getting better each fort I think I'll wait for some updates since I lost my last 2 forts to undead echidnas lol Or maybe play on n off until advanture to no burn out on the game What was my point? Ah yes thank you!!!

If you're wondering how I found you, I kept getting you recommended in the KZfaq shorts for some reason! But I'm glad since I love finding new dwarf fortress content creators.

The cycles described sound EXACTLY like my experience with the game... Install 1: Woah, this game sounds like fun! I can't wait to get started... What's going on? This game doesn't have graphics? Screw this. Install 2: Alright, got a graphics pack. How do I do anything? These controls are insane... Screw this. Install 3: Ohh, Adventure Mode is a much easier way to learn some of the controls and get familiar with the game. Well, I think I've done everything there, time for Fortress Mode! Woah, this is hard... Screw this. Install 4: Let's get good at Fortress Mode. Alright, things are going well, but holy shit assigning labors is insanely tedious... Screw this. Install 5: Alright, Dwarf Therapist should help with labors. Holy shit! I've got 200 dwarves! Things are getting done! What's going on with my FPS? Screw this. This all happened over the course of more than a decade... The cool stories and having the opportunities to share my own are what kept me coming back every time. It's a great game, should you learn how it works. Good luck!

I played a 100 hours and i think i burnt myself out and took a break. I still watch your videos and will hopefully start a new fort with much more knowledge of the mechanics so i can see all the endgame content.

There's another possibility, but if you're the right kind of person it's fun game to figure out on your own. When I started, there wasn't really youtubers and even the wiki wasn't really there, it was just the bay12 forums, but that was OK because losing was fun. To me, the not knowing how to do things was some of the most fun parts of the game, because it got you into trouble. Then you either figured out how to un-flood your fortress, or you go start again with a new respect for water. One of the things I think that is difficult for people who pick up the game today is how to appreciate failure as much. There's a lot of places that teach you how to do it right that you kind of feel stupid if you do it wrong. A lot of tutorials tell you to avoid aquifers, avoid towers, avoid scary biomes, make sure to set up your mist generators and geld your cats. But you miss out on some of the fun of setting out bright eyed on your first adventure and having skeletal cavies rip a dwarf apart only to have his limbs spontaneously regenerate and crawl through your fortress while you try to figure out how to brew. There's a pressure and an excitement and a short-term goal that comes out of those kinds of disasters that has a high chance of failure, but also feels awesome when you occasionally succeed. When you know how to do it right and set up your fortress safely based on a guide on how to optimize everything, then I think you lose something. I love your videos. But I just notice you talk about the people who get discouraged over failure, and you talk about the ways to avoid failure. But I don't see you talking about the potential fun that failure can bring if you allow it. All the best stories come from "bad decisions" or mistakes.

Personally my experience and fascination with this sort of games over the years could be described with a very short sentence: "I love dig".

Yup, it was fun but frustrating in the ASCII but the steam version is way user friendly to me for some reason, thus, more fun. I just found my first cavern in the steam version and my cattles are now underground. I'm trying my first cavern tree farm next. Took me two hours just to hit it because I was avoiding aquafers. On hindsight, I should have just dug through them then put channel with floor grate at the bottom to drain the water from the stairs.

My fun is mostly managing the chaos while thrown in are things like dwarves that dislike waterfalls and become depressed because places with lots of traffic have mist generators which is a nice little story but could be better.

One of these rare, precious gems of a game where Losing is Fun.

I began playing when it came out of steam, i have been playing rimworld a lot and wanted to give it a try. The shock!! I didn't understand nothing, and deleted it. But the seed was planted, and now i can't stop playing. I its the best game i ever played in colony simulation, i has a strong soul, like games of old... recommended

Dwarf Fortress is like sitting in the back seat of a bus and using ropes tied to the steering wheel to steer; you can't achieve much, often the best you can do is try for an impressive crash.

Honestly the only thing keeping me from sinking twice as many hours is the autosave crashes. They seem particularly common when the game calendar is rolling over to the new year. It keeps happening with or without mods.

I think df was just kind of waiting for a resurgence. I've sunk around 450 hours into the steam release so far with no mods (aside from dfhack). I knew the game existed before the steam release, I'd even played it back around 2013-2014 because I remember when trees were just one tile entities rather than complete structures like they are now, the graphics help a lot with identifying things but I wonder if df is enjoyed better when you don't know your militia are missing half their boots and all their gauntlets due to unfixed bugs or unexplained mechanics. You can tell a lot about a dwarf without opening their status window now. Back then I was in highschool and was introduced to the game from some friends. I'm glad that happened.

I have 100+ hours in this game and I LOVE IT but I never had any cool stories happen *In my opinion* until I saw the war of the Skunk and the Giant Slug, literally for a year or more they had popped up on my screen as they are fighting so much so I didn't notice my fortress was dying because I ignored the fighting pop up because of those two duking it out.

The old control scheme was the only thing that made it hard for me to get into dwarf fortress back in the day, With the new UI I am glad to say I'm super deep into the game in a way I never could be before.

Well, just to fix some stats: I am an old DF player (lazy newb pack user). I started by reading a book extract. The book was the DF tutorial. I learned the game a little, the basics (no magma forging, limited forging, limited military, no minecarts, no hidden fun stuff etc). You just help me fill in the holes in another iteration of my learning the game. And I suppose there are thousands of me. So, I strongly agree that its a difficult game where you need to love the details. You need to ignore that tediousness of smoothing surfaces, digging up spaces and forging furniture for the rooms. You need to focus on that grand hall with 4 way waterfall in the middle, with golden thrones filled with dwarves with plethora of different skills and traumas overlooking their platinum tables, eating their cat cookies and slurping the apple wine from their glass goblets. You need to appreciate that after an attack of werebeast a dwarf was hurt (horrible slash through stomach) and felt quite in a lot of pain. He then ran through corridor in living quaters and left something after a quick stop. Then he said he was quite fine, just in a slight pain. The thing he left, as I checked later was a pile of vomit. Quite realistic imho. You need to notice that you have a robust geological learning tool with accurate placements and variety of stones and ores and gems. You need to appreciate the detail of elven traders admiring the statues of dwarf sitting on an elf because of how well made they are. This is what you need for dwarf fortress. Its an amazing game when you know what to do and how to do it. But it takes time. These stories are from my experience, how many times I flooded my fort or let demon in or necromancer sieged me for 4 years until I decided to let it go: I cant count. But those took time and effort. Effort well worth it even in ASCII version, now with numerous improvements its so much easier that I suggest everybody should give it a solid try or 5 because its well worth it.

Around the the same time you had your first shot at DF a friend of mine dropped a line about having some dwarven fun while we were going to have a raid in an online game. I asked what he was talking about and he explained he was referring to DF, which I never heard about before. I tried it and experienced pretty much the same as you did, but I got hooked right from the start, feeling the game was worth the frustration. And sure enough, I got rewarded for keeping on trying. I must admit that it wasn't before I reluctantly started using DFHack and DwarfTherapist before I actually had a successful fortress running and dwarves living long enough to have names, but once I finally got there, boy was I in love. I now had a game that was more like an interactive book. Not like a movie but way more epic, because all the stories of every dwarf in my fortress connected to stories of their world and that world was actually happening while I was playing. Going out there I could actually see the places and people and things mentioned in those CV's. And my efforts were part of that world, creating still more stories. My fortresses would all die a slow but inevitable framerate death, and eventually I lacked the time and motivation to start over. Then I learned about a planned Steam release and soon after that a video about DF popped up in my YT recommendations. I've been watching your videos since then but only when they popped up. That changed with the vid about the actual release date, when I knew I wouldn't be able to resist. When the Steam release was finally there, I started playing again and of course it took me like a dozen tries or so to get a good fortress running. In the mean time your quick tutorials, your community fortress clips as well as the tutorial series were an invaluable resource to refresh some stuff I already knew but also to learn quite a bit of new things. Now I'm subscribed to your YT channel and following you on twitch. Should our schedules match, I will subscribe on twitch as well, because I think I can relate to your love for DF. Currently I have a fortress running in a little valley with a river, that started out quite well. I discovered the first cavern layer only 10 z-levels deep, after breaking through the very thin aquifer, but what do you know, there was also a lake of magma that close to the surface. Things were looking pretty dam good so I started securing my fortress in the middle of the first year after the embark, digging out a moat, 5 levels deep, 1 level above the aquifer which I planned on harvesting, using the channels to also act as an emergency drainage for the moat. Since that was a rather big project for my handful of dwarves it took me about 3 years to almost complete it. By the time I had around 50 dwarves, a hill titan decided to test my defenses which were not quite working (a month or so later they would have been in effect) it was one of the agile web shooting type and it wiped 45 of my dwarves before it finally was overcome. I was so close before we got so utterly crushed! I had the perfect spot and a perfect plan (as perfect as it can be in DF), I just couldn't give up! New migrants arrived despite the dangers and the fortress started prospering, because I had a lot of food leftovers with no population to consume them. The next caravan was ecstatic to trade their stuff for those culinary treasures and soon not only migrants but lots of visitors came to see my fortress, some even stayed and offered their services as monster slayers. A few of these actually asked for citizenship and are now part of my military. Just when I thought things were again going really well, a dragon came, laying waste to my precious little valley. It didn't care to enter my fortress but instead melted my lifestock, burned the woods and killed each and every visitor coming close. Finally it got bored and decided to go for my citizens who went through some hardships in the burrows, without the gathered food from the valley. The Dragon passed the only unbarred door and promptly ended up in the cage trap intended for smaller critters who always tried to steal something. 10 years after that, my military can handle even the strongest Monsters (maybe not dragons but I got other means for that), I have a huge underground river and a well trained dragon. While I tried to avoid getting involved with nobility and kindly refused any offer to name a barony, last year my King died and one of my citizens inherited the throne. I guess you can't avert all evil forever... Also a certain human who's brother is a merc in one of my squads, keeps asking for residence as a bard, but looking at his family relationships I noticed all of his family links point towards my dragon. Maybe I should keep a close eye on that merc brother and him, because mysteriously the trainer I had assigned to the dragon (along with some other people) died in a tavern brawl that escalated, just when that human bard was visiting again. Call me overcautious but I smell danger here...

I like how you mention reading Legends when you start a new world/fort. It would be great to see that next world you start, maybe as an EP 0 on KZfaq. Be great to come along for the story with you.

I tried getting into dwarf fortress a dozen times and the keyboard controls just never clicked for me. But I loved games based on it and I could see where the fun was to be found. I just couldn't get there without a mouse. The Steam release of Dwarf Fortress feels like a classical novel I've always wanted to read and have heard so much about finally being translated into English.

I am some 100 hours in, my second fort, and for me with the help of Wiki it was rather easy to learn the game. But I played a lot other hard games like Factorio, Rimworld, Civilization 5 (Vox Populi mod), Darkest Dungeon, even Don't Starve is some way, and I really love city builders and strategies. Also I am a programmer, so I am not frustrated as much with bugs and inconveniences (I can identify them and simply avoid them, instead of thinking I am doing something wrong), and can store big abstract structures in my mind. My only minor criticism is some easily fixed bugs not getting fixed (some of them for years now!), UI inconveniences (no multi windows, no copy/paste, no search and no sort in most lists, no window minimisation [primarily the stocks one], no mass cancellation for buildings under construction, etc), and the lack of more icons for labor menu, and professions like Fish Dissector that are used to do one tiny and rare thing. That's all. Well, also FPS, but I don't know how well the game is optimised in its code, but I suspect it has a capacity to improve. Otherwise it is great (better than RimWorld in many ways, primarily setting-wise for me), but not as mind-blowingly complex and intertwined as I expected. For the new player, who has no past experience with such games, and who is not a programmer of some sort, this game might be a living hell, even with the new UI.

well now i feel much more validated! damn my insecure ass! here i was; reading the lore of my worlds, falling into rabbit holes of story and information, and doing pretty much everything you said was the point. but because everytime i got on social media theres people milking the challenge aspect i felt i was doing it wrong just because dwarf fortress isnt really hard, its complicated sure, but i think it's unconventional design and niche appeal is what made the game seem so much more difficult than it actually is, you arent going to play the game and be obbliterated seconds in, the death of your fort is usually in-game years away. and functionally; every fortress is very similar, your forts will all probably look alike in the same way you have a writing style or an art style, but dont miss the forest for the trees, its in the minute, inconsequential details that you will find the fun, its in the interesting facts that stay with you, you make a world and you cherish it and learn about it as much as you can, and then, you let it inspire you, YOU give those little text boxes, form, and a face, and a vibe, YOU interpret it in a way you think its fun, like you would with a book. theres no wrong way to imagine something that didnt exist until you made it, and something is more special when its yours, no matter how many there are similar to it!

Learning DF = learning programming You go through stages It's an experience that gets easier with exposure

Since the first time I played it, around 2005 and since Kruggsmash started, I'm regularily not only visiting his channel and checking for new stuff but I have his old stuff running as second screen entertainment. Creators like him are the perfect way for people "not feeling" the game right away, to get hooked to the point that you'Re willing to invest 20 40 60 80 100 hours of pure, fail infested learning of the game. EDIT: Oh and fuck elves and surface dwellers :D

I too play df on and off over the years, And with the stream release i finally decided to play longer than a season. In that year i experienced a thief raiding my fortress, i didn’t mind since i don’t have any notable artifacts and didn’t mind losing a couple of cut gems. The thief took the only child migrant 😂 mistakes were made😅

as someone who's really struggling with my first ever fort, this video was very heartening

bought game recently at steam and like four first forts ended up by deletion one started fine but I made mistakes, finding out it was terrible thing to do only when I checked on general tutorials one I generated in bad area in one, nice area carefully taken skill.. one my two my dwarves died instantly at very beginning when I tried to layer down some hill part to make good entrance this game is hard to play for sure, hard to even build some story when your dwarves get upset and throw broken clothes everywhere and you cant even keep up with making clothes for 100 dwarves as ten migrand waves just came despite you arent ready for that anyway, and dead are pilling up faster than I can put stone slabs around

Nice dude! Doah's (I've renamed him) getting drunk again!!! Someone lock the Loom door!!! Sweet mother! What? Skeletons? Dwarf skeletons??? Ah man, my 2 necromancers have been busy... Thankfully the skellies are down a pit... Ah, that's what happened to my missing dwarfs, they fell down the pit... Caught me some goblin kiddy snatchers... Hmmm... I wonder... Yep! That worked! Hehe! And now everyone's going to starve... My bad... Quick game of Blood Bowl 2 and then... NEW FORTRESS!!!! :DDDD

I got stuck in the feedback loop of progress in my first fortress without any major goblin raids even occurring and it was still fun, still need to get back to my old save though

I tryed to play the ascii version but it was to hard to read and understand it, but now 180h later with some fort failing, god mode\cheat workshop test worlds, I learned so much my current fort is alive after 2 sieges and some monsters in the caverns. My mistake rushing into them and hoping the travelers cate to make them safe. Also in the option limiting the migrants first to 20 then 40 now 70 and mabe later to 100 helps a slower growing in the first 10 years.

Believe or not but the process of getting in a game was super fast for me. I have bought the game about a week ago, watched 2 vids of tutorial letsplay on one channel, watched 1 tutorial letsplay vid on this channel and started an embark. With a wiki and google on 2nd monitor. To be completly honest DF looks like a semi-casual game for me. The only difficult thing is UI and knowledge what I can do in this game. For example game will never tell me I can catch a Hydra to pet it or use Forgotten Beast to farm a silk. Sometimes I thing that reputation of a game like something suped-duper-havy-hardcore that df-community have created and supports is too scary for newbies and it is more a bad thing. But steam-version isn't that hard. You don't really need weeks and months to learn basics and have a fun buildnig a dwarf colony. You can get in in a few days! Just don't be scary if you want to try it. P.S. Thank you Blind for your vids, it was very helpful.

Glad the channel is doing well.

That's the thing about lore and Legends Mode. Unfortunately during Fortress mode the lore is not presented to you, and I find DF fort lore videos VERY VERY interesting. I finished watching your 55 playlist guide on how to properly play dwarf fortress a day ago. I'm on 60th hours right now. I played through my whole first fort without any 3rd party softwares (DFHack) to learn how to do everything myself by watching your videos.. On my 2nd fort I just imported a bunch of things from DFHack, got a bunch of automated things and started building stuff myself. Trying to make fort look nice, sort everything everywhere, make very visually appealing buildings, compared to first fort where I just tried to learn how to survive. Now I'm more into the LORE of the game. I mean, yesterday some dwarf crafted a legendary sock while being under a fell mood! And today I have a plan to make the biggest most beautiful room just for that one sock and put sock in the middle, like it's some kind of god diety simply because I find it funny that some guy crafted A SOCK and presented it to my civilization like it's some kind of accomplishment. One thing I kept hoping to see your next video to be is "how to view lore in Fortress mode" and from what I understand so far it's not possible. The only way to do it is to save the timeline, start a new game and just go look for Legends mode. At least I think that's the case. But yeah, lore and niche dwarf interactions is the best thing about this game. Again, I'm on 60th hour and I'm still having so much fun, simply because I play this game not because it's a GAME, but because it's a world simulation. I really really wish that it was possible to view whole lore of a creature. Like for example yestserday I managed to beat a fire breathing demon that appeared on my map and scorched 90% of all life on my surface. I'd LOVE to learn who it was, how many people it killed and other things it did. But unfortunately, that's just not possible in Fortress mode. All I can learn about the creature is that "it doesn't feel anything while in combat" and that it's lonely and prefers to fight alone lol. And the thought of Adventure mode REALLY REALLY excites me. I know I'll most likely have to create a new world to be able to play Adventure mode, but IMAGINE. After this (my 2nd fort) dies I could go to adventure mode as a change of pace and instead of building a huge Metropolis with happy dwarves I'll just go explore with my character, make myself a goal to get from point A to my 1st fort for example, because I've heard some legends of Urvad Alathgireth (my first general who took revenge on humans for coming to my tavern, getting drunk and then killing my dwarves for fun and then being THE LAST military person alive after I delayed killing what-it-seemed-to-be 7 Cave Dwellers because they got stuck in a part of the map that was blocked off by caves. And then when I opened that part instead of there being 7 of them there were 300 and Urvad Alathgireth, The Axe Lord was last one to die in that brutal battle, ALMOST defeating all of them.) LIKE THAT'S SUCH A COOL STORY! And I'm generally not a person who'd do this kind of thing, I'm 20 and people my age rage on Valorant and say n-word to every single person on Fortnite just because they died to some lucky headshot or whatever. Anyway, DF fun is definitely in yourown imagination, and I can't wait for Adventure Mode to experience some more thrilling combat and some goofy situations :D

Yeah, I'm still struggling with the most primitive basics. "How do I..." is always on my lips. But I do think it'll eventually click.

so i managed to make a automatic garbage disposal unit that i thought worked perfectly, untill i started getting messages about my dwarves getting attacked, turns out that the chute wasnt deep enough so when the dwarfs chucked down the shells the automatic drawbridge would launch them back up the chute and strike dwarves in the shins breaking bones or knocking them unconcious. I think this is my first example of something unexspected turning out to be fun, i went from 30 something rapidly down to 26 before i found out the reason as to why my dwarves where tumbling down the hole and getting crushed by the contraption of my own making. pretty cool as i had no idea this could happen, now the question is if i can make a impromptu catapult showering goblin attacks in turtle shells?

I feel like this is exactly the same path a lot of people took to play the game lol. I had probably a dozen cycles of download game, all dwarves starve or something dumb, and then delete and wait another 6 months.

Is anyone else having problems with water wheels? I am building a mist generator but can't keep the water wheels turning. I have built these before, sucessfully, but can't figure out why these stop for a few seconds every minute or so.

content idea for ya, if youre interested: abridged versions of some of your projects in your LPs; for example, i went back through riverdances to check out how you powered the magma pumps, stuff like that having a shorter video version would be handy

wow! great comparison of LOTR/DF. I shall now start naming dwarves!

Dig down and you'll find the fun alright. :D

There is a learning curve to this game but once you get it down and have your base good and started then it's much better.

Lmao I feel that DF origin story, I was really interested in cool free games, I think I tried to first tried to play it at like 12 and again at 15, and then finally when I became an adult I could figure out how to play the lazy newb pack and stuff, but then I took a break for a few years until the steam version came out. I remember on one of my first forts I was following this tutorial diligently to get used to the game, so I made a super traditional trap hall with some weapon traps. I get my first goblin raid and!... the game crashes... there was a bug at the time that caused the game to crash as soon as a trap touched a goblin on my first playthrough 💀I don't think I played again until the update that fixed that at least. I think now understanding DF's (at least partial) purpose as a story generator is very helpful, I think when I was a kid it just wasn't intuitive enough to learn mechanic wise to the point I couldn't even see that stories could be happening. I don't remember *anything* (other than a dragon attack in the back of my mind) about my first dwarves which is a bit sad and certainly due to just how much more effort even casually looking at something was back then, I would have had to *learn* to look at them first vs now where you just click and it's pretty intuitive.

Well said.

I started a new Fort today. The Goal? Eradicate all evil (atleast on the overworld). My Group's logo is a Goblin being mutilated by a battleaxe and shot by a crossbow

I've tried to get into fortress mode since 2018 and have made successful forts, but I just find it grueling. I enjoy adventure mode far far more and I can't wait until the Steam version has it, so that I can truly enjoy it.

Thanks to your tutorials I am playing again.

I have a hard time learning, because my fort has been under non-stop attack for a long time. It's hard to get much progress done on any project when you need to restructure your military and hospital and such because all your useful dwarfs were killed repeatedly. It would have been much easier to give up and start somewhere much easier, but where's the fun and challenge in that, right?

Rinse and Repeat. Same with me in the last haft decade playing with dwarf fortress.

"Decimated" _Such_ a misused word. Now *massacred* is the impactful one you're looking for.

DF definitely requires a specific type of play(er), it's not cs:go. It's a slow burn, you need to be inquisitive, plan, adjust and most of all enjoy the bittersweet failures. It's taught me to deal with struggle, to slow down and enjoy the moment, the characters, their failings and small victories. It's not about the end goal but the journey getting there.

Can you make a video on backing up your save so you can go into legends mode, and then restoring your active game?

Is really difficult to find fun when your FPS go down to 20 even when you do everything you can to prevent that. I think that is a mayor issue they need to solve ASAP.

I've always been interested in sharing my fortress' story, but it's so overwhelming as an on again/off again player and I'm always worried people will just crap on me for making noobie player mistakes.

Ventrillo, there's a name I haven't heard in awhile lol

I got into the game after the tutorials from CaptnDuck. Who else remembers those tutorials?

The entertainment is the stories you make.