Dwarf Fortress Wiki - User contributions [en]

v0.34:Giant cockatiel

2013-04-02T02:15:36Z

1000000000: Added butchering returns

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v0.34:Giant cassowary

2013-04-02T02:07:37Z

1000000000: Added butchering returns

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v0.34:Giant capuchin

2013-04-02T01:50:18Z

1000000000: Added butchering returns

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v0.34:Giant crab

2013-04-01T15:25:59Z

1000000000: Verified butchering returns, added contrib=no to Creaturelookup/0

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v0.31:Quickstart guide

2011-07-19T02:41:30Z

1000000000: /* Temporary Meeting Area */

{{quality|Exceptional|23:16, 24 April 2011 (UTC)}}{{av}}

<div style="font-size:120%">
:''This is a quickstart guide for {{L|Dwarf fortress mode}} for those who have never played before who quickly want to jump in head-first.''
:''If you are looking to learn adventure mode instead, see the {{L|Adventure mode quick start}} guide.''
</div>
<div style="font-size:120%">
:'''''Also see {{L|Tutorials}} for more detailed tutorials that people have submitted.'''''
</div>
{{TipBox2|float=right|Before you get started...|Always remember that '''losing is {{L|fun}}!''' Be prepared to lose a few fortresses before you get all the way through this guide – it can be easy to accidentally kill the entire fortress while learning. But remember: losing means that next time, ''you'll remember how you lost.'' In a big way, Dwarf Fortress uses the principle of learning from one's mistakes.}}

So, you want to play '''Dwarf Fortress''', but you have no idea what to do. That's understandable; in Dwarf Fortress you can really do anything you like. It is a huge, complex, and totally open-ended game. But in order to do anything, first you need a sustainable fortress. It turns out that this is not as hard as you might think.

As this article doesn't always contain the exact key sequences needed to do everything described, you will likely need to refer to the {{L|Dwarf fortress mode|Fortress Mode Reference Guide}} and the rest of the wiki while reading this. For something more detailed see the excellent {{L|Bentgirder}} tutorial.

[[File:FlowchartDF.png|thumb|500px|right|{{L|From Caravan to Happy Dwarves}} - This is a flowchart showing approximately what sequence of actions players usually take when starting up a new fort. Feel free to ignore it if you want. It's not necessary to refer to this to understand the rest of the guide, but by the time you finish the guide it will probably all make sense.]]

__TOC__

= Common UI Concepts =

{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|Keeping Up|While the guide contains many links, you may still need to look something up. Refer to the {{L|Dwarf fortress mode|Fortress Mode Reference Guide}} or use the wiki [[Special:Search|search]] function. Also, don't hesitate to [[Troubleshooting|ask for help]] if you can't find answers on the wiki.}}
{{KeyConventions}}

=World Generation=

The first thing you will need to do is {{L|World generation|generate a new world}}. Unlike many games, the world that your game takes place in will always be procedurally randomly generated by you or someone else. There is no "default" or "standard" world.

Luckily the basic version of this process is rather simple, and doesn't usually take too long unless your computer is a bit outdated.

{{TipBox2|titlebg=#00a|Starting World|
For your first game, {{L|World generation|generate a new world}} using the {{DFtext|Create New World!}} option in the main menu with the following options:

* {{DFtext|World Size}} is {{DFtext|Medium|3:1}}

* {{DFtext|History}} is {{DFtext|Short|3:1}}

* {{DFtext|Number of Civilizations}} is {{DFtext|Medium|3:1}}

* {{DFtext|Number of Sites}} is {{DFtext|Medium|3:1}}

* {{DFtext|Number of Beasts}} is {{DFtext|Medium|3:1}}

* {{DFtext|Natural Savagery}} is {{DFtext|Very Low|3:1}}

* {{DFtext|Mineral Occurrence}} is {{DFtext|Frequent|3:1}}

This should help to avoid difficulties.
}}

= Pre-Embark =

:''Also see: {{L|Embark}}''

'''Embarking''' is the process of choosing a site, outfitting your initial dwarves, and sending them on their way.

Select {{DFtext|Start Playing}} from the main menu, then select {{DFtext|Dwarf Fortress}}.

The map you see on the right is the '''World Map''' which will show you the whole world. The one in the middle is the '''Region Map''' which will show you a zoomed-in view of the part of the world indicated by the cursor in the world map. The '''Local Map''' on the left will show a zoomed-in view of the part of the region indicated by the cursor in the region map. In the local map area will be a highlighted embark region that you can move around with {{K|u}} {{K|m}} {{K|k}} {{K|h}}. This highlighted square is what will become your play area after you embark. Use {{k|↑}} {{k|↓}} {{k|←}} {{k|→}} to move the region and world cursors around. Hold down {{K|Shift}} while doing this to move more rapidly.

== Choosing a Good Site ==

Choosing a good embark site is crucial for beginners. Advanced players can create a functional fortress on a glacier, but for now, lets stick to dwarf (and newbie) friendly environments. You will want to look for certain features in your initial embark site that will make your first fort much easier to manage.

{{TipBox2|titlebg=#00a|Starting Site|
[[File:Quickstart-good-location.png|thumb|300px|right|An example of a good starting site.]]
For your first game, find a site with the following properties:
*'''NO Aquifer''' (This is '''''very''''' important!)
*'''Trees:''' Forested or Heavily Forested
*'''Temperature:''' Warm
*'''Surroundings:''' Calm or at least '''not''' Sinister, Haunted, or Terrifying
*'''Clay or Soil''' is important to make farming easier when starting out
*'''Shallow Metals''' (That's Metals, plural, not Metal. You want more than one.)
*A '''River''' if possible
*'''Deep Metal(s)''' if possible
*'''Flux Stone''' if possible

You may want to use the {{K|f}}ind tool to help you find a site. Notes about find tool:
"Calm" is classified as Medium Evil, Low Savagery. (See {{L|Surroundings#Combinations_of_surroundings|the chart here}} for why.) The find tool will also only indicate a general area so you will still need to check the attributes manually.

Your site may have multiple biomes overlapping it. If so make sure to press {{K|F1}}, {{K|F2}}, etc, to take a look at all of them. They may each have significantly different characteristics.

See '''[[/Starting site]]''' for more info on why these characteristics are important.}}

Press {{K|e}} to embark once you're sure you have the right area highlighted on the local map.

== Skills and Equipment ==
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|Optional: Preparing Carefully|If, at this point, you'd like to get into all of the details of picking individual skills and equipment for your expedition, select {{DFtext|Prepare for the journey carefully}} and see '''[[/Preparing carefully]]''' for instructions. '''This is completely optional.'''}}

Now the '''Prepare for the Journey''' screen should appear. You will be given the choice to either:
*{{DFtext|Play Now!}}
*{{DFtext|Prepare for the journey carefully}}.

Selecting {{DFtext|Play Now!}} will start you out with a default set of equipment that is reasonably safe, allowing you to skip having to set up your skills and equipment. If you'd like to get going now, just select that option.

=A Minimal Fortress=
[[File:Quickstart-map-starting.png|thumb|right|Starting out. In this example the dwarves will be digging out an entrance tunnel in the sandy cliff on the right. (You can use {{K|Tab}} to show or hide the overview map.)]]

At this point you have embarked and your dwarves have arrived at their destination. You will see your dwarves clustered around their wagon full of supplies somewhere near the center of your map. '''Immediately hit {{K|Space}} to pause the game''' unless it is already paused.

==Surveying the Area==
'''Do not unpause the game just yet.''' Take a look around. Use the {{K|k}} command and the arrow keys. Look up and down a few {{L|z-level}}s with {{K|<}} and {{K|>}}. Place the cursor on various tiles to familiarize yourself with what the symbols mean. If you get lost, you can press {{K|F1}} to return to the wagon. (You can define more {{L|hotkeys}} later, to jump quickly to other sites of interest.)

Notice the terrain features, the vegetation, and any minerals visible. If you chose a site with flowing water, where is it? What about pools of water? The more carefully you examine your site before breaking ground, the better off you will be.

Remember that this is more of a simulation than a game. It is not "play balanced", and you can very easily find yourself in impossible situations. That is all part of the {{L|fun}} because even when you lose, you create an interesting story.

Your wagon serves as the initial meeting area for your dwarves. Since you should have started in a non-freezing, calm (low savagery), non-evil biome, you shouldn't face any immediate danger, but if for some reason the area around your wagon proves to be unsafe, immediately designate another meeting zone using {{K|i}} (see ''Temporary Meeting Area'' below).

==Controlling Your Dwarves==
The first thing to keep in mind is that, for the most part, you can't directly control your dwarves the way you control characters in a typical fantasy RPG. Instead, you '''designate''' things that need to be done and then dwarves with the appropriate labor assignments will decide what to start working on based on a set of largely hard-coded priorities.

For example, if a dwarf needs to eat then he will go eat and only get around to digging a tunnel once he is done eating. It is also possible to designate things that no dwarf is able to do. For example, if you designate an area to mine but no dwarf has mining as one of his allowed labors or no dwarf has a pickaxe then the mining will never get done, and the game will not always advise you of why.

So what you are doing throughout the game is essentially giving your dwarves a detailed group-wide to-do list, but it's up to them to figure out which one of them will execute any given task if the task is even possible. Often many of the details of how a task is performed (such as exactly which rock will be used to make crafts) are left up to them.

==Strike The Earth!==
Generally, you will want to get all your dwarves and supplies inside a protected area as quickly as possible. So the first thing you will do is {{K|d}}esignate some areas to "mine".

Decide where you will build your main entrance. The best thing to do is just put it near your wagon to make it faster and less work to haul all of your supplies inside.

To designate an area for digging:
#Hit {{K|d}} to bring up the Designations menu.
#Hit {{K|d}} again to select Mine
#Place the cursor on one corner of the rectangular area you want to designate and press {{K|Enter}}
#Move the cursor to the other corner of the rectangle and press {{K|Enter}}. A rectangle will be highlighted and a miner dwarf will start to dig out this area once you exit the menu (with {{K|Esc}}) and unpause the game with {{K|Space}}.

This is basically how all of the designation commands work. Everything has to be designated one rectangle at a time, but rectangles can also be one tile wide, or just one single tile.

If your wagon is near a {{L|cliff}}, you can just designate a tunnel to mine ({{K|d}}-{{K|d}}) into the cliff to create an entryway. If you are on flat land with no cliff near the wagon, {{L|channel}} out a small rectangle (perhaps 3x3) on the surface with {{K|d}}-{{K|h}} to create a sort of pit with ramps on the edges, then go down one z-level with {{K|>}} and tunnel into the wall of the pit to create your entry. (Think of this as creating your own cliff, with the inside wall of the pit being the "cliff".)

Dig a hallway one tile wide and ''at least'' 10 long, ideally more like 20. This will be your entryway. Later you may want to expand this to 2 or 3 tiles wide but for now make it narrow so it will be easier to defend.

Your entryway defines the boundary between your safe and protected inner fort, and the big bad outside world. You want this to be your only entrance so that you only have to worry about defending this one opening.

==Delving Secure Lodgings==
[[File:Quickstart-level0.png|thumb|right|Level 0: This is the ground level which we'll call "level 0". The entrance tunnel is on the left where the refuse and wood stockpiles are partially visible. Inside are the general storage area, trade depot, stairwell, and farm plot.]]
At the end of the entry hall, dig a 5x5 room (where you'll later build your trade depot). Then dig out at least another 3 or 4 tiles of interior hallway beyond that, and beyond that another room for a general stockpile area about 10x10 tiles. You have some flexibility in how you do this; see the image at the right for an example.

Don't make any of these rooms too big or your miner will take forever to dig the rooms out, especially if he is digging in stone instead of soil. (Digging through soil is much faster.) You may want to designate one room at a time, then wait for it to be mined out before designating the next room.

=== Stockpiles ===
[[File:Quickstart-custom-stockpile.png|right|thumb|Keep corpses, refuse, stone and wood out of general use stockpiles. You can come back and change the settings on this stockpile using {{K|q}}, selecting the stockpile, then pressing {{K|s}}. Try to remember to come back here to disable/forbid types of things as you create more specific stockpiles for them.]]
'''Stockpiles''' are very important. These areas are where your dwarves will drop things for storage when they aren't needed elsewhere. To create a '''general purpose stockpile''' for your first storage area:
#Hit {{K|p}} to open the Stockpiles menu.
#Use {{K|t}} to change the the {{L|Stockpile#Custom_stockpiles|custom stockpile}} settings to {{K|e}}nable everything but '''Corpses''', '''Refuse''', '''Stone''', '''Gems''', and '''Woods'''. Use directional keys, {{K|e}}nable, {{K|d}}isable to do this.
#{{k|Esc}} out of that screen back to the stockpiles menu.
#Hit {{K|c}} to select Custom Stockpile.
#Designate the whole 10x10 storage room as a custom stockpile. This works just like designating an area to dig: place the cursor on one corner of the room, hit {{K|Enter}}, move to the opposite corner, and hit {{K|Enter}} again.
#Press {{K|Esc}} to get out of the Stockpiles menu.
Once you exit the stockpiles menu you should see dwarves running off to haul everything from your wagon into the new stockpile area. Later you can change what sort of things the stockpile accepts by hitting {{K|q}} (Set Building Tasks/Prefs), placing the cursor on the stockpile, then pressing {{K|s}} to get to the stockpile settings.

It is particularly important to '''keep wood, stone, refuse, and corpses out of your general purpose stockpile''', so you may want to double check to make sure all of these things are disabled in the stockpile settings. Failure to keep these things out of this stockpile will cause problems.

=== Stairways ===
Somewhere off of your interior hallway, dig out a 3x3 or so area and designate a Downward Stairway in the middle of it with {{K|d}}-{{K|j}}. Notice that after your miner digs the stairway, it doesn't automatically create another stairway on the z-level below. If you hit {{K|>}} to move the view down a z-level you'll see that there's no stairway below, but there is a revealed tile of rock/soil. Because of the down stairway that was dug, this tile is now accessible to miners. You can then designate an Up/Down Stairway on it with {{K|d}}-{{K|i}} and the miner dwarf will dig it out. Below that you can then dig out another up/down stairway and so on. For now just dig down one level; we will deepen the stairwell later.

==Stout Labor==
'''Labors''' are how you control what types of tasks a dwarf will do. For example, if the Fishing labor is enabled for a dwarf, that dwarf is allowed to engage in fishing.

When dwarves are idle, it could be because you haven't given them anything to do, or it could be because none of the idle dwarves have been told that they're allowed to do the types of tasks you've designated. For example, if you designate an area to mine, but none of the dwarves have the mining labor enabled, they will all just sit around ignoring your mining designation thinking that it isn't their job.

Dwarves will automatically have some labors enabled if they start out with skill in those labors, and some labors (such as hauling and cleaning) are enabled for all dwarves by default. This is why you didn't need to enable any labors on dwarves to get them to haul and mine, but later you may need a labor that no dwarf is currently capable of.

{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#aa0|Dwarf Therapist|You may have noticed that the UI for managing dwarves is a bit difficult to use. If you are using a supported operating system, the utility '''{{L|Utilities#Dwarf_Therapist|Dwarf Therapist}}''' can make this a million times easier, especially later when you're dealing with twenty times the number of dwarves you have now.}}
With the digging and stockpile taken care of, look over your dwarves' assigned {{L|labor}}s. Press {{K|v}} (View Units) then place the cursor on a dwarf. Now, press {{K|p}}-{{K|l}} for "preferences: labors". You will see a list of labor categories that you can navigate using {{K|-}}{{K|+}}. You can enter each category and toggle each labor off and on with {{K|Enter}} and get back out with {{K|Esc}}.

After exiting the View Units menu, you can use {{K|u}} (the units screen) to help you locate dwarves. Hit {{K|u}}, select a dwarf, hit {{K|c}} for "zoom to creature" and you'll automatically be placed in view mode on that dwarf. (Then use {{K|p}}-{{K|l}} to get to the labor configuration menu if necessary.)

Even if no dwarves have the corresponding skills, ensure that someone has {{L|wood burner}}, {{L|furnace operator}}, {{L|wood cutter}}, {{L|plant gathering}}, {{L|gem cutter}}, {{L|armorsmith}}, {{L|weaponsmith}}, {{L|blacksmith}}, {{L|metal crafter}}, and {{L|engraver}} (stone detailing) enabled. If you have dwarves with hunting or fishing, ''disable'' those until you have your initial fort completed. When you're first starting out you don't want dwarves wandering around alone where they can get killed.

Any unskilled dwarf can perform any labor given the necessary equipment and materials. Dwarves with no skill will simply be slow and produce a smaller quantity of lower quality goods in a given time period, but they will gain skill points as they do so.

==Temporary Meeting Area==
Using the {{k|i}} key, create an activity zone (at least 5x5) in the stairwell or general stockpile area (be careful not to make this too small otherwise your animals and dwarves will start fighting). This works much like creating a stockpile except that you draw the rectangle first then hit keys to define what the area is for. Draw the rectangle over the area then set it to be a {{K|m}}eeting area. Your idle dwarves will hang around in this area, hopefully keeping them inside the fort and out of trouble.

==Refuse==
[[File:Dwarf fort tut miasma.jpg|thumb|right|Avoiding {{L|Miasma}}]]
Outside your fort entrance, use {{K|p}} followed by {{K|r}} to create a stock{{K|p}}ile for {{L|Stockpile#Refuse|{{K|r}}efuse}} ''at least'' 5x5 in size. This should be outside in the open or you will have problems with {{L|Miasma}}. You will probably have to expand it later as it will fill up with vermin remains rather quickly. If you are seeing refuse appear in your general-purpose stockpile instead of the refuse pile, use {{K|q}} on the general stockpile and check its {{K|s}}ettings to make sure refuse has been disabled.

==Woodcutting==
Create another stock{{K|p}}ile for {{K|w}}ood outside your entrance. As it will only be temporary, don't make it too big (maybe 5x3, or 15 tiles total). Later you will move this closer to your carpenter's workshop once you build one.

Press {{K|q}}, place the cursor on your wagon, and hit {{K|x}} to deconstruct it. This will flag the wagon for disassembly. Eventually a carpenter will come along and turn the useless wagon into a few units of wood. Removing other buildings is done the same way.

Also near the entry, designate at least 10 trees to be chopped down with {{K|d}}-{{K|t}}. Don't designate too many trees at the beginning, or your dwarves will spend all of their time chopping them down and hauling them rather than doing other work.

==Pasture==
If you have any grazing animals with you, such as the draft animals used to pull your wagon, they will die if they are kept away from grass for too long. Use {{K|i}} to create a Pe{{K|n}}/{{L|Pasture}} zone over a grassy area outside and assign your grazing animals to it using {{K|N}} (while still selecting the zone). This area needs to be about 10x10 or so to ensure they have enough grass and don't trample it all.

==Sustenance by Plow==
Dig out an area in a soil layer, accessible from inside your fort but not reachable from the outside. You must pick an ''underground'' area with mud or soil. Hopefully you have chosen a site with a soil layer as this will make farming much easier, but if not then you will need to {{L|Irrigation|irrigate}} to create the required mud on stone floors.

Now use {{K|b}} to build a 3x3 {{L|Farming|farm {{K|p}}lot}}. Notice that some things like buildings and constructions are not designated corner-to-corner like digging designations, stockpiles, or activity zones. Instead, you define the width and height of the "building" using {{K|u}}{{K|m}}{{K|k}}{{K|h}} then position it with the directional keys. So hit {{K|u}}{{K|u}}{{K|k}}{{K|k}} to make the plot 3x3 and position it in the room you just excavated.

Remember you must enable the "Farming (Fields)" labour for at least one dwarf or the farm plot won't get built and farming will not take place. (If you selected "Play Now" earlier then you will start with a dwarf with farming enabled.)

{{K|Esc}} out of the build menu and wait for the farmer dwarf to create the plot. Once the plot is built, use {{K|q}} to set the plot to grow {{L|plump helmet}}s during all seasons. You will need to press {{K|a}}, {{K|b}}, {{K|c}}, {{K|d}} and select Plump Helmets for each season, otherwise you'll end up with an idle field for 3/4ths of the year.

==Designing Your First Fortress==
While this guide recommends a vertical fortress design around a central stairwell with each z-level being used for a particular purpose, it is really not that important to use this design for your first fortress. Therefore, feel free to put any of the areas described in the rest of this guide on your main level or wherever you want as long as dwarves can get to them without going outside the fort. In other words, you can think of the "levels" described in the guide more as areas that can really all be on the same level if you have space. Later you can ponder over what makes things most efficient, but for now just do whatever you find easiest.

To get stone though you may need to dig down a bit if you have more than one z-level of sand/clay/soil on the surface.

==Workshops==
[[File:Quickstart-level-1-workshops.png|right|thumb|Level -1: Mason's, carpenter's, mechanic's, and jeweler's workshops surrounded by appropriate stockpiles.]]
Dig your stairwell down one level (with {{K|d}}-{{K|i}}), if you haven't already, and create four 5x5 rooms off of the stairwell. These will hold your {{L|Mechanic's_workshop|mechanic's}}, {{L|Mason's_workshop|mason's}}, {{L|Carpenter's_workshop|carpenter's}}, and {{L|Jeweler's_workshop|jeweler's}} {{L|workshop}}s.

Use {{K|b}}-{{K|w}} to build the workshops, and select some sort of junk stone for the material. If you are still digging in soil and don't have stone yet, just use wood. (The material really doesn't matter in this case.) Put each workshop in the center of each room, and use the remaining space for the appropriate type of stockpile (wood for your carpenter, stone for your mason and mechanic, and gems for your jeweler.) If the construction of any building gets "suspended" just use {{K|q}} to unsuspend it. (This can happen if stone is blocking the way. See "Garbage" Dumping below if you find you need to remove some stone.)

{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|Too Good for Menial Peon Work|Certain labors are crucial in setting up a fort. At some point you may want to disable less important labors such as hauling for dwarves with the crucial skills of masonry, architecture, carpentry, mechanics, and maybe others. You want these dwarves working on creating beds, doors, and trap components before hauling stone and cleaning.}}
Remove the temporary wood stockpile you created outside (using {{K|p}}-{{K|x}}) and dwarves will move the wood to the new wood storage area.

Go to your mason's shop with {{K|q}} and use {{K|a}} to queue up one {{L|table}} and one {{L|throne}}/chair. You will find out why you need these in a second, but now is a good time to start building them. If you still don't have any stone at this point just use wood at the carpenter's workshop.

=="Garbage" Dumping==
'''Note that garbage is not the same thing as refuse.''' {{L|Stockpile#Refuse|Refuse}} is {{L|Miasma|rotting stuff}}. Garbage is anything you designate to be hauled to a {{L|Activity_zone#Garbage_Dump|garbage dump}}, even important things that aren't really garbage. Think of your garbage dump zone as a way to specify that objects you select will be brought to a specific area.

Use {{K|i}} to create a 1x1 activity zone somewhere near your mason's and mechanic's workshops and set it to be a {{K|g}}arbage Dump. Unlike stockpile areas where you are limited to storing one object per tile, any number of items may be piled in a garbage area. That means you will only need one tile to hold as much garbage as you like. Although many of the room sizes in this guide are suggestions, think of the 1x1 garbage dump size as mandatory. At some point you will probably want to retrieve an important item from your garbage dump, and the larger your dump is, the harder it will be to find anything in it.

Press {{k|d}}-{{k|b}} to get to the mass dump/forbid screen and select the {{k|d}}ump option. With "dump" selected, designate a rectangle over all of the loose stones cluttering up your living area. This will designate this stone to be transported to the closest garbage dump zone.

Once the stone from your living area has been moved there, it will be set as {{L|Forbid|forbidden}}. Before it can be used you will need to unforbid it using the same {{k|d}}-{{k|b}} screen, hitting {{k|c}} to claim it.

Congratulations! Knowing how to use garbage zones and dump commands puts you head and shoulders above most newbs. It takes some people weeks to figure this out.

==Trade Depot==
Build a {{L|trade depot}} using {{K|b}}-{{K|D}} in the 5x5 room you created near your entrance. This is where caravans will park their stuff and where {{L|trading}} will take place when one arrives.

==Bedrooms==
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|Communal Living|When a fort is first getting started, a common {{L|dormitory}} type {{L|bedroom}} will suffice for a while, but dwarves will eventually want their own rooms. So feel free to create a {{L|dormitory}} now if you want and come back later to create individual rooms. You will want an office now though.}}
[[File:Quickstart-level-7-bedrooms.png|left|thumb|Level -7: Meager bedrooms and office. All rooms have doors; the bedrooms have a bed, cabinet, and coffer; and the office has a table and chair.]]
Continue digging your stairwell down about seven more levels. Just create the stairwells for now.

On the lowest level, dig some halls leading to rooms for sleeping quarters. Dwarves don't need much space for living quarters; in fact, you can turn a 1x3 room into decent quarters by smoothing the stone and filling it with some decent quality furniture.

{{L|Bedroom design|Designing living quarters}} is a matter of personal preference and aesthetic sense. Actual design will be left as an exercise for the player. Just try to keep the bedrooms close to the stairs, and ideally make your access hallways at least two tiles wide so your dwarves don't have to crawl over and under each other to get where they are going.

You will want to create at least eight rooms: seven for your {{L|bedroom}}s, and one as an {{L|office}} for your manager/bookkeeper, which, rather than a chest, bed and cabinet, will contain the chair and table you queued up earlier.

==Nobles==
Hit the {{k|n}} key to open up the {{L|Noble|nobles and administrators}} screen.

The most important positions to assign are '''{{L|broker}}''', '''{{L|bookkeeper}}''' and '''{{L|manager}}'''. Your {{L|expedition leader}} is a good choice for all three when starting out. Don't worry that it's just one dwarf doing all this; none of these jobs take very long.

Having a manager will allow you to queue up work orders which will greatly simplify managing your production. Having a bookkeeper will allow you to maintain inventory counts on the {{K|z}} screen so you'll know what you do and don't have. A broker is necessary to trade with a caravan once one has arrived at your trade depot.

[[File:Quickstart-noble-selection.png|right|thumb|Nobles screen. The red stuff turns white once an office is assigned.]]
Don't worry about the {{L|chief medical dwarf}} yet. He will be needed when you set up your {{L|Healthcare|hospital}} which won't be covered in this guide. Feel free to go check out the {{L|Healthcare}} guide once you're done.

Lastly, while you are on this screen, highlight the bookkeeper and {{K|s}}et him to work for maximum precision. This will help train bookkeeping faster and ensure that you aren't dealing with vague inventory counts.

===Offices===
Some of your administrative positions (manager and bookkeeper) require an {{L|office}} in order to function. If your manager, for example, doesn't have an office, you will not be able to do any of the things that require a manager even though you have one assigned.

Earlier you should have queued up a table and throne in your mason's shop, and they should be done by now. Place them in the office (room you created down in the sleeping area) using the {{K|b}}uild command. Once dwarves has installed the furniture, use {{K|q}} to select the chair, make the room into an office, and assign the office to your expedition leader (who should be your bookkeeper and manager). Hit {{K|n}} to verify that these positions now have the office they need. If so then you shouldn't see any red.

==Furniture==
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|Different Names, Same Thing|As you've noticed, some things have different names based on what they're made of (like chairs vs. thrones) even if they're functionally the same. So, if it seems like you can't make something of a particular material, do some poking around and check the wiki.}}
Now would be a good time to start building some {{L|furniture}}. You could queue up all these items directly from your workshops, but why not give your new manager a little practice?

Using the manager screen {{k|j}}-{{k|m}}, hit {{k|q}} to queue up a new job, and type "bed", and then select "construct bed." Set the quantity to seven. Next, queue up seven wooden {{L|chest}}s or stone coffers, eight {{L|door}}s, seven {{L|cabinet}}s, at least two {{L|table}}s and two {{L|throne}}s/chairs. The tables and chairs will go in your {{L|dining room}}, speaking of which...

==Dining and Food Prep Area==
Above the living quarters, and right off the main stairwell, create another four rooms. One will be for general food storage, one a {{L|dining room|dining hall}}, one a {{L|kitchen}}, and one a {{L|still}}. The still will allow you to make alcohol. The Kitchen will allow you to make {{L|Cook#Recipes|Prepared food}}.

Make the rooms for the kitchen and still 5x5 each. The storage area and dining hall should be larger. Ideally make the dining hall so that it can be further expanded later.

Use {{K|b}}-{{K|w}} to build the still and kitchen in the middle of the 5x5 rooms. Create {{K|f}}ood stockpiles in the remaining space around each workshop, as well as the entire food storage room.

[[File:Quickstart-level-6-dining.png|right|thumb|Level -6: Dining level with dining hall, kitchen, still, and storage area.]]

Go back to your general purpose stockpile on the top level and use {{K|q}} to change the {{K|s}}ettings to {{K|d}}isable Food. This will cause any food in your general purpose stockpile to get moved to your new food-only stockpiles.

Hit {{K|z}} and select ''{{L|Kitchen}}'' from the top of the screen, then disable all cooking for plants and enable brewing for them so that they will only be used for brewing. Also disable alcoholic beverages for cooking, otherwise your cooks will waste perfectly good hooch in their cooking. The only time you might want to use alcohol in cooking is when you have lots of booze but are running out of food.

If you plan to do any fishing, dig out another area and create a {{L|Fishery}} on this level so the uncleaned fish your fisherdwarf just caught can be cleaned (gutted) for consumption or cooking. If you plan to do any hunting or {{L|Status#Animal_Status_Screen|slaughter}} any animals, create a {{L|Butcher's shop}} on this level so animal corpses can be butchered. The fishery/butcher's shop can be placed behind the kitchen or the general food stockpile, for example. A door is recommended for the butcher's shop in order to contain {{L|Miasma}} should something rot, and to otherwise avoid offending squeamish dwarves.

Eventually go check out the subpage on [[/Stockpiles]] for more information on fine-tuning these stockpiles for maximum efficiency. For now you can safely procrastinate on this and move on to the next section.

==Placing Furniture==
Once your furnishings are complete, you need to place them in rooms using the {{K|b}}uild command. Make sure each bedroom gets a door, chest, bed and cabinet. Put a door on the office (which should already have a chair and table). Put the new chairs and tables in the dining room. Make more doors and put them on other rooms if you want.

Once dwarves have hauled beds to the bedrooms, use {{K|q}} on the installed beds to make the bedrooms into bedrooms. Don't worry about assigning the bedrooms to specific dwarves; they will eventually pick their own as long as they have been defined as unowned bedrooms.

==Meeting Hall==
Use {{K|q}} on one of the tables you just placed in the dining room, define the area as a room, and configure it to be a meeting hall. This will cause idle dwarves to hang around in the dining hall. You want idlers in a central location, close to where you will be placing your emergency drawbridge levers. You may want to go remove the temporary meeting area and any other meeting areas that you created earlier (with {{K|i}}).

==Checking Supplies==
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#a00|Hostile Wilds|Before turning on either hunting or fishing, examine the {{K|u}}nits screen to see if there are any dangerous critters your hunters/fishers need worry about. With hunting especially, you may need to check this screen frequently.}}
Use the {{K|z}} ({{L|status}}) screen to check your stock levels. How much food and booze do you have left? You only have unprepared food at this point, and the booze you brought with you, but soon you will be making more. If you are running low on food, you can designate gathering some {{L|shrub|outdoor plants}}, {{L|Status#Animal_Status_Screen|slaughter}} some animals, turn on {{L|fishing}}, or turn on {{L|hunting}} to tide you over for a bit. Hunting and slaughtering animals both require a butcher's shop.

==Brewing and Cooking==
Once your first crop of plump helmets starts to come in, you will want to start {{L|brewing}} as a {{L|repeat}}ing task. Also, now would be a good time to start {{L|cooking}} actual meals rather than forcing your dwarves to eat raw food. Cooking {{L|Cooking#Recipes|easy meals}} will train dwarves faster, but they may be happier with {{L|Cooking#Recipes|lavish meals}}. So, you might want to cook easy ones until your cook or cooks skill up to a certain point then have them start making lavish meals. Prepared food is cooked from two (easy), three (fine), or four (lavish) raw food/alcohol ingredients. Each prepared food item will be called a something "biscuit", "stew", or "roast" depending on the lavishness of the meal.

{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|Conserving Resources|Some things absolutely require wood (like beds and charcoal), but others can be made out of more common materials like stone. For this reason it's best, especially in the beginning, to make everything that you can out of stone. For example, you could make wood chests and barrels, but stone coffers and rock pots would let you save wood for things that require it and help you rid yourself of all that stone. And if you decide you want solid gold chests or something later when you have more resources, you can always throw out the rock coffers.}}
Speaking of booze, in order to keep the booze flowing, you will need to create some {{L|barrel}}s, or some stone {{L|pot}}s. Your dwarves should have emptied a few barrels by now to get you started, but you will definitely need more. A ''lot'' more. If you have an abundance of trees, then you can designate some more for cutting, and have your carpenter make a bunch of wooden barrels, but it may be more prudent to make a {{L|Craftsdwarf's workshop}}, make sure someone has the {{L|Stonecrafting}} labor enabled, and build a bunch of rock pots. (Rock pots are essentially barrels made of rock.) And don't worry that you've made too many; you almost can't get enough of them.

Keep checking your food and drink stock levels on the {{K|z}} screen periodically. While cooked food (properly stockpiled) and alcohol don't spoil, there is really no need to stock 2,000 units of dwarven wine at this point. Ten times the number of drinks and meals as you have dwarves is more than enough. If you start running out of food or drinks, designate some wild plants for harvesting, {{L|Status#Animal_Status_Screen|slaughter}} some of your animals, start hunting or fishing, or start more farms.

Actually, now would be a fine time to make another three by three farm. Set it to produce {{L|sweet pod}}s in the spring and summer, {{L|cave wheat}} or {{L|pig tail}}s (your choice) in the fall, and {{L|plump helmet}}s in the winter. Having multiple types of plants will give your dwarves more variety in their food and drink, keeping them from {{L|Thought|grumbling}}.

==Storage Space==
{{TipBox2|titlebg=#0a0|float=right|Advanced Stockpiling|Check out the [[/Stockpiles]] sub page for more information on fine-tuning your stockpiles, especially in the food production area. This is somewhat complicated and it can safely be skipped if you don't feel like tinkering with stockpiles right now.}}
You should probably start making some wooden '''{{L|Bin|bins}}''' to help you store more stuff in less space. You might not need them yet, but you certainly will later. Bins are somewhat like barrels/pots, but they can store things other than just food and drink. Bins will also reduce the amount of labor needed to {{L|haul}} things to your trade depot or other stockpiles. So designate some more trees to be chopped down and queue up some bins. As with barrels and pots, you almost can't have enough bins.

=Beyond a Minimal Fortress=

By now you should have your main entrance created, along with a farm, general purpose stockpile, refuse pile (for trash), and {{L|trade depot}}. Somewhere you should have a mason's shop, a mechanic's shop, a carpenter's shop, and a jeweler's shop, surrounded by appropriate storage piles with garbage zone (for excess stone). You should also have a furnished dining area with kitchen, still, and food storage, and a residential area with furnished bedrooms and an office. You should have selected your administrators, and might even have an optional fishery, butcher's shop, craftsdwarf's workshop, or other stuff.

At this point, you have all the components of a minimal but functional fortress! Your next steps will be to make it safer and better protected, to set up your {{L|metal industry}}, and later to prepare your {{L|military|militia}}.

==Preparing for Immigrants==
Soon you should get some {{L|Immigration|immigrants}} if you haven't already. When you do get a group of {{L|Immigration|immigrants}}, take a headcount and queue up enough beds, doors, cabinets and chests to make bedrooms for them all. Examine their skills. (This is where {{L|Utilities#Dwarf_Therapist|Dwarf Therapist}} can come in handy again.) Be sure to enable any labors that they have skills in, but aren't active. Turn any useless dwarves into furnace operators.

==Traps==
Start producing '''{{L|mechanism}}s''' at your {{L|mechanic's workshop}}. Queue up ten. After they are built, use them to create {{L|Trap#Stone-fall_Trap|stone fall traps}} near the start of your entry hall using {{K|b}}-{{K|T}}. Queue up some {{L|cage}}s, and more mechanisms, and use these to create some {{L|Trap#Cage_Trap|cage traps}} right after your stone traps. Cage traps are incredibly effective at stopping ambushers, but traps in general will not protect you from {{L|thief|thieves and kidnappers}} who will almost always bypass them.

Continue to fill up your entry hall with alternating rows of stone and cage traps as the parts become available.

==Guard Animals==
Create two 1x1 {{L|pasture}}s near the beginning of your entryway, one on either side, using {{K|i}}. Using the {{K|N}} key inside the zone interface, assign a {{L|dog}} or other non-grazing animal to each of them. These animals will spot thieves and raiders before they gain entrance to your fortress. Try to pick disposable animals, as they ''will'' be slaughtered by the first ambush raiders. Ideally, don't assign female animals; you want them safe for {{L|Meat industry#Breeding|breeding}}.

==Drawbridge==
Build a {{L|Bridge|drawbridge}} ({{K|b}}-{{K|g}}) to seal off your entryway. Make sure to use {{K|w}}, {{K|a}}, {{K|d}}, or {{K|x}} to make it raise up in the right direction; otherwise it will just retract (disappear) instead of raising up to form a barrier.

Put the drawbridge between the trade depot and the hall-o-traps so you can lock things out of the trade depot and the rest of the fort. Build a lever ({{K|b}}-{{K|T}}-{{K|l}}) near your meeting area and connect it to the drawbridge by using {{K|q}} on the lever.

In case of an {{L|ambush}} or {{L|siege}}, you will want to close up your fort, keeping the goblins out until your {{L|squad}}s have formed up and are in position. Ideally you want to have enough cage traps to take out most of the goblins so your military will only have to mop up.

==Metal Industry==
[[File:Quickstart-level-2-forge.png|thumb|right|Level -2: Forge and smelters with ore stockpile in the middle.]]
Now, below your first workshop level, dig out four more 5x5 rooms around the stairwell. Three of these will be {{L|smelter}}s, and one a {{L|metalsmith's forge}}. Designate stockpiles for {{K|b}}ars around the smelters and forge. The bar stockpiles will hold {{L|Fuel|coke and charcoal}} and metal {{L|bar}}s. You will probably need larger bar stockpiles, but you can dig out more space and expand them later.

Also dig out some space and create a stockpile for {{L|ore}} somewhere nearby. To make an ore stockpile, designate a {{K|s}}tone stockpile, then use {{K|q}} to change the {{K|s}}ettings on it to forbid all types of stone other than ore.

Finally, go to your general purpose stockpile on the top level and use {{K|q}} to disable Bars. Stone should already be disabled on this stockpile, and if so then ore is already disabled for it.

===Wood Burning===
Somewhere near your carpenter's shop, near your wood stockpile, dig out an area and build a {{L|wood furnace}}. Hopefully, you will find enough '''lignite''' or '''bituminous coal''' that you will only need to use the wood furnace to create enough charcoal to jump-start the '''coke''' (refined coal) production. Without {{L|magma}}, you need to refine raw coal to make coke, or burn wood to make charcoal. Unprocessed coal is not a usable fuel; only refined coke and charcoal are.

If you don't find coal on your map, you'll need to either dig down to {{L|magma}} or make charcoal out of wood to run your forges and smelters, but don't worry about this yet. You need to do some digging around.

===Mining===
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|"I have struck what?"|New players who don't have a degree in geology usually find themselves confused as to what all these mineral names mean. In DF you'll never strike "iron ore" but you will strike {{L|magnetite}} or {{L|limonite}} which are {{L|ore}}s of {{L|iron}}. If you don't know that these things are ores of iron then it obviously won't occur to you to try to smelt iron. Note that ores usually look like {{Raw Tile|£|6:7:1}} before they are mined and {{Raw Tile|*|6:1}} after, though the colors will differ. See '''''{{L|The Non-Dwarf's Guide to Rock}}''''' to help you figure out exactly what you've found.}}
At this point you want to start looking for metal ore. You may have already found some while digging out rooms, in which case you can just mine into the walls of the rooms to get more ore. If you haven't found ore yet or you want to see what else you can find, you will need to dig {{L|Exploratory mining|exploratory tunnels}} looking for ores, minerals, and {{L|gem}}s. For now just start digging tunnels out from your stairwell or rooms in all directions and see what you run into. Note that digging into '''damp stone''' or '''warm stone''' is not recommended as those areas may be holding back water or lava which can flood your fort.

===Fuel===
Whether you find coal or not, you will need to burn wood into at least one unit of charcoal. If you find some coal (lignite or bituminous coal), start your smelters out processing it into coke using your charcoal to get things started. From then out you can burn coke to make more coal into more coke and so on.

Put these coke-making jobs on repeat. Only use one smelter to begin with, but you should be getting a group of {{L|Immigration|immigrants}} fairly soon, if you haven't already, and you can put them to work in the other smelters.

Don't give up on finding coal right away. Dig around for a while and if you're starting to get impatient then burn some more wood into charcoal, smelt some ore, and make some {{L|weapon}}s. If you rely on charcoal for fuel then you'll be needing a ''lot'' of wood, so in that case dig out another room near the furnace and create a wood stockpile. You might also want to just remove a smelter, replace it with a wood furnace, and create the new wood stockpile down in the smelting area. Finally, go designate more trees for chopping.

===Forging===
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#0a0|Alternative Energy|If you don't find coal then you will have to continue to burn wood into charcoal, or dig down to the bottom of the map and find the magma sea so you can power {{L|magma smelter}}s and {{L|magma forge}}s. Getting to magma can be difficult for various reasons that you will discover, so make sure you are ready for some trouble before you go that direction. Burning charcoal should work out ok in the short term.}}
Once you have smelted some ore to get metal bars, and have additional bars of either coal or charcoal, you can start forging metal items. Here are some suggestions on what to make first:
#'''{{L|Pick}}s''' - You may have only started out with one pick which limits the number of miners you have to one. By this point you are probably wishing you had more miners. Make a few picks and give some dwarves the mining labor once you get some immigrants. It doesn't matter what metal you use to make picks, at least when it comes to mining, so even copper is perfectly good.
#'''{{L|Weapon}}s''' - Picks actually make pretty good weapons, but there can be some issues equipping them because they're tied to the mining labor. You may want to make a few axes. They make good weapons, at least against most lightly armored opponents you're likely to encounter first, and can be used to chop trees. Start with 5 or so.
#'''{{L|Armor}}''' - You're going to want some armor. Start with shields, breastplates or mail shirts, helmets, leggings, then gauntlets and boots. Start with 5 or so of each in the order listed.
{{L|Steel}} is the best normal metal to make armor and most weapons out of, but you're likely find that you want some arms before you can make steel. {{L|Iron}} is good, {{L|bronze}} is also good. {{L|Copper}} is not ideal, but it still works and is better than no metal weapons/armor at all.

==Gemcutting and Trinkets==
You should have uncovered some {{L|gem}}s by now, so put your {{L|jeweler}} to work {{L|Gem cutter|cutting}} them. These will be the only thing you {{L|Trading|trade}} in the first year, and only for things you absolutely need and can't produce enough of yourself.

Actually, {{L|Finished goods|stone crafts}} produced by a craftsdwarf can make good trading goods as well. The only problem with this is that you'll need to make a lot of them (50+) because each one isn't too valuable individually. If you go this route you will probably need to dedicate a craftsdwarf's workshop and craftsdwarf to this task almost full-time, but you're very unlikely to ever run out of stone.

==Sticking to the Plan==
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#a00|Getting Distracted|Say one of your new immigrants turns out to be a legendary weaver. Should you plant some pig tails and create a loom for him? '''No!''' Put his legendary ass to work smelting metal or something that's part of your current industry even though he has no skill at it. Do not split your efforts yet. You can make use of his unique talents later when you can afford to diversify your industry.}}
Metalsmithing will be your primary economic activity, with cutting gems (and possibly making stone crafts) being used to give you some short-term {{L|wealth}} until the {{L|metal industry}} gets going. This means you will need miners, haulers, smiths and furnace operators. Unless a dwarf is doing something else vital to the proper functioning of your fort, such as training in the militia, making traps, cooking food, and so forth, they should be doing one of those four things.

==Wealth and Invasion==
{{TipBox2|float=right|titlebg=#a00|Crafting Invitations for Trouble|Creating too much wealth initially is a sure fire method of pulling down a goblin ambush that you are ill-equipped to deal with. Titans will also start attacking you should your wealth go over a certain amount. For this reason, spend no time smelting gold, smoothing, or engraving anything yet. Most of the wealth you create in the beginning should be the sharp pointy kind.}}
You may have struck {{L|gold}} or some other valuable metal, and you may be tempted to put your furnaces and smiths to work creating valuable metal crafts. Don't do it! Until you have your militia formed and fully equipped with armor and weaponry, your smelters and forge should be doing nothing else but smelting cheaper materials like coal, iron, making pig iron and steel if possible, and making weapons and armor. Making {{L|steel}} will actually increase your wealth quite a bit, but at least you can stab and beat things to death with steel; you can't make weapons from gold.

=Military=

Your '''military''' is an important part of fortress defense. Unless you have totally cut yourself off from the outside world then you will want at least some sort of military.

Once you reach this point you should hopefully have enough dwarves to start a small military training program. You will need at least 5 dwarves who aren't otherwise doing anything important.

If you don't have any spare dwarves yet, or just don't want to mess with it yet, just skip to the next section and come back to this later. Don't wait too long to set up your military though; you especially will want soldiers before you reach a population of 80 dwarves. (You will find out why.)

When you're ready to start up your military, see the {{L|Military quickstart}} guide.

= What Next =

Congratulations! If you've made it this far then you have a self-sustaining fort going and can now start to branch out into whatever you are interested in exploring. Expect some goblin invasions, forgotten beasts, titans, dragons, giants, and other creatures to interrupt your activities at various points. This is part of the {{L|fun}}.

Here are some things that people almost always do eventually though not necessarily in any particular order (these are somewhat essential):
*Build {{L|coffin}}s and a graveyard or {{L|tomb}}s for dead dwarves and pets
*Set up a {{L|Healthcare|hospital}}
*Build a {{L|well}}
*Build a {{L|jail}} for unruly dwarves
*Set up {{L|Scheduling#Alert_Levels|civilian alerts}} to get civilians to a safe area during ambushes and sieges

Here are some things that players often do as their population grows:
*Smooth and {{L|engraving|engrave}} walls and floors
*Produce {{L|Dwarf_fortress_mode#Livestock|Meat, eggs, milk, and honey}}
*Continue to expand the {{L|military}}
*Explore new {{L|Industry|industries}}
*Dig down to the {{L|caverns}} and create a defended lower entrance with traps to defend the fort against the {{L|creatures|denizens}} below
*Build a {{L|kennel}} and train some war animals
*Build a {{L|Mass pitting}} system to dispose of caged enemies
*Build above-ground {{L|construction}}s such as an archery tower or garden
*Create a {{L|statue|statue garden}} or {{L|zoo}}
*Farm in an {{L|Farm#Above_Ground_Farming|above-ground farm plot}}
*Dig down to {{L|magma}} and set up {{L|magma forge}}s and {{L|magma smelter}}s to avoid the need for fuel
*Build {{L|machine component}}s to pump magma and water
*Create more {{L|Trap design|elaborate traps}} such as magma and drowning chambers
*Try some {{L|stupid dwarf trick}}s

You may also want to just read over the {{L|Dwarf fortress mode|Fortress Mode Reference Guide}} and the many other very useful documents on the wiki to give you other ideas of what to do.

Keep in mind that how you play is not set in stone. Some people never defend, some start a {{L|Megaprojects|megaproject}} right after settling, some never dig and just build an above ground castle or town using logs. Some never smelt ore, some start smelting as soon as they arrive. Some make their home in the dangerous natural caverns. Some deal with invaders by flooding the map or isolating themselves completely. And that's not even considering the {{L|List of mods|mods}} and some of the crazier {{L|challenges}} that people have come up with. There's really no one "right" way to play DF.

= Feedback =

If you have any feedback on this guide, please leave a message on the [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}|talk page]] for this article or in [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=83452.0 this thread] on the forums.

{{Getting Started}}
{{Category|Guides}}
{{Category|Fortress mode}}

v0.31:Challenges

2011-07-16T02:22:37Z

1000000000: /* City-States */

{{av}}
{{Quality|Exceptional}}
==Pre-Embark Build Ideas==
Before you embark, you can optimize or sabotage your fortress from the very start, depending on how you distribute your points. After a few years, a well-developing fortress may or may not stabilize (depending on your idea of {{L|fun}}), leaving you to other challenges.

=== Diplomacy ===
* Six dwarves with only social {{L|skill}}s
* One skilled dwarf

Six courtiers of the king's court made some ill-advised remarks within earshot of the king, and as a result have been ordered to go found an outpost. They've hired you to make sure they survive. The six nobles only have social skills and refuse to do any work that is beneath them.

=== Minimalist/Survivalist build===

* 1 anvil
* 2 copper ore

Nothing else. From that alone, forge your pick and axe. (Figure it out yourself, or see the [[40d:DIY#Minimalist_challenge_build|40d Do it Yourself]] article for a step-by-step "how to".)

Alternatively, drop the second copper ore and use a wooden axe for your woodcutting needs.

===Peasantry===
* Spend 0 Points on embark

This challenge is moderately to very difficult, depending on the wildlife and outdoor food sources. Note that the three logs from the wagon are just enough to build a trade depot.

Sadly, the wooden axes of DF2010 make this challenge remarkably easy. All you end up with is a fort that decided not to dig until the first caravan. Of course, you could just choose not to use wooden axes (on the honor system, naturally).

=== Stranded Scout Squad ===
* Military skills
* Weapons, ammunition, armor, war dogs
* Picks are not weapons

Your civilian 'friends' promised a caravan in the fall as they left, laughing. Hopefully, you can survive until then with your forward scouts.

==Races==
Pretend to be another race! You can mod the game or just pretend that Elves have hair. It doesn't matter what you look like, just what you build, with what materials, and what's for lunch after we build it.

===Elves - The Ultimate Hippy Challenge===
Peace, man.
* Don't gather plants except those you plant yourself.
* Don't gather wood nor trade for it with humans or dwarves.
* Trade for plants and wood only with the elves; they understand your environmental code.
* Don't burn any {{L|fuel|coal}}. Do you know what that does to the environment, man?
**Magma-smelting is an option, but steel can't be had.
* Don't cause any creature's death, except in self-defense.
**No military, induced submerging, or lethal implementation of corkscrews.
* Only use cage traps, and either tame the creatures you catch, or release them back into the wild.
* {{L|Elf|Hippies}} prefer sunlight and wooded areas, with minimal use of rock (digging and building).

Bonus: Declare war on human and dwarven caravans that try to trade you wooden items.

For an extra challenge try this in an area with a cave.

===Humans - Living Large and Standing Tall===
Pretend you're a filthy above-ground dwelling {{L|Human|human}}.
* Build a town wall.
** Only hovels and farms outside the town walls.
* House your dwarves in small town homes
** 5-10 dwarves per house (they had pretty big families back in the day)
** Upstairs bedrooms, small dining room, maybe a single level basement.
* House your workshops according to profession, not convenience.
* Build warehouses for stockpiles, and set guards outside them.
* Create a keep, with its own wall, barracks, treasury, etc.
** House your nobles within the keep.
* Create a market square.
* Create a main street from the town wall to the market square and/or keep. Well-paved blocks, statues and decorative shubbery are a must.
* No underground connections between different areas.
* For obtaining stone, metal, etc. a mine may be built, but must have separate entrance from other buildings. It can be outside the fortress, but must not connect to the interior, or vice versa.
** If you create a side hill mine, only carve large (at least 2 tiles) tunnels, and create shaft to the surface to allow air circulation.
** Or better than that, create an open pit mine / quarry, with ramps to access lower floors.
* BONUS: Miniproject: Build a large, multiple-z-level fountain complete with decorations.
* BONUS: Miniproject: Human Inn, containing your only booze stockpile and should be party-oriented.
* BONUS: Miniproject: Farm simulation, complete with crops and free-range livestock, etc.
* BONUS: Easy Play: Embark on top of a Human Town.
* BONUS: Advanced Play: Modify the raws and actually use humans to make the fort.
* MEGABONUS: Build your entire fortress as {{L|mega construction|one huge arcology}}.
* MEGADWARFBONUS: Build your City in a giant, artificial cave. (or the caverns, if you can't manage that)

===Luddite===
Shun technology and contraptions. Who can really trust them, with those {{L|Gremlin|gremlins}} around. This may be challenging, as it forbids easy isolation/defense from attacks, all traps and wells. Irrigation is reduced to solid elbow grease and maybe a bucket or two. This challenge may be even harder combined with another challenge.
* No mechanics or {{L|mechanism}}s
* No {{L|machine}}s

** BONUS: Hey, wait, aren't crossbows machinelike?

===Earthworms===
Live constantly tunneling. Churn up the soil as you go and visit the surface only rarely to collect the stuff you need..
* Create one long tunnel. Dig forward at one end whilst sealing off (collapsing, building walls across) the other end.
* Workshops should be built directly behind the row of miners. When they reach the point where they would be destroyed, take them apart and rebuild back by the miners again.
* To make it easier, you can come up to the surface now and then.
* Try to keep the tunnel as short as possible.
* Like this: ||||||||==========> (| is walled off end section, = is tunnel and > is the miners.
* BONUS: Leave those pesky nobles walled in as you tunnel away from them!
* BONUS: Leave stockpiles of armour and weapons for any future diggers to find!
* MEGABONUS: Surprise a goblin siege by tunneling up underneath them!
* MEGABONUS: Leave a group of dwarves behind in a cavern farming. Carry no food, and return to the cavern to restock the dwarves.

=== Kill demons ===
Try to kill as many demons as possible. Use siege-engines and fortifications. Remember, that collapsing caves (use supports) kills everything.

===Eskimo===
Live like the Eskimo!
* Embark somewhere with tundra or glacial biome.
* Lot of fishermen, hunters and only a few diggers.
* Every dwarf is at least novice mason
* Build everything out of ice.
* Only spears and crossbows allowed in the military
* BONUS: Axes? what axes?
* BONUS: Only BONE crossbows, bolts and spears. Metal is for losers.
* BONUS: Embark near an ocean and create a floating ice fortress.
* MEGABONUS: Did I hear someone say held up only by one support? Connected with a lever, of course.
* MEGAMEGABONUS: In case of demons and goblins getting in the fortress, pull the lever.

===Amazon dwarves===
*Kill or lock in somewhere all male dwarves, kids are allowed until they grow up.
*BONUS: military use only bows and spears.

Alternative :
instead of killing the male, use them as slaves and make them work for the females dwarves and put all the females in the military, no male noble allowed.

===The Oregon Trail===
Settle like those who traveled the (in)famous Oregon Trail.
*Optional: Wait to stop world gen until the year 1840.
*Embark in an area that has mostly grassland biome.
*Bring 10 food and 15 booze per dwarf.
*All dwarfs must embark as peasants.
*Bring a few rabbits along for skins.
*Bring a few chickens along for eggs, meat and skins.
*Bring 10 copper bars and three random rocks, but only one axe and pick.
*If points allow, bring some leather along.
*If points allow, bring some cloth along.
*Hint: You may want to find an area with clay.

Post-Embark:
*Set one miner, one woodhacker, one main farmer, one weaver/clothier, one potter/glazer, one metalsmith and one glassmaker/gem cutter if you have or found sand.
*All dwarves must plant their own crops, process their own plants, spin their own cloth and cook their own meals.
*Chop down enough of one tree to make one 4x5 inner-tile log cabin.
*Repeat the above step for the rest of the 6 dwarves you came with.
*Hint: Use a rock you brought with to make a kiln. Set a clay collection zone and set Collect Clay on repeat. Use the clay to make houses, instead.
*Dig your dwarves a 5x5 root cellar and place food stockpiles in them.
*Place a 10x10 farm plot by each dwarf's cabin.
*Dig a side hill mine for stone and ore, and make it go down 5 to 6 levels.
*BONUS: Make a huge 40x40 quarry and decrease size by 2 tiles for each level going down.
*Settler BONUS: Place 1x10 farm plots that all grow the same crop 1 tile from each other, channel between them, tap into a surface river, and voila. Western-style irrigation.
*See how long you can survive like this.
*Modding BONUS: Mod the raws and actually embark as humans.
*Naming BONUS: Name the fort 'Tombstone'.
*Modding BONUS: Mod the raws to make sentinents butcherable, cause a food shortage and just plain recreate the Donner Party.

As you can see, this challenge is similar to the City-States challenge below. Try 'em both and see which one you like better!

==Utter Dwarfiness==
Need new ways to behave or new techniques to dip your toes into? Give any or all of your starting 7 some quirks to live up to. Want to try making your Boss a hell-bent, paranoid despot? Or establish a routine mass murder of small animals to provide your fort with raw meat by a vaguely intimidating, estranged butcher?

===Bandit Camp===
* Three or more Marksdwarves (perhaps with {{L|Ambusher|ambushing}})
* Embark site featuring places to hide

Attack and loot every enemy sentient creature you can find, such as goblins & kobolds. Develop sneaky and even horrific methods of trapping and 'processing' friendly sentients (merchants, diplomats, and even migrants). Take no prisoners and leave no evidence of foul play.

===City-States===
* All dwarves embark as peasants
* 7 or multiple of 7 of everything you bring (especially picks and axes)
* BONUS: Make one state for only nobles and force the other states to sustain it

At the start your dwarves split everything equally and move to 7 different locales that are not interconnected. They have to mine their own rooms, plant their own crops, use their own craft piles. This will probably require a bit of cross-fertilization until you get {{L|door}}s and can lock everyone in, but after that it is every dwarf for him/herself!

Burrows are very useful for this.

===Dwarftopia===
*Embark only with dwarves that have max skills, with no more than one miner; but bring extra copper picks.
*Separate the fortress into 2 parts: a vibrant city above, and a depressed slum below.
**BONUS: Reverse the order; elite dwarves get to live underground, while the poor have to scratch a living off the surface.
*Throw all low-skill immigrants into the pits, where they will spend the rest of their lives (unless called up for the draft).
*'''DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES''' let said immigrants socialize whatsoever with the Elite; so nobody (who matters) will be upset when they die.
**BONUS: Make it impossible for anybody to escape by using trapdoors to drop them in and bridge-a-paults for sending goods out (preferably with a carp-based sterilization system).
***MEGADWARFBONUS: Set it all up so that none of the 'elite' have to do any work; all their needs are met by the laborers. Watch what happens and laugh as the laborers die out and high society breaks down.
****MEGAUBERLITERARYBONUS: build the community from "The Giver", all dwarves keep all jobs they come with, 3-time troublemakers get "released" (spoiler alert) use magma instead of lethal injection, and remember, no death or pain! (mod the game for ultra control over marriage and jobs!)

===Equaland===
* No embark requirements
* Construct a successful fortress
* All dwarves are given equal attention regarding quarters, dining, armament and burial
* One dwarf elected to be "The Leader" commands a lever system capable of killing a single dwarf of your choice in their room, however you wish
* Allow the Leader (your id) free reign on his power, enforcing impossible and unannounced criteria on your other dwarves with death being the only punishment
* BONUS: Construct a large sickle-hammer at the fortress enterance to show the regime.

===Hermit===
* Spend points ONLY on ONE {{L|Pick}}

A well known and popular challenge. Kill off 6 starting dwarves and any {{L|immigrant|immigrants}} as they arrive, and try to make a living for the last dwarf. Turn away merchants. If they don't leave, kill them.

'''Variants'''
To moderate difficulty, feel free to allow these exceptions:
* Keep one male and one female dwarf as the Dwarven Adam and Eve.
* Keep your starting seven, but no immigrants.
* Selectively admit dwarves based on name, profession, etc.
* Embark with an anvil as well.
* Become a lone fisherman. The old man and the sea.

===Hunting Party===
* One Marksman+Ambusher
* One Cook+Farmer
* One Brewer+Farmer
* Four exclusively social dwarves
* Embark with no anvil, many hunting dogs, into a challenging biome (terrifying areas may have no supply of wood)

===Immigration and customs enforcement===
* One miner/mason/architect
* One woodcutter/carpenter/architect
* Five military dwarves
* Embark into a canyon or on a road
* Don't embark with an anvil

Spend the first year building fortifications to interdict traffic. Immigrants can build a town around you, but your original seven dwarves remain dedicated to their mission (purely military in purpose).

*BONUS: Make the two areas self-sufficent of each other, no resource-sharing.
*BONUS: Make the main construction capable of dispatching any interlopers into the main building through drowning.

==="Let Loose the Dogs of War"===
* No military Dwarves are permitted, including Fortress Guard.
* No weapons or armor may be forged, and any obtained from looting must be melted down.
* War dogs must be your only form of attack and defense.
** Bonus : No traps or defense mechanisms of any kind may be utilized, only dogs.

===28 Drinks Later===

*Embark at a terrifying biome(Scary Biome), make sure there are zombie somethings. Set up a five thick wall around your camp. Never leave the perimeters. All migrants would be wandering survivors, let them in or don't, as they might be infected.
*Bonus: If you have "reason" to believe the migrants are infected, sacrifice them to the Blood God. Remember, he loves Magma!
*Bonus: Only Marksdwarves for defense, You shouldn't get near the zombies, they tend to bite.If they are wounded, they must be quarantined, and shall therefore die.
*AdvancedPlay: Add zombie to the creatures list and set them as [EVIL].
**Bonus: Send one heroic guy to save the migrants from the zombies, like in 28 days later.
**Elf skin clothing anyone?
*Keep a diary from one of the characters perspectives, to be read when the world is repopulated.

===Master Of One===
Pre-Embark:
* All starting dwarves must have only one skill

Post-Embark:
* No changes are allowed on any dwarf's labor screen, except to ''disable'' hauling labors (enabling hauling is forbidden)
* All immigrants must stay with the profession(s) they arrive with
* All peasants must be activated into the military

'''Variant:'''
*Only allow one dwarf for each skill to remain in your fort (1 mason, 1 miner, 1 farmer, etc.). Slaughter or draft all other dwarves.

===Monarch with a grudge===
* Forbid any and all use of stone and metal
* No exposed tile may be labeled "Underground"
* Artifacts containing stone and metal are to be destroyed '''utterly''' (magma or the {{L|Dwarven atom smasher|DAS}})

"Nay, no ponderous stone doors or shining silver arcades, not while I live!"
The new king has decided rocks and metals can no longer be used in construction. He'll be overthrown shortly, but in the meantime construct your fortress without them.

'''Variants'''
* Embark with no construction materials, into an area devoid of trees.
* Construct a fortress made entirely out of glass. Try not using magma or limit yourself only to clear and crystal glass.
* Build with soap bars. Show those elven traders just how much you despise their philosophies by building with stuff derived from dead trees ''and'' dead animals. Cats are an excellent source of tallow.
* Choose one type of rock, one type of metal, one type of gem, one type of wood, and optionally one type of glass. All constructions can only use those types in their construction. An easy way to enforce this with stone is to mark all but your choice "Economical".
* Bonus points: Stone is forbidden along with digging

===Noblesse requiro===
* Construct a fortress only to please nobles (who, for the sake of this challenge, are all criminally psychotic)
* Criminals who deserve justice should be incarcerated, tortured, and executed for ''any'' offense. Use your imagination for every step of the process. Remember, there is no right to a fair and speedy trial in Armok's eyes.
* All Nobles must be treated to the highest quality living conditions
* All others must be treated to the bare minimum needed to physically keep them alive
* Elected nobles are to be treated as regular dwarves, but mandates hold equal sway regarding justice

===Santa Urist===
* Embark in a glacier biome
* Take at least 3 craftsdwarves to serve as Santa's Elves.
* Export as many toys as possible. These are your only permitted trade good.
* Bonus: Use this Christmas-themed tileset: [[http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/User:Sphr/gfx_set#Christmas_Special_2007]]

===Sitting on trees===
* Construct a wooden "tree" or several, spanning many (a dozen or so) z-levels
* Establish a successful fortress not inside, but around, these constructed trees

===The Mad Butcher===
* One dedicated Butcher+Tanner
* Minimal supplies and skills, so you can bring...
* As many puppies and kittens you can afford
* All food-gathering skills (except your Butcher+Tanner and Brewing) are forbidden

Caging your animals will increase performance to prepare a suitable butchery. Construct a wide, deep shaft to be zoned as an animal pit. At the bottom, outfit an isolation chamber complete with food and alcohol stockpiles, a bed, a butchery and a tanner's workshop. An active well will prevent mishaps. You should include during the construction either an airlock chamber (to enable the butcher to pass on food) or a second pit where the butcher dumps his created food. After construction, seal your butcher+tanner inside and live only off of his work.

===The World is Flat===
* No pre-embark requirements
* You'll probably want a region with lots of hills/mountains.
* You may only work/build/live on the original Z level where your wagon was
* No moats allowed, as this requires a channel, which goes below your z-level

===Hunter and Gatherer===
Pre-Embark (World-Gen)
* Try creating a world in year 1 (optional)
Post-Embark
* Everything allowed except Farming and Cattle Breeding.
Bonus
* BONUS: Embark in a desert, so only hunting and (aquifier) fishing.
** Extra Points: Dont fish in the aquifier. How could the turtles get there anyway?
** Create a huge pyramid and sacrifice living beings or valuables to Armok for rain by dropping it in the hollow inaccessible pyramid from the top.
*** Extended version: Fill the pyramid with magma!
** Create lines like the Nazca to honour Armok, so he will send some rain (maybe).
* BONUS: No Mechanics and only limited (i.e. only copper) or no metalworking.
* BONUS: Live underground in the caverns. Create there little huts out of rock and shrooms

===Cave Men===
Pre-Embark
An Overworld acessable cave

Post-embark
Go into the cave with all your dwarves, and try to survive the harsh enviorments of the new cave systems.
You cant use items from ground zero, all wood must be harvested in the caves, along with food.

*Bonus* no trading, who wants to enter that creepy cave anyways?
*MEGA BONUS* No dogs and no warrior dwarves.

===Fort wars!===

*The initial 7 create 2 forts on opposite sides of a map.

*After the initial 7, 1/2 of all immigrants get assigned to a burrow that encompasses one of the forts. New children get assigned to their parents fort. Each fort is self sustaining and produces their own goods. Then it turns into a competition to see which fort can produce the most wealth.
* Nobles are given free reign and will be quartered in the winning fort.
* Make a giant wall separating the forts above ground. On one side of the wall is an artificial lake made of water and on the other, one made of magma. Call forts Reliable.Excavation.Demolition and Builders.League.United.
** Bonus points if you make residents of both sides wear only team colors.

===Deep dwarfs===
Following the embark, lock yourself up under the ground.
Don't let any of your dwarfs go outside. Let invaders into your underground maze of doom!

*BONUS: Dig deeper and deeper, abandoning the upper levels and rebuilding your fortress as you get more
deep.
*MEGA BONUS: create a caste of deep dwarfs (nobles?), who will only live on the bottommost levels.

===Earth Mover===
*Do what you need to get a huge guild of miners
*Dig every square in the map.
**Hint: you might want to turn cave-in on
**Another hint: Do you really want to put your castle up there, when your dwarfs are digging down there?

===Minimalist===
The opposite of Earth Mover
*Only dig a stone you need
*There should be no unused stones on the map
*BONUS: No spare items or furniture also
*MEGA-BONUS: No wars, as war leaves corpses and other useless crap

===Oh, The Humanity!===
*Live like humans do.
*Make about half of your buildings out of wood- structures that serve no defensive purpose, such as workshops, meeting halls, dining halls, the homes of the serfs and peasants etc should be wooden. You can also divide a large building up as sensible- you might make the main structure of a castle or wall out of stone for strength, then make the interior detailing, shacks, and other "addon" buildings out of wood. The important thing to keep in mind is that for humans, drafty, damp stone buildings are sometimes a functional necessity, not something they prefer.
*Build an aboveground outer wall of wood to start- you can replace it with stone once you reach fifty individuals.
*Underground areas are ONLY for mining shafts, root cellars, plumbing/mechanics, and perhaps a secret passage for your nobles to take in emergencies. No workshops, living spaces, or large-scale storage allowed.
*Most of your mining for ore and minerals should be done quarry-style, as humans are not well-suited to long-term underground life. A quarry should be a big, wide-open pit, shaped like an inverted pyramid, with a ramp leading out, so you don't feel boxed in and claustrophobic. Don't worry about the ecological impact of your surface strip mining.
*An exception to the mining rule is excavation for purposes of putting up outdoor buildings- so you can carve away a cliff wall to make room for a building, but you can't actually build *into* the wall like a dwarf would, so channel that natural dirt/stone roof out!
*All farming must be done with surface plants. No underground plants.
*Humans need several pubs so they can go bar hopping in their free time- they get bored with just one. Make sure you have a separate pub for every 15 individuals.
*Unlike dwarves, few humans have enough beard to hide their naughty bits when they run around naked. Make sure your humans have enough clothing to wear at all times.
*Finally, you need an aboveground castle. Early on, a small building will suffice but by the time royalty arrives, you'll need to have at least begun constructing a castle worthy of their station.

*BONUS: Humans enjoy bathing. If there is no pond inside your walls, build a channel to carry fresh water to an artificial pond so your people have a place to cleanse themselves. Build a 1-level waterfall in it so they can shower, and stock soap nearby.
*BONUS: Every family has its own house. Each house has a "sink" (well), garage (shack) filled with owned tools, a driveway leading to the main thoroughfare, etc. Multiple-floor apartment buildings for the poor/immigrant dwarves. Once they become useful, they become "wealthy" and are moved to better housing. If they get married, they are moved to better housing for a year - if they're not "wealthy" by then, their house is foreclosed. If they arrive married/with kids, they get cheap housing anyway.
*BONUS: Humans, as opposed to the elves reverence for nature and the dwarves utter disregard for it, actually believe it is their duty to pollute and destroy nature.
**Designate large refuse stockpiles and garbage dumps in the wilderness, and fill them.
**Chop down enough trees to piss off the elves every once in a while.
**Fill the map with paved roads. Pavement rules!

*MEGABONUS: The ultimate in human engineering. Build a 5-level above-ground mega-mall displaying all your salable wares. Build various stores for your goods, back room storage, a wishing pool for the main atrium, a food court with several "restaurants" specializing in specific foods and meals, a hair salon, a bank, and a security office staffed with rent-a-cops. Come up with more if you feel like it.
**UBER-ULTRA-BONUS: Give all the mall's stores security doors that can be controlled from the security office, for instant lockdown in case of a shoplifter. Can't have too much security!

=== Orbital Defense Network[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61614.0] ===

Build a 40z-level high magma rain-dropper. Build reservoirs connected to a volcano with retractable bridges at the bottom to drop magma on invaders! In a 50 tile wide hexagonal system, a 4x4x4 is all that is needed per reservoir.

=== Dwarven Prison ===
Faced with raising criminal rates the king has decided to go for a zero-tolerance policy. He sent out seven dwarfs to build and manage a prison to hold the worst of the worst criminals of dwarvenkind.

* Only your initial 7 dwarfs may do any work
* All immigrants are treated as inmates sentenced to life-long prison sentences. Yes, even the children. Don't ask, you are just doing your job and who are you to criticize the dwarfen justice system?
* Every inmate is locked up in solitary confinement within his/her own <strike>bedroom</strike> cell with only a bed and a forbidden metal door. Metal bars instead of walls are optional.
* Inmates have to be kept alive in their cells, but don't pamper them: Make them live on a diet of water and raw plump helmets. Feed them by dumping the plump helmets through holes in the cell ceilings or using an airlock system. Water can be provided through a water hole in the floor leading to a sewer system.
* Should an inmate [[tantrum|start to rebel]] the <strike>[[sheriff]]</strike> chief warden should restore discipline with an iron hand.
* It won't take long until a few inmates start to [[strange_mood|go insane]] from sensory deprivation. Too bad for them.

=== Cavernous Dwarves ===
A version of ‘Deep Dwarves’ and ‘Cave Men’, this challenge takes advantage of the large, underground caverns you find when you dig deep enough.

*Dig out a few rooms near the surface to hold all your starting goods and move them all underground as quickly as possible. (Don’t forget to disassemble your wagon.)
*Designate a meeting area underground so that none of your dwarves will be on the surface and then remove the stairs/ramps leading up.
*Start digging. Dig until you find the underground caverns (around lvl 10 - 15 depending on your map).
*Treating the caverns as ‘outside’, build your rooms and halls with windows looking into the caverns/underground lakes.
*Try as much as possible to not disturb the natural formations of the caverns. Building around a pillar is fine, carving out a pillar and building inside of it is fine, but avoid removing pillars. Use the cavern floor as your main hallway.
*Starting with at least one combat-ready dwarf is advisable (you may want more than one) as there creatures lurking around every corner.
*'''BONUS POINTS''': Construct a castle in a large cavern to house your nobles and make sure that all their rooms/offices overlook the working peasants.
*'''Extra Room Challenge''': If you are looking to expand the caverns, you may drain lakes into magma seas. (WARNING: This is a frame-rate killer!!! If you try this, make sure to disable the auto-pause/re-centering for collapsing cavern messages, and expect it to take a long time to complete.) Once you have one or more lake drained, you will likely have doubled the size of available caverns to build in.

=== Roman Empire ===
This challenge tries to emulate Europe during the Roman Era.

*All new male non-noble dwarves must be conscripted into the military for a period of no less than a year. Your initial seven are exempt, as they may be thought of as having fulfilled their military duty earlier in life.
*Steel, Aluminum, and Pig Iron are banned.
*All full-time military dwarves must have a matching set of iron platemail ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorica_segmentata lorica segmentata]) and iron short swords.
**All conscripted dwarves must have a full set of leather armor (material doesn't matter) and wooden crossbow.
***BONUS: All conscripted dwarves must have bows and arrows instead of crossbows and bolts. Trade with the filthy [[elf|Gauls]] for them.
*BONUS '''Peloponnesian War''': All full-time military units may only wear bronze armor and use spears.
*BONUS '''Aztec Empire''': All military may only use leather armor and obsidian short swords.
**MEGA BONUS '''Pre-Historical''': All metal production is banned.

=== Incompetent Advisors ===
After wrongly advising the king about which stones were safe from magma's fiery heat, he sent you off with a party of six others, most of which never made it out of dwarf high.

*Using the wiki and asking questions on the forums are forbidden! The king only laughs when your inquiries arrive. You only know what you knew from the start, anything else has to be tested with experiments
**BONUS only embark with peasants and only accept immigrants with adequate or lower skills.
***MEGABONUS, when the king comes (to apologize) decide he isn't sincere and dump him into the magma with his advisers (Anyone who comes with him)

===Steve Jackson's Dwarfanoia===
*Make colored layers for the dwarves to live in Black (infrared), red, yellow orange green blue EVERYTHING in each layer must be that color a purple computer is at the "best" layer
** If you see a dwarf leave his color to go to a nicer one kill them.
*** Bonus: make it impossible to function without crossong the color boundry once in a while. (bedroom must cross a blue hallway or something)
**** hey wait, dodn't the blue dwarves make the purple computer? and its room?
** decide with random goals or by random when dwarves may go to the next color
** Bonus: everybody in the black level should be miserable -- the red should be merely unhappy, the yellow and orange mildly happy, and green and blue extatic.
* computer is in charge of random death traps
* encourage grudges between dwarves
** put dwarves with grudges in the same military unit
*Sherrif is the most deadly dwarf (and everybody other than soldiers go in civvies)
*Bonus make a weapons testing area which may kill the dwarves or give them awesome weapons via untested modding.
** Extra bonus -- the weapons are all either effective or deadly.
*Mega bonus -- have the computer give a sign to check happiness. Press "v" if the first dwarf it finds is unhappy or had an unhappy thought kill them.

Notes: I think you have to mod [mostly from scratch) for orange, so instead you may make cheap stone layer, flux stone etc, or just skip orange.

===Paladins===
* decide which dwarves are paladins and which are support -- paladins refuse to work and support may not fight
* embark to an evil (preferably terrifying) locale
* nothing evil may live
** how to define evil: standard -- use the wiki -- if it says that it lives specifically in an evil climate, it is.
** bonus - include trees
** bonus - all non-good
** bonus - all non-dwarf
** bonus - all non-controlled dwarf
** ultra-bonus - all non-related to the 7 first dwarves
* no profit may be made from anything evil -- that includes trees and plants.
* if all paladins die, end your game -- the other dwarves have no purpose there and will leave/ commit suicide
* how long will you survive?

===Survivor Dwarves===
Dwarves try to survive, stranded on an uninhabited island.

* Find an island in your generated world (or keep making worlds until at least one island appears).
* Try to ensure that there are no neighbors on the island (except other dwarves, of course).
** Bonus: try to find an island that only has hostile neighbors (ie {{L|goblin|goblins}}, {{L|Kobold|kobolds}}, {{L|Evil#Evil|evil}}).
* Take only the bare essentials along with you (see {{L|Challenges#Minimalist.2FSurvivalist_build|Minimalist/Survivalist}} build above).
** Bonus: only peasants managed to survive the incident which landed your dwarves on the island (see {{L|Challenges#Peasantry|Peasantry}} above).
* NO TRADING! Ignore the dwarven traders that come (or kill them).
* {{L|immigrant|Immigrants}} are now other survivors; limit the number of survivors your island can have (either by changing the population cap or just killing off new immigrants).
** Bonus: play 'Survivor' with your dwarves and have them vote a dwarf 'off the island' once a month (or some other frequency).
*** Bonusx2: tribal colony sacrifices any dwarf that is 'voted off'.
** Bonus: new survivors (immigrants) are a rival survivor band (or tribal dwarves) that are trying to steal your supplies/kill you. Kill them or sacrifice them to Amok!

* Bonus: try to build large outdoor fires to signal rescue craft.
* Bonus: if a new mayor is elected, sacrifice the old mayor for 'failure to ensure the rescue of the survivors.' (Obviously you will need a large enough population to be able to have mayors).

===Venice===
Build a perfect replicable of Venice.

*Building next to a river-side, carve out canals and make a picture-perfect replica or Venice, down its basilicas and plazas.
*Make sure to have an expansive glass industry.

* Bonus: make models of other famous historical-era cities.

===Dwarf Hoarder Challenge===
(edit and improve this please)

step 1: embark with 7 proficient miners and 7 picks

step 2: once you reach the outpost location, strip the outside world of all its valubal minerals

(valubal=all metal ores and anything else that you can make a decent profit from)

step 3: mine deep underground and make a very large room to store your items in

step 4: kill and loot the bodies of all migrants and caravans that come to your fortress and take what you loot from them down into the stockpile

BONUS: keep all the nobles that come with the migrants in cage traps in your stockpile

step 5: do what you did in step two, but this time underground

step 6: add huge defenses to your stockpile underground, but keep it accessible

step 7: repeat steps 2, 4, 5, and 6, until the king/queen comes

step 8: cage and store all of them

BONUS: cast them in obsidion and have the obsidion mined and carved into masterwork statues

MEGABONUS: make them statues of the nobles you have captured thus far
(including the king/queen)

step 9: continue step 7 until the first of your starting 7 dies

step 10: seal the fortress entirely and kill off your remaining dwarves

(by this time they should have become friends, so its best to kill them before the tantrum spiral starts)

BONUS:wait until the tanrum spiral comes and let that kill them all

if step 9 never comes than do step 10 anyways (if you have accumulated lots of wealth)

step 11: (optional) brave your own defenses in adventure mode to gain access to this great fortune
BONUS: make a system so the nobles stay alive
MEGABONUS: make a sytem so the nobles can be set free
MEGADWARVERNBONUS: make that sytem be part of the defenses so when you get to the stockpile the nobles are released and tear you apart.

NOTE: modding may be required so the nobles stay there and so that you may release them

Additional step: have one dwarf carve the tale of this fortress on the walls of the fortress

==Arbitrary Law==
Rule your fortress with a Soapen Fist! Or see how far you get until a (voluntary) significant flaw sends you into an inevitable sadness spiral. Whatever it is, be sure to stick by it or you'll be meeting the Hammerer.

===Work with what you have===
* Build for one year as you normally would. Be as efficient as you like.
* At the end of the year, no more mining, constructing, or anything else.
* Wood may be gathered
* Walls may be constructed, but can only be used in already-existing constructions, like dividing a room into multiple separate rooms
* No new aboveground/belowground space-creation. You may only use the space you mined out in the first year
This challenge forces you to utilize space you havn't before. A large 5x hallway may be converted into a 1x with bedrooms on either side. Whatever you have to do to fit your current population. Be sure to build without any thought into the future of the fortress when you can no longer build. Instead, make it as hard as possible.
Variations:
* you may build aboveground to a maximum of two stories above ground. Make big slums/refugee camps/bazaars. Anything that involves mass-small-one-story-buildings
* you may increase/decrease the time before you can no longer dig or build new space
* (decreased difficulty) you may plan ahead

===ASPCA===
* {{L|Animals}} are forbidden from the fortress
* Animals following immigrants cannot enter the fortress
* Lethal traps forbidden, caged non-sentients must be immediately released
* Butchery is forbidden, but leatherworking is allowed

Rather than forbidding immigrant pets from entering, you can choose to deal with the owner of that pet instead for a more sadistic challenge.

===Commune===
* After embarking, enable all labors on all dwarves (including immigrants).
* Beds can only be designated as barracks or a dormitory, and no dwarf can be assigned to a bed (even nobles).
* Coins are forbidden.
* Be aware that nobles are to be considered part of the "bourgeoisie" and {{L|Unfortunate accident|dealt with}} immediately.
* Establish a communal military plan and force everybody to be a part of the military at some time or another. Share all weapons and armor, anybody that tries to make an artifact weapon, either share the weapon, or somehow destroy it, and then execute the individual who made it.
* Force everybody to take turns and act as the executive dwarf for the month/season/year. If that person makes decisions that go against the good of the commune, execute them.

===Couples only===
* As soon as a married couple exists in your fortress:
** Kill all single dwarves (or put them in a meeting area for a year to find a lover. Kill the rest)
** Kill all incoming single dwarves
** Try to save children, until they are adult and single

===Dieting Dwarves===
* Exclusively dine on a food type of your choice (meat, fish, plants, alcohol)
* Optionally, forbid alcohol consumption to limit carbohydrate intake
**Note: forbidding alcohol permanently is as good as accepting a slow but continuous fortress death

===Dwarf Liberation Movement===
* Nobles are worthless scum, we give them nothing!
* As soon as possible, cage your expedition leader.
* Never appoint any dwarf into becoming a noble.
* Cage any dwarf that appears on the nobles and administrators screen.
* When your population elects a new mayor, release your old one and cage the new one.
** Bonus : Cage the king and all of his escorts!
** Extra Bonus : Once you have caged all nobles, administrators, the king and his advisor; you must unleash the Dwarf Atom-Smasher upon them.

===Citizenship===
* All dwarfs must earn citizenship. To do so they must prove themselves by reaching legendary mining skill. Because REAL dwarfs know how to dig. Until then they are forbidden to do any work.
** Bonus : Hauling is forbidden too.
** Extra Bonus : Non-citizens are prohibited from entering into a fortress, and they must remain outside. Above-ground constructed buildings count as part of the fortress.

===Fight for your name===
* Before embarking, randomly generate a fortress name and be sure to know its English translation
* Do the same with your group name
* Creatively designate a serious goal for your fortress, based on these names
* Fanatically reach your goal

===Fort Geneva===
* Lethal traps are forbidden
* Caged sentient creatures are to be considered prisoners of war and treated humanely

Suggested provisions for prisoners: a bed, a personal cell, a commons area, aboveground exercise yard, and the clothes the creature was wearing when captured. For more inspiration, go to: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions Geneva Conventions]

===Government in Exile===
* Only Military and Social skills can be purchased and enabled in your entire fortress

All dwarves are either nobles or in the military. The only useful dwarves you'll have will be your broker, manager, mayor, bookkeeper, and dungeon master. If you can survive until the sheriff arrives, transfer your entire military into the fortress guard. With a little luck, and a lot of exported roasts, you too can rule without proletarian interference.

===Hardcore Altruism===
* Do not allow the death of any Dwarf

Though not viscerally entertaining, an incredible challenge. All strange moods must be given what they crave. All medical attention must be done ASAP. Mining, fishing and hunting must be done with much care. Sadness must be met with excellent social skills and quality furniture.

===Industrial Plant===
* Choose one industry that produces commercial goods
* No other industries permitted, only imported

===Johannesfort===
* Find a starting location with a lot of gabbro, containing Kimberlite
* Mine and cut all the diamonds on the map
* Only gems can be traded.
** BONUS: Your leader [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_denialism#In_South_Africa denies the existence of infections]. Soap is neither manufactured nor traded for. Even if you know a dwarf has an infection, do not quarantine it or treat it any differently.
** BONUS: Use the Burrows tool to establish "gated communities" for select dwarves, such as legendaries and nobles. Keep the fortress guard confined to these gated communities. If a dwarf throws a tantrum outside these designated areas, let him or her rage.

===Sexist Segregation===
* Establish two functioning and stable fortress
* One must be entirely male, the other entirely female
* Married couples are to be processed

===THIS! IS! SPARTAAAA!===
* Change your population cap to 300.
* At least half of your fortress population must be active in the military.
* Crossbows and traps are forbidden.
* Only spears, swords, wrestling, helmets (helms) and shields may be equipped by military and used to fight.
** BONUS: All weapons and armour must be made from bronze.
* Civilian dwarves have all labors enabled.
** If ever activated, cannot use quality weapons or armor.
* Maimed dwarves (perceived to be) incapable of being fully healed must be killed. (This includes incurable spinal injuries in military dwarves!)
* Devise methods of dropping Liaisons down pits during meetings. Yell, "THIS IS SPAARRTAAAAA..." at your monitor.
* Demand goods be turned over from all caravans.
* Recreation is forbidden, as well as any 'improving' action, such as smoothing/engraving, or constructing things out of metals what can be done with rock and wood (besides spears, swords and shields).

Note that the above suggestions are modeled on the popular movie [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film) 300], an adaption of the visual novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(comics) 300], both of which historically inaccurate. For a more "realistic dwarven Sparta", try reading the Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta#Society Spartan society].

===Xenophobia===
Difficulty increases with each bullet point:
* Kill all non dwarves...
* ...and dwarf traders (or are they race traitors?)
* ...and all immigrants (or are they spies?)
* Make sure you kill all animals and especially find those collosi, dragons etc.,
Extra-gore version - make sure to make elves, goblins, humans etc., butcherable and wear only sentient hide clothing.

===Mesoamerican Dwarfs===
* All food must be grown above ground, on small plots, surrounded by canals (chinampas)
** BONUS: Flood the farms annually.
* All buildings must be above ground.
* Capture as many of your enemies as possible.
* Build a massive step pyramid at the center of your fortress. Appoint one dwarf high priest and have him kill the prisoners at the top.
** BONUS: Build it upside-down.
*** MEGABONUS: Build the entire city on top of the upside-down pyramid, with another pyramid-temple in the middle.
* Surround your fortress with an artificial lake.
** BONUS: Build it in the middle of a natural lake.
* Use only copper or bronze metal (except for iron anvils).
* Soldiers can only use obsidian short swords. Axes are only for wood cutting.
* No armor except leather and only let champions use it. All others must fight unarmored.
** BONUS: Divide your soldiers into "Jaguar[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_warrior]" and "Eagle[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_warrior]" warrior societies and outfit them with leather armor made from their respective animals.
* Demand that all non-dwarf caravans surrender their goods as tribute.
* Build a giant, multistory building for holding skulls.

===French Revolution===
*Keep your nobles happy and your proles subjugated until you have a king issue a particularly stupid mandate.
*Build some manner of guillotine.
*Kill the king, everyone he is aquainted with, and everyone within the same room.
*Kill other important nobles as soon as your guillotine frees up.
*Unimportant Nobles are to be executed upon first mandate, or exiled at a random point in time.
*Any dwarf that has any relation to any noble must be executed.
* Kill any other dwarf if he has any whiff of aristocracy about him. Use your discretion.

===Specialized economy===
* The goal is to reach maximum efficiency. To do this, you must assign all your workshop dwarves to an individual burrow.
* Each dwarf must have his own dining room, bedroom just next to his workshop.
* You have to assign a stockpile for food and booze next to each of your workshop dwarves so they can feed. Specialized haulers will have to bring them their foods.
* You have to assign a raw material stockpile next to your workshop so your dwarf can work. Specialized haulers will have to bring them these raw materials.
* No workshop dwarf should leave their respective burrow. Ever.
* Good luck keeping all these stockpiles supplied all the time without getting lost!

===Becoming the abomination you sought to kill===

The seven founders are trying to hide a terrible secret that can doom all dwarfkind, so each took on an arbitrary law that must be followed until the related dwarf is dead. Their ultimate goal is to kill everyone in the forteress but none of them actually KNOWS the other are pursuing the same goal undetected!

Here is a typical set of laws:

-No hunting

-No trading

-Only one batch of alcohol is to be produced per year (that's 1 drink per dwarf, tops).

-Constant war with all elves

-No military training

-No magical materials (nothing above steel)

-Forteress should be over a magma-based doomsday trap, with 20 levers able to trigger it at any time (aka the "glorious death defeating the dragon by any means necessary" plan). Did I mention the alcohol restrictions turns dwarf insane?

You shall attempt to make as many of the original dwarves as possible die from old age rather than any other cause. So pray for strategic deaths early(no cheating)! This way even your UNCONCIOUS is untrustworthy...

Overall, any of the seven laws shouldn't be TOO deadly, but certain death should be a result of following them all permanently.

Success is acheived by one criteria only: at the death of the forteress you must have learned your unconscious planned Dwarf deaths you didn't plan consciously... that's the only way to "win".

===The Hive===
*All dwarves have all labors on.
* -Dwarf Therapist helps with this.
* -Hunting and fishing are optional.
*The endgoal is to make a fully functioning "bee hive" like fortress, All rooms inside the hive must be the same size.
*The hive must be suspended in the sky like below (scale is your choice)
= is a Up/down stairway
O is the hive parts

======
OOOO =
OOOOOO =
OOOOOO =
OOOO =
=

'''Urist's Legion'''
*Women are allowed no jobs, and must be held as breeding stock.
*Most of the men are military, and the rest are workers.
*All military armor must be leather. All weapons must be iron swords and spears.
*Only appoint named dwarfs to noble position.
*The expedition leader must be kept safe, and will do nothing.
*He must also have a royal bedroom, dining room, and tomb.
*BONUS: Build an artificial lake. Make a replica of Hoover Dam. Build walls to make sure the goblins only appear west of the dam. Guard it againts the GolbiNCR!
MEGABONUS: Build a camp with walls out of aluminum bars. make the entire thing a barracks.

==Megaprojects==
Try building some <s>ridiculously</s> humongous, <s>over</s>complicated construction, using whatever <s>in</s>appropriate building method your fevered imagination can come up with! Need some ideas? Take a look at the {{l|Megaprojects|Megaprojects page}}!