Adventurer mode

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This is a detailed reference guide for Adventurer Mode. For a beginner tutorial, see Adventure mode quick start, or see Adventure mode quick reference to quickly look up key commands.

A player-controlled adventurer about to embark on a journey with a somewhat predictable end, not realizing the fun nature of the game.
Art by HonorbruSudoku

Adventurer mode (also called "Adventure mode" or simply "Adventure") allows you to embark on an open world roguelike adventure to explore the worlds you have generated. You create a character, or party, from any race playable in that world (dwarf, human, elf, goblin, necromantic experiment, animal person, etc.), then visit any part of the world, where you can learn about what ails the inhabitants, and optionally go on quests to end those troubles (or get brutally slaughtered trying).

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You can venture into the wilderness to discover caves, caverns, shrines, lairs, abandoned towers (mundane or magical) (or certain mysterious places), towns, and more. You might even decide to revisit your previously abandoned or retired fortresses, to reclaim the treasures you once crafted, or catch up with your dwarves on a more... personal level. While building and crafting mechanics exist in dwarf fortress mode, building is not available in the current version of adventure mode and crafting is quite limited without mods.

World selection

You can play adventure mode in any world that has a civilization with the [ALL_MAIN_POPS_CONTROLLABLE] token (which are dwarven civilizations, human civilizations, and elven civilizations). Each civilization has its own preferred style of settlement:

• Dwarven civs are spread between fortresses (which are built into the surface, and almost always connect to the underground), mountain halls (which do not contain a direct connection to the surface, they are accessed through underground tunnels instead), and hillocks (a loose collection of mounds built into hillsides).
• Elven civs inhabit forest retreats.
• Human civs inhabit cities, towns, and castles.
• Goblin civs inhabit dark fortresses and dark pits.

Any species can be a part of any civilization. A civilization starts with a certain race as its population; over time, other races will join the civilization, as long as they can reach it.

Towns, forest retreats, and fortresses are currently the only sites with shops and other places to officially buy goods. If you have previously built a fort in the world that you select, your adventurer will be able to go visit it. The activity levels of the fortress will depend on whether you decided to "retire" it or abandon it:

• If retired, you will likely be able to encounter most of the inhabitants from the year of retirement in fortress mode, though likely not at the same level of activity as before.
• If abandoned, the fortress will be considered deserted (which pretty much means, given you're playing adventure mode: "don't abandon, if you were planning to have any further interaction whatsoever").

Character creation

Race

Party members can be of any race that is a member of a playable civilization, which usually includes dwarves, elves, humans, goblins, and animal people. More races can be made playable (e.g. angels) by conquering their sites in fortress mode.

• Dwarves can enter a martial trance when fighting multiple foes at once, and can see in the dark. As one of the smaller creatures, they're unable to wear human clothing and armor, but wear the same size as elves and goblins.
• Elves have higher natural speed, and a notably sharper sense of smell. Like dwarves, they wear smaller-sized clothing. They generally start with weaker wooden gear, rather than metal.
• Humans are larger than the other main races, meaning armor from other civilizations is too small, but that also means they are slightly better in combat.
• Goblins do not need to eat or drink, possess low light vision like dwarves, and wear the same size armor/clothing as dwarves and elves.
• Animal People come in various sizes, shapes and abilities, and therefore, may not be able to wear armor sized for the more common races (with some exceptions, that you can find in this list of creatures by adult size). The very largest of them can be very good in combat, especially if using armor made for them in a player fortress. Some are carnivorous, which limits their food options. You can either play as an animal person from a civilization with an existing population of that species, or you can play as an animal person who only just recently joined civilized society, using the "Intelligent Wilderness Creature" option; however, this option is only available to Ordinary characters.
• Experiments that have joined one of the playable civilizations will also be playable. Experiments do not need to eat, drink or sleep, but otherwise vary in size and details.

Civilization

The civilization you pick determines which sites you can start from, and what skills and items are available when creating a character, among other things.

• Dwarven civilizations have access to copper, bronze, iron, silver, and steel equipment, but not two-handed weapons or whips.
• Elven civilizations only have access to weak wooden equipment, but wild animals will not attack characters who are members of an elven civilization. The only weapons they have are shortswords, longswords, spears, and bows.
• Human civilizations have access to copper, bronze, iron, and silver equipment, and the widest selection of possible weapons, and can start as a hearthperson. Generally, you should pick a human civ if you want the intended adventure mode experience.
• Outsiders are characters that don't start as a member of any civilization. Only humans can be outsiders by default. Playing as an outsider has some initial limitations—they possess no pre-existing relationships or cultural knowledge, such as rumors, wildlife, art, musical forms, musical instruments, clothing types, etc.; including cultural practices, such as hair styles, or language, which is chosen randomly during character creation, but doesn't carry over in game, so items can't be named. When selecting skills for outsiders during creation, many more skills may be available than would otherwise be if they were part of a civilization. They will also have access to all possible pets (although some cost more character creation points than are available), and weapons and armor made from almost every metal available, including some you cannot normally use. However, they will not have access to any other items, including the very important backpack and waterskin. Be aware that outsiders can't claim sites unless they become a member of a civilization.

Destiny

Affects the level of guidance and direction received. All destinies have access to the same world features, with higher destinies providing stronger guidance and starting conditions. Due to current restrictions on starting sites, some creature types may not be available for higher destinies.

• Chosen: Adventurer receives the aid of a supernatural parent or patron, and all benefits of Hero mode. Requires a market site containing a temple and a priest, which usually means a human civilization.
• Hero: Compass directs to nearby sites. Requires a market site.^[Verify] Defaults to hearthperson (called soldier in some civilizations), but can be changed. Companion recruitment is easier.
• Ordinary: No guidance, compass, or additional restrictions on character creation.

Difficulty

Determines the number of starting skill, attribute points, and equipment points.

• Hard: 15 attribute, 35 skill, 55 equipment
• Normal: 35 attribute, 95 skill, 255 equipment
• Easy: 105 attribute, 161 skill, 1255 equipment

The number of skill points is less significant than the number of attribute points, because the time it takes to go from Hard to Easy in skill terms, is much less than what it would take to go from Hard to Easy in attribute terms.

Archetypes

There are a number of predefined archetypes that an adventurer can select, corresponding to a choice of weapon or performance specialization. Selecting an archetype will distribute your attribute and skill points accordingly, based on the archetype chosen. All archetypes, besides blank slate, include one level of swimmer and reader.

Attributes and skills can be further customized after choosing an archetype, either from a sample archetype or from a blank slate.

Starting attributes

See this page for more info about adventurer mode starting attributes, or this page for full info about attributes

A creature has numerous attributes which affect its performance at various tasks, split into physical factors associated with the body, and mental factors associated with the soul.

Body

• Strength: Improves melee attack damage, damage resistance and encumbrance limits. Increases leg strength to movement velocity, but increased muscle layer mass reduces speed.
• Agility: Improves movement speed, attack velocity and potential attack rate. All combat skills, especially defensive ones, rely on it.
• Toughness: Reduces physical damage inflicted on you, and also relates to defensive combat skills.
• Endurance: Reduces the rate at which the adventurer becomes exhausted—exhaustion progressively penalizes physical skills and rate of movement, to the point of immobility and unconsciousness.
• Recuperation: Increases the rate of wound healing.
• Disease Resistance: Reduces risk of contracting syndromes (including infection) and the negative effects when active (including alcohol-induced.)

Soul

Some of these are demonstrably useful for adventure-mode-applicable skills, but the effects of the attributes aren't clearly understood. For ideas on how they may be applied, see a list of skills organized by attributes..

• Analytical Ability: Useful for Tracker, Knapping and Student.
• Focus: Affects Archer, Ambusher, Observer. Makes it easier to become focused from fulfilled needs.
• Willpower: Affects melee combat (as in, Fighter), Crutch Walker and Swimmer to a minor extent. Willpower helps resist the negative effects of status ailments such as Pain, Stunned, Unconscious, and all states of exhaustion and food/drink/sleep deprivation.
• Creativity: This influences quality of poems, songs, dances, and crafts.
• Intuition: Helps with Observer, which aids in spotting concealed enemies, ambushes, and identifying attacks from opponents.
• Linguistic Ability: Affects any speaking and writing ability, improves the ability to communicate thoughts and feelings to listeners/readers.
• Spatial Sense: Important - affects combat skills, Ambusher, Crutch Walker, Swimmer, Observer, and Knapping
• Musicality: Influences the adventurer's ability to perform music and song well.
• Kinesthetic Sense: Affects most combat skills, crutch-walking, swimming and dancing to a greater extent.
• Empathy: Affects social skills, such as Persuader, Flatterer, Judge of Intent, and other Social skills that may not be applicable in adventurer mode.
• Social Awareness: Increases the number of followers you can have at a given fame level.
• Memory: Increases how much local area information you can maintain before it begins to be overwritten—important to navigate fortresses and underground mazes.
• Patience: Not useful for players. Determines how well or long a non-player character will tolerate negative dialogue towards them, such as insulting or ignoring them.

Starting skills

See this page for more info about adventurer mode starting skills, or this and this pages for full info about skills.

Characters from different civilizations will have different sets of skills available at the time of character creation, depending on the civilization that they are from, but keep in mind that almost all starting skills, as well as ones not available at character creation, can be improved through use in-game, with the exception of the Reader skill.

This section will specifically address starting skills as they relate to adventure mode. For a full description of combat skills, see Combat skill.

Weapon

Includes Axeman, Bowman, Crossbowman, Hammerman, Knife User, Lasher, Maceman, Pikeman, Spearman and Swordsman. Each skill enables the character to use the appropriate weapon more effectively. Weapons may be chosen on the embark screen before starting an adventure.

Note that different races, particularly dwarves, may have different names for their weapon skills. These names are defined in the creature raws, as can be seen in the dwarf raws. For example, a Dwarven crossbowman is called a Marksdwarf, while a Dwarven bowman is called a Bowdwarf.

General combat

Includes Fighter and Archer. These skills improve effectiveness of melee (Fighter) or ranged (Archer) combat, regardless of the weapon used. Fighter skill also improves unarmed combat, Archer also improves throwing.

Defence skills

Including Shield User, Armor User and Dodger, these skills improve the character's ability to defend using a shield, armor, or dodging. Starting out with good ability in one (especially Shield User or Armor User) if not all, is strongly advised.

Unarmed combat and improvised weapons

Including Wrestler, Striker, Kicker, Biter, Thrower and Miscellaneous object user; while some of them come in handy at times, they can generally be raised fairly easily in-game, especially Wrestler and Thrower.

Movement and awareness

Includes Observer, Swimmer, Ambusher, Climber, Tracker and Crutch-walker.

Observer is hard to train, and adding some points here is advisable. Swimmer is almost impossible to train without at least Novice level, and Adequate level is advised because Adequate swimmers do not drown while stunned.

Other

Includes Knapper, Bone carver, Writer, Carpenter, Persuader, Judge of intent, Flatterer, Musician, Speaker, Poet, Singer, Dancer, Stringed instrumentalist, Wind Instrumentalist, Percussionist, Keyboardist, Reader (a Novice level of Reading is required in order to become a necromancer), Butcher and Wordsmith.

Personality

All the aspects of who an adventurer is as an individual, determining their beliefs, needs, and ultimate goals, as well as their tolerance for stimuli like combat, trauma, and death.

Equipment, mounts and pets

Use the equipment points from difficulty selection to obtain a starting set of equipment and/or pets. After this is completed, you can begin your adventure, or add additional party members, before starting.

Gameplay

About key symbols

This wiki uses symbols that look like t or t to indicate what keys or interface buttons are used for an operation. Note that keys are case sensitive and to save space, Shift+t is shown as T. So t means "press the 't' key without the shift key" and T means "hold down shift and press the 't' key". Lowercase and uppercase keys will often perform different functions, so it is important to use the correct key. Sequences of keys will be in separate boxes, so abC means "press 'a', then press 'b', then hold shift and press 'c'"; while bT means "press 'b', then hold shift and press 'T'. A plus sign '+' between the boxes means to press them all together, so Shift+Enter means to hold shift and press 'Enter'. Other separators, such as ',' or '-', might be used but mean the same as no separator: to press the keys in sequence.

Keybindings can be seen and changed on the Keybindings tab in the Settings menu.

Menu navigation and selection

Esc or right mouse	Go back to the previous screen/menu
Mouse wheel	Scroll menu one line
Shift+mouse wheel	Scroll menu one page
Left mouse	Select menu option

Esc or right mouse will almost always return to the previous screen until you get to the top level of the UI, at which point Esc will display the options menu.

Moving around

You can move around using 8 2 4 6 7 9 1 3 or ↑ ↓ ← →. Use Shift + < or Shift+5 (num lock off) to ascend up the stairs and Shift+> or Ctrl+