v0.34:Challenges

v53.05 · v0.47 · v0.34.11 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23 This article is about an older version of DF. More Info · V

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

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 fun), leaving you to other challenges.

Diplomacy

• Six dwarves with only social skills
• 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.

Expansion: The game is over when you die.

Minimalist/Survivalist build

• 1 anvil
• 1 copper ore

Nothing else. From that alone, forge your pick and axe. Real dwarves won't need to peek...

Step-by-step

Deconstruct the initial wagon for the 3 wood it provides. Build a wood furnace with the copper nugget Make 1 ash and 2 charcoal from the wood. Deconstruct the wood furnace. Build a smelter with 1 ash (a fire-safe "bar"). Smelt the nugget into 4 copper bars using 1 charcoal. Build a metalsmith's forge with 1 anvil and 1 copper bar. Forge a battle axe using 1 copper bar and 1 charcoal. Chop some trees. Construct a wood furnace with a copper bar. Make more charcoal. Forge a pick. ... and proceed as normal.

Peasantry

• Spend 0 Points on embark

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

The wooden axes of recent versions make this challenge a lot less gruelling. 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) or to embark in a place too dwarfy for aboveground trees. Deserts and glaciers are excessively dwarfy, though - with no plants and no water, there's no way to survive till caravans arrive (none of the starting dwarves can drink blood). You don't need a trade depot if something happens to a caravan that carries a pick.

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 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.
• 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.

Alternatively, mod the game and actually play as elves. Swapping the species tags is the easy way. Moving the civ_controllable tag is the hard way. Enjoy not being able to make anything, unless you add training axes as well.

Hobbitton

Forget about deep-delving adventures and armoursmithing. You're playing hobbits.

• You're not in a dwarf fortress. You're in a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
  • Hobbit-holes are all on one level - store-rooms, wine-cellars, bedrooms and all.
  • One family per hobbit-hole, though that may include the help. No underground connections between holes, either.
  • Walls are to be lined with blocks of good polished wood, or clay bricks. Floors can be surfaced in stone or wood.
  • Don't forget your glass skylights and brick chimneys over the kitchen! While you're at it, how about a greenhouse for those exotic plants?

• Your primary industries are farming and distilling. Trade primarily in these. Purchase all metals and avoid industrial mining.

• Hobbits are uninterested in machines more complicated than the odd water-mill - no traps of any sort, though a drawbridge, dogs and militia as a concession to safety may be acceptable. And, of course, a mill.

• Elves are your friends - always give them your preference as a trading partner. Go to the effort of storing your trade goods in barrels and large pots, so you can sell them your finest liquors for their valuable woodcrafts.

Humans - Living Large and Standing Tall

Pretend you're a filthy above-ground dwelling 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.
• BOUNS: Miniproject: Have a series of canals for transport.
• BONUS: Easy Play: Embark on top of a Human Town.
• BONUS: Don't use any dwarven physics,ex.atom smashers, perpetual motion devices.
• BONUS: Advanced Play: Modify the raws and actually use humans to make the fort.
• MEGABONUS: Build your entire fortress as one huge arcology.
• MEGADWARFBONUS: Build your City in a giant, artificial cave. (or the caverns, if you can't manage that)

"Humans"

Make your dwarves pretend to be an ordinary, albeit short human village, to disguise the secret diggings below. Prepare to launch an invasion on the unsuspecting Big Folk.

• Embark as close to the human towns as possible.
• Construct a "manor house" to house your mayor and broker, with a stone-walled ground level containing office, dining room and kitchens, wood-block walls and windows above for the mayor's bedroom, and a large cellar with a discreetly concealed entrance to the Secret Fortress.
• Construct a walled village including a token number of shacks, barns and workshops, a mill and a blacksmiths' for that authentic touch.
• Surround the village with large fields, growing typical human crops.
• While all this is going on, excavate an extensive fortress underground, with a focus on a well-trained militia. If the map permits, build a secret training area for your army, perhaps hidden in the top of a large hill.
• Trade only raw crops to the human and elven caravans, in exchange for the minor needs of a human village.
• Lure the goblins underground before meeting them in battle - best to hide the evidence, you understand.

Luddite

Shun technology and contraptions. Who can really trust them, with all those gremlins running 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 mechanisms
• No machines

• • 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! Only try if you are an expert

• 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.

Amazon dwarves

• Kill or lock in somewhere all male dwarves, kids are allowed until they grow up.
• BONUS: military use only bows and spears.
• DOESTHISMAKEITOFFENSIVE Bonus: Do the same but with women instead

Alternative: Instead of killing the males, use them as slaves and make them work for the females dwarves. Put all the females in the military, no male nobles 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 dwarves 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 attempt to recreate the Donner Party.
• Modding BONUS: Add dysentery.
• Mega Modding BONUS: Add guns and bullets of some sort.

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

Intelligent Cats

Sure to be REALLY FUN... add the [INTELLIGENT] token to cats using DFHack.

• UltimentInsaineWhatAreYouThinkingDwafBonus: Have a Catsplosion lead by an ancient Vampire Necromancer Cat King.

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 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 doors 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 Pick

A well known and popular challenge. Kill off 6 starting dwarves and any 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