v0.31:Quickstart guide

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

v50.13 · v0.47 · v0.34 · v0.31.25 · v0.28 · v0.23 This article is about an older version of DF. More Info · V

This is a quickstart guide for Template:L 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 Template:L guide.

Also see Template:L for more detailed tutorials that people have submitted.

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 is not so hard to do! Note that "quick" is kind of relative; this guide is about as quick as you can get given the complexity of the game.

As this article doesn't contain the exact key sequences needed to do everything described, you will likely need to refer to the Template:L and the rest of the wiki while reading this. For something more detailed see the excellent Template:L tutorial.

Template:L - This is approximately the process that this guide will cover.

Common UI Concepts

About Key Symbols

This document and most documents on the wiki use key symbols that look like t to indicate what keys are used for an operation. Note that these are case sensitive. In order to save space, Shift+t will be written as T. So t means "press the 't' key without the shift key" and T means "hold down shift and press the 't' key". Sequences of keys will be written with dashes between them. So a-b-C means "press 'a', then press 'b', then hold shift and press 'c'".

Cursor Movement, Menu Selection, and Navigation

Esc	Go back to the previous screen/menu
↑ ↓ ← →	Change active menu option or move cursor
- +	Alternate menu selection keys
Enter	Select menu option

Often you use the directional keys ↑ ↓ ← → and Enter to make menu selections, but sometimes you will need to use the alternate selection keys (- and +) to make menu selections. Generally speaking, when dealing with menus, if the directional keys don't work try -/+.

Esc will almost always take you back to the previous screen until you get to the top level of the UI, at which point it will display the options menu.

Keeping Up: If you need to look something up while going through this guide, refer to the Template:L or use the wiki search function.

World Generation

The first thing you will need to do is Template:L. Unlike many games, the world that your game takes place in will always be procedurally randomly generated by you or someone else.

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the basic version of this process is rather simple, and doesn't usually take too long unless your computer is a bit outdated.

Starting World: For your first game, Template:L using the Create New World! option in the main menu with the following options:

• World Size is Medium
• History is Short
• Number of Civilizations is Medium
• Number of Sites is Medium
• Number of Beasts is Medium
• Natural Savagery is Very Low
• Mineral Occurrence is Frequent

Pre-Embark

Embark Screen

Also see: Template:L

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

Select Start Playing from the main menu, then select Dwarf Fortress. You will then see something that looks like the screenshot on the right.

The map on the far 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 u m k h. This highlighted square is what will become your play area after you embark. Use ↑ ↓ ← → to move the region and world cursors around. Hold down Shift while doing this to move more rapidly.

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.

Finding a Good Site

Using the site finder function can help.

In older versions you would get more information on stone layers than you do in newer versions. Now you only know if you have soil, clay, a metal, more than one metal, an aquifer, or flux stone. This makes things more of a challenge because it's harder to figure out what you're going to get for metals.

Aquifers

You will especially want to avoid sites with Template:Ls, as these can be incredibly difficult to dig through, leaving you without stone of any sort until you manage it.

Trees

Also, you will want to avoid sites that have no trees. Dwarves like to sleep in beds, and beds are only made from wood. After the first Dwarven trade caravan arrives, you can tell them you would like a lot of wood, and the next time they show up, they will bring it. But that will be a year and a half after you first arrive, a long time to wait for beds. You could dig down to the first cavern level and chop down giant mushrooms for wood, but even the uppermost cavern level often contains far more Template:L than a newbie can handle.

Water

Having a river on your site will make things much easier. It isn't a necessity, there are other sources of water on most maps, but only oceans, lakes, rivers, streams and brooks contain unlimited quantities of the stuff. Speaking of water, take a look at the Template:L. In temperate or colder climates, above ground water will freeze during the colder months. This can be anything from a minor inconvenience to a major pain, depending on circumstances. Just be aware that it is one more thing you will have to deal with, and choose your climate accordingly.

Hostile Civilizations

While searching your map for a good site, hit the Tab key to change the display. You will notice that there are several informative screens besides the default screen showing the biomes and layer types. One screen shows the relative distance to different races' civilizations. If Template:Ls are too close by, you will suffer ambushes by your second spring. As a newbie, these goblins will very likely destroy you. If you like seeing dead dwarves and blood all over the map, go right ahead and pick a site next to a dark fortress. If you do, you will need to focus on defense immediately before doing nearly anything else.

You can set up your fortress to keep the goblins out, or kill them with Template:Ls, but do not expect your militia to fight off these first waves. They will die. And remember, keeping goblins out means keeping traders out (or worse, stuck inside, wanting to get out.) Goblins will attack trade caravans, and YOU will be blamed if the caravans die. As a newbie, you may want to opt for a site far from goblins. If you choose an island site, you will notice that no other races are listed. Only dwarves will come to trade with you, but you won't be attacked by goblins.

Geography

It may also be helpful to choose a location with a solid cliff face and a decent mountain to dig into above ground, so that your fortress can have a more straightforward layout. It's also possible to ignore this and have a fortress that's entered from above, if you'd like, but some may find it easier to have all of the main parts of a fortress visible on one screen, to help facilitate an early understanding of how the fortress works.

Evil Biomes

Finally, you really, really do not want the Template:L of your first site to be "sinister", "haunted", or "terrifying". As you might imagine, zombie whales can be difficult for even seasoned warrior dwarves to handle.

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 find tool to help you find a site. Note that it appears that "Calm" is classified as "Medium Evil" on the find tool, so always check the site manually.

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

Okay, you've found a site, possibly far from goblins. Now it is time to outfit your dwarves! Press e to embark once you're sure you have the right area highlighted on the local map.

Choosing Skills and Equipment

Now the Prepare for the Journey screen should appear. You will be given the choice to either Play Now! or Prepare for the journey carefully. Pick the later option.

Feeling Lucky? If you're feeling impatient, select the first option and you will be provided with the default set of skills and equipment for your dwarves. If you decide to do this you can skip to the next section. Otherwise, read below for advice on outfitting your expedition.

Preparing Carefully

Since we know certain things about our first site, we can choose our dwarves and equipment knowing what to expect. Metal will be our primary industry. We won't be hit too hard by enemies right off the bat, so we can concentrate on civilian dwarves and supplies.

Chopping and Digging

Our starting location will have wood, so we don't need to bring a bunch with us. What should we bring, and what sorts of dwarves should we choose? Well, first we will need something to chop down trees, and something to dig with: Template:L and an axe.

One copper axe, and two copper picks should suffice to start. Actually a wooden training axe will also chop down a tree, but will be worthless in battle.

Food and Drink

Sixty drinks and forty food should be enough to see you through until you can produce your own, even if you get large waves of immigrants right off the bat. Skip dwarven wine, that is the very first sort of alcohol you will be producing, from Template:Ls, and you will be making a lot of it. Five to ten of each sort of seed will be enough to start you off farming, though you may want additional plump helmet spawn.

To produce our own vegetables, we will need Template:L.

Medical Supplies

As for medical supplies, you can easily make your own Template:Les and Template:Ls, but you may want to bring along a small amount of Template:L, Template:L, and Template:L for stitching up dwarves and making casts, as these are more difficult to produce initially.

Other Supplies

You want three ropes, one for a well and two for chaining up animals. Template:L is useful to have as you need them to make a Template:L and you can't produce your own until your have either metalworking or pig-tail farming and processing set up. They are also useful for chaining animals up near your entrance as a warning system.

Bring an Template:L to set up your first forge. The problem with anvils is that you have the chicken-and-egg problem that you need an anvil to make an anvil. You could wait until the first caravan shows up and trade for one, they will almost always bring one in the first fall, but that can be a long time to wait to start producing metal.

Animals

You also might want to take two or three dogs and a breeding pair of cats. The dogs can help you hunt and fight if you train them, and the cats catch vermin that infest your food supply. Both make good pets which help keep dwarves happy. And in a pinch, they can both make a tasty snack.

Skills

As for dwarves, choosing certain skills will make your life much, much easier starting off. I recommend the following skills as essential to starting a fort: Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, and Template:L.

If you chose a site with flowing water, Template:L can help keep your fort fed early on. If not, hunting can do the same, but keep in mind that safe hunting requires a lot of micromanagement. Your hunters will happily stalk and attack elephants, cougars, and other dangerous animals before they have the skills necessary to deal with them. Fisherdwarves, on the other hand, really only need to worry about alligators and crocodiles.

Template:L can be another useful skill, especially if you hunt or raise animals. If not, your first caravan will likely show up with tons of cheap leather. Leather makes good armor for your marksdwarves, as it is light weight and won't slow them down too much.

Finally, as your economy will be centered around metals, you should choose a metalworking skill, probably armor working but weapon making is also a good choice. Some people say the best defense is a good offense, but dead dwarves won't fight, so I usually pick armoring as my first metalworking skill.

You will probably want one dwarf with medical skills, and another with crucial social skills. For your doctor, put one point into each of Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, and Template:L. For your leader-dwarf, put one point into Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, and Template:L.

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This is a flowchart showing approximately what sequence of actions players usually take when starting up a new fort. Don't worry about understanding it all right away; the rest of the article will walk you through the most important parts.

A Minimal Fortress

Starting out. You can use Tab to show or hide the overview map.

Okay, so you have a site picked out, you have chosen your dwarves and equipment, and you have embarked. You will see your dwarves clustered around your wagon full of supplies somewhere near the center of your map, with the game paused.

Surveying the Area

Do not unpause the game just yet. Take a look around. Use the k command. Look up and down a few z-levels with < and >. Place the cursor on various tiles to familiarize yourself with what the symbols mean.

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 Template:L because even when you lose, you create an interesting story.

Creatures

The units screen. Luckily we're in a calm biome and there are only our dwarves, our animals, and some mostly harmless ducks.

But you don't want too much fun yet, do you? So, open up the unit screen and look at what other critters share the map with you. Your wagon functions as your initial meeting areas until you designate another, so if your wagon is parked next to a river full of crocodiles, or near other dangerous animals, you may want to designate another meeting area(using i) immediately. If your wagon starts on top of tiles that are pure cyan or white, it is on ice and the ice is likely to melt unless that portion of your site is Freezing.

Obtaining Shelter

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 designate some areas to dig.

If your wagon is near a cliff, you can tunnel into the cliff to create an entryway. If you are on flat land, dig channels down and then tunnel over to create your entry. Your entryway defines the boundary between your safe and protected inner fort, and the big bad outside world. You may be tempted to make a short entry hall, so your dwarves don't have to walk as far to get outside. Bad idea. You may also think it clever to have several entrances, and you would be wrong.

Think about the difference between inside and outside. Outside does not necessarily mean outdoors, and inside does not mean underground. Outside means undefended. Inside means defended. You can have multiple entrances, for instance, as long as they all lead to the same well defended gateway. But if you have an undefended back door, that is where you will be attacked. Make sure that to get inside, into the defended areas of your fort, enemies must pass through your defenses. Initially, you will not have the resources to defend more than one entrance.

Checking Labors

First off, look over your dwarves' assigned labors by pressing v then placing the cursor on a dwarf. Now, press p-l for "preferences: labors". You will see a list of labor categories that you can navigate using +-. You can enter each category and toggle each labor with Enter.

Using u can help you locate the dwarves. Select a dwarf, hit c for "zoom to creature" and you'll automatically be placed in view mode on that dwarf. Use p-l to get to the labor configuration menu.

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 Template:L can make this a million times easier, especially later when you're dealing with twenty times the number of dwarves you have now.

Besides the labor enabled automatically from having the skill, ensure that someone has wood burning, furnace operating, wood cutting, plant gathering, gem setting, armoring, weaponsmithing, blacksmithing, metalcrafting, and stone finishing enabled, even if nobody has the corresponding skills. If you took dwarves with hunting or fishing, disable those until you have your initial fort completed. You don't want dwarves wandering around alone where they can get killed right now.

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, and mechanics. You want these dwarves working on creating beds, doors, and trap components before hauling stone and cleaning.

Main Entrance

Decide where you will build your main entrance. Unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise, (such as a large deposit of valuable ores visible on a distant cliff face) put it near your wagon.

Dig a hallway three tiles wide and at least ten long. This will be your entryway. At the end of the hall, dig a 5x5 room for your trade depot, a stairwell, and a storage area at least 10x10 tiles. Using p, then use t to set the custom stockpile to accept any and all items you brought with you. Hit c and designate the whole room as a custom stockpile. (You can change the stockpile settings later with q).

Using the q key, set your wagon to be deconstructed. Using the i key, create an activity area, at least three by three, near the stairwell. Set this as a meeting area.

Build the Trade Depot using b. This is where caravans will park their stuff and where trading will take place using q.

Refuse

Near your planned entry, create a stockpile for refuse. It needn't be too large. Create another storage area for wood; it will only be temporary, don't make it too big, maybe 5x3, or fifteen tiles total.

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 i to create a Pen/Pasture zone over a grassy area and assign your grazing animals to it using N. This area needs to be at least 10x10 or so to ensure they have enough grass and don't trample it all.

Woodcutting

Also near the entry, designate at least 14 trees to be chopped down. You will turn these into seven beds and seven chests. Don't designate too many trees at the beginning, or your dwarves will spend all their time chopping them down and hauling them rather than making things out of them.

Farming

Dig out an area in a soil layer and place a 3x3 farm plot in it. 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 read about Template:L needed to create the required mud on stone floors. Don't worry, irrigation needn't be that hard especially using the murky pool method, but hopefully you can skip this.

Use q to set the plot to grow plump helmets during all seasons. You will need to press a, b, c, d and select Plump Helmets for each season, otherwise you'll end up with an idle field for 3/4ths of the year.

Create a storage area and set it to accept food, but then use q to change the stockpile settings and disable every food except for seeds. Obviously, you want your seeds stored near your farmland and not down in your dining area. This will make planting happen faster.

Workshops

Dig down one level and create four 5x5 rooms off of the stairwell. These will hold your mechanic, mason, carpenter, and jewelry workshops. Put the 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.) Remove your temporary wood stockpile and dwarves will move the wood to the new wood storage area.

Go to your mason's shop with q and queue up one table and one rock throne (chair). You will find out why you need these in a second, but now is a good time to start building them.

Bedrooms

Continue digging 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 one by three room into decent quarters by smoothing the stone and filling it with a high quality bed, chest, and cabinet. When a fort is first getting started, a common dorm-style bedroom will suffice for a while, but dwarves will eventually want their own rooms.

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 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 bedrooms, and one as an office for your bookkeeper, which rather than a chest, bed and cabinet, will contain a chair and table.

"Garbage" Dumping

Note that garbage is not the same thing as refuse. Refuse is rotting stuff. Garbage is anything you designate to be hauled to a garbage area, even important things that aren't really garbage. Think of your garbage areas as a way to specify that objects you select will be brought to a specific area.

Use i to create a 1x1 activity zone somewhere and set it to be a garbage Dump. Unlike storage 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. Designate a one tile garbage area near your mason's and mechanic's workshops.

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

Once the stone from your living area has been moved there, it will be set as forbidden. You will need to unforbid it using the same d-b screen, hitting c to claim it instead of