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[EugeneSimon]

Hello! As you might have noticed, I'm new to Dwarf Fortress and while I have a basic understanding of some aspects, I often find myself struggling to grasp what's happening in my fortress, especially about 90% of the time. I would greatly appreciate any guidance or tips on how to navigate and succeed in this game.

[joostheger]

1. Follow tutorials on youtube
2. Try and fail hard
3. Try and fail less hard
4. Etc.

[Saiko Kila]

Hello! As you might have noticed, I'm new to Dwarf Fortress and while I have a basic understanding of some aspects, I often find myself struggling to grasp what's happening in my fortress, especially about 90% of the time. I would greatly appreciate any guidance or tips on how to navigate and succeed in this game.

Times have changed, so I won't advise to use Usenet (which is kind of superseded by Reddit), but it's good idea to read wiki. I was reading it over a month before I started playing.

Some YT videos may help, though I won't know which ones are worth it. I remember when I watched a half an hour video about Steam edition by one youtuber, that only thing which really piqued my interest (apart from graphics of course) was an info that stockpiles can be redefined now But for someone new I'm sure many other things would be more exciting.

Also, since now gamelog works as it should (more or less), you can read gamelog.txt after some play, and read the stream of information, maybe something will strike you as worth digging deeper.

[anewaname]

When you have some idea of what your fort's problem is, pause your game and spend 5 minutes searching for the topic in the DF wiki... Odds are good you'll spend another 15 minutes reading and developing a plan to fix your fort's problem.

If you're not sure what the fort's problem is, join a chat channel for DF, there are some listed at the bottom of the wiki page, I don't know which get the most activity. A quick question and answer can help you identify the problem, and if you still don't know how to solve it, maybe you'll end up at the wiki or googling for internet for forum threads.

[mikekchar]

The main piece of advice I have is to slow down the frame rate.  This will be unpopular with some people, but I think for those that are actively trying to follow what's going on in the game, it's solid advice.  Set the game frame rate (not the graphics frame rate) to 30.  Ideally I would actually set it at 20, but this version of the game needs a higher frame rate to ensure that your keyboard and mouse inputs work properly all the time.

When the dwarfs are warping around the screen, it's hard to tell what's going on. Slow them down.  Take it easy. Pause the game a lot.  Look at each dwarf and see what they are doing at any given time.  See what they are carrying.  Use the follow mode to see them complete tasks.  Look at their thoughts.  Are they happy with what they are doing?  Are they sad?

Another hint is to limit the size of the population in your fortress (the population cap in the options).  Keep it at about 20-25.  Get to know your dwarfs.  Keep your building ambitions low.  Make sure all your dwarfs have a place to sleep. Make sure there is a nice dining room.  Make sure there is a place to socialise. Make sure there is plenty of drink and food.  Get all the creature comforts set up.  Then think about upping the population cap (or not!)

And finally, don't worry about it.  Let your fortress grow, die and crumble.  Build another one.  Let the history of your world grow.  Your 7 dwarfs are only 7 random dwarfs in the world.  They can fail.  It's fine.  There is no winning in this game.  Give yourself permission to make as many bad fortresses as it takes.  Or more, if you enjoy making bad fortresses :-)

[sniper_231996]

you can always check my guides on steam 

[brewer bob]

mikekchar has some solid advice there if you want to get to know your dwarves (especially PAUSE is your best friend). I'd add to it that take notes of the listed stuff and give interesting dwarves nicknames so they're easier to follow. Maybe even write down a journal for your own enjoyment? Or if you feel like it, you can always make a report of your fort in the Community Games & Stories section (personally I've found this to be a good motivator to dive deeper into the daily lives of dwarves/citizens).

Another hint is to limit the size of the population in your fortress (the population cap in the options).  Keep it at about 20-25.

Just want to point out that while I think this is good advice, (semi)megabeast attacks or sieges won't happen with such a low population (barring towers and if you go and provoke a civ with raids). The triggers (pop 80 with sieges & megabeasts, 50 with semimegabeasts & werebeasts, iirc) can be lowered (not sure where these are in Steam, but previously they could be changed in advanced world gen and by editing raws).

[Flying Dice]

Pause. Any time you're confused, any time you want to look at something, any time anything happens which you're not sure about, pause and investigate.

Everything else is a matter of learning what things are and do, but pausing immediately is what will let you catch things as they happen instead of trying to reconstruct from the aftermath.

[mross]

Hello! As you might have noticed, I'm new to Dwarf Fortress and while I have a basic understanding of some aspects, I often find myself struggling to grasp what's happening in my fortress, especially about 90% of the time. I would greatly appreciate any guidance or tips on how to navigate and succeed in this game.

Layout, organization, and a decent tileset is probably the easiest way to make shit easier to understand. For example, I almost never allow bins so I can always see how much stuff I have in each category. You can sort workshops into categories by floor - so I'll have masons, carpenters, and crafters on one floor, then farmers, querns, kitchens, stills, the next floor will be metal industry, etc.

[DerpFortress]

The wiki has a quickstart guide for multiple versions of DF, including the latest. And like some the other posters said, it's an excellent resource.

https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Quickstart_guide