Yes, she and I are good friends indeed. We speak very often.

EDIT: Agggggh... I didn't get any immigrants the first year, so the second year, I got 25! I'm afraid to unpause.

DOUBLE EDIT: Things are running smoothly thus far, no one has died.

ILLEGAL BUMP and I'm reading through Boatmurdered. Effin' good stuff.

I tried it once, the ASCII scared me, I think I may have been eaten by a Grue. If someone can point out a way/mod to make it more accessible to someone who doesn't want to have to apply for citizenship in the wiki, please do.

EDIT: I'm looking at this, and I'm already getting giddy from the depth of this. Is that a bad thing?

HK-

Your graphical release is here: http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php

This game has a lot of depth. After the few hours I've put into my first fortress, I still know very little, and hardly have things "set-up". It's great.

EDIT: Make sure you read up on editing the INIT file. Also, if you want the music that normally plays in the background (classical guitar), you'll have to download the normal version and copy the .ogg files to the sound folder. If you want any tutorial or help, we can chat or something. I wouldn't mind.

Ah. The story of the rise and fall of the greatest fortress ever. Classic.

I will add more to the OP soon as im typing this on my iPhone.

Ah yeah, DF makes for great stories.

As do other ASCII-based games! :teach: (TOME, Angband, NetHack...)

I decided to start another fortress, though I kept my first one. After getting grips with things, I some-what understand what I'm doing, and I wanted to change my initial set-up and fortress design. After an hour or so of trying to find my desired location (the location finder has down syndrome, I swear...), I finally have come upon Duskhammer, home of The Golden Hammers of Fortune.

For anyone starting out (like me):
http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Bedroom_design

I found this very helpful, and I rather like the magical three-way door.

Update: Duskhammer has been abandoned. I was doomed from the start for a few reasons:

-Lack of experience (obvious)
-No soil/sand/etc. for cave farming (didn't realize that until too late)
-No previous experience in irrigation
-Far too ambitious in my initial mining
-Not enough food/drink in store to keep everyone healthy while I limp and hobble trying to irrigate (which eventually failed; not enough water)

In the very end, everyone was bustling around, still dumping rock from my initial mining; though they would take breaks every 3~5 minutes due to no alcohol. I resorted to slaughtering puppies for emergency food, which was eaten in seconds. My only hope for crawling out of my food problem was to irrigate (unless I put in an arseload of time using plan B's and limping along until I found an alternative), which as I said, failed... so I abandoned fort. It was a good learning experience, all in all... And great fun!

As for me I am doing my best.
I picked an area with a forest, river, and a mountain. I think it also has some Happy Fun Stuff. Luckily for me the only creatures present were herds and herds of mountain goats. (And some troglodytes, heh.)

I started out by mining with 3 people, one had sub administration skills, one mechanics, and the other was a building designer. I had a woodworker, a herbalist, a mason, and a really nice cook.

I ended up not taking an anvil so I could afford everything, which afterwards I brought another pick, 4 war dogs, 4 dogs, a large number of booze and food.
I started out by mining my fortress, I could do all that I wanted because I had a crapload of food.

I started digging close to the river and ended up with a rather nice fortress, I moved in, started making bedrooms, a barracks, workshops, etc.
Started making beds, doors, tables, and chairs. After a while the merchants arrived, then the liaison, it was all going nicely.
I had immigrants shortly afterwards with my multitude of fine beds and doors, and I magically was able to house them all.

I made all my peasants soldiers so I could make them wrestlers!
I need a military!
Well, nothing much happened except for a couple of thieves and snatchers in the end, none of which were successful.

I started a quarry to get a few legendary miners, just a huge chunk out of the mountain. I have around 4 I think now, and its going good.

I apparently ran out of booze, because people are running to the river now for water.
I set my kitchens to cook and it says they need unrotten food elements.
Now I'm getting worried about starvation.

I lack an anvil that I need to make actual weapons to have actual soldiers, or even armor.
Hopefully the next caravan can help.



Poke, don't set huge stone stockpiles, if you have good miners eventually you're going to be fighting a losing battle. Stone hauling is a very time consuming job.

Dumping != hauling

Its still dwarfs moving rocks around, right?

Yes, but in a different sense. A stone stockpile takes lots of space, and most likely will need to be refilled every once in a while. A dump will just be there, take infinite amounts of stone in one tile, and in general be more effective way of stone storage. Now, myself I d > b > H hide all stone, so my fort looks better.

Sounds like you're doing marginally better than I did, MLC!

As far as rock dumping goes, dumping is waaay lower on the priority list than hauling. You create a 1-tile garbage dump zone (i) and then use (d)->(b)->(d) to mark things to dump en masse. They will then be moved to the dump tile if nothing else is being done, e.g. a peasant's job. It just a more efficient way of cleaning out stone. (there are legitimate uses for a stone stockpile, however)

I'll be starting another fortress some time tonight, though my previous fortress (albeit less thought-out), Ancientsteel, still stands quite proudly, without any problems. Current population of 30~ dwarves with 8 in the military (champions).