Bay 12 Games Forum

I've played DF vanilla for the entire time I've played it - now I'm looking into dwarf the rapist.
It looks amazing! My only problem on first start up though: having the names of the jobs so that I have to tilt my head is super distracting. Do you get used to it?
Can I do anything about it?

oh shit, an owl...
(sorry)
but yea - they are right. On that note - check general behavior in those screens. Like refuse gathering outdoors, every dorf harvesting and that fucking "claim your enemies shit", which makes your guys run out into the open to get the stuff of the one dead goblin... thats lying in the midst of a double ambush...

This sounds so incredibly narrow minded to me Oo...
Let them dorfs choose what they want to wear - if it's dresses for the males and just a thong for the females - so be it.
Let the game generate those preferences

You can also just ignore the stones, as they won't get in the way of storing your stuff. You'll get used to it eventually xD

Try giving the squad a direct order (station there), and they should go and pick up stuff. Thats what helps me to force them to DO shit.

This is very useful for !!SCIENCE!!.  I once had a fort like yours, but I had only 1 breeding pair, and I could get the rest to breed no matter what I did.  That's interesting that aunts and nephews will get together, but not the same generation.

I feel bad now... my first thought? "Why is "science" on fire?

Honestly - the military interface is a mess, because it just takes ages - BUT YOU CAN FUCKEN DO ANYTHING WITH IT. Therefore I love it.

General wtf do I do? I hope do help you a little with a  menu by menu explanation:

Positions: Here you can assign your dwarfs to squads. You can give your squads orders later (quick orders like "KILL THAT DUDE" or general schedules like "patrol that area")
Not much more to it. To learn more, make 2 (or morer) squads here. When asked to "asign uniform", just select leather or plate or w/e.
Alerts: Alerts let you trigger specific behavior, that is defined in your schedules.
Let us look at the standard alerts: "Inactive" and "Active/Training", let's also make a new one, called "patrol". In themselves they don't mean shit, but you can define what they mean in your schedules.
As you might notice, you can asign different squads to different alerts.
Schedule:I look at the schedules next, because we need them to make the alerts work.
Holy wall of text... let's fight our way through it.

First: By pressing buttons (I use *), you can cycle through the different alert states.
Remember: If you set a squad to an alert state, he will do what you program him to do HERE!
Now - you see the orders for every squad and every month at once! You select squad and month with the arrow keys.

Start with "Active/Training" (remember - use * to cycle through the alert states). It should have "Train" in every single "cell". Look at the bottom left of the upper text block (above all the "give order" "edit order" etc) and you'll see the specific command of this squad and month. The default thing is "Train, 10 minimum".
What this says is: "The members of this squad shall train. A minium of 10 dwarfs of that squad shall do that task". Only have 4 members? Well fuck! We need to change that, or they will do shit.

Change it: press "e" to edit the order. We want to decrease the number of dwarfs by pressing the +- keys. You can also CHANGE the order from "train" to "defend burrow" or different stuff. Accept the changes by pressing shift + enter.
You can now copy the order by pressing "c", highlight a different order for the squad and replace it by pressing "p"

You now have the alert "Active/Training" set, so that one of your squads trains, and uses a minimum of x dwarfs for that (choose the ammount of dwarfs in your squad or less).

Set up barracks You need to set up barracks for your squads to train in. Use a bed and designate a barracks. You then need to designate it for a squad to train/live/store equipment in. Using the +- keys, go to your squad you want to train - then press "ztiq" to let them do everything there.

Last step Go to your military screen again, go to alerts (m-a), scroll to "active/training" with the arrow keys, go right, select your squad, press enter (an "A" will appear next to it), and everything is set up. Your dorfs will now start training!

If you really want me to, I can cover Uniforms and equipment pages aswell. I do not know how the ammunition tab works though - please add to this wall of text, if you can and want to.
Please also ask, if you have any questions about it!