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[Magnus]

My first dwarf adventurer locked himself inside a bedroom by lighting a campfire in the doorway and starved to death. (Jumping over it did not work, nor did pouring water on it or waiting for three days.)
My second dwarf managed to find the exit from the workshops and starved to death in a hallway.
My third dwarf managed to steal all the trader's goods and starve to death in the workshops.


My question is, how do I exit the fortress I start in? I hear there's this world outside somewhere, and people keep telling me about forgotten beasts and bandits I should kill, but all I'm doing is wandering around in a maze designed by Escher and Mandelbrot on shrooms, until I die of starvation. Am I just unlucky and the random generator always gives me a fortress with no way out, or is there a trick to finding it?

[Max™]

First try to travel (shift+t), if there is an underground tunnel and you don't have anything from a shop in your inventory you should be able to move around, and even if you don't want to leave the fortress when you're in the travel map you can hit m and see the descriptions of nearby structures, one of which should say "fortress entrance", traveling to it will put you by a ramp to the surface.

If you have dfhack either type advfort or if you have the standard keybinds for it I think they are ctrl+t, then distmantle a wall or dig through if you find a pick. If you can't find a pick you can probably find a forge, take it apart for the anvil, melt it downstairs in the smelters you can almost always find, then dismantle one and make a forge, then forge a pick.

If you don't want to do it that way but still have dfhack you can also use reveal while in (l)ook mode and try to find a connection to the surface that way before setting out for it again. Often there will be a rather convoluted route that will let you out, but for the most part no, even with all the time I've spent roaming through world-gen fortresses they still trip me up regularly, and sometimes they get scrambled so the part which connects to the surface isn't linked to the side tunnels anymore, and you generally start out in one of the side tunnels.

As such it is a bug so there is nothing "cheaty" about just using reveal to make sure you aren't fruitlessly wandering around to your death in a sealed off hunk of fortress, unless you're in to that sort of thing.

[Max™]

It's pretty common for you to start out in a little side tunnel like this, and then notice the X up/down stair:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So, do you go up:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...or down:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Assuming you went the right way, how do you get out from here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's a hint, it connects to this image (which also has the ramp to the surface) somewhere:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So yeah, dfhack+reveal and skip the unnecessary "adventure" of starving to death in the starter fort because the tunnels don't always link up to the surface section (which is shaped like the area with the weird walls in the last screenshot, same size and such) and even when they do it isn't exactly clear even WITH reveal, much less without it.

There we go, went and checked around a little bit, found an abandoned fort with a weird surface layer in the sand, another little chunk of fort with water-filled cavern sections around/above/below it, and then we get here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The section on the right is just two z-levels high, completely cut off from everything else.

The section on the left is massive, five or six z-levels, and ALMOST connects with the surface:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It also hides a candy spire apparently since there was a blacked-out chunk of fortress in the reveal on the z-level below that one there.

So yeah, in that fort you get two whole areas you can spawn in with no connection to the surface, weee!

[Magnus]

Ahhh thank you very much. Yeah, I've pretty much only seen mazes like the one in your second screenshot. I'll try the T menu and see if I can find the fortress entrance from there. Hope it works better this time around!

[Max™]

Yeah, that's one thing I didn't realize until waaaaay later on, that even if you're just starting it is always faster to travel to the entrance even if it is just a couple steps, than trying to weave through the fortress directly. Even with lots of practice and a good feel for the layouts, as you can see from the totally cut off screenshots, it can actually be impossible at times.

[Magnus]

Haah hahahaha look!

I made a new world and got a dwarf with the pants-shittingly badass name Datan Libashusân (Iron Axemurder).
For some reason he started out in a "Dwarven Hillocks", it's a hole in the ground with 20 dwarves and ONE bed! This is the best game ever!



Datan and the hunter are going out to kill that vampire. Cheers mate!

EDIT: We killed two lions!!!

[Max™]

Oh, I thought you were trying to start out in a fortress, I like to start out with the locally important background in a fortress if just because I'm pretty sure it gives a larger pool of people with auto-revealed names to start with. Just cycling through til you get a hillock is always an option if you don't care which background you start with, but it's harder to find a hillock with the locally important choice.

[Magnus]

Yeah this is really my first brush with adventurer mode. Was just about to clear out a band of goblins, and then I ran into their commander... boom. Dead.

Time for a new one!

[Max™]

Yeah, that'll happen.

If you want a quick way to get a bit more survivable, find somewhere safe you can slelep which has animals around like cats or turkeys, get a full suit of armor and a bunch of shields, then go wrestle a cat until you get tired and hungry, head somewhere to sleep, eat, drink, rest up, you'll get armor/dodging/shield skills up pretty quickly just holding on to a cat with your arm and letting it swing at you, and you can hit shift+c to change your combat preferences to close combat, stand ground, dodge away and you'll be able to move towards it and wrestle it when it gets tired and falls over (if it is standing you'll throw it and possibly kill it) but a bit of that will let you move faster and provide some much needed survivability.

Fortresses will have stuff in the depots, if you can't buy it but don't want to get branded a thief you can kinda exploit it a bit and pick something up, drop it away from the depot and rest for an hour, it'll be unpriced and you can use it if you're desperate for food/gear. Hamlets will occasionally have food, keeps will usually have some stuff available and you can often find a waterskin and backpack in a bandit camp.

If you're interested but more comfortable with fort mode you can also do what I did the first time I adventured which was make a backup save (in case you mess up something and/or regret it later but it should be fixable if you do it properly) and then in dfhack type mode set, hit 2 for arena mode, don't unpause, hit k and assume control of your chosen dorf, mode set, hit 1 for adventurer mode, dfusion, hit 2 for adventurer tools, hit 2 again for change adventurer, you should now be able to save, retire, and travel without any glitches or losing anything.

You can do this and get the effect of being "locally important in a fortress" but guarantee you have exits since, well, you know the layout as you designed it.

Also makes you look at how you lay things out in a whole new way, I'll definitely give more thought to certain staircase and hallway designs after traversing them with other dorfs as an adventurer.

[Robsoie]

You may find this link interesting to learn how things are working in adventure mode :
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Adventure_mode_quick_start

[Magnus]

Thanks a lot! I think I've got the swing of it now. I actually prefer the hillocks to starting in a fortress, it's a lot more convenient.

I just realized that people weren't kidding about the Bogeymen, so on my next character I'm going to not dump every social and mental attribute so he can actually have companions. My adventurers in role-playing games tend to be of the type "Adventurer angry! Adventurer smash!", possibly not the greatest idea in this case.

Food doesn't seem to be a problem. I... borrowed... a sack of plump helmets from the starting hillocks, and butchering returns are plentiful. You can apparently butcher and eat kobolds with no ill effect, who would have known.

One thing I'm wondering about is, does the game tell you when you've completed a "quest" somehow? I went and got rid of some kobolds that had been plaguing a village, then I got back and told the lord about it, (summarize event where I killed Flaaargh the Kobold), but he just says it was inevitable. He doesn't mention them under "Troubles" anymore, but I didn't get a reward either. Is this normal? Does completing quests eventually let you become a hearthperson?

[Rumrusher]

Thanks a lot! I think I've got the swing of it now. I actually prefer the hillocks to starting in a fortress, it's a lot more convenient.

I just realized that people weren't kidding about the Bogeymen, so on my next character I'm going to not dump every social and mental attribute so he can actually have companions. My adventurers in role-playing games tend to be of the type "Adventurer angry! Adventurer smash!", possibly not the greatest idea in this case.

Food doesn't seem to be a problem. I... borrowed... a sack of plump helmets from the starting hillocks, and butchering returns are plentiful. You can apparently butcher and eat kobolds with no ill effect, who would have known.

One thing I'm wondering about is, does the game tell you when you've completed a "quest" somehow? I went and got rid of some kobolds that had been plaguing a village, then I got back and told the lord about it, (summarize event where I killed Flaaargh the Kobold), but he just says it was inevitable. He doesn't mention them under "Troubles" anymore, but I didn't get a reward either. Is this normal? Does completing quests eventually let you become a hearthperson?

it did before now it's more super vague about it. quest now are just suggestions or rumors people ask.  oh yeah hearthsperson is based on how friendly you are with the leader not fame, which might only pop up in retired units or figuring out how to butter up a person so that they agree you're loyal enough to join.

[Max™]

I have never had trouble becoming a hearthperson after reporting enough impressive stuff for them to call me a legendary hero, that may take a dragon or two and a few minotaurs or a cyclops mixed in can't hurt.

[Robsoie]

Note that if you don't want to get NPC in your party and so prefer to adventure alone, it's possible to prevent the generation of bogeymen in your world by select the "Design New World with Advanced Parameters" option in the main menu, select the template (blabla region, blabla island of several sizes) then press the key e to edit the parameters, find the one that define how many kind of bogeymen are generated and change it to 0 , after that generate the world and no more bog

[Max™]

Also, if you add [NOFEAR] to a race you adventure as in a world you happen to love but which already has bogeymen, you can still get cackling but unless you attack them they just show up and fight other stuff until morning or you find a building.