Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Pitchblack]

Hello i recently hear about dwarf fortress and thought "hey that actualy might be fun" But after dowloading reading doing failing quitting coming back and failing again  i am more lost than when i first started, i havent even gotten anything built or done, could someone please help me because i fear for my dwarfs lives.

[Pitchblack]

i forgot to mention my xfire is firepower02, and my aim is thevortex101 i use teamspeak alot so add me to either if your patient enough to explain in person  

[The Moonlit Knight]

Well, I think the Wiki would help you out a lot:
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Quickstart_Guide  http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions  http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Starting_Builds

and look around on the main page for any other helpful articles. And I'm sure someone else on the forum could actually give you a decent explanation of the game, but I figured I'd just direct you to the Wikis for now.

[Xgamer4]

Yeah, use the wiki. And don't be afraid to experiment. There has to be at least 402 different ways to do everything.

[Eagle of Fire]

There is something I definitly did wrong in my first four games or so, and that something was to abandon and restart fresh a new fortress everytime I did something wrong that I didn't liked.

It's impossible to do perfect in the first few games because you are learning the game, and whatever you do you can always revisit or reclaim your fortress later with either the adventure mode or the reclaim fortress option. So don't give up, at least give it a shot past the first winter to make sure you get some good experience right away.  

[Pitchblack]

my problem revolves around not getting pastthe part where i need to build my stuff, for some reason my keyboard dislikes dwarfs or anything that has to do with a fortress o combining them ehas made it not want to work... i shall retry again shortly.  But untill then i will read those wikis

[puke]

are you on a laptop keyboard by any chance?  you really need a full keyboard with a seperate numeric keypad to play.  the same is true for most "roguelike" games.  i use a targus usb numeric keypad when i play on my laptop.

works like a champ.

edit: also, hit up the IRC channel #bay12games on... um... my xchat seems to have expired, so im not positive, but i think its worldIRC.org

people on there will be happy to talk you step by step through setting up workshops and such.

[ July 01, 2007: Message edited by: puke ]

[Pitchblack]

ive been to the irc website but it looked like it would cost me $ so i didnt delve to far, also my first fort has dug into the mountain and hit the river unfortunately my farm rooms seem to be unable to work with contraptions and such.

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

irc is free (although perhaps there are commercial clients)

And yes, read the wiki, ask questions if the wiki doesn't help and the community here is generally very helpful. Lastly, fact of DF = your dwarves will die. Don't be afraid of losing, ("Losing is Fun") learn from it and try again. It takes several forts (for me its in the teens or twenties) before you really start to get a hang of it and can get to work on a fort that both:
a) has good chances of survival

b) is built to your liking

PS- Don't get intimidated by me saying it took me so many forts, I'm counting the ones that never made it past first winter, got slaughtered by wildlife in 4 minutes, etc., and they were all a blast in their own way.

[Pitchblack]

i googled irc but like my dwarves it was no help could someone drop a link and instructions??

[puke]

shazam:  http://www.worldirc.org/index.php?page=webchat

theres better applications and stuff, but that would require more explaining than a simple "shazam".  once the java thing loads on that page, do a "/join #bay12games" without the quotes.

if that does not work, you can try any number of free IRC clients.  some of the popular ones include MIRC and XCHAT.  also, some of the unified IM clients can access IRC, such as Miranda and Trillian.  the setup for each one is probably unique... but the link above should work, so it shoulndt matter.

[Solara]

quote:Originally posted by Pitchblack:
<STRONG>ive been to the irc website but it looked like it would cost me $ so i didnt delve to far, also my first fort has dug into the mountain and hit the river unfortunately my farm rooms seem to be unable to work with contraptions and such.</STRONG>

Farming can be a little daunting when you're new to the game, but don't be scared by all the horror stories of flooded fortresses, it's really easy and all you have to do is take precautions as basic as locking a door.

All you do is build a room with a little tunnel leading to the river, put a floodgate right up against the water, link it to a lever, install another floodgate next to it, link it to the same lever, then make sure the room is clear of anyone you don't want drowned, lock the door and pull the lever twice.

If you still can't figure it out, a screenshot might be helpful so we can see what the specific problem is, your posts are a little vague and it's hard to give advice without more details.

[Pitchblack]

i have fixed all my problems so far made several fortresses that work well
but now im at this point
past my first year
i have way to many imigrants for my style ( small amounts of HIGHLY skilled dwarves) instead of large amounts of semi skilled dwarves) one fortress reached around 40 so i mined key walls and flooded the whole fort.

im still working on screenies.

[Solara]

A drowning chamber works exactly the same as a farm, so once you've got one down the other shouldn't be a problem.

It's pretty common for new players to freak out when waves of migrants start coming in, I know I wouldn't usually let my population get above twenty or so until I got the hang of things.

It's just a little hard to make the transition from constantly micromanaging the original seven to the more abstract approach to a fortress with a large population. Designing efficient workshops and  storerooms and the like is also an issue, you've got to think big from the beginning, make wider hallways to handle all the traffic, etc.

You can always set a population cap in the init file if you want to avoid a ton of immigrants, I know they can be pretty distracting while you're still trying to learn the basics, but you'll adjust eventually and start actually looking forward to migrations. I can't deal with just twenty dwarves anymore, it seems like work takes forever to get done. Somewhere around 50-70 dwarves is the sweet spot for me now.

EDIT: Oh and just a tip, all those unskilled dwarves you're complaining about, they can be useful. You could always just turn off everything but the hauling jobs, which means your professionals don't have to waste time lugging furniture back and forth, set them as engravers and have them smooth your floors, or just recruit them en masse to the military and forget about them. It's not like they have to do the job they start off with.

[ July 04, 2007: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Faces of Mu]

You'll notice most, if not all, the migrants start off as novices anyway. This is the second rank in any skill. Hence it's not a big sacrifice to change their profs as once a year or two goes by they should be pretty pumped up for whatever you've got them doing.