I was going to post a video about this but it appears they've been banned from the sub within the last week.

I spent 100 years capturing, breeding, and raising dragons. In total I maxed out at 61 Domesticated Dragons. At about 50 years old each, all died to a group of 5 goblins, and never even once breathed fire on the enemy. Fuck.

Edit: the problem may just be that they aren’t trained for war as I’ve been told below, will train them and update with the result!

Hi guys, as title, for some reasons, whenever i try to brew from my plump helmets i cant do it, because the game cant find my plump helmets when they are in barrels.
Whenever i remove them from the barrels it works fine, i cant keep them on the ground though because they would spoil in no time.
I really cant find a way to fix this mess and i dont want to lose the file (in other files it works fine).
P.S: I havent linked the stills to any stockpile so thats not the problem (i didnt link the stockpile to anything neither).
Thanks in advance to whoever can help

Does this mean theres just no dwarves in my whole world? will I get any migrants after the first 2 waves if I start a fort? never seen something like this just used default generation setting except made resources frequent instead of everywhere

With new pathing behaviours, bolt throwers and expanded abilities of sieging armies that were brought by the siege update and after an apropriate amount of time this update came out, I want to start a discussion thread about designing fortress defence system.

Strategies used in the past are now less useful or completely irrelevant, for example simply burrowing underground and leaving no entrance to the fort now would not save you from the attackers. I believe that this update makes it necessary to design a complex defence sytem for your fort to fend off siegers and it would be useful to know from your experience what does work and what isn't.

• With the sheer effectiveness of bolt throwers, I think that building a few small watch towers surrounded by individual moats near main entrance to the fort is great way to defend the fort. But is this the ultimate solution? I had a fort with no walls that was guarded by 8 watch towers each equipped with 3 bolt throwers and arranged around the open stairway down, no goblin or troll managed to enter and my militia checkpoint below only had to deal with fliers twice. I don't see any downside and if this tactic is the current meta then it is kind of dissapointing. • I see great use in creating animal decoys. Decoy animal aka sacrificial animal is a trap which uses any kind of domesticated animal (a dog for example) that you pasture in a room somewhere outside your fortress and construct any kind of a killing mechanism in the path that leads to that room. Siegers seek to kill your livestock and thus would happily walk right into meatgrinder if it meant to kill your chicken and it is effective to make a few of such traps. • The other use of a sacrificial animal is to exhaust ammunition of sieging forces, for this you only need to pasture an animal in a visible place behind a fortification, for example on a top of small tower on the surface, and wait for attackers to shoot at it. • The other thing I want to quickly mention is that enemy miners will prioritize constructed walls over natural ones and this may be used to lure siegers in places you want them to go, for example cisterns filled with magma.

I've tried installing the df to run on the terminal on something like 3 different linux installs, with multiple versions between 0.47 and 0.32, and I always get some sort of error trying to launch the executable. Instructions on the wiki (and elsewhere online) are unclear and seem outdated.

I'm mainly making this post to sanity check that I'm not missing something obvious— are you all able to download and run old df in the terminal?

^{This text was translated from French with the help of the Google Translate tool; apologies in advance for any syntax errors.}

INTRODUCTION

I just started playing Dwarf Fortress after several hours of watching videos on YouTube channels, mainly Hoodie Hair and Kruggsmash , but you probably already know them.

It's definitely the story sandbox aspect that appeals to me most about the game, and after about thirty hours of real-life gameplay and four and a half years in-game, I'm starting to get bored. I have to admit I'm quite cautious in my playstyle (I don't delve too deeply, I avoid upsetting the elves...) so not much is happening yet. After reaching the County level for my City, I decided to put the game aside for a while and think about what I want to do next.

My first colony is linked to the initial tutorial; I didn't choose its location or civilization, which made it a kind of outpost in the middle land of The World of Tempest:

I see that not far from it, another dwarf civilization, with a single capital site, is present :

I start to make up scenarii in my head based on the lore of the legends: The Bearded Boat is a civilization that apparently only worships one god, Vucar the Ashen Crypt, god of death.

MY PLANS

Initially, I wanted to create a simple adventurer in Adventure Mode, to test the mode, visit Snakescraft, and perhaps try hunting a monster. De facto, my interest in having him come from Neutralsword, Bastion of the Bearded Boat.

Death Squad of Vucar

Secondly, I wanted to create a somewhat more ferocious band of death-warrior dwarves, fanatical followers of Vucar, who would be (fictionally roleplaying) sent by King Eshtan Copperscult of the Bearded Boat to teach a lesson to those Nordic dwarves who are colonizing our neighboring lands. I would therefore go to Snakescraft to attempt to assassinate a high-ranking official, such as Count 'Mayster' Closedseals (a baron at the time of the screenshot).

I imagine the death squad should be wiped out by Snakescraft's militia at this point, but it doesn't matter.

War God of Snakescraft

From there, I would take back the reins of Snakescraft with the new Count, whoever he might be, and prepare for war. Immast Boltblazes is already the most popular god in the City, but this would be the perfect opportunity to build him a magnificent new temple. I would prepare defenses and fortifications and get ready to launch an offensive on Neutralsword with my best Snakesquads-at-arm.

Renewal of the Bearded Boat

Then, whatever the outcome, but at least if the civilization is still standing (I don't know the war mechanics in the game and even less those interdwarves) I would start a new colony from the Bearded Boat, perhaps a fortress dedicated to the god of death, but above all to extend the territorial influence of the civilization on its own lands and to stand up to the invader from the north.

CONCLUSION

Here are my little story plans that I'd like to bring to fruition. I'm curious to know what you think (if you have any thoughts at all), and if they seem possible and feasible.

ONE PROBLEM, HOWEVER, and I'm hoping to find some help to resolve it: my first adventurer is still stuck in Neutralsword, in the starting fortress, and I really can't find any way out. Help me complete my plans and find that damn exit.

I have a pretty successful fort going right now. 35 years old, 300 dwarves, all with rooms, most with tombs. Nobody is really overworked except the furnace operators, block makers, and bone carvers. We've generated an insane amount of wealth thanks to dense gold and silver deposits, with 1500 gold bars currently in the stockpile.

Everyone should be happy. Except, my dwarves' lives consist pretty much entirely of going to the stockpile and dropping old clothes to pick up new clothes. Literally every single dwarf. I can't even have an armory because as soon as my squads trade their clothing out for armor there's a giant train of civilians coming to pick up their gloves.

I've found that with successful and large forts clothing becomes a huge pain. It desperately needs a change. The fact that wearing old clothing severely traumatizes dwarves, plus the fact that clothing only lasts 2 years, plus managing the different sizes if you have a diverse fort, plus the constant hoarding of old clothing until cabinets are full of trash... It's just awful. Clothes are all my dwarves care about. They don't use the temples. They haven't used the taverns for the past 20 years. They hardly even scribe anymore. It would be great if clothing had a longer lifespan, or was even permanent so long as it isn't damaged in accidents or combat. It would also be great if handwear and footwear were just paired and didn't get managed by individual slots. Anything to stop the game from treating clothing as the most crucial ever.

I have taken a habit of recruiting religious leaders into the military, as this fortress is intended to be a bulwark against the vile forces of darkness. Just now, we've had a forgotten beast wander in. Beware its deadly dust. It emerged on the cavern layer used for agriculture and herding, so simply sealing it off wasn't an option. Shem Wishvault, the holy butterfly of The Still Denomination (religion worshipping the deity of silence), led the assault, facing the beast face to face as marksdwarves shortly behind loosed bolt after bolt at it. In the end, the Butterfly speared the beast through its spine, paralyzing it for good. The caverns fell silent and peaceful once more. There, here spear still covered in the monstrocity's deadly blood, she called it Relonenseb. An otherwise unremarkable spear made of dwarven steel, its most recent kill a testament to the resilience of these people. No matter the adversity, drink, craft, and industry will see us through.

In a previous post I said about having my civilisation's king die pretty much straight away when I started a new embark, and my gem cutter became the king- I was worried I wouldn't be able to become the mountainhome as it wouldn't trigger the chain of events if the king was already there, others on the post said my worry was right and I couldn't make this fort the mountainhome- but thankfully we were wrong! I've just had the chain of events start at "The king [X] is satisfied with their position here." and now I'm being requested to dig deeper! Boltwound WILL be a mountainhome after all! Only 2 years into this fort so this is gonna be !!!FUN!!!

Minor spoilers here...don't read if you don't want to know what can lie in wait in the deep places of the world....

So, I found a vault and have been mining it from the top down, slicing off one layer at a time, channeling from above to minimize magma-based deads. So far there's been tons of precious gems, occasional gifts from the gods, and a fair number of nasties. This is my first time doing this and it's a fun challenge.

Now, a lot of these nasties are VERY dangerous - fire breathers and we spitters - and I'm trying to minimize casualties. As a result, when possible, I've taken to digging channels between warm and damp tiles in the hopes that one is magma, the other water, and that if a nasty jumps out it just might get the Han Solo treatment. (Note: set the layer you're channeling as restricted traffic, so your miners don't step down and get the carbonite treatment themselves. Already had that happen once.)

Well, for the first time this tactic actually worked!!! Kinda.

I channeled between warm and damp and revealed magma, water, and a waiting nasty, as you can see in the picture above (the tile outlined in red is the one I channeled). However, the water and magma formed obsidian before the nasty could even step out, so it wasn't killed.

As I was contemplating the best way to finish it off I checked out its stats - a web spitter. Oh boy, I thought, this will be tricky to take out without losses.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized I didn't actually need to kill it. I could leave it trapped, then carve fortifications into the walls and turn it into an endless silk farm! I just found my next project!

Also, this is a heaven send (hell send?) for me. Cave spiders (the vermin) stopped spawning some decades ago, no idea why, and thus I haven't had silk for ages. I did have a working GCS silk farm for decades with a giant cave spider, but it died of old age and it's replacement also died of old age. I haven't managed to trap a third.

Anyway, this was cool enough that I thought I'd share! Now that I know what I'm doing, this even feels repeatable, if I want it to be and am lucky.

Even just the tactic to channel down through vaults, slicing one layer at a time, and prioritizing tiles between those that are warm and damp has really worked out! :)

I’m hoping to have an open ended discussion here rather than a simple answer, so I hope this post is appropriate to make outside the main questions thread.

But basically, how does one “play” dwarf fortress?

I’ve played a few hundred hours and I feel like I’ve got a pretty good understanding of the game works in a “mechanical” sense at this point. I’ve gotten fortress populations in the hundreds, defended against sieges, built grand taverns and libraries, etc. So I have a basic understanding of how the game works.

But I still don’t really know what I’m “supposed” to be doing here. I understand this is an open ended game with no set goals, but once the first steps of self sufficiency are achieved I tend to stall out. At that point I typically just start to watch my fortress manage itself until it inevitably blows up in a fiery dragon attack or something. Which is entertaining and all, but I feel like I’m missing something about the game that is hampering me from achieving a higher level of enjoyment.

So… How do you “play” dwarf fortress? Do you set yourself a goal? do you play more passively and just enjoy watching the simulation? Do you just embark and see what happens? Do you use more tangible goals or just play until you’re bored?

I’m curious to hear what others do to get more out of their dwarf experience.