omg you make me really want to get into this fortress game
Thanks for saying that and you should definitely try it! Dwarf Fortress is a very dense and very interesting game, not just from a player perspective but also in terms of its development and community. That said, it requires a lot of perseverance because it’s a dwarf management simulator that works kind of like a really in-depth flight simulator; heavy interfaces with the opacity of a mud window and a lot of required knowledge from the get go in order to get off the ground high enough to not have your whole squad of founders get eaten by tigers or bears in the first year.
If you want to get into it here are some sick imba resources that I personally would recommend:
Boatmurdered is a ‘legacy’ game that was played on the SomethingAwful forums about ten million years ago in the bygone age of 2006-2007. It’s pretty much the main reason I originally started playing Dwarf Fortress because it’s fucking fantastic. If you want more insight into the game community’s outlook and some of the whacky shit that can and used to happen to motivate you I’d recommend taking a look. That said, it’s from a version of the game so old the world was literally flat in it so a lot has changed, and some stuff that is !!exciting!! to find yourself without spoilers hasn’t changed. If you feel hyped enough from just me whining about my shitty fortress or the dwarf fortress tag in general you should skip Boatmurdered for now and get back to it when you’ve delved into the game enough to reach the really weird shit.
This link goes to the actual download for the game. If you use Windows you’ll be mostly fine. If you use anything else there’s links on the page but fuck if I know how well they run.
Next, this is the wiki. It’s super helpful and its tips on your first fortress and on other general stuff in the game like jobs and buildings and fauna are kind of invaluable, just be careful you don’t wander into the areas of it that are about the really weird shit if you want to find that stuff on your own (luckily the wiki does warn you of spoilers). Furthermore, there are links to things like tilesets which are nice if you’re in the majority of people who think the game is ugly as sin.
I believe that the forums also have a wealth of information and resources like tilesets and talk of weird projects as well but I don’t use them at all really so what do I know.
Oh! And before I forget, I don’t personally use this myself but I believe that just about everyone else in the world does: Dwarf Therapist is apparently the most useful thing to happen to anyone anywhere since the invention of legs. While I don’t really know what it’s about other than that it apparently alleviates a lot of headaches regarding telling dwarves what things they can and cannot do, it’d be remiss of me not to mention it since it is so widely utilised. You’d have to ask someone who uses it about its specifics though.
I hope you get into it and if you want some help with anything that the wiki isn’t immediately giving to you, feel free to ask. Just remember that losing horribly is Fun!
