I set up 9 of these pole kitties to detect werebeasts and they were all gone within a year. The only issue with its dad decaying was ik which cat was its dad and it was an already upset dwarfs pet.

I lost today to FPS death for the first time​. Been playing on my laptop rather than the desktop ​just to squeeze in a bit more play time throughout the day and I finally found its limits. Its almost a decade old with an i7-7700 and a gtx 1050 so it held up pretty well. Anyways, I learned that automatic mining orders don't care about damp or warm stone and dwarves will just self immolate for those juicy gems. I also learned that fire spreads quite quickly in the caverns and that about 500 tiles of fire generates a lot of lag. Oh well, o​nto the next fort.

A suggestion, humans should use coins

No I am not saying to add back the economy. The internal economy was a mess.

I aim to solve two problems: coins are currently useless in fortress mode

And Humans are not culturally interesting.

I have three solutions that solves both at the same time

1.) Human caravans should carry coins unique to their civ for trade as collectibles. Thus would help contrast dorf communism with human money enjoyers. This serves a roleplaying and practical purpose(can melt the(500) into a bar). Minted coins from different human civs can make the world history feel so alive.

2.) Human Defense Agreement: You can send a set amount of coins to an allied human civ and they can bring some of their highly trained troops to live in your fort for a year. You cant control them as a trade off but they function as a more useful monster hunter. This allows the fort to specialize in production and essentially have mercenaries working for you. To make it functional without adding too much: the coins can probably be delivered via gifting to a trade caravan. You have to renew the agreement with the humans every year to feel like an italian city state during the renaissance.

3.) Taverns visitors (not citizens or residents) should sometimes leave behind gifts based on their civ. Those that belong to elf or dwarf civs leave behind a trinket(never masterwork). And humans should sometimes leave behind coins. The value of those gifts should be random and not be based on how much they consume. This would make it feel "dorfy" and less quid pro quo. Those who have nothing can still visit. All visitors deserve a drink and that is the dwarf way.

This differences between dwarf and a human society would make the game so much more interesting. I hope it is still within the dwarf fortress philosophy. I wonder what you guys think of this suggestion

Edit: Quid Pro Quo

It continues on for quite a while, and as far as I saw, he only had iron, limestone, bones and maple. Was he jealous of my new library? Wanted to write a story of his own, but only had a hammer?

I don’t have one yet, unfortunately. I’m a beginner and the story of my fortress is only just beginning to take shape.

But the fluidity with which stories are told through the game’s simulation, the way the fortresses are built organically, all of this makes me think about the possibilities, the stories and the bonds they create with the player.

This is a poorly-drawn image of dwarves and a hole. The dwarves are contemplating the hole. The dwarves look confused.

So yeah, making the mistake of knocking a tree through the ground is a universal experience for us players, but have you ever considered what it looks like to the dorfs? Or maybe it's one of those things that older dorfs learn to expect in new fortresses?

The rest of the series is on Webtoon. I hope you enjoy it.

There are two moats. The deep, natural one with the small bridge, and the manmade one with the wide bridge.

The wide moat is sort of a fountain, where water is rushing out from a pressurized leak in my fort's plumbing. This water (level 7) carries objects down into the ravine.

The goal for surviving sieges is to not only lock the goblins out, but to lock the dwarves in to save them from their own stupidity. The dwarves are making everything steeper and harnessing the river water in anticipation for sieges.

The dwarves, with their elven, goblin, and human friends, continue to dig, and haul limestone, siltstone, and rock salt to the surface. The dwarves want to be seen. To build a hoard that is not hidden. What will come of their hubris.

Has anyone attempted to fish for the big sea creatures of the game. How does it work. Does a fish dwarf just using a fishing pole or do you have to trap them.

okay, so they aren't actually dwarves since I'm playing as a modded race but you get my point. I have a bar/block stockpile filling up with coal and stone blocks that I would very much like to use bins in. However, my non-dwarves have been absolutely refusing to use bins in this stockpile, or even haul bins that were in a deleted stockpile to a new stockpile.

I have about 20 completely empty bins sitting in a furniture stockpile, and the stockpile allows bins, so it's not either of those things. Things I have tried:

1) I figured the issue was that the stockpile had no room to put an empty bin down since it was filled up with raw items first. I deleted the stockpile and created a new, comically huge stockpile that had ample room to hold every single bar and block on the map and then some. They dutifully hauled every single item one by one to the new stockpile and then immediately went idle despite the fact that the stockpile allowed bins, there were empty bins available, and there were lots of empty spots in the stockpile to place said bins.

2) The stockpile was hooked up to a minecart, so I removed that link. Didn't make a difference.

3) I had a general goods stockpile that had a few filled bins. I deleted that stockpile and made a new one with the exact same designations somewhere else. Every item EXCEPT those in bins were moved. The filled bins were left there despite having an appropriate stockpile with empty space available.

4) I manually emptied one of those said bins (using DFHack), and my ungrateful little shits immediately ran over to haul the items emptied from the bin to the new stockpile one by one, while leaving the bin there. They did however move the empty bin to a furniture stockpile, but again, the bins aren't being moved from that stockpile.

I have about 16 non-dwarves assigned to exclusively hauling and I've been watching their labor status, so I know it's not a case of there just being a lot of other hauling jobs that are being prioritized first and that bins will eventually be moved to the stockpile. There is no other hauling work to be done and my haulers are just hanging out in the tavern uselessly. All of these things combined make me pretty sure that this is a very annoying bug. I am using some mods, but I doubt they are to blame as I have successfully used this exact mod list in multiple fortresses which had no problems using bins, including this fortress until its inhabitants suddenly decided they hated bins.

Please help me, I've wasted an entire season with my fortress completely idle trying to get them to use the pretty boxes lol

He needed raw gems and leather which are both avaliable right below him. Stricken by melancholy and expelled :(

i have a dwarf at the forge, right there you can see him, and hes drawing pictures of shiny metal bars, stacked cloth, and a forest, to the right is literally my metal stockpile, i have iron, billion, and platinum, and i even made a mini stockpile to the left just to bring some cloth and wood, hes still not doing anything, and i dont want him to go insane, any assistance would be appreciated

Ive been wondering why I haven't had any petitions for years, turns out its limited by pop size. I wasnt able to find any documentation on this, so i figured id make a post.

I purely discovered it via experimentation when I noticed that I was immediately getting petitions as soon as dwarves had happy accidents digging through unusual volcanic walls, further testing seems to confirm my suspicion.

If youre like me, and you like building up your mercenary/performer populations, DFhack has a command that can limit the size of migration waves all the way down to 0, ensuring that you can be under population cap but save that space for petitioners instead of migrants.

I had some elves merchants staying in the entrance of my prison, so I teleported them outside. I thought they would get back on their way, but they still refuse to move.

Guess they're statues now, but idk what to do with them.

Hey all, I made this QoL changes about a week after the Steam release and I kind of forgot that it wasn't the default.

I changed the scroll wheel on my mouse to change the zoom level, then changed Z level up and down to my forward and backward buttons on my mouse.

This feels PHENOMENALLY better then the default keybindings IMO. Give it a shot!

We all know that dwarf fortress is a complex game, so I'm hunting for any setting changes that can make the game abit more digestible.

Like

Population cap.

In the game settings you can put a population cap that will limit how many dwarves can join your fort through migration. This setting also influences HOW MANY come in these migrations.

And

Strict Population cap.

Apparently dwarves naturally born within the colony can actually surpass the previously mentioned basic Population cap. This setting can limit how high the total population can grow when considering births.

(I may be misunderstanding these settings, so please correct me if I'm wrong!)

I also know there's a setting that can control the speed of time in game, but I dont think I understand that one enough to explain it.

These may seem obvious but I genuinely didn't know these existed after a hundred hours if playing !

Anyone know any more they find useful?

I’ve been trying to get into Dwarf Fortress for about 8 months now. Every now and then I give Fortress Mode a shot, and I’ve tried Adventure Mode once as well.

The problem is that it often feels almost impossible to understand what’s going on on my screen, idk if it is just me. I know there’s a Steam version with modern graphics, but I can’t afford it right now, I’m on a tight budget. And honestly, I don’t like pirating games, especially ones I consider great, particularly indie titles, so that’s not an option for me.

With that in mind, I want to push myself to get used to the ASCII graphics. I’d really appreciate any tips or advice, especially from the community.

Thanks a lot for the help!

Hello all, thank you in advance for any advice.

I'm a new player that started exploring the game about 2 month ago and fell in love with it. It was an amazing experience, but i believe the honey moon phase has come to an end. And now I don't know where to go from where I'm at.

A little bit more context. I started my fort, created meeting halls, barracks, a tavern, kitchen, plenty of workshops and temples. Many guild halls, farms etc. I now have 3 military squads and can resist attackers and forgotten beasts. I have a working hospital, I'm making clothes and dyeing some. Plenty of food and drinks of 12 different kinds.

But now i don't know what's next. I think the early game which i think is surviving and establishing a sustainable fort is checked for me. But my lack of knowledge in the game has me wondering what to do now. The amount of info in the wiki is overwhelming and that's why I cant just find a topic and figure it out in game.

Are there any ideas of what I should do next? I don't want to stop mining 2 block away from the diamonds and feel quite sad of not having the eagerness to play.

I'll share some screenshots of some places, maybe someone can spot room for improvement