New Dwarf Fortress

[Jon Miller]

So I have one guy going and chopping wood and nothing else happening.. I can't figure out how to tell my dwarves to do anything...

JM

[Asher]

It would be nice if someone told us what this was. .......

[Jon Miller]

it's a complicated asci game where you have drones that do things for themselves... and is really detailed, but as far as I Can see they just sit around until they starve

it really needs mouse access..

and some simplification, I won't ever care if my guy has an injured finger, but I do care that I can't figure out how to make anyone do anything

JM

[Skanky Burns]

I have 30 miners because I haven't made more picks for more people to be converted to miners yet.

I have a population of 105, all major industries are working fine or over-producing, and that really only requires a small portion of my population. At the same time I haven't got a huge quantity of metal ore to make stuff with yet, so I am digging out levels to find more ore. I had 2 legendary miners but one died trying to outrun lava and the other became a non-working noble. You would think that 30 miners would dig quite fast, but with low skill they are really quite slow. As they level up though, the pace should pick up a bit.

I think bookkeeping is probably the quickest skill to level.

[pg]

Book keeping is sort of useless however, and only one noble can do it. Anyhow DF is easy to learn especially compared to other ASCII games. Just look at the menu and it says all the keys. The main thing you need to do is press d and start mining/chopping trees/gathering plants. Then use the stone/wood/plants to make mason items, beds, and food/beer in the appropriate workshops. Build things via the b key, work shops are b then w. It's really not that hard to get a basic self sustaining fortress going.

Another main thing to look into is managing dwarves by pressing v selecting a dwarf then going into the pref with p then l to the labor screen. All your main dwarves who you need working specific tasks like mining or farming - just remove all the other jobs off their lists so they do those instead.

[Skanky Burns]

I disagree on bookkeeping being useless. There is a world of difference between it reporting stone: 1000? and seeds 100? and actually getting a breakdown of the types and quantity of each.

Regarding the skill itself, its not important to have it high in and of itself once your accuracy is at the highest level. It is the bonus attributes it brings that are valuable. Fortunately you can put an unskilled dwarf as bookkeeper and train them up without losing any accuracy in your reports.

[Jon Miller]

Umm, I pressed d a whole lot in two games and never mined anywhere.

JM

[pg]

Sure it's useful, but it's not that hard to look over your own stocks if you have your stockpiles sorted instead of mixed.

[pg]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Umm, I pressed d a whole lot in two games and never mined anywhere.

JM

You have to select an area with enter for all the d actions. You can use the mouse too. Watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-nDYuJCzNg

[N35t0r]

the wiki is your best friend.

[El_Cid]

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/features.html

For ages I had thought this was a thread about some unispired AAA console rts title - how very wrong I was!!

[Jon Miller]

Oh, I found out how to dig a mine.. the third or fourth try. You have to have a hillside to dig into, I don't know why you can't just dig down.

JM

[Jon Miller]

The ice just melted and everyone downed.

JM

[Jon Miller]

I wish you could save starting lists... cause I want the same stuff.

JM

[Jon Miller]

OK, I tried recovering it and they all drowend again. It was a neat place to build if the river just stayed ice long enough.

JM