Dwarf Fortress - Despite the multiple let's sperg threads, we never had a general

[Mr.Miyagi]

Is it better than Rimworld?

It's better in some ways and worse in others. Rimworld has the advantage of being much more accessible, as well as the huge swath of mods you can easily apply. I think DF is a bit better in regards to making the dwarves feel like people with personalities and having emergent stories. I'd probably recommend Rimworld over DF to anyone who's interested in that style of game, just for the learning curve alone.

 

[Book Thief]

Is it better than Rimworld?

A lot will depend on how much you're willing to tolerate a game that looks like it was made with zero budget and has a control scheme that feels like you're controlling an airliner (ASCII version), or have generic, non-animated pixel art that somehow makes the game look messier than how it looked originally, with a mouse control set-up that was obviously rushed to market (Steam version).

If you can tolerate its short-comings, I'd argue that Dwarf Fortress offers the richer experience in terms of procedural and emergent story-telling, as the game procedurally generates the world down to individual cultures and factions that have annual traditions and conquer territory, and digging through the world's history genuinely makes you feel like an ancient historian for a fantasy universe as you piece the events together in your head. However, if you don't give two shits about that and just want to enjoy a fantasy colony simulator, Dwarf Fortress has a learning curve so steep, it's practically an overhang, primarily due to how the game tells you nothing yet expects you to know everything from hours of reading online tutorials and Wikis.

The Steam version is more accessible to newbies due to its mouse-based control, but is missing a considerable amount of features compared to the ASCII version, and the mouse control and general layout leaves much to be desired for long-time veterans. The ASCII version is more feature complete (Adventure mode is so much fun!), and costs you nothing, but is driven exclusively with the keyboard with controls straight out of a roguelike from the 80's, which can be very, very intimidating to anyone who hasn't played those kind of games.

Overall, I'd say give it a shot. It's a game I've sunk hundreds of hours into, yet I still feel like I have much to learn. The ASCII version is free if you're worried about wasting your money, and that's the version I prefer, but I can totally understand if a new player might find the Steam version more appealing from a control and aesthetics stand-point.

 

[AnOminous]

If you can tolerate its short-comings, I'd argue that Dwarf Fortress offers the richer experience in terms of procedural and emergent story-telling, as the game procedurally generates the world down to individual cultures and factions that have annual traditions and conquer territory, and digging through the world's history genuinely makes you feel like an ancient historian for a fantasy universe as you piece the events together in your head.

This is really the reason to play this game. The lunatic level of detail that goes into every aspect of the lives of the dwarves means you can spend as much time just looking into the internals of the individuals and how they experienced their lives inside of your cruel, evil plans.

One of the canonical examples of this ridiculous level of detail is when people noticed dead cats showing up around bars. What is killing these cats?

Well, alcohol poisoning seemed like a possibility, but why? Cats don't drink.

However, cats in Dwarf Fortress, much like actual cats, are cleanly animals who clean themselves.

And dwarves, much like dwarves in any universe, are rowdy creatures who drink a lot and splash around a lot of alcohol.

So cats would end up walking into pools of booze splashed around by drunken dwarves, cleaning their paws, and then end up dead of alcohol poisoning. This got fixed because a cat shouldn't die from overdosing from just licking her paws clean.

The game is full of these kinds of emergent things, though.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

There are very few games that have stuck in my brain like DF.
Understanding (and projecting) the things that happen in the game burns haunting memories in your brain... (I've played the OG, and with Lazy Newb Packs, but not the Steam).

All DF vets know what I am talking about. Try DF @Otis Mallebrok and once you get familiar, you will make memories as well.

(The best things in life are 'free'. DF is one of these things.)

 

[AnOminous]

All DF vets know what I am talking about. Try DF @Otis Mallebrok and once you get familiar, you will make memories as well.

And they're often not even dramatic or involving violence. I think it might have even been posted here but I remember a tale of a dwarf who just seemed to be getting more and more stressed before ultimately going completely insane and jumping in a volcano or something. This is even though he had exquisitely designed rooms with every floor square and every wall smoothed and engraved by a master engraver.

On an examination of his status before his final plunge, it was revealed he absolutely detested mosquitos.

The vast majority of the engravings in his royal chambers were of mosquitoes. All by the same master engraver. They were often of some other historical event, but the commonality? Mosquitoes.

Coincidence? I think not.

There are often things like this, years-long drama between characters you were barely aware of, living their strange dwarf lives.

Sometimes you feel guilty when you realize decisions you made set someone on their path to ruin. Other times you don't care and just send them to their dooms gleefully.

 

[Diamond Homonculus]

Reminds me of this one dwarf I had that died in a fight with another and when they made a casket for him it was engraved with the image of a mace bashing his brains out. Poor guy couldn't escape his horrific fate even in eternal sleep.

 

[AnOminous]

I'd probably recommend Rimworld over DF to anyone who's interested in that style of game, just for the learning curve alone.

The learning curve for DF is insane. There's at least a month long period of "I don't even know what the fuck is going on."

Reminds me of this one dwarf I had that died in a fight with another and when they made a casket for him it was engraved with the image of a mace bashing his brains out. Poor guy couldn't escape his horrific fate even in eternal sleep.

And this is kind of the reason you should always just look at random objects, so you know some dwarf got his brains bashed out with a mace and he's now being buried in a coffin engraved with a picture of him having his brains bashed out.

 

[That_Guy]

This happens a lot. Had an out-of-fort monster hunter die kicking some forgotten beast's ass while saving mine because I hadn't yet set up a military. Decided I really owed the guy a statue, threw some engravings on the floor around it and just told the engraver to use that guy as the subject. Stone statue of him standing around looking cool or something placed right on top of a floor engraving of his wedding. First thing you'd see on the wall by the entranceway to the hall where you couldn't miss it? Their divorce three years later. Must've spilled a beer on the engraver or something.

It really is a big procedural story generator with a game glued to the top.

 

[Book Thief]

I'm so fucking tired of trying to find new LPs to watch. They're all playing the Steam version. It's so goddamn soulless.

Also:

If by "communism" this guy means throwing useless dwarves like children into a gulag and forcing dwarves to take on jobs they don't want to do for the sake of appeasing a looming presence who can snuff them out if they refuse, then yes. It does embody communism quite well.

Note: this comment was lost due to the September 17th outage. This has been recovered due to me not closing the tab, since the outage happened right when I was ready to post. The image I was reacting to uploaded by @Coelacanth was this one:

I haven't watched it, but I'm assuming that "capitalism" in this case refers to the deprecated economy system, which was removed due to technical limitations. That is to say, keeping track of every coin taxed everyone's system to a crawl. To say that this move is in any way an endorsement of any kind of political ideology, as opposed to a simple game optimization, is a mind-blowingly retarded take.

 

[AnOminous]

This happens a lot. Had an out-of-fort monster hunter die kicking some forgotten beast's ass while saving mine because I hadn't yet set up a military.

I've never had any such luck with these useless bastards. Usually they just show up and hang around in the bar doing nothing. Or wander down into the caves and get killed instantly. I had one idiot who spent all his time in the bar except he'd go down in the caves every month or two, run into something, and run away in terror.

At least the combat logs of them getting killed gives you an idea of the general capabilities of the monster.

I haven't watched it, but I'm assuming that "capitalism" in this case refers to the deprecated economy system, which was removed due to technical limitations.

It's also idiotic considering they just went to actually selling it, even if they kept the free version.

 

[not william stenchever]

At least the combat logs of them getting killed gives you an idea of the general capabilities of the monster.

"It's free recon"

 

[Coelacanth]

Note: this comment was lost due to the September 17th outage. This has been recovered due to me not closing the tab, since the outage happened right when I was ready to post. The image I was reacting to uploaded by @Coelacanth was this one:

View attachment 5344578

I haven't watched it, but I'm assuming that "capitalism" in this case refers to the deprecated economy system, which was removed due to technical limitations. That is to say, keeping track of every coin taxed everyone's system to a crawl. To say that this move is in any way an endorsement of any kind of political ideology, as opposed to a simple game optimization, is a mind-blowingly retarded take.

Thank you for salvaging the image, fren!

Took a little look at the video and no - the guy is a genuine communist. Apparently being self sufficient and throwing your nobles into the arena as a Bronze Colossus's new chew toy makes Dwarf Fortress all about communism.

The Steam version of Dwarf Fortress was a fucking mistake.

 

[Book Thief]

Thank you for salvaging the image, fren!

Took a little look at the video and no - the guy is a genuine communist. Apparently being self sufficient and throwing your nobles into the arena as a Bronze Colossus's new chew toy makes Dwarf Fortress all about communism.

The Steam version of Dwarf Fortress was a fucking mistake.

I see, so it's the players' decision to drop annoying nobles down a chasm that's "communist" about Dwarf Fortress.

Never mind that doing so is done at an individual player's discretion and the game never actually encourages you to do this, but rather encourages you to build up wealth through trade so that you can eventually become your faction's capital, and that you should decorate the nobles' quarters with offensively valuable trinkets. Nor should you mind that hating the rich isn't an exclusively communist idea. No, the game is in love Marxist doctrine, and you're a fool for thinking otherwise!

 

[Coelacanth]

Speaking of nobles, something happened that I don't think I've ever seen before in one of my forts.



There was only about 30 dwarves in this tiny, unassuming outpost that I've been working on (turns out my problem with playing DF is I think too big too quickly) when out of the blue this message popped up. From what I understand a goblin fort razed the capital and somehow one of my dwarves ended up becoming Queen. I'll have to check out what exactly happened to the last ruler and what this dwarf's connection to all this is, but suddenly I have to get to grips with appeasing a very important noble very quickly.

That being said, when I set the dwarves to start carving out her throne room, my heart melted when I saw her working alongside the miners.

It might be because she was a former miner herself, but goddamn I'm interpreting it as her specifically wanting to help as a way of showing how important being a ruler is for her.

 

[Book Thief]

Speaking of nobles, something happened that I don't think I've ever seen before in one of my forts.

I had something similar happen, where the previous ruler died somewhere off in the world during a war, and I was suddenly shouldered with the heir, who happened to be a mason who created a legendary cabinet. Unfortunately, she ended up getting killed by a giant cave spider before I could truly deck out the noble's quarters...

 

[Coelacanth]

I had something similar happen, where the previous ruler died somewhere off in the world during a war, and I was suddenly shouldered with the heir, who happened to be a mason who created a legendary cabinet. Unfortunately, she ended up getting killed by a giant cave spider before I could truly deck out the noble's quarters...

At least she didn't die getting t-bagged by goblins or elves. Any fate is better than that.

 

[AnOminous]

I had something similar happen, where the previous ruler died somewhere off in the world during a war, and I was suddenly shouldered with the heir, who happened to be a mason who created a legendary cabinet. Unfortunately, she ended up getting killed by a giant cave spider before I could truly deck out the noble's quarters...

I've had some rando in my fort suddenly end up the King of some other civilization because apparently they were an heir to one who had just died.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

I had one session where there were no Goblins. Literally none.
I checked the Legends and saw that the Goblins were wiped out in pre-history.

Peaceful, but boring early game.

 

[AnOminous]

I had one session where there were no Goblins. Literally none.
I checked the Legends and saw that the Goblins were wiped out in pre-history.

Peaceful, but boring early game.

Usually it's kobolds who end up dead in pre-history.

 

[Ghost of RBG]

Usually it's kobolds who end up dead in pre-history.

I don't think I've seen a kobold appear in fortress mode in multiple years.

My current world generated this absolutely massive evil mountain range that has quarantined the elves. Humans and kobolds were wiped out by a zombie hydra before year 5 so the rest of the world has just been non-stop dwarf/goblin violence for the past 200 years, leading to the northern third of the map being covered in sites. Eastern edge is ruled solely by one dwarf civ and the southern part and center valley are completely barren.


On a side note the past few forts I've made have had the first tree immediately crush the woodcutter. For the rest of the fort it never happens again.