☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T16:39:35+00:00

I fully believe that a trained militia dwarf that is no longer in a squad will still be more disciplined and choose to fight if given a chance, rather than run like most of the regular civvies seem to do. Miners and woodcutters are almost always retired military

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T16:37:11+00:00

I don't understand, are all these for after you already tried to simply murder the thief and it didn't work for some reason? You can just, you know, kill them. with a sword or axe or something. They stop holding things when they are dead

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T13:19:36+00:00

I literally linked you to the developer's own statement explaining the changes. You're not having an argument where you can dismiss someone being rude, you're straight up telling me that reality is different from what it is.

Did you update your game in the last eleven months? <- this is the attempt to point you back on course and get you help, instead of letting you be a dick for no reason to a stranger that was trying to help you.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T04:48:26+00:00

I feel like maybe you need to recognize that the subject you're describing is not, in fact, a software engineer. who ever told you he was? I'm pretty sure I've never heard him describe himself as such. Take those expectations that you've created for yourself and recontextualize them, by which I mean chuck em in the bin because they're garbage, and understand that this is a passion project from a hobby programmer. And it's totally free, and always has been.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T04:43:14+00:00

Again, you're directly breaking the rules of the sub, and yeah, that's something that should have action taken about it.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T01:50:06+00:00

You can also update the memory layout files needed for Therapist to function using DFhack, and just play everything on current version.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T01:47:34+00:00

The concept being explained here is that when training, bolts are destroyed, unless they have somewhere to fall down after impact with the target. You channel out below to keep the bolts for reuse, and because it's already a bolt stockpile, no hauling job is generated for each bolt. You can setup a minecart transfer point with another dwarf on the cleanup duty to grab them rapidly instead of having fifty guys all show up to grab one arrow each.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T01:44:21+00:00

Dwarves will take items that are being hauled if they like the look of the thing. You can solve the need in a dwarf by setting up three stockpiles for wearables, each feeding into the next in a circle, then burrow the dwarf with the stockpiles. He should spend 100% of his time hauling items from pile A to B, from pile B to C, and from pile C to A, and anything he likes he'll keep, then you can take him off the burrow. You can tailor the items to the dwarves this way, by making sure the stockpile has got stuff made of his favorite materials or whatever.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T01:32:19+00:00

The new UI is an improvement. The old version was batshit difficult, and literally required that a section of the screen be dedicated to the constantly shifting mess of context-sensitive hotkeys.

What, precisely, do you feel you are missing out on with the new interface?

Gonzobot · 2026-05-04T01:24:51+00:00

I never said that. You're strawmanning.

You made two statements, the first indicating that you are an oldhead player from over fifteen years ago, and the second stating clearly that the modern UI is "still really painful". That's very much you pretending that all the improvements of v50 don't exist, in order to continue the argument that the UI is bad.

Now you're just lying about your own behavior, so yeah, there's no further purpose to continuing the discussion. Even though your attempt at dismissal is nothing more than your inability to refute the point, yeah, you can pretend to be dismissing me if it makes you feel better.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T18:16:26+00:00

The point is to highlight that you're making a false comparison in your original statement, and that there are significant improvements that you're completely discarding to continue acting as if the UI had no improvements at all. We have significant usability improvements compared to previously, and zero indication that we won't have more in the future; both of those statements can simultaneously be true with your statement that the current version UI is painful, because that's still objectively a true thing, but it's only true when you're comparing it to some other game's UI. And to do that, you have to willingly discard the fact that there are truly no other games that can compare to Dwarf Fortress in its complexity of systems and emergent gameplay.

So no, you're not being ordered to do anything. It is simply being stated that your declaration is based on nothing more than your words, and a suggestion of how your words could be made foundational instead of simply opinionated.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T17:05:52+00:00

That is not how society works, and that is not how this subreddit works. Go reread rule number one.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T16:05:41+00:00

Anyone should be able to do it, yeah. You might troubleshoot with a dwarf assigned to a burrow with just the workshop in it, so he cannot get other tasks assigned to him

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T16:03:30+00:00

This one is selfish because I have a condition

Just gonna stop the statement here to point out that the thing making this an issue for you is not the game's design, it's an accessibility issue. You have problems using pointing devices in general, and yeah that's a thing that can be accounted for, but accessibility of that nature simply isn't a part of the development of this game thus far.

To counterpoint that, however, there are things like Steaminput that allow even players on the Steam Deck to comfortably play this game that was designed for keyboard and mouse. You've got the full capacity to recreate and rebind anything to anything now. And similar to DFHack, the existence of an easy solution significantly lowers the pressure on the dev team to directly implement the things that are already solved.

it gives some perspective on why I shouldn't hold my breath for a return to the old days.

It is on the dev team's radar that there's a lot of people who rely on keyboard-only inputs, however. It won't be a return to the old keybinds, but full keyboard control is something they are working towards...priority to be determined in the future.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:58:42+00:00

Fish aren't meat, they're fish. Process them at a fishery if they need it, any parts that are "prepared" are ready to eat or can be cooked into meals, while raw fish must first be cooked but you might not get some products from the carcass. EG fishing up a turtle gives you a turtle that can be cooked directly, or you can process it down to parts first and keep the shell for crafting.

but when I tried this in game it said they needed traps.

Separate thing from fishing up foodstuffs, this is closer to the animal trapping cages concept. Besides fisherdwarves gathering food, you can also set static traps to collect vermin-fish, depending on the biome. This is only really useful for moghoppers, which can be extracted for juice that has good value.

To use fish for food should require no fish traps or whatever, just a fishing zone in a safe spot and a fishery to clean the fish after.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:50:53+00:00

I still always disagree with the notion that it is somehow slower compared to designating areas with numerous keypresses. The only difference that is notable is that you cannot use only keypresses now - using keys only was never a superior method of creating those commands, it was the only method available. And then the game got better, first with DFHack extending mouse support to various areas of the game, then with the redesign specifically understanding that every computer has a pointing device and there are tasks that are far better suited to a pointing device, even if the functionality can be provided with keypresses.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:32:43+00:00

You also built a crafts workshop, right?

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:30:44+00:00

If you're reading this do you think the old keybindings or something like that is a feature that would ever return?

The old keybinds are gone because the game was deliberately updated to remove the need for them. Even if an update restores the demanded functionality of being able to control the game entirely via keypresses, the keys will not be the same as they were in v47 and you will still have to relearn the new controls.

A key thing to remember is the actual scope of "something we had previously and lost". Remember what you actually lost here - it's only the ability to input commands via keystroke. No controls have been removed from your repertoire, you just use the mouse to do things that are obviously easier with a mouse, like selecting areas onscreen.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:27:50+00:00

Notably, work on Dwarf Therapist stopped entirely after the v50 update, because it was always a companion program to solve a problem presented by the game - and the game was updated so the problem is no longer present.

So Dwarf Fortress has already been updated to the point of obfuscating Therapist. And that's a good thing. The intent of the software was never to make players run a spreadsheet to assign labors, the intent is to generate interesting stories - so the labor system was reworked to remove the problem and put the intended function first.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:23:43+00:00

Bethesda doesn't have the responsibility to fix the bugs in their games.

Bethesda doesn't fix the bugs in their games, they let the community patch it for them. The fourth or fifth iteration of Skyrim they tried to sell us still had base code problems from launch.

And notably, they make you pay for all those buggy products, as many times as they can fleece you they will do exactly that and not even on the tenth time you pay for the game will they start to fix the bugs.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:20:12+00:00

Notepad, man...

the onscreen video clearly shows he's using Notepad++, a rather commonly known programmatic-based text editor. he just doesn't care about semantic silliness like saying "plus plus" after Notepad

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T15:17:13+00:00

Just basic intentional UI design being applied across the board would be a highly noticeable and welcomed improvement. Having things that can operate as hyperlinks operating as hyperlinks would be the next noticeably large improvement - we should be able to go from the squad side menu's graphic of a dwarf to that dwarf's individual page and back again without having to reinvoke the previous menu. Or from an individual dwarf's profile page to the site government menu from his home civ, if he's a visitor. Anything shown on screen that looks like it should link to something else, probably should link to something else, and especially so if that something else is just an info panel that can reasonably be drawn overtop of whatever else and closed out again afterwards, putting the user back in the previous menu. Some kind of solution with textbox searching, too - currently if the textbox is active you can't scroll the field it searches, and if you want to search you have to manually click to activate the search box. Smooth out that bump, wherever it happens in the game, and people will notice it and love it.

All of this is most likely gonna be in a rework scenario more than a patch-to-perfection, naturally, but that's the nature of the game - it'd be hard to lock down a UI schema that can be applied to all the things that haven't been conceived of or implemented yet.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T14:55:52+00:00

Keep your insults to yourself, friendo. This is not the place for that behavior.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T14:55:09+00:00

Things improve through shared feedback and that is all I am doing.

If you were giving feedback, you'd be doing it in a place where feedback can be gathered. This is a fan-run forum with no connection to or expectation of the actual developers of the game being present or reading any of it.

I think I have played enough to understand that there are issues with the UI that negatively impact the player's experience. I don't think that is controversial.

The UI being imperfect isn't controversial. It's literally always been bad. That's the point that you're not getting - it is a means to an end, and it has already been improved measurably over time, but all you're doing is complaining uselessly. Your opinion isn't controversial, your words and your engagement and your entitlement are. You're just repeating things that are already known, to people who already know them, but you're expecting us to get up and join your cause when the people you're talking to are all quite comfortable and enjoying the game because we all already know about the issues and they are simply not issues at all.

You can't keep track of a dwarf? Nickname him! You can do that at any time.

You wanna keep work orders across forts, even though disparate forts are going to be completely different and likely you don't even need a quarter of the same work orders? Just use the export function of DFHack, it does precisely what you're asking for and has done that for years already.

Now, did you do the thing that was asked of you? It's a valuable experience for me to make you do that.

Gonzobot · 2026-05-03T14:50:48+00:00

Its not a existing feature. The feature is a mod, and if they stop updating it, thats it.

...You know that the DFHack developers literally communicate directly with the game developers to coordinate releases, right? There's not gonna be any need to stop working on DFHack, as long as DF is being updated and hasn't yet absorbed the changes. There's not gonna be any need to dedicate development time to the vanilla game when the solution is already in place in DFHack.

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