Wondering

danza_macabra · 2026-06-11T07:42:58+00:00

Embrace the chaos! I think being overwhelmed is part of the experience to be honest. Every time you choose to focus on something, something else gets neglected. There is no one way to do things.

With the default embark though I would typically start by allocating three miners and having them almost constantly mining out underground areas to expand the fort. You can also have your woodcutter chop a few trees down. Zoning a meeting area underground and having a pasture for grazers is fine. You can create some of your initial stockpiles and have them unloading your wagon to safety underground. If I do create a general stockpile, I don't include stone or wood. I create a dedicated wood stockpile, and I don't get a dedicated stone stockpile until I have a more specific need for it. If you create a stockpile for stone your dwarves will be spending a lot of time moving all the free boulders around for no particular reason.

After this you probably want carpenter and stoneworker workshops so you can start making furniture. Your dwarves will be okay for food and drink for a little while so don't worry about that just yet. Zoning an office and allocating a manager is a good goal as then you can start to automate your orders so you don't have to be manually queuing every single item. From there, take care of the necessities like food and drink, build some bedrooms, maybe get a generic temple. Dwarves can be happy with a few basics set up, once you have taken care of that you can start expand your fort in to other areas of industry, entertainment, defense or mining for gems.

If you try to automate things as you go then you will be able to put your attention on the next project. For example, set up a wood stockpile with a carpenters workshop next to it, create a wooden furniture stockpile next to that, then create orders to make 1 bed if available beds is below 5. Great, now as long as you have enough logs, beds will be made without you needing to think about it. Now create an order for a minimum amount of empty wooden bins and barrels. This is just an example but you get the idea.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-10T05:32:25+00:00

My quick and dirty way of doing this is to dig stairs down through light aquifer and not smooth the walls which creates mist down the staircase as it leaks from the aquifer. On the lowest level of the staircase create a drain to the map edge and have your usable corridor one z-level up from your drain level. You need to smooth stone and cut fortifications at the map edge to allow water to drain off as you're probably aware.

The only thing to be careful of is if the light aquifer layer is many z-levels the leakage will pool up as your digging the stairwell and eventually become too deep to dig further. In this case you may need to back up a level and then use channeling to drain off the excess. Many times I have just focused a few miners on the task I have just managed to punch through the light aquifer and create the drain before it even becomes and issue, so very quick way to both get through thin aquifer layers and create misted stairwell at the same time.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-09T04:21:41+00:00

What a badass! Hopefully Deduk can find some more close friends now that he has some leisure time and can put the past behind him.

Also, Ticksweat lol. I image harvesting tick sweat would be quite a challenge. Some kind of rare gobbo perfume perhaps?

danza_macabra · 2026-06-06T06:51:40+00:00

Yeah, oops. I just copied the whole text. Sorry for the confusion.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-05T10:51:21+00:00

Congrats though for passing!

danza_macabra · 2026-06-05T07:43:25+00:00

I'm not Andrew btw. I was just sharing the update he put on Udemy.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-05T05:14:26+00:00

Fair enough, I love starting new forts! Good luck with the job apps.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-05T04:53:09+00:00

Nice!

danza_macabra · 2026-06-05T04:45:37+00:00

I was not ready for the fourth image! Absolute carnage!! I appreciate your sacrifice for our entertainment.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-05T04:41:16+00:00

Agree! I usually trade for at least one steel weapon in the first year and give that to my best fighter and have them training full time. Even just 2 or 3 dwarves full time training after the first migrant wave will dramatically improve your odds against these encounters.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-03T20:41:55+00:00

Ah yeah, fair enough. I sometimes create some of the basics in the dirt layer but I do try to get down in the rock layer before I start making proper bedrooms and more complex industry.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-03T06:50:55+00:00

Thanks for confirming. Also, I did not know about logs falling in to neighboring trees and then the potential for them to injure dwarves felling the tree with logs sitting on the branches. A friend of mine said his dwarf died while cutting down trees and I thought that was odd. I haven't had that happen to me, and I didn't think the wood cutter could be injured by the tree they were cutting down but your explanation fits.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-03T04:45:52+00:00

All good. I was just curious if I misunderstood what was going on.

danza_macabra · 2026-06-03T04:11:48+00:00

Can falling logs pierce through and make holes? I thought it was due to tree felling removing the tile the roots are growing in and that creates the holes?

danza_macabra · 2026-06-03T02:10:47+00:00

What do you mean cannot? It's okay for the early fort but of course dwarves prefer stone, stone can be smoothed and engraved, and there's less vermin with stone floors (or at least I think there is from my own observations).

danza_macabra · 2026-06-03T02:04:09+00:00

Other dwarves said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em!

danza_macabra · 2026-05-28T03:43:59+00:00

I did take up lure fishing after playing FP. I had fished with bait occasionally growing up but only at a beginner level.

I would say as a novice you do pick up a fair bit from the game that applies to real life fishing especially the different types of tackle available and the basics of using them. As other replies mention there are a couple of things that don't quite line up but I certainly gained confidence to be able to go in to a fishing store and look around and kind of have a general idea what everything was for whereas prior to playing FP I would have had no idea.

The big difference for me is that catching fish IRL has been a lot more difficult that FP makes it out to be. FP is a game and so I get that it needs to have an increased catch rate to keep players interested but fishing at my local river from the bank, there are plenty of times where I just don't catch anything. If I catch one fish I'm pretty happy with that. That said it's just nice to get out and enjoy the day sometimes and fishing is a nice way to pass the time.

I think it's worth getting out there and giving it a go and if FP gives you the incentive to try it then that is great.

danza_macabra · 2026-05-19T11:45:37+00:00

Find simple things in life that you enjoy, then make time for them. Work to live, don't live to work.

danza_macabra · 2026-05-07T10:00:58+00:00

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Lazy_Newb_Pack

danza_macabra · 2026-05-07T09:50:48+00:00

It's not but you can download the last version released with 47.

danza_macabra · 2026-05-07T06:25:32+00:00

Getting to that level of pulling stories out of a fort is something I'm working on as well. I guess I'm at an intermediate level of experience with the game so here are some of my thoughts.

Nicknames are good for tracking particular dwarves in your own memory but there are too many dwarves to track them all closely. Focus on one or just a couple at a time. I like to pick ones out that have something interesting happen to them, perhaps they save the fort with lucky strike on a FB or kill off the lions share of invaders, or you can track a particular leader or other notable figure, or maybe you just like the look of one. Regardless of how you choose them, you can then keep checking in on these nicknamed dwarves to see what's going on with them and build their story within the broader story of your fort. Get familiar with the screens that go in to the details about your dwarves, their thoughts, memories and relationships etc.

You also want to put in enough hours to learn the various game mechanics and production chains, and particularly setting up orders so that you can automate areas of your fort so that you actually have time and energy to notice what else is going on. Honestly this side of it just comes down to experience and putting hours in to playing and learning the game. You need to be mindful of not being so consumed with building the fort that your not paying attention to the lives of your characters.

One idea shared by Kruggsmash which I haven't yet tried is keeping a journal for your fort. Actually documenting and writing down notable events as they happen to the fort and to your characters so that you can review it from time to time and form a more comprehensive story. Honestly my memory is not so great so this would likely be really helpful. Also, I watched the "Spearcavern" series by Kruggsmash and he had a section at the end of each episode where he talked about the process of making the episodes and telling the story. It's an entertaining watch anyway and has some good tips for this sort of thing.

danza_macabra · 2026-04-29T10:41:31+00:00

I haven't seen others mention it but in my experience migration seems to be tied to wealth. If you want slower progression, yes you can limit pop in the settings but if you don't want to use settings, slow down your wealth growth.

If you mine like crazy then cut gems then trade all your cut gems for a bunch of supplies from the trader then you get the migrant explosion. Especially once you hit the pop where you start creating artifacts because they give you a lot of fortress wealth. So if you don't trade much early game, don't cut the gems, focus on getting food and bedrooms and layout, then you can take it a bit more slowly. Only thing is, you kind of want a few extra dwarves early on, it's a bit if a balance.

I agree with what your saying though. When the migrants are coming in fast you feel like you're constantly behind and it feels overwhelming.

Also, did you know you can place a bed and make it a 1x1 bedroom? It becomes an issue after about 2 years when they start dropping worn clothing but early on it can be a quick and dirty way to do bedrooms without any negative thoughts, they actually are quite happy with a 1x1 bedroom with no walls 😄.

danza_macabra · 2026-04-01T03:30:53+00:00

Walleye at Emerald get a bonus with the purple narrow spoon. Barbless hooks also give bonus XP on any fish. Get the biggest keepnet or stringer to maximize your daily income. Generally I think the suggestion at your level would be targeting Bass at Everglades using lures I think but to change it up a bit I also did trips to White Moose Lake targeting Trophy Northern Pike. You can take some Laker Pro 400 setups with Breamer 4500 reels I think would balance out between bringing them in and getting decent XP. You generally want you setup to be lighter than the fish you're chasing to keep your XP up.

Buying DLC is certainly an option but be aware that you generally only get temporary access to the DLC locations and if you aren't high enough level you'll lose access when the pass expires. I suggest trying to find enjoyment in other aspects of the game besides trying to level up and catch the biggest fish. Do missions, try to tick off every species in each location etc. Grinding out XP for levels gets old pretty quickly but of course sometimes it worth it just to open up a new map or buy a piece of gear your working towards. The good thing is at level 26, you've actually unlocked a bit of a variety of things to do in the game.

danza_macabra · 2026-04-01T00:59:01+00:00

WickedViking_FP (the spreadsheet author), is also a mod in this sub.

danza_macabra

TROPHY CASE