Dwarf Fortress Quickstart Guide

8/17/2019 Dwarf Fortress Quickstart Guide

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More Info

Before you get started...

Always remember that losing is fun! Beprepared to lose a few fortresses beforeyou get all the way through this guide –it can be easy to accidentally kill theentire fortress while learning. Butremember: losing means that next time, you'll remember how you lost. In a bigway, Dwarf Fortress uses the principle of learning from one's mistakes.

Feedback

If you have any feedback on this guide,please see the instructions in thefeedback section.

DF2014:Quickstart guide

From Dwarf Fortress Wiki(Redirected from Quickstart guide)

v0.43.02 · v0.34 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23

This article is about the current version of DF.

For installation instructions, see Installation.

This is a quickstart guide for Dwarf fortress mode for those who have never played before and quickly want to jump in

head-first.

If you are looking to learn adventure mode instead, see the Adventure mode quick start guide.

Also see Tutorials for more detailed tutorials that people have submitted.

So, you want to play Dwarf Fortress, but you have no idea what to do. That'sunderstandable; in Dwarf Fortress you can really do anything you like. It is ahuge, complex, and totally open-ended game. But in order to do anything, first

you need a sustainable fortress. It turns out that this is not as hard as youmight think.

As this article doesn't always contain the exact key sequences needed to doeverything described, you will likely need to refer to the Fortress ModeReference Guide and the rest of the wiki while reading this.

Contents

1 Common UI Concepts1.1 About key symbols1.2 Cursor movement, menu selection, and navigation1.3 Options menu

2 World Generation3 Pre-Embark

3.1 Choosing a Good Site3.2 Skills and Equipment

4 A Minimal Fortress4.1 Surveying the Area4.2 Controlling Your Dwarves

4.2.1 Stout Labor4.3 Strike The Earth!

4.3.1 Additional miners4.4 Delving Secure Lodgings

4.4.1 Room dimensions4.4.2 Mining safety4.4.3 Stockpiles4.4.4 Stairways

4.5 Temporary Meeting Area4.6 Refuse4.7 Food

4.7.1 Farming4.7.2 Emergency food sources

4.7.2.1 Plant gathering4.7.2.2 Butchering

4.8 Building material

DF2014:Quickstart guide - Dwarf Fortress Wiki http://dwarffortresswiki.org/DF2014:Quickstart_guide

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From Caravan to Happy Dwarves - This is a flowchart showing approximately what

sequence of actions players usually take when starting up a new fort. Feel free to ignore

it if you want. It's not necessary to refer to this to understand the rest of the guide, but

by the time you finish the guide it will probably all make sense.

Keeping Up

While the guide contains many links,you may still need to look something up.Refer to the Fortress Mode ReferenceGuide or use the wiki search function.Also, don't hesitate to ask for help if youcan't find answers on the wiki.

4.8.1 Woodcutting4.9 Drinks4.10 Pasture4.11 Designing Your First Fortress4.12 Workshops4.13 Brewing4.14 "Garbage" Dumping

4.15 Trading4.15.1 Trade Depot4.15.2 Choosing what to sell and what to buy4.15.3 Trading4.15.4 Troubleshooting

4.16 Migrants4.17 Bedrooms

4.17.1 Location4.17.2 Layout4.17.3 Building

4.18 Nobles4.18.1 Offices (Studies)

4.19 Furniture

4.20 Dining and Food Prep Area4.21 Placing Furniture4.22 Meeting Hall4.23 Checking Supplies4.24 Brewing and Cooking4.25 Storage Space4.26 Situational Awareness

5 Beyond a Minimal Fortress5.1 Traps5.2 Guard Animals5.3 Drawbridge5.4 Metal Industry

5.4.1 Wood Burning

5.4.2 Mining5.4.3 Fuel5.4.4 Forging

5.5 Gemcutting and Trinkets5.6 Sticking to the Plan5.7 Wealth and Invasion

6 Military7 What Next?8 Feedback

Common UI Concepts

About key symbols

This document and most documents on the wiki use key symbols that looklike t to indicate what keys are used for an operation. Note that these arecase sensitive. In order to save space, Shift + t will be written as T . So tmeans "press the 't' key without the shift key" and T means "hold down shiftand press the 't' key". Lowercase and uppercase keys will almost neverperform the same function, so it is important to use the correct key. Sequencesof keys will be written with dashes between them. So a - b - C means "press'a', then press 'b', then hold shift and press 'c'".


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Cursor movement, menu selection, and navigation

Esc Go back to the previous screen/menu

! " # $ Change active menu option or move cursor

- + Alternate menu selection keys

Enter Select menu option

Sometimes you use the directional keys ! " # $ and Enter to make menu selections, but sometimes you will need touse the alternate selection keys ( - and + ) instead. Generally speaking, when dealing with menus, if the directional keysdon't work try - / + .

Esc will almost always take you back to the previous screen until you get to the top level of the UI, at which point it willdisplay the options menu.

Options menu

Most basic game-related tasks (saving, keybindings, sound, etc.) are performed through the options menu, which can bereached with Esc from the main screen. There are usually seven available options:

Return to Game: Exits the options menu (shortcut Esc ).Save Game: Saves the game, unloads the fortress, and returns to the main menu. There is no "save and continue"option, but saves can be backed up and reloaded.Key Bindings: Allows you to change the keys that trigger nearly any function in the game. This can appear extremelyconfusing to use, but it is fairly simple to navigate through (as it uses the standard arrow keys, Esc and Enter ).Changing keys for menus is probably a bad idea, since this guide assumes the default keybindings — however, it mayoccasionally be useful to change navigation keybindings on some laptops (for example, changing menus to use =instead of + ).Export Local Image: Saves full-size images of your fortress.Music and Sound: Controls for volume adjustment.Retire the Fortress (for the time being): Do not select this option unless you know what you are doing! It retires thefortress from your control and gives control to the normal world updating process. You can later reclaim the fortress

but it may not be as you left it.Abandon the Fortress to Ruin: Do not select this option unless you know what you are doing! It will end your fortresspermanently and return to the main menu (all progress in your fortress will be lost). Your fort and most items willremain, however, so this can be useful in extreme circumstances (e.g. when you know your fortress is doomed andwant to start again) – see abandon for more information.

Notably lacking is an "exit without save" option. Players who wish to quit and leave their previous save unchanged maymanually kill the Dwarf Fortress process using the "die" command in DFHack, the Windows Task Manager (you might thenhave to end the process dumprep.exe), or the Unix "kill" command (on some systems, ctrl - \ in the terminal running DFaccomplishes the same thing). Do not attempt this while saving, as your save folder will become corrupted. Alternatively,you can make a copy of your region folder in the (DF)/data/save folder (e.g. "regionXX") before saving, save the gamenormally, remove the "regionXX" folder and rename the copy.

World Generation

The first thing you will need to do is generate a new world. Unlike many games, the world that your game takes place in willalways be procedurally randomly generated by you or someone else. There is no "default" or "standard" world.

Luckily the basic version of this process is rather simple, and doesn't usually take too long unless your computer is a bitoutdated or the world's history is set to Long or Very Long.

Starting World

For your first game, generate a new world using the Create New World! option in the mainmenu with the following options:


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An example of a good starting site.

World Size is Medium

History is Short

Number of Civilizations is Medium

Number of Sites is Medium

Number of Beasts is Medium

Natural Savagery is Very Low

Mineral Occurrence is Frequent

This should help to avoid difficulties.

Pre-Embark

Also see: Embark

Embarking is the process of choosing a site, outfitting your initial dwarves, and sending them on their way.

Select Start Playing from the main menu, then select Dwarf Fortress. The game will go through a few screensdoing various world loading and updating activities. Then it will show the "Choose Fortress Location" screen.

The map you see on the right is the World Map which will show you the whole world. The one in the middle is the RegionMap which will show you a zoomed-in view of the part of the world indicated by the cursor in the world map. The LocalMap on the left will show a zoomed-in view of the part of the region indicated by the cursor in the region map. In the localmap area there will be a highlighted embark region that you can move around with u m k h and resize with U M KH . This highlighted square is what will become your play area after you embark (This means that you cannot do or see

anything outside of this area during your game). Use ! " # $ to move the region and world cursors around. Hold

down Shift while doing this to move more rapidly.

Choosing a Good Site

Choosing a good embark site is crucial for beginners. (Very) highly skilled players can create a functional fortress on an evilglacier, but for now, let's stick to dwarf (and newbie) friendly environments. You will want to look for certain features in yourinitial embark site that will make your first fort much easier to manage.

Starting Site

For your first game, find a site with thefollowing properties:

NO Aquifer (This is very important!)Trees: Forested or Heavily Forested(or, at the very least, sparsely forested)Temperature: WarmSurroundings: Serene, calm, or atleast not any evil or savage biome.Clay or Soil is important to makefarming easier when starting outShallow Metals (That's Metals, plural,not Metal. You want more than one.)

A River if possibleDeep Metal(s) if possible


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Optional: Preparing Carefully

If, at this point, you'd like to get into allof the details of picking individual skillsand equipment for your expedition,select Prepare for the journeycarefully and see Preparingcarefully for instructions. This iscompletely optional.

Flux Stone if possible

You may want to use the f ind tool to help you find a site. You may find it easier to put onlysome of the criteria into the tool (at the very least, No Aquifer). Once the find tool has finishedrunning, the general areas which it has found will be indicated by flashing characters on the map.

Notes about the find tool:

"Calm" is classified as Neutral, Low Savagery (see the chart here for why). The find tool will alsoonly indicate a general area containing suitable sites, so you will still need to check the attributesmanually by moving between flashing regions on the world and region maps (with the arrow keysor numpad) and by moving around on the local map (with u m k h ) until you find the mostsuitable site.

The find tool may take a few minutes to run. When it's done, press ESC to look at the results.If the world map is just covered with red flashing Xs, it means that it couldn't find an areamatching your criteria. Try again with different criteria, or make a new world. What you want tosee are some flashing green Xs, which are areas that match your criteria. As you move youryellow X over those suggested sites, the info bar on the right will tell you what features arepresent in that general area, such as sand, soil, minerals, an aquifer, etc. Choose the one that looksbest to you!

Your highlighted embark site - the moveable rectangle shown on the leftmost map - may containmultiple biomes. If so be sure to press F1 , F2 , etc, to take a look at all of them (Macs andlaptops may require fn - F1 , depending on your settings). Each may have significantly differentcharacteristics. Note that occasionally a site with multiple biomes may contain an aquifer whichisn't shown in the info bar due to it not being in the predominant biome (the one visible withF1 ). If your site has multiple biomes, it is very important to check all of them to avoid

surprises like this.

Additionally, you can resize your embark area using U M K H . A 4x4 embark (thestandard) is usually reasonable, but you may want to decrease the size to avoid an undesirablebiome (or if your computer can't handle a 4x4 embark).

See Starting site for more info on why these characteristics are important.

Press e to embark once you're sure you have the right area highlighted on the local map.

Skills and Equipment

Now the Prepare for the Journey screen should appear. You will be giventhe choice to either:

Play Now!

Prepare for the journey carefully.

Selecting Play Now! will start you out with a default set of equipment thatis reasonably safe, allowing you to skip having to set up your skills andequipment. If you'd like to get going now, just select that option.

A Minimal Fortress

At this point you have embarked and your dwarves have arrived at their destination. You will see your dwarves clustered

around their wagon full of supplies somewhere near the center of your map. Immediately hit Space to pause the gameunless it is already paused.


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Starting out. In this example

the dwarves will be digging

out an entrance tunnel in thesandy cliff on the right. (You

can use Tab to show or hide

the overview map.)

Keybindings

If you're on a laptop (or using a restrictedkeyboard), you may notice that using +to scroll upward on some menus isinconvenient, since it requires the Shiftkey. Fortunately, this is easy to changeby modifying your key bindings:

Press Esc to access the optionsmenu and select Key Bindings

1.

Select General, scroll down toMove secondary selector

down (using the arrow keys),move right, and select Addbinding

2.

Press = and select either optionthat appears. (Technically, you canchoose any key you like at thispoint. However, = (equals) isprobably a good choice, since it'snext to - and isn't used foranything else in menus.)

3.

Surveying the Area

Do not unpause the game just yet. Take a look around. Use the k command and thearrow keys (remember that Shift +arrow keys will move faster). Look up and down a fewz-levels with < and > ( Shift - , and Shift - . on many keyboards). Place the cursor onvarious tiles to familiarize yourself with what the symbols mean. If you get lost, you canpress F1 (or Fn - F1 on some systems) to return to the wagon. (You can define more

hotkeys later, to jump quickly to other sites of interest.)Notice the terrain features, the vegetation, and any minerals visible. If you chose a site withflowing water, where is it? What about pools of water? The more carefully you examineyour site before breaking ground, the better off you will be.

Remember that this is more of a simulation than a game. It is not "play balanced", and you can very easily find yourself inimpossible situations. That is all part of the fun because even when you lose, you create an interesting story.

Your wagon serves as the initial meeting area for your dwarves. Since you should have started in a non-freezing, calm (lowsavagery), non-evil biome, you shouldn't face any immediate danger, but if for some reason the area around your wagonproves to be unsafe, immediately designate another meeting zone using i (see Temporary Meeting Area below).

Controlling Your DwarvesThe first thing to keep in mind is that, for the most part, you can't directly control your dwarves the way you controlcharacters in a typical fantasy RPG. Instead, you designate things that need to be done and then dwarves with the appropriatelabor assignments will decide what to do.

Some tasks receive a higher priority. For example, if a dwarf needs to eat then he will go eat and only get around to digging atunnel once he is done eating. It is also possible to designate things that no dwarf is able to do. For example, if you designatean area to mine but no dwarf has mining as one of his allowed labors or no dwarf has a pick then the mining will never getdone, and the game will not always advise you of why.

So what you are doing throughout the game is essentially giving your dwarves a detailed group-wide to-do list, but it's up tothem to figure out which one of them will execute any given task if the task is even possible. Often many of the details of

how a task is performed (such as exactly which rock will be used to make crafts) are left up to them.

Stout Labor

Labors are how you control what types of tasks a dwarf will do. For example,if the Fishing labor is enabled for a dwarf, that dwarf is allowed to engage infishing.

When dwarves are idle, it could be because you haven't given them anythingto do, or it could be because none of the idle dwarves have been told thatthey're allowed to do the types of tasks you've designated. For example, if youdesignate an area to mine, but none of the dwarves have the mining labor

enabled, they will all just sit around ignoring your mining designation thinkingthat it isn't their job.

Dwarves will automatically have some labors enabled if they start out withskill in those labors, and some labors (such as hauling and cleaning) areenabled for all dwarves by default. This is why you didn't need to enable anylabors on dwarves to get them to haul and mine, but later you may need alabor that no dwarf is currently capable of.

Look over your dwarves' assigned labors. Press v (View Units) then placethe cursor on a dwarf. Now, press p - l for "preferences: labors". You willsee a list of labor categories that you can navigate using - and + . You canenter each category with Enter (except for mining, which is a single labor),toggle each labor off and on with Enter , and get back out with Esc .


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Scroll down, select By letter:+, and press Backspace (orDelete , depending on your

keyboard)

4.

Press Esc and select Save andexit

5.

You can now use = instead of + to

scroll these types of menus (includingthe labors menu), which can besignificantly easier than using + oncertain keyboards.

Utilities

You may have noticed that the UI formanaging dwarves is a bit difficult touse. There are a few utilities available forthis purpose (for Windows, Mac OS X,and most Linux systems):

Dwarf Therapist can make labormanagement considerably easier,especially when you're dealingwith twenty times the number of dwarves you have now. It cangroup and sort dwarves bymultiple attributes and displaytheir preferences, mood, and more.DFHack includes "Dwarf Manipulator", a UI for managing

labors. It has fewer features thanDwarf Therapist, but displaysmuch of the same information andis adequate for normal use. Inaddition, it is accessible fromwithin DF via u - l , eliminatingthe need to constantly switchbetween applications.

After exiting the View Units menu, you can use u (the units screen) to helpyou locate dwarves. Hit u , select a dwarf, hit z for "zoom to creature" andyou'll automatically be placed in view mode on that dwarf. (Then use p - l toget to the labor configuration menu if necessary.)

Even if no dwarves have the corresponding skills, ensure that someone haswood burner, furnace operator, wood cutter, plant gathering, gem cutter,armorsmith, weaponsmith, blacksmith, metal crafter, and engraver (stone

detailing) enabled. If you have dwarves with hunting or fishing, disable thoseuntil you have your initial fort completed — dwarves with these laborsenabled will constantly be outside attempting to perform them. When you'refirst starting out you don't want dwarves wandering around alone where theycan get killed (in addition, they won't be doing anything useful, like hauling).

Note that any unskilled dwarf can perform any labor given the necessaryequipment and materials. Dwarves with no skill will simply be slow andproduce a smaller quantity of lower quality goods in a given time period, butthey will gain skill points as they do so.

Strike The Earth!

Decide where you will build your main entrance. Generally, you will want toget all your dwarves and supplies inside a protected area as quickly aspossible. The best strategy is to put the entrance near your wagon to speed upthe process of hauling all of your supplies inside.

The d esignations menu allows you to select areas to dig. There are multiplemethods of digging:

Mining removes solid, floor-to-ceiling terrain (natural 'walls') on thez-level selected, leaving behind a rock or soil surface (also referred to asa natural floor). This does not do anything in areas without natural walls(for example, the surface or previously-mined areas).Channeling removes natural (rock/soil) floors (either created naturallyor by mining) and creates a ramp (%) on the z-level below. Note thatyou will see a down arrow (&) on the current z-level, indicating a rampon the level below. (For best results, ensure that the area below isunrevealed, i.e. black).

To designate an area for digging:

Hit d to bring up the Designations Menu.1.Hit d to mine or h to channel (see above)2.Place the cursor on one corner of the rectangular area you want todesignate and press Enter .

3.

Move the cursor to the other corner of the rectangle and press Enter . A rectangle will be highlighted and a miner willstart to dig out this area once you exit the menu (with Esc ) and unpause the game with Space .

4.

This is basically how all of the designation commands work. Everything has to be designated one rectangle at a time, butrectangles can be many tiles wide.

If your wagon is near a cliff or hill (generally speaking, any difference in levels, usually shown by the existence of naturalramps), you can just designate a tunnel to mine ( d - d ) into the cliff to create an entryway. If the wagon is surrounded byflat terrain, channel out a 3x3 rectangle on the surface with d - h to create a sort of pit with ramps on the edges, then godown one z-level with > and tunnel into one wall of the pit (with d - d ) to create your entry.

Dig a hallway one tile wide and at least 10 long, ideally more like 20 ( Shift moves 10 tiles when digging, so this can beeasily accomplished by pressing Shift +an arrow key twice). This will be your entryway.

Your entryway defines the boundary between your safe and protected inner fort, and the big bad outside world. You want this

to be your only entrance so that you only have to worry about defending this one opening.


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Demonstrating the difference

between mining and channeling.

Mining creates empty space on

the same level where it is

designated. Channeling creates

empty space in the level below,

clearing the floor. The levels are

connected by up/down ramps.

Channeling

Note that channeling can be dangerous.Unless you know what you're doing, youshould only ever make a pit one z-leveldeep. If you dig a pit multiple z-levels

deep, only the lowest level will have anupward ramp, which is not enough fordwarves to leave the pit. (Dwarves canclimb out in some circumstances, but thisis unreliable.)

This diagram shows the cross-section(side view) of 1x1 pits channeled 1z-level deep, 2 z-levels deep and the

correct way to do a 2 z-level deep ramp.The appearance of "downward ramps"can be confusing as there is no suchthing - the down arrow indicates a rampon the level below. Dwarves in the firstpit can climb the ramp to ground leveland escape, while dwarves in the secondpit can only climb to the level belowground level (and are then faced with avertical wall). The third pit lets dwarvesclimb back to the surface again as theramps are not only above each other butalso next to each other (like a 45° slope).

In short, channels (particularly channelsmultiple z-levels deep) can be dangerous.Digging an entryway from surface levelis one of the few times you'll ever needto channel.

Stairs can also be used for an entryway, but

channels allow wagons entry to your fortress.

A somewhat-outdated video guide tostarting a fortress can be found here(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLYDcuk29bE&feature=plcp). (Note that this applies to v0.34.11, notv0.43.02, so some parts may be inaccuratein the current version.)

Additional miners

Mining will go faster if you have more than one dwarf doing it. By default, only one dwarf has the Mining labor enabled, butthis can be changed fairly easily:

Choose a dwarf that isn't doing anything especially useful (the fish cleaner is a good choice for a beginning fortress,but you can always change your mind if you end up with a useless peasant later on)Press v , navigate to the dwarf, and press p - lEnable the "Mining" option (see Stout Labor above)Exit with Esc

The next time you designate an area for mining, both of your miners should start working (assuming they're not busy doingsomething else).

Notes:


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An example layout, as

described in this section. Note

the 3-tile wide passage - this

allows merchants to access

your depot, which will go in

the 5x5 room. Note that the

turn also needs to be 3 tiles

wide; otherwise, wagons won't

be able to access the room.

Each miner requires a pick. A standard embark comes with 2 picks. If you want more than two miners, you'll need toforge more picks (forging is covered later in this guide). Two miners should be adequate for most fortresses, but moreminers can add reliability (for when a miner decides to sleep) and speed. For now, you'll almost never need more thantwo miners, but you'll want more once your fortress expands.If you're digging a one-tile-wide hallway, only one miner can work from an end.Mining, Wood Cutting, & Hunting labors are mutually exclusive - a dwarf can only have up to one of these professionsactive at a time. For this reason, it's not recommended to make your only woodcutter a miner, since they won't be ableto cut wood anymore.

Delving Secure Lodgings

Near the middle of the entry tunnel, build a 5x5 room, and link it to the entrance tunnel with a 3-tile-wide passageway.Expand the main entry tunnel to three tiles wide from the entrance of the new room to the outside entry. At the end of theentry tunnel, dig a small room, which will later become your main stairwell. Two tiles past that, dig a larger room, which willlater become your general stockpile, and connect it to the stairwell with a narrow passageway.

Room dimensions

Apart from wagon access (3 tiles wide), the trade depot (5x5), and other workshops (3x3),there are no fixed dimensions you need to worry about. The lower limiting factor is thetraffic your tunnels receive (dwarves may have to start climbing over each other), and thespace your rooms need (stockpiles, tables/chairs, livestock). The practical maximum size islimited by how long it takes your miners to dig the rooms out, especially if they're diggingin stone instead of soil (digging through soil is much faster). Most sites have at least onelevel soil layer below ground level, which is where you're digging right now, but as you digdeeper you'll hit stone (if you haven't already), and digging will become slower.

In most fortresses, even the main hallways never need to be wider than 3 tiles, and needingmore than 3 tiles of stairs per floor is very rare. A 3x3 per floor staircase (9 stairs!) isabsolute overkill for anything but 20 year old 300-resident capitals. For most tunnels inyour fortress, 2 tiles wide will be sufficient, and many will be fine at just 1 tile wide. 11x11

is a convenient size for stockpile rooms, as the Shift +arrow keys move the cursor 11 tiles.However, something smaller is perfectly fine for rarer stockpiles, offices, and small diningrooms. Commoner's bedrooms need not be larger than the amount of furniture you want inside.

Mining safety

While mining, take care to avoid digging into water. Dwarves are usually poor swimmers, and are unlikely to escape from anunderground flood. However, it is safe to mine next to underground water, as long as you leave at least one "wall" tilebetween them (see the picture to the right). You can also mine one z-level under a body of water (for example, mining undera river), but you will have to designate each tile individually because DF automatically cancels digging of newly-revealed"damp" tiles (tiles are considered damp when they are adjacent to a water tile, regardless of whether the water tile is on thesame z-level or not).

Also note that water can flow diagonally:

Stockpiles

Stockpiles are very important. These areas are where your dwarves will drop things for storage when they aren't neededelsewhere. To create a general purpose stockpile for your first storage area:

Hit p to open the Stockpiles menu.1.Use t to change the custom stockpile settings to e nable everything but Corpses, Refuse, Stone, Gems, and Wood.Use directional keys, e nable, d isable to do this.

2.

Esc out of that screen back to the stockpiles menu.3.


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Keep corpses, refuse, stone

and wood out of general use

stockpiles. You can come backand change the settings on this

stockpile using q , selecting

the stockpile, then pressing

s . Try to remember to come

back here to disable/forbid

types of things as you create

more specific stockpiles for

them.

Up, Down, Up/Down: Types of Stairs

In Dwarf Fortress, every z-level is composed of afloor and a wall (or "space between floors"). Theconfusingly named "down" and "up" stairs havenothing to do with the direction creatures can moveto; instead, down stairs penetrate floors, while upstairs penetrate walls. Up/down stairs penetrate thewall and the floor below. (note the picture to the left)

Consequently, you will normally use up/down stairs,and use down and up stairs only for the bottom andtopmost level of your staircase respectively. If you'renot sure whether you want to expand the staircase inthe future, use up/down stairs at the end.

This is how the different stairs would look like from the side.

Hit c to select Custom Stockpile, if it isn't already selected.4.Designate the whole 11x11 storage room as a custom stockpile. This works just likedesignating an area to dig: place the cursor on one corner of the room, hit Enter ,move to the opposite corner, and hit Enter again.

5.

Press Esc to get out of the Stockpiles menu.6.

Once you exit the stockpiles menu and unpause you should see dwarves running off to hauleverything from your wagon into the new stockpile area. Later, if you like, you can change

what sort of things the stockpile accepts by hitting q (Set Building Tasks/Prefs), placingthe cursor on the stockpile, then pressing s to get to the stockpile settings.

It is particularly important to keep wood, stone, refuse, and corpses out of your generalpurpose stockpile, so you may want to double check to make sure all of these things aredisabled in the stockpile settings. Failure to keep these things out of this stockpile willrapidly fill it up, causing workshops to become cluttered when dwarves can't store things inthe stockpile.

Note: When assigning stockpiles, you should make sure they're in a vacant area (i.e. the tilesshould not have any items already stored on them). Dwarves will not haul items to occupiedtiles, so make sure the area is vacant before assigning a stockpile.

Stairways

Designate a 3x3 downward stairway in the middle of the 3x3room (not the 5x5 room) that you dug out earlier with d - j .Notice that after your miner digs the stairway, it doesn'tautomatically create another stairway on the z-level below. If youhit > to move the view down a z-level you'll see that there's nostairway below, but there is a revealed tile of rock/soil. Becauseof the down stairway that was dug, this tile is now accessible tominers. You can then designate an up/down stairway on it withd - i and the miner dwarf will dig it out. Below that you can

then dig out another up/down stairway and so on. For now just

dig down one level; we will deepen the stairwell later.


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An example meeting area.

Note that this layer has a

different type of soil than the

layer above - this can happen

often. Also note that the

"north" side of this room is

directly below the lake in the

level above, but no water is

present.

Avoiding Miasma

A 5x5

room

with a

3x3 farm

plot

Temporary Meeting Area

On the second z-level below ground (the one below the stockpile level, which you justreached with the staircase), dig a short, 3-tile wide passageway (this only needs to be 1-2tiles long). Past that, dig out a room between 5x5 and 7x7, leaving room to enlarge it in atleast one direction in the future.

Using the i key, create an activity zone in the room you just created, filling the entire room(be careful not to make this too small lest your overcrowded animals start fighting). Thisworks much like creating a stockpile except that you draw the rectangle before definingwhat the area is for. Draw the rectangle, filling the entire room, and set it to be a m eetingarea. Your idle dwarves will hang around in this area, hopefully keeping them inside the fortand out of trouble.

Refuse

Outside your fort entrance, use p followed by r to create a stock p ile for r efuse at least 5x5 in size. This should be outside in the open or you will have problems with Miasma. If you do not disable vermin (Item Types -> remains), you will probably have to expand itlater as it will fill up with vermin remains rather quickly. If you are seeing refuse appear inyour general-purpose stockpile instead of the refuse pile, use q on the general stockpileand check its s ettings to make sure refuse has been disabled.

Food

To keep functioning, your dwarves require constant supplies of food and drink. You can use the z stock screen to monitorhow much food and drink are available. Luckily, your dwarves will eat almost everything raw, including plants.

Farming

For a reliable, long-term food and alcohol supply, you'll need to set up a farm. Dig out a medium-sized room in a soil layeraccessible from inside your existing fortress (5x5 is a good size to start with, but you'll want to leave room to expand in atleast one direction). You must pick an underground area with mud or soil*. Placing this near the stockpiles is more efficient,since farmers won't need to travel as far.

* Hopefully you have chosen a site with a soil layer, which will make farming much easier, but if not you will need to irrigate to create

the required mud on stone floors.

Use b - p to build a 3x3 farm plot in the room you just created. Notice that some types of buildings (as wellas most constructions) are not designated corner-to-corner like digging designations, stockpiles, or activityzones. Instead, you define the length and width of the building using u m k h and position it with thedirectional keys. Use u u k k to make the plot 3x3 and position it in the room, ideally near the wall toleave space for more plots later on.

Remember that you must enable the Farming (Fields) labour for at least one dwarf or the farm plotwon't get built and farming will not take place. (If you selected "Play Now" earlier then you will start with adwarf with farming enabled.)

Esc out of the build menu and wait for the farmer dwarf to create the plot. Once the plot is built, use q to set the plot to


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grow plump helmets during all seasons. You can use + and - to select plump helmets (pressing - once should do thetrick). Select with enter . You will need to press a , b , c , d and select Plump Helmets for each season — otherwiseyou'll end up with an idle field for 3/4ths of the year.

Note that a default embark starts with five plump helmet seeds — for now, only half of your field will end up being planted.Eventually, as your dwarves consume plump helmets, more seeds will become available and will be automatically planted byan unoccupied farmer.

For more troubleshooting tips, see How do I build a farm

Emergency food sources

Occasionally, even with a working plump helmet farm, you may experience food shortages. For now, you should have plentyof food on hand left over from embarking. However, if you ever run low on food, there are a few ways to obtain more:

Plant gathering

If you have shrubs (") growing above ground, you can harvest plants from them. Note that this requires a dwarf with thePlant gathering labor enabled (under Farming), and time (this can take a while for an inexperienced dwarf, and itdoesn't always yield edible plants). To start, d esignate some p lants to be gathered on the surface (similar to selecting anarea for mining, except it only selects plants in the given rectangle). Once processed, some will leave behind harvested plants(often edible berries).

Butchering

If you suddenly run low on food, butchering an animal is another option. Build a butcher shop ( b , w , u ) and mark one of your animals for slaughtering (press v , move the cursor to the animal, then press p , s ). A dwarf with the butchering laborenabled will haul the animal off to the butcher's shop, work for a while, and produce neat stacks of meat products.

Building material

Initially, wood is probably a good choice for building materials, as it's lightweight and can be easily obtained. You will needplenty of building materials as your fortress grows, but wood will suffice for now. If you are unable to locate enough wood(or if you run out of trees, which is unlikely at this point), extend your staircase down to a stone level ( d - i ) and mine out asmall area (at least 5x5) to obtain stone.

Even if you don't have trees, you can obtain 3 logs from your embark wagon. Press q , place the cursor on your wagon, andhit x to deconstruct it. This will flag the wagon for disassembly. Eventually a carpenter will come along and turn the uselesswagon into a few units of wood. (Removing other buildings is done the same way.)

Woodcutting

Assuming your site has trees above ground, now is a good time to start obtaining wood.

Create a stock p ile for w ood outside your entrance (preferably near to it). As it will only be temporary, don't make it toobig (maybe 5x3, or 15 tiles total). Later, you will move this closer to your carpenter's workshop (once you build one), so don't

worry about placement too much.

Also near the entry, designate a couple of trees to be chopped down with d - t . One tree will produce many logs, so onlydesignate three to five at this point. If you designate too many trees, your woodcutters will spend all of their time choppingthem down and hauling the resulting logs instead of doing other work. As soon as one tree is cut down and its wood stored ina stockpile, you can proceed to the next step (your woodcutter will continue cutting down any remaining designated trees).

Drinks

Drinks can be more problematic than food, since they require more preparation (except for water, that is). In warmer weather,you can specify a "water source" activity zone ( i - w ) around a lake or river on the surface to keep your dwarves from dyingof thirst, but dwarves deprived of alcohol slow down and become unhappy. In addition, drinking outside can be dangerous —

dwarves running outside constantly risk running into wild animals, or worse. Creating a still to brew alcohol is the simplestsolution to these problems.


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A completed

still

Grazers

If you aren't sure whether or not ananimal is a grazer, you can check this

category. (You can also search for theanimal on this wiki.)

You need a brewer to brew drinks. Unfortunately, your brewer is also your woodcutter (with a default embark), who is busycutting down trees. You will want to make a different dwarf your brewer instead, since both your brewer and woodcutter willbe busy (and one dwarf can't do both jobs at the same time).

Find your woodcutter in the u nits list, select it, and press z (this selects the dwarf without you having to search yourentire map). Use the p - l menu to disable brewing (located under "Farming/related" — you can navigate this menuwith the + and - buttons).

1.

Pick another dwarf that isn't doing anything useful. Right now, this can probably be your fish cleaner, but you can

change this as soon as some migrants arrive (by following these steps again).

2.

Use the u - z - p - l menu again to enable brewing on the new dwarf.3.

Assuming you have building materials available (which you will if your woodcutter has been doing their job), you can now create a still:

Dig out a 3x3 area connected to the farm plot.1.Use b - w - l to build a still. Position it in the 3x3 area you just created and press Enter .2.Use Enter to select a building material for the still (this is probably one of the logs you just cutdown by default).

3.

Use Esc to exit the menu, and unpause the game.4.

After a short delay, your new brewer should run off, drag a log over to the workshop site, and build the

workshop. (This is also how building other workshops works, but you won't need to do that yet).

To brew drinks, use q to select the still and press a dd task- b rew drink. This will not work yet, since you don't have anyempty barrels or rock pots, but you should start brewing in the first six months.

Pasture

If you have any grazing animals with you, such as the draft animals used topull your wagon, they will die if they are kept away from grass for too long.Use i to create a Pe n /Pasture zone over a grassy area outside and assignyour grazing animals to it using N (while still selecting the zone). This areaneeds to be about 10x10 or so to ensure they have enough grass and don'ttrample it all.

The amount of grass required varies greatly depending on the type(s) of animals being pastured. If you intend to keep grazing animals permanently,you may need vastly larger pastures later. As an alternative, you might wish toslaughter your largest animals for food and materials.

Designing Your First Fortress

While this guide recommends a vertical fortress design around a central stairwell with each z-level being used for a particularpurpose, it is not really that important to use this design for your first fortress. Therefore, feel free to put any of the areasdescribed in the rest of this guide on your main level or wherever you want as long as dwarves can get to them without goingoutside the fort. In other words, you can think of the "levels" described in the guide more as areas that can really all be on the

same level if you have space. Later you can ponder over what makes things most efficient, but for now just do whatever youfind easiest.

Note that you may need to dig down a bit to get to stone if you have more than one z-level of sand/clay/soil below thesurface.

Workshops

Most labors of your dwarves need a place where they can process raw materials — workshops. Almost all of them occupy a3x3 square, and most of them require just 1 unit of any building material (wood, stone, metal).

Dig your stairwell down one level (with d - i ), if you haven't already. It's fine if this layer is soil — in fact, soil is better,since it's easier to dig through (if you only have one soil layer, you can put these workshops somewhere on your first level).

Dig space for your workshops off of the stairwell. It will hold your mechanic's, mason's, carpenter's, and jeweler'sworkshops. Something to consider is stockpile proximity: the farther away the material is the dwarves use, the more time


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An example workshop

layout. The gem stockpile

(empty) is north of the

Jeweler's workshop

(southwest corner), the

wood stockpile is east of

the Carpenter's workshop

(northwest corner), and the

stone stockpile occupies

the rest of the space. Note

the wheelbarrow

(Ö/umlaut-O) in the stone

stockpile.

Too Good for Menial PeonWork

Certain labors are crucial in setting up afort. At some point you may want todisable less important labors such ashauling for dwarves with the crucial

skills of mining, masonry, architecture,carpentry, mechanics, and maybe others.You want these dwarves working oncreating beds, doors, and trapcomponents before hauling stone andcleaning.

they waste with walking. So for now, dig out some more space for stockpiles close to whereyour new workshops will be (wood for your carpenter, stone for your mason and mechanic,and gems for your jeweler). It doesn't matter if you put everything in one large room or dig outsmall rooms for each workshop and stockpile. Note however that some tiles of workshops areimpassable: they appear as dark green 'X' when you choose a location (the specific wiki pagesof the workshops also show you this). So before you build small 3x3 rooms for eachworkshop, make sure your dwarves will be able to reach them.

Once you've dug out your rooms, set your miners to work by adding a z-level or two to thestaircase (you can designate multiple z-levels at once using < and > , just like moving upand down). Hopefully you'll obtain some stone by doing this, which will be useful eventually.

While your miners are busy, use b - w to build the workshops, using whatever buildingmaterial you have. If you are still digging in soil and don't have stone yet, just use wood. (Thematerial really doesn't matter in this case.) If the construction of any building gets "suspended" just use q to unsuspend it. (This can happen if another dwarf or object is blocking the way.See Garbage Dumping below if you find you need to remove an object.)

Remove the temporary wood stockpile you created outside (using p - x and selecting theentire stockpile) and dwarves will move the wood to the new wood storage area.

Go to your mason's shop with q and use a to queue up one t able and one throne/ c hair.You will find out why you need these in a second, but now is a good time to start buildingthem. If you still don't have any stone at this point just use wood at the carpenter's workshop.

At this point, it is a good idea to build a few wheelbarrows to make haulinglarge objects (particularly stone) more efficient. Queue up 2 or 3 at thecarpenter's workshop. (Wheelbarrows are located near the bottom of the list,on a separate page. They are not visible initially, so you'll need to scroll with+ or - — scrolling up with - is more efficient, as it wraps to the bottom of

the list.) While the wheelbarrows are being built, select your stone stockpilewith q and use w to increase "Max Wheelbarrow" to 3 (the maximum).Your dwarves will automatically move wheelbarrows to the stockpile oncethey are built.

Brewing

You'll need barrels to store drinks for your dwarves. The stockpile you set up earlier will use as many barrels as possible to

store items in, which means they can't be used to store drinks. To change this, press p to access the stockpile menu and use* to increase the number of "reserved" barrels (e.g. barrels kept out of stockpiles - 5 barrels is good for now).

Queue up two or three barrels in your carpenter's workshop with a - v . (If you run out of wood at any point, cut downanother tree or two outside). If a lack of wood cancelled a job, you will need to queue the job again.

Go back to your still and order some drinks to be a - b rewed. Each drink requires one barrel and one edible plant, such as aplump helmet. Even if none of yours have been harvested yet, you should have some left over from embark. Also, brewingplump helmets creates two seeds from one plant, which makes plump helmets an excellent choice for a beginning fortress.

Five barrels should be plenty for now (each plant makes 5 "units", or servings, of booze, and dwarves don't need to drink toooften, so 30 units should last you a whole year. When the stocks get low, you'll probably want to start queueing up moredrinks to be made (you should have more empty barrels by then).

"Garbage" Dumping


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Note that garbage is not the same thing as refuse. Refuse is rotting stuff. Garbage is anything you designate to be hauled toa garbage dump, even important things that aren't really garbage. Think of your garbage dump zone as a way to specify thatobjects you select will be brought to a specific area.

Use i to create a 1x1 activity zone somewhere near your mason's and mechanic's workshops and set it to be a garbaged ump. Unlike stockpile areas where you are limited to storing one object per tile, any number of items may be piled in a

garbage area. That means you will only need one tile to hold as much garbage as you like. Although many of the room sizesin this guide are suggestions, think of the 1x1 garbage dump size as mandatory. At some point you will probably want to

retrieve an important item from your garbage dump, and the more tiles your dump contains, the harder it will be to findanything in it.

Press d - b to get to the mass dump/forbid screen and select the d ump option. With "dump" selected, designate a rectangleover the loose stones cluttering up your living area (if there are any – this often isn't a problem yet if you've build your fort ina soil layer). This will designate this stone to be transported to the closest garbage dump zone. Be sure not to dump stone inyour stockpiles by mistake, since that will only cause your dwarves to perform unneeded hauling.

Once the stone from your living area has been moved there, it will be set as forbidden. Before it can be used you will need tounforbid it using the same d - b screen, hitting c to claim it.

Note that dwarves hauling stone (or any large, heavy objects) move slowly, and can take a lot of time to reach theirdestination. This can be a major waste of time if you designate 50 boulders to be dumped at once. Unless the stone is in the

way of something, you don't need to dump it every time you dig out a new area. Stones lying on the ground don't slowdwarves down at all.

If there is a particular dwarf you don't want hauling stone, you can disable the "Stone Hauling" labor (under the "Hauling"category). Miners are good candidates, since they are far more useful when digging than when moving the stone they just dugout.

Congratulations! Knowing how to use garbage zones as garbage dumps puts you head and shoulders above many newplayers. It takes some people weeks to figure this out.

Trading

Not all embark sites have all the resources you need for a successful fortress, but every site has something you can sell. A

talented dwarf can process any useless resource into something valuable, and trading is a good way to sell those goods.

Note that producing goods creates wealth and getting too much wealth too fast can have unwanted consequences.

Trade Depot

Build a trade depot using b - D in the 5x5 room you created near your entrance. This is where caravans will park their stuff and where trading will take place when one arrives. (as stated earlier, the wagons are 3x3 so the entrance tunnel needs to beat least 3x3 for the wagons to go by).

You will need one architect, which will be enabled on your mason if you selected Play now! at embark. You also need atleast 3 logs or boulders to build the depot.

Choosing what to sell and what to buy

While there are some goods that are more valuable, and some that are less valuable, it's a good idea to simply produce/exportwhat you have too much of to import what you have too little of. Generally though, Gems and Finished goods are goodexport goods for a new player.

In your first fortress your priority should be importing some food and alcohol. In addition, you might want more livestock,seeds (comes with a free bag), and - depending on what resources you are missing - additional picks, barrels, wood, bags, aswell as rope and a bucket (for a well). While you're at it, check if you need an anvil. Maybe you forgot to bring one, or a keastole it. Always having a small supply of all 3 kinds of cloth, some gems, leather, a bit of sand (free bag!) and some bones arehandy to have, as those are hard to come by on short notice. If you're short on weapons-grade metal for your military, importnot only actual metal bars and ores, buy all metal goods you can afford and melt them down in a smelter to increase youryield.

Trading


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Once a caravan has arrived, you can mark the goods you want to sell through the Trade Depot, and your dwarves will beginmoving them to the Depot. Be careful not to sell wooden items to Elves; this includes containers: even a wooden bin full of metal crafts will make them upset. Also note that the Traders will want to make a profit off of you. While they're happy withabout 200%, the more profit they make on your site, the more goods they will bring next time, so it can be a good idea to givethem even better deals.

A more detailed overview of the entire process is here.

Troubleshooting

Once the depot is built, use D from the main menu to make sure your depot is accessible. ( This command is only availableonce the depot is built – before building, the command will be disabled, and while the depot is under construction everythingwill flash red until the depot is built). Once completed, checking D epot access will flash some of the following symbols:

X: This tile is not accessible by wagon. This could be because something is blocking it (a tree, a natural boulder, etc.).

W : This tile is accessible by wagon. (These tiles will radiate outward from the depot, not from the map edges.)

This is good, but does not guarantee wagons will be able to reach the depot. Make sure you see the words Depotaccessible on the left.

D The depot is accessible via wagon.D The depot is not accessible by wagon. See below.

If you see the message Depot inaccessible in the menu (or the D) symbol over the depot, try these solutions:

Is the path to the depot (in your fortress) less than 3 tiles wide? If not, expand the entranceway and try D again.Are there trees blocking a path to the depot outside? Try clearing a path by cutting down a few (you probably won't

need to cut all the trees in a 3-tile wide path; usually cutting some a few at the end of a path of W 's clears a path.

Are there boulders (!) blocking the path outside? To remove them easily, you need an engraver. If you selected "playnow", you should have one already. Select d - s mooth Stone and designate the boulder(s) for smoothing. They should

flash this symbol: " Is the path to the depot only accessible via stairs or did you build traps in the way? Wagons cannot pass traps or stairs,

even if they're 3x3 wide.

It's possible that there are multiple obstacles blocking the depot, so keep checking D epot access until the Depotaccessible message appears.

Note that even if your depot is inaccessible to wagons, traders still will come without wagons. They will carry much less

goods and you can sell them much less, because their carrying capacity is greatly reduced.

Migrants

Some migrants have arrived.

At some point soon, you'll most likely be getting migrants (if you haven't already). You'll usually get between 5 and 15migrants in the first 2 waves, which occur sometime during your second and third seasons. See this page for advice when youreceive migrants.

Bedrooms

Up to this point, your dwarves have probably been sleeping on dirt or rock in your fortress. While this is fine for a short time,your dwarves will gradually become less happy if they are forced to sleep without a bed. Under normal circumstances bedscan only be made from wood, so be sure to designate some more trees to be cut down if you're short on logs.

Designing living quarters is largely a matter of personal preference and aesthetic sense. While a few useful designs arediscussed here, there are many other options. In general, try to keep the bedrooms close to the stairs, and make your access

hallways at least two tiles wide to reduce congestion.


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Location

Because noise generated from certain jobs (especially mining and woodcutting) can bother sleeping dwarves, doing these jobs within 8 tiles of a sleeping dwarf should be avoided (see noise for more information). There are two ways of accomplishing this:

Placing bedrooms at the end of a hallway at least 8 tiles long will avoid most noise (as long as you are careful to avoidnoisy jobs directly above or below the bedrooms).

Extending your fortress down several z-levels will also work (9 levels from the surface is a safe choice), althoughextending a 3x3 staircase takes more work than extending a single hallway.

Both options works equally well, as long as you are careful to avoid disturbing sleeping dwarves. Ultimately it depends onhow you want your fortress to look.

Layout

Due to the limited resources of a new fortress, setting up a communal sleeping area in a dormitory is often the best short-termsolution. However, you can also set up individual bedrooms for dwarves.

Benefits of individual bedrooms:

Dwarves are happier with their own bedroom and furniture.Individual rooms can increase your fort's perceived wealth.

Benefits of dormitories:

Dormitories are easier to set up and expand (only one room is necessary, and each dwarf only requires one bed).Sleeping dwarves are much less likely to be attacked when other dwarves are around them.Multiple dwarves can sleep in a dormitory. In contrast, only one dwarf can ever sleep in a bedroom (dwarves cannotsleep in another dwarf's bedroom, even when unoccupied).Far fewer beds are needed – in a fort of 50 dwarves, for example, around five dwarves will be sleeping at a time (onaverage). A dormitory, therefore, rarely requires above ten beds, while individual bedrooms would require 50 beds tobe built.Even when all of the beds are occupied, dwarves will still sleep in the general area of the dormitory. This is more

convenient than having dwarves sleeping all over your fort.

For now, setting up a dormitory is easiest (although you can change this later, if you feel the need to).

Building

Queue up as many beds as you need in a carpenter's workshop (no more than 3 or 4 should be necessary for a dormitory).Beds are queued with q - a - b at a carpenter's workshop and built with b - b . (As long as your furniture/general-purposestockpile isn't full yet, dwarves will store beds in them as they are finished, so there may be a delay before they're available tobe built.)

Setting up a dormitory:

Dig out an empty room in the location you selected.1.Once you have a bed ready, build it near the middle of the room (towards the end away from the entrance).2.Use q to select the bed and r to turn it into a bedroom. Resize the room until it fills the area you dug out (positioningthe bed away from the entrance makes it easier to avoid extending the room out into the hallway). If you decide youdon't like the position of the bed, remove it with q - x and place it again.

3.

Press d to turn the room into a dormitory (the menu should read d: Dormitory )4.

Once you have more beds built, you can place them in the same room. You don't need to mark them as dormitories as long asthey're in the area you designated for the bedroom.

Setting up individual bedrooms:

Dig out a small room for each bed (the size and shape are up to you, but 2 to 4 tiles generally works best).1.Build each bed in a room when ready2.

Use q - r to mark the bed as a bedroom.3.


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An example of individual

bedrooms (with furniture,

discussed below)

Nobles screen. The red stuff

turns white once an office is

assigned.

Different Names, Same Thing

As you've noticed, some things have different namesbased on what they're made of (for example, chairsvs. thrones and chests vs. coffers) even if they'refunctionally the same (material almost never makes adifference). Here's a list.

Beds are a notable exception — they can only bemade of wood.

You should see Current owner: Nobody in the menu. A dwarf will eventually getaround to claiming the bedroom – you don't need to assign each dwarf to a specificbedroom.

Nobles

Hit the n key to open up the nobles and administrators screen.

The most important positions to assign are broker, bookkeeper and manager. Yourexpedition leader is a good choice for bookkeeper and manager when starting out. Don'tworry that it's just one dwarf doing all this; none of these jobs take very long. The broker should be another one of your otherdwarves (rather than being the same as your bookkeeper) so that they're not too busy doing bookkeeping when a tradedelegation arrives to actually talk to the traders.

Having a manager will allow you to queue up work orders which will greatly simplify managing your production. Having abookkeeper will allow you to maintain inventory counts on the z screen so you'll know what you do and don't have. Abroker is necessary to trade with a caravan once one has arrived at your trade depot.

Don't worry about the chief medical dwarf yet. He/she will be needed when you set up yourhospital which won't be covered in this guide. Feel free to go check out the Healthcareguide once you're done.

Lastly, while you are on this screen, highlight the bookkeeper and s et him to work for"Highest Precision" (all counts accurate). This will help train bookkeeping faster and ensurethat you aren't dealing with vague inventory counts.

See Stocks for a detailed explanation of the z -stocks screen.

Offices (Studies)

Some of your administrative positions (manager and bookkeeper) require an office in order to function. If your manager, forexample, doesn't have an office, you will not be able to do any of the things that require a manager even though you have oneassigned.

Earlier you should have queued up a table and throne in your mason's shop, and they should be done by now. Dig out a roomnear your sleeping quarters or stockpiles (at least 1x3, no more than 5x5). Place the furniture in it with b - c (chair) andb - t (table). Once dwarves have installed the furniture, use q to select the chair (not the table), select "Make Throne

Room or Study" ( r ), size the room appropriately, and assign the office to your expedition leader (who should be yourbookkeeper and manager). Hit n to verify that these positions now have the office they need (if so, [REQUIRE] should nolonger be red).

Furniture

Now would be a good time to start building some furniture. Youcould queue up all these items directly from your workshops, butwhy not give your new manager a little practice?

Using the manager screen j - m , hit q to queue up a new job,and type "bed", and then select "construct bed." Set the quantityto around 4 (or more, depending on how many beds you need).Next, queue up at least four tables, eight thrones/chairs, and fourdoors. Make sure you select a material you have – rock or woodwill both work for all of these (except beds), so use whatever youhave in your stockpiles. If you like, you can also queue up a fewwooden chests or rock coffers and cabinets (which can be used inbedrooms, if you set up individual bedrooms). The tables andchairs will go in your dining room, speaking of which...

Dining and Food Prep Area

Right off the main stairwell (any unused area by the staircase will work), create three rooms. One will be for general food


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Dining level with dining hall

(east), kitchen (north), storage

area (west), fishery, butcher's

workshop, and tanner's

workshop (south).

Hostile Wilds

Before turning on either hunting orfishing, examine the u nits screen to seeif there are any dangerous critters yourhunters/fishers need worry about. Withhunting especially, you may need tocheck this screen frequently.

storage, one a dining hall, and one a kitchen. The kitchen will allow you to make prepared food. Make the room for thekitchen 5x5. The storage area and dining hall should be larger. Ideally, leave empty space on at least one side of your dininghall so that it can be expanded later if necessary.

Use b - w - z to build the kitchen in the middle of the 5x5 room. Use p to create f oodstockpiles in the remaining space around it, as well as the entire food storage room.

Go back to your general purpose stockpile on the top level and use q to change the

s ettings to d isable Food. This will cause any food in your general purpose stockpile toget moved to your new food-only stockpiles.

Hit z and select Kitchen from the top of the screen, then disable all cooking for plants andenable brewing for them so that they will only be used for brewing. Also disable alcoholicbeverages for cooking, otherwise your cooks will waste perfectly good hooch in theircooking. The only time you might want to use alcohol in cooking is when you have lots of booze but are running out of food.

If you plan to do any fishing, dig out another area and create a Fishery on this level so theuncleaned fish your fisherdwarf just caught can be cleaned (gutted) for consumption orcooking. If you plan to do any hunting or slaughter any animals, create a Butcher's shop onthis level so animal corpses can be butchered. The fishery/butcher's shop can be placed

behind the kitchen or the general food stockpile, for example. A door is recommended forthe butcher's shop in order to contain Miasma should something rot, and to otherwise avoidoffending squeamish dwarves.

Eventually go check out the subpage on Stockpiles for more information on fine-tuning these stockpiles for maximumefficiency. For now you can safely procrastinate on this and move on to the next section.

Placing Furniture

Once your furnishings are complete, you need to place them in rooms using the b uild command. Put the new c hairs andt ables in the dining room. If you like, you can add doors for aesthetics (they can be useful in case something starts rotting in

your food stockpiles). If you created chests and cabinets, you can add them to each room if you want, but it is not urgent now.

Meeting Hall

Use q on one of the tables you just placed in the dining room, define the area as a r oom, and configure it to be a meetingh all. This will cause idle dwarves to hang around in the dining hall. You want idlers in a central location, close to where you

will be placing your emergency drawbridge levers. You should probably remove the temporary meeting area (and any othermeeting areas that you created earlier) with i - x .

Checking Supplies

Use the z (status) screen to check your stock levels. How much food andbooze do you have left? You only have unprepared food at this point, and thebooze you brought with you, but soon you will be making more. If you are

running low on food, you can designate gathering some outdoor plants,slaughter some animals, turn on fishing, or turn on hunting to tide you over fora bit. Hunting and slaughtering animals both require a butcher's shop.

Brewing and Cooking

Once your first crop of plump helmets starts to come in, you will want to startbrewing as a repeating task. Also, now would be a good time to start cookingactual meals rather than forcing your dwarves to eat raw food. Cooking easy meals will train dwarves faster, but they may behappier with lavish meals. So, you might want to cook easy ones until your cook or cooks skill up to a certain point then havethem start making lavish meals. Prepared food is cooked from two (easy), three (fine), or four (lavish) raw food/alcoholingredients. Each prepared food item will be called a 'something' (for instance, a specific animal meat) "biscuit", "stew", or

"roast" depending on the lavishness of the meal.


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Conserving Resources

Some things absolutely require wood(like beds and charcoal), but others canbe made out of more common materialslike stone. For this reason it's best,

especially in the beginning, to makeeverything that you can out of stone. Forexample, you could make wood chestsand barrels, but stone coffers and rockpots would let you save wood for thingsthat require it and help you rid yourself of all that stone. And if you decide youwant solid gold chests or something laterwhen you have more resources, you canalways throw out the rock coffers.

Advanced Stockpiling

Check out the Stockpiles sub page formore information on fine-tuning yourstockpiles, especially in the foodproduction area. This is somewhatcomplicated and it can safely be skipped

if you don't feel like tinkering withstockpiles right now.

Speaking of booze, in order to keep the booze flowing, you will need to createsome barrels, or some stone pots. Your dwarves should have emptied a fewbarrels by now to get you started, but you will definitely need more. A lot more. If you have an abundance of trees, then you can designate some morefor cutting, and have your carpenter make a bunch of wooden barrels, but itmay be more prudent to make a Craftsdwarf's workshop, make sure someonehas the Stonecrafting labor enabled, and build a bunch of rock pots. (Rockpots are essentially barrels made of rock.) And don't worry that you've made

too many; you almost can't get enough of them.

Keep checking your food and drink stock levels on the z screen periodically.While cooked food (properly stockpiled) and alcohol don't spoil, there isreally no need to stock 2,000 units of dwarven wine at this point. Ten timesthe number of drinks and meals as you have dwarves is more than enough. If you start running out of food or drinks, designate some wild plants forharvesting, slaughter some of your animals, start hunting or fishing, or startmore farms.

Actually, now would be a fine time to make another 3x3 farm. Set it toproduce sweet pods in the spring and summer, cave wheat or pig tails (yourchoice) in the fall (autumn), and plump helmets in the winter. Having multiple types of plants will give your dwarves more

variety in their food and drink, keeping them from grumbling.

Storage Space

You should probably start making some wooden bins to help you store morestuff in less space. You might not need them yet, but you certainly will later.Bins are somewhat like barrels/pots, but they can store things other than justfood and drink. Bins will also reduce the amount of labor needed to haulthings to your trade depot or other stockpiles. So designate some more trees tobe chopped down and queue up some bins. As with barrels and pots, youalmost can't have enough bins.

Situational Awareness

At this point you might already have lost one or two times. Understandingwhy that happened is the most important part to get better and avoidfrustration. To do so, you should be aware of what situation your fortress is in at all times: Are there enemies on the map? Doyour dwarves have enough food? How many dwarves do you have? What season is it?

Along with just loo k ing around periodically, there are 4 screens that can help you with these questions:

The u nit screen with its various tabs. Keep an eye out for invaders, dangerous animals and so onThe status screen ( z ) and its "stocks" subscreen (Remember to appoint a bookkeeper and set him to the highest accuracy). Pay attention to the current date and your supplies.a nnouncements, and

Combat r eports

Check them periodically and you will be able to recognize problems earlier and avoid disasters better.

Beyond a Minimal Fortress

By now you should have your main entrance created, along with a farm, general purpose stockpile, refuse pile (for trash), andtrade depot. Somewhere you should have a mason's shop, a mechanic's shop, a carpenter's shop, and a jeweler's shop,surrounded by appropriate storage piles with garbage zone (for excess stone). You should also have a furnished dining areawith kitchen, still, and food storage, and a residential area with furnished bedrooms and an office. You should have selectedyour administrators, and might even have an optional fishery, butcher's shop, craftsdwarf's workshop, or other stuff.

At this point, you have all the components of a minimal but functional fortress! Your next steps will be to make it safer andbetter protected, to set up your metal industry, and later to prepare your militia.


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Traps

Start producing mechanisms at your mechanic's workshop. Queue up ten. After they are built, use them to create stone falltraps using b - T . Be sure not to block access to your depot! Queue up some cages, and more mechanisms, and use these tocreate some cage traps right after your stone traps. Cage traps are incredibly effective at stopping ambushers, but traps ingeneral will not protect you from thieves and kidnappers who will almost always bypass them. Stationing animals, such asthe dogs previously mentioned, near your entrance will alert you to these ambushers.

Continue to fill up your entry hall with alternating rows of stone and cage traps as the parts become available.

Note that traps will block wagons from reaching your trade depot (although pack animals will still arrive safely). A few waysto avoid this are shown below:

A simple strategy, most useful outside where invaders can come from the sides – inside, this is less useful(invaders don't tend to emerge from the walls)

A more complex design, but also extremely effective (best used underground). The majority of invaders willchoose to take the shortest path, directly through the traps. This can also be extended to make a wider group of traps of a longer safe route.

This is relatively easy to implement it you already have a 3-tile wide hallway – just dig a small loop off it andplace traps in the old location.

Note that this is only necessary when caravans can't get to your trade depot because the hallway is filled with traps - if yourtrade depot is not behind a trap-lined hallway, you can safely make a hallway full of traps - citizens won't trigger traps.

If you place a trap somewhere you didn't mean to, remove it with t - x ( q - x will work, but it won't display the name of

the trap, making it harder to select the correct one). Bug:1540 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1540)

Guard Animals

Create one 1x1 pasture near the beginning of your entryway, in the middle tile, using i . Using the N key inside the zoneinterface, assign a dog or other non-grazing animal to it. This animal will spot thieves and raiders before they gain entrance toyour fortress. Try to pick a disposable animal, as it will be slaughtered by the first ambush raiders. Ideally, don't assign femaleanimals; you want them safe for breeding (you should make sure to keep at least one male around for breeding as well).

Drawbridge

Build a drawbridge ( b - g ) to seal off your entryway. Make sure to use w , a , d , or x to make it raise up in the rightdirection; otherwise it will just retract (disappear) instead of raising up to form a barrier. And therefore, enemy ranged unitswill be able to fire across.

Put the drawbridge between the trade depot and the hall-o-traps so you can lock things out of the fort. Build a lever( b - T - l ) near your meeting area and connect it to the drawbridge by using q on the lever.

In case of an ambush or siege, you will want to close up your fort, keeping the goblins out until your squads have formed upand are in position. Ideally you want to have enough cage traps to take out most of the goblins so your military will only haveto mop up.

Metal Industry

Now, below your first workshop level, dig out four more 5x5 rooms around the stairwell. Three of these will be smelters( b - e - s ), and one a metalsmith's forge ( b - w - f ). Designate stockpiles for b ars around the smelters and forge. The barstockpiles will hold coke and charcoal and metal bars. You will probably need larger bar stockpiles, but you can dig out morespace and expand them later.

Also dig out some space and create a stockpile for ore somewhere nearby. To make an ore stockpile, designate a s tone

stockpile, then use q to change the s ettings on it to forbid all types of stone other than ore.


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Level -2: Forge and smelters

with ore stockpile in the

middle.

"I have struck what?"

New players who don't have a degree ingeology usually find themselvesconfused as to what all these mineralnames mean. In DF you'll never strike"iron ore" but you will strike magnetiteor limonite which are ores of iron. If youdon't know that these things are ores of iron then it obviously won't occur to youto try to smelt iron. Note that oresusually look like £ before they aremined and * after, though the colors will

differ. See The Non-Dwarf's Guide to Rock to help you figure out exactly whatyou've found.

Finally, go to your general purpose stockpile on the top level and use q to disable Bars.Stone should already be disabled on this stockpile, and if so then ore is already disabled forit.

Wood Burning

Somewhere near your carpenter's shop, near your wood stockpile, dig out an area and builda wood furnace ( b - e - w ). This is where you will create charcoal (see below) and ash (for

making soap).

Dwarf Fortress has two forms of carbon which are useful as fuel in the metal industry:charcoal (which is charred wood), and coke (refined coal). They are completely interchangeable. If your map has a lot of lignite or bituminous coal, you can process that into coke, using charcoal to jump-start the process.

If you don't find coal on your map, you'll need to either dig down to magma or make charcoal out of wood to run your forgesand smelters, but don't worry about this yet. You need to do some digging around.

Mining

At this point you want to start looking for metal ore. You may have alreadyfound some while digging out rooms, in which case you can just mine into the

walls of the rooms to get more ore. If you haven't found ore yet or you want tosee what else you can find, you will need to dig exploratory tunnels lookingfor ores, minerals, and gems. For now just start digging tunnels out from yourstairwell or rooms in all directions and see what you run into. Note thatdigging into damp stone or warm stone is not recommended as those areasmay be holding back water or lava which can flood your fort.

Fuel

Whether you find coal or not, you will need to burn wood into at least one unitof charcoal. If you find some coal (lignite or bituminous coal), start yoursmelters out processing it into coke using your charcoal to get things started.From then out you can burn coke to make more coal into more coke and so on.

Put these coke-making jobs on repeat. Only use one smelter to begin with, butyou should be getting a group of immigrants fairly soon, if you haven'talready, and you can put them to work in the other smelters.

Don't give up on finding coal right away. Dig around for a while and if you're starting to get impatient then burn some morewood into charcoal, smelt some ore, and make some weapons. If you rely on charcoal for fuel then you'll be needing a lot of wood, so in that case dig out another room near the furnace and create a wood stockpile. You might also want to just removea smelter, replace it with a wood furnace, and create the new wood stockpile down in the smelting area. Finally, go designatemore trees for chopping.

Forging

Once you have smelted some ore to get metal bars, and have additional bars of either coal or charcoal, you can start forgingmetal items. Here are some suggestions on what to make first:

Picks - You may have only started out with one pick which limits the number of miners you have to one. By this pointyou are probably wishing you had more miners. Make a few picks and give some dwarves the mining labor once youget some immigrants. It doesn't matter what metal you use to make picks, at least when it comes to mining, so evencopper is perfectly good.

1.

Weapons - Picks actually make pretty good weapons, but there can be some issues equipping them because they're tiedto the mining labor. You may want to make a few axes. They make good weapons, at least against most lightly armoredopponents you're likely to encounter first, and can be used to chop trees. Start with 5 or so.

2.

Armor - You're going to want some armor. Start with mail shirts, helms, leggings, then gauntlets and boots. Start with3 or so of each in the order listed, then make more later when your military grows. Also make some shields out of wood, unless you're swimming in metal (since the shield's material doesn't matter for defensive purposes). Once you

have the essentials covered, you can include breastplates (but they take 3 bars of metal to make, and they don't cover asmuch of the torso and arms as a mail shirt).

3.


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Alternative Energy

If you don't find coal then you will haveto continue to burn wood into charcoal,or dig down to the bottom of the mapand find the magma sea so you can

power magma smelters and magmaforges. Getting to magma can be difficultfor various reasons that you willdiscover, so make sure you are ready forsome trouble before you go thatdirection. Burning charcoal should workout okay in the short term.

Getting Distracted

Say one of your new immigrants turnsout to be a legendary weaver. Should youplant some pig tails and create a loom forhim? No! Put his legendary butt to worksmelting metal or something that's part of your current industry even though he hasno skill at it. Do not split your efforts yet.

You can make use of his unique talentslater when you can afford to diversifyyour industry.

Crafting Invitations for Trouble

Creating too much wealth initially is asure fire method of pulling down agoblin ambush that you are ill-equippedto deal with. Titans will also startattacking you should your wealth go over

a certain amount. For this reason, spendno time smelting gold, smoothing, orengraving anything yet. Most of thewealth you create in the beginningshould be the sharp pointy kind.

An important thing to note is that mail shirts protect the upper leg as well asthe torso and arms, and high boots protect the lower leg. As dwarves have noknees (at least in military terms), high boots and mail shirts are sufficient toprotect your dwarves's legs.

Steel is the best normal metal to make armor and most weapons out of, butyou will likely find that you want some arms before you can make steel. Ironis good, and bronze is also good. Copper is not ideal, but it still works and is

better than no metal weapons/armor at all.

Gemcutting and Trinkets

You should have uncovered some gems by now, so put your jeweler to workcutting them. These will be used for trade. Only buy things that you need inthe first year.

Stone crafts produ

Documents

Dwarf Fortress Quickstart Guide