You can carry two weapons and swap tabs with the "w" key. Kiting with a bow or crossbow is a good strategy early on. Buy proper medical gear like healing salves and splints. Always keep your health topped off. Honestly though. You died surprisingly often.
DF is a game, where the devs were concerned about the simulation first, and everything else second (or not at all). We didn't even have mouse control or graphics until lately. :D
I find it a bit ironic that you call a game that gives you a set of new randome "gods" every single new world that your dwarfs have the need to worship ...a " miracle"
That's one of the best ways to explain Dwarf Fortress to people, what an amazing video! When asked, I use to tell them it's a Phantasy World Generator and then proceed giving examples on how it is played and some of its gameplay layers. That said, I play Dwarf Fortress for 9 years and stream Dwarf Fortress content - in Portuguese! here's Tarn and Kitfox wandering through one of the fortresses we did last year :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3oCqZYm4WwI.html
I really want to try this game, I love micromanaging and one of my favorites games is Rimworld (which was heavily inspired by DF). But being honest DF scares me a little bit
Love this game, my fortress always get destroyed with a forgotten beast or a crazed legendary axe dwarf or some other bullshit and I love it. I wanted to ask how can I get my name on the list to join your dwarves?
Perfect is a strong word. It has so many bad things. The whole interface is bad beyond all else . I feel sorry for all the fans who played it for years. And that's not hate. I like it even tho I only have 50 hrs. But man is the Interface bad. Especially if you want to check 150 dwarfs, their needs, skills , or even trying to make a militia based on real interest ...
Yeah the ui could do with some work but I haven’t found it getting in the way of me enjoying the game too much. Most of dwarfs have very similar needs and the outliers will be the unhappy ones so they’re usually easy to find
My fortress is ran by a mayor who is loved by the dwarves, and hss a near legendary warrior hammerer as her spouse How is she loved? She is a vampire. I decided to lock her up in a jailcell Her spouse keeps on leaving the cell door open and she gets to snack on kids who come to play with dice and spinners in her jail cell. In the same fortress a dude made a masterwork wardrobe out of his pet... Out of said pet's bones because he needed bones for the inspirated building And the mushroom grower guild just keeps on asking for more and more statues
I think there's strong points to why DF isn't really as big as it is influential. Yeah, the game has good aspects to like about it, but there's reason to dislike the game that have been prominent throughout its lifetime - The UI, some of the building, etc - (Some) of the automation - The giant list of things that should be a little more streamlined - The lack of telling you the story of what's happening, instead relying on you as the player to look into it. (Note it's not to say there isn't depth, as DF basically treats NPCs like players, but it feels often this will still overlooked by most people, even though some people tell stories that are appreciated and read by many people, like in the steam reviews-- But as previously stated, influential? Yes, but not exactly popular) Although I rate DF a strong 8/10, I kind of imagine most people have a hard time getting into it even though they generally like the concept, maybe they would rate it 6 or 6 & a half, but the jank can really kill it for the typical newer generation of gamers. It really feels like a matter of patience too.
True, I know dwarf fortress isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s hard to learn and like I was saying in the vid it’s more like a tool than a game and some say the real players are the ones who watch the videos of it. But that being said, since the steam release, I think a lot more people can get into it (myself included)
Hot take: Most mid colony builder I've played. The devs are fantastic. The community is fun and welcoming. There's a _lot_ to do in the game, many options. I easily recommend the game to anyone who enjoys the genre. I just feel like it falls very short of it's direct counterpart, Rimworld, as a basic example. Style of the games put aside (everyone will have their own valid opinions on the looks of games)... It just doesn't feel like a 20 year in development project. At release it already felt dated, there doesn't really feel like there's direction in the game. There's literally no ending, you just play until you lose interest, or the colony dies. It's all just so... bland? For someone who doesn't tend to have much self motivation in sandbox games, I found myself playing very little, then quitting, because I was either bored, overwhelmed, somewhere in the middle, or just wanted to play something more driven. To go back to a past example, Rimworld strikes a great balance with this. The player has plenty of freedom to do what they want, they can pursue an ending, or endlessly build, but there's something for everyone. Same with Minecraft, even that has an ending, even if rather shallow. There's always a "Goal" you can go towards that you didn't come up with yourself. Dwarf Fortress to me feels exactly opposite of something like Baulders Gate 3. Where BG3 is a lovingly handcrafted experience where all the content in the game is well thought out, implemented, and has at least some depth to it, DF feels exactly like the saying "Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle", with no where to go. Any time I express my feelings on the game like this I tend to get crucified. But this _was_ one of the most anticipated games of it's genre that isn't even reaching half the peak player count of Rimworld, the game inspired directly by DF. So where are all the players? I just feel like many people hold the same or similar sentiments to myself. Like it's a good game. You wont really see poor reviews for it. It's just not... a _great_ game like so many people have hyped it up to be. Unfortunately, passion does not equal greatness, for if it did, this _would_ be the greatest game of all time.
I think dwarf fortress appeals to the type of player that enjoys coming up with their own stories and in a way is more like people watching than playing a game. You kind of have to make up a lot about them. So i completely get why you might not like the game as much because it does have a lot of jank. I did notice in adventure mode they’re working on a more story focussed start so maybe that’s something they’ll add to the fortress in the future. Thanks for commenting that though I find it really interesting to read everyone’s opinion on the game even if I don’t 100% agree.
Hey man, just wondering if you can answer a question that I can find absolutely zero answers to in google. Under my game save on the main menu, it says, “timeline forgotten” in green lettering. Do you know what this means? I’m wondering if it got bugged and I should start a new world. I’ve been playing it for a while
@@lrdhsy I was perma banned from Reddit a few months ago or else that would be where I’d go right away so now I’m just a wondering lost soul on RU-vid when I have questions lol. Thanks for trying though man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else with this thing happen so I dont expect to find an answer, but game still works so I’ll roll with it.
It's not that df is "undiscovered" it's that df is quite obtuse. It's a great story telling machine make no mistake but if you're not good at weaving the stories together and you're not good at coming up with projects you're not doing much in df. It also doesn't help that its offshoots, rimworld and minecraft are both much more reasonable experiences that do a better job accommodating the feedback of your actions to a player. They also have a certain progression meaning that if you're not a very creative mind you still have tangible objectives. I remember getting DF on steam and being completely disheartened that I couldn't make a magical weapons workshop. I just wanted to crank out high quality enchanted weapons and armor so I could attract adventurers and monster slayers. Lo and behold that's only feasible by very harsh rng where my dwarves need to have moods that specifically make them create weapons or armors. being entirely dependent on rng is absolutely not fun. It's the League of Legends effect. DotA is a much richer and complex system than League yet League being more accessible has made it a worldwide phenomenon whereas DotA is quite widespread but has a smaller audience by comparison.
@@lrdhsy It's honestly not just a reputation. It is hard to play. You need to assign everything properly and that's no easy task for a beginner and it's not fun as an advanced player. And like I said the visual feedback just isn't as interesting as in Rimworld or other colony sims. Back when the game came out on Steam every cc was on top of it. Until they watched their viewer count drop because watching DF isn't as engaging. DF is deep but also very obtuse. And like I said if you don't have a project in mind going in you're not going to make any use of the game's systems. A standard beginner colony is just not very interesting as you can just build everything and if you make a source of food and drink you're basically done. I'm reminded of my first colony that became a gem cutting outpost. I then went to another one and made a smithing workshop. I then made another with a library and had a necromancer join, did he do anything? no it's up to rng if he does anything. This level of depth isn't interesting to 90% of the players and expecting people to find fun in making outposts or large colonies to watch the in world time pass by only to then go check a log for interesting generated lore is, sorry to put it this way, like watching paint dry. It's great once you know what to do but like many people have already said on this platform it's not reasonable to ask of someone to bear with a game's systems for "100 hours" for a game to be "good". And make no mistake I play tons of very complicated games, Terra Invicta, X4 and Victoria 3 come to mind though I play many others but DF is probably the most "ant farm" of all the games, you are at the complete mercy of stuff happening when you're not engaged in a project. I like watching Hoodie Hair's videos but some of the projects require so much to "go right" that to me, and I feel many people, it would just feel like a massive waste of time. Sure DF is the papi and "the king" but if you're not Kruggsmash or creatively inclined then people will just want more reasonable experiences that give them more control. Rycon does top quality content stories for Rimworld and though RW's level of control is closer to a "doll house" it's definitely the more popular mainstream game within the colony sim genre.
@@ayuvir Numbers means nothing to define quality. Most players nowadays would not bypass first level of Contra 2. Back in the day, play a game, ANY game, needed you to LEARN a lot, and lost a lot; the process of learning was part of the thing, and it was always hard. Is the same for Dwarf Fortress. And you don't had need of be a great mind for it. As BlindIRL once said in one of his livestreams: "Dwarf Fortress isn't for super smart people. I'm not a super smart person, and I play Dwarf Fortress.", and I subscribe to this. Once you learn, Dwarf Fortress is easy to play, yet with the huge amount of variables and the absurdness of simulation. As for complexity: there's no need to know every details of the game. After almost ten years playing, only recently I had build my first soap and glass productions. As you said: if you have a home, you're done. DF is a State of The Art of a game (more a simulator than a game); it is what it is, and has no need to be loved by everyone, as not everyone wants to hear Mozart or read Dostoevsky: instead, people should be less lazy and better themselves to be capable of appreciate those masterpieces. Well, people just became lazy. Games like DF and Factorio are lights in the darkness. Dwarf Fortress, as for objectives, can be simple as Age of Empires. You create a world, you build your castle, you attack a neighbor and you start a war. The difference is that you can choose the place to build, the size, the form of your castle; you manage all the details of your production and you can twist the terrain to your favor. You can choose to attack or trade, or nothing. In Dwarf Fortress, you play as you live: there's a vast amount of objectives; you just don't have a sign pointing all of them.
@@madmax3655 Sure man I feel like you missed the point of my comments a little. If you'd read everything you would've noticed that I agree with you on most things you mention. However I didn't say that DF is only for smart people for one. Nor that DF is particularly hard. I also do appreciate DF for what it is. Where I disagree with what you're saying is that people "became lazy" and that they should "better themselves" in order to play and appreciate DF, and other games for that matter. Games are leisure, they are distractions meant to be fun, if you're not having a good time it's fine to just drop it and move on. I'll go back to my League/DotA comparison. I've been a fan of DotA for ever, I've always appreciated the mechanical depth and complexity of that game. But I never managed to get my friends to play that game since they like League and the few DotA matches they played they got completely wrecked. League brings the genre to the casual playerbase, it made many of the complex systems of DotA much more reasonable for someone to enjoy the genre. League is by extension the more popular of the two. I made a beast tamer colony in DF. Chose a forest biome and got to doing my thing. Would capture animals and train them. then sell them off. Had a fairly large colony with 100 dwarves and I wasn't having a good time. Building and getting the colony running isn't very fun to me. When the dwarves got to work doing their taming it was pretty uneventful and boring. Nothing major was happening. You'd figure I would have some cool artifacts but they never materialized, I believe I had a flute and that was it. Said flute did nothing, it was a display item. Eventually I made an arena and would toss in enemies and intruders. What I expected was that people would come visit my tavern around the arena and watch the show, I made a glass dome explicitly for this. People didn't and my colony wasn't far from human and dwarf settlements. I had good relations and good trade but there weren't many visitors. The halls were decorated and easy to access and the mine was safe with many beds, food and entertainment. When eventually there was a celebration, I missed it as I was planning a new set of rooms in the mine. And after looking for the reason of the celebration all I found was a bunch of lines saying people were carousing. I didn't have a good time, it felt like I was wasting my time waiting for something interesting to happen which I would only be able to enjoy through text. Rimworld provides a less expansive experience but the visual nature of the game as well as a lot of the qol makes for a more streamlined experience that gives me more satisfaction. I like watching my colony in RW grow, I like unlocking new tech and slowly upgrading my tools. Even when I'm waiting, there's likely going to be a raid or a new mission to keep me sharp. There's always engaging stuff happening merely by virtue of the game being a much more visual experience. It's not that colony sims are complicated and unpopular. There's a huge influx of upcoming colony sims as well as a fairly large audience for colony sims. The thing is that DF needs to be processed. Kruggsmash does this with his videos, he processes the events into engaging stories.
Boatmurdered is pretty over-rated and starts to suck real hard after Stark Raving Mad's addition. If you want good Dwarf Fortress stories, go to any video about Dwarf Fortress. SsethTzeentach's review, IGN's Review, or any react video about either of those two. Potentially also videos about the history of the game. People will post their stories in the comments all the time and no one gives them any attention. They're amazing, if not a bit brief for the sake of brevity.
@@lrdhsy It's missing adventure mod, which was by far one of the best features of old dwarf fortress. Without it, it feels like half the game it was IMHO. More than that, so much dev time has been spent working on the steam version and (now) getting the adventure mode working again, I feel like it's lost a great deal of momentum. No new additions like magic or alternate planes that Toady was planning to look forward to for so long- the game progress seems like it has just stagnated for years. Forums have almost emptied since I started playing too. Community seems spread to the winds. Still a great game, but it's not as great as it used too I think. Toady can turn it around maybe, but I think the steam version really hurt the game in many ways.
Everything said in this video is 100% true. I do think there will be even better emergent story games in the future though. I mean, look at Neofables. There is no contest to emergent story games than Dungeons and Dragons. As AI begins to fill the role of a dungeon master we will see unique adventures that we ourselves will go on or share with others. In the same way you have to look through the fuzz of DF, you have to look through the current AI driven experiences, but it's only as bad today as it will ever be and it's getting better all the time. DF is a pillar of gaming inspiration. It will unfortunately be left behind before it is widely truly appreciated. I do encourage everyone to go and play it now, as DF is getting better and better with the Steam version, and it's an experience you will never forget.
Funny thing is I found your channel yesterday and I liked your videos about dwarf fortress and battle brothers so you gained one more subscriber today have a nice day 😁
Hoodie Hair is cool, in his regard he makes really entertaining, short videos. Would not call him the best DF RU-vidr. Really Kruggsmash has such amazing Stories. Blindrl is the best covering news about DF and cool gameplay and livestreaming and also there are a few youtubers that make amazing tutorials and show great insights about the game.
The key to survival in this game is to know where guards patrols are. Keep upkeep low and try learn how fight and running away at the same time. Most of the time getting hit is the same as death. So weapons that can push away enemy with 2 square range like pitchfork are supper usefull at start.
