Dwarf Fortress

Welcome to the Noisebridge Dwarf Fortress Page!

Dwarf Fortress is an amazingly complex yet low-fi real-time strategy game, with dwarves! Actually, it's much more than just a game. You can create complex mechanisms that model things such as Turing complete computers and calculators for example (see more computing projects here).

This page is for those people interested in learning how to play and/or those who are already experienced who wish to share tips and what not. Feel free to make use of the discussion tab above as well.

Events

• We met on 2010-10-05, but didn't get started until after 7:30pm, thus missing Vonguard by a few minutes.
• We recently held an informal "Beginning Dwarf Fortress" class on 2010-09-28. Let us know if you think we should do this again!

Enthusiasts

• LeMonkey
• Ryan
• VonGuard
• Miah

Tips

• Construction advice: the construction system can be a little confusing at first.
  • Mega construction
  • A common mistake is to build an upwards staircase then later wanting it to be up/down. You cant do that!
  • However, you can place an up/down stairway on previously dug ground using "b C x"
• Bins and barrels are a good way to manage items:
  • Using bins and barrels
• Be careful about custom stockpiles, you may end up making it unusable!
  • stockpile settings
• How to update Dwarf Fortress without losing your saves
• Important advice
• Tips on using alternate graphic tilesets
• Computing projects

Links

Below is a collection of Dwarf Related links that you may find helpful or interesting:

Portals

• The official Dwarf Fortress site
• The Dwarf Fortress wiki
• Good collection of resources
• Reddit Dwarf Fortress stub

Tutorials

Many tutorials are already listed under the Dwarf Fortress wiki. Some of these are included below:

Web

• Highly recommended is the "bentgirder" tutorial
• Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial (14 parts!)
• Reddit's Dwarf Fortress intro class
  • Post about Reddit's Dwarf Fortress intro class
• Boatmurdered, a humorous walk-through of one person's fortress experience that explains a lot of things
• Nice flowchart generalizing things to work on

Video

• captnduck's series of execellent beginner tutorial videos
• 51ppycup's awesome "Lets Play Dwarf Fortress" series on Youtube
• Updated video tutorials from captnduck for 2010

3rd Party Plugins/Tools

• The Dwarf Fortress Lazy Newb Pack
  • Note that v5.0 has many disabled utilities, if you want the full utility experience highly consider getting v4.6!
• Stonesense live 3D map viewer
  • Note: this is just a VIEWER and doesnt actually make the game 3D. It has a lag as well, so it's long term usefulness is limited in terms of playing the game. But it's very impressive to show your friends.
• Massive list of DF utilities
• Various alternate tilesets

Reviews/Mentions

• playthisthing.com
• A post on reddit
• A post on Digg
• Another post on reddit
• Turing machine created in Dwarf Fortress
• Epic lore for one person's world
• Interview with the creator, Tarn Adams
• The Dwarven Calculator
• Another interview with the creator

Humor

• An amusing song by Finntroll called Trollhammaren
• A lulzy illustrated tale

Similar Games

• Goblin Camp
• Nethack