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Dwarf Fortress is often called the most complex video game ever made. While that claim is difficult to verify, it can undeniably be quite intimidating to newcomers, with dozens of menus to sort through and mechanics for everything from beekeeping to investigating murders.
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The good news for new players is that Dwarf Fortress is a game of layers; many of its systems can basically be ignored as you learn the game with little if any penalty. This guide is designed to help you get started with the game, focusing your early efforts where it actually matters.
Starting a Fortress
When people talk about Dwarf Fortress, they typically are discussing what’s called “Fortress mode.” This game mode is one where you control a colony of dwarves at a single location, slowly building and expanding a fortress of your own design. The other “real” game mode is “Adventure mode”, which allows you to play in a world you have created (not just a single fortress) as a character of your creation using open-world roguelike mechanics. As a beginner, it’s recommended you ignore Adventure mode (and Legends mode, which is basically just a world database rather than a true game mode) and take the following steps:
Create a World
To begin a fortress, you must first create a world. Right away, the menus involved in this process can be intimidating. New players can mostly ignore the many options available (and youshouldignore the “Detailed mode” option if you feel at all overwhelmed). The default settings produce a reasonably fair yet challenging experience, with a world large and complex enough that you will never be able to engage with all of it regardless.
In terms of determining difficulty, the last three options are most important: Number of beasts, natural savagery, and Mineral occurrence. Your Number of beasts setting determines how many Megabeasts, Semi-megabeasts and Titans (basically “boss” monsters) will spawn at the start of the world. Your Natural savagery determines how frequently a biome will be generated as a Savage biome (meaning more aggressive and dangerous types of animals can spawn there), and Mineral occurrence will determine the rarity of gems and metals.
Play the Tutorial
Dwarf Fortress has a quick tutorial that someone completely new to the game should check out at least once. It doesn’t cover everything you need to know, but it does help teach players some critical controls and how to build some essentials, like beds and stockpiles (dwarves typically dig to gain more storage space, unlike in Path of Exiles 2,where you pay real money for it). It’s also very digestible; at the time of writing, it has eight sections that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes each.
Once you complete this tutorial, the fortress created for the tutorial remains in the world, and you can play it just as you would a standard fortress. While some basic steps typically performed at the beginning of starting a fortress are skipped (you don’t choose a location or set up your expedition party), not much of the standard Dwarf Fortress experience is lost if you continue a run from the tutorial, assuming you don’t want to do anything unusual (like settle in a dangerous biome or bring dwarves with atypical skills).
Start (or Continue) a Fortress
With a world generated and the tutorial giving you a basic understanding of the game, you can either start a new fortress or just continue your tutorial fortress. If founding a new fortress, you will need to select a site and the dwarves you will bring. As is always the case with Dwarf Fortress, there is an immense amount of depth here for those interested. However, new players can generally just select a location in a reasonably safe biome (Forests can make excellent starting places, making sure to avoid Evil and Savage biomes) without too much worry. Just pay attention to the traits of a selected location before settling there; metal deposits are especially useful, while aquifers (specifically heavy aquifers) can be a major hassle. Especially dangerous or otherwise challenging embark locations usually present you with a warning before you found a fortress there; new playerscanignore these warnings and settle anyway, but it’s best to settle somewhere safe while you learn.
With a location you intend to settle selected, assuming you didn’t use the tutorial, you will then be told to select your difficulty options. The “Enemies” selection determines how frequently you may be attacked by serious threats (such as megabeasts and armies) and the “Economy” selection determines the level of wealth needed to hit certain milestones, such as when trying to increase the quality of rooms. Newcomers should likely just leave these settings unchanged if looking for a “typical” Dwarf Fortress experience.
Then, you will have the option to “Play Now!” or “Prepare Carefully.” Clicking “Play Now!” gives you a decently well-rounded group of starter dwarves, gear, and animals. While this start isn’t “Min-Maxed” as some veteran players might prefer, it will be more than enough to start a successful fortress in most biomes.
“Prepare Carefully,” meanwhile, allows for granular customization of the dwarves, animals, and items you bring. For new players, this approach isn’t recommended; while almost any combination of dwarves and items can work as long as you bring pickaxes and axes, it’s possible to hurt your chances of success if you select the wrong options here.
Building for Success
With a fortress site selected and dwarves to occupy it, a new player will find they have dozens, maybe hundreds, of directions they can now take their new colony. Therefore, it’s important to keep your initial scope relatively small and prioritize the essentials.The following subsections go over what you more or less willneedto do; you can and will set optional objectives for yourself as you learn the game and expand your fortress, but this guide is designed to help you get started and carve a space for you to safely learn those tertiary mechanics without overwhelming you witheverythingthe game allows:
Food and Drink
Your earliest fortress priorities are the essentials. Dwarves need food and drink (theycandrink water, but alcohol is vastly preferable). Unless you choose otherwise, your colony will begin with some food and drink to get you started, but this won’t last especially long.
To begin, mine down using the stairway option until you reach a layer of farmable soil or muddied rock below the surface. Then mine out some space on that farmable layer to construct your farms and create some early storage space (for now, you can put a decently large “Everything” stockpile, building specific stockpiles for each item type later). While you can farm above ground (which allows you to grow a different assortment of crops), it is typically safer and easier to automate farming below ground (you also may not start with the seeds needed for overworld farming anyway).
New players can usually just grow Plump Helmets for every season in all or most of their fields, unless they have a particular reason for wanting to grow a different crop (or just run out of Helmet spawn). These are very versatile mushrooms, capable of being eaten raw or converted into wine (both of which then generate spawn, which are basically mushroom seeds that then allow you to start the cycle of growth and consumption anew). Cooking Plump Helmets is typically a waste in the early game, since they can already be eaten raw and cooking destroys the mushroom spawn, wasting what’s likely to be a limited resource in the early stages of a fortress. Quality cooked food can make dwarves happier, but it isn’t a priority as long as they have something to eat.
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As Plump Helmets can be eaten raw, you now only need to start converting some into drink to begin meeting most of your dwarves' biological needs indefinitely. To do this, build a Still. Plump Helmets count as plants, so you then select “Brew drink from plant” at that Still to begin turning Helmets into alcohol (“Brew drink from fruit” is basically identical in purpose, except it uses fruits). You can often just set this option to continue infinitely; it only needs to be turned off when food runs low (as Helmets are also food). Brewing requires barrels, which can be made at a Carpenter’s Workshop from wood, but this isn’t likely to be a major issue as consumed alcohol leaves behind the barrel which contained it, meaning barrels used for alcohol storage are renewable. However, as your fortress grows in size, you may occasionally need to engage in a burst of barrel production to keep up with the demand for drink.
If you’re ever low on food or drink, consider the following:
Shelter and Administrators
As you build a sustainable source of food and drink, you will also need to start sheltering your dwarves and assigning key administrators. Thankfully, the typical dwarf isn’t incredibly picky when it comes to shelter (although dormitories will cause them to complain). Once you’ve found a layer in which you want to build the “heart” of your fortress (-6 to -10 often makes a good target), you can carve out a few hallways from which you will then dig bedrooms. The ideal size for a bedroom is debated but, in testing, a 3 by 5 area seemed reasonable and caused little complaint (room quality is technically determined by value, not size, anyway). Each bedroom needs a bed (built from wood at the Carpenter’s Workshop) and they technically don’t need doors (built from wood at a Carpenter’s Workshoporstone at a Stoneworker’s Workshop), but it is easier to mark many bedrooms at once if you do enclose the room with one.
Once you have one bedroom built per dwarf (with married couples and their non-adult children all sharing one room and needing only one bed), you must then designate them as bedrooms using the Zones button. Click the Bedroom option, then “Multi.” This allows you to just quickly click a bed, generate a room, and then click the next bed, and so on, until you have designated all your bedrooms. Click “Accept” when done. Bedrooms are automatically claimed by dwarves; you don’t need to manually assign them unless you need a particular dwarf to sleep in a particular room, which usually only applies to demanding nobles who want a luxurious living space (a non-issue in the early game).
With food and bedrooms out of the way, it is now time to assign Administrators from the Nobles and Administrators tab. Each of these roles has a unique purpose, but someone in the early game of running a fortress really only needs to worry about assigning the following roles:
Administrators and Nobles may demand certain rooms of a particular level of quality or higher, which should be provided to avoid causing them stress. In the beginning, these demands are very easy to meet. Of the roles noted above, only Managers and Bookkeepers need any attention. Both require a Study of Meager or greater quality; this can be achieved by building a small room with a single chair in it, then using the Zone function to assign the room as an office. Make sure to designate the office as the needy Administrator/Noble’s personal office. If an individual demands a higher quality room, increase the value of that room until it is of the desired quality. This can be done by expanding the room and smoothing surfaces, as well as placing valuable furniture in the room. Room value can be quickly increased by building a Display case or Pedestal and putting a valuable item on it.
Combat and Fortress Defense
With administrators assigned and a fortress that has the basics covered, you may now start preparing for defense (and outright war). This is done by forming Squads, which you can do through the Squad Sidebar, acessible through a button in the bottom right corner of the screen (you can also just click “q”). Click “Create new squad” and select the uniform of that squad (you can adjust the uniform later and even create custom options as you make, collect, and purchase better equipment).
To train, squads will need a Barracks. Dig out a space for a room that should contain one bed and one container, such as a chest, per dwarf in the squad you want to assign to the Barracks. You will also need to build an Archery Range, with Archery targets, if you want to train dwarves equipped with ranged weapons. An Archery Range, like a Barracks, needs to be assigned to a squad if you want them to train there.
Importantly, dwarves train with the weapon they have equipped. For this reason, you will typically want members of a squad to get a metal weapon as soon as possible (focus on melee in the beginning, as making ranged weapons viable is a bit trickier). You can make training weapons out of wood, but dwarves don’t hurt each other when sparring or training, and it’s easy to forget a dwarf has these weapons equipped, which may cause you to send them into combat with a nearly useless weapon in hand. The community debates which weapon is best; the early game reality is that just picking arbitrarily based on what’s available to getsomethinginto the hands of your military is often good enough to start. Then you can get aim for better versions of whatever weapons a dwarf is becoming proficient in.
With asomewhatequipped squad (prioritizing weapons) of four to five decently combat proficient soldiers, you’re able to typically handle the early game threats you’re likely to encounter, like troglodytes. When a threat appears, select a squad and assign the squad a Kill order to attack a target or a Station order to go to a particular place and attack anything hostile nearby. Once the threat has passed, you can then Cancel ongoing orders so they go back to their usual business. Just make sure you’re growing your military with your fortress; greater dangers are in your future, and you’ll want more and better soldiers as time progresses.
In addition to forming squads, you’re able to also protect your fortress with traps and barriers. While traps are complex enough that they’re beyond the scope of this article, don’t underestimate the simplicity of Walls, Doors, and Hatches (which are basically just doors but covering openings in floors created by stairs and slopes). The vast majority of enemies can’t handle locked doors and hatches, and even fewer can get past walls. In many cases, just locking the entrance to your fortress can prevent anyone inside from being attacked. You can even wait out entire sieges, as long as they don’t have any allies that can break down your barriers (such as Trolls). Enemiescanclimb, so make sure you remember to roof off areas you want to protect if they’re exposed to the open air.
Healthcare
One of the last goals of a fortress that is at least somewhat essential is a working Hospital. This is another room type created with the Zone feature; first, create a Dormitory. Then select the Dormitory zone, clicking the shield icon and converting it into a Hospital. Essentials of a Hospital include:
As the above might demonstrate, Hospitals can be somewhat complicated to get fully operational (Soap, Traction Benches, and Wells specifically can be annoying depending on your resources, especially if you’re new to the game). At the same time, they’re fairly important if a dwarf ever gets seriously injured, especially if they can no longer move (seriously injured dwarves won’t be given alcohol, even if they’re dehydrating to death, requiring a source of water and someone to get the water for the injured dwarf). If you’re getting overwhelmed, ignore Soap and Plaster; these things make a Hospital safer and more effective, but it will function without them.
Unless a fortress is very isolated (or potential traders have been wiped from the area through war and time), a fortress will eventually be visited by Traders. In autumn, a dwarven caravan will visit, and, depending on relations, you can also be visited by elf, human, and even goblin traders over the course of an in-game year. Some civilizations also send liaisons, where you can request particular items you would like to barter for on their civilization’snextvisit, making them more likely to bring those items but also raising their price. What your fortress ought to request will depend on your needs, but metal bars, weapons, tools, and armor are almost always of at least some interest.
To receive these traders, verify you have a Trade Depot constructed by autumn. Unless the biome is very dangerous, this depot is best built outside. If it’s too enclosed, you may prevent traders from bringing wagons, reducing the amount of goods they can bring to trade and accept from you.
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Note that while coins exist in Dwarf Fortress, they’re almost never used. Instead, if someone arrives to trade, call your broker to your Trade Depot and, also through the Depot, tell your dwarves to bring the goods you want to trade. Once a broker and the visiting trader are at the Depot, you can click “Trade” to attempt to exchange whatever items you’ve brought with whatever the merchant has brought that interests you. Cut gems make excellent early trade goods, produced from rough gems at a jeweler’s workshop. They’re very light, so dwarves can move them quickly, and you can trade many gems to a caravan with almost no risk of overburdening the trader (traders can only accept so much weight, regardless of the value of what you’re offering). There are complexities to trading that are beyond the scope of this article, but basically, a merchant wants to profit and may reject trades they don’t view as profitable enough (with the margins they’ll accept changing depending on your broker’s skills and the trader’s current disposition). If a trade isn’t going through, offer more valuable items or remove some of the items you’re requesting.
Importantly, elves are notoriously picky (and thus wildly unpopular with the community, to the point of their mass murder being something of a joke when coupled with their often mediocre trade offerings). If an item that requires wood to produce is offered, including if wood is used in its decoration, elven merchants will grow angry and might refuse to trade. This even includes items that need ash to make, like soap. At present, they also dislike many animal products, although they will buy live animals and some products that require an animal to produce. Be careful, as elves can also care about how an item iscontainedif trading the entire container, such as if selling a load of gems stored in a wooden bin.
The community seems to believe that giving a merchant a roughly 50% profit margin (meaning you give them roughly 150% the value of what you are requesting from them in your own goods) is a good rule if you just want to have a trade accepted and leave a merchant happy. The specifics beyond that depend on your goals and more complex mechanics; just be careful experimenting too much with what deals a merchant will accept, as too many rejected offers may cause them to refuse to trade further and leave. In many cases, a fortress won’t struggle to create items of value after the first few merchant visits; if you have an abundance of cut gems and other trade goods, you don’t need to be too picky about getting as fair a trade as possible from merchants.
It’s also possible to seize items from caravans, steal them, or outright kill merchants, leaving all their goods behind. Just keep in mind this has the potential to severely harm your relations with the relevant faction; civilizations whose traders you harass may stop sending merchants or might even declare war on you. Humans and dwarves are also capable of putting up a fight; elves and goblins, however, can usually be defeated without much trouble from a moderately prepared fortress.
Plenty More to Discover
The above is only a small portion of Dwarf Fortress offers, but doing everything discussed thus far should allow you to create a fortress which is self-sustaining and can handle an attack or two from goblins and other ne’er-do-wells. How you play is up to you, but some additional features you may want to explore include:
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