Creativity Excavation - Dwarf Fortress
Friday, February 1st, 2008 by TheRollingPin
For those of you who don’t know, Dwarf Fortress is easily one of the best civilization simulations to date. Your citizens are drunken dwarves… And, luckily, you don’t often need to evict them. The game pushes you to efficiently manage stocks and citizens, though thankfully you don’t have to do all the math, as you have your book keeper do it for you. Dwarf Fortress develops creativity, too, forcing you to create your own play style to conquer its numerous challenges. For instance, you can set up complex trap systems which make your fortress nigh invulnerable to your neighors.
Today I decided to try my luck in a game of Dwarf Fortress. I figured it would be interesting considering the random name the game gave my fortress: “Bleedingcaps the Frozen Anus of Whores,” which essentially is.. the frozen anus of the earth. Now, of course, being the badass he is, my hunter ran off to the only untame thing on the map, and shot down a little polar bear, butchered it into yummy bits, and is now rather bored and playing with its bones. Digging through ice isn’t exactly fun. For now I’ll just have to wait until one of them gets morbid thoughts and kidnaps a baby.
On a lighter note, I finally found a bit of rock under all that damned ice; finally, my mason isn’t useless!
Dwarf Fortress Gameplay Introduction
You start off with a party of seven dwarves, with professions of your choice: Various crafting types, ie. carpentry, masonry (stonework), metal crafting, jeweling, and the jobs to get the respective materials. Then you pick a place to go! Since I wanted a challenge I picked a glacier. Of course, I could have also picked a haunted area, but I didn’t feel like fighting skeletal elephants. D:
Eventually trade and economy comes into play, and you start renting out rooms to your little worker dwarves. And please, god, don’t get me started on the nobility.. snobs. Despite their alcoholic tendencies, Dwarves are some of the hardest working little bastards known to man. After the first trade caravan arrives, the dwarves tell you of the prospering humans and their giant cities above the ground, how they’re sissys and need roads because the ground hurts their sensitive toesies. So then, sure enough they come along with their mule-pulled wagons full of goods.
And then there’re the elves.. the lazy, strawberry-wine-sipping, tree-hugging elves. After enough seasons, the elves come and aren’t too demanding at first. However, if you offer them any leather or wood (which I recommend doing, just for sheer entertainment) they’ll explode at you, and leave because they’re so offended. They’re hypocrites, though, as they ironically sell you wood AND leather products. Eventually they come and tell you that you have to stop chopping down so many trees, at which point I usually tell them to screw off and/or kill them all where they stand and take thier precious caged bears.
Amazing world of Dwarf Fortress
To show you the massive changes you can make to forge a great fortress, I’ll tell you the future plans for my own. There are going to be great networks of bridges over a hole in the ice in which watch towers and workshops are built. To make the hole, I’ll dig out layers and put stairs into the ice, and then build great pillars all across the vast expanse to support my bridges, and put up statues for decoration. Around the hole, I’ll dig out an empty moat with spike traps lining the bottom, so that anything trying to get in would have to fall into the pit and try to climb back up a slick wall of ice. On the first floor of rock, my barracks would be placed all around my entrance for easy access to the different levels and to face off any threats, with workshops buried deeper inside to protect the civilians.
One level of a fortress
Channels of water and magma can be built to create water wheels, moats, or magma ovens which removes the need for coal to make metal products. Of course, you could mix the two and create steam, which hurts quite a bit, as the invading goblins discover very quickly. Catapults and ballistae are constructed on your battlements to fend off seiging hordes and sleazy whores… Though, which is worse I’m not yet sure.
Heroic Bakery logo made from channels
While all this construction goes on, all kinds of events will happen, such as artifacts being created by dwarves taking on a mood (not having sex for years will do this to anyone) and hogging up workspace, and demanding materials. He/she’ll eventually create a masterpeice of craftdwarfship, often with hanging rings, spikes, studs, and images of the history of the fortress. A good example of this is an old hammer that one of my weaponsmiths made: “Coupleclouds the new world”. It was a hammer made of onyx with menacing steel spikes and gold rings, and always conjured up images of stormclouds for me..
Your greatest challenge is the survival of your fortress, which requires you to keep your dwarves happy and fed. However, your people are resourceful, and if you’re occupying an area with scarce food, they will eat vermin or slaughter puppies so that they can live through the winter. They make nice gloves, too, but we won’t go into detail about that. So long as you keep a full pantry, you’ll be able to keep your pets. There are, however, quite alot of ways to get food, including farming, livestock, hunting, foraging, fishing, and brewing. Brewing, by the way, is very important, as Dwarves don’t work so well when they haven’t had their drinks. Make sure they’re nice and drunk. It helps.
Overview
If you want to deepen your thought process, and expand your thinking capacity in general, Dwarf Fortress is a great way to exercise your gray matter into that tight muscle you’ve wanted for ages. The game is developed by Bay12 games, under the leadership of Toadyone The Great, or just Toadyone. They produce mostly arcade games, but Dwarf Fortress is actually a sequel to their previous game, “Kobold Quest.”
One of the best things about DF is the amount of user suggested content, and the free modding which is shared in abundance on the forum. If you have anything you think would work well for their releases, don’t be afraid to let them know!
You can get Dwarf Fortress here:
http://www.bay12games.com/
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
And, for a good starting guide, check out:
Remember that this game is quite a challenge, especially in the beginning - and that’s precisely why we’re sharing it with you. Persevere, and believe in the DF motto: Losing is fun!
Don’t forget to bring lots of rum. Cheers!
