I've wanted to get into it for a while, but never really been in a position to put in the investment required to make it worth it.

Yeah. The game seems cool. No, cool is an understatement. The game is unquestionably a work of art.

My experience with it was not positive. I spent something like fifteen hours attempting to play it and had still not yet ran into any interesting challenges, puzzles, adventures or produced any memorable stories.

Like mendax, my conclusion was not that the game was flawed, but that I hadn't played it enough. Basically, I ran out of time.

Yeah, I guess I'll say that if you have less than twenty hours to try out the game, then I wouldn't bother. By which I mean that you should bother, but you should probably block off a couple of weekends. Maybe get a more experienced player to walk you through your first couple of missions.

Please let me know how it turns out - the game has drawn quite an impressive fan-base and I think it would be wonderful if you could join it's ranks.

I consider myself somewhat of a journeyman to the game. It's one of my favorites, and for me, half the fun is learning how to play it. http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/2991851/Casual/

So what's the thread for? Do you have questions for me?

I've never played it, but I read a little bit about it. Funny thing is that the more that I have read about the game, the more I realize the vast scope of my ignorance in regards to the depth and complexities of this "game". How many different ores/minerals are there to mine?? Something over 100, right?

I don't mean to use quotes around the word "game" in a disparaging manner, rather, I mean to suggest that calling it a mere game would be woefully inadequate. It would be better described as a fantasy world simulator. One with ever evolving history, seemingly endless details and facets. Perhaps one of most sophisticated such things ever created.

Frankly, I've been intrigued, but perhaps just too intimidated to take a dive into this world.

Godspeed, ora. You seem to be in for a hell of a ride.

Thegatso, how would you begin to describe this game to someone completely unfamiliar with it (as would seem to be the case for most on this forum)?

"based on real-world geology and mineralogy... ...you may want to crack open a geology textbook"

from http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Stone#DF_Geology_and_real-world_Geology

Yeah, there are only a few fantasy ores added, but being a geologist definitely helps..

Questions? sure, what is the best/worst death you have suffered?

My journey so far... (mostly supported by reading tutorials) first fortress, a nice idealic little place near some mountains, farming was hard to setup and the entire party starved (or went crazy and killed everyone) within a year (and the initial stock of food running out)

Second fortress, ok i've started out on a glacier, but this should probably be a short game anyway... I can't find any wood to make beds, so people will be mostly sleeping on the (icey) floors... dig dig dig... oh an underground cavern... ok pick mushrooms for food, and start farming (got it right this time) ... fungus which can substitute for wood? Awesome, ok, start making some bedrooms... (Several days and one polar bear later) I want to irrigate a newly dug cave to start using as an extended farm area, so this is my first attempt at using floodgates... break through to the water source, oh crap, my floodgate seems to have been washed away... (Several hours later) ok, i've now got a nice waterfall feature (though a lot of dorfs have been swept away to their death at the bottom of this mess)... more migrants arrive, build more beds and private bedrooms for a few special people... ok, i need a well inside, hmm this sounds like a great chance to drown some miners...

Well it looks like all my miners died, losing their pick axes means i can't dig anymore... This severely limits my ability to do most things, i can't make a new one because i've got no ore to melt into metal and even if i did my anvil is stuck in the wagon starting place, probably because of some bug...

Next wave of migrants bring a single miner, and now i know i need to find metal ores if i want to make metal anything (though i will also need an anvil...)

... Argh, my miner was crushed by some granite block while exploring, at least i think the pick is still intact.

Wow, sounds like a very vibrant and intriguing game.

Here is my question, prefaced by a statement. I don't enjoy research so don't like games that you have to do a lot of internet research on to really be able to play. Where does Dwarf Fortress sit on the Spectrum of being able to play it straight out of the box and have a good time versus having to do lots of internet research to stand a chance?

Thanks!

Sounds like Civ or SimCity with Dwarves and mining... Might have to check it out.

@Alderian: out of the box? slim to none... reading at least one tutorial (on the main dwarf fortress wiki) might be vital, i think, unless you feel like banging your head against your keyboard/screen for several hours.

@Draug: Similar, but very detailed. Start out with 7 dorfs, each with their own personality - make them happy with hard work and drink and they'll do fantastic, accidentally kill their pet cat and they'll go on a kill crazy rampage through your fortress.... (and if they happen to kill someone else that will upset their family and friends... of course you want your dorfs to make friends at first as it will make them happy)

Also, apparently the geology is all accurate, if you don't know the names of minerals you'll find it hard to know what you've found when you hit it. Hematite is good... but there are tonnes of different mineral names which you could learn off. (also the procedurally generated geology makes some sense, with magma flows if you go deep enough, and water in aquifers... ) There is a hint of fantasy with adamantine super materials aswell... but it's mostly real.

Okay, thanks ora!

@Alderian

On a scale from Angry Birds to Dwarf Fortress, it's at about a Dwarf Fortress.

As for describing the game, I would describe it as The Sims multiplied by about 20,000. Simply described, you manage every aspect of a fortress.

Every.
Single.
Aspect.

So, the dwarfs wet themselves if you don't tell them to go to the bathroom when they need to?

In some sense you don't directly control anyone (like in simcity) If a dwarf is tired (s)he will look for somewhere to sleep, if they have a bedroom that's great, if they have to sleep on the floor they will (but it wouldn't improve their mood) you don't get to force them to do things...

You do leave instructions for what needs to be dug out or where to move furniture (so beds if you want to make a bedroom) but it is always one step removed...

Anyone ever played Majesty? It's kinda like that.

no, looked it up though. Majesty looks good, but i didn't like the price tag... (it's available on the ubuntu store)

And everybody is dead... I finally got a new miner from migration and continued growing my fortress, built some bridges to prevent goblins of others from getting inside.

However a major problem with my many dead seems to be the number of ghosts, so eventually i embarked on building a great mausoleum to honour the dead... hundreds of coffins and space for them all... or at least that was the plan (a lot of corpses were left outside to rot, though i think the glacial conditions may have prevented decomposition) I figured out how to pump water up to a storage compartment above the mausoleum and trigger a hatch to release the water into it should the need arise (i presume to stop grave robbers... probably should have installed some kind of pressure plate now that i look back)

I figured out how to trade and got an anvil and some new picks, so lots more digging could be done, and i secured much of the area around my waterfall of death...

But in the end my drawbridge was destroyed (probably by some desperate dwarf who didn't have enough alcohol or food) and Goblins eventually killed every last citizen (a two year old girl being the last and i followed her around for a bit... i probably should have figured out how the military units work; maybe next time...)

I've been spending a bit of time here and there starting my first fortress. Just working my way through the quick start guide.

Remember: losing is FUN.

also, this may be one of the worst interfaces to learn, but once you know the shortcut keys everything suddenly goes very fast...

Is this one of those "how many ways can I kill of my population and watch them suffer" games?

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens.html

If this is the game, I think I will pass. ASCII characters with colors I can't differentiate don't exactly work for my crappy color-blind eyes.

There are tilesets which can be used instead (eg: http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/blog/6081/dwarf_fortress.png )

And it is certainly about dying, or attempting to die in the most spectacular of ways. They don't like it when they run out of drink, and don't like being drafted to the military if they have no weapon skills... but you may have to draft dorfs if you are invaded...
Delving too deep to hit magma and result in *fun*...

That's much better. I could possibly play that, although with the processing power out today in even my Windows 8 Phone, a simple animated UI along the lines of Warcraft (not WoW, but the overhead view from Warcraft) should have been implemented from the beginning.

I'll check it out this week if I get time.

It is not a question (or was not) or processing power, it was a question of design time.

The new tileset is from a third party (fan) dev; the original game is still ascii, and some have even described this 'feature' as an advantage (because it leads to immersion, as the player must imagine the world, and so becomes more fully immersed...)

Whether you, personally, happen to enjoy this immersion or are hindered by the colour-coding (though i largely don't have a clue what most colours mean, as light-grey and dark-grey are two i find hard to distinguish between (see: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Color_scheme )

Also, when it comes to processing power, I have found that once i hit somewhere above 100 dorfs in my fort the frame rate starts to slow, and my laptop isn't particularly slow.

I meant graphic processing power. I.e. graphics card capabilities. I used to play a start trek game (turn based) on an old DEC PDP 9 we had in high school. It was the 2-D grid where you were hunting the Klingon ship with the Enterprise.

And if you need some music to go along with the game...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRpzxKsSEZg

I feel like i remember that game... I recall playing some kind of star trek game way back when.

Anyone else have some dorf fortress 'fun' to post (losing is fun, so a nice story of how your got destroyed might be good...

What a cool little game! I tried it for the first time a couple of days ago on seeing this thread. Still getting to grips with it, but it's pretty cool.

Just got back from watching the hobbit, and the only thing it has left me wanting to do is build a great dwarven city... More dorf fortress, me thinks!

Yeah, Dwarf Fortress is lots of !!FUN!!.

My most exciting fort death was also totally unexpected - I had kept a fortress of ~150ish alive for 6 years, and everything was running smoothly. Lots of walls, plenty to eat, experienced marksdwarves, all of that. Then one day, a trapper was searching for small animals to trap. Well, he trapped one - a fire imp. He brought it home, it escaped, it threw a couple fireballs and the fortress burned down around him.

Ok, i started a new fort, on the edge of the tundra, (why are there bees in the frozen wastes? Are they ice-bees??) i'm building a cool fort on the surface to look nice, may have weapons built onto the walls if i can get that far... Also i have a moat around it. (though a second secret entrance exists, i need to put in some trap to murder people who attempt to enter that way... I might be able to keep some animals on the surface inside my walls...