That said, I’m going to use this first post to explain what I want to do with this series. First and foremost, I want this tutorial to be a living document. If something changes in Dwarf Fortress that invalidates one of my posts, I’m going to come back and fix it. If there’s something people ask me to explain in the comments, I’m going to consider writing a post explaining that.
Most importantly, however, I’m going to be very careful with this tutorial not to alienate new players by giving them way too much information at once. Each post is going to have a specific topic and won’t deviate from it.
This series was last updated for Dwarf Fortress version 0.44.12. I’m only writing that version number once for the whole series, because when a new version comes out, I’m updating everything, not just individual articles.
The first thing you’re going to need to play Dwarf Fortress is… Dwarf Fortress!
Thankfully, Dwarf Fortress is free to download and self-contained, so “installing” it is just unpacking the files into a folder of your choice.
The latest version of Dwarf Fortress Alpha (which is what this tutorial is about) for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X can always be found at bay12games.com/dwarves.
There are lots of third party addons for Dwarf Fortress, ranging from simple tile set replacements to full-on memory hacking libraries. For our first fortress, we are going to install… None of them!
A big mistake I’ve made in the past is pointing new players towards the Quickstart guide on the Dwarf Fortress wiki or one of the three third party distributions named Lazy Newb Pack (seriously, all three are named the same thing and run by different people). We’re not doing that. That’s a good way to get overwhelmed very quickly, and it won’t help you actually understand what’s going on in the game.
There is one modification I will make for this tutorial, and it’s completely up to you whether you want to make the same change in your copy of the game.
Open data/init/init.txt in your favorite text editor and find [FONT:curses_640x300.png].
Replace it with [FONT:curses_800x600.png].
That’s all. You’re done. Close the file.
This changes the tile set very slightly, making the smiley face tiles look like bearded dwarves. It makes all of the tiles slightly wider, which makes structures more accurately shaped, but can also make text slightly awkward to read and make some of the shaded block tiles repeat in a less appealing way.
It’s completely your choice which tile set to use. You can close the game and switch at any time.
Part of the series Get into Dwarf Fortress
Next time: Part 2: Strike the Earth
I've been meaning to "get into dwarf fortress" for years! I'll give it a read
Who was it tooted once "there are 3 kinds of people: people who play dwarf fortress; people who don't play DF; people who say that they want to play DF and never ever will"?