Dwarf Fortress 101

Lesson 1 – Getting Set Up

Welcome to the first lesson of Reddit University’s Dwarf Fortress 101! I have never taught a class before,
so this will be an interesting challenge for all of us. Remember, if you are having problems or have a
question, go ahead and ask in the comments section of each lesson. I will try to stay on top of the
questions as much as my schedule will allow. Remember, the Dwaf Fortress wiki, and the Bay 12 forums
are great places to refer to for some help after the class ends or if you do not want to wait for me to
answer a question.

This first lesson may be tedious for some of you that have already dabbled with the game and if you
have never opened Dwarf Fortress before, please don’t let the graphics discourage you! In my opinion
the two single greatest entrance barriers for new players is understanding the graphics of the game, or
what you are actually looking at, and memorizing the different keyboard shortcuts. If you can complete
this first lesson with a good idea of how the world works and can get used to how objects like trees or
hills are presented in the game, then you have already conquered a huge barrier that puts off many
people, and the game only gets better from here.

Let’s go ahead and open up the game to begin.

After the amazing intro video we are taken to the main menu as shown below. Normally we would need
to go through the world generation, pick a desired location to embark to, and prepare the supplies for
your trip to the new fort. I decided to go ahead and skip this for now and set everyone up with a starting
save. The embark screen can be very difficult to understand and navigate if you have never played the
game before. You can very easily end up in a location with an underground aquifer, which makes getting
stone difficult, and picking supplies and skills for your dwarves can be very confusing to start with so I
am saving that as the last lesson for when you are ready to go out and start a new fort on your own.

Go ahead and hit enter to ‘Continue Playing’ the game, then hit enter again to select the only save
available right now.
Welcome to Alabeteyo, “The Momentous World”! We are in a fairly calm region, so it should be quiet
for a few seasons while we get the fort set up. There is a lot to look at on this first screen. You can see
the master menu on the right in the screenshot below listing many of the hotkeys you will be using soon
enough. You can cycle through having the menu and an area map open and closed with the ‘Tab’ key.
Generally I think the area map is fairly pointless so I just like to keep the menu open.

Let’s get accustomed to what we are looking at here. Remember the game has many similarities to Sim
City, you look at the world from a top down perspective and everything is located on square tiles, only in
this game the tiles aren’t as pretty and more imagination is required. Unlike Sim City, Dwarf Fortress is
simulated in 3 dimensions which will take some getting used to since we are obviously only looking at
the world through 2 dimensions.

Looking at the world we can see our 7 dwarves standing around doing nothing…this will become a very
common sight indeed. There are a couple of dogs, cats, and a horse hanging around the dwarves also.
The wagon containing all of our supplies is in the center of this little meeting point. When you see an
object that is rotating through pictures, like the supplies here, it simply means the game is showing you
everything that is sitting on that tile. There are three ponds near-by, with shrubs you can harvest, a few
boulders laying around, lots of just ordinary light/dark grass tiles, and a bunch of different evergreen
trees denoted by the green up arrows. There are a few baby trees around and the red tiles are red sand.

On the left we see a hill. Remember we are simply looking at a 2D slice of a 3D world. The triangles
denote that it is a hill sloping upwards and the color shows what is growing on the slope, mostly grass
but there are a couple that are just sand. Next to the slope indicators is the face of the hill and we can
see that it is made mostly of red sand and random different types of rock. The grey area is the inside of
the hill which we cannot see into yet.

Now let’s figure out how to look at different levels higher and lower than us so we can really start to
imagine what the world looks like in 3D. Each “slice” of the world is called a z-level, ‘z’ denoting the axis
you are moving up and down on. The number 146 in the lower right tells us what z-level we are
currently on in the world. This goes all the way down to about below us past zero to about -30, and
there is no maximum height. The game stops rendering a few levels into the sky, but if you build a tower
and reach that threshold then the game will continue giving you z-levels to build upwards on. The blue
and tan bar on the far right above the current level shows how far you are above or below the ground
graphically. The deeper you are underground the more the bar fills tan and vice versa. The number on
the top right shows how many levels above or below the surface you are for an easy reference point.
Since we are on the surface it is 0.

In order to move up and down z-levels we use ‘Shift+< and Shift+>’. Let’s hit ‘Shift+<’ right now to go
one z-level up into the sky to see the top of this hill.

In the screen shot below, we can see that the area we were just looking at is darkened and the features
just turned to small dots to signify that it is now below us. The green triangles on the side of the hill that
were pointing upwards before now point down, showing the hill is sloping down from this level. Simple
huh? We can see there is some more grass, boulders, and a few trees on top of this hill. We also see
another set of upwards pointing green triangles along with more of the inside of the hill, so this hill must
go even higher than the level we are on currently. We can see the information on the right has changed
to reflect our new altitude in the world. The 0 in the upper right has changed to a green, positive 1 so we
are 1 level up from the surface at this specific point. The graphical bar has gone one notch into the blue,
and the counter in the bottom right has incremented one to 147.

If you look one more z-level up, you will see the hill still continuing upwards and a lot of the terrain is
now just blue empty space. If you are more than one level above terrain the game just displays it as
blank space.

Now let’s go back down a few z-levels and take a look at one level below the surface, so hit ‘Shift+>’
until you are one level below the dwarves or at level 145 as denoted by the counter. Depending on how
many z-levels up the hill you looked it may take a few hits to get there. As you can see, there isn’t much
here, just lots of unexplored rock or dirt and the bottom of the three ponds. We can deduce that there is
probably a lot of sand on this level since we can see the sides of the ponds are made of red sand.
Now let’s go one z-level back up to the surface. Now that you know how to look around the world, you
can check out the surrounding area using the arrow keys and the key combinations you just learned to
look up or down z-levels. If you get lost and want to return to where the dwarves currently are, simply
hit the ‘F1’ key to snap back to about where we started. As you can see, we are located in a very small
area. I did this because Dwarf Fortress is very processor intensive and so of course the larger the area
you play in, the more it will tax your system. Since everyone is on a different set up and some of us may
have less powerful computers, I decided it would be best to work in a small area for now. Go back to the
starting area where the dwarves and three ponds are.

The next thing to learn is how to how to use the “look around” command to take a closer look at your
surroundings. As you can see on the menu, this command is designated to ‘k’. I want to mention that
some hotkeys are case sensitive, so keep that in mind as we play through the game. Go ahead and hit
‘k’. You will now see a yellow X on the screen and the menu has changed to a detailed list of what is
actually under the cursor. It tells you the objects as well as if you are above or below ground, inside or
outside, and if it is light or dark in that particular spot. You can use the arrow keys to move the cursor
around, or hold down shift while using the arrow keys to move the cursor faster. As you can see I’ve
placed the cursor over a horse. The detailed view shows he does not have an owner, so he is a stray, and
he is tame also. On some objects or creatures you can hit enter to bring up a more detailed description,
go ahead, hit enter, and read about the horse, cats, or even to check out a dwarf if you wish. You can hit
escape at any time to back out of either the detailed view of the horse or to get rid of the yellow cursor.

It is also worth mentioning that the z-level counter at the top right (shows 0 in the previous screen shot)
is dependent on where the cursor is on the screen. If you hit ‘k’ and move it inside the hill to the left, the
counter will reflect that the cursor is now underground. Go ahead and play around with looking at the
world if you still do not feel comfortable with your surroundings. If you do not know what a tile
symbolizes, then simply hit ‘k’ to check it out. Try to visualize how the world would look in 3D.

Now that you know how to look around the game and get a detailed look of objects, it’s time to start the
fun stuff! We need to get our dwarves and all our supplies inside. If left to sit outside, wild animals may
start stealing things and food can rot.

Hit the ‘d’ key to bring up the designations menu. You will see that a yellow X cursor has appeared just
like with the ‘k’/detailed look command. Designations tell dwarves to perform a specific action in the
area you select. As you can see on the new menu that has appeared on the right, there are many things
you can designate your dwarves to do, from digging to mining out stairways, to chopping down trees. It
is important to realize you are not in control of the dwarves so you can only designate areas for them to
perform tasks…whether or not they actually do it depends on factors which we will talk about later. For
now let’s designate an area that we want the dwarves to mine out.
In the ‘d’ designation menu, hit the ‘d’ key again to select mining. Let’s go mine out that original hill on
the left a little bit. Move the cursor over the side of the hill and hit enter to begin the designation
process. Move the cursor into the hill about 10 tiles over and then move it down about three tiles and
hit enter again. Suddenly the area you just selected has turned yellow meaning it is waiting to be mined
out. It should look like you have a 3 tile wide hallway designated. You will quickly realize that mining is
very subjective, meaning it does not have to be exactly the same as mine and you do not have to count
out tiles every time we are mining. There are certain circumstances when I will want it to be exact
though, and I will let you know when I want it to match mine. For now, your newly designated mining
area should look like this.
That will be a pretty nice hallway once it is finished, but this is only the beginning. We need to make it
longer, and change directions a little bit. This will help us once we start setting up defenses and getting
ready to trade with other civilizations. Move the cursor to the end of the hallway, hit enter, and select a
3 tile wide hallway again but this time going North. Make it around 8 to 10 tiles long from the end of the
last hallway then hit enter. You should now have a 3 tile wide L-shaped hallway ready to be mined out.
We aren’t done yet though, we have one more section of hallway to make before we can let the
dwarves begin digging. Hit enter at the very top of the newly designated hallway and make one more 2
tile wide hallway, again about 10 tiles long. Once you have done this our future hallway should look like
a big tetris piece, refer to the screenshot below to see how it should look. If you messed up in
designating something, you can erase designations by hitting ‘x’ in the designation menu, then selecting
the area to erase just like mining!
Now it’s finally time to let those lazy good-for-nothings get to work. Hit escape to close the designation
menu and bring the main menu back up. Currently the game is paused and as you can see, there is an
idler counter at the top right. This tells you how many dwarves are slacking off at any given moment.
The ‘Space Bar’ pauses and unpauses the game so go ahead and hit that now. You should see the idlers
drop to 5 as two dwarves decide it’s time to work and begin mining out the side of the hill. The tiles that
have an active dwarf assigned to mine them will flash. Every time the dwarf mines out a tile he will
decide if he wants to continue working or not. If he feels like working a new tile will start to flash and
the dwarf will continue. We should have no problem completing the hallway without the dwarves
getting tired or wanting to go get drunk this time. The dwarves should mine through it quickly, moving
faster through the red sand than through the rock. They may leave some stone behind, but it probably
won’t be much yet since their mining skills are still low. The more skillful the dwarves get at mining, the
faster they get and the more stone they will leave which we can use. Once the dwarves have finished
mining go ahead and pause the game again with the space bar while we figure out what to do next.

While we will not be pausing and unpausing the game after every action for very long but we need to
do it for now. We have very limited food and alcohol stocks available until we get our fort up and
running so keeping the game paused helps conserve as much as possible. I won’t keep reminding you,
but try to make it a habit for awhile of hitting the spacebar before and after you complete some actions
until we get a farm set up. The screen shot below shows what my newly mined hallway looks like.
If you wish you can use the ‘k’ view to see what kind of stone we mined out. This is a good entrance to
the fort, but now we need to dig out more and get a room ready to put all of our perishable food,
supplies, and tools in. If you notice, we really can’t scroll anymore to the left on this level, we have
reached the edge of the map. There really isn’t a lot of space on this one section of hill to build the
rooms that we need to store things. You will quickly see a well run fort requires a lot of space on the
map to function properly. If we cannot go any further in one direction then, like true dwarves, it is time
to dig farther underground where we can find much more space.

Hit the ‘d’ key again to bring up the designations menu, only this time we need to designate a staircase
to be dug out. There are three kinds of stairways, the upward, the downward, and the up/down. Right
now we need a downward stairway, so hit the ‘j’ key to select this. At the end of the two tile wide
hallway we dug out, hit enter and select the two adjacent tiles on the wall to be turned into stairs. The
area should be highlighted as two dark tiles with yellow stairs.
Next, we will need to go one z-level down and designate more stairs to be constructed. Without leaving
the designation menu, hit ‘i’ to select the up/down stairways. Place the yellow cursor on the top-most
downward stairway we just designated. Without moving the cursor, hit ‘shift+>’ to move one z-level
down. Your cursor should be directly below the topmost stairway you just designated. Hit enter and
then move one tile down and hit enter again. You should have designated two more staircases, this time
up/down staircases, to be dug out.

You may notice that the area around the pond to the North is flashing when in the designation menu.
This is simply warning you water is there and not to breach that wall or you will flood the entire place.
Dwarf Fortress simulates complex fluid dynamics and keeps track of water pressure, depth, and flow.
This allows fun things like rivers and waterfalls, but those are also huge processor drains so I opted not
to embark on a location with those.

The new up/down stairways should again be directly below the downward staircases, if you get this
wrong use the ‘x’ remove designation command to try again.
As you can see the up/down stairway designations have a different look than the downward staircases
we designated a level up. We have a little more room on this level, but if you scroll to the right you can
see a few more ponds blocking things. We will use this level to farm, but we will worry about that later.
For now we need to dig a little deeper. Place the cursor back over the topmost up/down stairway, move
down a z-level, and designate two more up/down stairways on level 144 directly beneath the others.
We need to go one more level down from here to complete the staircase and so you can get a feel for
how each type of stairway works. Press ‘u’ to select the upward stairway, move the cursor over the
up/down stairway again, move down one last z-level to 143, and designate two final tiles as upward
stairways. We should now have 4 sets of stairway designations stacked directly on top of each other on
z-levels. Now it is easy to see why you need to think in 3D even though the game plays in 2D. Now, at
the bottom of our staircase we need to designate another hallway and a storage room to be dug out. Hit
the ‘d’ to mine and designate out a two tile wide hallway around 10 in length from the tiles right next to
where the stairway is. Designate a large square room to be mined out from the side of the hallway.
Mine is 9 x 7 but this doesn’t need to be exact. Look at the screenshot below to see what the bottom
floor ultimately needs to look like

Go ahead and hit escape, then unpause the game. You should see the idlers counter drop again as the
dwarves begin to mine. Sit back and watch as your new fort is now dug out before your eyes!

Once this room on your main floor is completed, we need to tell the dwarves that they are allowed to
store food and supplies in there. At the main menu, hit ‘p’ to bring up the stockpiles menu. Stockpiles
allow us to tell the dwarves where we want them to keep their stuff. While eventually we will want to
keep our goods and food separated, for right now we just need to get everything inside.
You can see the stockpile menu here, you can hit the corresponding key to designate what you want to
be stored in your future stockpile. Notice it only lets you select one at a time, well we have a lot of
random stuff that fits into more than one category we just need to get inside. Hit the ‘c’ to select a
custom stockpile, then hit ‘t’ to go to the custom stockpile settings. Here you can use the arrow keys to
select what type of good to include in the stockpile and hit ‘e’ to enable that good. We want to enable
Animals, Food, Furnature, Coins, Bars/Blocks, Gems, Finished Goods, Leather, Cloth, Weapons, and
armor. Once you enable a good, more menus allowing further customization, if you wish, are shown. If
you take a second to scroll through some of these, food for example, you can see how much stuff is in
this game and the ridiculous amount of customization you can have over even the smallest things like
where to put each type of fish and meat. Your stockpile settings should look like this when completed:
Once you have enabled the goods we want, hit escape to go back to the stockpile designation menu.
Move the yellow cursor to one corner of the square room and designate the entire floor of the room just
like you would if you were mining the area out again. The floor should now change colors to a pattern of
dots if you did it correctly. You should see all of the dwarves, not just 2 this time, go to work and soon
you will have a nice storage room full of goods, food, and most importantly booze. Don’t worry about
the rocks being in the way for now, they really aren’t a big deal and dwarves can stack most goods on
top of them. To confirm this you can use the ‘k’ look option to scroll over all the tiles to see your goods.
It may take awhile to get all of that stuff inside and the dwarves will no doubt frequently stop working to
drink booze and take breaks. Your stockpile should now look similar to mine:
My dwarves still have not finished moving everything yet but you get the idea. You may start to see your
dwarves creating sand trails outside as they trample the grass when moving things inside the fort, that is
just another example of the level of detail this game tracks that we will learn about in lessons to come.
One last thing, if you notice purple skulls and bones laying around like in my screenshot, do not worry.
No one has died and everything is ok, your cats are just doing their job like they are supposed to and
killing rodents and bugs. Those are the remains and we will worry about cleaning those up later.

For now that is the end of the first lesson. That was a lot learn if you have never touched Dwarf Fortress
before, or this may have been a ridiculously easy waste of time depending on your level of expertise.
You can either keep messing around with the game or you can hit escape and select ‘save game’ to end
the session until next time.

I fully encourage you to play around, try different things and really get a feel for the game. Try using
what we learned today and digging into ponds and flooding your fort for example just to see what
happens. This is a sand box game and to really enjoy it, you have to let your creative side free which will
become easier the farther into the game we get. Don’t worry about messing anything up, I will again
make master saves available at the start of every lesson you can use to stay at the same place as the
class, or to even go back and try old lessons again. I will tell you how to use make use of those saves at
the beginning of the next lesson! Remember to give me feedback if you wish. If you think I’m going too
fast, too slow, or am being too wordy then let me know in the lesson comments and I will adjust to the
level that the majority of the class needs!