Dwarf Fortress is quite fun, lets share stories (Adventure mode or whatever)

[DoPo]

Yeah, I come bearing the news of that obscure game Dwarf Fortress I'm sure nobody has heard of. By which I mean, it should be a well known thing.

Spoiler: this thing

Because I find this poster funny

So, what's my history with the game - I tried it out about five years ago. Erm, the controls were a lot and the manual was big, so I decided to leave it for later. So aside from the occasional "I should try playing DF again" thought, I actually finally picked it up last week once more. I decided to go with adventure mode, because, why not? Also, it was probably going to be easier than starting Fort mode.

And holy fuck, it the game awesome. I was lazy, so I just followed the quickstart guide from the wiki in order to go and start playing now. Notable, the guide mentions "Select Demigod as your status. Even as a demigod you will probably die anyway." and I have to say probably? Fuck that, I lost, like a dozen characters already. But it's all good. First character drowned when I tried to cross a river[footnote]sadly, there was nobody to save him. Though, there weren't dogs and other stuff in the water for the stranger to choose between[/footnote], second one was eaten by bogeymen when the only thing I knew of combat was A for attack (apparently, being surrounded is not good). Third one fell into a hole, then one got his brains bashed out by bandits. And so on.

Some of the ones I liked more: the first character I thought I was doing something useful with - instead of blindly going after the first quest available, I decided to go get some henchmen and to help me out - got the maximum (3) and then went hunting in the woods to get some meat to sell as well as train. And so I did - found some dingos and chopped them up good. But before I headed to the shops, I decided to check that thing on the map I had not yet seen - see, forts are white circles, but this was a black zero. Weird, what could it be. So there were some buildings - I successfully opened the door to one and entered. Jackpot! Some sweet items and armour lying around. Let's see what's there furthe-HOLY FUCKING SHIT A MUMMY. Yeah. And not a nice mummy. It resurrected the skins of all dingos I was carrying and they attacked me. Then the mummy carved up my companions, resurrected them, too, finally, turned it's attention to me - chopped off my two hands, resurrected them too (as if there wasn't enough things attacking me) and I finally bled to death trying to escape. So maybe raiding random tombs wasn't the smart decision. Huh, who knew.

With my last character I decided to finally try doing it proper proper - none of the others lived for more than an hour (IRL), so this one was going to, dammit. I went and started swimming in the river to level up swim, as well as Endurance. Did that until I got Swim to just below Legendary (easy if you're watching some videos in the mean time) but I ran out of food, so I went hunting in the forest. Found an elephant, which I mercilessly killed, then butchered and took his meat and bones etc for selling. Now, the problem was that due to my speed was quite low - 99 (from 1300) and night was approaching. No worries - there was a fort just midway to town - I just needed to sleep there and continue on in the morning. I reached the fort as night fell and as I was trying to locate the entrance FUCKING BOGEYMEN ATTACK. And with my low speed, they just murderised me quickly. Literally, like, two metres away from the fortress.

My current character lived for MORE THAN AN HOUR, WOOT! Finally. Well, he hasn't been exposing himself to danger as much but still.

So, that's the experience of a newb with Dwarf Fortress - just share any more stories from any mode you wish. Because - fun!

 

[Vhite]

Suddenly a red text box appears. Oh shit, what is it this time?

"A large ass twisted into humanoid form..."

And then I went unconscious due to lack of oxygen.

 

[thespyisdead]

my adventure characters have all started as pesants, have all raided nearby forts and castles for free loot, and have all died because i wanted to kill something and fast.

once i created a peasant, raided the nearest fort, as per protocol, and went an a murder spree in a local village, transforming this guy from pesant to a fuckin martial artist in a few (if not one) game days. i finally got bored and went to take on a tower of zombies... died, because one of those buggers got a lucky hit to the head on me

 

[SecondPrize]

I'm not man enough to play Dwarf Fortress, but I did love reading the story of Boatmurdered. Everyone should check that out.

 

[snowpuppy]

This one time I had a dwarf warrior missing a leg. He was legendary in several combat skills and his weapon of choice was a pick axe. He killed three or four bronze colossi before I got bored and left him. He might still be on my hard drive.

 

[Binkan]

ohh DF sure is a great game, it takes time to learn stuff about it but so much random stuff can happen in it.

Played it alot a couple of years back and me and a friend played on the same save so whenever he finished something he sent it to me and then i continued on it and he usually made trap-doors that made the dwarfs fall into pools of lava and such.

I think the most epic thing i experienced in the game was when i had kept on digging so far down that a demon made it up to the surface and assumed the role of a god in one of the churches that was in the city i built, needless to say it was quite hilarious to see a demon do that, not so fun when the demon demanded sacrifices and made the cult murder about 80% of the town and nearby villages.

SP mode is quite fun when Dragons appeared and usually burnt up most of the woods and somehow killing themselves with their own firebreath, or how arrows somehow managed to hit more than one spot on a target.

 

[Piorn]

I played a bit of Fortress mode at University recently, and sometimes some of my friends would ask what's happening and I'd tell them the most recent events from my fortress.

There was this siege engineer who almost got choked to death by a wereelephant, and he only survived because the wereelephant turned back into a peasant and ran away. He was pretty mangled so he got hospitalized.
We started discussing about wereelephants, and if they too would be weak to silver, or if that's exclusive to standard werewolves.
Then he asked me if dwarves can also become werebeasts from werebeast attacks...
Of course, with no military to speak of yet, hilarity ensued.

I think I managed to get it under control, though. Luckily, I had already built several coffins.

 

[ssManae]

I don't remember why she tantrumed. Surely it was just another stupid complaint with little basis in reality. Regardless, she had kicked someone while doing it, and though it calmed her down it was still against the law. She was sentenced to a beating. To prevent tragedy in an already-tense fort, I dropped my militia commander from the sheriff post, and assigned some nobody-peasant with no skills whatsoever and poor physical stats. After chasing down the guilty legendary glassmaker, the new sheriff punched once. Some light bruising, just as planned! And then... the second blow caved her head in. My legendary glassmaker, dead, and the sheriff happy for it. A bridge was constructed over the magma.

The only thing that saved his life was that another dwarf went moody and claimed a glass shop. He did, however, get permanently assigned to refuse hauling only.

 

[piinyouri]

I've tried playing this.
Many many many different times.

Despite that I love the overall idea and amount of depth conceptual, It's just not my thing I'm afraid.

 

[Vern5]

I found this in an old notebook. Seems to be a log I was keeping while playing Dwarf Fortress. Not a lot of detail but pretty interesting in retrospect.

Started with a Dining room, Crafts room, Kitchen and residential area.
First immigrants included a surgeon. Set up a hospital and farm.
Miasma in kitchens. Forgot to put a doors in that place.
Started digging downward. Created cellars and vaults.
Main shaft goes ever downward. Keep finding gems. No metals yet.
More and more immigrants. Got a few hunters now. Making crossbows for them. Going to set up some leatherworks as well.
Struck gold today. Lots of gold. These veins don't seem to stop.
Started smelting gold into coins and crafts. Coins mostly for domestic use. Crafts for outsiders. Very lucrative.
Two artifacts now. One is a wooden ring. Not bad. Other is a solid Gold door decorated with skin. Fucking bizarre.
Shaft leads into a huge cave now. More gold and now lapis lazuli. Signs of cave spiders. Preparing a military now.
Turned original dining room into a barracks and created a better dining room farther in.
A hunter turned up dead today. Not a good sign; that hunter was a mean sonofabitch.
Fishers were ambushed by Goblins. Sent the squad after them. Lost two fishers and one recruit. Another recruit graduated to Mace Dwarf during the fight. Found a replacement for the lost soldier.
Need to prepare for more attacks.
need to expand into that cavern and keep the military nearby in case of spiders

Now if I remember clearly, this is the fortress that I probably flooded while I was trying to build a functional well.

A few things happened before I flooded the fortress.

A forgotten Beast randomly showed up in the underground cavern. It was a slug thing that created fire but was somehow not immune to burning. A few of my hunters shot it with crossbows and then it burned to death in a mushroom fire.
Goblins siege the fortress. I sent out the military to fight. They came back alive but they were all missing a few limbs.
The Goblins got bored and left. I noticed that many of my wounded dwarves died from dehydration (the wounded ones can only drink water rather than the beer they usually use).
I decided to create a well by diverting the river through my fortress. Unfortunately, I don't understand the basics of water pressure and flooded every last part of the fort. Most of the dwarves drowned in the dining room. Some survived because they were outside looting the dead goblins.

 

[Alssadar]

I don't have any dwarf fortress stories (as my computer freezes up during world creation), so I'll get /tg/ on this:
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress
Take the links on the way out, but watch our for Heresy and Promotions!

Spoiler: I also have this:

 

[bigwon]

Haven't quite found the mood to play adventure or dwarf mode, but sometimes I'll just fart around with the 'arena' mode were you just spawn things and have them fight each other.

For me it was haunted ghosts, insane people and limbs flying every were. I had a wrestler who always seemed to have a knack for flipping people around by there right pinkey finger....amusing stuff..

I remember lurking the official game forums and reading about a fellow who created a system to farm mermaids. They've got some good stories over there if your interested in them.

 

[The Madman]

It was to be my glorious magnum opus at the time; a testament to my growing skill at Dwarf Fortress and the creative strives I had begun to make. A massive Fortress carved into the mountainside, it's main entrance a huge fortified gateway carved from the mountains own stone, framed by giant statues of the Dwarven Kings of old to either side that would stare down upon visitors and immigrants alike as a demonstration of my fortress sheer power and wealth. From that impressive entrance you'd walk forward into a cavern so massive it makes Moria seem like childs play. A huge central chamber whos walls are dotted with the windows of 15+ levels worth of Dwarven habitations, all designed and built so that everything revolved around this giant central room. And there, in the center of that room, was to be the biggest Dwarf created waterfall possible. An entire river redirected and pumped up to a huge reservoir lake that would feed this waterfall, providing a centrepiece for this Dwarven central hive.

The cavern and entrance I had mostly managed to finish. A lot was still in the works but the main framework was there. The Waterfall however I completed almost right away so that I could use its reservoirs to also water the farms that lined the top levels of this fortress. From above it would plummet down 15+ levels in freefall before being gathered in another reservoir beneath the feet of the chambers bottom level. Iron bars and railings keeping Dwarves from getting too close or being swept away. Meanwhile that second reservoir fed into the underground cave-system I had discovered and could be re-directed at the flip of a switch to flood the passageways leading from those untamed underground lands, ensuring nothing from bellow could even hope to get up to my Dwarves main chamber. In fact everything was controlled from one chamber near the roof of the place where a series of levers could alter the flow and direction of water (Feed the farms for example or perhaps change the underground flow into the defensive one just mentioned. Another switch could close it off entirely and stop the waterfall if need be.).

Everything worked great! Probably my proudest achievement at the time and even looking back at it now I'm impressed by how well everything worked... I say worked because one Dwarf destroyed it all.

Driven mad by the loss of his wife during a goblin ambush patrolling the lands outside, he'd been wandering the fortress causing all sorts of havok. My sheriff beating and imprisoning him for a time didn't help his mood either, although he had quieted down. Quieted enough that I didn't even notice as he made his way to the water control room. I didn't even notice when switches were pulled and then smashed, the entire place destroyed. I only noticed when the bottom levels of my fortress started to flood.

I could go into the details of what mistakes I now know I made in designing the waterfall, but needless to say by the time I noticed it was too late. The bottom levels were also where a lot of my storage was kept, including the parts that would be needed to repair the now broken levers and stop rising water. No much more tragic was seeing the individual Dwarves trapped in their chambers as the waters rose, slowly seeping around doorways but leaving the Dwarves just enough time to panic and cry as the hallways outside were completely submerged, trapping them there. The water rose higher and higher, trapping and killing the unfortunate while driving the panicked and grief stricken survivors higher till finally the water reached the level of my main entrance and came pouring out those half-finished battlements and under the gaze of the watching Dwarven kings.

With those that survived I might have gone on. The farms and much of the rest of the fortress was high enough up to have not been flooded. But the entire main chamber had turned into a ring of rooms surrounding a big lake, with stairway leading down to the flooded levels where Dwarven and animal bodies alike lay trapped in closed off rooms full of wealth. A ghostly dead reminder of one Dwarves grief and the murderous turn it had taken.

No, I abandoned the place after that. I couldn't bear to see what remained of my once glorious beginning. I like to think it went on the become a tale of warning and danger. Of a ghostly Dwarven spirit that still wanders the flooded hallways grieving for his dead wife while the spirits of his victims live an eternity of torment in those tiny rooms where they'd waited to die, knowing no rescue was coming and watching as the water slowly rose around them. Maybe someday someone else would mine up from the cave system bellow and allow the water to drain properly, giving access once again to those drowned rooms of commerce and their amazing wealth.

But it would be me.