Confused, Overwhelmed, and Frustrated

[White Rhino PSO]

Despite a friend's warnings that I would probably end up feeling overwhelmed and frustrated - since that's what the game had done to me years ago - I recently bought the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress. I had watched the first three parts of Quill18's "Let's Learn" series on the game, and I thought that would give me a good handle on how to start what would hopefully become a successful fortress.

3.5 hours later, and I'm pretty much back where I was with the free version.

I found a decent looking location according to his suggestions: a flux layer with no aquifers, and I even made sure to find one that had enough vegitation that I wouldn't have difficulty finding trees. I broke ground, dug down several levels, and then started shaping my stockpile and workshop level. That part was simple enough.

I appointed a Manager so I could start using the Work Orders function, but it didn't seem like it was working right. I'd put in an order for 8 beds, and the game would eventually tell me that the order had been completed. But when I went to place them, I could only place 3 before the game told me I didn't have any more beds to install. Later on, the reverse happened with tables; I'd put in an order for 10 tables, watch my dwarves install every one of them, and afterward notice there were still 3 in my stockpile.

I dug out one floor to use for farming before remembering that I would need something like sand or soil to plant my crops. The small plot I designated on the surface presumably needs to be fertilized before I can grow anything in it, but my dwarves don't seem interested in doing any of the work necessary to fulfill the ash / potash orders I put in.

In a mad dash to find some natural caverns that I could use for farming, I sank my main stairwell all the way down to level 20, but still haven't had any luck. The process listed on the wiki for creating "muddy stone" seems overly convoluted for someone this new to the game. Meanwhile, my dwarves are rapidly running out of things to drink, but nobody wants to gather any of the surface plants I designated for pickup months ago. All of them seem to be more interested in slowly hauling chunks of stone up forty flights of stairs in my desperate attempt to find fertile soil.

The moment that made me decide to take a break was when I noticed that the population had grown to 11 dwarves, seemingly without the game deciding to let me know when the latest batch of migrants showed up.

I honestly don't know where to go from here. I get that "losing is fun" is meant to be a big part of the experience, but losing because the game wasn't designed to explain most of its own mechanics is more than a little frustrating - and honestly doesn't feel fair. A lot of the tips and features that Quill18 talked about in his series were things that one of my friend said they'd never heard of even though he had watched multiple other videos. These aren't "what's the best ratio of boilers to steam engines in Factorio" kinds of details, these are core mechanics of the game that just aren't being told to the player.

I want to enjoy this game, but right now I feel like I wasted $30 to relive the same frustrating, overwhelming experience I had with the free version several years ago.

[['w']]

Frustration tolerance, I was pulling my hair out until I realized that I missed a single click on a certain arrow to make my lorries work.

I only know if you go directly to the workshop and say build bed,bed,bed,... and you lack the resources they will cancel all following beds

You can set an order to build as long as I only have 4 beds or less

splashing water on stone = muddy stone, don't cook plants or you will loose seeds, brewing them or eating them raw gives you seeds, if you got too many items in your storage or people, animals on your map the game might constantly crash

[McFuzz]

Threads like these make me want to hit the "Uhhhh game EASY!?!?" threads over the head.

Sorry you're having a tough time with it. It is decidedly not for everyone.

There's answers to everything in your post though.
-Sometimes buildable items aren't available until a little bit after they were constructed, as a dwarf might be carrying it, which removes it from the list.
-The furniture you were looking for was probably still in the workshops and hadn't been moved to the stockpile yet
-You don't need to fertilize before things can be farmed. If there were no options, your aboveground farm was on mountain biome, where nothing can be grown. Don't bother with fertillizing, it is extremely low priority.
-You don't NEED to use the caverns for farming - That's actually quite a critical mis-step for a new player to breach the caverns ASAP, as they're extremely dangerous. Don't worry about muddy stone either. Just use underground soil and grow plump helmets - it still works just fine, despite the warning that it's not optimal.
-Don't set stone stockpiles while there are better jobs to be doing. And don't make all stockpiles (if you do, turn off stone/wood/refuse, or they'll flood your dwarves working priorities and overfill the stockpile)

-Migrants, yeah, it's a problem. The game needs pausing on migrant waves to come back. There was a notification on the left, but it's easy to miss with no sound or pausing.

[Dukey]

You can farm on clay as well!
Actually i never had a spot where i did not had any clay at all. Just plant Plump Helmets, disallow them for being used in the Kitchen - This is important as only brewing will give you spores back for replanting and you should be good to go.

I usually set the work order as "Make 50 if less than 150 Drinks in stock."

[Diarmuhnd]

Every time migrants arrive you get a pop warning on the left side, where ALL the other alerts pop up.

It seems to me that you really need to watch an entire dedicated tutorial series, not a 'lets play with tutorial tagged ontop'.

I recommend you watch Blind s 31 "quick tuorials" in his play list , as well as longer tutorial videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYw2go17SqI&list=PLcOt9GXNrkgiFBTcz_kMycm6fvnYsn9XG

And there are many others by Nookrium, DasTactic Twisted Logic and many, many others.

Go learn, then go dig a hole. Its not that hard, It only took me about 20ish hrs to lean the basics. And the 100+ hrs since have been fun.

Good luck Holler if you need more links or help

[Dukey]

If you are quick enough, install a drawbridge, raise that thing and when they are standing in front of it.. remove them from existance

[McFuzz]

Sand, clay, soil, it's all farmable and almost everywhere. Ignore fertillizing, ignore the need for mud, ignore the caverns, ignore aboveground farming. Learn basic underground farming, then expand outward when you are ready.

An underground farm can be set up in under a minute, you were engaged in a self-orchestrated psy-op where you convinced yourself that, because the game appears outwardly complex then this must be a difficult step.

Nope. Dig dirt, build farm, plump helmets, eat forever.

[Grimbot]

In addition to what some others have said, I think you're taking in too much at once. You picked a decent location, and if you're not actively at war with anyone, you should have some time before dwarves start dropping dead. It seems like part of the problem could be that you've given them so many tasks that the individual tasks take forever to complete.

Maybe start by accepting that you're going to fail, and just decide to get one of the things on your list done. Maybe just build the farms and get them running and let everyone drink your booze stockpile and river water until that's done. Then make a well on the surface. Then make some beds and place them in a chamber underground.

I have many hundreds of hours in this game, and the fort I'm building now is the first time I've ever dug into clothing and dying cloth. I have yet to make a successful pump stack and I've never successfully stripped a single prisoner.

Granted, the learning is part of the fun for me. If it's too frustrating, there are always other games out there...

[StarRekt]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zhma0p/lurklurklurkposts_new_players_visual_guide_for/

This reddit post should help you

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by White Rhino PSO:

Despite a friend's warnings that I would probably end up feeling overwhelmed and frustrated - since that's what the game had done to me years ago - I recently bought the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress. I had watched the first three parts of Quill18's "Let's Learn" series on the game, and I thought that would give me a good handle on how to start what would hopefully become a successful fortress.

3.5 hours later, and I'm pretty much back where I was with the free version.

...I'd put in an order for 8 beds, and the game would eventually tell me that the order had been completed. ... I'd put in an order for 10 tables, watch my dwarves install every one of them, and afterward notice there were still 3 in my stockpile.

...The small plot I designated on the surface presumably needs to be fertilized before I can grow anything in it, but my dwarves don't seem interested in doing any of the work necessary to fulfill the ash / potash orders I put in.

In a mad dash to find some natural caverns that I could use for farming, I sank my main stairwell all the way down to level 20,... Meanwhile, my dwarves are rapidly running out of things to drink, but nobody wants to gather any of the surface plants I designated for pickup months ago. All of them seem to be more interested in slowly hauling chunks of stone up forty flights of stairs in my desperate attempt to find fertile soil.

The moment that made me decide to take a break was when I noticed that the population had grown to 11 dwarves, seemingly without the game deciding to let me know when the latest batch of migrants showed up....

I want to enjoy this game, but right now I feel like I wasted $30 to relive the same frustrating, overwhelming experience I had with the free version several years ago.

...when I noticed that the population had grown to 11 dwarves...

I can tell you exactly what you ran afoul of... :)

Notice all the stuffs you were doing, ordering, making.

Then, notice that you "grew" to eleven Dorfs.


You were doing too much at one time and your Dorfs didn't have the time to do all of it. THAT is what happened.

See my longwinded TLDR types-too-much post, here, for some small number of "tips:"

https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370/discussions/0/3727323721762375239/

OK..

Start off slow. There's little reason to go careening off into the depths, immediately. Why? If ANYTHING threatening shows up, you're probably dead anyway. Most enemies aren't going to notice you until you start Trading or rumor of your wealth and population gets out. (40 pop, maybe? Dunno, the triggers are listed somewhere out there and also in your Options settings. Check them out.)

Get a guide on the Early game and first things to do on Embark. In what I wrote, above, make those changes to your Standing Orders and, potentially, customize your Job Roles when you get a bit more familiar with them.

Use. The. Wiki.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/

Look up everything.

Your frustration is simply because you don't yet know what to prioritize, which is completely understandable, and there is a lack of general game "info" and feedback in the UI - You have to hunt for what's available and the UI, even though "upgraded," sucks rocks... It does and it's just that simple... It should get better and the devs have someone new that's going to help, there, one hopes. :)

Don't fear Light Aquifers. Even so, always try to be sure you've got a nearby freshwater Stream, at least, so you can get clean water AND have Fisherdwarves fishing it, providing meat/food and usually Shells for making into early-game jewelry and for decorating items. (Skilling up a Craftsdorf on cheap Shell jewelry is a good idea.)

This is not just a game that focuses on one of its included genres... It's "all of those and more." It reaches past the spectrum of a genre-specific game. The game even has 4x Conquest features in it and exploration, too. It's got detailed and interconnected behavior sets, attributes, materials, even temperature and just about every living thing has a multitude of body parts, internal organs, individual eyeballs and eyelids and individual darn teeth in their heads. Go ahead, go look it up if you don't believe me.

This version of Dwarf Fortress is more accessible and easier to learn as a result. DF is not a hard game to play, but it is a hard game to master and a lot of knowlege will need to be accumulated as you play if you want to avoid frustration.

If you do not want to learn about the different mechanics as you play and don't want to refer to the wiki or guides or ask questions and the like, you will be very frequently frustrated. This is a game you play while you've got the game manual open, but this game doesn't have a manual and not even the developers know what sorts of interactions are going to happen in any specific playthrough. You may be assaulted by were-lizards or an evil faction may plot against yours and send in spies and conspired with your own dorfs to steel your stuffs... Ancient monsters could just be on their way to the store when they happen to cross your fortress's tile. You may find FUN in the depths or your fortress could become embroiled in a civil war..

You can't write a manual for these kinds of things. The best that can be done is the Wiki and getting info from Vets/Experienced players. (I'm not a Vet and only barely experienced. I just tend to accumulate info/bits/knowledge kind of quickly, but can make mistakes too!)

[ARRATHON]

To get the game to pause when migrants arrive open the dwarf fortress/data/init directory, open the Announcement.txt file.
Find these two lines [D_MIGRANTS_ARRIVAL:A_D:D_D] [D_MIGRANTS_ARRIVAL:A_D:D_D] add :BOX to the end so it look like this [D_MIGRANTS_ARRIVAL:A_D:D_D:BOX]
This will make an announcement appear in a box and pause the game.
There are some basic instructions at the top of the file.

[Boshedo]

Originally posted by Diarmuhnd:

Every time migrants arrive you get a pop warning on the left side, where ALL the other alerts pop up.

It seems to me that you really need to watch an entire dedicated tutorial series, not a 'lets play with tutorial tagged ontop'.

I recommend you watch Blind s 31 "quick tuorials" in his play list , as well as longer tutorial videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYw2go17SqI&list=PLcOt9GXNrkgiFBTcz_kMycm6fvnYsn9XG

And there are many others by Nookrium, DasTactic Twisted Logic and many, many others.

Go learn, then go dig a hole. Its not that hard, It only took me about 20ish hrs to lean the basics. And the 100+ hrs since have been fun.

Good luck :craftsdwarf::urist::mead: Holler if you need more links or help

I can concur with this. Nookrium is fun to watch. He interacts with his audience and I could seriously fall asleep to him talking lol. I've watched him and DasTactic but sometimes DasTactic can get sidetracked. Blind is also good but he goes to fast when he's explaining things.

[White Rhino PSO]

Thank you all for replying! I'll do my best to respond to everything.

One thing I saw multiple people saying is that I can use any kind of subsurface soil, dirt, sand, or clay. The problem here is that I couldn't find any of that. Even a single layer below the surface seemed to be nothing but stone, which is why I looked into muddy stone or natural caverns to save me. While I'm fairly sure the embarkation screen mentioned some sort of soil presence, maybe I'm wrong..

The "sometimes crafted items are still in the workshop inventory, or actively being hauled by dwarves" thing makes sense. I had a pretty massive stockpile going, but it was quickly filling with chunks of material; if the chunks were keeping my dwarves from moving the doors and beds into the stockpile, then that might be part of what was going wrong there.

I'm definitely going to make it so migrants cause a game-pausing announcement box to pop up. Hopefully the developers will add a "notifications" tab to the settings menu that easily lets players turn that sort of feature on more directly.

I'm definitely going to give the game another try, but I might wait until tomorrow. And again, thanks to everyone for replying to my post.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by White Rhino PSO:

One thing I saw multiple people saying is that I can use any kind of subsurface soil, dirt, sand, or clay. The problem here is that I couldn't find any of that. Even a single layer below the surface seemed to be nothing but stone, which is why I looked into muddy stone or natural caverns to save me. While I'm fairly sure the embarkation screen mentioned some sort of soil presence, maybe I'm wrong..

The "sometimes crafted items are still in the workshop inventory, or actively being hauled by dwarves" thing makes sense. I had a pretty massive stockpile going, but it was quickly filling with chunks of material; if the chunks were keeping my dwarves from moving the doors and beds into the stockpile, then that might be part of what was going wrong there.

It sounds like you're in a mountain biome, due to the aboveground farm having no plants and there being very little soil. Depending on the exact terrain, some have a layer of soil/clay/silt/sand and some do not. Because you can't embark wholly on a mountain, SOMEWHERE on your map is soil lol. But if you have any ponds, or a river, you can intentionally flood a room then drain it, to make farmable ground. That's a mid-level engineering problem though, and would be easier if there was just dirt. If you have trees on your map, there'll be soil beneath them. Farm there til you find a better spot, even in the worst case scenario.
My bet is that it's just a problem with 'seeing' it yet. But that's okay. You don't have your dwarf eyes yet. You'll get them.

Don't use "All" stockpiles. Ever. There are 'features' that make refuse rot items they share a stockpile with. And they're just wildly inefficient due to some resources just taking up more stockpile space than most others, like stone, wood, and furniture.
Use the different categories, then make customs for certain places when you're comfortable.

[burtod]

Thanks for not giving up!

too many jobs and not enough labor can cause all sorts of problems, too. Like, if I really really need planting or gathering done, I will restrict hauling to a select few so that the farmers can do their jobs. I will also restrict hauling to Only Food Hauling sometimes if I need to move a lot of plants around.

If you are trying to brew drinks, but you never get any produced, it could be a shortage of barrels. Make a bunch of extra barrels because stockpiles that use them also like to keep an empty barrel reserved. Every barrel that contains a plant or some seeds or whatever is one less for alcohol. I now embark with a variety of 2 point meats, and cook them all into easy biscuit meals, for extra barrels.

Also, if the log ingredient for your beds are being hauled, then the build bed job won't find the log.

Subsurface soil will be marked on embark, but the embark rectangle can have multiple biomes within it. You embark might have shown a forest or a grassland with soil, but you actually started digging at a mountain with no soil. I have also had some unlucky spots with a stone layer interrupting my soil layer, but usually leaving behind soil floors when mined away.

Have FUN!

My last fort died because I exposed a deep underground cavern. Some SPOILER exploded, and revealed two Clowns and one whatever-the-code-word-is-for-the-guardians. The two clowns easily killed the guardian, and then an exploring monster hunter visitor, and then one clown proceeded to wipe out my entire 16 dwarf population. I did save-scum from a previous savegame afterwards, but man, it was surprising and exciting to see.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by White Rhino PSO:

Thank you all for replying! I'll do my best to respond to everything.

One thing I saw multiple people saying is that I can use any kind of subsurface soil, dirt, sand, or clay. The problem here is that I couldn't find any of that. Even a single layer below the surface seemed to be nothing but stone, which is why I looked into muddy stone or natural caverns to save me. While I'm fairly sure the embarkation screen mentioned some sort of soil presence, maybe I'm wrong..

You'll generally see a Light Soil or Deep Soil note when looking at your Embark during that phase.

However, as with all things DF... Nobody said you had to survive your first five seconds in a Dwarf Fortress embark. That's no joke, no matter what your Settings are. Even by toggling everything nasty "off" that you can touch, you can still be eaten by an angry alligator. They're just mundane beasties. Heck, on my latest, most successful, embark, I had to fight was nearly a "war" against the native population of Yaks. (Culminating in "The Great Yak War," started by three children beating on a Yak cow, not long after.)

It's entirely possible you just missed, passed over, or haven't reached the various "Soil" types, yet. It happens. Your overall Biome choice is going to have a big effect on how that appears in your play. (Mountains are tough.)

I'm definitely going to make it so migrants cause a game-pausing announcement box to pop up. Hopefully the developers will add a "notifications" tab to the settings menu that easily lets players turn that sort of feature on more directly.

After awhile, you really wont' care that much. Just keep an eye out and you'll easily notice the first few and ignore the rest for the most part.

I'm definitely going to give the game another try, but I might wait until tomorrow. And again, thanks to everyone for replying to my post.

Relax.

Watch some Let's Plays, Streams, or Guide/Tute vids and have a sandwich or something, There is no rush. You can accumulate some good experience in the necessary skills by watching others "do." :) Do that. Eat ice-cream. Ice-cream solves all problems. It's mathematically provable and is a maxim. Geometric law, even... Probably.