Embarking

Learn the basics of starting a new fortress in Dwarf Fortress. This guide covers choosing a site, managing your dwarves, and setting up essential resources for survival.

This is a quickstart guide for dwarf fortress mode for those who have never played before and quickly want to jump in head-first.

If you are looking to learn adventure mode instead, see the Adventure mode quick start guide.

For installation instructions, see Installation.

For starting the game using the default Embark preperation, see Play Now!

For a basic "How to" for military, see Military quickstart.

Also see Tutorials for more detailed tutorials that people have submitted.

Before you get started...

Always remember that losing is fun! Be prepared to lose a few fortresses before you get all the way through this guide – it can be easy to accidentally kill the entire fortress while learning. But remember: losing means that next time, you'll remember how you lost. In a big way, Dwarf Fortress uses the principle of learning from one's mistakes.

So, you want to play Dwarf Fortress, but you have no idea what to do. That's understandable; in Dwarf Fortress you can really do anything you like - it's a huge, complex, and totally open-ended game. But in order to do anything, first you need a sustainable fortress. It turns out that doing this is not as hard as you might think.

Enlarge - This is a flowchart showing approximately what sequence of actions players usually take when starting up a new fort. Feel free to ignore it if you want. It's not necessary to refer to this to understand the rest of the guide, but by the time you finish the guide it will probably all make sense.

Contents

• Common UI Concepts
  • About key symbols
  • Menu navigation and selection
  • Options menu
• World Generation
• Tutorial
• Embark
  • Choosing a Good Site
  • Skills and Equipment
• A Minimal Fortress
  • Getting your bearings
  • Controlling Your Dwarves
    • Labor and work details
  • Strike The Earth!
    • Additional miners
  • Delving Secure Lodgings
    • Room dimensions
    • Mining safety
    • Stockpiles
    • Stairways
  • Temporary Meeting Area
  • Refuse
  • Food
    • Farming
    • Emergency food sources
      • Plant gathering
      • Butchering
  • Building material
    • Woodcutting
  • Drinks
  • Pasture
  • Designing your first fortress
  • Workshops
    • "Where did I build that ___?"
  • Brewing
  • "Garbage" Dumping
  • Trading
    • Trade Depot
    • Producing for export
    • Trading
    • What to buy
    • Troubleshooting
  • Migrants
  • Bedrooms
    • Location
    • Layout
    • Building
  • Nobles and Administrators
    • Manager & Broker
    • Bookkeeper
    • Offices (Studies)
  • Furniture
  • Dining and Food Prep Area
  • Placing Furniture
  • Meeting Hall
  • Checking Supplies
  • Brewing and Cooking
  • Storage Space
• Beyond a Minimal Fortress
  • Traps
  • Guard Animals
  • Drawbridge
  • Metal Industry
    • Wood Burning
    • Mining
    • Fuel
    • Forging
  • Gemcutting and Trinkets
  • Sticking to the Plan
  • Wealth and Invasion
• Military
• What Next?
• Feedback

Keeping Up

While the guide contains many links, you may still need to look something up. Refer to the Fortress Mode Reference Guide or use the wiki search function. Also, don't hesitate to ask for help if you can't find what you're looking for.