Starting the Game

Jump into Dwarf Fortress with this quickstart guide. Learn essential UI concepts, world generation, embarking, and building a minimal fortress to survive and thrive.

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.

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.

From Caravan to Happy Dwarves - 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

• 1Common UI Concepts
  • 1.1About key symbols
  • 1.2Menu navigation and selection
  • 1.3Options menu
• 2World Generation
• 3Tutorial
• 4Embark
  • 4.1Choosing a Good Site
  • 4.2Skills and Equipment
• 5A Minimal Fortress
  • 5.1Getting your bearings
  • 5.2Controlling Your Dwarves
    • 5.2.1Labor and work details
  • 5.3Strike The Earth!
    • 5.3.1Additional miners
  • 5.4Delving Secure Lodgings
    • 5.4.1Room dimensions
    • 5.4.2Mining safety
    • 5.4.3Stockpiles
    • 5.4.4Stairways
  • 5.5Temporary Meeting Area
  • 5.6Refuse
  • 5.7Food
    • 5.7.1Farming
    • 5.7.2Emergency food sources
      • 5.7.2.1Plant gathering
      • 5.7.2.2Butchering
  • 5.8Building material
    • 5.8.1Woodcutting
  • 5.9Drinks
  • 5.10Pasture
  • 5.11Designing your first fortress
  • 5.12Workshops
    • 5.12.1"Where did I build that _ _ _ _?"
  • 5.13Brewing
  • 5.14"Garbage" Dumping
  • 5.15Trading
    • 5.15.1Trade Depot
    • 5.15.2Producing for export
    • 5.15.3Trading
    • 5.15.4What to buy
    • 5.15.5Troubleshooting
  • 5.16Migrants
  • 5.17Bedrooms
    • 5.17.1Location
    • 5.17.2Layout
    • 5.17.3Building
  • 5.18Nobles and Administrators
    • 5.18.1Manager & Broker
    • 5.18.2Bookkeeper
    • 5.18.3Offices (Studies)
  • 5.19Furniture
  • 5.20Dining and Food Prep Area
  • 5.21Placing Furniture
  • 5.22Meeting Hall
  • 5.23Checking Supplies
  • 5.24Brewing and Cooking
  • 5.25Storage Space
• 6Beyond a Minimal Fortress
  • 6.1Traps
  • 6.2Guard Animals
  • 6.3Drawbridge
  • 6.4Metal Industry
    • 6.4.1Wood Burning
    • 6.4.2Mining
    • 6.4.3Fuel
    • 6.4.4Forging
  • 6.5Gemcutting and Trinkets
  • 6.6Sticking to the Plan
  • 6.7Wealth and Invasion
• 7Military
• 8What Next?
• 9Feedback

Common UI Concepts

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 fi