
(Very) highly skilled players can create a functional fortress on an evil glacier, but for now, let's stick to dwarf (and newbie) friendly environments. Hold down Shift while doing this to move more rapidly.Ĭhoosing a good embark site is crucial for beginners. Use ↑ ↓ ← → to move the region and world cursors around. This highlighted square is what will become your play area after you embark (This means that you cannot do or see anything outside of this area during your game). In the local map area there will be a highlighted embark region that you can move around with u m k h and resize with U M K H. The Local Map on the left will show a zoomed-in view of the part of the region indicated by the cursor in the region map. The one in the middle is the Region Map which will show you a zoomed-in view of the part of the world indicated by the cursor in the world map. The map you see on the right is the World Map which will show you the whole world. Select Start Playing from the main menu, then select Dwarf Fortress. Luckily the basic version of this process is rather simple, and doesn't usually take too long unless your computer is a bit outdated or the world's history is set to Long.įor your first game, generate a new world using the Create New World! option in the main menu with the following options:Įmbarking is the process of choosing a site, outfitting your initial dwarves, and sending them on their way. There is no "default" or "standard" world. Unlike many games, the world that your game takes place in will always be procedurally randomly generated by you or someone else. The first thing you will need to do is generate a new world. "regionXX") before saving, save the game normally, remove the "regionXX" folder and rename the copy. Alternatively, you can make a copy of your region folder in the (DF)/data/save folder (e.g. Do not attempt this while saving, as your save folder may become corrupted.
#Dwarf fortress embark strategies windows
Players who wish to quit and leave their previous save unchanged may manually kill the Dwarf Fortress process using the "die" command in DFHack, the Windows Task Manager (you might then have to end the process dumprep.exe), or the Unix "kill" command (on some systems, ctrl- \ in the terminal running DF accomplishes the same thing). Notably lacking is an "exit without save" option. when you know your fortress is doomed and want to start again) – see abandon for more information). Your fort and most items will remain, however, so this can be useful in extreme circumstances (e.g.

So t means "press the 't' key without the shift key" and T means "hold down shift and press the 't' key".

In order to save space, Shift+ t will be written as T. Most documents on the wiki use key symbols that look like t to indicate what keys are used for an operation. Also, don't hesitate to ask for help if you can't find answers on the wiki. Refer to the Fortress Mode Reference Guide or use the wiki search function. While the guide contains many links, you may still need to look something up.

1.2 Cursor movement, menu selection, and navigation.
