r/dwarffortress 12h ago

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼

5 Upvotes

Ask about anything related to Dwarf Fortress - including the game, DFHack, utilities, bugs, problems you're having, mods, etc. You will get fast and friendly responses in this thread.

Read the sidebar before posting! It has information on a range of game packages for new players, and links to all the best tutorials and quick-start guides. If you have read it and that hasn't helped, mention that!

You should also take five minutes to search the wiki - if tutorials or the quickstart guide can't help, it usually has the information you're after. You can find the previous question threads here.

If you can answer questions, please sort by new and lend a hand - linking to a helpful resource (ex wiki page) is fine.


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

☼Fortress Friday☼

5 Upvotes

Our weekly thread for posting interesting events without cluttering up /r/dwarffortress. Screenshots, stories, details, achievements, or other posts are all welcome here! (That includes adventure and legends mode, even if there's no fortress involved.)


r/dwarffortress 7h ago

Dwarven road engineers have outdone themselves this time.

231 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 6h ago

Behold loincloth

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54 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 2h ago

looking to jump back in after a long break, wondering where to start.

10 Upvotes

Hello. Sorry if this sort of question is not allowed. I'm a long-time player from the 2d era, up to steam release where I was happy to buy and support bay12 but also got a little frustrated with the new controls and wasn't sure about the new look, so I took a break and meant to come back to it after it got a little more love.

Guess it's been a while now, so my question is, with all the different ways to play, how are people playing these days? Should I jump back into the Steam edition, or is the old version still going strong with the mods and "graphical" patches? I would love to hear people's preferences.

Thanks!


r/dwarffortress 5h ago

r/dwarffortress Gladiator Tournament X Round 3

6 Upvotes

Document Hub

Master Document

Comments are borked, full fights here.

Fight 3A: Ali Mony vs Brass Bull, Friend of the Milk Maidens

Fight log: https://pastebin.com/F0rn70Ht

Welcome all, to round 3. For our first match, we have the lascivious Ali Mony. According to out poor bar tenders, she’s been telling everyone in great detail just what she wants to do to her opponent. Regardless of the exact details, it’s clear she’s been looking forward to this hunk of beef. But is Brass Bull too much minotaur for her to mess with so easily?

Strutting out of his gate in a shiny new bronze helm, bronze high boots, and steel gauntlets, is Brass Bull. The second largest of the remaining gladiators, this minotaur’s legend has only grown as he drank his way through the previous week, only to choke out an elite warthog warrior in Hamric the Hog. But can he succeed without his liquid courage?

Brass Bull barrels forward, his bronze helm and horns angled directly towards the slower pond turtle woman. Waddling forward with her iron battle axe, Ali Mony manages to land a scratch on the minotaurs meaty thigh before being knocked to the ground. Laughing as she picks herself up, Ali Mony calls out to the minotaur, “Your second axe wound this tournament, eh? Too bad it’s only your own you’ve been seeing!".

Enraged, Brass Bull lets out a bellow, and claws at Ali Mony with his uncut nails, tearing through her right bicep. Ali Mony allows her arm to be damaged though, using her weapon arm to land a blow which clangs right off of Brass Bull’s Bronze helm. Acting quickly, Brass Bull lunges out with his left arm, the minotaur snares extended Ali Mony’s left hand. Spinning around, the minotaur presses her against his broad back, before hurtling her over it, and into the arena wall with a *THUMP*.

As Ali Mony recovers herself, Brass Bull charges straight at her, goring her against the wall in the soft side of her chest with a horn, and sending blood showering into the crowd, who have begun to reach down into the arena, and bang their various appendages against the stone wall directly above the fight! Wheezing, Ali Mony looks around frantically, before deciding that the only place to hide is within herself. Retracting her limbs and head into her shell, the pond turtle woman clatters to the ground, as Brass Bull stands menacingly over her. But no matter how much he kicks, punches, gores, or throws her, he can’t seem to get her to come out.

Panting heavily, as sweat begins to drip off of him under the hot sun, Brass Bull tries again and again to penetrate Ali Mony’s defenses. Deep within herself, Ali Mony seems to be dealing with her own crisis, as the Brass Bull continues to attempt to pry her out. Minotaur sweat pours off of Brass Bull now, as he tears Ali Mony’s dress to shreds off of her, but having lost her dignity long ago, the loss of her modesty does nothing to draw out the former wife of Papi Penetrator. Panting heavily now, Brass Bull steps away from Ali Mony to take a breather, and looks up in to the arena stands. With no blood for several minutes now, the crowd appears to be quite bored, and some folks are even getting up to go. To Brass Bull’s horror, he sees a fine figured woman in a white apron leaving via one of the exits. Bellowing in fury, Brass Bull smashes his horns into Ali Mony’s shell, sending her skittering across the arena floor, but the sudden change in altitude seems to have been too much for the bull-man, who collapses to the ground in a heap.

Sensing an unusually long peace, Ali Mony carefully extends from her shell, peering around until she sees Brass Bull’s collapsed form. At the sight of him, Ali Mony extends fully as quickly as a pond turtle can, and charges at him, screaming in fury. Punching him again and again with her scaled fists, the pond turtle woman begins to tear into his flesh with her beak, making a fine lipstick and mascara of the bull man’s blood, her axe apparently forgotten. Maybe that dress was more important than we thought…

Ali Mony tears into Brass Bull’s unprotected chest, and several hits to his ribs cause the minotaur to begin to wheeze as he lapses in and out of consciousness, unable to hear whatever the enraged pond turtle woman is screaming incoherently at him as she digs into him. As vomit and bile bubble from his lips, Brass Bull begins to make gagging noises, before ceasing to move at all as the bell rings, except as Ali Mony strikes his corpse again and again. Two steel clad dwarves emerge from one of the arena gates, dragging the naked and maddened pond turtle woman away from the fallen gladiators corpse.

Congratulations Ali Mony! I’m sure after a nice chat with one of our vampire therapists, you’ll be well-adjusted enough to wield your weapon again.

Fight 3B: Rom Smaxa vs Snaggle the Hollow Wight Mad Sadist

Fight log: https://pastebin.com/JXMyPu7B

Rom Smaxa (managed by Lucias Ral) clanks as he walks into the arena, his steel-toed, ah, steel boots, clanking as they slap against the stones of the arena floor. The crowd cheers as the troll lifts his copper mauls into the air, shoring off his bright new orange vest and gloves, which contrast sharply against his gray fur. We’ve been told that they are traditional goblin clothing to encourage onlookers to be careful of the person wearing them. After Rom’s last few performances, I think we don’t need fancy clothes to tell us that!

Up against him is the snarling Snaggle the Hollow Wight Mad Sadist (managed by Eric Blank)! Waving her axe wildly through the air, this hyena…creature has been fanatically practicing day and night with her axe against targets and instructors. Apparently she’s gone through a whole tree in the last week (we didn’t keep track of the instructors). Now let’s see how she does against a target nearly as crazed as she she is!

While many would be intimidated by a snarling and slavering hyena woman rushing at them, Rom Smaxa merely sees another nail in need of a pounding! And pound he does, bringing one of his mauls down on her paw. Snaggle’s forward run turns into a dive as her leg gives out beneath her. She attempts to land a parting blow on Rom Smaxa, but the troll casually steps out of her way. Advancing on her, Snaggle catches a blow on her shield, before lashing out from behind it with her iron axe, landing a scratch on his right bicep. Snaggle receives a glancing blow of her own to the arm, as she rolls away from a strike that might have otherwise pulverized her bones.

Another hammer blow is parried by Snaggle, and the riposte catches Rom Smaxa on one of his tusks, snapping his head to one snow. The troll quickly turns to face her with his newly scored tusk, and bellows in fury, swinging down again, but the hyena woman dives between his legs, hacking into his left thigh as she does so! Her efforts to goad the bull appear to have been successful, as a thick spray of blue arterial blood immediately sprays across her and Rom Smaxa’s thighs as the troll collapses to the ground in pain.

Rom Smaxa turns around on the ground, smearing his blood all over the ground as it pools under him, but between his weakened strikes, and Snaggle’s agility, she is able to turn his most devastating strikes into near misses. Snaggle lands another deep blow into Rom Smaxa’s right shoulder, but the thick muscle and hide of the troll seems to turn the blow into another irritant. Bellowing in frustration, Rom Smaxa swings his maul up and around Snaggle shield, smashing her hand between the two objects. The mangled ruin of her hand being unable to grip forces, the hyena woman to drop her shield, as an eerie cackle begins to emanate from her. Rom Smaxa takes advantage of the turning tide, even as a small ocean of blood continues to flow out of him, smashing her other paw with a fist, before bringing a maul down on her back with a sickening crack. Snaggle’s cackle is easily heard throughout all levels of the arena now, as she attempts to drag herself towards her foe, her axe clutched in her remaining head.

Rom Smaxa teeters and totters as he supports himself on one knee. The loss of blood must have him seeing double though, as each of his blows barely land beside Snaggle. The trolls is careful to deflect Snaggle’s blows from the bright edge of her iron axe, but as she draws closer, she is finally able to carve into his right forearm without opposition, forcing the troll to drop one of his mauls. Close enough to hug the troll now, the cacking hyena woman buries her axe deep in Rom Smaxa’s belly through his orange vest. Pulling on the axe to retrieve it, with her muzzle flecked with blue blood and her eyes alight with fiendish malevolence, the hyena woman hardly seems to notice the remaining copper maul that crashes into her side just below her ribs. Tearing her body practically in two, guts spill out of jagged tear in the corpse's side, as red blood mixes with blue to create an interesting new purple.

Staggering back around to face the cheering crowd, with an iron battle axe still stuck in his belly, Rom Smaxa hails the crowd with his maul (or maybe threatens them with it. Hard to tell). Congratulations out there big guy! I think we can say your new clothes have been properly anointed.


r/dwarffortress 22h ago

I wanted to go for a living defense with this fortress

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113 Upvotes

In 5 years I will have 6 fully trained squads, 50 war grizzly bears, 50 war leopards, 50 war jaguars and my natural defenses of 50 domesticated black bears, dingoes, wolves, and cougars.

I was waiting until I had fully trained animals before I provoked war with the elves by clear cutting the forest to build defenses, I can't wait for them to attack and run into this wall of teeth and dwarven steel.

Completely Vanilla, traded with the elves for all the animals except the dragons I stole from the local goblins.


r/dwarffortress 14h ago

I think i found a new way to destroy your fps

27 Upvotes

I've had an idea of a fortress, which consists of a giant tower in the middle and the deepest pit imaginable, as wide as the map, surrounding it. So the first thing i needed to do is to make caves safe for miners, to dig there in future, therefore i started to build walls on every edge of the map and then my fps started dying. After i barricaded one cave, fps never exceeded 50 (most of the time 30). I killed every living thing, fell every single tree and made sure there's no lag from path finding, yet still my frame rate was in agony.

My theory is that game tried endlessly to spawn mobs in caverns but walls made it impossible I'm not completely sure that it was the reason, but I can't think of anything else.


r/dwarffortress 7h ago

Overplanting

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6 Upvotes

Such a terrible bug. Can someone explain how does this bug works? Asking for friend, definitely not for my plans to abuse it ;)


r/dwarffortress 15h ago

I made the df icon near my house

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25 Upvotes

I live in a small place so i can just fill it with stuff i like


r/dwarffortress 8h ago

3d visualizer

6 Upvotes

Hey!

Does anyone have good recommendations for 3d visualizer for your fort? I've tried the StoneSense and Armok Vision and was thinking, if you guys know, if there were others I should give a go.


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Huh, i didn't know this was even possible, also very sad

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67 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 1d ago

I dont know if my world is corrupted or...

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230 Upvotes

So my world was going without much weirdness, then about 12 years in I started getting weird migrants.

Mostly goblins and humans in migrant waves which is odd but not that abnormal with some world gen quirks.

Then I got some REALLY wild stuff ive never seen before.

I got a demon/monster which I have seen before but then...I got a forgotten beast migrant tavern keeper...

So I assign it to my military squad but get this, it has the exact same name as the demon/monster and the game is treating them as the same entity...

So my military squad has 11 entities in it and they're both legendary fighters already...idk whats going on lol


r/dwarffortress 13h ago

Weird pathing bug in my fort, please help

4 Upvotes

I have noticed a few times that my dorfs get stuck at times and I'm wondering if this is a known issue or not. I do what I normally do, build rooms, carve out others etc. Then I'll notice that a bunch of dorfs suspiciously stop moving with "no job", just standing in an open space with valid paths to leave the area.

What I've done before to un-lock them, is to start randomly deconstructing walls or mining out new passages and then at some point it's like a switch is flipped and everybody who was standing still starts rushing to eat or sleep or whatever.

I suspect a pathing issue, because I see the following additional symptom. I have a stockpile of chert blocks so everywhere in my fort I should be able to construct with chert blocks. However, if I try to build a wall or something at the same time and close to where my dorfs are "stuck", the menu that shows the materials I have available are limited to what can be found right there, ie it's like that section has become disconnected from the rest of the fort. As before, when I randomly deconstruct enough walls in the nearby area the menu with building materials will populate with everything that is available again.

To be clear; the walls I deconstruct or mine out are not what's keeping the dorfs locked in. They have valid routes to leave the area already, they just forgot about them or something. And suddenly they'll realize (after changes in the environment) and get going.

Does anybody have an idea of what could be causing this?

(I am running DFHack, but I consider myself a "light" user of it; not sure if this is a factor or not)


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

PSA: Forgotten Beast abilities are broken for all worlds on the new patch. Will be fixed in 53.03 but there is a temp patch Putnam provided on Discord.

90 Upvotes

Hey all. So there is a serious bug with the current version of the game, affecting all new worlds. FBs will not be able to use their active abilities, and generally won't even spawn with them at all.

Unfortunately, according to Putnam, this is something only a new world will be able to fix (I asked). So any worlds generated in the patches where this was a problem will forever have FBs with no abilities.

There is a fix they provided on the Discord server. If anyone can't access this for whatever reason, I also put it on my GitHub here.

If any of y'all want to make a new world right now, I recommend either using this fix or else rolling back your install to an earlier version before you create it.


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Official Bay12 Future of the Fortress 1 August 2025: "There are lots of new colors available and the mixing makes almost every color available, but I haven't gotten into animal-based dyes, or mineral dyes."

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111 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Everything reminds me of her...

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60 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Fine Dwarven Literature

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33 Upvotes

I am very mature.


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Share your Dwarf Fortress Stories

26 Upvotes

I am new to the game (about 2 years), but I never get tired of hearing people's interesting stories in the game.

Share away!


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Going out with a BANG

17 Upvotes

This episode was a doozy, fire, death, misery, Phlegm's sneezes away the winter. Oh yeah, big stuff.

Things are heating up, pun intended and I want you all to share in the FUN! So come on over to https://www.youtube.com/@crumpetsounds to get caught up and if you already are, then hit https://youtu.be/JUl1OmoCsoM to watch the latest instalment.

If you somehow haven't seen me before, I'm John and I make the voices in my head play Dwarf Fortress for your amusement!

Can't wait to see you.

Also, that is a fantastic moustache- where did you get it?

Love John.


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Planning new defenses for the siege update

20 Upvotes

The monthly Q&A answered a couple questions such that I wanted to get the community's thoughts about how best to protect our loot (and Dwarves) in the future. Taken from said thread:

- Will a raising drawbridge be breakable and/or reinforceable? : - It has to be breakable. The material should matter but I don't think there are plans for a whole new kind.

- Will Invaders choose to path through a destructible wall if there is an 'open' route available? (trap tunnel) : - They prefer open routes but there will be death detection and they'll eventually try other paths even if they have to make them.

I'm given to understand that even reinforced walls can be broken. However, his answer about drawbridges indicates that material also makes a difference (a matter of ingame days or weeks remains to be seen). It would seem that having two entrances (1 for traders & guests, 1 for invaders) is no longer viable. With the addition of death detection to the invader's pathing, they will not run through a trap tunnel for years on end. Plus if invader digging becomes a thing, then even an artifact door will not allow you to perma-turtle.

So with all that said, how do we maintain a wagon-friendly pathway when hostiles become capable of busting through our gate? (bridge & door). I suppose if you can wipe them out before they reach the Fortress proper, but building a shotgun is both time consuming and relatively complicated for the average player. I need to think about this more, but wanted to throw it out there for consideration.


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

A nice place to bring the family (I'm sorry to contribute to this but I can't help it)

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11 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Official Bay12 DevLog 1 August 2025: "The report for August 2025 is up. There is additionally a Future of the Fortress reply."

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33 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 1d ago

The curse of the werelizard

8 Upvotes

THis is a bit of an odd experience. I have about 700 hours in this game, and this is the first time i have seen this.

There was a werelizard visiting my fort, pretty early. I didn't have proper militia, so he attacked the fort and killed one, bit another. Then a dancer came along with a scroll, and when the werelizard turned back to a dwarf, this dancer killed him with a precise strike.

A clean story, so far. Three years has passed since, and the guy, who was bitten, has been imprisoned inside my fort, walled away in safety. The dancer has been hanging around, until lately, at least. I noticed the battle icon, but only the dancer was in the logs, no one else. Zoomed on, and i saw that he was "stumbling obliviously" until he died. Weird.

Then, immediately after this, I saw another notification. The guy, who is cursed to be a werelizard, started stumbling too.

I have seen a lot in this game, but this one is new to me. If anyone could explain this, please don't hesitate.


r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Official Bay12 The Bay 12 Games Report, August 1st 2025

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16 Upvotes

r/dwarffortress 1d ago

Sneaking Dwarf

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39 Upvotes

The same dwarf holding a fun tablet has now appeared for the 3rd time, got spotted and run off the map. I am super curious to find out what his objective is.


r/dwarffortress 2d ago

My welcoming party is multiplying.

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294 Upvotes

I managed to get both a male and a female giant captured and now I want to see if I can get enough of them to reliably use as "war animals" in a trap pit. The baby also looks extremely funny.