Dwarf Fortress Absolute Beginner's Tutorial in 5 MINUTES

Do you want to learn to play Dwarf Fortress? Are you an absulute beginner? Our Dwarf Fortress absolute beginner's tutorial is for YOU! This 5 minute lesson is designed to get you started with the very basics of Dwarf Fortress. You won't learn everything you need to know with this tutorial, but you'll learn enough to start failing upward. In this video we cover downloading the game, starting the game, making a world, embarking in the world, digging, and building basic workshops. Have questions? Leave them int the comments below and we'll try to answer as soon as possible.
Links:
LazyNewbPack: dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?i...
Bay 12 Games: bay12games.com/dwarves/
Dwarf Fortress Wiki: dwarffortresswiki.org/
Dwarf Fortress Subreddit: / dwarffortress
humanechoes.com || Become a member for BONUS PODCASTS: bit.ly/1NkSWnQ || Patreon: / humanechoes
Watch our Gaming Content: / @humanechoesgaming
Bad Ideas Podcast on iTunes: apple.co/2yrDfyx
Buy some T-shirts: bit.ly/1NetNNP
Join our Community Discord: / discord
Listen to Bad Ideas: • The Yugo: The Worst Ca...
Watch Dirt Block: • The Minecraft Dirt Blo...
Watch Dwarf Fortress: • Dwarf Fortress Adventu...
You can also follow the Human Echoes Peeps on Twitter!
@HumanEchoes
@tsouthcotte
@albert_berg
@josephdevon
@ManicPix

[@mthees08]

>The Dwarf Fortress community is incredible helpful Just dig down like 100 Z levels and enter the caves as fast as possible.

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

That might not work out so well.

[@bernardoferreirabastosbrag2226]

@@HumanEchoesGaming at least it will be fun!

[@celticbrzrkr]

speedrun strat

[@Notaforumguy007]

Yeah, one teaching video did that to show underground farming/pastures/making wells and during his military video an entire squad of 3 was almost lost dealing with things that came up during the video.

[@ReyhanJoseph]

thanks for this lesson. this needs to be on the main page of Dwarf Fortress for tutorial sake.

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

That would be cool!

[@amethystleigh4646]

I have been trying to get into this game on-and-off for years and i've always left feeling stupid and like the game was completely inaccessible. last time all i managed to do was start a world then i was completely stumped. This tutorial is by far the best one i've ever seen for this game! it's short, easily understandable and it gets players started super easily! i'm so glad i stumbled upon it!

[@andersasblom6452]

That miner didn't need that arm any way.

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

Yeah, what kind of wuss can't swing a pick with one arm?

[@cocacolacan1550]

​@@HumanEchoesGamingfr

[@salfordsal]

I really enjoyed this rapid fire explanation of the basics :)

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

We hope it's the kind of thing that gets beginners over the hump of "Scary Hard Dwarf Fortress."

[@Kibbe_Surdo]

Incredibly helpful, you should start a whole serie of those, truly awesome content!

[@rottenpoet6675]

guys for beginners the best way is to disable invaders so nothing gonna kill your fort so you have time to master your skills and learn how to build up defences fast, when you feel ready turn on the invaders and let them come or start a new fort and apply your knowledege

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

I'm so dumb, I had forgotten that was an option! Obviously you're right, and this is yet another example of the principle that the best way to learn where you're wrong is to say things on the internet.

[@rottenpoet6675]

also another way to make it even easyer...if you go to the dfhack tab in the lazypack and select performance tweaks that will remove all contaminants that means no miasma from rotting things

[@aidandixon6028]

Nah I love invaders, it forced me to figure out how the military system works and now out of my 150 dwarves in the zombie infested evil biome, 70 of them are soldiers, loosing is the fastest way to learn

[@masonmason22]

Nice tutorial. Also, in OBS there is a setting where you can define the area of the screen to be recorded so you can avoid having to show all of your screen if you don't want to.

[@mattmorgan2525]

This is an amazing and quick beginners tutorial. Great job, I'll definitely send this to anyone who asks me how to play :)

[@JJNincorporated]

This was real helpful, cheers!

[@xpt754]

this is awsome!

[@YammoYammamoto]

I've had sooo much.... fun... with DF. There's... fun... lurking around every corner. :D

[@aztro.99]

why is this more useful than the four 30 minute tutorials ive seen 😭

[@VitaKet]

Tried a couple times over the years but was always kinda overwhelmed... with the Steam release just around the corner I'm finally pushing through with the help of this vid!

[@george-stefanleoca1319]

Depending on what u do in this game the game itself will adapt to your gameplay and support you in either giving you a hard time if u are unexperienced or an easy time if u manage to keep ur fortress in check. You decide you like mining boom game gives you more miners as your fortress is recognized as a place that harbors a lot of passionate miners; guilds of miners will be formed and such; same goes for every profession , i, for example i had a herbalist's guild with 20 or so legendary herbalists in just the first year.(they all died to a goblin siege fighting bare-handed) and also i had a legendary cook making biscuits and stews. Just with the slightest bump you make, tragedy befalls. It is kinda fun to get some ancient titan roaming on ur map and then decide to open a library so that scholars may come in, just to watch them get slaughtered by the titan, then the titan proceeds to somehow enter ur base (probs climbing goddam trees) and slaughter your entire 200 dwarf fortress. But watching a titan fight an army of goblins only to get it brutally mangled by the green plague and u suppose to fight the goblins? hell na i'm calling hax. That map was a pure mess, loads of caravans arrived and alot of emigrants, i had like 300-400 tombs made with coffers 5x5 rooms some with windows all engraved. I loved that base :( .The tragedy occurred when i assigned my 200 or so dwarfs to gather all the items on the map, i am telling you there were easily thousands of items on the map, the titan was gone at that time each and every dwarf had sickness due to being exposed to the sun after years of underground life. and my poor pc did not like that one bit.

[@george-stefanleoca1319]

That thumbnail preview is cute.

[@george-stefanleoca1319]

The best feeling in this game is learning how to fight and how to find and drink water in adventure mode.

[@Mel-mu8ox]

which tile set are you using??? and how do I find it?

[@george-stefanleoca1319]

They will indeed sleep in the bed regardless of it being unassigned .

[@climbumbiamember8564]

So glad you don’t have to control it like this anymore

[@LoloXinChen]

when i read the title of the video, i thought it was a joke..

[@LoloXinChen]

but this is actually pretty good

[@randompopcat9615]

what about an advanced guide like modifying it from the actual dwarf fortress download

[@DaveMackenzie]

I'm not sure if anyone has done a quick-start guide which explains all of the cheats and exploits which can nerf some of the harder aspects. If you just want to build a fortress and crush enemy sieges, you can use "reveal" and "prospect" to avoid underground surprises and liberal application of "remove-stress" can rally fortress morale when things get dire. The greatest risk these fortresses face is player boredom, (or low FPS) but they're a great place to practice things like pump-stacks and drowning chambers.

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

We plan to do more of these that cover the basics for people with no experience with DF, but digging into the guts of DFhack might be beyond the scope of what we're trying to accomplish at the moment.

[@Griffon-xm9yg]

I could help out with the DFHack tutorial video if needed, I even had a few useful commands in my cheat sheet that I shared on reddit and with AL and Joe several times also for low fps I like the fastdwarf command, but that is considered cheating by most people

[@YammoYammamoto]

That sounds like fun-avoidance.

[@aidandixon6028]

I always change the raw files to make it so all of my dwarves start out as impervious to stress, dealing with stress is really un-fun as there's no way to stop dwarves from having a mental breakdown after seeing hundreds of bodies, or give dwarves therapy of any kind, it ends up feeling out of your control.

[@Griffon-xm9yg]

I loved this so much, granted that I already know how to play, but the pictures were amazing it would have been better if you used the Drake Hotline Bling meme for the water vs alcohol part my biggest hump in Dwarf Fortress when I started wasn't the how to get started it was the why do I need to do this and how do I keep them from starving, also you didn't really cover anything about the metals or how to grow crops or the most important part the manager, though since you spent more time talking about the game and the download process I understand you probably didn't have the time if you wanted to keep it at 5mins max

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

Yeah, this was more about getting someone who only has played Steam games (kind of where I was at when I first started to play DF) into the game and to give them at least a chance of understanding the interface. This is a series we're working on so we'll get to mining and plants and soap later. :)

[@Griffon-xm9yg]

I don't think I've ever done soap before lol

[@DaveMackenzie]

​@@Griffon-xm9yg It took me a while to figure out, too! 1. Wood Furnace makes ash from logs. 2. Ashery makes lye from ash (in a bucket). 3. Soap Maker makes soap bars from the lye and animal tallow. None of my fortresses have lasted long enough to use more than 20 bars, so you don't need much. I hope this helps! :)

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

Soap is funny because there's also a long-standing bug where buckets with lye in them have to be stored separately, one bucket per square, instead of in a barrel otherwise they get lost.

[@Griffon-xm9yg]

it's mostly that I just haven't bothered to make soap, I've looked it up before and I always build at least 1 of all the workshops, but it's just easier to buy soap than to make it and its really only a factor for infections which aren't half as bad as the infections in Rimworld, if someone gets an infection in Rimworld its basically a death sentence

[@nadiazulkifli7997]

run

[@ChaojianZhang]

F1 - Return to starting point.

[@shodan2002]

I already forgot everything but ok 👍 lol man caves of qud is a lot easier

[@shadorain]

Gosh why not just superior vim keys instead of whatever those wacky keys were lol

[@orvilleredenpiller338]

How to play an accidental neurological diagnostic tool.

[@ashcheeks1]

10/10 👌

[@andrzejalf82]

I just in adventure mode just jump to water... RIP

[@HumanEchoesGaming]

RIP

[@SomePotato]

Wait a minute. You didn't chop any trees. How do you build a bed? Did you bring wood on embark?

[@eroll2]

He literally designated like a dozen trees right before placing the carpenter...

[@ShizaruBloodrayne]

What are with these key bindings? lol

[@blen983]

This game reminds me of teletext or some spectrum game. Exactly what I’m looking for weirdly…

[@seraphonica]

It takes five minutes to teach someone how to double click an icon? This I have to see to believe.

[@dylandang]

carson said you sucked

[@Saphels]

Create military squad of marksdwarves, give 'em those nice crossbows, ammo, sets of armor, waterskins and so on. Build them barracks, train them hard. Station a squad of them at a reasonable distance from the enemy. Watch your marksdwarves charge at the enemy and use their teeth to attack giant monstrous blob comprised of fire and filth. Watch them burn. Watch that blob moving in to attack a baby with an iron toy soldier. Watch that baby instant killing blob with said toy. Do it all again. S T R I K E T H E E A R T H ! After a couple of games you will understand the following message: D !g!

[@cobalius]

reminds me of oxygen not included

[@theblackneon5396]

Hah! 3 hours reading, as if. I spent 15 hours watching the tutorial, and I don't know how to make a tavern yet.

[@sald4971]

instead spend all time with reading toying with buttons from the ui will give better understanding in my experience

[@CausticAscarite]

You're only telling people hotkeys a b c d that's nonsense which is hard to remember. You should mainly tell them what option to click, I mean how it's called, with hotkeys provided as -_an additional info_

[@NoHeadsProduction]

In Dwarf Fortress there is nothing to click, everything is hotkeys.

[@JessePatrick-zc8ng]

He did. With the keys.

[@jacobely6826]

3 hours in the wiki? dont you mean like 3 fucking days lmfao. after 3 hours you might just about understand how to make a fortress layout without breaking the game :P

[@TirelessGaming]

video is over 5 minutes, disliked. :P

[@koolaidmansam8yearsago273]

by 40 seconds smh. that's not a big deal

[@TirelessGaming]

@@koolaidmansam8yearsago273 i know, just being a smartass

[@itsover8780]

stop using cringy stock photos its uncomfortable ty

[@neurothrall5314]

stop using cringy loli profile pics its uncomfortable ty

[@itsover8780]

@@neurothrall5314 i will use it as much as i want you dumb shit

[@atomicdragon5385]

@@itsover8780 how is he a dumb shit?