Dwarf Fortress’ biggest changes in the Steam release

With Dwarf Fortress’ Steam release, a few big things are different. It might be difficult for experienced gamers to adapt. Below, we’ll give you the 11 biggest changes we noticed after putting a quarantined-with-COVID amount of hours into the original version and about 40 hours into the Steam release.

There’s a tutorial and the help is more helpful

A tutorial can be added to the site. Dwarf FortressIt is an important deal. Never before has there been a tutorial. For nearly 20 years now, players were dumped into the game with no explanation and left to sort through the game’s legendary complexity on their own (or with a LotsThis wiki has lots of information. This is why Dwarf Fortress’ learning curve is called a learning cliff.

You will be guided through each step of building your fortress. This tutorial can be re-accessed at any time.

Photo: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games by Polygon

The tutorial can be reactivated even after you close it. You can access the help menu to reactivate or interact with it at any moment. You can also find the new help menu in something. MoreIt is easier to find and more helpful.

Graphics.

Other than the introduction of a tutorial the most significant change is to Dwarf Fortress is visual — in that there are visuals now. Some of the attraction of Dwarf Fortress has been the… let’s call it IntriguingThe ASCII graphics are a part of nature. But the new graphics — new tilesets provided by Mayday and Ironhand — are a welcome addition.

The graphical design extends to menus. There are now cascading, icon-based menus that allow you to change textual lists. Let’s talk about the menus, actually.

More sense in menus

Most people are satisfied with the following: Dwarf Fortress’ menus have been rearranged in logical ways. Frustratingly, this somehow makes it more confusing if you’re used to the old version.

Let’s start with what used to be Designations (d).. Each subcategory has been separated into its own menus and given their icons. Now, there’s a separate menu for Digging (m), Chopping Trees (l), Gathering Plants (g), Smoothing, engraving (v) and Removing Orders. Designing products Dumping and Smelting is in it’s own menu as well.

Photo: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games by Polygon

With this, you can build things b is a lot more organized now, in that it’s organized at all. Military Constructions like Archery Targets or Armor Stands now have their own sub menu. Doors and hatches have their own sub-menu.

Reorganizations of workshops have been made. Looseness LeatherThe workshop is filed in its own section of the logically. Leather and ClothingEven though the Tanner falls under Farming, Sub-heading AgricultureCovers all food related to Stills, Kitchens and Querns. Millstones don’t appear in Farming Workshops. They are located now under Machines/Fluids alongside Wells and Levers.

Over in the bottom left of the screen, you’ll have icons for Creatures, Tasks, Places, Labor, Work Orders, Nobles, Objects, and Justice — all menus you could access before, but now they’re all in one easy-to-click place.

Some workshops have been changed

A simple addition to the Workshops menu change is Mason’s renaming to Stoneworker. This doesn’t really change anything — it’ll just take you a second to find it if you’re looking for the wrong name.

The addition of the is a bigger shift. Vermin Catcher’s Shop. The new workshop takes care of the Capture Live Land Animal Job that was previously done in Kennels and Butchers.

Speaking of Kennels, those don’t exist anymore.

Many keyboard shortcuts have been changed

Steam does not have every keyboard shortcut. Dwarf Fortress, but enough of them are that it’s going to take a bit to relearn if you’re used to the vanilla version.

The first example you’ll bump into is that mining is no longer d>d — instead, it’s m>m. Or, since Tree Chopping gets it’s own menu now, you designate an area just by hitting l instead of d > l like before.

Many of the Workshops in the build menu (which is o instead of w) have different shortcuts, too — Carpenter is p, for example, and a Kitchen is one menu deeper under Farming (f) and has the shortcut k.

If you’re a Dwarf Fortress veteran, take your time to learn the new shortcuts — there are helpful tooltips that pop up when you hover the mouse over any given icon — instead of trying to forge ahead with the commands you (think you) know.

The un-designating of mining is an entirely different command.

We mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating because it’s an odd sticking point for us: you can’t go straight from designating a mining area to removing that designation. In the Steam version, you have to close the mining menu — by right-clicking or hitting esc — and then open the remove designation menu with x to start erasing those designated blocks.

One reason this is frustrating is that the keyboard-controlled cursor no longer remembers its location between menus, so you’ll have to reposition it every time.

Stairs can be made simpler

Stairs have seen a slight change in the past few years due to mining. There is no longer a variety of stairs that can be used to go up and down or up and down. Instead, you have one type of stair. The appropriate stairs will fill in for you automatically when the stairs are stopped or started at different levels. You do still have the option to build stairs as well with Build (b) > Constructions (n) > Stairs (t). It works exactly the same way as digging stairs.

The control of labor and skill is a different matter.

Dwarf Fortress’, frankly, inscrutable Labor and Skills menu(s) have been pretty dramatically redesigned. Instead of managing each dwarf directly — or even indirectly by using add-ons like DFHack or Dwarf Therapist — there’s a simple menu now.

Photo: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games by Polygon

There are three broad groups of laborers: Haulers and woodcutters. For each category, you’ve got the option to let anyone pick up a job (Everybody does this), select the dwarves that do it (Only selected do this), and forbid any dwarf from doing it (Nobody does this).

If you want to dig down deeper to control more specific tasks like who does Tanning, Gem Cutting, or Cleaning, you’ll have to Add an additional work detail It’s best to do it this way.

An announcement and report have changed

Photo: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games by Polygon

Reports and announcements are now displayed as icons at the top of your screen. They’re even grouped by category. They work much like other RTS.

It is mandatory to use a mouse

Vanilla is the best flavor Dwarf Fortress was handled via the keyboard, there are some commands and mechanics that just don’t have the option for keyboard input any more.

Some constructions — like Stockpiles — require you to click on the menu icon to create them. Similarly, you can’t place Stockpiles with the cursor and arrow keys. Creating Zones is the same — you’ll need to use the mouse to decide what kind of zone you’re making and to place it.

It’s not clear if this is a bug, not implemented yet, or a purposeful decision. On that note …

There are still bugs to fix

To be clear, we haven’t encountered any game-breaking bugs and the game actually runs better than ever, but some things just don’t quite work right. If you’re placing a floor or a bridge, for example, there’s no indication of where the floor is as you drag out the shape. It’s easy enough to work around it, but it’s a little awkward since you can’t actually see what you’re doing.

As the game develops, be patient. After all, it took 20 years for us to reach this point.