That's easy to get in some biomes, comprising the first few z-levels beneath the earth, and very hard to find in others. To grow proper dwarven crops underground, which you probably started with seeds for, you'll want an underground area with a soil floor: silt, sand, loam, clay, mud, whatever. Dwarven farms are absurdly productive and even a small, unfertilized plot growing Plump Helmets will feed a lot of dwarves. Your farms don't need to be bigger than 2x2 or 4x4. You can place a field on any soil, under Build-W orkshops- Farming-Farm Plot. Your dwarves can theoretically drink water but it'll rapidly make them murderously upset.įarming is pretty straightforward once you get a few quirks out of the way. Your first dwarves can get along for quite a while on fishing, hunting, and foraging in most biomes, picking up wild produce and turning it into booze with the Still you built during the tutorial. (Image credit: Bay12 Games) Food and drink

Dwarves are perfectly happy to have their living and eating quarters directly above or below their working spaces. Two rooms or hallways connected by a staircase have, effectively, no tiles between them-a stockpile of metal beneath your blacksmiths can sometimes be better than one beside it. I'm spelling out exact tile movement and emphasizing staircases because a key bit of design in Dwarf Fortress is about making your underground base at least somewhat vertical. Some players base their whole fortress around a central, 3x3 spine staircase, and that's a pretty solid idea for budding fortress architects. Other creatures and dwarves can get in their way, greatly slowing them down, so it's often good to make major hallways 2-3 tiles wide, and build major staircases in 2x2 blocks. It doesn't matter if that tile is flat ground, stairs, or a ramp. The only way to guarantee something can't move out of a tile is a perfect box of either natural wall or constructed walls, as even locked doors can be battered down by stronger creatures like trolls.įor a moving dwarf, one tile is one tile. They can move diagonally, and are even able to squeeze between the corners of two filled tiles. Let's get some basics established, too: units move from one tile to another at variable speeds based on their species and the like. (Image credit: Bay12 Games) Dwarven ergonomics

Dwarf fortress wiki starter guide