Oh yeah, it's going to be a long read. Maybe worth your time, maybe not. Try it out if you can :) So, the first question that probably is going to come to mind when clicking on this post, for most people anyways, is: "What?" I have played Dwarf Fortress for some time now. I'm not good at it, at all, but I find it entertaining and would maybe like to share some of it with the nice folks on Ordo, and I plan on doing something like a diary, with random updates on random intervals. Most of you will read this part, maybe take a look at the rest, and not be interested ever again. I personally don't care, even if nobody reads, don't feel bad, I don't expect you to read it anyway, especially because DF is not a game for everyone. Maybe I should explain what it is first huh? Introduction (Skip this if you understand the basic concept of the game) The gamemode I shall be playing is the default gamemode: Dwarf Fortress. The concept is simple: you start with 7 dwarves and try to establish an outpost, a fort, for your civilization. The game requires you to take care of a great deal of things, like: food, water, temperature, happiness, invasions(sieges or ambushes), diplomacy, etc, etc. Most of the bad things in the game will be described as !FUN!. Why Fun? Because the game's motto is: "Losing is fun!". You'll lose in so many ways and you get no mercy, just have to start over, the fun is too big. Initially, your fort will be slow and calm (most of the time anyway), until you start to increase your population. The main way to do so is migrants, childs take years to grow and once that time comes, it's probably too late for your beautiful fortress. You can pick what stats your first 7 dwarves come with, migrants are randomized, so you'll have to work with what you get. Here's a fun part: you can give your dwarves nicknames, and I'm giving my dwarves Ordo names, I'll talk about that later. I feel like I could spend years explaning the game, therefore I'll not do it, I'll not get in depth with my explations, and all my "diary entries" will be written in a way most people would understand. Now, if you managed to stick until here, this could scare you off: the game's main graphics are... ASCII. Yes, there are tilesets, but I'm not using any. Understanding what is going on is going to be hard, but I'll try to point things out. Entry 1: A fort starts to rise I started a new fort earlier today and played around with it, about 2 hours or so. Enough to get past the initial boringness. I started in a Taiga, the snow never melts, even in summer. Getting water is going to be difficult, but I already have something going. The picture below shows the first level of my floor. It's dug in sand, because it's easy and doesn't leave anything behind that would take time for my dwarves to haul. I've got a Trade Depot outside, and just made my first trade with the Mountainhomes. The rest are basicly workshops, stockpiles and a couple farms. Underground yes, plump helmets are awesome. For now, I shouldn't need to get actual water, brewing drink from plants will be enough unless I get an injury of some kind. Then I'll have a problem. I dug down 1 Z level, found myself some stone to work with. There I dug a dining room and some basic bedrooms. Dwarves need a place to sleep. Why in rock this time? Because you can smooth and engrave rock, and dwarves like their kitchens and bedrooms all engraved and such. One more Z level down and look at what I found: Hematite. Iron ore. And I have a flux stone layer on this area, which means I can make steel later on. GREAT. You can see some of my mining here. As I've said, Dwarf Fortress is cruel, and your dwarves are going to die, at one point or another. Unfortunately, deaths this early can be bad, bad bad. One of my miners was hauling some stone to the workshops when suddenly, on the Z level above, a tree fell down. The log crush the ground under it, making a hole and falling on my dwarf. It was quick, there was nothing else that could be done. I started to dig a graveyard area for the future. Just wish I didn't have to start so early. The dwarf's tomb is already in place. This particular spot has a lot going for it. Why? It has metals, flux stone and most imporatly: a volcano. The volcano will allow me to easily power my furnaces later on and I should save up on a lot of fuel when smelting and crafting things. Also, lava is fun and I can and probably will turn it into a weapon at some point. This is my progress so far. Then I had this ideia, let's name all my dwarves after Ordo people: I put the names in a random, for the most part. I didn't check for gender or anything. If someone does not want their name in here for any reason (or no reason), tell me, and I will remove it. If you know someone that will NOT read this and has their name in there, tell them and ask if they're okay with it. If they're not... Anyway, I'll not name the childs, they don't deserve real names yet. If someone else wants their name in here, just tell me, I'll be happy to put it in on the next wave of migrants. Some of you I don't even talk to, I just picked your name at random, maybe looking through people that were on TS3 at the time or had a recent post on the forums. First day conclusions I'll post these randomly, and I don't how frequently either, I guess I'll just update it every once and a while. Also, most entries will not be this long. I wanted to introduct a bit of the game on this one. Most updates will contain at most 1 or 2 pictures and 1 or 2 paragraphs. I'd appreciate your support, maybe just a happy comment or some type of crazy idea for me to do. Thanks for reading this first entry. More to come soon. (Hopefully) :D