Arguably the best all-purpose DF tutorial around is After Action Reporter’s The Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial for Dwarf Fortress . I have witnessed firsthand many people that had previously tried (but given up on) DF finally have the game snap into place for them after running through this guide. What makes it so good? Let me count the ways:
- It is incredibly comprehensive. I’ve been playing DF since 2D, and even I learned new things skimming through some of the later chapters (I had never noticed ramp removal under designate could be used outdoors to create steep cliff dropoffs). This comprehensiveness could actually be a problem, except…
- It is broken up into distinct sections. Know the DF basics, but just want to learn more about Magma, or the military, or traps? You can zip right to those areas.
- Arguably the biggest benefit of all is that the tutorial very smartly comes with a DF pack that INCLUDES pre-installed graphics, and a fortress savegame. Without coming with a savegame, the tutorial would instead have to spend 100s of words right at the beginning explaining world-gen and embark profiles. But now, new players can just jump right in. It also ensures they can follow along very directly with the directions and screenshots.
- Lastly, the folks at AAR are just good teachers. The first time or two the guide tells you to do something, like chop down trees, or dig out a room, it tells you exactly what you need to do in dead-simple terms, down to every keystroke. But then it starts to lighten up, and might include an instruction like “go ahead and designate some more trees to be chopped” or “dig out some more bedrooms” to force you to do some things on your own and not just follow the guide letter by letter.
If you’re a DF fan hoping to get your friends & family interested, send them on over. If you don’t want to go through the guide page by page, or want to have a local copy for when you’re without internet access, there’s also a PDF version available for download.
Thanks for the kind words! I have promised a couple more tutorials and I will try and do those before… Christmas? ;)
It’s how I got started on the game. And I agree that it’s great!
That tutorial is what finally allowed me to begin playing the game. I’d heard so many people raving about it, but the times when I tried to play it on my own, I might as well have been staring at the symbols from The Matrix. Between the graphic tileset and the excellent tutorial, I was able to get far enough up the learning curve to be able to play the game well-enough to get hooked.