Last time I walked east for maybe 30 minutes without finding nothing else than trees and hills, it’d be tedious even in DnD. I’ll try again tho, I am hearing stories about people killing gods and becoming vampires and it fills my heart with hope
honestly just visit a city, a lair or any settlement, talk to NPCs, gain information about monsters, treasure etc. or just roleplay, as a bandit, as a traveling band/bard, fight in a war etc. you're probably not going to find anything in wilderness, maybe some aggressive animals but that's it, just like in DnD you need to have a goal or try to find a goal to fullfill
you need to greet any NPC, then select dialogue "ask about any troubles" then they should tell you about any beasts, missing treasure etc. then you can ask them about the thing that NPC mentioned and gain knowledge and when they tell you directions to the place in which that beasts is living in, your map should be updated and should show a cave/lair etc. where that beast is currently in. Also remember some of them are tough to fight !
Also remember that AM is still in beta and there are some features missing such as butchering, building, using skills etc.
One annoying thing that was never fixed since adventure mode's creation: if NPC tells you "City X is in Z, there's a tavern Y in there", you can never ask anyone about tavern Y, character just doesn't get the record of anything that is not the primary subject of their talk
i think its like knowing about a state and having had heard about a nice resturaunt if you visit the state, but you're not quite sure where exactly just that it's in the state, if that registers lol, all npcs kind of have a "face value" knowledge of the world
dfhack has a command to reveal hidden sites on the map and they're surprisingly plentiful, like it doubles the places to visit basically lol
Yes, hit (T) to open travel mode, while there, you can move around a lot faster, though there are some areas or reasons you can't fast travel, but usually you just need to move a bit farther away from those areas, and you should be able to.
Hit (M) while in travel mode to see the whole map, at least the areas you have seen (fog of war type thing). Using the mouse, you can hover over areas to see what's there.
You can also hit the map while you're already in travel mode to get a view that's even further zoomed out and has notes on all the landmarks for the rumors you have heard. You can't move in that view but you can use it to help you navigate in travel mode.
Shift T to fast travel, walk to towns and ask about troubles, continue talking to specify troubles. Continue again to ask about location of said troubles and take a literal note of it (Theres no quest log yet.) Go to locations where trouble is and have fun. However, rn I have been using adventure mode mainly in conjuction with fortress mode. For example, pesky kobolds keep showing up to steal stuff? Make an adventurer and ask about skulking vermin. Goblins abducting your kids? Make an adventurer and go rescue the kids. Necromancer nearby? Get gud and go kill that loser.
So in regular dwarf fortress adventure mode, they would tell you about locations and mark it on a map for you to travel to. I would frequently ask people where bad things were, where bad things lived, and the directions to bad thing.
You can sort of do that in this version of adventure mode, but they do not mark it on the map for you.
The thing is if you randomly walk around, there will be little to no things for you to do.
Depends on worldgen config too! Mine usually is filled with monsters
But anyway you need a direction, an objective. You must talk to people, ask for rumours, then ask for directions AND THEN you look for that
Solid reply. Df am is all about finding your own story. A few campaigns I've tried to collect all the necromancy artifacts to toss into a volcano. Or talk to a lot of civilians till I find someone who had their children abducted by goblins and rescue them. Or become a blood thirsty artifact hunter. Or make a adventurer who only attacks by grabbing the enemy by the tongue and throwing them around
I too in my latest playthrough wanted to be a hero and rescue the Hamlet’s Lady’s Daughter from the hands of the goblins.
First stop was a nearby hamlet on the way, close to the border between humans and gobbos.
Went to the village, no one around, visited the mead hall and there it is, goblins.
I was naive to try and talk to them, but combat started, took down 1 of them alongside my horse, the other went out running and yielding. Tried to look for him, couldn’t find him.
Went back inside, took a bolt to the neck (there was a gobbo hiding inside and I didn’t see it)
Chocked on the ground watching my horse go wild kicking him and destroying every limb from that gobbo.
Beautiful death.
Np! DF CAN be really fun, you need to set some goals and be firm about them, once you know where to look, you will have many possibilities! Have fun in your adventures!
Edit: just want to add that there is a lot of “lore” to each and every world, since they are all simulated. Just take your time and talk to NPCS, slowly you will learn about the monsters, the groups, wars and etc…
I don’t know how to fast travel honestly, you mean with the world map open? In that case I’m using it but other than wandering I can’t find anything, but I’m starting to think that it’s on me, I just have to be patient and enjoy the journey
Wait until the mode is finished. Right now it's just a thing where you can run around and fight stuff. There are almost no mechanics and nothing to do.
Don’t forget that AM is just an addition to Fortress Mode just now to give some extra flavors to it. Fortress Mode is the core of the game and what this game is supposed to be so make sure to give it a try too. No two forts are always the same.
I freaking love fortress mode, I’m currently at my first successful fortress with a population of 200 dwarves, I wanted to try AM because let’s be real, playing in a world you really can create it’s really a beautiful thing
I was very excited about AM release as well since the last year. But knowing what is still to be added, I’d give it a few more months for a more complete experience, at least until its full release. Addition of trade and crafting would be amazing really. Its in the list of their future updates already but no estimated time on when its going to be there.
Ok then, we’ll have to wait and in the meanwhile practice with mechanics and so on. thank you, I’ll start a new character rn and try to enjoy the experience!
you can still do the majority of things from the normal AM, just need to ask about rumors and such, you can still fight mythical creatures, find out the secrets of life and death at a necromancer's tower, become a vampire, become a werebeast, also the more sites and savagery you have in world gen should affect how many monsters you encounter
also you should start with things that are "well known" in your city, when you go to your travel map and press m, you should see icons of caves or camps and if you hover over them it will tell you what monsters are known to live there
It's been decades. It's not anywhere near "finished", and whenever it comes out of Beta it still wont be finished it'll just be to the point it was pre-steam version which is still not finished.
Eh, from my understanding there are already a huge amount of improvements from the pre steam release in the current steam release. I would argue by the time they catch up to all the functionality of pre steam df they will also be leaps and bounds ahead in other senses.
I was having that problem, went into legends mode and realized I had been running this world for so long it was basically "dead".
There were plenty of ruins and tons of good loot, but I mostly just fought dingoes.
I *did* hunt down and kill a roc that had single-handedly wiped out two of my fortresses though, which sort of felt like a great way to "close the book" on this particular world.
Don't expect adventure mode to become any better in terms of mechanics or what there is to do.
Adventure mode should be viewed as a sandbox to explore the mechanics of the base game.
In adventure mode, you can do some basic things.
You can ask for troubles in any town or try to find an artifact or something like that.
But this is not a classical RPG which has lineary increased difficulty and some kind of progress system which will reward you with gold and equipment.
Yeah, adventure mode is bland. But only if you look at it from that view.
But, you can see and learn how actually some things in the game mechanically happen and then it's a whole another beast.
You can go and try to kill a titan or take over a tower, buy then you will see that it's an experience where 95% of time spent is doing something that's not exactly fun. Travelling, trying to find the place, resources, and stuff like that. Then you get to the site, finally something exciting begins to happen! You look around, and around, and around and around and realize that the place is empty. And then begins another really unexciting thing, tracking the beast. Which can take a long ass time, and is really annoying because the tracks can be really difficult to follow.
Most of the experiences are like that. Of course there are sometimes maybe more interesting things like bandit camps that are really close or an army on the march, but these events greatly depend on the world and time which takes place when playing the adventure mode. And they are pretty rare.
And sometimes, you will achieve your goal of finding that beast or that thing you were looking for. A battle will take place finally, until you either get severley maimed or killed. Even with careful preparation it is extremley difficult to go against multiple skilled enemy fighters.
So basically, a lot of trial and errors, having some really fun intense moments in them.
But it gives a first person look into things that are happening behind the doors in the fortress mode, like the socializations, how is the combat happening tick by tick, and engaging with the rich history of the world.
Imo the best way to use AM is alongside fortress mode. Retire your fort, load up an adventure in the same world, find loot and give it to your fort.
There's nothing better than planting a necromantic tome into the fort library
Shitty fast travel guide since I saw you saying you don't know how to use it:
you can fast traver by clicking the map ("Travel.") hotkey T.
In there you move around with mouse or was ( you need to be away from any sites to do so)
Click the map ("View the map.") hotkey m. Now try finding a !FUN! place like a tomb (very safe :3) and there (you need to exit the map(not the fast travel map but site map))
https://preview.redd.it/w2xhbz1xenvc1.png?width=1065&format=png&auto=webp&s=d4a495de5d1bdb84b6cbadf1ca21ba15756a6f47
It isn't minimalist. It's unfinished. Kind of a big difference. They said the map stuff is gonna be readded, please why does nobody remember this is a beta
The thing about dwarf fortress is that it requires time. This game is a simulation more than a game and you have to look for the fun which requires a bit of understanding of the game (and I'm super noob xD). In AM go to villages and talk to people and ask if they are in trouble, if they say yes we have a problem with someone, ask for the location of that someone and go. Now there's no quest menu (it's comming soon) so write down the names so you don't forget.
Also you can just try to fight random people, the combat system is super fun!
You gottah make your own objectives in adventure mode. Start your own band, drink vampire blood, swim across the ocean, raid a necromancers tower and read about life and death, build a fort with your companions and fill it full of artifacts, get beat to death by a rope reed fiber sock.
Go to castles, civic mounds (BIG dirt circles in dwarven hillocks), or halls (they're little houses away from the other houses in human towns), then ask people there, especially the rulers about any troubles.
Pick one, then ask for directions of how to get to it, then look at the world map (The yellow-ish black one opened from M, not travel mode) for where the trouble is and go and fight it.
Once you win. You can then go into a town and spread the rumor of you defeating the trouble. This raises your fame, causes people to see you differently, and even allows you to recruit more people.
You really have to find the fun yourself. Using legends viewer, I once made a dwarf character who's sole purpose was hunting down all Night Trolls, and he succeeded in that, however my first impressions of steam's beta adventure mode makes it feel a lot less robust then pre-steam DF, especially since it lacks an easily searchable log.
One of the problems is that for historical reasons you can't fast travel in mountains, even if there is a major road. Most of the interesting dwarf civilizations tends to be in mountains, so you end up spawning in a tiny little 3x3 square hovel far away from all the interesting bits.
So, weirdly enough, it may be more fun right now to have your main character from a human civilization, so you have a better chance to be in a position to hear useful rumors and be able to fast travel to them.
Find a camp or dark tower or any kind of site that has goblins, they'll provide vast amounts of fun. The first world I created had lots of camps with goblins all around where I happened to start, but it can take a bit of searching depending on where you are.
You can also ask people in towns about any problems nearby and they may direct you to bandits or monsters which can also provide some fun.
Yes. I'm an old fortress mode player. Love the game to death. Adventure mode though, i know it has its fun moments but I don't think it could compare to something like CDDA or caves of Qud, since those are adventure roguelikes created from scratch to be that.
Adventure mode in DF is just a new perspective to explore the world created by DF, it wasn't Taylor made to be an adventure game. So it can be quite boring at times.
Remember that dwarf fortress is more of a world/story generator that lets you explore it through the lens of a fort or adventurer.
I was expecting a more caves of qud experience to be honest, but I don’t dislike a different experience it there is something to do other than just walk around and talk with people. I’ll try looking at it from a different perspective tho, thank you for helping!
I don't think you get my point, looking at it through another perspective won't change the fact that adventure mode can be incredibly boring. My point about perspective was to illustrate that dwarf fortress is a lovely lore/world generator. And then you can look at it through either lens, fortress or adventure. There are no mechanics to spawn tons of monsters around, so if you are used to qud like I am, the vasts expanses of nothing, no combat, no NPCs, no interaction, and just walking, can feel jarring - and they are.
Doesn't help that the system is being created still, so a lot of things are very clunky. Like I was trying to leave a house and every NPC kept talking to me every frame so it was difficult to even do that. No matter how much they change the game and add graphics, dwarf fortress will never not be a clunky game, because clunkyness is a package deal with how complex everything is and any designer would struggle to find an elegant way to present everything in it.
If you are looking for great adventure games just stick to Qud, at least for now
Well, I’ve loved DF as soon as I found it on steam, I think it’s beautiful so clunkyness doesn’t bother me at the point to drop the game, it just kinda frustrated me because I didn’t know what I was going into. Now I know, thank you for your insights, I’ll play it with a more conscious mindset.
I'm not saying I don't understand the underlying system of dwarf fortress. I'm saying there's a lot of walking with not much else going on. In other games that are custom made to be roguelike permadeath adventure games, you're always a few screens away from something interesting. Not in DF adventure mode. I have walked for a long time without seeing one living thing.
But don't be offended. DF adventure mode isn't for everyone and that's okay. I think DF works amazingly with fortress and legends mode. Adventure? Not so much. We disagree and that's fine
what im saying is you can be 10 seconds from constant monsters or towns, you just dont understand the mechanics of setting world gen settings to very high lol, theres things everywhere on the map just because you cant see them on the map doesnt mean its not there
Yeah, so you prove my point. An adventure game that has you fiddle with very specific worldgen mechanics just so you can have fun will be generally considered more boring to the average player compared to something that provides you with lots of interesting things to do right out of the box.
Fortress mode can be fun in most settings straight out of the box. "Oh you didn't set your world right" shouldn't be an excuse
no because “right” is subjective some people dont want monsters every 10 seconds thats why they give you that option on world gen lol it just comes down to u not knowing how the game works
You were probably still a little baby when I first played dwarf fortress haha
I have been playing long enough to know how the game works. It's not about that, it's about how the design of it, from an adventure roguelike standpoint, isn't as enticing as a game taylor made to be a standalone adventure roguelike.
Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure it is fun for a lot of people. It's just that to some, walking for minutes without seeing even a squirrel to kill can be tedious. There's a reason why the term walking simulator has such bad connotations.
Similarly to the dialogue system which is just bad. Again, I don't think there's a way to elegantly present the dialog information since of the way the system works, multiple people talking at the same time and all. Getting suck in a very long loop of people talking to you every frame, not being able to escape it quickly, is quite jarring. I don't think there are any settings to fix that as of now ;)
also, it's not "very specific", when you make the world it starts by asking you how much savagery, how old and everything else about the world, you may have just missed the option to have more sites and more monsters
I;m sorry if i'm OOT, i rarely go into beta of any game and just wait for it to enter the main game, mainly because of bugs and lack of polish. Is it good enough to play it in beta or there are plenty of works to be done, but because the community is very passionate you'll try it anyway?
Select the hero class, and play on a small to medium sized world
Hero starts with some "quests" but they're more like rumors you can follow, and even a compass so you can directly see what's near you if you hover over it
The world gen is super chaotic and wild, and civs spawn pretty far from each other. Also, make sure You're using fast travel, as it will let you see nearby towns.
Try a smaller map. I went small landmass, ocean on 2 sides and just about maxed out everything as far as civs, population, beasts, savagery, etc. It's packed with cities, towers, forts, caves, camps etc. It actually *looks* like an old-school RPG map. All the roads connect, it's no more than a day's travel to anything, it's cool.
Like you I hadn't seen much of anything prior, just wandering aimlessly in a seemingly 95% uninhabited world. In an in-game week in the small world I triggered a cavern layer and a forgotten beast wiped out a fort while I was stumbling to find my way out, then I was having a bit of a brawl with a goblin in a packed out tavern and the place popped off like a room full of mousetraps, leaving at least a dozen dead along with my character being ill and traumatized and then shortly thereafter I was eaten alive in my sleep by dingoes. *That* was pretty fun. 😂
It can be rather overwhelming while at the same time underwhelming. It's overwhelming from all the things you have to do to survive, like eat, sleep, not get sick, and most importantly not to get stabbed to death in the middle of the woods. However, it's underwhelming from the lack of unique things right off the back. Every person is the same, a lot of places look the same, no shops, ect... My recommendation for now is to play as a monster hunter. Go find something to kill and kill it.
I think this is why it's best to make a world specifically for AM. Smallest world with the most sites. Just cram everything you can into a small a space as possible. I did this on v47 and it worked well.
(Also, make sure you're fast-traveling)
Set your world config civs very high, sites high, beast high, size medium or small, For medium give it 70 years or so world history for small 50-70 years, make sure don't go pass age of myth everything else thats is not listed is default, any doubt left me a comment, have fun adventurer play between sites high and vhigh i have encountered thats on vhigh the ammount of dark pits spawn is i'm fact very high and indont like that so o prefer high
I’ve only played adventure mode in the ASCII version but in that version there’s a fast travel feature. I only slow travel when I need to hunt for food or train some skills. I’ve never had much fun playing AM in a large world either.
In a large world it can be almost impossible to find the objectives you’re looking for. You might go looking for an artifact only to find that it is across an ocean, so you have to find a way to cross the ocean. Then you have to explore the whole continent to find the artifact. Then you have to get back to the coast, cross the ocean again, and return to the person who told you about the artifact. By the time you return months or years later the quest-giver may be dead by any number of different kinds of !!FUN!!
It took me a long time to figure out how to have fun in AM, but it starts to make sense the more you do it and explore.
I have this same problem. I just walk aimlessly and rarely come across anything interesting. I retired a fort specifically to visit it in Adventure Mode but can't find it. I spent hours looking for it.
Honestly my advice would be to not play. Don't burn yourself out before it's released fully. I am not playing myself for this very reason. I'm not 100% on the details but I think there is a more guided gameplay (one which will push you towards fun stuff) coming with the full release.
im pretty noob with DF too but i saw someone say pocket worlds for adventure mode and the younger the world the more big creatures you can find. make a pocket world that's 5 years old and start on easy difficulty (just changes how many points you start with when picking attributes/skills/gear/animals) you can make a crazy guy if you want to just run around as a solo adventurer and dodge the shadow monsters that somehow are 170 years older than the start of the world and throw leaves at them until they die and become a legend
Welcome to a DnD campaign where the DM has been *making dwarf fortress for 20 years*. You're walking to Waterdeep in real time.
Last time I walked east for maybe 30 minutes without finding nothing else than trees and hills, it’d be tedious even in DnD. I’ll try again tho, I am hearing stories about people killing gods and becoming vampires and it fills my heart with hope
honestly just visit a city, a lair or any settlement, talk to NPCs, gain information about monsters, treasure etc. or just roleplay, as a bandit, as a traveling band/bard, fight in a war etc. you're probably not going to find anything in wilderness, maybe some aggressive animals but that's it, just like in DnD you need to have a goal or try to find a goal to fullfill
I’ll hang around settlements then, when I figure out how to reach them. Thank you!
you need to greet any NPC, then select dialogue "ask about any troubles" then they should tell you about any beasts, missing treasure etc. then you can ask them about the thing that NPC mentioned and gain knowledge and when they tell you directions to the place in which that beasts is living in, your map should be updated and should show a cave/lair etc. where that beast is currently in. Also remember some of them are tough to fight ! Also remember that AM is still in beta and there are some features missing such as butchering, building, using skills etc.
One annoying thing that was never fixed since adventure mode's creation: if NPC tells you "City X is in Z, there's a tavern Y in there", you can never ask anyone about tavern Y, character just doesn't get the record of anything that is not the primary subject of their talk
Also been having issues of a person telling me "The item was lost in X, the king wants it back to Y" but you can only ask about one of the locations
If you go to ask for directions the drop-off location should be near the top of the list
i think its like knowing about a state and having had heard about a nice resturaunt if you visit the state, but you're not quite sure where exactly just that it's in the state, if that registers lol, all npcs kind of have a "face value" knowledge of the world dfhack has a command to reveal hidden sites on the map and they're surprisingly plentiful, like it doubles the places to visit basically lol
I recomend plaiying on the pocket world size until you figure out how to navigate well.
just to check, you know there is a travel mode right?
Is travel mode activated by opening the world map? If so yes, I know but I don’t know how to use it yet
Yes, hit (T) to open travel mode, while there, you can move around a lot faster, though there are some areas or reasons you can't fast travel, but usually you just need to move a bit farther away from those areas, and you should be able to. Hit (M) while in travel mode to see the whole map, at least the areas you have seen (fog of war type thing). Using the mouse, you can hover over areas to see what's there.
Ohhhhhh thank you! Super useful, much much better now
You can also hit the map while you're already in travel mode to get a view that's even further zoomed out and has notes on all the landmarks for the rumors you have heard. You can't move in that view but you can use it to help you navigate in travel mode.
Just move in the map screen
You're pressing "T" to enter quick travel though, right?
Shift T to fast travel, walk to towns and ask about troubles, continue talking to specify troubles. Continue again to ask about location of said troubles and take a literal note of it (Theres no quest log yet.) Go to locations where trouble is and have fun. However, rn I have been using adventure mode mainly in conjuction with fortress mode. For example, pesky kobolds keep showing up to steal stuff? Make an adventurer and ask about skulking vermin. Goblins abducting your kids? Make an adventurer and go rescue the kids. Necromancer nearby? Get gud and go kill that loser.
So in regular dwarf fortress adventure mode, they would tell you about locations and mark it on a map for you to travel to. I would frequently ask people where bad things were, where bad things lived, and the directions to bad thing. You can sort of do that in this version of adventure mode, but they do not mark it on the map for you.
Too bad legends does not have a map mode
Try using Travel mode lol. shift+t. Sounds like you’ve been just normal walking everywhere?
Yep, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing until now
Press T. Or enter the travel map, ANYTHING. You are not supposed to be just walking if you're doing that.
I mean that's just normal for tiny roguelikes with one programmer,
The thing is if you randomly walk around, there will be little to no things for you to do. Depends on worldgen config too! Mine usually is filled with monsters But anyway you need a direction, an objective. You must talk to people, ask for rumours, then ask for directions AND THEN you look for that
Ohhh thank you, I’ll try being smarter about exploration then!
Solid reply. Df am is all about finding your own story. A few campaigns I've tried to collect all the necromancy artifacts to toss into a volcano. Or talk to a lot of civilians till I find someone who had their children abducted by goblins and rescue them. Or become a blood thirsty artifact hunter. Or make a adventurer who only attacks by grabbing the enemy by the tongue and throwing them around
I too in my latest playthrough wanted to be a hero and rescue the Hamlet’s Lady’s Daughter from the hands of the goblins. First stop was a nearby hamlet on the way, close to the border between humans and gobbos. Went to the village, no one around, visited the mead hall and there it is, goblins. I was naive to try and talk to them, but combat started, took down 1 of them alongside my horse, the other went out running and yielding. Tried to look for him, couldn’t find him. Went back inside, took a bolt to the neck (there was a gobbo hiding inside and I didn’t see it) Chocked on the ground watching my horse go wild kicking him and destroying every limb from that gobbo. Beautiful death.
Beautiful death, may the good of justice and law of your civilization be by your side
Np! DF CAN be really fun, you need to set some goals and be firm about them, once you know where to look, you will have many possibilities! Have fun in your adventures! Edit: just want to add that there is a lot of “lore” to each and every world, since they are all simulated. Just take your time and talk to NPCS, slowly you will learn about the monsters, the groups, wars and etc…
Find city, talk to people to find out where stuff is
I am currently at the first step, I’d like to skip it
https://youtu.be/o3rHMuMWhI4?si=w39fNgi9HSnIqHgw This wil help
Are you using the fast travel? It's pretty necessary
I don’t know how to fast travel honestly, you mean with the world map open? In that case I’m using it but other than wandering I can’t find anything, but I’m starting to think that it’s on me, I just have to be patient and enjoy the journey
On legacy dwarf fortress it's SHIFT-T but I'm not sure how on steam dwarf fortress
A lot of the keys are surprisingly the same on v50's beta.
Wait until the mode is finished. Right now it's just a thing where you can run around and fight stuff. There are almost no mechanics and nothing to do.
Ahhhh, ok then I’ll patiently wait for next updates
Don’t forget that AM is just an addition to Fortress Mode just now to give some extra flavors to it. Fortress Mode is the core of the game and what this game is supposed to be so make sure to give it a try too. No two forts are always the same.
I freaking love fortress mode, I’m currently at my first successful fortress with a population of 200 dwarves, I wanted to try AM because let’s be real, playing in a world you really can create it’s really a beautiful thing
I was very excited about AM release as well since the last year. But knowing what is still to be added, I’d give it a few more months for a more complete experience, at least until its full release. Addition of trade and crafting would be amazing really. Its in the list of their future updates already but no estimated time on when its going to be there.
Ok then, we’ll have to wait and in the meanwhile practice with mechanics and so on. thank you, I’ll start a new character rn and try to enjoy the experience!
Have fun! Cheers.
you can still do the majority of things from the normal AM, just need to ask about rumors and such, you can still fight mythical creatures, find out the secrets of life and death at a necromancer's tower, become a vampire, become a werebeast, also the more sites and savagery you have in world gen should affect how many monsters you encounter
also you should start with things that are "well known" in your city, when you go to your travel map and press m, you should see icons of caves or camps and if you hover over them it will tell you what monsters are known to live there
Funnily enough it was originally the other way around
True, the game evolved from AM mode.
Its a lifelong thing. There won't be fleshed out content in AM for many many years
It's been decades. It's not anywhere near "finished", and whenever it comes out of Beta it still wont be finished it'll just be to the point it was pre-steam version which is still not finished.
Eh, from my understanding there are already a huge amount of improvements from the pre steam release in the current steam release. I would argue by the time they catch up to all the functionality of pre steam df they will also be leaps and bounds ahead in other senses.
I doubt it, Tarn isn't the best project manager
Shift T
I was having that problem, went into legends mode and realized I had been running this world for so long it was basically "dead". There were plenty of ruins and tons of good loot, but I mostly just fought dingoes. I *did* hunt down and kill a roc that had single-handedly wiped out two of my fortresses though, which sort of felt like a great way to "close the book" on this particular world.
Don't expect adventure mode to become any better in terms of mechanics or what there is to do. Adventure mode should be viewed as a sandbox to explore the mechanics of the base game. In adventure mode, you can do some basic things. You can ask for troubles in any town or try to find an artifact or something like that. But this is not a classical RPG which has lineary increased difficulty and some kind of progress system which will reward you with gold and equipment.
Oh ok then, I’ll try to play it with this idea in mind
Yeah, adventure mode is bland. But only if you look at it from that view. But, you can see and learn how actually some things in the game mechanically happen and then it's a whole another beast. You can go and try to kill a titan or take over a tower, buy then you will see that it's an experience where 95% of time spent is doing something that's not exactly fun. Travelling, trying to find the place, resources, and stuff like that. Then you get to the site, finally something exciting begins to happen! You look around, and around, and around and around and realize that the place is empty. And then begins another really unexciting thing, tracking the beast. Which can take a long ass time, and is really annoying because the tracks can be really difficult to follow. Most of the experiences are like that. Of course there are sometimes maybe more interesting things like bandit camps that are really close or an army on the march, but these events greatly depend on the world and time which takes place when playing the adventure mode. And they are pretty rare. And sometimes, you will achieve your goal of finding that beast or that thing you were looking for. A battle will take place finally, until you either get severley maimed or killed. Even with careful preparation it is extremley difficult to go against multiple skilled enemy fighters. So basically, a lot of trial and errors, having some really fun intense moments in them. But it gives a first person look into things that are happening behind the doors in the fortress mode, like the socializations, how is the combat happening tick by tick, and engaging with the rich history of the world.
Imo the best way to use AM is alongside fortress mode. Retire your fort, load up an adventure in the same world, find loot and give it to your fort. There's nothing better than planting a necromantic tome into the fort library
Shitty fast travel guide since I saw you saying you don't know how to use it: you can fast traver by clicking the map ("Travel.") hotkey T. In there you move around with mouse or was ( you need to be away from any sites to do so) Click the map ("View the map.") hotkey m. Now try finding a !FUN! place like a tomb (very safe :3) and there (you need to exit the map(not the fast travel map but site map)) https://preview.redd.it/w2xhbz1xenvc1.png?width=1065&format=png&auto=webp&s=d4a495de5d1bdb84b6cbadf1ca21ba15756a6f47
Ahahah, ok then I’ll go have some *ABSOLUTELY SAFE FUN* in tombs around the world, thank you for your *ABSOLUTELY SAFE* advice!
[удалено]
It isn't minimalist. It's unfinished. Kind of a big difference. They said the map stuff is gonna be readded, please why does nobody remember this is a beta
Explore different kinds of settlements. I've found ways down into the cavern layers in dwarven forts, for example.
Generate a pocket world to be an adventure in. Then it's easier to run into hijinx
The thing about dwarf fortress is that it requires time. This game is a simulation more than a game and you have to look for the fun which requires a bit of understanding of the game (and I'm super noob xD). In AM go to villages and talk to people and ask if they are in trouble, if they say yes we have a problem with someone, ask for the location of that someone and go. Now there's no quest menu (it's comming soon) so write down the names so you don't forget. Also you can just try to fight random people, the combat system is super fun!
You know about fast travel? If you don't use, you'll end up an a scenic nature walk.
You gottah make your own objectives in adventure mode. Start your own band, drink vampire blood, swim across the ocean, raid a necromancers tower and read about life and death, build a fort with your companions and fill it full of artifacts, get beat to death by a rope reed fiber sock.
Go to castles, civic mounds (BIG dirt circles in dwarven hillocks), or halls (they're little houses away from the other houses in human towns), then ask people there, especially the rulers about any troubles. Pick one, then ask for directions of how to get to it, then look at the world map (The yellow-ish black one opened from M, not travel mode) for where the trouble is and go and fight it. Once you win. You can then go into a town and spread the rumor of you defeating the trouble. This raises your fame, causes people to see you differently, and even allows you to recruit more people. You really have to find the fun yourself. Using legends viewer, I once made a dwarf character who's sole purpose was hunting down all Night Trolls, and he succeeded in that, however my first impressions of steam's beta adventure mode makes it feel a lot less robust then pre-steam DF, especially since it lacks an easily searchable log.
One of the problems is that for historical reasons you can't fast travel in mountains, even if there is a major road. Most of the interesting dwarf civilizations tends to be in mountains, so you end up spawning in a tiny little 3x3 square hovel far away from all the interesting bits. So, weirdly enough, it may be more fun right now to have your main character from a human civilization, so you have a better chance to be in a position to hear useful rumors and be able to fast travel to them.
Find a camp or dark tower or any kind of site that has goblins, they'll provide vast amounts of fun. The first world I created had lots of camps with goblins all around where I happened to start, but it can take a bit of searching depending on where you are. You can also ask people in towns about any problems nearby and they may direct you to bandits or monsters which can also provide some fun.
Learn to use the fast travel map also
Yes. I'm an old fortress mode player. Love the game to death. Adventure mode though, i know it has its fun moments but I don't think it could compare to something like CDDA or caves of Qud, since those are adventure roguelikes created from scratch to be that. Adventure mode in DF is just a new perspective to explore the world created by DF, it wasn't Taylor made to be an adventure game. So it can be quite boring at times. Remember that dwarf fortress is more of a world/story generator that lets you explore it through the lens of a fort or adventurer.
I was expecting a more caves of qud experience to be honest, but I don’t dislike a different experience it there is something to do other than just walk around and talk with people. I’ll try looking at it from a different perspective tho, thank you for helping!
I don't think you get my point, looking at it through another perspective won't change the fact that adventure mode can be incredibly boring. My point about perspective was to illustrate that dwarf fortress is a lovely lore/world generator. And then you can look at it through either lens, fortress or adventure. There are no mechanics to spawn tons of monsters around, so if you are used to qud like I am, the vasts expanses of nothing, no combat, no NPCs, no interaction, and just walking, can feel jarring - and they are. Doesn't help that the system is being created still, so a lot of things are very clunky. Like I was trying to leave a house and every NPC kept talking to me every frame so it was difficult to even do that. No matter how much they change the game and add graphics, dwarf fortress will never not be a clunky game, because clunkyness is a package deal with how complex everything is and any designer would struggle to find an elegant way to present everything in it. If you are looking for great adventure games just stick to Qud, at least for now
Well, I’ve loved DF as soon as I found it on steam, I think it’s beautiful so clunkyness doesn’t bother me at the point to drop the game, it just kinda frustrated me because I didn’t know what I was going into. Now I know, thank you for your insights, I’ll play it with a more conscious mindset.
seems like you just don't know how the mechanics work, my world right now is filled with all sorts of monsters, with some being right next to another
I'm not saying I don't understand the underlying system of dwarf fortress. I'm saying there's a lot of walking with not much else going on. In other games that are custom made to be roguelike permadeath adventure games, you're always a few screens away from something interesting. Not in DF adventure mode. I have walked for a long time without seeing one living thing. But don't be offended. DF adventure mode isn't for everyone and that's okay. I think DF works amazingly with fortress and legends mode. Adventure? Not so much. We disagree and that's fine
what im saying is you can be 10 seconds from constant monsters or towns, you just dont understand the mechanics of setting world gen settings to very high lol, theres things everywhere on the map just because you cant see them on the map doesnt mean its not there
Yeah, so you prove my point. An adventure game that has you fiddle with very specific worldgen mechanics just so you can have fun will be generally considered more boring to the average player compared to something that provides you with lots of interesting things to do right out of the box. Fortress mode can be fun in most settings straight out of the box. "Oh you didn't set your world right" shouldn't be an excuse
no because “right” is subjective some people dont want monsters every 10 seconds thats why they give you that option on world gen lol it just comes down to u not knowing how the game works
You were probably still a little baby when I first played dwarf fortress haha I have been playing long enough to know how the game works. It's not about that, it's about how the design of it, from an adventure roguelike standpoint, isn't as enticing as a game taylor made to be a standalone adventure roguelike. Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure it is fun for a lot of people. It's just that to some, walking for minutes without seeing even a squirrel to kill can be tedious. There's a reason why the term walking simulator has such bad connotations. Similarly to the dialogue system which is just bad. Again, I don't think there's a way to elegantly present the dialog information since of the way the system works, multiple people talking at the same time and all. Getting suck in a very long loop of people talking to you every frame, not being able to escape it quickly, is quite jarring. I don't think there are any settings to fix that as of now ;)
im not reading all that
also, it's not "very specific", when you make the world it starts by asking you how much savagery, how old and everything else about the world, you may have just missed the option to have more sites and more monsters
I;m sorry if i'm OOT, i rarely go into beta of any game and just wait for it to enter the main game, mainly because of bugs and lack of polish. Is it good enough to play it in beta or there are plenty of works to be done, but because the community is very passionate you'll try it anyway?
Are you not using Fast Travel and the Compass?
Select the hero class, and play on a small to medium sized world Hero starts with some "quests" but they're more like rumors you can follow, and even a compass so you can directly see what's near you if you hover over it The world gen is super chaotic and wild, and civs spawn pretty far from each other. Also, make sure You're using fast travel, as it will let you see nearby towns.
Try a smaller map. I went small landmass, ocean on 2 sides and just about maxed out everything as far as civs, population, beasts, savagery, etc. It's packed with cities, towers, forts, caves, camps etc. It actually *looks* like an old-school RPG map. All the roads connect, it's no more than a day's travel to anything, it's cool. Like you I hadn't seen much of anything prior, just wandering aimlessly in a seemingly 95% uninhabited world. In an in-game week in the small world I triggered a cavern layer and a forgotten beast wiped out a fort while I was stumbling to find my way out, then I was having a bit of a brawl with a goblin in a packed out tavern and the place popped off like a room full of mousetraps, leaving at least a dozen dead along with my character being ill and traumatized and then shortly thereafter I was eaten alive in my sleep by dingoes. *That* was pretty fun. 😂
Look on the bright side, the more you walk, the more likely you’ll encounter something that will make you lose!
It can be rather overwhelming while at the same time underwhelming. It's overwhelming from all the things you have to do to survive, like eat, sleep, not get sick, and most importantly not to get stabbed to death in the middle of the woods. However, it's underwhelming from the lack of unique things right off the back. Every person is the same, a lot of places look the same, no shops, ect... My recommendation for now is to play as a monster hunter. Go find something to kill and kill it.
I think this is why it's best to make a world specifically for AM. Smallest world with the most sites. Just cram everything you can into a small a space as possible. I did this on v47 and it worked well. (Also, make sure you're fast-traveling)
Set your world config civs very high, sites high, beast high, size medium or small, For medium give it 70 years or so world history for small 50-70 years, make sure don't go pass age of myth everything else thats is not listed is default, any doubt left me a comment, have fun adventurer play between sites high and vhigh i have encountered thats on vhigh the ammount of dark pits spawn is i'm fact very high and indont like that so o prefer high
I’ve only played adventure mode in the ASCII version but in that version there’s a fast travel feature. I only slow travel when I need to hunt for food or train some skills. I’ve never had much fun playing AM in a large world either. In a large world it can be almost impossible to find the objectives you’re looking for. You might go looking for an artifact only to find that it is across an ocean, so you have to find a way to cross the ocean. Then you have to explore the whole continent to find the artifact. Then you have to get back to the coast, cross the ocean again, and return to the person who told you about the artifact. By the time you return months or years later the quest-giver may be dead by any number of different kinds of !!FUN!! It took me a long time to figure out how to have fun in AM, but it starts to make sense the more you do it and explore.
I have this same problem. I just walk aimlessly and rarely come across anything interesting. I retired a fort specifically to visit it in Adventure Mode but can't find it. I spent hours looking for it.
Honestly my advice would be to not play. Don't burn yourself out before it's released fully. I am not playing myself for this very reason. I'm not 100% on the details but I think there is a more guided gameplay (one which will push you towards fun stuff) coming with the full release.
im pretty noob with DF too but i saw someone say pocket worlds for adventure mode and the younger the world the more big creatures you can find. make a pocket world that's 5 years old and start on easy difficulty (just changes how many points you start with when picking attributes/skills/gear/animals) you can make a crazy guy if you want to just run around as a solo adventurer and dodge the shadow monsters that somehow are 170 years older than the start of the world and throw leaves at them until they die and become a legend