Dwarf Fortress News

Hey Urists,

It’s Alexandra here and we’ve got a packed update this week with patch 52.05, siege update footage, merch announcements and an exciting community event. The team is busily finishing the last few features before the siege update is ready to go live.

Patch 52.05 brings a bunch of crashing and stability fixes.

[h3]Release notes for 52.05[/h3]

General updates

• Fixed crash caused by interrogating certain suspects under certain circumstances in world generation.
  
• Fixed crash in legends caused by missing works of art.
  
• Fixed potential out of bounds crash setting appearance contributions from parents in world generation.
  
• Fixed pathing issues caused by building construction on certain maps.
  
• Fixed some other issues related to map block allocation and path connectivity.
  
• Made training marksdwarves use the last bolt in a stack.
  
• Allowed work orders to specific plants for milling jobs.
  
• Stopped dyed items from triggering inappropriate export prohibitions.
  
• Specifying wood in certain work quotas will now actually use the specified wood.
  
• Stopped meandering behavior for animals that are trained for war or hunting.
  
• Again allowed impaled weapons to be dropped by the wielder, leaving the item behind.
  
• Fixed a problem causing minerals to not show up in some mods.
  
• Fixed issues with blinding and necrosis item powers in scripts.
  
• Increased world generation stability.
  
• Fixed problem with material initialization causing unpredictable problems.
  

[h2]Siege Update Preview[/h2]

The siege update is coming “soon” and we have a short video showing off some of the new features in action. You can see the new sprites with trolls wearing equipment, showing a enemy siege formation. There’s also a defensive formation with crossbow turrets firing at an incoming charge up a hill. This is just a small sample of all the things you’ll be able to do when the siege update goes live. We still have a few surprises to reveal! Watch the siege update preview here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We will be sharing the release date ahead time so you’ll be able to prepare your forts (and your dwarves) for completely new threats.

[h3]Adventure Mode Vinyl and 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition[/h3]

You can now pre-order the Adventure Mode vinyl from GameMusicRecords.com. It’s a breathtaking set that includes two LPS with original artwork by by Tomáš Duchek and Kitfox artist Thea Kent. It also includes the bonus track Danger Room which we previewed in the last update. The vinyls are set to ship Q1 2026.



Dwarf Fortress turns 20 next year and Serenity Forge has been working on a Collector’s Edition to commemorate the occasion. Included in this set is the game in a beautiful collectors box, a cloth map of a special DF Anniversary world you’ll be able to visit, a gorlak plushie, bottle opener, lenticular card and a special collection of Zach’s crayon drawings and community fort stories.

You can pre-order the 20th anniversary set here.



[h3]The 1st Official Dwarf Fortress Mod Jam[/h3]



We’ve teamed up with DPh Kraken, Squamous and dikbutdagrate, some of the best modding experts in the DF community to start the first official Dwarf Fortress mod jam.

Inspired by the Caves of Qud mod jam and Titan fest, this three day jam is designed to be a beginner friendly way to try out modding in DF. Experienced modders are challenged to embrace the theme and experiment with lua. The jam will start on October 20-23rd with a showcase stream celebrating the entries on October 29th. Because it is so close to Halloween, the theme of the jam will be “Creatures of the Night” so we encourage mods with flavourful and fearsome monsters that suit the world of Dwarf Fortress. To register for the jam and more information please go to the jam page on itch.io.

You can also join the mod-jam channel on the Kitfox Discord and chat with the organizers and fellow jammers ahead of the event.

That’s all for now, we will be back with more siege update info soon!

-Alexandra

Hey Urists,

It's Alexandra here with patch 52.04 to fix issues with armies/squads travelling. We're sorry this was such a pain to deal with in-game, it was a nasty bug. There's also some other fixes in there. The team's focus for September is continuing with the siege update. We will have more news and details to share soon.

[h3]New Single Release[/h3]

Dabu and Simon Swerwer just released the new single, a remastered and reimagined rendition of "Danger Room" using the original recordings. The cover art is also by Dwarf Fortress pixel artist Carolyn. This track will also be making its way into the game soon. Give it a listen:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Release notes for 52.04:[/h3]

General updates

• Fixed issue with squads/armies breaking into groups and not rejoining.
  
• Mod upload doesn't clobber info.txt.
  
• Fixes a crash when choosing clothing sizes in workshop.
  
• Fixed out-of-bounds error in army processing.
  
• Fixed out-of-bounds error in transformed units.
  
• Fixed armies deleting items improperly.
  
• Fixes a potential crash in wrestling.
  
• Fixed issue with plant processing job specifiers being ignored.
  
• Mill job plant can be specified.
  
• Makes the "placing lakes and minerals" stage of worldgen significantly faster.
  
• Moods using bars try to use metal now.
  
• Animal people no longer inherit meandering from their base creature.
  

See you in the next one,

Alexandra

Hey Urists,

It’s Alexandra here with update 52.03 which brings new colour and options for dying and some general fixes and improvements. From Tarn:

Here is a release to continue to stabilize the lua update. There are several regular fixes as well, listed below in the patch notes.

Also, we have some dye improvements for you! You can now mix dyes to produce a variety of colors, and you can tint with dyes to mix the natural color of the material and the color of the dye during the dyeing process. If you make a new world, you'll also have access to some additional outdoor plant dyes. Leather can now be dyed, and there are some new stockpile controls to help you manage all of the new stuff.

If you want to see your dwarves in their new outfits after you've made some shiny clothes, there's the existing preference setting to show their dyed outfits rather than coloring them by profession.

Release notes for 52.03:

Dye improvements

• Added dye mixing.
  
• Added dyeing of leather.
  
• Added partial dyeing of items (tinting).
  
• Added 60+ new outdoor plant dyes (in new worlds).
  
• Leather, cloth, armor, and finished goods stockpiles can now filter by color and dye status.
  
• Plant processing and extraction jobs can have a specific plant set.
  
• Added natural colors to undyed cloth, thread, and leather descriptions.
  
• Added dye color to dye descriptions.
  

Modding and lua updates

• Mods in mod_upload are now sorted (first by ID, then name, then numeric version, then description).
  
• The "delete" buttons for saves have been replaced with a "Files" button, which, when clicked, gives the previous menu (with a warning that "Delete" is permanent and instant) with an extra button that opens the saves folder (Windows).
  
• You may click on mods in the various mod lists to open their folder (Windows).
  
• Added logging for missing PERMITTED_REACTION and PERMITTED_BUILDING objects.
  
• Reactions associated to entities that use plant reagents will check that the entity has those plants when making powder list (reaction products are not checked.)
  
• Changed how duplicate object message boxes work.
  
• Possible improvement to Linux message boxes.
  
• Added DYER to list of hard-coded buildings permitted for reactions.
  
• Nightmares no longer have bogeyman polymorph.
  
• Fixed angel sphere descriptions.
  
• Fixed attack tweaks and webs on forgotten beasts.
  
• Fixed necromancer animation missing IT_MANUAL_INPUT.
  

General updates

• Fixed issue with not all save files being copied to the folder.
  
• Archers will no longer infinitely flick each frame between archery training and going to some other training if they have no ammo.
  
• Fixed problem causing some armies to become stuck.
  
• Announcement settings save properly again.
  
• Prevented some potential crashes on startup.
  
• Removes dead/ghostly/caged/sleeping/paralyzed units from the noble queue.
  
• Makes nobles drop their haul items when they go to a meeting.
  
• Noble meetings auto-rebuff if meeting data is lost.
  
• Improved/optimized memory management for armies/army controllers.
  
• Optimized a particularly slow army loop.
  
• Fixed crash associated to transformed creatures with fewer body parts than their untransformed body.
  
• Fixed the "view sheet" hotkey for items/units.
  
• Fixed placement of titan shrines.
  
• Made work orders reset their suggested conditions properly when details are changed.
  
• Added some crash guards and logs for corrupted units/nemesis records.
  
• Made default embark cloth items dyeable.
  
• Updated historical nicknames in more places so that legends mode has them.
  
• Adds a fix for scrolling on laptop trackpads etc.
  
• Fixed typo in nemesis corruption message.
  

It’s also the start of the Kitfox Festival which means that Dwarf Fortress and the entire Kitfox catalogue is on sale! And as owners of Dwarf Fortress, you can take advantage of our bundles and pick up say, award-winning roguelike Caves of Qud (since not all of us are patient enough to wait until it comes out on Nintendo Switch, announced this morning)

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38314/Best_Patch_Notes_Bundle/

Our friends at A Sharp also just announced their brand new procedural adventure game, Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists. If you're into tense tactical battles and long sunless journeys then this might be for you. You can watch the announcement trailer here and wishlist the game on Steam now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3794210/Thousand_Hells/

That’s all for now, happy festivaling!

-Alexandra

For years, Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams has been planning a more mythical turn for the notoriously dense fantasy sim—which, by his own admission, has been a little lacking on the fantastical front. Today, thanks in large part to the efforts of programmer Putnam, who joined Bay 12 Games in 2022, Dwarf Fortress makes its first major step towards that prophesied myth and magic update with a scripting overhaul that will let modders work a bit more of their own magic...
Read more.