Dwarf Fortress News

Fantasy megasim and mad magnum opus Dwarf Fortress has a long and cherished history of absurd patch notes and bug reports, having gifted us with bangers like "Made the corpses of small animals that die out of water stop teleporting" and "Bug: Ghost of vampires still drink blood." With its first patch of 2026, Dwarf Fortress is already hitting the ground running in what's likely to be another year of unhinged update literature...
Read more.

[p]We heard your feedback about the portraits and updated a bunch of them that were feeling inconsistent with the tone of the game. I'm still getting a hang of making art direction decisions and wasn't as careful as I should have been. So Guido/Neoriceisgood and I talked more about the portrait art and I gave him more time to rework them.

Although we always welcome feedback, it was disappointing to see disrespectful and disparaging comments directed to Guido/Neoriceisgood who was simply working within the confines of his role. And so I ask that folks be more kind to the dev team in future feedback. I also want to clarify that we do not use generative AI for Dwarf Fortress in any step of development. We make things that make things but we make them by hand.


[/p][h3]Release notes for 53.09: [/h3][p]
Here's a patch with lots of routine fixes. Lots of new portraits and some updated portraits. Small experimental beasts now have their own colorful graphics to match the forgotten beasts. Find details below:

Graphics updates
[/p]

• [p] New procedural graphics for small experiments.[/p]
• [p] New animal portraits, and some new full body animal tiles.[/p]
• [p] Can pop up basic small animal sheets to view portraits and read descriptions for small animals.[/p]
• [p] Offering place, display furniture, and nest box show proper item materials when placed as buildings.[/p]
• [p] Uses proper list icons for creatures when choosing animals in embark or adventure setup.[/p]
• [p] Added further box highlighting for chosen/hero/ordinary selection in Classic.[/p]
• [p] Added error log for unrecognized tile graphics rectangle tokens.[/p]
• [p] Properly sized giant flying/gray squirrel list icons and corpses.[/p]
• [p] Fixed upright weapon trap display error.[/p]
• [p] Minimap properly updates on certain recenter commands.[/p]

[p]
General updates
[/p]

• [p] Stopped mood dwarves from choosing inaccessible workshops and causing path cancellation lag.[/p]
• [p] Dwarves no longer try to store pile and tomb items which are located outside their burrows.[/p]
• [p] Dwarves no longer try to store carried objects outside of their burrows.[/p]
• [p] Stopped dwarves with no working grasps from trying to store owned objects and excess equipment.[/p]
• [p] Made armor appear again on many non-sieging units where it was missing.[/p]
• [p] Mothers seeking lost infants no longer respect burrows but do respect chains.[/p]
• [p] Mothers no longer seek ghostly babies.[/p]
• [p] If an egg hatches and the mother is assigned to a zone (e.g. pasture), the baby is now assigned to the zone.[/p]
• [p] Soldiers given an order while hauling will now drop their hauled job items instead of taking them along on duty.[/p]
• [p] Dwarves heading off to meetings will drop hauled items from cancelled jobs.[/p]
• [p] Dwarves are more likely to handle their hauled drink-related items after drinking.[/p]
• [p] Appropriate buildings now stop rain and snow.[/p]
• [p] Added indication during assignment of specific military items whether the item is already assigned elsewhere.[/p]
• [p] Animal traps can catch subterranean water creatures like cave lobsters again.[/p]
• [p] Cave lobsters can be processed in the fishery and their shell can be used for shell crafts.[/p]
• [p] Creatures that leave statue corpses now leave statues of themselves rather than of random creatures.[/p]
• [p] Prophets and other religious people with prophetic belief systems will no longer include incorrect beliefs in their greetings.[/p]
• [p] Stopped pedestals and display cases from being allowed to display themselves.[/p]
• [p] Made mussels and oysters stop appearing on land when animals root around near oceans.[/p]
• [p] Stopped a few illegal werebeast types from being created.[/p]
• [p] Added visual button to back out of art element creation and deletion.[/p]
• [p] Fixed conflicting hauling/hot keys keybindings. You may have to restore defaults or update it yourself if you have custom bindings.[/p]
• [p] Specified amount created in some job names.[/p]
• [p] Fixed some item description grammar.[/p]
• [p] Fixed broken child/baby strings in certain contexts like action reports.[/p]
• [p] Cleaned up procedural creature text a bit.[/p]
• [p] Fixed incorrect name for coral material.[/p]
• [p] Fixed improper text for mythical dream objects.[/p]
• [p] Giant and animal person variants of pool creatures will now appear in savage lakes. (New worlds)[/p]
• [p] Fixed a few typos with key binding text.
  [/p]

[p] -Tarn[/p]

Here's a little patch to clean up some issues that sprang up (broken deconstruction speeds, broken work detail scrollbar.)

I've also tried to adjust the new material-based dwarf dig speeds to be faster overall - there had to be give somewhere, so legendary miners now aren't as relatively speedy (they are still twice as fast as a novice.) Native metals were also taking way too long to mine. And the lack of drinks effect was coming on a little too strong too early in mining in a noticeable way.

General updates

• Reduced erroneously long deconstruction speeds.
  
• Fixed broken scrollbar for work detail labor list.
  
• Changed relationship between mining speed, mining skill, and materials.
  
• Fixed broken mining speeds for native metals.
  
• Moderated lack of drink effect on work speed.
  

[p]Hey Urists,

This is our last Dwarf Fortress update for the year and we have patch 53.07, a list of the upcoming major features and a winter Tarn Time video. [/p][h3]Release notes for 53.07:[/h3][p] Here's another patch for the Siege Update. Dwarves will now have happy thoughts to bolster them after sieges, while invader movement has been made a bit more dynamic. There are lots of new animal portraits. Hundreds of them! And the lua has been brought in line with our full set of procedural creature graphics, so forgotten beasts in new worlds should look extra fancy now. Siege Updates [/p]

• [p] Added a positive thought for everybody in the fortress when a siege is defeated.[/p]
• [p] Made siege leaders a bit more dynamic when cut off.[/p]
• [p] Made fleeing invaders with special movement (flying, magma etc.) escape more cleanly.[/p]
• [p] Added invasion creature cap and strength to the difficulty settings.[/p]
• [p] Pick/wall material now impacts digging speed through natural materials (for invaders and the player).[/p]
• [p] Hunters reserve only 25 bolts at embark now.[/p]
• [p] Default archer uniforms at embark specifies weapon if civilization has only one type.[/p]
• [p] Default archer uniforms at embark created for both leather and metal armor.[/p]

[p] Graphics Updates[/p]

• [p] Added hundreds of new creature portraits, and added new full body graphics for a few natural creatures.[/p]
• [p] Added some new graphical layers to forgotten beasts/demons/titans and enhanced other layers.[/p]
• [p] Added some missing graphical layers and tweaks to forgotten beasts/demons/titans/experiments.[/p]

[p] General Updates[/p]

• [p] Fixed a crash caused by kitchen input with no entries.[/p]
• [p] Fixed a crash related to post-worldgen population growth.[/p]
• [p] Stopped items thrown at visitors by tantruming dwarves from causing an escalation to lethal combat.[/p]
• [p] Stopped drunk/tantrum brawlers from attacking small and vulnerable body parts like the throat.[/p]
• [p] Throwing and pinching are no longer considered brawling-level moves.[/p]
• [p] Added a chance for falling creatures and objects to bounce at each level of stairs or heavy branches, rather than falling all the way down.[/p]
• [p] Added (economic) difficulty setting for fortress dig speed. Currently the same on normal/hard.[/p]
• [p] Tree/axe material impacts tree felling speed.[/p]
• [p] Stopped certain children/animals from being born with negative sizes and/or random ages.[/p]
• [p] Displayed correct age in years on sheets, respecting birthday.[/p]
• [p] Displayed proper experimented-upon historical figure name in experiment description.[/p]
• [p] Stopped fort vampires from attempting to disguise their kills with unique "Zero Kill" text on their kill list.[/p]
• [p] Handled a few more issues with hospital patients and caretakers being frozen.[/p]
• [p] Fixed grazer status only being displayed for grazers with long names.[/p]
• [p] Brought mead value in line with other drinks.[/p]
• [p] Properly respected complete ocean edge minimum settings of 1 and 2 during world generation.[/p]
• [p] Added a mitigation for underground feature save corruption.[/p]
• [p] Fixed some sort issues with lua for RNG stability. [/p]

[p][/p][h2]What's Next for Sieges?[/h2][p]The list does not include the ongoing work on bugfixes and other quality of life improvements that occur simultaneously. We don’t have specific dates or timeframes to share but you can expect a lot of things from the list to arrive in 2026. If you’d rather see the video version, skip down past the text! [/p][p]Tarn writes: "Following the release of the Siege Update in November 2025, we're continuing on with a series of releases involving magic, armies, villains, site building, and maps. The first Siege Update focused on invasion planning, overcoming fortress defenses, and defensive siege engines. The second release will focus on magic, armies, and diplomacy. We've revised the list below of possible changes, none of which are guaranteed, but which we are aiming for: [/p][p]Magic diverse enough to make sieges and siege defense more exciting[/p][p] -Kidnapped humans and dwarves trained by demons as sorcerers
-Deity-based powers and temple ceremonies
-Other magic based on the supernatural structure of the world
[/p][p]Resident wizards[/p][p] -Help to defend the fortress against magical sieges while you aid them in their work
-Assign assistants to work in magical workshops and to go off-site for research tasks
-Laboratory zones can incorporate lab equipment for alchemy and other magical research
[/p][p]Improved diplomacy[/p][p] -Clean up siege negotiations
-Send messengers to other sites
-Ability to see existing petitions
[/p][p]Using outside armies[/p][p] -Send out squads to muster armies in the hillocks
-Use scouts to receive warning before enemy armies arrive
-Engage, delay, and turn back sieging armies

[/p][p]Misc[/p][p] -Changes to cage traps to make it more intensive but still possible to e.g. capture megabeasts [/p][p]-Make megabeast and kobold attacks more functional and interesting [/p][p]-Fix and improve underground civilization attacks (as far as we can without future map changes) [/p][p]-Anything from Combat Flow and Combat Styles that comes up, also a notion of reach [/p][p]
We've promised Adventure mode site building as the first major Adventure mode feature post launch, since it used to be in the game but didn't make it in for the graphical version. This is still the plan, and we'll take care of it after Fortress mode gets some attention with the siege improvements above. In order to further motivate this for everybody, we're planning a foray into cross-mode play and Adventure mode crafting here. Details will follow as we get closer and select our direction.[/p][p]
Post siege improvements, we'd like to start some map rewrites and additions to get us prepared for a more magical and procedural future.

Prior to the Steam/itch work over the last years, we were working on villains, and left quite a bit of work on the table. After the siege improvements are done, and we've made some additional progress, we'll make another post to see how these additions will be incorporated.[/p][p]
And of course, we'd like to start bringing more and more myths and magic and world changes into the game, probably through the avenues of covens and religion, but we'll see how that develops as all of the above progresses, since it will be important to be flexible.”

[/p][h2]Community Requests[/h2][p]
We hear you! There are many of you who have been asking for classic keyboard controls from the ascii version to make their way to Steam. We know this is important for the veterans who have developed muscle memory for the last 20 years. In order to do this we are going to move the interface elements out into lua. The expansion of lua is an ongoing project and work on interface widget luafication has already begun. But we don’t have any dates or timelines.

We also get occasional questions about the Mac port, but as we announced earlier in 2025, we have chosen to put that port on hold indefinitely. The improvements and advances made wouldn't have been possible if we had been supporting that platform.

[/p][h2]Tarn Time Winter 2025[/h2][p] Tarn reflects on the siege update and outlines the features he’s excited to work on next. Watch here: [/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]
[/p][h2]Hundreds of new Animal Portraits are in![/h2][p]
[/p][p]Part of today’s update includes over 350 new animal and creature portraits from artist Neoriceisgood/Guido Bos. There’s lots to discover here with everything from the majestic horse to the timid fluffy wambler. We'll be chatting with Guido soon about his art and process, so comment with your question below if you have a specific curiosity![/p][p] [/p][h2]
Bundle with Songs of Syx [/h2][p]Dwarf Fortress players can get a 10% additional discount on the newly updated fantasy city-builder Songs of Syx by picking up the bundle, on top of its current 25% off sale. This is the perfect game for Dwarf Fortress fans who want even more simulated armies and battle.

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]So that’s all for 2025! We hope you have a relaxing Holidays and your dwarves will be nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of a fey mood dance in their heads. We’ll be back in the new year with a magical mindset! [/p][p][/p][p]- Bay 12 Games and Kitfox Games [/p]

[h3]Release notes for 53.06:[/h3]

Continuing to add improvements to the Siege Update. Some sources of siege freezes/lag are gone, and the invaders should be a bit smarter with more active rams. Some new graphics tweaks, and a new song, "Nabidas"! The problem with inter-party fighting in adventure mode on ambush is fixed.

Siege updates

• Fixed slowdown associated with invaders trying to break through certain floors from below.
  
• Made builders always try to connect staircases even if the main siege path has changed.
  
• Fixed issue causing siege path to sometimes reset if it required both miners and builders.
  
• Fixed issue causing battering ram pathing spam.
  
• Added some more pathing spam prevention to invader planning.
  
• Made building invaders give up on stale irrelevant far away build jobs.
  
• Improved siege composition to stop overemphasis on heavily armored unskilled invaders.
  
• Fixed some exploration behavior that got invaders stuck in trees too often.
  
• Made rams more active.
  

Audio

• New song "Nabidas" plays in any context.
  

Graphics

• Updated dwarf and human skin tones/eyes in full body pictures.
  
• Blind cave ogre fingers and toes properly represented.
  
• Updated snail people graphics.
  
• Updated gem graphics.
  
• Updated jeweler's workshop graphics.
  
• Added palettes for leather and skins.
  
• Creatures without corpse pictures show a skeleton or liquid blob.
  
• Centered cave swallow and serpent person images and fixed serpent person corpse image.
  

General updates

• Stopped adventure mode party members from feeling instinctual need to hunt and kill other party members when ambushed by wild animals.
  
• Stopped glob spitting procedural creatures from spitting unknown material rather than poison.
  
• Fixed issue that could cause adventure mode bandit harassment from ending prematurely.
  
• Added more medical job exemptions to mount-being-controlled-by-rider rule.
  
• Stopped ghosts that return from the dead twice from reporting an improper location as the site of the return.
  

You can listen to the new song, "Nabidas" by Dabu and Simon Swerwer here or on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]