Dwarf Fortress News

The most detailed sandbox game ever hits its lowest price on Steam

From Minecraft and Terraria to Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included, the creative freedom offered by the best sandbox games is tough to match. While there's plenty of big names to choose from, perhaps the most important among them is Dwarf Fortress. Its deep, intricate simulation has been spoken about in hushed, reverent tones, and now a big Steam sale lets you snag its updated and polished version, complete with the newly overhauled roguelike adventure game mode, at its lowest price yet.

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Dwarf Fortress is 20% off!

Hey Urists!

Dwarf Fortress is on sale on Steam at it's lowest price to date! Pick up Dwarf Fortress and the Fortress Mode Soundtrack for 20% off. We won't be discounting this low for a while so take advantage of this deal until May 13th.

Buying Dwarf Fortress will also give you access to the public beta of Adventure Mode. We will also be patching Adventure Mode next week so stay tuned!

Fortress Mode update 50.13: Portraits, crash fixes, and decorous demon chefs?

Apologies for two updates in two days but important things are afoot, and as I mentioned yesterday, Tarn is going to take a little rest for a week or two, so hopefully this will help make that wait more bearable.

This is version 50.13 updating on the main/default branch, improving Fortress Mode! If you're not seeing it, try closing Steam and re-logging in.

[h3]New additions/changes[/h3]

Portraits! Whether they're dwarves, elves, humans, or animalpeople, they have portraits! Procedurally assembled, in many cases.

A few of my favorite animalpeople portraits

[h3]Major bug fixes[/h3]

Fixed statue-related crash
Fixed syndrome-related crash
Fixed temperature-related crash
Fixed crash from empty kitchen menu
Fixed multi-kill squad orders
Fixed world gen crash from the appointing of chefs by demon rulers that had been influenced by outside reading materials on decorum and leisure time

[h3]Other bug fixes/tweaks[/h3]

Centered some creatures that were printing off-center
Large gems and gem crafts should be produced properly by gem cutting jobs again
Fixed cave adaptation
Fixed problem with numbers in wild creature clusters
SELECT_GROWTH and SELECT_MATERIAL available in plant modding

Thank you for playing!
Tanya on behalf of Kitfox and Bay 12

More Adventure Mode fixes, Portraits coming to Fortresses soon!

Hey Urists!

Alexandra is off today so you have to make do with me, Tanya. But I'll be brief.

As many of you probably already noticed, beta13 went live yesterday afternoon with these fixes:

[h2]New functionality[/h2]

right click menu has option to move more than one tile
npc sheets no longer give away their names unless you know them

[h2]Major fixes[/h2]

cleaned up an intermittent crash from playing multiple adventure worlds
fixed crash from some old adventurers

[h2]Minor fixes[/h2]

stopped lockpicking menu from popping up until that's ready
fixed cave adaptation
optimization for loading speed with regards to flow events
restricted some actions like bookkeeping from happening outside fort mode
centered display of some wide-bodied creatures (some bears, anaconda, python, some animal people

We're all hoping to get the food situation sorted soon (butchering, etc), along with many other wishes, but it'll have to wait awhile (probably 2+ weeks), because Tarn worked very very hard to bring you the beta on his birthday, then needed to hurry some crash fixes with Putnam, and now needs a small rest. He'll be back at the grindstone soon, we promise, and his fey moods will return. In the meantime, dabbling in thievery or playing as a goblin or a necromancer (edit: oops, not available yet, sorry) will also keep your belly from rumbling.

BUT! Very very shortly the portraits from Adventure Mode will be hitting the main branch for Fortress Mode, plus some bonus bugfixing while we're there, one that might be an all-time great. You'll know it when you see it in our update later this week.

Thank you for playing!
Tanya, on behalf of Kitfox and Bay 12

Patch Notes 51.01 and what's coming next for Adventure Mode?

Hello Urists!

Alexandra here with a post-Adventure Mode beta launch update. We hope you’re enjoying all the mischief and mayhem that the beta has to offer. Some of the stories you’ve been sharing have been hilarious and thought-provoking to say the least. This story about stealing a shield gone wrong made me laugh a lot.

[h3]Today’s Patch[/h3]

A big thank you to everyone who has been submitting bug reports to the tracker. The team already patched early this morning with some fixes:

Fixed region map scrolling crash
Crash fix related to multithreading

[h3]What’s Next?[/h3]

In the beta, as you may have noticed, you can create a party in character generation, visit your old forts, retire, unretire, get NPC companions, take quests, fight monsters with the various melee/wrestling/ranged options, set fires, tell stories, and travel the world. Portraits are available for dwarves, humans, elves, goblins, kobolds (minus some clothing variations), animal people (no items), and necromancer experiments (no items). These portraits are in both modes on the beta branch.

These are the features and improvements we have planned for Adventure Mode, as listed by Tarn in his devlog yesterday. We plan on keeping the beta branch up till the full launch on the main branch so you’ll be able to continue to play as features get added.

Even just the first few items on the (non-exhaustive) list below might take a few weeks so you can expect the beta to last quite a bit longer than that, which unfortunately means the launch won’t be extremely soon, despite what we thought and said previously. We promise we’re looking at how to be as efficient as we can. We don’t yet have a target date for the full adventure mode launch, but you’ll know as soon as we do, and keep updating regularly.

Planned improvements, though not sure in what order they'll be attacked exactly yet:

Quest log / information screen
Butchering and crafting
Ability use, from necromancy to pet animal to spit
Composing
Motion/attack indicators
Building interactions (levers, doors, etc.)
Wrestle button
Stealth vision arcs
Better UI for stuff like going through hatches over ramps
Some other info like movement speed / encumbrance
Tracking / odor / weather / light / time etc. information
Some travel map stuff like visible armies and zooming and highlights
Minimap / map memory
Trading and bartering (and the town shops being generally a mess)
Assuming false identities
Full personality customization in chargen
Graphics and audio that didn't make it in for the initial beta release
Get Classic conversions for the new buttons etc.
The new stuff: chosen mode with deities, town improvements, dungeon improvements, healing options, and so forth

As we’ve said before, cabin building is a larger interface project, so that'll have to wait until after the rest of Adventure Mode is launched. We might also shift some of these improvements to be post-Adventure Mode launch, depending on how things look as we go. We’ll keep you updated.

[h3]The Adventure Mode Soundtrack is Available![/h3]

Also, after a bit of a hiccup on the backend, the Adventure Mode soundtrack is now available on Steam. You can even get a 10% discount on it and the other OST, if you already own the base game.

Check it out!

That’s all for now! We really appreciate all the support and kind words as we continue our own adventure (of development!)

-Alexandra + Tanya + Bay12