How should I learn to play Dwarf Fortress?
I am interested in learning how to play Dwarf Fortress. Where should I start, as an absolute beginner?
I like this set of tutorials. It's based on the old version but it goes through the steps of building a fortress pretty well.
Captain Duck has a great series of video tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/user/captnduck). Most of them are for pre-2010 versions, but they still give a great intro to the game, and he has started to make a couple of videos for the 2010 version. He starts the tutorials at the absolute beginning, and walks you through everything.
If you have any specific questions, the dwarf fortress wiki is a great place to look (http://df.magmawiki.com/).
Different styles work better for different people, but I learned the fun way:
- Begin
- Lose
- Figure out what happened
- Repeat
If you're stuck on something specific, there's nothing wrong with looking at a tutorial or checking the wiki, but try not to over-research before you really get your feet wet. One of the coolest things about learning to play DF is discovering all of the neat/interesting/strange/complex things that the world does and researching too much before hand will diminish the sense of discovery.
Learn how to feed and hydrate your dwarfs.
Specifically, learn how to farm: mill plants into flour with a quern and cook that flour into meals at a kitchen, and brew alcohol at a still.
There's a Quickstart guide at The Dwarf Fortress Wiki, which is an invaluble reference site. I didn't have any issues applying the previous version's tutorial(v0.28.181.40d) to the current version(v0.31.10).