Dwarf Fortress! The life simulator and construction sandbox game epitomizes dedication to a single game. The history of Dwarf Fortress’s success is the quintessential example of a game developer’s efforts rewarded by an equally dedicated fanbase after two decades.
A Brief Summary About World Generation Settings of Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress is undoubtedly one of those unique gaming experiences that have achieved the ambition and creative vision of its lead designers, Tarn Adams, and Zach Adams. Here’s the kicker: they plan on continuing the support for games because much more is in the pipeline in the coming years and months.
A big part of the originality, charm, and appeal of Dwarf Fortress is its world-generation settings. Any change you make to the settings could potentially alter the world in drastic ways, which is my it’s vital to have a good understanding of all Dwarf Fortress world generation settings.
Why World Generation Settings In Dwarf Fortress Matter?
In a nutshell, Dwarf Fortress creates a customized world simulation for your dwarves to live in, where they will work, fight, mine, invent, and drink heartily.
You will see the Dwarves play out their lives in the game’s bright pixelated art style and texts depicting their actions and emotions.
The decisions in the world setting will determine the Dwarve’s fates, which, more often than not, will end in hilarious tragedy if you’re new to the game. Even veteran players fumble up, and hours and weeks of gameplay end up with all your Dwarves dead.
”But failure is parred for the course, as the game’s tagline in the community sums things up quite eloquently, “Losing is fun.” It motivates you to see what went wrong and how you could have avoided a bad ending.“ But that is parred for the course, as the game’s tagline in the community sums things up quite eloquently, “Losing is fun.” It motivates you to see what went wrong and how you could have avoided a bad ending.
Now, let’s look at the different world generation settings of Dwarf Fortress.
The Variables In Dwarf Fortress Settings For World Generation
When you start a new game in Dwarf Fortress, you will spend a chunk of time changing different variables that will shape the world for your Dwarves. Those settings include:
Size of The World Map Determines The Overall Area of The Game
The first thing to address in the setting of Dwarf Fortress world generation will be the size of the world map for your Dwarves. Depending on your PC’s capability and how well you can manage to bounce from one place to another, you can make the World Map small, medium, or large.
A large world map will allow other races to inhabit the world relatively peacefully. Each race will have its designated land; overall, conflict is avoidable. There will be drawbacks to a large map because that would mean that different biomes and wildlife, as well as resources, will be spread out all over, and your Dwarves will have to do the leg work to collect and bring their loot back to their base.
A shorter map will see fights over resource-laden sections between different races and more dangers lurking about that can potentially kill off your Dwarves.
The Length and Time-Span of World History
After determining the map size, you will choose the time duration passed between the world’s creation and your Dwarveworld’s point. Depending on which timeframe you want your Dwarves to be in, it will significantly shape your experience, with the game.
For example, if you choose a time gap of less than 20 or 30 years between the world’s inception and your Dwwon’t entering it, then it would result in technology and progress being primitive. There won’t be many innovations untworld’s Dwarves can invent and find new materials.
The relations and lore of different races won’t be as developed, and in a sense, you will be creating history.
Conversely, if you choose a long time between the world’s creation and when your Dwarves inhabit it, a significant amount of time will have passed.
The historical events and backstories of nations will have happened, many alliances formed, rivalries renewed, and scientific progress and precious materials discovered. On the flip side, too much gap of, say, 500 or 1000 years will result in wars devastating the lands, resources dried up, and diseases running rampant.
The Number of Civilizations That Inhabit The World For Population Variety
Another factor in making the background setting in Dwarf Fortress feel distinct is the number of civilizations in it.
The different races in Dwarf Fortress are the titular Dwarves, and the entire game will be from their perspectives.
Humans are always in everything, so they are a given, but you can’t play as them, thankfully.
Other races include goblins, aggressive little creatures who can be cunning and agile.
Elves are a sophisticated lot with loads of historical events and have roots in fantasy, and last but not least are the hostile Kobol, careful when fighting them as they can quickly get the drop on you with their stealth tactics.
Setting the race number high will ensure that every race is present in the game world, making them often interact. The interactions will result in special events (including wars) adding to the world’s lore, increasing the world trend.
If you set the number of races to low, there is less chance of interaction between them and less chance of conflict, but also the danger of extinction.
The Maximum Number of Sites For Influencing Progress
Keeping the number of sites high in Dwarf Fortress will give the different races multiple settlements. The different settlements are spread apart throughout the world map.
If you want races to have internal conflict and a history of their own, setting the maximum number of sites high is an excellent way to incorporate them into your game world. Each race has primary regions like mountains, dark pits, and forests and can spread its influence to capture more territory.
If the maximum number of sites is low, there will be less chance of different races occupying new territory and progressing. But your Dwarf Fortress will always be in danger of them. After all, non-dwarves are foreigners, and conflict will be inevitable. Plus, its chances of extinction are greater.
The Number of Beasts For Wildlife Control
Okay! So how cool is it that Dwarf Fortress has mega beasts, titans, and junior sem-mega beasts that roam the world map? The answer it’s freakin awesome!
The beasts are the Kaiju-inspired creatures that appear when there’s a population explosion. The beasts are more helpful than you might think. They can reduce huge portions of the populace to make it easier to manage the game.
Setting the beast population high means frequent attacks on settlements and fortresses; lessening them means the population won’t face many mega beast attacks. Similar to the populace becoming extinct, the beasts can die out too.
Remember that if your map size is more extensive, the number of beasts will rise accordingly.
The game’s thematic setting changes dramatically if the number of beasts increases. It can give birth to a survival scenario in an apocalyptic nightmare.
Natural Savagery Calculates Aggressiveness Of Creatures
Dwarf Fortress settings for world generation also ask to adjust the natural savagery of wild animals.
If you set the savagery level high, animal population and aggressive behavior will also rise. You will see savage animals more frequently because their biomes spread near every settlement. However, the low savagery setting can reducFortress’smal aggression, and they can be tameable.
Species of wild animals can go extinct if you lower the setting of natural savagery.
Mineral Occurrence Is The Critical Factor
The final customization for Dwarf Fortress’s world map generation is the mineral occurrence frequency. It is, in my opinion, perhaps the most crucial setting which determines the game’s direction.
Mineral Occurrence refers to the rare and precious metals that your dwarves mine to create solid and impregnable fortresses. The options for mineral occurrence range from rare, sparse, and everywhere. Select the rare if you want a true challenge (and less hair due to pulling on it from frustration and progress blockage).
For new players, it’s best to start the game with Mineral Occurrence set to everywhere. That is best to get a feel for the game and not get put off due to minerals being hard to come by.
Detailed Mode For Finetune Customization
Before finally getting the settings done and jumping in immediately. Let us tell you about Dwarf Fortress’s Detailed Mode.
The game allows players to adjust even the minute gameplay elements, which is awe-inspiring.
You can change many specific environmental settings. Weather conditions, temperature control, map elevation of mountainous regions, and other geographical specifics. You can even set volcano eruption rate, placement, and the specific number of individuals living on the customized map. Veteran players who deeply understand the game should play around with these settings.
Final Thoughts
We hope you enjoyed the individual breakdown of each Dwarf Fortress world generation setting. Each one greatly impacts the game in different ways. If you like to read about the game settings of other games, we recommend checking out this article about the graphical settings of Ready or Not.
Dwarf Fortress is worthy of all the praise and support it has earned. If you haven’t played the game, we highly recommend checking it out.
