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Comment by riksucks | Hacker News Reader

The fact that dwarf fortress generates lores and story, makes me feel like I need to try out this game. But it always seems hard to get into

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if you install one of the "lazy newb pack" mods (this is the typical recommendation: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126076.0) and watch a tutorial or two on how to use the interface, it's actually quite intuitive. Its interface is similar to vim in many ways.

ah if its similar to vim, then I might give it a try, thank you so much beacon. Sometimes I feel like that these are essential things in nerd culture lol, and I dont feel cultured enough because I dont know these. But yeah lemme fire this up and try

Id suggest reading a tutorial on the DFHack Workflow plugin. It makes the game much easier as you can just automate jobs for the dwarfs so you don't forget to do things like brew alcohol.

Consider trying Rimworld--it's a more approachable (and in turn, shallower, though not as shallow as you'd expect) riff on the "story generator"/ant-farm approach to game design.

It's definitely has major design philosophy differences that make it scratch a very different itch then dwarf fortress. Both good games, but not really equivalent imo.

RimWorld randomizes difficulty through the game. So when things go crazy the response tends to be Angst against rngesus.

In dwarf fortress when problems arise the answer is almost always that it could have been prevented and or dealt with in many many ways (some that the developer never considered).

Play a different storyteller. ;) Plenty of mods bring with them much fairer storytellers. I like Sara Spacer from Save Our Ship, who scales based on tech level and research completed.

Nobody I know plays the default ones regularly except for Randy, and Randy won't hit you hard enough to break most skilled players.

You can go through and read the lore of a world without having to play.

Speaking of this, I've yet to play the game for more than five minutes, but there are some great YouTubers that let you get into the game through lets play without having to master it: https://www.youtube.com/user/kruggsmash

You could also wait for the steam version, which will have a much more intuitive UI.

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