You know, just in case any newer players might be interested in them.
- In 2007 the first version of the game to have height actually exist instead of being abstracted was released. Trees, however, continued to be exactly one tile wide and one tile tall until 2014.
- It took a shockingly long time to make it so dwarves reacted to fire in any way at all. Significantly longer than it took to make it so dwarves who were on fire would blow up your booze stockpiles when they went to get a drink.
- In the 2D versions there were no nobles you appointed yourself. Even things like brokers and sheriffs were sent over in migrant waves
instead of people you could actually use for something. - In the early 3D versions fish that appeared on the map were the most terrifying foe imaginable, because they continually trained swimming and thus increased their attributes to ridiculous levels. Oh, the stories people can tell you about carp...
- When giant sponges were first introduced they were also ridiculous, because they only had one hit location and the combat model wasn't sophisticated enough to handle that. Spongebob was hardcore.
- The first 2010 version had a bug in its more detailed skin modeling that caused dwarves to melt in the rain.
- In the first generation of 3D versions you could embark to a goblin fortress and the goblins would inexplicably be friendly...but in 40d (the last iteration of that version) they'd suddenly remember they're supposed to be hostile whenever your first siege showed up. Surprise!
- Speaking of 40d, in that version cats would constantly spam "[name], cat cancels Store Item In Stockpile: Too injured" messages whenever they moved vermin they killed to the refuse stockpile, because the game checked for hands they neither had nor needed. The cats would then proceed to put the vermin corpses in the refuse stockpile anyway.
- At one point there was a bug in the interaction of strange moods and burrows that let you force dwarves to add an infinite number of decorations to their artifacts, which was first discovered by someone who got an artifact statue with the entire history of the world their fort was in carved into it.
- Speaking of artifacts, in the 2D versions dwarves who made artifacts would carry them forever, not even considering storing them somewhere not on their person...which was more than a little awkward when you got, say, an artifact lead floodgate.
- There used to be a noble called the philosopher who would show up and serve no purpose whatsoever beyond occasionally altering the prices of goods.
- Speaking of which, everything about the dwarven economy. I'm just gonna link the wiki page because it'd take too long to explain.