jae

Losing is fun is something the community dreamed up that I think is critical to Dwarf Fortress enjoyment. If you consider your losses a fun learning experiment, then there is no wrong way to play. It's a lovely state of mind.

the Fun will happen, sooner or later. it is an inevitability

my personal white whale was trying to get a patrol of crossbowdwarfs that would reload when out of ammo, instead of climbing the walls of my central tower and trying to bludgeon any enemies to death in melee combat

but spamming weapon traps to deal with goblin christmas is fun in its own way c:

people love to hype up the difficulty of the game - the Fun - but stress spirals & deadly dust aside, the games difficulty has been very manageable for years. i think oxygen not included and rimworld are both harder games overall!

its really easy to get to a point where there's little pressure on your fort as a whole. like, sure, a werebeast or vampire might pick off a few people, or a mood might take someone and you have no shells so you lose em, but one drawbridge can protect you from every invasion for 100 years, no sweat.

the Fun, after you get the hang of the basics, comes in when you get an idea. to go to war with the world, to turn all your dwarves into necromancers, to flood the surface with lava, to live in a place not fit for the living, to catch a great mythological beast and make it be your first line of defense... to dig too deep. this is where the capital f Fun lives.

alternatively, you find out about a cool bug where creatures can straight up jump through grates and fortifications and your "totally safe" connection to the river becomes a zombie party in your central chamber

Losing is Fun and will always come for you. Honestly, there are plenty of great ways to introduce oneself to Fun, to get it out of the way. :D

when we're talking about Dwarf Fortress, the real question is: is it possible to do things right?